Thursday, March 31, 2022

The Athletic Hockey Show: Eugene Melnyk's complicated legacy

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Ian shares his thoughts on the passing of Eugene Melnyk and the complicated legacy he leaves
- What does the future hold for the Senators now, and is there a chance it won't be in Ottawa?
- Jesse joins us to look at the rise in NHL scoring
- We discuss Rules Court, and that 2-on-1 shootout idea
- The best and worst of hockey pranks
- The underappreciated Phil Esposito, listen questions and more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)

-- ZOOM: Trying signing in through the web site (w/ google) and entering meeting ID, then when it launches the app it should only ask for the password. (All info found in calendar invite.)




Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Replace shootouts with 2-on-1s? No free icing on penalty kills? Goalies are fair game? Rules Court is back in session

Everyone please rise, Rules Court is back in session.

If you missed the first edition a few months ago, the concept is simple. You send in your proposed NHL rule changes – big or small, realistic or silly – and make your best case for them. A jury of me, Sean Gentille and Ian Mendes will consider your arguments and deliver our verdict. Convince at least two out of three us, and your proposal becomes an official new NHL rule. (Note: It will not become an official new NHL rule.)

Last time, we considered seven proposals and voted yes on three of them. Not bad, but now that you’ve had a while to think about making your case, I’d expect the success rate to go up. You submitted over 100 new entries for this edition, and we picked eight to consider. Let’s see how you did…

Note: Submissions have been edited for clarity and style.

Call icing infractions for teams on the penalty kill. Why does a guilty team get the advantage of being able to clear the puck and change? Never made sense to me. – Anthony L

Mendes: I’ve also never understood why a penalized team gains an exception to a rule (icing) that is in effect while teams are at even strength. Like, imagine if penalized teams were allowed to clear the puck over the glass as many times as they wanted during a penalty kill. It’s basically the same logic here. A rule that is in effect during even strength situations mysteriously vanishes for random two-minute intervals during the course of a game.

When penalized teams are allowed to ice the puck, they’re able to change on the fly during a penalty kill – putting a fresh unit on the ice. But if the icing was enforced as it should be, all penalty killers would be forced to stay on the ice for the ensuing face off in their own zone. I could see how this could make it difficult for shorthanded teams to execute line changes, especially in the second period when the “long change” is in effect. But I believe this should lead to more goals and I’m always in favour of that. YES.

McIndoe: As the guy who gets to sort through all the suggestions you guys send in, I can say that this one was extremely popular, maybe even the one that showed up most often. And on the surface, I get it. We want offense, powerplays should be more dangerous, and watching a team shoot the puck all the way down the ice to kill time is boring.

My one concern is the same one I have with lots of offense-friendly changes: That coaches would ruin it, in this case by just having their teams ice it anyway, under the logic that killing even ten seconds of a two-minute powerplay is worth the offensive zone faceoff. Or maybe we just see players perfect the art of the rink-wide flip that doesn’t quite make it all the way to the icing line. Either way, I don’t think this one would work as well as people seem to think, but I’m willing to give it a try. Mark me down for a hesitant YES.

Gentille: That’s the way a lot of these debates tend to go, yeah? One of us says, “Yeah, of course this should be a rule,” another says, “Sure, but coaches are gonna find some way to warp and ruin it,” and then we eventually settle on, “OK, mark up another tentative yes.” And fellas, we’ve got another one. Do I think some coaches would eventually instruct players to ignore the illegality of it all? Yeah. I also tend to think that there’s something ingrained in coaches — it could be genetic, I’m not a scientist — that’ll still win out, in plenty of cases.

And either way, it’s worth it. Legalized icing during the P.K. is one of those things that we’ve watched our entire lives and internalized, for whatever reason, as being something other than nonsensical and unfair. It’s both, actually. If your guy is in the box, there shouldn’t be a temporary rule change to your advantage. YES

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Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Puck Soup: He's the DJ, I'm the slapper

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Will Smith slapped Chris Rock and we have thoughts
- The NHL GM meetings, where only some may speak
- The Wild and Bruins go streaking
- The Flames and Oilers bring the fun
- The Red Wings get lit up, again
- Two guys who say they aren't interested in Wrestlemania spend way too much time talking about Wrestlemania
- Habs out, NCAA talk, the best score for an OT game, and more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.




