Friday, March 31, 2023

Grab Bag: NHL vs. WrestleMania, 1992 rule changes and a plea to bad teams

In the return of the Friday Grab Bag:

- Comparing the NHL to Wrestlemania
- An important request for fan bases of bad teams
- An obscure player with an epic playoff stat spoiler
- No comedy stars because Brad Marchand deleted his twitter
- And a YouTube guide to all the new safety rules introduced in 1992

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Thursday, March 30, 2023

Puck Soup: Staggered starts

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The NHL apparently has some creative scheduling ideas
- It's not going great for Florida or Winnipeg
- Thoughts on The Athletic's week-long series on fighting
- The end may be nearing for Jonathan Toews
- Sens sale update, Chytil extension and more...

>> Listen on The Athletic
>> Subscribe on iTunes
>> Listen on Spotify

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




The Athletic Hockey Show: Mis-Sean Impossible

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Ian and I plan a heist of NHL headquarters
- The Devils meet the Rangers in a possible playoff preview
- Jesse Granger explains a goalie's mindset when facing former teammates
- The latest on Ryan Reynolds and the Senators sale saga
- Listener mail, some WHA merger history, 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)




Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Hockey’s bare-knuckles legacy and whether fighting will likely always be a part of the NHL

In the sport’s earliest days, before the NHL even existed, hockey was known for outbursts of violence — not just fights, but stick-swinging and outright assaults, sometimes involving fans or officials. Fighting has always been a part of hockey but its place in the game has evolved, with marked shifts in how (and how often) hand-to-hand combat is featured. And not everyone agrees on what those fights mean, or why they’re part of the sport’s legacy at all.

Even a century ago, debates raged over whether hockey would need to clean up its act to find a wider audience. In the Original Six era, there were essentially no enforcers — everyone fought, and stars like Gordie Howe were largely expected to protect themselves. With only six teams and just over 100 jobs available, there was no room on the roster for one-note fighters.

But then came the 1967 expansion, which doubled the size of the NHL. More expansion followed, and the WHA arrived soon after, pushing the number of big-league teams into the dozens. And as that shift was happening, one team emerged as the most influential group in the modern history of NHL fighting.

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Monday, March 27, 2023

Weekend rankings: The five best teams who haven’t cracked the Top Five

As we head down the season’s final stretch, we’ve hit that part of the schedule where the top and bottom five aren’t changing all that much. The top five has featured the same three or four teams for most of the last few months, with the occasional cameo from a fringe contender or two. The bottom five is even more locked in, with four teams pretty much set in stone and just the last spot up for grabs.

That’s life with a long-term view; as the long-term becomes near-term, it shouldn’t be fluctuating all that much. But it does mean some teams might not be getting the attention they deserve, especially in the top five. There are always more than five real contenders in the parity era, after all, and even if these teams aren’t chasing down the Bruins, they still deserve some respect.

Let’s focus on a few of those good teams that haven’t cracked the top five all year long. We’ve had good teams like the Leafs, Stars and Lightning show up on the list from time to time. But today, let’s offer up some accolades to the best five teams that haven’t found a spot even once all season long.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Thursday, March 23, 2023

The Athletic Hockey Show: That 70 show?

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- How high can Connor McDavid go?
- Taking stock of the wildcard races
- Jesse Granger nerds out on goalie gear
- A great listener email about Pride events
- This week in history, featuring the worst MVP ever
- 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 22, 2023

Puck Soup: Fighting Fanatics

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Yet another player sits out Pride Night
- Fighting is banned in the QMJHL, sort of, while NHL reconsiders the instigator
- The league partners with Fanatics and people are mad
- Looking at the dwindling playoff races
- How high can McDavid's numbers get?
- The NHLPA player poll is out
- A few rounds of 20 Kesstions, and more...

>> Listen on The Athletic
>> Subscribe on iTunes
>> Listen on Spotify

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




Monday, March 20, 2023

Weekend rankings: Which playoff bubble team is under the most pressure?

We’re exactly four weeks away from the playoffs, and as always at this time of year there are four groups of teams: Those that have had a spot locked up for weeks or months, those that have been out of the race forever, those that are right on the bubble, and those that still think they’re in the race but probably aren’t.

