Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Podcast: Price fixing

In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- Carey Price is back. Are the Canadiens saved?
- Scoring is up and nobody can figure out why. Dave and I have a theory.
- The Flyers are flatlining and change has to be on the way soon.
- Which two active players would combine for the best goalie fight?
- And lots more...

>> Stream it now on Vice Sports

>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.




Tuesday, November 28, 2017

The 20 stages of realizing your favorite NHL team might be terrible

We’re now over a quarter of the way into the NHL regular season. That’s not all that far, and there’s still time for plenty of twists and turns. But we’re starting to settle in, and by now there are certain things we’re starting to feel pretty sure about.

For example, we’re pretty sure that a few of these teams are terrible.

You can’t make the playoffs in the season’s first few months, as we’re often told, but you sure can miss them. And several teams are well on their way to doing just that, with starts around the league that range from concerning (Edmonton, Montreal) to outright bad (Buffalo, Florida, Philadelphia) to historically awful (Arizona).

If you’re a fan of one of those teams, or one of the many other early-season disappointments, it can be a tough time. So today, we present the 20 stages of realizing your favourite team might be terrible. This may not make you feel any better, but it will at least help you keep track of where you’re at.

Stage 1: Opening-night optimism

Ah, opening night. The one night of the year when everyone is convinced that their team will be fine. Like the old saying goes, everyone is tied for first place. But not for long. Soon, your team will have first place all to itself.

Look, is this team perfect? No, of course not. It’s the cap era, so every team will have its share of imperfections, and this one is no exception.

But is it a bad team? No, it most certainly is not. Nobody with half a brain thinks that. They’re going to be fine.

Bring on the season. You have a good feeling about this.

Stage 2: The first signs of a problem

Huh. You kind of thought they’d look better than this. Obviously, you knew they weren’t going to go 82-0-0, and a few losses are nothing to overreact to. But sometimes, it’s about the way that you lose. And you don’t like the way this team is losing.

Maybe it’s the goaltending, or the secondary scoring, or the veteran star who seems just a step or two slower. But once you notice it, it’s all you can see. And if it continues, it’s going to be an issue.

Still, there’s plenty of time to sort this stuff out. In a month or two you probably won’t even remember that any of this stuff was a concern. For now, let’s just put a pin in it and see how the rest of the season plays out.

It’s probably nothing.

Stage 3: Constantly repeating that it’s still early

OK, there’s no denying that this isn’t going well. But it’s early.

And yes, this is the point where someone will start quoting stats about how a team that finds itself a certain number of points out of the playoffs on Nov. 1 or American Thanksgiving or whatever the date is will almost always end up missing out. But you don’t buy that. Most of the teams who found themselves in those situations were bad. This team is good. Or at least not terrible. Probably.

It’s still early. Just keep saying that to anyone who tries to talk to you. Preferably before they even finish their sentence.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




Monday, November 27, 2017

Weekend wrap: Sens of urgency

So it’s probably time to talk about the Senators again.

The first time we led with Ottawa, it was two weeks into the season and they’d just rolled through western Canada, looking an awful lot like a team that was picking up where last year’s conference finalist had left off. A few weeks later, they were bringing in reinforcements, pulling off a blockbuster three-way deal for Matt Duchene. Both times, optimism was the word of the day in Ottawa.

Today, not so much. The Senators followed the Duchene trade with a trip to Sweden, where they swept two against the Avalanche. But since returning to North America, they’ve been a disaster, losing six straight and picking up just a single point in the process. It’s their worst stretch by far of the Guy Boucher era, and it’s dropped them into the ranks of the Eastern Conference also-rans, nestled in between the Hurricanes and Flyers. Today, the Sens are sitting three points out of an Atlantic playoff spot, and six back of a wild-card berth.

Even worse, the Duchene trade seems to have thrown a wrench into the offence, which hasn’t scored more than twice during the losing streak after scoring three or more in seven of eight games before the deal. And Duchene himself certainly hasn’t helped the cause, contributing just a single point since arriving while posting an ugly -10 rating.