Monday, March 28, 2022

The Wild land the big name, the Islanders do nothing, and the rankings sort through all the teams in between

The deadline was one week ago and it already feels like it was four months ago, because time gets very weird around this point in the season. The playoffs are tomorrow but every team still has 15 games left, and nobody has anything to play for except the teams whose very existence is on the line. It’s weird, and it’s OK to feel disoriented.

But yes, after crunching the numbers I can confirm that this is indeed the first Monday rankings of the post-deadline era, which means we need to try to figure out how much the biggest deals moved the needle on our expectations, if at all. That qualifier matters, because the impact that any one move can have on a team is smaller than we’d all probably like to think. And while this year’s deadline certainly had plenty of action, the biggest stars to be moved ended up being a 37-year-old goalie having a decidedly average season and a 34-year-old forward with just one second-team all-star pick on his career resume. Not exactly Russell Wilson or James Harden or Tyreek Hill or even Matt Olson, but we work with what we have.

A few of these calls probably won’t be all that controversial. Just about everyone seems to like the Panthers going all-in, even if the consensus is that they overpaid for Ben Chiarot. They look like the Eastern favorites right now, even if you’re still not quite sold on their goaltending and the Aaron Ekblad injury looms over their first round. The rest of the East contenders got better too, with the possible exception of the Hurricanes, whose mostly quiet week stands out unless you think Max Domi can be fixed.

Out west, the Wild were the big winner with Marc-Andre Fleury, but it’s goaltending so world’s biggest shrug emoji. The Avalanche made a few small moves instead of any big ones, and that’s probably fine. The Flames made their big move a month ago, the Oilers didn’t do much, the Golden Knights somehow did even less than that, and nobody thinks any of the other teams are really a threat, which means one of them is definitely going to the Stanley Cup Final.

OK, you might say, but what we really want to know is how all of this shakes out in the top and bottom five. (You were not saying this, but humor me.) Let’s find out …

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Thursday, March 24, 2022

The Athletic Hockey Show: Evgeni Dadonov and the rest of the deadline fallout

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- What was the deal with Evgenii Dadonov? Jesse Granger helps us figure it out
- Does the NHL need an overhaul of the NTC System?
- Other great clerical screw-ups in NHL history
- Who stands out as the best bet for the Stanley Cup after the deadline?
- We argue about the best broadcast duos in the NHL today, and ever
- Listener questions, an insane record in This Week in Hockey History, and lots more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)




What’s the ideal numbers of career trades for building an NHL all-star roster?

Another trade deadline has come and gone, and some players were traded while others weren’t. Hey, this feels like an excuse to build some rosters.

Today’s assignment will be to fill out rosters based on how many times a star player was traded during their NHL career. We’ll build a team out of guys who were never traded, one out of guys who were only ever traded once, plus teams for the two-timers, the three-timers, and the four-or-mores. Then we… well, we look at the rosters and argue about which one would win. That’s pretty much it. (Also, some of you will try to get Dom to use his model to deliver a mathematical answer, because he doesn’t have enough to do.) Basically, it should be a fun time waster for the post-deadline hangover period.

But first, a few ground rules:

  • Each team gets a 21-man roster with 12 forwards, six defensemen and three goalies. We’ll try to balance wingers and centers as best we can but won’t get too hung up on position.
  • To keep this somewhat modern and focused on guys you’ve heard of, we’re only going to use players who played in the NHL after 1970 (although trades before that can still count). Apologies to the one-trade team on missing out on Phantom Joe Malone. Also, active players are allowed as long as they’re reasonably deep into the careers.
  • We’re counting NHL trades only here. No WHA, junior, or whatever else. We’re also not counting trades that involved a draft pick that was ultimately used on a player. Tyler Seguin going from Boston to Dallas counts, but his pick going from Toronto to Boston does not.
  • A player doesn’t have to have actually suited up for a team for a trade to count, as long as it was an official deal that their name appeared in. All those post-career Coyotes cap deals are in play.
  • Finally, a very important rule that I’m breaking out the italics for: For the no-trade team, we are only counting guys who played for more than one team. We kind of have to, because otherwise the no-trade team will win in a walk with names like Lemieux, Lidstrom, Crosby, Ovechkin, Yzerman, Sakic, Bossy, Dryden… there’d be no point. The NHL has a long history of superstars playing their entire career for one franchise, and it would be no fun to just list all those guys on one team. You have to played for multiple teams to qualify, which makes this team a lot trickier.

As always, let’s go into this with some blind predictions. I’m betting that Team No-Trades struggles, Team One-Trade takes the crown, Team Two-Trade is solid, Team Three-Trade stinks, and Team Four-or-More is surprisingly feisty but ultimately bad.

Spoiler: We’ll see some overlap with this post from a few years ago, but not as much as you might think, because trades are weird. Got some rosters forming in your head already? Cool, let’s do this.

Team No-Trades

Remember, these guys have to have played for more than one team. That’s going to make this one tough… or will it?

Team No-Trades
FORWARDFORWARDFORWARD
Dave Keon
Bryan Trottier
Gordie Howe
Paul Kariya
Mike Modano
John Tavares
Daniel Alfredsson
Saku Koivu
Mikko Koivu
Brian Gionta
Joe Pavelski
Corey Perry

DEFENSEDEFENSEGOALIE
Bobby Orr
Larry Robinson
Martin Brodeur
Scott Stevens
Scott Niedermayer
Tony Esposito
Borje Salming
Serge Savard
Billy Smith

Yeah, the more-than-one-team rule certainly strips a lot of star power from this squad, which was the whole point. But it certainly doesn’t cost us all of it, as two of the five best players in history show up here in Gordie Howe (who joined the Whalers as a free agent) and Bobby Orr (who did the same with the Hawks). That duo represents a very solid start, and they’re joined by another megastar in Bryan Trottier, who went from the Islanders to the Penguins as a free agent.

From there, the depth up front is solid, featuring modern Hall-of-Famers like Mike Modano and Paul Kariya, plus Leafs legend Dave Keon thanks to his brief stint with Howe’s Whalers (and the fact that his four career trades all happened in the WHA). Things drop off from there, although I like having the Koivu brothers on the same line.

The real highlight here is the backend, featuring a blueline that includes Orr along with Larry Robinson, Serge Savard and Borje Salming, plus the reunification of the Devils pairing of Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermayer. (We’re not counting Stevens’ RFA mess with the Blues and Devils as a trade; if you disagree, the appeals office would be happy to hear from you.) The goaltending is also strong, with Brodeur’s shady stint in St. Louis working to our advantage. We also get Hall-of-Famer backups in Tony Esposito (who went from Montreal to Chicago in the old intra-league draft) and Billy Smith (who went from the Kings to the Islanders in the expansion draft). And even with Henrik Lundqvist’s gameless stint in Washington not counting, we still have Gerry Cheevers ready to go if we need an injury fill-in. Not bad at all.

It turns out the multiple-team rule didn’t decimate Team No-Trade after all. But will they be good enough to win it all?

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Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Puck Soup: Trade deadline wrapup

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We react to all the action and inaction from the 2022 deadline
- The Evgenii Dadonov mess, who's to blame and what happens now
- Marc-Andre Fleury goes to the Wild
- The Atlantic contenders load up
- Whether the sellers did enough
- And lots more trade talk

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.




Monday, March 21, 2022

The 10 teams under the most pressure to do something today, plus a Knights collapse, Hawks questions and more

I love trade deadline day. I hate writing the power rankings on trade deadline day.

I mean, what’s the point? Rankings are always ephemeral by nature, because a few good or bad games can change perceptions significantly. But today? I can rank your team somewhere because their blueline isn’t good enough, and they may have addressed that by the time you get around to reading it two hours later. Today should be wild, which is great for everyone except me when I’m writing this.

So before we get to the maybe-already-obsolete top and bottom five, let’s kick it off with a different ranking: My list of the 10 teams under the most pressure to do something big today.

10. Dallas Stars. It feels like the decision has been made on sticking with big names like John Klingberg and Joe Pavelski, and the standings say that could be the right call. But they’re slumping now, so maybe Jim Nill needs to rethink things. It would be a genuine game-changer for the day if he did, but feels so unlikely that the Stars crack the top ten, but only barely.

9. Edmonton Oilers. I’m ranking them this low because they’re more comfortable thanks to their win streak, and they’re doing everything short of renting out billboards reading “We won’t do much”. Still… I mean, you’re really going to stay the course in goal? That’s the plan? If you say so.

8. Nashville Predators. It’s decision day on Filip Forsberg, and it remains a tough call. Keeping him for the stretch run and a possible playoff appearance shouldn’t be out of the question, but David Poile’s phone probably rings a few times today with offers. How much would it take for him to pull the trigger?