That last group, sadly, includes a few of this year’s teams that have been the most fun to watch. That includes our beloved Sabres, as well as the perpetually not-quite-pesky-enough Senators, plus the Wings and Capitals. Each of those teams could still make a run, but would need an enormous hot streak to pull it off. Even that might not be enough.

So with apologies to those teams, let’s focus on the six teams that were sitting between 10% and 90% playoff odds based on Dom’s projections (as of Sunday). These are our bubble teams, and they’re fighting for four spots. They all want to make it, obviously, but some are under more pressure than others. But who? Let’s break it down, from the least pressure to the most.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Monday, March 13, 2023

Weekend rankings: Changes for Flyers, Kings keep rolling and April highlights

It’s mid-March, the trade deadline is over, and I just want you to know that it’s perfectly OK to admit that you’re already looking forward to April.

April rules. It’s when we get the last few weeks of the season, leading into the first round of the playoffs, which is the absolute best time of the year to be a hockey fan. It’s the time where we find out what the matchups will be, and whether of all the (non-McDavid) stars can get to 50 goals or 100 points. And if your team stinks, April is also the draft lottery. Either way, it’s what everything is building towards, and it’s pretty great.

March? Or to be more specific, post-deadline March? Eh. It’s good too, some of the time. It’s fine. The playoff race starts to form, and we get lots of low-scoring three-point games between division rivals. March is a perfectly acceptable month of the hockey calendar. It’s just not April.

And it’s OK to want to look ahead to the really good stuff. That’s what I did, and I found five gifts that the schedule-maker has left under the April tree. We can’t open them yet, but let’s pick them up and shake them. I feel like I’ve strangled this metaphor sufficiently, let’s get to the link.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Friday, March 10, 2023

All 95 members of the 50-goal club ranked, from Gary Leeman to Rocket Richard

While it was at least a little bit lost in all the trade deadline news, Connor McDavid made some history by joining the 50-goal club last week. Somewhat surprisingly, it was the first time he’d reached the milestone, making him the 95th player in NHL history to have achieved the feat.

This seems like a good excuse for a ranking.

Now, with 95 different names to sort through, am I going to write an extensive explanation of each and every rankings, droning on for roughly 10,000 words that nobody will read? Sure, sounds like fun! (Editor’s note: No you will absolutely not.) No I will not. But with some judicious use of grouping and categorization, we can get this down to a manageable level. Remember, these sorts of lists aren’t about being right or wrong. They’re about you CTRL+F’ing down to your favorite player and then having a temper tantrum in the comments about him being too low.

I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday, so let’s do this. To be clear, I’m not ranking these players best on who had the best careers. I’m not even ranking them based on who had the best goal-scoring season, since we can just sort by stats to get that. No, we’re looking for the guys who do the best job of capturing that 50-goal vibe. I realize that’s vague, but you know it when you see it, so let’s get to the ranking.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Thursday, March 9, 2023

The Ahtletic Hockey Show: Talking trades

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- We discuss the human side of NHL trades
- Is it time to worry about the Jets?
- Tony DeAngelo spears Corey Perry in the pills
- Brainstorming future NHL bobbleheads
- Jonathan Quick's role in Vegas
- Listen mail, this week in history 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 8, 2023

Puck Soup: Deadline aftermath

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We run down the biggest trades from the final days before the deadline
- The Coyotes keep cooking the books
- The Canucks, Flyers and Penguins are... interesting
- What's next for the Flames
- Rumblings of expansion to Atlanta and Houston
- Ryan makes his Oscar picks, and more...

>> Listen on The Athletic
>> Subscribe on iTunes
>> Listen on Spotify

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




With the NHL deadline done, I have a nagging question about all those trades

Trade deadline season is finally past us, with a wild few weeks that saw a ton of action. Our trade grades page lists over 30 trades that were worth debating. Some big names were moved. And that’s not even mentioning all the other stars that were rumored to move and didn’t, with some of those discussions sure to resume in the offseason. As a fan, it was pretty great, and it might even be the new normal.

And through it all, something has been bugging me. Do me a post-deadline favor and indulge me as I try to work my way through it.

