Weekend rankings: It's time to be scared of Tampa and worried about New Jersey

The NHL makes no sense.

What happens today doesn’t seem to have all that much to do with what happens tomorrow. Two weeks ago? Forget it. Teams get hold and cold, seemingly at random, and you never know when you’re going to get a result that nobody expected.

You know this. Depending on what kind of fan you are, it might be a big part of the product’s appeal. It’s any given Sunday, seven days a week.

But part of the fun of a league like this is that you can always look back at certain results and say, well, that just shouldn’t have happened. We may have had a few of those games this weekend, with a flatlining Oilers team that can’t get a save shutting out a Capitals team that was red hot, the usually tidy Hurricanes giving up eight to the Lightning, and a historically bad Sharks team dropping a big bag of regression on the feel-good Canucks. Will we look back on either of those games as turning points for any of the teams involved? Maybe. But there’s a good chance they’ll just be weird outliers in a league full of them.

So before we get to this week’s rankings, let’s look back at five games from the first two months that, in hindsight, don’t make a damn bit of sense.

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Lets do a mailbag

Hey folks...

We're a few months into the season, so it feels like a good time for a mailbag. Have questions about the HHOF? Want to argue about the franchise dysfunction belt? Have a roster challenge you want me to try? Or just want to ask a straightforward hockey question? Send them via email at dgbmailbag@gmail.com.

Thanks,
Sean

The NHL’s championship belt of franchise dysfunction, Part 2: The Bettman Era

Welcome to Part 2 of our attempt to trace the lineage of the NHL championship belt of franchise dysfunction and ineptitude. The concept is simple: We start with the most embarrassing franchise at a given point in time, and they hold the belt until someone even worse comes along.

Yesterday, we covered the first 75 or so years of NHL history, passing the belt between various teams in an escalating race to the bottom. We had an area burn down, a Stanley Cup final get evicted by a circus, a garbage can trophy ceremony, and a cameo by Mickey Mouse. When it was all over, the San Jose Sharks were left holding the belt, thanks to their historically awful expansion debut.

Can they keep it? No they cannot, because the Gary Bettman era is about to begin, and things are going to go from bad to worse.

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Tracing the history of the NHL’s championship belt of franchise dysfunction - Part 1

Hockey fans love to argue about which franchise is in the best shape. These guys just won the Cup, but this team has a brighter future, and this one is run by the smartest people. They’re the teams that you want your team to be when it grows up.

And sure, that’s all well and good. But I think we can have just as much fun with the other side of the coin. What about the franchise that’s a complete mess?

After all, there always seems to be at least one franchise in this league that’s just a total trainwreck. So today, let’s try to answer the question: Who was the single most dysfunctional team at any given point in NHL history?

To do it, we’re going to break out one of my favorite gimmicks: The Bill Barnwell “championship belt”. Bill debuted this concept back in the Grantland days, and I’ve borrowed it before. The concept is simple enough: At any given point in history, one team holds the championship, and to win the belt you’ve got to be able to clearly beat them. We go back to the beginning and trace the lineage of the title, figuring out when it changed hands and why, until we get back to today.

To be clear, we’re not just looking for the worst team in terms of on-ice results (although that will obviously be an important factor). We already have the standings to tell us which team lost the most games in a given era. We’re looking deeper than that, for the teams that were a mess from top-to-bottom, on the ice and off. The roster, the coaching, the front office and ownership will all be factored in.

In short, we’re looking for the one team, at any given point in time, that you’d look at as the fan of another team and think “Well, we might be bad, but at least we’re not them”.

We’ll begin at the beginning, although we’ll speed through the early history to get to the more modern stuff you’re probably waiting for. This is Part One, which will take us from the earliest days through the first 75 years of NHL history; the rest will come tomorrow.

Can your team win the coveted belt? Let’s see just how dumb this league can get.

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NHL weekend rankings: Wild struggle, Capitals surge, and Thanksgiving looms

Happy Thanksgiving week to readers south of the border. In America, this is a week for travel, family, and fun. In Canada, it’s a week to go “wait, why is there football on a Thursday afternoon?” But in either country, it means that if you’re not in a playoff spot, you might just be screwed.

There are different theories about just how far out you can be, and just how unlikely a comeback could be. But the most basic version is also the scariest: Teams that are out of a playoff spot on U.S. Thanksgiving are very unlikely to make it, period. We’re told that even coaches buy into it.

The good news, if your team is on the outside looking in, is that we’re a few days early here. The bad news is that some teams have already clinched, in the sense that even if they win the rest of their pre-Thanksgiving games, they’ll still be out in the cold on Thursday morning. Let’s focus on those teams, and try to figure out who’s going to defy the odds.

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Jumping the Sharks: Is this San Jose team worse than the expansion version?

I didn’t write this post last week, because I thought it would be cruel.

At the start of last week, the Sharks had yet to win so much as a single game, and were coming off back-to-back losses where they gave up ten goals. They were being outscored by Auston Matthews, which seems bad because he’s one guy. They were the laughingstock of the league, only it was getting hard to laugh.

But now? They won two games last week. In a row! They’re practically the late-70s Habs, which makes them fair game for some fun. And is there anything more fun than combining current events with an early-90s NHL history lesson? (Looks around an awkwardly silent room.) No? Just me? Too bad, it’s my column.

Today’s question: Who’s worse, the current Sharks, or the historically terrible Sharks from their first two seasons, in 1991-92 and 1992-93? That older version was an awful team that some of you probably aren’t familiar with, so this will be fun and educational. I’ve got all the important categories and criteria laid out, so let’s see where this takes us.

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When a contract can't fit on one Cap Friendly page. Introducing the Red Arrow Index

When you go to your team’s Cap Friendly page, how many red arrows do you see?

With apologies to those mythical Gary Bettman fans who don’t care about the salary cap, everyone else knows the red arrow. It’s the little icon that shows up on a Cap Friendly team page, denoting a contract that has so much term left that it doesn’t fit on the screen. Right now, that means the red arrow shows up next to any deal that stretches to at least 2029.

How many does your team have? Welcome to the Red Arrow Index, a new analytics tool that was created based on a long and thorough process of me making it up in my head during a podcast a few weeks ago.

Like all great and complicated analytics, the Red Arrow Index needs a bit of context. A high score isn’t necessarily bad, and neither is a low one. As a rule of thumb, a team that’s old and bad wants to be at zero, but a team that’s young and good is happy with a high number. It’s tempting to describe it as “the dreaded red arrow”, and that would apply often, but not always.

Still, we can learn a thing or two from going through the league and seeing who comes in where. For example, there are three teams who score a zero on the RAI, two of which were not surprising and one of which very much was. And as for the team with the highest score in the league… well, you might already have a guess, but we’ll get there.

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NHL weekend rankings: Jay Woodcroft fired, good times in Vancouver, and more

The Oilers snapped their losing streak on Saturday, dominating the Kraken early on their way to an impressive 4-0 win that may save the job of head coach Jay Woodcroft whoops nope, there he goes.

That was weird, right?

When news first broke on Sunday morning that Edmonton was making a change despite the win, my first thought was “Well, they’ve obviously got a big name in their back pocket and they don’t want to risk waiting.” But nope, the new coach is Kris Knoblauch, a guy who’s had a lot of success in junior and not as much in the AHL.

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Debating the Hall of Fame case for Joe Pavelksi, John Tavares and other active stars

The Hockey Hall of Fame will welcome its class of 2023 tomorrow. That’s always fun, but I prefer to look ahead. In this case, several years ahead, because we’re going to study the candidacies of a half dozen players who are still active. The question is simple: Are they on a Hall of Fame track?

This is something I like to poke around with every so often, usually around HHOF time. Here are the columns I did during the 2019 offseason, another from later that year, and one from 2021, plus one that reevaluated a few of those cases last year. (If you’re going to hit me with a “I can’t believe you didn’t mention…” comment, know that there’s a decent chance the guy you’re thinking of was already covered in one of those pieces.)