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Free deadline day live blog

I'll be live all day with Other Sean, reacting to everything that does (and doesn't) happen. Believe this is free and open to non-subscribers, so drop by.

Here's the link.




Friday, March 18, 2022

The 12 players you should be ready to meet at every NHL trade deadline

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It’s deadline week, which means that it’s every hockey fan’s Wendel-given right to lose their minds. It’s what we do at this time of year, and to be honest, it’s kind of fun. We devour every rumor, think through every scenario, and break down every move that does or doesn’t happen in the leadup to the big day.

Then Monday arrives, and… it’s fine. It’s always fine. But that’s ok, because the deadline itself isn’t really the fun part. That’s right now.

So sure, lose your mind for the next few days. But do it responsibly.

After all, you don’t want to be one of those fans who goes completely off the deep end and embarrasses themselves. You’re not some rookie, and this isn’t your first deadline week. Or maybe it is, and you’d like to convincingly fake it. Act like you’ve been here before, and all that.

Either way, it’s important to remember that most deadline weeks are pretty much the same, and we should know what to expect. So today, let’s run through the 12 people you might get to meet as the hours count down to trade deadline day.

The guy who’ll fetch a first-round pick and years later none of us will remember why

There’s a concept in psychology called the anchoring effect that basically says that the first price we hear for something ends up sticking with us more than it should, even if it’s unreasonable. It’s fair to say that some NHL GMs are very familiar with this concept.

It happens every year. You hear a player’s name floated in the runup to the deadline, and the rumored asking price is a first-round pick. You kind of laugh it off, because that’s ridiculous and no team would ever give up that much. But then you hear it again, and then again, and next thing you know everyone is just kind of going with it without question. And then some team actually pays up.

At the time, everyone nods along. Yes, the price was high, but that’s what it was always going to cost. What else was anyone supposed to do? It’s only a few months or years later that you go “Oh right, that guy wasn’t all that good”.

History is filled with guys like this; there are usually at least a couple most years. This year it’s Ben Chiarot. Last year it was Nick Foligno. A few years before that, we had guys like Ryan Hartman, Martin Hanzal and Kyle Quincey. My all-time favorite was the year that we somehow had a leaguewide bidding war for Paul Gaustad.

The key point here is that a player’s value is just whatever some other team will give up for him. Aim high, and with a well-run marketing campaign, you never know.

(Note: This guy is not to be confused with his cousin, the guy who’ll fetch a first-round pick and nobody will remember why but it’s fine because the team wins the Cup. That club includes names like David Savard, Antoine Vermette and an old Tomas Kaberle. There’s no such thing as a bad deal for a team that wins it all.)

The big name you’re kind of getting sick of

We all love a big trade, and that means that at least one player involved has to be a reasonably big star. When those names first start appearing in the rumor mill, it’s exciting. Fans start churning through possible destinations, arguing over price tags, and throwing out increasingly wild possible deals.

It’s fun. For a while. Then you realize it’s only December.

Days turns into weeks turn into months, and you keep hearing about this same name. By the time the deadline arrives, you’re just about sick of it. You just want the team to pull the trigger and end it. In extreme cases, you may find yourself screaming “Yeah we get it!” at Pierre LeBrun on TV.

Also, there’s about a 90% chance this guy doesn’t end up getting traded after all. I’m not completely sure who this year’s version is, but I think it might be John Klingberg.

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Thursday, March 17, 2022

The Athletic Hockey Show: Chiarots of fire

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- The Habs actually got a team to give up a first for Ben Chiarot, and we have thoughts
- The Sharks lock up Tomas Hertl, but do they actually have a plan?
- Ian wants the Leafs to add Zdeno Chara, and every other ex-Senator
- Jesse Granger tries to explain what's gone wrong for the Knights
- Some listener mail, including a proposal for an NBA-like "fouling out" rule
- This Week in History goes all the way back to 1941 for a never-seen-again goalie rotation strategy, and lots more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)




Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Puck Soup: Bowl me over

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Wait, they don't have 5-pin bowling in the United States?
- Josh Manson heads to Colorado, and the Avs look like they've got more moves on the way
- Our thoughts on who's buying, who's selling, and who we want to see move
- The Golden Knights are collapsing, and we're waiting for the coaching change
- The Leafs need a goaltender
- Ryan has strong feelings about a Tyler Seguin quote
- Scott Hall, the Auston Matthews suspension, and more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.