The good news is that Duchene is coming off his best game as a Senator, which came during Saturday’s loss to the Islanders. He had a power-play goal late in the game, and didn’t post a minus rating for the first time (he was even):

That’s not exactly a breakthrough, but at this point you start with baby steps.

More important, the underlying numbers suggest that Duchene’s lack of production is more due to a swing of bad luck than anything in particular that he is or isn’t doing. He’s putting almost twice as many shots on net as a Senator than he was in Colorado, but he’s getting PDO’d to death at both ends of the ice. That kind of stuff can happen to anyone over the course of a year, and if it’s buried in the middle of a season we may not even notice it. But when it comes in a player’s first few games after a monster trade, it gets people talking. (Kyle Turris has six points in eight games in Nashville, in case you were wondering.)

But while you might be able to shrug off Duchene’s struggles as a temporary blip, there’s at least some reason for concern with the Senators as a group. Their record is already inflated by loser points, with just eight actual wins to show for 22 games. That’s a stat that can go both ways, since some better luck in overtime and shootout coin flips would mean a few extra points. But they’re already well back of just about everyone else in the ROW tie-breaker, which could come into play if the playoff race is close.

So what’s wrong? It’s not about injuries; with the exception of Erik Karlsson‘s delayed start to the season, they’ve been reasonably healthy. They are getting hurt by goaltending, with Craig Anderson posting a .895 save percentage. Normally we might write that off as a slump by a guy who’s usually among the league’s best, and it probably is, but you get a little nervous when a guy who’s 36 starts to stumble.

No team is ever as bad as they look during a losing streak, so we have to go bigger picture when trying to figure out the Senators. And there’s a good chance that Anderson settles in, Duchene adjusts to his new home, Karlsson wins a few games singlehandedly and everything turns out OK. But it’s also possible that the Senators we’ve seen so far this season are an accurate reflection of what this team should be — in other words, one that loses more than they win, keeps it relatively close in the process, and hangs around the outside of the playoff picture.

And of course, they’ve already played most of their trade chips, at least in terms of future assets. We often hear about how crucial it is for Ottawa’s bottom line that the team always at least make the post-season. If things don’t turn around soon, we might be about to find out just how crucial.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards Stanley Cup–favourite status.

5. Nashville Predators (14-6-3, +7 true goals differential*): Last year’s conference champs had won nine of 10 before yesterday’s shootout loss in Carolina.

4. Winnipeg Jets (14-6-3, +10): They didn’t impress during Saturday’s showcase game in San Jose, but two of three in California ain’t bad.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




Saturday, November 25, 2017

Saturday storylines: The return of Carey Price

It’s a bit of a weird weekend this time around, with the NHL taking U.S. Thanksgiving off on Thursday and then jamming the schedule with 14 games last night, the busiest Friday of the year. That means just about everyone will be playing tired tonight, and the combination of fatigue and backup goalies could lead to some high-scoring games.

HNIC Game of the Night: Jets at Sharks

Heading into the season, this wouldn’t have been a game you circled as a potential matchup of the night. And sure, there are other matchups around the league that feature more star power or better teams. But this one is intriguing partly because it features two teams we haven’t quite figured out yet.

The Jets are finishing off a tough road swing that’s seen them play four games in six nights, starting in Nashville and then heading through California. So far, it’s yielded mixed results, with one/two wins in three games. But that still leaves the Jets with one of the better records in the Western Conference at 14-5-3.

We’ve been waiting for this kind of breakout for years in Winnipeg, where a talented young core has played fun-but-inconsistent hockey that’s so far produced more magazine covers declaring them future Cup champions (one) than playoff game victories (still waiting). Last week, we nudged them into our top-five power rankings for the first time, well, ever.

So it’s hard not to get excited about how it’s all coming together this year. But then you look down the list of teams the Jets have actually beaten, and aside from an admittedly impressive 7–1 win over the Penguins you see a mix of struggling contenders, question marks and outright bad teams. Maybe that’s to be expected in a parity league where almost everyone is just kind of OK, but it would be nice to see the Jets make a statement.