This time, it’s six brand new names, some based on your suggestions over the years. And just to make sure I’m not too far off track with my own judgements, I’ll be checking in with Paul Pidutti's Adjusted Hockey, the excellent system that boils a player’s Hall qualifications down to a single number. Paul’s formula is hardly an argument-ender – nor should it be, because the argument is most of the fun – but it helps ground the discussion in some historical reality.

Let’s do this. Six names, starting with a fan favorite…

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Remembering 8 NHL stars who were Hall-of-Fame locks, until they weren’t

Nicklas Backstrom stepped away from hockey last week, and it got me thinking about the Hall of Fame.

Granted, that doesn’t take all that much. As my readers know, I love a good HHOF debate. In fact, we’ll be having a few later this week, as the Hall gets set to welcome its class of 2023.

If Backstrom’s career is over, he won’t be eligible for three years. I don’t think he makes it, but I suppose it’s not a sure thing. (The committee occasionally surprises us, to put it kindly.) But there was a time when Backstrom absolutely seemed like he was on a Hall of Fame track. Back in 2009-10, he was just 22 and coming off a 100-point season when those were exceedingly rare. If you’d gone around the league back then and placed bets on future Hall odds, he would have been high on anyone’s list. Just not anymore.

That’s not a rare story in the NHL, where we’re often a little too quick to slap the “HHOF lock” label on a player, only to see their candidacy fade – sometimes slowly, sometimes dramatically.

So today, let’s look back at eight NHL stars who sure seemed like future Hall-of-Famers, right up until they weren’t. I’ll give you the details, you see if you can guess the name.

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NHL weekend rankings: West coast positivity, plus 5 teams that should be panicking

It’s November, which means that if your team is still bad then you should be panicking.

Well, assuming your team was trying to be good. If this a tank year for you and yours, then keep piling up those losses. It’s not a fun way to spend the season, but until the NHL gets around to changing the rules, it’s the best strategy.

But if you were led to believe that your team would be competitive this year? Yeah, not great. And man, does that ever seem to apply to an unusually high number of teams around the league these days. The “it’s still early” train has left the station, and it’s time to worry.

How much? That depends on the team. So let’s check in with an early (but not that early) panic index.

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Cap discounts for draft picks? Mid-game substitutions? NHL Rules Court returns

Please rise, the sixth session of Rules Court is now… uh, in session.

Sorry, I’m a little thrown off, and I blame you. It turns out, you guys are weird. Or at least your ideas can be, as we’re going to see in just a bit.

First, for those of you who are new to this, here’s how it works. The readers submit a rule proposal, about the on-ice rules or the CBA or anything else you’d like to see change. Our three-man panel of Sean Gentille, Ian Mendes and Sean McIndoe vote on whether the NHL should adopt it. If you can convince at least two of us, the motion is carried and your rule becomes official. (Note: This does not happen.)

You can find previous editions here, here, here, here and here, in which we’ve already made changes like abolishing offsides, adopting the 3-2-1-0 point system, and making it so that the referee has to skate around holding up both arms if there are two delayed penalties at the same time. Honestly, that last one may have been our finest work so far. The bar is high, but let’s see what you were able to come up with this time…

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Boo, in more ways than one. Celebrate Halloween with the NHL's scariest starts

Happy Halloween. Are you scared?

No? You should be. Because there’s probably a player on your favorite team who stinks right now.

That’s the stunningly creative theme of today’s post, as we scan around the league for players who've had frighteningly shaky Octobers. Bad starts are relative, of course, and we’re mostly focused on the guys who came into the season with high expectations – either because they were stars, or they were joining a new team, or both.

We’ll fill out a 21-man roster – we’re struggling here, so we’ll need that extra goalie – with a limit of one player per team, because otherwise the whole roster would just be this. That means 11 teams are left out, either because nobody is playing poorly or our expectations were already low, and I’ll leave it to you to decide which is which. We’ll work those teams in with some half-hearted honorable mentions, but for the rest of, let’s crank up the spooky music and hunt for some last-minute costume ideas that are truly scary.

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NHL weekend rankings: Who's had it worse so far, the Oilers or the Flames?

It’s the Battle of Alberta!

Specifically, the battle to see which of these two fan bases should be the most miserable right now.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Heading into the season, the Oilers were a team that finally had everything lined up just right for a Cup run. And while the Flames weren’t favorites, they’d finally shed the dark cloud of Darryl Sutter and were ready to move forward in a Pacific where the path to the playoffs was wide open. Give the two teams a few weeks to establish themselves, and the Heritage Classic was destined to be a barnburner.

It's fair to say that the barn remains unburned. That’s not to way that last night’s game wasn’t fun, or it’s own kind of spectacle. By now, we all know the familiar beats when it comes to an outdoor game – the funny pregame outfits, the soaring panoramic shots, the alternate jerseys that will never be seen again, the weird-but-intermittently-loud ambience, the local flavor. Last night checked all the boxes. It was fun.

What hasn’t been fun for these two teams: Pretty much everything else. Both fan bases have the right to be cranky right now, with the teams tied for 30th in the NHL with five points each. In the spirit of competition, let’s ask the obvious question: Which team has had it worse, Edmonton or Calgary?

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You can go home again, by acing our “Who did he play for twice?” quiz

Did you make time for Fluto’s story about Milan Lucic’s return to the Bruins this week? Be sure to check it out, it’s an interesting look at what brings a player back to a team after years away.

Lucic isn’t the only prodigal son who returned to a former team this year. We’ve seen Trevor Lewis head back to Los Angeles, Laurent Brossoit return to Winnipeg, and Tony DeAngleo get another chance in Carolina. Those guys are following in a rich history of NHL players returning to former teams, a storyline that everyone in this league seems to love. Big stars, virtual unknowns, and everyone in between – as their careers wind on, they often find themselves back in a familiar uniform.

So today, we’re going to honor those comeback stories by flipping the script on our usual quiz format. Most time, we play a game called “Who didn’t he play for?”, where I give you a player and you try to figure out which team never employed him. This time, we’re going “Who did he play for twice?”, in which I give you a player and you… actually, if you can’t figure it out from the title, I’m not sure any further explanation can help you.

As always, we’ll have 16 names to test your memory, ranging from super-easy to take-a-guess. Complete the quiz, then scroll back up to check your score and see how you did.

0 – 2 right: You’re Peter Forsberg returning to the Avalanche and lasting two games.

3 – 5 right: You’re Mark Messier returning to the Rangers with a footprint on your back.

6 – 8 right: You’re Luc Robitaille returning to the Kings.

9 – 11 right: You’re Luc Robitaille returning to the Kings. No, the other time.

12 – 15 right: You’re Roberto Luongo returning to the Panthers and rediscovering your magic.

16 right: You’re Teemu Selanne returning to the Ducks to win the Stanley Cup.

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A brief history of Canada's early Cup favorites, and where they went wrong

So about that Canadian Cup drought…

It’s been a while since one of the country’s teams has won a championship. You may have heard about it. In fact, you may be sick of hearing about it. You might even be looking for an exceedingly dumb alternate universe where things were easier, and if so I’ve got you covered.

Or you might be wondering if this is the year the drought ends, in which case the news isn’t great. Heading into this season, the oddsmakers pointed to two Canadian teams as legitimate contenders: the Oilers and Maple Leafs. Depending on where and when you looked, you could even make the case that those two teams were the leaguewide favorites. At the very least, they were near the top – in June, our list had the Oilers second at +900, while the Leafs were tied for fourth +1200.

(I’ll pause here to explain that +900 is the same as 9-to-1, which is to say an implied 10% chance at winning. The lower the number, the better for a team's chances, so +500 or 5-to-1 is a strong favorite, while +2000 or 20-to-1 is a much longer shot.)

But two weeks in, the Oilers are a mess and the Leafs have been inconsistent. And while we’ve seen some positive signs from the Canucks and Senators, none of the country’s teams are looking like Cup favorites right now.