Take this quiz to see how well you remember the best and worst of Leafs trade deadline history

The trade deadline is days away, and Leaf fans probably have some mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s an exciting time of year, especially for teams that think of themselves as contenders. On the other, the Leafs’ history of deadline dealing is decidedly mixed.

If you’re a Leaf fan, you could be forgiven for blocking out some of the memories. But here’s hoping you didn’t, because we’re going to test your knowledge of Toronto’s history of deadline and deadline-adjacent deals over the decades. See if you remember who went where, how much it cost, who all those precious picks turned into, and the occasional weird detail.

There are 20 questions in all. Do your best, then scroll back up to the top to check your score on this handy table.

0 – 2 right: You are the Tom Kurvers trade of quiz-takers.

3 – 6 right: You are the Rask-for-Raycroft trade of quiz-takers.

7 – 10 right: You are the Phil Kessel trade of quiz-takers.

11 – 15 right: You are the Schenn-for-Van Riemsdyk trade of quiz-takers.

16 – 18 right: You are the Tiger-for-Vaive trade of quiz-takers.

20 right: You are the Doug Gilmour trade of quiz-takers.

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Monday, March 14, 2022

Weekend rankings: Deadline week arrives, questions for the Rangers and Canucks, good times for the Sabres and Coyotes, and more

This is usually the spot where I do a long lead-in to the column, focusing on the league’s biggest stories. Most of you skip that part and go right to the rankings so you can get super mad that your 16th place team isn’t in the top five. It’s cool, we all know what we signed up for.

But there’s really no need for any of that this week, because we know what the big story is: The trade deadline, which is officially one week away. It’s been quiet so far, without a single trade since way back on March 2. It could stay that way, with Hockey Night in Canada suggesting that some of the bigger names might stay put and Pierre mostly backing that up. Lots of GMs are putting out the word that the market is slow, which they always do at this time of year.

On the other hand, I just wrote about the lack of trades, which usually means that a dozen of them will happen between now and when I hit “send” on this post. Let’s see how much the hockey gods hate me these days.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Thursday, March 10, 2022

The Athletic Hockey Show: Phil in the blanks

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- I have to yell at Ian about Phil Kessel's ironman streak
- Should Michael Bunting be a legitimate Calder candidate?
- Why would the Devils terminate P.K. Subban's contract?
- Is Jaromir Jagr overlooked in the all-time GOAT discussion?
- A surprisingly large amount of baseball talk for some reason
- Plus this week in history, the goalie quiz, Wayne Gretzky as an analyst and more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)




Puck Soup: Sources are telling us

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Trade season heats up, but will your favorite team make a deal just for the sake of making a deal?
- Who's selling and who's buying
- Do rumors about P.K. Subban or Shea Weber make sense?
- The Western playoff race is chaos
- The Coyotes are a juggernaut, and also Phil Kessel made a baby
- Are people getting weirder about awards?
- And lots more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.




Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Get warmed up for the trade deadline with the ‘Who Didn’t He Play For?’ quiz (goalie edition)

The trade deadline is less than two weeks away, with plenty of rumors and big names in play. Maybe the most interesting position to watch is the goalies, with a handful of contenders potentially shopping for an upgrade. While midseason goalie trades are rare, more than a few of them have worked out well. And it’s not unusual to see even some of the best goalies move around to several teams over the course of their career.

Why yes, that last line was a segue. It’s time for another round of “Who Didn’t He Play For”, the quiz in which I give you a player and four teams and you tell me which one he never suited up for.

The first edition featured players from the Hall of Fame, and you all said it was too easy even though the average score was only 9 out of 16. That was followed up with a Hall of Vey Good edition, which saw you collectively up your game and raise your average all the way up to 9.1. At this rate, we only have 70 of these left to go before you guys are perfect, so let’s enjoy them while we can.

This time around, we’re going to focus on a group that was conspicuously absent from the first two editions: The goalies. These lovable weirdos have a habit of bouncing around the league, so let’s see how many of their stops you remember. Take your best shot at the 16 questions below, then submit your answers and scroll back up to see how you did.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Monday, March 7, 2022

The Penguins are still confusing, the Jets might be done, and let’s find the season’s most mediocre team

The nature of this column is that we spend a lot of time talking about the very best and very worst teams. Maybe too much time, honestly, since there are only so many ways you can write “The Avalanche are good” or “The Sabres are the Sabres” each week. We trying to use the “not ranked” slot to bounce around the league and make sure everyone gets a mention, but the teams that are thoroughly mid tend to be mostly ignored. Except for this week.