The Sharks may not offer that opportunity, since they’ve been up and down all year. We snuck them into the top five on a couple of occasions, too, but they’ve cooled off lately and dropped out of a playoff spot. That’s not a cause for panic quite yet, at least in what’s shaping up to be a weak Pacific Division, and the analytics types still seem to love them. But wins are wins, and right now the Sharks are in danger of moving into that mushy middle of teams nobody pays much attention to. Maybe they should already be there.

If so, then this is exactly the sort of winnable road game that a contender would march in and take. We’re still not sure that the Jets are that team, but they’ve been proving it a game at a time, and they get another chance tonight. At the very least, it may be the biggest Jets-vs.-Sharks matchup in 50 years.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




Friday, November 24, 2017

Grab bag: Pangs of pregret

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- An NHL coach finally calls BS on the league's ridiculous injury policy
- Celebrating a new class of terrible of contract
- An obscure player who did something nobody had managed since Phil Esposito
- The week's three comedy stars, including that SNL sketch
- And a YouTube breakdown of the game that introduced Mickey Mouse to the NHL

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports





Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Podcast: Fixing the DoPS

In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- A look at a bus week of suspensions
- Fallout from the Wings/Flames fight
- Remembering back to what old school hockey brawls were like
- Dave and I fix the DoPS
- How worried should the Habs be?
- A fun hypothetical about Carey Price's contract
- And lots more...

>> Stream it now on Vice Sports

>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.




Handing out some awards at the NHL's quarter pole

We’re almost at the quarter-mark of the NHL schedule, which means it’s time to do a few things. First, and most importantly: Start wildly panicking if your team isn’t doing as well as they should be. You guys on that, Montreal and Edmonton? You are? Great, nice work as always.

For the rest of us, we may as well hand out some quarter-season awards. Sure, most of these will turn out to be regrettable in hindsight by the end of the year, and some of them will look bad within weeks. But that’s part of the fun.

So let’s do it. You can vote for your own picks right here with results revealed this week on Wednesday Night Hockey. In the meantime, here’s who we’d be handing out the tiny quarter-sized trophies to, based on the season’s first six weeks.

Most valuable player

Every sport that features an MVP award has the same debate over how exactly we should define “valuable.” Some see it as simply a fancy way of saying the best player, while others look for some deeper meaning related to a player’s relative importance to his teammates in terms of his team’s playoff chances.

Some years, one player emerges as the favourite under either definition and we can skip the semantic debate. This year, we may not be so lucky. Because based on the first quarter of the season, Hart Trophy voters could end up facing a dilemma: What do you do when the season’s two best performers are on the same team?

With Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos racking up big numbers while helping the Lightning to top spot in the standings, some will try to argue that they can’t be considered more valuable than someone like Connor McDavid or Johnny Gaudreau, who are the clear offensive leaders on their team. Others would point out that points aren’t everything, and that a two-way force like Anze Kopitar should get some consideration.

Of course, if we’re not going to just look at the top of the scoring race (like Hart voters usually do), we could make the case for a goalie or defenceman. That would bring guys like Sergei Bobrovsky, Alex Pietrangelo and Corey Crawford into the conversation. And then you’ve got guys who’ve missed time to injury, but are clearly their team’s most valuable players when healthy — that group would include Erik Karlsson and Auston Matthews.

Luckily, we fall into the category of voters who keep it simple. The league’s most valuable player is the one that’s having the best season, period. That means Kucherov gets the nod, edging out Stamkos. And we’ll toss Bobrovsky a third-place vote, if only because non-forwards rarely get enough Hart love.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




Monday, November 20, 2017

Weekend wrap: Which teams were we wrong about?

Well, that didn’t go well for the Canadiens.

Fresh off the embarrassment of becoming the first team in the league to lose to the Coyotes in regulation, the Habs had a chance at instant redemption in a home matchup against the Maple Leafs. Instead, they suffered through a third-period implosion on the way to a 6–0 loss that may have somehow been even more embarrassing.

So now what? The Canadiens are 21 games into their season, and it already feels like the drama around this team is exhausting. They started slow, including a stretch where nobody could score. But they seemed to have turned things around, winning six of eight while scoring five or more four times. They still had ground to make up, but the percentages were evening out and it felt like it was OK to sound the all-clear on any talk of disaster.

