Grab bag: Changing the rules

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Gary Bettman and the Flames try to bluff their way to a sweetheart arena deal
- ESPN asked 30 players to suggest new rules changes, so I made a power ranking of their answers
- An obscure player from a doomed franchise
- It's the week's three comedy stars, and Matt Duchene is not laughing
- And in the classic YouTube breakdown, we remember that everyone complained about suspensions 30 years ago too.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Five one-team stars who went down with the ship

The Sedins made news this week with an article in The Players' Tribune that seemed to all but rule out the possibility of the twins finishing their career anywhere but Vancouver. With the Canucks expected to finish near the bottom of the standings this year, there had been talk the team could make a Ray Bourque-style trade to send its franchise players to a Stanley Cup contender. That door seems closed now.

That means the Sedins will join players like Steve Yzerman, Nicklas Lidstrom and Jean Beliveau in the fairly exclusive club of star players who spent their entire career with the same franchise. Of course, those situations were a little different – those players stuck around to play their final seasons for a contender. The Sedins know that likely won't be the case for them.

It's far less common for a star to go down with the ship, playing out their final seasons with the only team they've ever known even though they realize they don't have a shot at finishing with a Cup or even a playoff run. But it's not unheard of – Shane Doan's recent retirement was one example. Here are five more.

Thomas Steen, Winnipeg Jets

Steen is a reasonably direct comparable to the Sedins – a Swedish forward on a Canadian team who had never won a Cup and clearly wasn't going to if he stayed put. Steen broke in with the Jets in 1981, but by 1994 he was nearing the end of the road with no title in sight.

Of course, the mid-'90s Jets were in even worse shape than today's Canucks. Not only were they a bad team, having finished no higher than fourth in their division since 1990 and failing to win a playoff round since 1987, but they were on the verge of packing up and moving to Arizona. 

So it was no surprise when Steen's name showed up in trade rumors as the 1993-94 deadline approached. The Toronto Maple Leafs were mentioned as a potential destination, and would've made sense – they were a borderline Cup contender that was shopping for veteran help up front. But the deal never happened (the Leafs landed Mike Gartner instead), and Steen returned for one last partial season after the 1994 lockout, during which the Jets finished last in the Central Division for the second straight year.

At the time, that was assumed to be the last season for the Jets in Winnipeg. When a goodbye rally was held after the season, Steen's number was retired to a loud ovation. That made him the first Swedish player to be honored by an NHL team, not to mention a rare case of a player having his number retired when he was still technically active. While the team ended up making a surprise return for one more season in Winnipeg in 1995-96, Steen did not.

So take solace, Canucks fans. Barring a miracle run, the Sedins may be headed towards a Steen-like finish to their careers. But at least you'll still have a team to cheer on after they're gone.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Grab Bag: Was Wayne Gretzky overpaid?

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The new offside review rule isn't perfect, but it's a good step
- Thoughts on the NHL's Declaration of Principles
- A Duchesne trade... in the obscure player section
- The week's three comedy stars feature bread shoes
- And an old (old, old, old) school debate over Wayne Gretzky's million-dollar salary.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

The 2017 offseason bizarre-o-meter

It’s September and training camp is just a few weeks away, meaning for all intents and purposes the NHL off-season is over. The key decisions have been made, the big moves have gone down, and we have more than enough information to separate the winners from the losers, and the good off-seasons from the bad ones.

But there’s another way to look at it, and it’s with a question we like to break out every year around this time: Who had the most bizarre off-season?

To be clear, bizarre doesn’t necessarily have to mean bad. In today’s ultra-conservative NHL, taking the most predictable approach is often the worst possible strategy, with more than a few teams over the years playing it safe and coming to regret it. And sometimes a little bit of creativity can work out just fine, even if it leaves us scratching our heads at the time.

But there’s still something fun about watching a team make its way through the off-season and wondering: Wait, what are they doing?

So today, let’s dust off the Bizarre-o-meter and hook it up to all 31 NHL teams division-by-division to see which ones did the best of job of keeping us on our toes and giving us something to talk about over the summer.

Central Division

Nashville Predators

The off-season so far: They said goodbye to Colin Wilson in a trade, James Neal in expansion and captain Mike Fisher via retirement. They did lock up Ryan Johansen, albeit at a pricey $8-million cap hit for the next eight years.

But their strangest move was: Giving Nick Bonino more than $4 million a season on a four-year deal seemed like an overpayment for a veteran middle-sixer in an otherwise stingy free agent market.

Bizarro-meter ranking: 3.6/10. Nothing all that strange here, in an off-season that turned out to be marginally less exciting than last year’s.

Minnesota Wild

The off-season so far: Chuck Fletcher pulled off a four-player deal with the Sabres that saw him add Tyler Ennis and Marcus Foligno. He also signed UFA Matt Cullen, and got Mikael Granlund locked up on a three-year bridge deal.

But their strangest move was: Wriggling out of a tricky expansion-draft dilemma for the relatively cheap price of Erik Haula and prospect Alex Tuch. Given that they stood to lose a guy like Mathew Dumba or Eric Staal, that was a win.

Bizarro-meter ranking: 3.8/10. The Wild did well to avoid an expansion disaster. Now the question is whether they’re actually any better.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Grab Bag: The NHL needs a Jagr Draft

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Jaromir Jagr is still unsigned. Here's how we fix this.
- Introducing a new name for overrating one-team players
- An obscure player whose name is fun to say
- The week's three comedy stars
- And as the Flyers prepare to retire his jersey, we look back on Eric Lindros's all-time career highlight: Appearing on Arsenio Hall

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports