Who wins, a team of Canadians who played in Canada or Americans who played in America?

There’s a concept in international best-on-best hockey that some causal fans may not be completely familiar with, mainly because I made it up just now: The double player.

It’s a player who’s represents his country both internationally and in the NHL. A double Canadian is a Canadian player who plays on a Canadian NHL team. A double American is an American player who plays on an American NHL team.

Jack Eichel is a double American. Matthew Tkachuk became one when he forced his way out from Calgary to Florida. Connor McDavid is a double Canadian, at least for now. Mitch Marner was, but not anymore. And Mario Lemieux, as great as he was, never earned the double distinction. So far, neither has Auston Matthews, Sidney Crosby or Cale Makar. But Quinn Hughes just did, a few days ago.

Cool. So who wins, a team of Double Canadians or Double Americans?

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NHL weekend rankings: A wild Friday shakes up the league, and our Top 5

December can be a boring month in the NHL. Opening night optimism is a faded memory, the deadline is still months away, the playoff picture is jumbled, and not much is happening.

And then, every once in a while, we get a day like Friday.

We got one of the biggest midseason blockbusters in years, with the Quinn Hughes trade to Minnesota. We got the long-awaited Oilers goalie trade, with Tristan Jarry coming over from the Penguins. Oh, and before those two deals dropped, we also found out that the Sabres might be on the verge of a front office shakeup.

Other than all that, pretty quiet day.

Let’s dig into those two big trades, with a few lingering thoughts…

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Which of the teams that are .500 or worse will find a way to make the playoffs?

The other day, I had a question I was wondering about: How often does a team that’s .500 or worse in December manage to still make the playoffs?

And I was surprised by what turned out to be the answer: All the time.

No, literally, it happens every season. Going back to the 2013 lockout (and excluding the COVID season that didn’t start until January), at least one team that was .500 or worse in December has made the playoffs each and every season:

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Who was the worst NHL GM to keep his job for five years or more?

 I’m a big fan of sports questions that seem simple but are actually more complicated than they appear, which is how I’ve managed to waste huge chunks of my life on questions about jersey numbers or building rosters of terrible contracts that are still somehow cap compliant. Today, we’re going to try another one.

Which GM had the worst long stint with a team, meaning five years or longer?

You can already see the problem. There are lots of GMs in NHL history who’ve held the role for a particular team for a long time. And there are lots of GMs who didn’t do an especially great job. But those two groups aren’t supposed to overlap. This is supposed to be one of the most important jobs in a relentlessly results-oriented league – if you’re not having success, shouldn’t your team replace you with somebody else who might?

You’d think so. And sure enough, most of the GMs who are remembered poorly fall short of our five-year cutoff, often by a lot. Even guys that stuck around longer than fans might have wanted, like John Ferguson Jr. in Toronto, Ron Hextall in Pittsburgh, Ned Harkness in Detroit or Peter Chiarelli in Edmonton didn’t get to the five-year mark. Five years is a lot.

But every now and then, for a variety of reasons, a team sticks with a guy well past the point that results would dictate. Those are the guys we’re interested in today, as we count down the ten worst GMs to get at least five years with the same team.

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NHL weekend rankings: Naming and shaming the (many) fake .500 teams

If you’re a sports fan, you know what “.500” means. In general, it means you’re average. Mediocre. Just OK. And specifically, it means you’ve won as many games as you’ve lost.

The exception: The NHL. Since 1999, the league has given out points for losing, which is dumb but we’ve been over that. In the NHL, we rank teams based on their points percentage, and because of those loser points, you can have a percentage north of .500 even if you’ve lost more than you’ve won.

Most years, it’s annoying. This year, with the loser point being well and truly out of control, it’s messing up the standings even more than usual. So this week, let’s take a look at five teams that are fake. 500 – which is to say, they’re sitting at .500 or better even though they’ve lost more games than they’ve won. We’ll name and shame those teams here, and rank them from least to most fake.

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