Maybe not. The Habs have now lost four of five, sinking back down to five points out of a playoff spot. GM Marc Bergevin is taking all sorts of heat. Max Pacioretty is getting his usual share of the blame. And now there’s even talk that the team could be doing some “soul searching” while considering starting all over with a rebuild. That’s a long-term decision and any problems with this roster didn’t just appear overnight, but it’s amazing how much one rotten week can change the perception of a team.

The Canadiens aren’t the only team being reevaluated right now. Half the teams in the league have now hit the 20-game mark, which means it’s time to do a few important things. First, we can spend the next few days referring to this point in the season as the “quarter pole” just so that the sort of people who enjoy giving lectures on proper horse-racing etymology will have something to do. And second, we can start in with some serious re-evaluation of the teams we may have been wrong about.

Every year, a few teams we thought would be good stumble through the season’s first month while a few teams we’d already written off look like playoff contenders. Those are interesting stories, and we’ve covered plenty of them in this space over the last few weeks. But as we’re constantly reminded, it’s still early, and a small handful of games can’t tell us all that much.

But 20 games is… well, it’s still a relatively small sample, and it’s not unheard of for a team to have a good or bad stretch for a quarter of a season that still turns out to be an outlier. But we’re reaching the point where it’s time to start taking the standings seriously, if only because teams may have built up a cushion or deficit big enough to survive a correction down the line.

So this week, let’s pick three teams that most of us thought would be good and three teams we all assumed would be bad but who aren’t following the script, and ask: Were we wrong? And if so, what does that mean going forward? We’ll tackle the disappointing teams in our Cup section and the surprising teams in our lottery section. For some of them, based on the first 20 games, it may be the last time they get mentioned in those sections this year.

And of course, we’ll also dive into the teams that have been truly good and truly awful in our weekly power rankings. Speaking of which, you’ll never guess who’s sitting in the No. 1 spot in our top five.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards Stanley Cup–favourite status.

5. Winnipeg Jets (12-4-3, +12 true goals differential*): The Jets make their debut on the strength of a four-game win streak. They’ll be tested this week as they head to Nashville tonight and then onto a three-game California road trip.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




Saturday, November 18, 2017

Saturday storylines: Leafs vs Habs, chapter two

Welcome to the NHL’s “Centennial Birthday Weekend,” in which the league celebrates its 100th birthday. It’s not the anniversary of the first ever games, since that’s in December, or of the league officially forming, since that’s next week. It’s just … uh … a centennial birthday. Stop asking questions. Look, do you want some cake or not?

HNIC Game of the Night: Maple Leafs at Canadiens

This is the second time this season that we’ve featured a Leafs-Habs game in this spot, and it probably won’t be the last. There’s just something special about a Saturday night matchup between the two long-time rivals. And since the league is using the meeting as an opportunity to douse us with history, all the better.

It’s worth revisiting what we wrote about these two teams the last time they played, if only to serve as a reminder of how many twists and turns can be packed into five weeks. Back on the season’s second weekend, we were wondering if the Maple Leafs could snap Montreal’s 14-game win streak in head-to-head matchups. They did, earning a 4-3 overtime win on an Auston Matthews goal.

We were also wondering if Montreal was ever going to get the offence going. That happened too, although it took a little longer. The Habs’ inability to score went from a curiosity to problem to an outright crisis over the course of the season’s first few weeks, before the floodgates finally opened and all those stats guys were proven right about percentages and regression and sample sizes. The Canadiens aren’t exactly lighting up scoreboards – they still rank just 24th in total goals – and Thursday’s loss to the Coyotes was the first time they’ve scored more than three in a game since Nov. 4. But at least nobody’s panicking about the offence anymore in Montreal. They’ve got other things to worry about.