There’s time for all that to sort itself out, but for now it had me wondering: Which teams were Canada’s best Stanley Cup hopes of the drought era, based on the preseason odds? We know teams like the 1994 Canucks, 2004 Flames and 2006 Oilers all came agonizingly close, but all of those were Cinderella runs. Which Canadian teams in the last 30 years went into a season as consensus Cup favorites? And then, what went wrong?

Luckily for me, it turns out there’s a site that tracks exactly this sort of thing. And as it turns out, there have been 15 Canadian teams that have gone into a season at less than +1000 since 1993. Let’s look back at those teams and see whether we can learn anything from what happened to them once the games mattered. At the very least, we can try to cheer up those salty Oiler and Leaf fans.

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Puck Soup: Frozen frenzy

A new episode of the Puck Soup podcast has been posted:

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Weekend NHL rankings: The Oilers are bad now, and other trends that may not last

We’re two weeks in. Are you keeping up on your mandatory first-month cliches?

Week 1: “It’s too early.”

Week 2: “It’s still early.”

Week 3: “It’s gets late early around here.”

Week 4: Miscellaneous Halloween “it’s getting scary” reference.

But while (checks notes) it’s still early, some trends are coming into focus already. Let’s take a look at a few, and see if we think they’ll continue.

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Building history's best roster of guys who weren't the top star with their own name

A very important milestone happened on Saturday night in Montreal, when a longstanding NHL record was broken by rookie wonderkid Connor Bedard. They didn’t stop the game to recognize the accomplishment with a ceremony, which was unfortunate, and I’m not even sure that casual fans noticed it. But it was very important.

By recording the third point of his young career, Connor Bedard became the all-time leading scorer among guys named “Bedard”. He broke a decades old tie between a pair of Jims, 1950s defenseman Jim Bedard and 1970s goalie Jim Bedard, both of whom were tied with two career points.

No? It’s just me who cares about this stuff? Yeah, I guess that’s possible. But I’ve always been mildly fascinated by guys who become NHL stars while clearly being the second-best player with their own last name.

So that’s what we’re doing today, as an early-season Friday time-waster. Let’s make an all-time roster of great players who weren’t quite great enough to be the best player with their own name.

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The Contrarian: How Mark Messier saved the Canucks, and other fake arguments

Welcome to The Contrarian, a new column idea that I’m very excited about.

Or am I?

You see what I did there. And there’s more where that came from, because the concept here is simple: You send me some NHL-related statements that you believe to be true. It can be something that seems obvious, maybe even inarguable. Then I argue it anyways, and try to convince you that you’re wrong.

I get to flex my contrarian muscles, which will come in handy if I ever get invited to be on one of those TV shows where sportswriters just yell at each other about stuff they don’t actually believe. You get some (hopefully) fun contrarian content to challenge your cherished assumptions and/or roll your eyes at. It will be fun.

At least, that’s what I thought before I started reading through your submissions. You people are messed up. You couldn’t let me ease into this, could you? Nope, you went right to the top shelf with just about the most slam dunk statements you could find. I’m surprised none of you went with “ice is cold”. Maybe next time.

But I said I’d give this a try, and I’m a man of my word. Let’s do this. You’re wrong about everything, and I’m going to prove it to you. (And as an added bonus, try to figure out which of these I actually believe.)

Note: Submissions questions have been edited for clarity and style.

The Mark Messier era in Vancouver was an unmitigated disaster. – Olivier C.

On the contrary, Olivier, you moron.

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Weekend NHL rankings: Early season picks for the best, the worst and the best bandwagon teams

We’re back, it’s way too early, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Welcome back to the weekend NHL rankings, in which I’ll start off every week of the season by serving up a Top Five, a Bottom Five, and a Bonus Five, with a few of the week’s more interesting teams tossed into the mix.

First, let’s be clear about what this ranking is all about. Those of you who’ve been around for past seasons should know the drill by now, and if so skip on down to the bandwagon rankings. But if you’re new, it’s worth a quick aside on what we’re actually trying to do here.

These rankings are meant to be a long-term view, where we try to figure out which team will win the Cup and which will finish dead last. That means that while we’ll still react to what we see on the ice and who beats who, short-term swings may not have as much impact as you’d expect. A team can be the Cup favorite even after a three-loss week, and one team beating another doesn’t necessarily mean they move up and take their spot. If you’d prefer a more short-term view, the Friday rankings have you covered. Around these parts, it’s more of a slow-and-steady approach.

That means we won’t overreact to a game or two here and there. It also means that if we’re wrong about a team from the start, we run the risk of staying wrong for longer than we need to, so the way-too-early opening rankings can matter. The gap between being conservative and just being stubborn can be a tricky one. Or at least, that’s what the comments section likes to tell me.

We’ll get to the power rankings in a bit. But first, this week’s Bonus Five, in which I’m going to help you find a second-favorite team.

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Help me become a better contrarian

Hey folks…

I had an idea for something new this season I’d like to try. It would be a semi-regular column called The Contrarian or something similar. You send in a statement that you think is obvious or inarguable, and I’ll try to come up with the contrarian view.

It could be anything: A team that’s definitely good (or bad), a rule that should change, a historical argument… up to you.

Let’s try it out and see where it goes. Send me your sure-thing statement via email at dgbcontrarian@gmail.com.

Nobody understands the Bruins (and other lessons from your preseason predictions)

Every now and then, somebody will ask me why I take the time to set up the annual prediction contest. Why bother, when it takes so much work to scrape all the data from our (occasionally uncooperative) comment section, massage it into some kind of working shape, and then monitor the whole thing over the course of a full season?

The first answer is that I just like seeing how wrong you all are, and how sad that makes you feel.

But the second answer is that there’s a bonus to the contest, from my perspective: By getting a few thousand readers to put their pre-season predictions in writing, I end up with a treasure trove of data on what fans are thinking. I like to think that The Athletic’s readers are reasonably bright and well-informed, and while a prediction game isn’t a random sampling, it’s still a useful way to take the pulse of the hockey world.

So today, let’s set aside the contest aspect – we’ll check in on that later in the year – and just focus on what you told me about what you do and don’t believe heading into the 2023-24 season.

This is all based on an early pass on the data, which hasn’t been cleaned up yet. (Special thanks to contest wrangler Mike, who was able to get the initial pass done in record time.) We’ll focus on broad trends rather than specific numbers, but there’s still plenty to dig into.

Such as…

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Offering up an oddly specific prediction for all 32 NHL teams this year

This is my favorite prediction column to write each year.

Like most hockey writers, I produce more than my share of predictions. There’s my annual leaguewide look, which also went live today and can be found here. I was part of The Athletic’s staff-wide award picks. I’ve been making picks on podcasts, and radio hits, and probably in my sleep. It’s part of the lead up to opening night, and it’s fun.

But once a year, I let myself go overboard by making predictions for each team that are way too specific. Anyone can predict that a player will hit a milestone or break a record; I want to also give you the exact date it will happen. Some player is going to be in the running for an award? Not good enough, you deserve to know exactly where they’ll finish. Along the way, we also dig up a few weird odds and ends from the stat book. But the key is that in these parts, we don’t use words like “around” or “approximately” or “close enough”.

We also don’t use words like “correct” very often, but that’s half the appeal. And when I do nail one of these predictions – like picking the exact game in which Joel Hanley would score his first regular season goal, or the exact night that the Kings would take their only misconduct penalty of the season – then it goes without saying that I will never shut up about it.

The offseason lasted forever and real hockey is just hours away. Let’s get oddly specific.

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Puck Soup: Predictions + who he play for

A new episode of the Puck Soup podcast has been posted:

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From Stanley Cup contenders to bottom feeders: Predicting the NHL season

Opening night is almost here. Are you sick of predictions yet? Too bad, here comes another batch, as I’ve put together my annual attempt to sort the NHL into four divisions.

The rules, as always: I get just those four divisions, each with exactly eight teams. We’ll have the bottom-feeders, the middle-of-the-pack, the legitimate contenders, and then the teams where I just have no idea. That last one should honestly just have every team in it, but let’s not dwell on that.