(Did you like the way I slipped in the term “mid” there? I learned it from my teenager. Apparently it’s how the kids talk about something that’s middling or mediocre. I’m told that it’s better than being cringe, but not as good as being lit. I have no idea whether it’s better or worse than being poggers, but I promise you that I’m on the case.)

Anyway, this is the week that we’re going to figure out which team has been the most mediocre, something we try every year around this time. As always, we’ll start with our top and bottom five lists, or rather, with the teams that haven’t shown up in either yet.

This year, that’s 10 teams, but a few of them don’t really work as candidates. The Rangers haven’t been in the top five yet, for example, but they’re clearly a very good team. The Bruins and Leafs haven’t shown up yet either, but they’re not in the running here. On the other end, I haven’t had the guts to put the Islanders in the bottom five, but they’re closer to that group than to the mushy middle.

That leaves us with six real candidates among the no-list brigade. The Kings, Stars and Predators have all given off some pretty mediocre vibes at times, but all three teams are good enough for the playoff hunt and solidly winning records, so I don’t think they work. The Sharks and Red Wings seem like better fits, hovering right around .500, but they’ve lost far more than they’ve won and their goal differential suggests that they’re bad.

The best contender among teams who haven’t been on either list is probably the Jets. They’ve lost a few more than they’ve won but are over fake .500 thanks to a league-leading ten loser points, and the goals differential is close to even. But can you really be the league’s most mediocre team if you were so bad at one point that your own coach had to quit midway through the season? I’m not convinced you can be.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Friday, March 4, 2022

Checking in on that super-easy prediction contest, in which several hundred of you are already out

One the even of the 2020-2021, I had an idea for a prediction contest. I admittedly didn’t put a ton of thought into it, but I liked the concept and thought it could be fun, so I threw together a call for entries. About 900 readers obliged, answering my eight “easy” questions about what would happen during that shortened season with as many or as few answers as they wanted. In the end, only one of those 900 entries was perfect, and it didn’t score well enough to win.

In other words, this thing was harder than it looked. So of course, the sequel had to be even tougher. This year’s version had ten questions, including one fiendish but optional bonus. Then again, we now had a proof-of-concept from year one that could guide your strategy, so maybe this would be no problem at all.

Halfway into the season, how’s everybody doing? Let’s take a look and see.

The short answer is that it’s a bit of a mixed bag, which is probably to be expected given how many entries we have to wade through. There are 1,554 of them, to be precise. (And thanks to readers Mike and William, I now have some tools to help me parse all the entries rather than doing it by hand.) As with last year, there are a few questions that look like they’ll be easy pickings and a few others that are causing big problems. The key is whether you could figure out which were which.

A quick reminder of the rules: You got ten simple and straightforward questions like “Name a GM who’ll definitely keep his job” or “Name a team that definitely won’t make the playoffs”, and you had to give at least one or as many as five answers. You get more points the more answers you give, but even one wrong answer gets you a zero for the question, so you had to balance the risk and reward when deciding how far to go.

This year’s edition of the contest can be found here, and you can search for your entry in Mike’s database here. Let’s run through the questions and see how it’s going.

1. Name up to five teams that will make the playoffs this year.

2. Name up to five teams that will not make the playoffs this year.

Simple enough, and last year both of these questions ended up being easy money, with only the Flyers tripping up more than a handful of entries. Otherwise, the teams that everyone knew would make the playoffs – like the Avalanche, Lightning, Golden Knights – cruised to their spots, and the consensus bad teams – like the Sabres, Senators, and Red Wings – all missed by a mile. Basically, you should have had a ton of points in the bank after these two questions, and if you didn’t then you were probably already out of the running.

That led to an obvious strategy for this year’s contest: Load up on with max answers on the first two questions. So how’s that working out?

Not great! This year’s standings have thrown some curveballs at us, and a whole lot of you are going to swing and miss. The big killer here is the Islanders, who showed up on about 900 entries as a sure-thing playoff team. They’re not mathematically eliminated yet (nobody is), but barring a miracle the majority of entries will be taking a zero on Question 1. And if you did dodge the Islanders, you still may not be out of the woods yet, as about 400 entries picked the Oilers and 140 had the Jets.