Instead, we’re all wondering what’s up with Carey Price, who’s “minor” injury has kept him out for two weeks now. He still says it’s no big deal, assuring fans that they “don’t have to be concerned” and that this isn’t a repeat of 2015. That’s reassuring, and with rookie Charlie Lindgren looking fantastic, the Canadiens haven’t missed their superstar all that much yet. But seeing Price try to play through a second pre-game injury raises some fair questions about the relationship between the team and its expensive star. And you can forgive Montreal fans for being a little nervous about the situation, especially when Antti Niemi suddenly shows up via waivers? If Niemi is ever the answer, the question probably isn’t anything good.

As for the Maple Leafs, the last time they were in Montreal they were riding high and scoring a ton. Since then, we’ve seen them boost their record to 6-1-0, be declared Cup favourites, cool off, hit an outright slump, and then reel off five straight wins even though they were missing Matthews for most of that stretch. It’s been quite a journey. And these days, the Maple Leafs are winning thanks to solid goaltending and team defence instead of by just blowing the doors off whoever’s in the opposing net. They even managed a 1-0 overtime win their last time out. That’s not quite as much fun, but it probably makes Mike Babcock a lot less cranky, and that’s worth something.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




Friday, November 17, 2017

Grab Bag: When Teemu sings

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- That Wings/Flames brawl was crazy, but man times have changed
- Your guide to the GoalDNA project
- An obscure player who likes ice hockey, ice hockey
- The week's three comedy stars
- And new Hall-of-Famer Teemu Selanne has a song for you

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports




Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Biscuits podcast: Fixing the Hockey Hall of Fame

In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:

- Gary Bettman was allowed to speak in public again, so Dave and I are annoyed
- Brian Burke did too, and he didn't disappoint
- We introduce a new feature called Dave and Sean Fix The NHL. This week's project: the Hockey Hall of Fame
- Is Martin St. Louis a HHOFer? Dave isn't sure.
- Should Daniel Alfredsson be a sure thing? I'm not sure.
- We both suggest a longshot defenseman we think should be in.
- Reader questions, and lots more...

>> Stream it now on Vice Sports

>> Or subscribe on iTunes.





Monday, November 13, 2017

Weekend wrap: Are the Penguins broken?

Almost a quarter of a way into the season, the Pittsburgh Penguins have lost more games than they’ve won. They have the league’s third-worst goals differential, having given up 17 more than they’ve scored. They’ve lost six of their last eight. And Sidney Crosby is struggling through an extended slump, one that sees him with a bigger number on the wrong side of his plus/minus (-14) than in the points column (13).

Should we be concerned here?

The knee-jerk reaction is to say no, of course not. It’s early, there are still five months to go and these are the Penguins we’re talking about. Most good teams go through a cold spell or two over the course of a season, and we shouldn’t overreact just because the Penguins’ stretch is coming in October and November instead of being buried in February when nobody would even notice.

That’s pretty much the stance we’ve been taking around these parts, where we spent October stubbornly slotting the Penguins into our top-five list even when they were losing games 10-1. That seemed fair – two straight titles should buy you some benefit of the doubt. But as the season wears on and the Penguins continue to look like a decidedly mediocre team, it may be time to start wondering.

After all, this is a team that lost a lot of last year’s roster. They were depth pieces, sure, and in theory the core was even better because Kris Letang is back. But Letang is off to a terrible start, and the team seems to miss guys like Nick Bonino, Ron Hainsey and Chris Kunitz. They’ve missed Marc-Andre Fleury too, as Matt Murray is off to a slow start and the backup spot has been a mess.

They’ve also had issues with back-to-back games. They’ve played two games in two nights six times so far this year, and they’ve lost the second game all six times. That includes three embarrassing blowouts by scores of 10-1 (against the Blackhawks), 7-1 (Lightning) and 7-1 again (Jets). No team likes to play back-to-backs, but seeing the Penguins struggle like this has to be a concern. This team has played a ton of hockey over the last two years, and you have to wonder about fatigue. Seeing them constantly look like their tank is empty in back-to-backs is a worrying sign.

Let’s circle back to those three ugly blowouts. In a weird sort of way, maybe they’re good news. The Penguins were outscored 24-3 in those three games, which accounts for that terrible goals differential. You can’t just hand-wave away a team’s worst games, but it’s not like the Penguins have been as consistently bad as a first glance at the numbers might suggest.

