Who wins, a team made up of guys who captained more than one team, or guys who were never captains at all?

We’ve almost made it through the dead zone of August. But with a few weeks left in Slow News Summer, I realized we haven’t done a full roster-building exercise. That’s not good, so let’s dive into a topic that’s been in the news lately: Captains.

Today’s question: Who wins, a team made up of guys who captained more than one team, or guys who were never captains at all?

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free trial.)

Martin St. Louis for Jack Adams? Mitch Marner for Art Ross? We made 24 longshot award picks

Predicting the NHL award winners for the coming season can be a hit-and-miss exercise, to put it lightly.

Sometimes the obvious favorite wins, like Connor Bedard taking last year’s Calder. At -135 odds, that means the bookies thought he was more likely to win than everyone else combined, and sure enough he ran away with the award, to absolutely nobody’s surprise.

Other times, the winner is a little bit less obvious, but only a little. Last year’s Rocket Richard favorite was Connor McDavid, but Auston Matthew was right behind him at +300, which is to say 3-to-1 or a 25% chance – hardly a surprise winner. Nathan MacKinnon was 10-to-1 for the Hart, trailing only McDavid. Connor Hellebuyck’s Vezina (13-to-2) and Quinn Hughes’ Norris (10-to-1) were in the same range. 

But we do get surprises, like Rick Tocchet winning the Jack Adams despite being a 25-to-1 preseason longshot, trailing behind 15 other coaches, including several like D.J. Smith, Todd McLellan and Jay Woodcroft who didn’t even make it through the season.

Tocchet became the latest in a long list of surprise award winners, at least based on those preseason odds. That preseason part is important, because many of those winners go on to feel like they were obvious or even inevitable, and it’s hard to remember that there was a time when nobody was expecting them. For example, when Leon Draisaitl won the Hart in 2020, he’d gone into the season as a 22-to-1 longshot. When Adam Fox won the Norris three years ago, he’d been listed at 35-to-1, well back of names like Torey Krug and John Klingberg. Marc-Andre Fleury was 40-to-1 for the 2021 Vezina, trailing behind Mikko Koskinen, while Linus Ullmark was 80-to-1 for the 2023 version, tied with Logan Thompson for 23rd place.

You get the idea. Every now and then, someone comes out of next-to-nowhere to win a major award, and nobody sees it coming.

Or do they? That’s the idea behind today’s post, as three of us -- Dom Luszczyszyn, Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoe -- are going to take our best swing at nailing a longshot. We’ll take eight of the major awards and limit ourselves to players who are listed at 20-to-1 or worse, and try to make the case for why our guy could shock everyone by taking home the hardware.

If we’re right, you’ll never hear the end of it. If we’re wrong, we’ll never bring it up again. Sounds like we can’t miss, so let’s take a shot at this.

(All historical odds are taken from Sports Odds History. All odds for this coming season are from Draft Kings, and were current as of publish date.)

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free trial.)

Ten weird facts from NHL history that bother me more than they should

I know a lot of stuff about the NHL. That’s not bragging, because most of what I know isn’t even vaguely useful, and it all takes up space in my brain that should probably go towards keeping tracks of my wife’s birthday or my children’s hopes and dreams.

But the bigger problem is that a lot of this stuff bothers me. This league, man. Am I right?

So today, in the dead of summer with nothing else happening, I’m going to share some of this stuff with you. Some of you old-timers will already know a few of these. I’m sure I’ve made passing references at least a couple over the years. I’m doing this partly because I think it’s interesting but mainly because I’m hoping some of it annoys you too and I won’t feel like a giant weirdo.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free trial.)

DGB Summer Mailbag: Gretzky's quote, jersey number trivia, and an alien challenge

Welcome to the August mailbag. Is it going to get weird? (Scans actual headlines.) It had better. Let’s do this.

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

Who wins a seven-game series: The team that just won the Stanley Cup, or the best team that didn't make the playoffs IF the series starts the day after the Cup is won, the challenger is fully healthy, rested and prepared, and the champs don't know the series is happening until that morning? – Ben D.

First of all: This is one of the best questions this mailbag has ever had. But to really make it work, we need to establish the stakes. Otherwise, the easy answer is “The champs just won the Cup so they don’t care if they lose every game 10-0 and wouldn’t bother trying.”

So here’s what we’re playing for: The champs are informed that the Cup is on the line, and if they lose the series then their win is stricken from the record. That ought to get their attention.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free trial.)

A brief history of the Sam Pollock Trophy, a fake award for NHL Trade of the Year

We’re into August, well and truly the dead zone of the NHL offseason. While we occasionally do see a major roster move or two this late into the summer, it’s just as often the case that all the big headlines are done until we get close to camp.

So if the 2024 offseason is all but over, what was your favorite blockbuster? Was it the Mitch Marner trade that finally blew up the Leafs’ underachieving core? Or maybe big moves involving Martin Necas or Nik Ehlers? Are you going with one of those culture-changing shakeups that the Rangers promised? Or maybe it was when the Ducks finally pulled the trigger on the long-rumored Trevor Zegras deal.

Oh… right.

None of those deals have happened. At least not yet, and in some cases, pretty clearly not anytime soon. The summer hasn’t been a total letdown, with some legitimately big moves involving names like Jacob Markstrom, Mikhail Sergachev, Linus Ullmark and Pierre-Luc Dubois. But overall, if you’re a fan the dying art of the hockey blockbuster, the summer’s been a bit of a letdown.

This sounds like a good excuse to make up another award.

 

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free trial.)

Looking for a summer mailbag

Hey folks...

I need your help. It's August, nothing is happening, and I have a mailbag to write, and I need some questions. Fun ones, silly ones, complicated ones, simple ones, about e verything from fictional awards to history to real, actual hockey news (so that the "slow news day?" weirdos have something to chew on too). Please bring it. Send your questions, comments and rants via email at dgbmailbag@gmail.com.

Thanks,
Sean

Remember some Guys: Looking back at some famous first names the NHL has lost

Joe Pavelski retired this summer. Actually, he seems to have done it about a half-dozen times, which is weird in its own right, but we’ll allow it. He had a great career, lasting 18 seasons, cracking the 1,000-point mark and representing Team USA internationally.

And while it may not have been quite as important as those accomplishments, Pavelski also did something else: He continued a long line of NHL stars named Joe. It’s been a classic NHL name since the league’s earliest days, when Phantom Joe Malone gave way to Bullet Joe Simpson, paving the way for modern era stars like Joe Sakic, Joe Nieuwendyk and Joe Thornton.

Joe is a great old-school hockey name. But these days, the emphasis is on the “old”, because it’s just not a name your hear much anymore. The popularity of first names will rise and fall over generations, after all, and the NHL is no different. And when Pavelski made his exit official, I’ll admit that one of my first thoughts was: Was that the last Joe we’ll ever see in the NHL?

Not quite, as it turns out. We still have Joe Veleno in Detroit, and if you also count guys named Joey, we’ve got Daccord and Anderson. Crisis averted. The legacy of Joe lives on, at least for a few more years.

But that got me wondering about some other classic hockey first names that haven’t been as lucky. In this new world of Brayden, Jayden and Kayden, a few names you might have come to associate with NHL greatness are now nowhere to be found in the league.

Is this all an incredibly thinly veiled excuse to Remember Some Guys? Of course it is, absolutely. Welcome to slow news summer. Let’s start our list with arguably the most famous hockey name ever.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free trial.)