Four divisions, starting with the dregs and working our way up. Will I get them all right? No. But will I nail at least a few? Not necessarily, to be honest. Let’s do this.

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Make your picks for the prediction contest that's so easy it's almost impossible

It’s easy to look like a genius when you predict the NHL season. Just focus on the obvious, lay out everything that you know is going to happen, and feel confident in your unshakeable wisdom. And then – and this is the important part – don’t leave a public record anywhere, so nobody can look back in a few months and see how wrong you actually were.

That’s where this contest comes in. A few years ago, I got tired of everyone telling me how predictable the NHL was. Something would happen that I thought was unexpected, like the Golden Knights being good in year one, or the Sharks collapsing, or Barry Trtoz getting the Islanders into the playoffs. I’d express my surprise, and I’d inevitably hear from all sorts of fans who’d scoff. It was obvious all along, they’d tell me. And everyone with half a brain knew it.

OK, I finally said – prove it. And after a little bit of tinkering, my annual prediction contest was born. The premise was simple: Since the league is so easy to predict, I’d ask you some of the most basic questions imaginable. Nothing fancy or especially complicated. Just which teams would be good or bad, which coaches and GMs were on safe ground, and which players would be the stars of the season. If the prediction business was as easy as everyone said, you guys would crush it.

Gentle readers, you have not crushed it.

In three years, the contest has grown from 800 entries to 1,600 to last year’s 2,1000. And nobody has come close to an especially great score. Only a small handful have even managed a passing grade. You can check in on last year’s results here, when it turned out that you didn’t believe in the Kraken, you did believe in Darryl Sutter, and literally nobody thought old man Erik Karlsson was a Norris candidate. Like I said, not so simple… at least when someone is keeping track.

This year, we’ve got all the old classic questions returning, plus a brand new one that shines a spotlight on the middle-of-the-pack. And yes, the dreaded bonus question is back too. As always, the winner gets a signed copy of my book, plus the (infinitely more valuable) bragging rights that you actually called your shots.

Good luck. History says you’re going to need it.

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We found playoffs in a hopeless place: The case for the NHL's 10 worst teams

We’re now just a week away from the start of the NHL season, meaning hockey fans are being flooded with season previews. That’s great for most of us, as we head into a new year clinging to optimism and best-case scenarios. But for fans of teams that rebuilding or just plain bad, preview season just means that any lingering hope gets squeezed out, as every preview seems to echo the same theme: You’re bad, and you’re screwed.

That’s where today’s column comes in. For the last few years, I’ve looked to offer some optimism to fans of the worst teams. And not just garden-variety optimism, where things might go a little better than expected. I’m talking a world where everyone is wrong, your team is actually good, and they’re going to make noise in the playoffs.

It’s, uh… not easy.

That doesn’t mean it can’t work sometimes. For example, heading into last season the consensus was that the second-year Kraken would miss the playoffs and maybe even be in the mix for last place. I made the case for why they could be better, and maybe even win a round. Then they did.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that last year, our previews only had the Kraken as the tenth worst team, and the nine teams below them all missed the playoffs by healthy margins. Sometimes bad teams are just bad, and all the hope in the world can’t trump that reality. But we can try, if only to give a few fan bases a break from all the negativity.

Here’s the optimist’s view of the ten teams with the bleakest outlook heading into the 2023-24 season, based on the previews that Dom, Sean and Shayna have been churning out. We’ll start with the best of those teams, and work our way down to the dregs.

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Puck Soup: Best and worst

A new episode of the Puck Soup podcast has been posted:

>> Stream on the Puck Soup site
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>> Listen on Spotify

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Dubas, Laviolette, Babcock and more: The offseason Bizarro-meter heads East

Yesterday, we fired up the bizarro-meter for our annual attempt to measure the NHL’s weirdest offseasons. We covered off the Western Conference, and it was… not all that weird? Almost alarmingly normal? There was the usual mix of questionable trades, bad signings, and erotic book-based controversies, but in the end no team even cracked an 8 out of 10 on the meter.

Either this league is getting boring, or most of the weird stuff headed east this year. Let’s find out.

As always, a reminder that a bizarro offseason isn’t necessarily a bad one, or even a busy one. It’s about the moves that happen and the ones that don’t, with an emphasis on the moments that make you wonder: What are they doing over there?

Can any Eastern teams surpass the West’s meagre efforts? I’m guessing you won’t have to scroll through my phone to find an answer…

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Dubois, Bedard, Trotz and more: Rating the West’s offseason with the Bizarro-meter

The offseason is over, training camp has started, and it’s time to get weird. Longtime readers know what that means: It’s time to dust off the trusty bizarro-meter and find out which teams had the strangest offseason.

But first, let’s just make sure everything is still working.

(Dramatically pulls tarp off of machine, brushes off cobwebs.)

(Turns enormous crank to get it started until lights start flickering and a faint humming sound can be heard.)

(Waits patiently for output.)

(Hears a computerized voice declare “The league assures us that fans love the animated board ads, they all swear it makes the viewing experience much better.”)

Huh. Yeah, I’d say it’s working. Let’s get started.

But first, a reminder: We’re looking for how weird an offseason was, and “weird” is a value-neutral term. It doesn’t mean good, and it doesn’t mean bad. It doesn’t mean busy, or quiet. A weird decision can be brilliant or disastrous or somewhere in between, and playing it safe by doing nothing of note might be the weirdest choice of all. If you just want to know which offseasons were good or bad, check here. This is about who managed to surprise us, or confuse us, or make us point and laugh.

As always, we’ll do this by conference. Today, we get started with the West.

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My 2023-24 all-intrigue roster, featuring one name from each team

Summer’s over and the NHL is almost back, which means it’s time for my annual All-Intrigue roster. As always, the criteria here is whatever I want it to be – these are the guys who I find interesting heading into the season, for whatever reason. Some of them will be obvious. (Spoiler alert: This Connor Bedard kid will be one to watch.) Others might be surprises.

The key rule is that each team can only be represented once, which is necessary to keep every slot from going to the endlessly fascinating Maple Leafs team that I know you all love reading about so much. We’re doing 12 forwards, six defensemen and two goalies, plus a coach and GM, and I’ll include honorable mentions for each section to make sure every team gets a mention. And just to make things ever more complicated for myself, I’m adding one more rule: No repeats from last year. Sorry to all the Mackenzie Blackwood fans out there.

Goaltenders

Connor Hellebuyck, Jets

Remember when the Jets were facing down a busy offseason, one that would see them have no choice but to make blockbuster trades around longtime pieces like Hellebuyck and Mark Scheifele? We’re well into September and neither guy has been moved, and it seems like it will stay that way.

So now what? Hellebuyck’s been one of the best goalies of his generation, but he’s entering the final year of his contract and seems unlikely to get the big extension he’s been hoping for. With unrestricted free agency looming, he’s got a ton riding on this season. He’s always been a workhorse, and you wonder how hard the Jets will ride him if this is his last year in Winnipeg. Is he a midseason trade candidate? Maybe a deadline gamechanger? Or just a guy facing down one of the biggest contract years in recent NHL history?

Devon Levi, Sabres

We all just kind of assumed that Kevyn Adams would go out and get some goaltending help this offseason. Maybe it would be an established star to hold down the job while Levi was the understudy, or maybe it would just be a competent veteran to be the insurance policy. Neither happened, and with Craig Anderson retiring, an up-and-coming team’s position of weakness is in theory even worse.

That could be disastrous, if Levi isn’t ready. But maybe he is ready, and can have the sort of impact rookie season that young goalies used to have back in the day. If so, then the Sabres could go from up-and-coming to legitimately scary. Or maybe all that progress goes down the drain because they can’t get a save, and the Wings and Senators blow past them instead. No pressure, kid.

Honorable mentions: I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a reigning Vezina winner go into a season with less leaguewide buy-in than Linus Ullmark, who won roughly 85 games last year and doesn’t even seem to be anyone’s pick for the best goalie on his own team. The Devils are another team that was supposed to be goalie hunting but seem ready to roll with what they have, which might mean we get to see if Akira Schmid is a genuine 1a on a contender or just the Swiss Steve Penney.

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Remembering the supplemental draft, the entry draft's weird and short-lived cousin

Hockey history nerds: Are you all ready for the big anniversary? Got your balloons, streamers, and wall-length banners reading “Happy 37th”?

Literally everyone else: It’s OK that you have no idea what I’m talking about. You’re about to learn something, and while I can’t promise it will be educational or enriching, it will be weird.

This coming Sunday marks 37 years since the debut of a brief and essentially forgotten piece of the NHL offseason known as the supplemental draft. Not to be confused with the far more well-known entry draft (or the equally forgotten waiver draft), the supplemental draft was a special event specifically for college players. Not all of them, mind you, but we’ll get to that.

Of course, this being the NHL, even the simplest concepts inevitably go sideways. So as we get ready to celebrate the anniversary, let’s remember (and/or learn for the first time) 10 fun facts about the old supplemental draft.

1. The concept was relatively straightforward

So what was the supplemental draft? Basically, it was a way to assign the NHL rights of college players who were too old for the standard entry draft.

The supplemental draft was first established for the 1986 offseason. To be eligible, a player would have to be 21 or older and undrafted, with at least a year of college play but no professional experience. In its original form, the draft would last two rounds, with the first open only to non-playoff teams and the second open to everyone.

Simple enough, you might think. But why have the draft at all? And specifically, why suddenly implement it in the mid-80s, years after all the other draft rules had already been established?

Well, about that…

2. The draft was born because one team was annoying everyone

As with most things in life, the problem starts with the Detroit Red Wings.

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Introducing the “they had him but he never played there” all-stars

With the season just over a month away, it will be time to get back to real content soon. It’s been a fun summer of time-wasting challenges and random rankings, but soon it’s going to be time get serious.

Soon, but not quite yet. So today, we’re going to get to a topic that shows up in a lot of your requests: Superstar players, and the teams they never actually played for. Specifically, we’re looking for players who belonged to a team at some point, be it a few years or a few hours, but never suited up for them. Along the way, we should run into some interesting stories.

But first, a few ground rules™:

- We’re going to be building a 20-man roster out of 12 forwards, six defensemen and two goalies.

- We’re looking for overall star power. Normally this is the part where I give you the whole “only get credit for what a player did on your team” caveat, but… (gestures at entire concept). Full careers on this one.

- Finally, we’re limiting each team to one representative. Call this the Arizona Coyotes rule.

Sound good? Let’s do this. One full roster, full of stars who never played for the teams they were one.

---

We’ll start our squad with a Hall-of-Famer and all-time great, who’s also kind enough to be a simple example of what we’re looking for here. Six years before he arrived in Montreal and gave the Habs nearly a decade of Cup-winning goaltending, Ken Dryden was a Bruins third-round pick. Boston held onto him for all of three weeks before trading him to Montreal, and the rest was history. Unlike the Bruins, we’ll give him a chance as our starter.

The second goalie spot has a few worthy candidates. We could go with Tim Thomas, a Nordiques pick who never got a chance there. There’s also Olaf Kolzig, who was technically Maple Leafs property for a few weeks in 2009, or another not-quite-Leaf in Tuukka Rask. Or Mike Richter, a lifelong Ranger who was briefly a member of both the Predators and Oilers due to offseason shenanigans. Evgeni Nabokov was a Red Wing for a few hours before the Islanders sniped him off the waiver wire. The Canucks acquired John Vanbiesbrouck for a few days before the 1993 expansion draft. We could even dip back into very recent history to go with the Blue Jackets’ brief Jonathan Quick era. And the best of the bunch might be Henrik Lundqvist, who signed with the Capitals but was never healthy enough to suit up for them.

All else being equal, I’d go with Lundqvist here. But without giving too much away, I don’t want to use my Capitals slot this early. So instead, let’s go with Hall-of-Famer Eddie Belfour and his brief and forgotten two-day stint with the Nashville Predators in 2002. Yes, really.

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Puck Soup: Don't mess with success

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The Maple Leafs extend Sheldon Keefe, because you don't mess with a winning formula
- Bill Peters is back
- Things are getting weird in the KHL
- The US TV schedule is out, and people are mad
- The return of the Best of Seven quiz game

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10 things I learned while wasting way too much time with a fun new research tool

Have you been enjoying the Immaculate Grid craze? It started with baseball, spawned imitations in other sports, and has since been bought and consolidated by the wonderful folks over at Sports Reference.

If you’re a hockey fan, you’ve probably been playing Puckdoku, an NHL version that was inspired by the original baseball version. But the official version at hockey-reference is fun too, and it’s led to an important development you may have missed: The site finally launched a “Find Players Who Played for Various Franchises” tool.

OK, the name is a little wordy, I’ll give you that. But the concept is gold for hockey nerds. It’s just a simple search tool that lets you input any combination of teams and then find out which players appeared in at least one game for all of them. Want to know how many guys have played for two rivals, or some combination of Original Six teams, or any two random teams you might think of? Now you can find out. I encourage you to give it a try.

It's a great way to waste company time when you’re supposed to be working. Or if you’re lucky, you have a job where you can realize that you can turn what you’ve learned into a summer article. Today, I’m going to take you through 10 interesting things I learned while wasting way too much time playing with the Various Franchises tool.

1. No player in NHL history has played for all three California teams

I’m going to start with this one, because it stunned me. I get that there’s a rivalry between the three current California teams – RIP Golden Seals – and that it’s been heated at times. I wouldn’t expect there to be a ton of players who’ve suited up for all three teams. But none? Not one guy in the 30 years since the Ducks completed the trio? That’s hard to believe.

But it’s true. There have been 98 players who’ve appeared for two of the three teams, including big names like Teemu Selanne, Rob Blake, Jari Kurri and Jeremy Roenick. But all three? The database says: Nobody.

For comparison, there have been 12 players who’ve played for all three New York-area teams, all but two of them since the Ducks arrived in 1993. Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa have had three. The old Detroit/Chicago/St. Louis rivalry from the Norris days has 14, including Glenn Hall. But California? Not an option, apparently.

Speaking of rivalries…

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Puck Soup: C's get degrees

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We pick the next captain for the ten teams without one
- Thoughts on Brandon Hagel, Jonathan Toews and Evan Bouchard
- What are the Sabres getting ready to do with their cap space?
- RIP Rick Jeanneret and Rodion Amirov
- And more...

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>> Listen on Spotify

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The NHL rulebook has a problem, but we can fix it by removing one word

 You remember the moment. It’s Game Six of the playoff series between Seattle and Colorado, with the defending champs fighting for their playoff lives and the hometown fans agonizing through the most important game in the Kraken’s short-lived franchise history. It’s late in the second period, with the Avalanche having just scored to go up by two. Colorado’s Andrew Cogliano leans forward near the boards, trying to make a tough play to get a bouncing puck out of the zone. Seattle’s Jordan Eberle hits him from behind, launching him headfirst into the boards.

What’s the call? It’s a penalty, for sure, but is it two or five? Is it a match?

If you’re a rulebook nerd and/or you read my explainer from earlier this year, you know it’s not a clearcut question. There are lots of different penalties in the NHL rulebook, and almost as many different ways to parse the minor/major distinction. But boarding, the call on this play, is one of the many where at least part of the distinction comes down to the question of injury.

In this case, Cogliano got up and went to the room. He seemed shaken, but otherwise OK, and in fact he even returned to the game in the third period. Then, after the game, he was diagnosed with a fractured neck. If the Avs had advanced, he would have been sidelined for the rest of the postseason.

Eberle got two minutes, at least partly because it was determined that the guy whose neck he’d just broken hadn’t been injured.

What are we doing here?

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Let’s waste an August day building rosters in the 100-number game

It’s mid-August and nothing is happening, so let’s play a roster game. This one was sent in by longtime reader Bill, who graciously took time off from thinking about inferior sports to suggest a deceptively simple challenge: Find the team that makes the best possible starting lineup where all six players’ jersey numbers add up to 100.