But there’s a flip side to that coin, and it’s that it’s extremely rare for good teams to get blown out this badly this often. Only three teams have ever lost three games by six goals or more and gone on to win the Stanley Cup that year: the 1917-18 Toronto Arenas, 1979-80 Islanders and 1983-84 Oilers. All three of those teams played in high-scoring eras. Since the year 2000, there have been only four other times where an eventual champ was blown out by six or more. On the other hand, two of those included last year’s Penguins, so maybe this is just a thing this team does.

It’s also worth noting that the Pens have been very good at home but lousy away from Pittsburgh. That’s important, because they’ve played 13 of their 19 games on the road. That’s part of a bigger issue, which is that their early schedule has been a tough one. They’ve played the Lightning, Predators and Capitals twice each, as well as the Blues, Jets and Blackhawks. That’s a tough start, especially when you’re on the road for most of it.

The bottom line is that it’s certainly too early to write off the Penguins – as bad as things have been, they’re still sitting in second spot in their division. But they don’t look much like the team that’s rolled through so much of the league since Mike Sullivan arrived on the scene. Maybe it’s fatigue, maybe it’s a lack of depth, or maybe it’s just one of those cold streaks that happens sometimes. We don’t know yet, and there’s still plenty of time to find out. But even if it’s not panic time, at least a little bit of concern seems reasonable.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards Stanley Cup–favourite status.

5. Toronto Maple Leafs (12-7-0, +8 true goals differential*): The Leafs sneak back onto the list after winning four straight this week, despite not actually playing all that well and missing Auston Matthews. Good teams have to find ways to win when they’re not at their best.

4. San Jose Sharks (10-6-0, +7): Honestly, there’s like a half-dozen teams we could slot into the No. 4 and 5 spots. But we’ll give this spot to the Sharks even though they may not deserve it. You know, kind of like it’s a penalty shot.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




Saturday, November 11, 2017

Saturday storylines: Duchene vs. Turris

We’ve got a dozen games on the schedule Saturday, including a pair of afternoon games, one of which is being played in Sweden. Let’s dive in.

HNIC Game of the Night: Maple Leafs at Bruins

We’re going with the Leafs and Bruins as Saturday night’s featured game, for a couple of reasons. First, by using it here we don’t have to worry about having it show up in the “From the Archives” section, meaning we don’t have to revisit this or this. Honestly, that’s kind of the main one. Whoever said “time heals all wounds” was never a Maple Leafs fan.

But even putting all that unpleasantness aside, Saturday night’s game looms as an intriguing one. It’s the back half of an old school home-and-home series played over consecutive nights. Last night, the Leafs beat the Bruins in overtime. Now the Bruins get their chance at revenge.

Both teams have steered through an up-and-down first month of the schedule. The Leafs have more to show for it, thanks to a hot start and a solid last week that balance out a rocky two-week stretch in late October. They’re sitting at 11-7-0, and while even their wins tend to feature uneven performances, holding down second spot in the Atlantic behind only the powerhouse Lightning seems like a reasonable result.

The Bruins are off to a slower start, having lost more games than they’ve won. At 6-5-4, they look like a playoff bubble team, which is essentially what they were last year. But given their injury troubles so far, they’ll probably take it. They’ve been without David Krejci, Tuukka Rask and David Backes among others; Brad Marchand returned Friday night after missing two games with an upper-body injury.

(The Maple Leafs are dealing with an injury issue of their own, of course, with Auston Matthews missing time this week. He’s not expected to play Saturday.)

So it’s the beaten-up Bruins against the still-figuring-it-out Maple Leafs in a matchup between longtime rivals fighting for the same playoff spot. And that fight may have gotten tougher over the last week, since one of their fellow Atlantic contenders just made a few headlines of their own…

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet





Friday, November 10, 2017

Grab bag: We have a trade to announce

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Holy crap the NHL actually had a major trade
- Canada is torn apart by a political controversy involving a Bob Probert fight
- An obscure player from the biggest three-way trade ever
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a classic YouTube clip of the time David Poile turned down the Maple Leafs GM job

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports




Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Biscuits podcast: We're back

Good news... after a long offseason that stretched through October, the Vice Sports Biscuits podcast is back. Dave and I will be doing the show weekly through to the end of the season, with new episodes appearing late Tuesday/early Wednesday most weeks.