I want to be clear on what’s going to happen here. Usually, when I throw out an opinion, it’s because I’m trying to convince you that I’m right. I want to change how you think about something. I think I know what the answer is, and I’m trying to get you on board with me.

I’m not sure whether that’s what I’m trying to do here. It might be. But it’s also possible that what I really want is for you convince me that I’m wrong. Your job might be to talk me out of this.

That’s because I’ve spent most of my writing career celebrating the art of the trade, and I’ve made it clear that I love this part of the sports world. Heck, I want to see even more of it. In over a decade of doing this for a living, I may have written more words about trading than any other subject.

But I haven’t written these ones: Are all these trades a good thing? Should we be celebrating them?

Imagine you’re an NHL player. You’re a celebrity, probably rich, and living out your childhood dream while playing a game for a living. You’re also a human being. It's possible that you could be struggling with your mental health, or marriage issues, or addiction, or bad decisions. You might be helping to care for an elderly parent. Maybe your spouse is struggling in their career, or your kid is going through a tough time at school. Through it all, you’re trying to do your job while also dealing with real life, just like the rest of us.

Then one day you get a phone call: You’ve been traded. Your whole life is being upended. You now live in a new city, or time zone, or country. There’s a car on the way and you’re expected to be on a plane in a few hours, to start a new chapter of your life. And you’ve got absolutely no say in the matter.

Is that OK? Is that even a question worth asking?

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Monday, March 6, 2023

Weekend rankings: Most interesting deadlines, Sens surge, Canuck questions

Well, that was a week.

Deadline day ended up being a bit of a bust, but only because all the big names had already moved. You can get caught up on all the important stuff here, plus grades for all the deals and all the teams. (That last one is fun. Four teams got a 3/10 or worse. Hint: Two of them are in the same state. That state is hopelessness.)

For our purposes, when we last did these rankings we’d just seen Timo Meier head to New Jersey in a 13-piece deal, and Tanner Jeannot got to Tampa in exchange for all the picks. We also knew Patrick Kane was going to be a Ranger, even though it wasn’t official. But we hadn’t yet seen the deals for Mattias Ekholm or Jakob Chychrun, the Jonathan Quick drama, trades for Tyler Bertuzzi or Max Domi, whatever the Leafs were doing with their blueline, or roughly two dozen other moves.

So things have changed. But ultimately, how much? After all those moves, do the rankings really look all that different?

We’ll get to that in a minute. But first, let’s use our bonus ranking to cover off a few teams that kept things interesting over the last week or two. These aren’t necessarily the teams that made the biggest or most important moves, but rather the ones that left us wondering how things will turn out. The Devils getting Meier was a monster move, but it was straightforward – good team gets great player and improves Cup odds. These five teams are a little more uncertain, and that will make them especially interesting down the stretch.

Top five teams that had the most interesting deadline

5. Calgary Flames/Florida Panthers – I’m cheating to cram an extra team in, but these two both make it for the same reason. It’s not often you see a team in the thick of a playoff chase basically sit out the deadline, but the Panthers didn’t do anything and the Flames didn’t do much (although the brother trade was cool). It’s a little ironic that the two teams that hooked up on the biggest offseason trade in years decided to stay the course with their playoff lives on the line. In Calgary’s case at least, maybe it doesn’t even matter.

https://twitter.com/domluszczyszyn/status/1632394796705693699

4. Seattle Kraken – They didn’t do anything at all, unless you want to count Jaycob Megna, and that’s certainly a choice. I get the argument that Ron Francis is already playing with house money, as a team that few of us expected to make the playoffs is holding down a spot that only the Flames are anywhere within range of. Still, this was shaping up to be a magical year in a new market that’s still finding its feet. Staying the course might make sense in the long run, but sometimes it’s OK to go off script.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Friday, March 3, 2023

Trade deadline live blog

I'll be live-blogging all of today's action(?), along with Sean Gentille and Hailey Salvian. We'll have all the rumors, trade grades, and updates from beat writers on whatever moves might be left. Swing by and join us right here.




Thursday, March 2, 2023

The Athletic Hockey Show: Deadline headlines

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Has this been a great deadline, or just a busy one?
- Thoughts on some of the recent deals, including Tyler Bertuzzi to Boston
- The David Pastrnak news breaks as ww're recording
- Jesse Granger on whether the Golden Knights will trade for Jonathan Quick
- A weird Arizona Coyotes stat, remembering the 1996 Blues, a great magic draft pick idea 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 1, 2023

Puck Soup: Three minute warning

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We try (and fail) to spend only three minutes on every NHL trade from the last week
- Maybe some other stuff but seriously there were like 140 trades to get through.

>> Listen on The Athletic
>> Subscribe on iTunes
>> Listen on Spotify

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




Remember some trades: One underrated NHL trade deadline deal for all 32 teams

Everyone loves a good deadline trade, with the possible exceptions of players, their families, most teammates, and the GMs who get mocked and then fired for screwing them up. But sure, everyone else, which is to say sportswriters like me who need content.

That’s especially true when the trade is a genuine blockbuster featuring a big name. Those are the sort trades that get remembered forever, with fans still reciting details decades later. But most deadline deals aren’t like that, and sometimes they can even fade from our collective memory. That doesn’t mean the trade didn’t matter, but it does give us an excuse to go back and pick an underrated trade from every team’s deadline history.

The premise might be a little tricky here, since one fan’s underrated move is another’s obvious blockbuster. We’ll try to thread the needle as best we can, looking for deals that ended up being important but that might not be all that well-remembered outside a given market. We’ll even dig up some old links to send you even further down the rabbit hole. It’s deadline week, it’s not like you were going to get any work done.

Sound good? Cool, let’s remember some trades.

Anaheim Ducks

The Ducks are a fun place to start. They’ve made some memorable deals over the years, including the ones that landed Teemu Selanne in 1996 and sent him to San Jose in 2001, plus a busy deadline last year. But the trade that best fits our premise came in 2003, when the Ducks sent a young Mike Commodore and prospect Jean-Francois Damphousse to Calgary for veteran center Rob Niedermayer. That deal was a winner in more ways that one – Niedermayer helped the Ducks make a surprise run to the Cup final that year (along with fellow deadline pickup Steve Thomas), then stuck around long enough to be a key reason that his brother Scott signed as a free agent in 2005.

Arizona Coyotes

For Arizona’s deadline deal, let’s go with the Antoine Vermette trade. No, the other one, and that’s part of the beauty of it. The 2012 trade that saw the Coyotes get Vermette from Columbus for picks paid off nicely during that year’s playoff run. Vermette stuck around for three years, was dealt to the Hawks at the 2015 deadline in a more memorable deal that landed the Coyotes a first-round pick, and then even came back that summer as a UFA.

Boston Bruins

The Bruins have a long history of taking advantage of dumb teams on the trade market, but finding a deal that qualifies as underrated is a bit trickier. I don’t think Adam Oates in 1992 would qualify. Taylor Hall can’t, and neither can Hampus Lindholm. You know what, let’s go with the 2006 deadline move that sent Sergei Samsonov to Edmonton for two players and a second-round pick that turned into Milan Lucic at that summer’s draft. (Bonus fun fact: The pick that would become Brad Marchand was traded that same day, but it went from the Coyotes to the Islanders; the Bruins later acquired it on the draft floor.)

Buffalo Sabres

I don’t think we can count the 2003 Danny Briere deal, so let’s go way back for our Sabres pick. At the 1981 deadline, they sent all-star Rick Martin to the Kings for a first-round pick two years down the road. This one ended up being contentious, since Martin was hurt and was at risk of missing the playoffs, leading to the rare sight of the trades terms being renegotiated after the fact. The 1983 first stayed in the deal, though, and ended up being fifth overall, and the Sabres used it on Tom Barrasso, who immediately won the Vezina as a teenager. The deadline pick that turns into a star goalie trick works well for them; they pulled it off again in 1999 when they flipped Mike Wilson for the pick that became Ryan Miller.

Calgary Flames

Their deadline history includes trading away a young Brett Hull, plus an old Jarome Iginla to two teams on the same night. But I’m going to go with a classic hockey trade that features six great 90s names: Gary Suter, Paul Ranheim and Ted Drury to Hartford for Zarley Zalapski, Michael Nylander and James Patrick. Why yes, that would be Chris’s brother, William’s dad and Ryan’s uncle all in the same trade, because there are like nine families left making all the NHL players.

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