I like it. And yes, I can already sense the danger, because we’re going to run into some of the same problems we did in that column. Hockey numbers are handed out randomly, and they tend to group into either very low or very high. Mix in the several position-based traditions that come into play, and this won’t be as easy as just finding a few stars and then filling in the team around them. Or maybe it will. Let’s find out.

But first, a few ground rules™:

• We need a six-man lineup of a center, two wingers, two defenseman and a goalie. Yes, I do plan to immediately regret using wingers, thanks for noticing.
• In the case of guys who wore more than one number, we’re getting credit for whatever they did in the number we pick, meaning we can’t get cute with something a guy wore for a game or two because it was training camp or someone stole their jersey.
• Each roster only gets credit for what they did with that team.

Let’ see how this goes. We’ll start with the team that traditionally pulls leadoff duty in these things…

Edmonton Oilers

As is usually the case, the Oilers set some parameters for us right away. We can’t use Wayne Gretzky or Connor McDavid, because that doesn’t leave us enough room to find five more guys. In fact, given how rare it is to see a forward with a low single-digit number, we’re probably looking at something in the 70s as an upper limit for forwards, and lower than that for the other positions.

The better strategy will be to aim for lower numbers across the board. For the Oilers, we could try building around Leon Draisaitl (29), Jarri Kurri (17) and Mark Messier (11) up front, with Grant Fuhr (31) in goal. That adds up to 88, leaving us 12 to work with on our blueline. Paul Coffey wore 7 with the Oilers before switching to 77 for the rest of his career, so we just need a 5. With apologies to Cody Ceci and Ladislav Smid, that probably means Steve Smith gets out last spot, and our Oilers entry looks like this:

Forwards: Mark Messier (11), Leon Draisaitl (29), Jari Kurri (17)

Defense: Paul Coffey (7), Steve Smith (5)

Goalie: Grant Fuhr (31)

That’s… well, that’s actually pretty darn good. Better than I thought we’d be able to get, if I’m being honest. You could quibble a bit with the forwards since we did say we’d have two wingers, and Messier and Draisaitl are both primarily centers who also play left wing. File a protest if you’d like, but otherwise we’re off to a great start.

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Five truths your fan base needs to hear

It’s August, barely anything is happening, and the casual fans are all focused on baseball, barbeques, Barbie, and the occasional NFL preseason games. In the hockey world, only the diehards are still around. If you’re reading this, then that’s you.

Good. We need to talk.

I wouldn’t write this piece during the season, because the casual fans would take it personally. They’d probably get upset. But you? You’re still reading hockey content in mid-August, even when you know there's nothing to read about. You can handle some big kid talk. And that’s what you’re getting today.

We need to talk about you. Specifically, about your fan base. There are some truths that you and your fellow fans need to hear.

No, I don’t know which team you cheer for. That’s the beauty of it – I don’t need to. Because today we’re going to talk about some things that apply to pretty much every fan base. Even yours? Yes. Especially yours.

You may not like it, but it’s better that you heard it from a friend. Here are five hard truths your fan base needs to hear.

You’re overrating your prospects and young players

They’re not that good.

OK, yes, some of them are. Depending on where your team has spent the last few years on the whole contending-to-tanking continuum, they may even be very good.

They’re just not as good as you think they are.

That’s because you’re probably falling into the same trap that virtually all fans do: You’re looking into a future where all your team’s prospects have reached their ceiling. If every one of those guys is as good as the experts say they could be, we’re in great shape! But you’re not, because that’s not how prospects work.

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Summer mailbag: Puckdoku tips, history's most-hated captains, an all-Canadian league

Welcome to August, where nothing is happening and it’s the perfect opportunity to waste everyone’s time with a bunch of nonsense. “Um, slow news day?” No, dummy, it’s a slow news month, so let’s get weird.

Please settle the debate about the proper way to play Puckdoku. (And share any tips you might have.) – Eric C.

If you’re not already playing Puckdoku, you’re still getting work done missing out. The game is based on a bit we did on Puck Soup a few weeks ago, and is basically a hockey version of the Immaculate Grid craze. You’re presented with a 3x3 grid, with teams or accomplishments along the top and side, and you need to fill each space with a player who meets both of his square’s requirements.

How do you win? In theory, by successfully filling out the whole grid, although some people like to go further. Is there a right and wrong way to play? I don’t think so – this is one of those things where everyone should just enjoy what they enjoy, and play however they choose.

That said, you should make up your mind before you start each day's grid. As best I can tell, there are four distinct ways people are playing:

- Basic mode: Just get as many right answers as possible, which a lot of days is difficult enough on its own. A right answer is a right answer, and that’s all you’re looking for. I’d imagine this is how most beginners and/or casual fans play.

- Front-runner mode: In this version, you’re trying to guess the most popular answer for each square, which will usually (but not quite always) be an active and/or superstar player. This means you’re looking for the highest possible “uniqueness” score for each square. Or to put it more simply, you want your grid to match the “Popular picks” that show up at the end of the game.

- Sicko mode: The opposite of front-runner mode, this one has you searching for the rarest answers, and the lowest possible uniqueness score. Double-digits is good; single digits is better. It will not surprise you to know that this is how I play.

- Cheater mode: This is sicko mode on steroids, where you research your answers before you enter them to try to get as close as possible to a uniqueness score of zero. I’ll be honest, I don’t really get the appeal here, especially now that you can use this tool to easily find players nobody has ever heard of. But if it’s your cup of tea then go for it, with the only caveat being that you own it – no showing up in conversations between sicko mode fans and pretending your zero was legit.

If anyone has come up with anything more creative, be sure to let us know in the comments.

As far as tips, I’ll pass on a few.

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Puck Soup: Nothing is happening

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We talk about everything making news in the NHL, which is to say not much
- People are mad about Matt Murray going on the LTIR
- The remaining UFAs and RFAs
- A new game debuts
- And more! But honestly, not much more.

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The return of Cap Court, with a twist: Which NHL stars have great contracts?

We’re into late July, and with apologies to Vladimir Tarasenko and Matt Dumba, the free agent frenzy is pretty much done. And this year, I think we can all agree that it was… fine? That’s about it, right? There weren’t many big names available, and the flat cap meant that there weren’t as many big deals flying around as we’re used to seeing.

That’s probably good news for the 32 teams, who tend to make the worst mistakes when the UFA market opens. Looking back at this year’s deals, there were certainly a few overpays, but nothing that seems outrageous. Maybe GMs are finally learning. Or maybe the flat cap meant they just didn’t have enough to spend, and will be right back to setting piles of money on fire next summer.

Either way, this sudden burst of thriftiness feels like something worth recognizing. So this week, I’m breaking out an old gimmick with the return of Cap Court. That’s the feature where we pick five contracts and put them on trial, judging the deals based only on the years that are left and the cap hit they carry. We’ve done five of these over the years, meaning 25 verdicts have been handed down, and it’s fair to say that every reader agreed with 100% of them.

But this time, there’s a twist: We’re not looking for bad contracts. This time, we’re looking for great ones.

As always, we’re viewing this from a team’s perspective, meaning we want to know which contracts are “great” the way Nathan MacKinnon’s was for the Avalanche for all those years. MacKinnon himself might disagree with the idea that that was an especially great contract, since it ultimately cost him tens of millions of dollars. Or maybe not, and he’d tell you that he was happy to leave some cap room for his team to build a winner around him. Players always say that when their contract is tossed into the “great” pile. Some of them might even mean it.

I’ve picked five contracts that I think you could argue are great ones from a team perspective, but could also fall into the range of merely good. That doesn’t mean that I think these are the only five deals on the league that could qualify, and in fact I’ve left some off the list that are pretty obviously huge bargains. Leon Draisaitl, Cale Makar, Brad Marchand and Jason Robertson are all underpaid, relative to what they bring to the table. So is Connor McDavid, even though he carries the second highest cap hit in the league. Jack Hughes might be one more big season away from becoming the new MacKinnon as far bargains go. I’m not sure anyone would argue any of those, which means we don’t need to waste time putting them on the docket.

The five names I’ve chosen should be at least a little tougher. So court is now in session: Are these good contracts, are do any of them rise to the level of being great ones?

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The story behind the best player to play exactly one game for your favorite team (Western edition)

This week’s dog days of summer project is to try to find the best player who played exactly one game for every NHL team. Yesterday we covered the Eastern Conference, coming up with a list that included a 300-game winner, a celebrity divorcee, a member of the legendary 1972 Team Canada squad, and a pro wrestling legend’s dad. It was an eclectic group, is what I’m saying, and today should be more of the same. Let’s head west and seek out the best one-and-done players in each team’s history.

Anaheim Ducks

The Ducks have got some fun names on their list. Remember Trevor Gillies, the mustachioed Islanders enforcer who went wild against the Penguins in 2011? He played one game for the Ducks back in 2005, racking up 21 PIM in 2:40 of ice time. The Ducks’ one-game club can also claim recent Sabres’ signing Dustin Tokarski, as well as the record-holder for the longest Stanley Cup suspension in Aaron Rome.

We’ll give the nod to journeyman blueliner Ian Moran, who endured “Get a Brain” jokes long enough to have an 11-season career, almost all of it split between the Penguins and Bruins. (Fun fact: The Pens traded him to Boston for the draft pick that they turned into Paul Bissonnette.) He signed with the Ducks in 2006, dressed for one game, and spent the rest of the next two seasons in Europe and the AHL before retiring.

Arizona Coyotes

The Coyotes would absolutely dominate the "stars who were acquired but played zero games" list, but they don’t give us much to work with as far as one-gamers. That said, we can at least turn to a guy who was once traded one-for-one for an MVP. That would be David Aebischer, the Swiss goalie who won a Cup as a rookie with the 2001 Avalanche, played in two Olympics, and was traded to Montreal for Jose Theodore in 2006. He signed with the Coyotes the year after, and started their third game of the 2007-08 season. One loss to the Blue Jackets later, he was waived and demoted, and headed back to Europe.

Calgary Flames

First things first: Shoutout to Jarrod Skalde, who qualifies for this exercise for three different teams thanks to one-game stints with Calgary, Dallas and Philadelphia. We’ll be nice to Flames fans and not go with Morgan Klimchuk, the first-round pick from the Jarome Iginla deal that didn’t quite pay off. And while Gerry O'Flaherty was a solid 70s scorer, his one Flames game came for Atlanta, so we’ll look elsewhere.

That probably leaves us with Mark Lamb, Calgary’s fourth-round pick in 1982 who made his debut midway through the 1985-86 season before heading back down to the minors. The Flames would let him walk as a free agent that summer, and he’d go on to bounce around the league for another decade, most memorably in a five-year stint with the Oilers, where he’d win a Cup in 1990. Later, he’d get Selke votes while captaining the expansion Senators before ending his career with the Flyers and Habs.

Chicago Blackhawks

On the goalie side, the Hawks could give us the very start of Carter Hutton’s career and (presumably) the very end of Anton Khudobin’s. For skaters, we could use old-school veterans like Rick Lanz if we need a defenseman, or Jeff Jackson if we need a soundbite. But instead, I’m going to draw on the full power of an Original Six team to go way back to the earliest days of the NHL itself. Our Hawks picks is a Hall-of-Famer named Barney Stanley, who made his name in other pro leagues but got into a single NHL game with the Hawks.

Maybe my favorite part of the story is the identity of the coach who put him in the lineup: Barney Stanley, who apparently looked at this underperforming team and figured that if you needed something done right then you had to do it yourself.

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The story behind the best player to play exactly one game for your favorite team (Eastern edition)

Your favorite team has had some players who stuck around forever. They’re probably stars, but not necessarily. They’re just the guys who never left, or maybe did and kept coming back. You check the team record books for games played, and there they are, right near the top. And every single fan from that era has a memory of watching them do their thing.

And then, there are the guys at the other end of that games played list. The guys who played exactly one game for your team, and that’s it.

I’ve always been kind of fascinated by these guys. There are lots of players who only got into one NHL game, period – Sportsnet’s Ken Reid wrote a very fun book about them. But what about the guys who had longer NHL careers, enough to at least make a name for themselves, but still managed a one-game stop with a team along the way? When you think about, it’s not easy to do. And when it happens, there’s often a story behind it.

So this week, we’re going to look at all 32 NHL teams and ask a simple question: Who’s the best player to ever play one (and only one) game for them? We’re obviously getting a little bit subjective with “best” here – spoiler alert, there aren’t going to be a lot of Hall-of-Famers on the list – but we’ll try to at least find some names you know. I’m hoping you’ll learn a few things. And along the way, we’ll get to remember some guys, which is pretty much the best thing a hockey fan can do in mid-July.

We’ll start with the Eastern conference, before moving west tomorrow.

Boston Bruins

In theory, the Original Six teams should give us lots to work with. That doesn’t really turn out to be the case in Boston, although they do offer up a young Aaron Downey and the lost Pronovost brother. There’s not much question about who their most famous one-gamer would be, although that guy didn’t really make an NHL name for himself until he tried his hand at coaching and broadcasting.

So instead, let’s go with Ted Irvine, a winger who put together a long career in the 1960s and 70s. He was Bruins’ property in the Original Six days, but only cracked the lineup for a single game at the age of 19. (The fact that he went -2 in a game his team won 6-3 might give us a hint as to why it was his only game.) Like a lot of the era’s fringe players, he got his break when expansion arrived; he was claimed by the Kings, then had his best years as a Ranger before finishing off with the Blues. In all, he played over 700 games, scoring over 150 goals. And yes, despite all that, today he’s probably best known for his bratty kid.

Buffalo Sabres

This one’s a relatively easy call for now, although Joel Armia is making a run at the title. For now, he’ll have to take a back seat to one of the most prolific offensive defensemen of all-time, one who scored over 200 goals and nearly 700 points while earning all-star votes in eight straight seasons and topping the 20-goal mark six times. That would be Reed Larson, who’s scoring exploits have been somewhat forgotten in the decades since, but who was a steady scoring threat for the Red Wings from 1976 to 1986. He went on to play for the Bruins, Oilers, Islanders and North Stars before landing in Buffalo as a late-season UFA addition in 1990. He played one game for the Sabres, the last of his NHL, before retiring and being a first-ballot inductee into the Hall of Very Good.

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Grab Bag: What the NHL GMs are up to, a possible celebrity sighting and more

In the Friday Grab Bag
- What various NHL GMs are up to these days
- We're using the word "clinch" wrong
- Comedy stars
- An obscure player who'll help you with Immaculate Gord
- And I'm pretty sure I found a three-year old future celebrity in a Macarena-themed HNIC intro

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Every GM class of the cap era, ranked from worst to best

It’s the middle of July, and we’re getting dangerously close to that time of year when the NHL essentially shuts down. Not officially, of course, but there’s about a six-week stretch where we don’t get much in the way of big signings or trades. It’s almost like the GMs all go on vacation.

Great, that makes this a perfect time to rank them.

Specifically, we’re going to rank each of the GM classes of the cap era. That means we’re going back to 2005 and judging each calendar year based on which full-time GMs were hired (with a glove tap to our friends at NHL Trade Tracker).

The ground rules are simple. We’re judging based only on what a GM did with that team, not anywhere else before or after. Interim GMs don’t count. And each hire in a given year gets equal weighting – if a year saw five guys hired and one of them was a modern-day Sam Pollock, that will boost the ranking but only to a point; the other guys matter just as much.

Each class gets ranked based on their impact, their success, and their entertainment value, based on a strict system of me pulling a number out of the air and running with it. Highest total wins.

We’ve got 19 years to work with, and we’re ranking all of them. Well, almost all of them, because…

Not ranked: Class of 2023

GMs: Barry Trotz (NSH), Kyle Dubas (PIT), Brad Treliving (TOR), Craig Conroy (CGY), Danny Briere (PHI)

Look, I think I've shown over the years that I’m willing to be entirely unreasonable when it comes to a ranking, but even I have my limits. These guys have been on the job for a few weeks, most of them have barely done anything newsworthy yet, and I'm not even sure Conroy knows that free agency has started. I can’t sit here and pretend that I can pass judgement on any of them yet. (But check back in August, when my 6,500-word Dubas vs. Treliving scorecard should be ready to go.)

#18. Class of 2017

GMs: Rob Blake (LAK), Jason Botterill (BUF), Dale Tallon (FLA)

I like the work Blake has done in L.A., even though he hasn’t won anything yet. The good news is that he’s easily the best GM of the class of 2017. The bad news is that it would be just about impossible not to be, since Botterill didn’t really work out in Buffalo and Tallon 2.0 in Florida was so busy vanquishing the Computer Boys that he ended up doing more for the Golden Knights than the Panthers.

Impact: 3/10

Success: 2/10

Entertainment: 2/10

Total: 7/30

#17. Class of 2022

GMs: Chris MacFarland (COL), Mike Grier (SJS), Pat Verbeek (ANA), Kent Hughes (MTL), Patrick Allvin (VAN)

It’s far too early to rank last year’s class with any degree of fairness, but life’s not fair so here we are. Only one year in, this group isn’t exactly crushing it; aside from MacFarlard, who took over a Cup champion, it’s been a whole lot of wheel-spinning for this group. Hughes at least gave us a great draft moment in Montreal, and Grier might be about to drop an Erik Karlsson blockbuster. But for now, it’s been a lot of talk and not much action – which is probably about right when three of the five teams are rebuilding, and one of them probably should be. Let's call this class a work in progress and slot them in here for now.

Impact: 2/10

Success: 2/10

Entertainment: 4/10

Total: 8/30

#16. Class of 2009

GMs: Stan Bowman (CHI), Greg Sherman (COL), Joe Nieuwendyk (DAL), Chuck Fletcher (MIN), Randy Sexton (FLA)

First things first: I cover the NHL for a living and I have zero recollection of Randy Sexton returning to the league to be the Panthers GM for less than a year. I do remember Nieuwendyk’s unsuccessful stint in Dallas, and poor Sherman being GM in title only while Patrick Roy and Joe Sakic did his job for him. Bowman won three Cups in Chicago with Dale Tallon’s roster, but ultimately left in disgrace. And that leaves us with Chuck Fletcher, who lasted almost a decade in Minnesota and was responsible for some of the most thrilling moments in franchise history like, uh…

Impact: 3/10

Success: 5/10, basically all from Bowman

Entertainment: 2/10

Total: 10/30

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Building the cap era’s All Buyout Team

It’s the summer, which means I start taking requests. That doesn’t always work out well for me, but you guys tend to have some good ideas. And over the last week, there’s one that keeps coming up: In the wake of another window for teams to disappear their contract mistakes, a whole lot of you seem to want to know what an All Buyout Team would look like.

Sounds good, let’s do it. But first, a few ground rules™:

• We’re going to build a 23-man roster, with 13 forwards, seven defensemen and three goalies.
• This is cap-era only.
• All flavors of buyouts count, including the standard version, the compliance version, and an odd one we’ll get to.
• We’re basing the selections on the player’s entire career, with an emphasis on their peak – not on what they were by the time the buyout arrived. The actual buyout number isn't the main factor, but when in doubt we won't be able to resist it.

Can we find enough good players to fill a roster? And if so, what does that say about the job NHL GMs have been doing over the years? Let’s find out.

Goaltenders

Henrik Lundqvist, Rangers, 2020

Right off the bat, we start with a guy who you may not remembering being bought out, even though it only happened a few years ago. The Rangers bought out the final year of Lundqvist’s contract in 2020, splitting from their franchise goalie after a 15-year career (and 20 years in the organization). At the time, Lundqvist intended to keep playing and went on to sign with Washington, although a heart condition kept him off the ice. The Rangers ate a $5.5 million cap hit in 2020-21, but they gave the All Buyout Team a Hall-of-Fame starter, so we thank them for it.

Years bought out: 1 x $8.5 million cap hit

Braden Holtby, Canucks, 2021

We’ll add just about the only thing our roster doesn't get from Lundqvist in a Cup ring thanks to Holtby. You don’t see a lot of guy sign two-year UFA deals and then get bought out after one season. Then again, the Canucks have a knack for thinking different.

Years bought out: 1 x $4.3 million cap hit

Ilya Bryzgalov, Flyers, 2013

We’ve got other goaltending options to look at, including Cory Schneider and Martin Jones, and even Rick DiPietro (who played his last game ten years ago but is still on the Islanders’ payroll until 2029). But we simply can’t build this team without Bryzgalov, who cost the Flyers a whopping $23 million to buy out back in 2013, just two years into a nine-year deal. It was a post-lockout compliance buyout, so there was no cap hit, but still – imagine asking your boss to cut a $23-million check to make a mistake go away. Luckily it was the last roster management error the Flyers ever made.

Years bought out: 7 x $5.667 million cap hit*

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The Athletic Hockey Show: Gull you know it's true

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Ian gives us an update on Alex DeBrincat
- My theory on what's really going on here
- Should teams trade within their own division?
- Vladimir Tarasenko switches agents
- Father-son combos on the same team
- The 1991-92 San Diego Gulls for some reason, 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)

The 2022-23 predicion contest results (or, how Auston Matthews ruined everything)

Every year, right before the season starts, one of my favorite things to do is run a simple contest. Simple, in the sense that it’s not very complicated. But more importantly, simple as in easy. All you have to do is answer the most obvious set of questions about the coming NHL season. Which teams are locks for the playoffs, which coaches are definitely safe, which goalies will be their team’s undisputed starter, that sort of thing. Dead simple.

You guys are terrible at it.

That’s the beauty of it. While the questions always seem easy in hindsight, they’re a little tougher when you have to lock your answers in before the season starts.

We first ran the contest two years ago, and you did poorly. Last year we upped the difficulty just a bit, and you did even worse. And that brings us to this year.

The good news is that for the second straight year, we shattered the record for entries. This seasons’ contest had over 2,100 entries. Surely at least a few of you would knock it out of the park.

Well, let’s see about that. If you’re new to this, the idea behind the contest is that there are ten regular questions and one optional bonus. For each of the first ten, I ask you a basic question and you give me anywhere from one to five answers. Each answer scores points on a scale that increase with the more answers you give, so there’s an incentive to go big. But even one wrong answer wipes out all the points for a question, so you have to get strategic. Sure, it seems easy, but how confident are you? Will you play it safe with the true sure things, or risk it all to squeeze in one more answer?

That’s where it gets tricky. Let’s see how you all did this year.

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Puck Soup: UFA winners and losers

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Free agency winners and losers
- Small trades that have been made
- Big ones that haven't (yet/)
- Changes in the women's pro game
- And more...

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>> Subscribe on iTunes
>> Listen on Spotify

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Ryan Reaves to the Maple Leafs: What it says about Brad Treliving’s mindset

There are two ways to look at the Maple Leafs signing Ryan Reaves to a three-year deal, after apparently making him one of their top priorities in free agency.

The first is that it’s a low-risk bet on a veteran who has a defined role and knows how to fill it. Reaves is as close as today’s NHL comes to an old-school enforcer, the guy who’s there to make sure the other team stays in line. He doesn’t have to fight to do that job, but he will, and opponents know it. The Maple Leafs have plenty of skill at the top of the lineup but they can be pushed around, and traditional hockey thinking says that means there needs to be snarl at the bottom.

At three years and a $1.35 million cap hit, Reaves won’t crush the Leafs’ salary cap, especially as the ceiling rises over the next few years. And while he’s 36 years old, the skillset the Leafs are buying isn’t one that will diminish with age. If it doesn’t work, he didn’t cost all that much. If it does work, he could be one of the most popular players in Toronto, the Tie Domi for a new era.

That’s the positive spin. Are you buying it?

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