In this week's episode:
- We break down the Matt Duchene trade
- Were we wrong about Joe Sakic?
- Why Pierre Dorion should get some credit for making this move
- We play "real or fake" with the first month's biggest surprises
- Which two teams would you combine to make each conference's best dream team?
- They kick us out early because somebody else needs the studio, because some things never change

>> Stream it now on Vice Sports

>> Subscribe on iTunes. (Or find us and subscribe on your other favorite podcast platforms.)




Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Revisiting the golden era of the three-way blockbuster

NHL fans had plenty to talk about over the weekend thanks to a major trade involving the Senators, Predators and Avalanche. The deal finally ended the long-running Matt Duchene saga, sent pending UFA Kyle Turris to Nashville with an extension in hand, and signaled a major change in direction for all three teams involved.

While it’s rare to see a trade of this significance go down so early in the season, the deal was notable for another reason. It resurrected a concept that’s all but disappeared from the NHL over the years: the blockbuster three-way trade.

Fans love the concept of the three-way deal. In theory, they should be more common in the modern NHL, where we’re constantly told that good fits and cap space are tough to find. Adding another team to the mix seems like an ideal way to address those issues, and it’s not surprising that so many hot-stove rumours inevitably see speculation about a third team getting involved.

But it rarely happens, at least on any sort of significant scale. We’ve seen a few in recent years, like last year’s Mark Streit deal and the whole John Scott thing, but those were relatively minor moves. The Kyle Quincey deal from 2012 was bigger, but hardly earth-shattering.

(And yes, we’ll pause to acknowledge that technically, three-way NHL trades don’t exist. A trade can only involve two teams, so a three-way deal is actually a series of discrete two-team trades. Settle down, comment-section pedants — you know what we mean.)

So what happened? Where did the three-way blockbuster go?

Maybe modern-day GMs are right when they tell us that trading is just too hard. Maybe today’s front offices, clogged with assistants and analytics experts and consultants and a dozen other voices, just aren’t built for creativity. Maybe three-way deals are meant to be a relic of the past, when a table full of impatient GMs could order a few pints and then swing a deal or two.

Or maybe — now that the Senators, Predators and Avalanche have reminded us how it’s done — we can hold out hope that the concept will come back into style.

So today, let’s head back to the 1990s and revisit the golden age of the three-way blockbuster. Here are five significant three-way NHL trades from a decade when NHL GMs often found that three heads were better than two.

1) Nov. 2, 1993: Acquiring an iron man

The background: By the time the 1993-94 campaign arrived, Steve Larmer had spent 11 full seasons with the Blackhawks. And they had been full – Larmer had never missed a game over that time, playing 884 straight to get within range of Doug Jarvis’s all-time iron-man record. But Larmer’s streak ended on opening night, not due to an injury or a benching, but because he was holding out to force a trade.

One month into his holdout, with Larmer holding firm on his demand for a change of scenery, the veteran winger got his wish.

The deal: The Blackhawks sent Larmer and Bryan Marchment to Hartford for Patrick Poulin and Eric Weinrich. The Whalers then flipped Larmer along with Nick Kypreos, minor-league defenceman Barry Richter and a draft pick to the Rangers for James Patrick and Darren Turcotte.

The move was part of the Rangers’ push to build a contender around Mark Messier, one that would see them add veterans from around the league as the season went on. It was also part of the mid-’90s Whalers’ apparent attempt to have every star player of the era show up on their roster and then immediately leave.

The winner: Larmer. He’d play only two years in New York, retiring after the lockout-shortened 1995 season, but he’d arrive just in time to be reunited with Mike Keenan and help the Ranges win the 1994 Stanley Cup. Weinrich and Poulin were fine for Chicago, but didn’t exactly represent a windfall, while Marchment, Turcotte and Patrick all lasted less than two years in Hartford.

(Kypreos ended up doing OK for himself, too.)