It could get even worse on Question 2, although the outlook here is better than it was looking a month ago. A whopping 1,200 entries had the Ducks as a team that wouldn’t make the playoffs, and they’ve been holding down a spot for most of the season. They’re fading now, but still in the race, so there will be some nervous eyes on Anaheim. If they can’t make a comeback then this question should be relatively safe, aside from a few dozen of you who had the Kings or Rangers on your list.

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Thursday, March 3, 2022

The Athletic Hockey Show: When a win is not a win

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Where should fans stand with Alexander Ovechkin now?
- The Hawks have a new/old GM
- The Leafs are bad now
- A rant about how hockey fans are conditioned to think about 10-7 wins
- Jesse Granger on some trade deadline odds
- Plus listener mail, the 1960 Team USA gold and more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)




Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Puck Soup: Russian to judgment

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The hockey world reacts to war in Ukraine
- How should we view Alexander Ovechkin now?
- The Hawks finally pick a new GM, and it's just their old GM
- Whether Chicago should rebuild, and if the Canucks will join them
- Reacting to that 10-7 Leafs game
- The outdoor game in Nashville
- The MLB lockout sure feels familiar
- And more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.




Every ten-game win streak of the cap era, ranked from least to most fake

Last week, the Calgary Flames lost a game to the Vancouver Canucks. That wouldn’t usually feel all that newsworthy. But this time it did, because the loss snapped the Flames’ ten-game winning streak.

Those streaks are rare, although not as rare as you might think. There have been three this year – the Flames, plus the Penguins and Avalanche. There’s been at least one win streak of ten games or longer in every season of the cap era, with the exception of 2014-2015. In all, the list of 10+ win streaks in NHL history sits at 59, with the cap (and shootout) era accounting for 33 of them.

And let’s just say they’re not all created equal.

That’s the thing about long win streaks. Sometimes, they’re an absolute show of force by a truly superior team exerting its dominance over an outclassed league for weeks on end. And sometimes, if we’re being completely honest, it’s just a mediocre team (or worse) that goes on a fluke run. A goalie gets hot, the bounces all go one way, and next thing you know a team looks unbeatable. But it doesn’t last, and by the end of the season you’re left wondering how these scrubs managed to string together that many wins.

Today, we’re going to rank all 30 cap-era streaks from past seasons, going from the least to the most fake. (Sorry, Flames, Pens and Avs fans, we won’t know how this year’s streaks rank until a few months from now.) There’s no set criteria, but basically we’re using the power of hindsight to see which teams that ran off a long win streak turned out to be worthy, and which ones didn’t quite.

Every long win streak in our current era is at least a little fake because of runaway parity and at least a little real because wins are still wins, but that doesn’t mean some can’t turn out to be more real than others. Let’s do this, starting with the teams that won a lot of games because they were actually good…

#30 and #29 (tie): Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay Lightning, 2019-20

The team: While it may be hard to remember now, the Lightning struggled through the first two months of the season. Coming off their shocking loss in the first round in 2019, they won just 17 of their first 34 games in 2019-20.

The streak: The Lightning kicked off what would become a 10-game win streak on December 23; the stretch ran through January 11. They took a quick break to remember what losing felt like, didn’t like it, and then won 11 straight from January 29 through February 17.

But then: After the COVID pause, they came back in the bubble and won the Stanley Cup.

Fake factor: Two streaks in the same season that ends in a championship is about as un-fake as they come.

#28. Chicago Blackhawks, 2012-13

The team: Coming out of the lockout, the Blackhawks started the year 10-0-3. Then they somehow got better.

The streak: From February 15 through March 6, the Hawks won 11 straight, running their points streak to 24 games.

But then: When they lost 6-2 to the Avalanche on March 8, it was their first regulation loss in a regular season game in almost a full calendar year. Then they went out and won the Stanley Cup.

Fake factor: Everything about a lockout season is a tiny bit fake, but this team was unstoppable.

#27. St. Louis Blues, 2018-19

The team: Halfway through the season, they were in dead last in the league. You may have heard the rest of the story.

The streak: From January 23 to February 19, the Blues ran off 11 straight wins. At one point they also had three straight shutouts, just to show off.

But then: They slowed up a bit down the stretch, including losing five of seven at one point. But I hear that the playoffs went pretty well.

Fake factor: This is the streak that every mediocre team dreams of – the one that sure seems fake at the time, but turns out to be a legitimate Cup contender in hiding, revealing itself to the world.

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