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




Monday, November 6, 2017

Weekend wrap: The Duchene trade finally lands

The big NHL news from the weekend came off the ice, when the Senators, Predators and Avalanche combined to make a blockbuster three-way trade that finally ends our long national Matt Duchene sweepstakes nightmare.

Well, the news came off the ice for the Senators and Predators. The Avalanche were actually in the middle of a game when the news broke, which lead to the somewhat-bizarre scene of Duchene sneaking away from the action. You don’t see that often in the NHL, but given how long he’s had to wait for this move to go down, it’s amazing Duchene didn’t cartwheel off the bench and down the hallway as soon as it was announced.

The trade sees Duchene head to the Senators, Kyle Turris go to the Predators, and a haul of seven picks and players go to the Avalanche. Nashville then signed Turris to a six-year, $36-million extension, which will keep him from his scheduled date with free agency next summer.

The trade itself was hardly a surprise, given that the key details being discussed had leaked out on Friday. At the time, we were told the deal was dead, and maybe it was. But it’s one thing for there to be rumours about a deal, and another for actual names to spill out. Once that happened, it felt inevitable that the teams would come back to the table. As it turns out, it didn’t take long.

So who wins? From the Avalanche perspective, there has to be a certain relief at finally getting something done at all. The situation had been dragging for over a year, and GM Joe Sakic had received plenty of criticism over that time for his lack of action. According to reports, his asking price had been high – maybe too high – and he didn’t get any established NHL help in this move. That seems like a disappointment, especially with the Avs off to a strong start. But it may also buy the beleaguered GM some time before anyone can really declare him a winner or loser here.

As for the Predators, this ends up being fairly straightforward: They get better right now. After last year’s near-miss, Nashville is clearly looking to win it all, and are willing to sacrifice a bit of the future to do it (including giving up the best young player in the deal, Samuel Girard). The Turris extension wasn’t cheap, but was a reasonable cap hit that they didn’t have to go to seven or eight years to get. Like most contenders, the Predators are focused on getting better today and will worry about the rest of it down the road.

That brings us to Ottawa — and here’s where things get interesting. On one level, your thoughts about this deal from a Senators’ perspective will come down to whether you see Duchene as a significant upgrade over Turris. Clearly, the Ottawa organization does, since they gave up a decent premium to swap the two players, including a first-round pick (albeit one with top-10 protection). The hockey world would seem to agree; remember, Duchene was viewed as good enough to play for Team Canada at the Olympics just a few years ago. Then again, the numbers suggest the two players are closer than you might think.

The other factor here is financial. The Senators apparently didn’t like their odds of getting a deal done with Turris, for whatever reason. But Duchene will be in the same situation a year from now, and if he really is a better player then he should cost them even more. An extra year of team control is certainly worth something, especially to a budget team like Ottawa. But you wonder if they won’t be right back here this time next year, looking to move a guy they don’t want to pay.

That’s for down the road, though. In the meantime, Duchene and the Senators head to Sweden to face the Avalanche on the weekend, which makes that whole expedition a lot more interesting. The Predators should have Turris in the lineup tomorrow in Columbus. And seeing Duchene go off the market could put extra pressure on teams like the Hurricanes, Islanders and Canadiens who were rumoured to be in on him.

For now, these three teams have given the whole league plenty to chew on. On to the power rankings…

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards Stanley Cup–favourite status.

5. San Jose Sharks (8-5-0, +5 true goals differential*): They’ve won four straight and haven’t allowed more than two goals in six. Next up: a showdown with the Lightning on Wednesday.

4. Columbus Blue Jackets (9-4-1, +10): John Tortorella finding out what his Lightning players were up to in 2004 may be the highlight of the weekend.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet




Friday, November 3, 2017

Grab bag: The Nuclear Option

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Introducing the Nuclear Option, a new idea to bring hope to the league's worst teams
- Why it was kind of a rough week to be a hockey fan
- An obscure player who frightened small children
- The week's three comedy stars, featuring Halloween fun and the "Good one, Del" girl
- And a Classic YouTube clip of the time the Sabres and Senators turned the goalie sliders all the way down to easy.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports