Offer sheets, free agents and… Utah? Rating the West’s offseason with the Bizarro-meter

Welcome to part two of the annual Bizarro-meter rankings, in which we rate each team’s offseason to see which were the weirdest. As always, “weird” doesn’t necessarily mean bad or good or anything in between; this isn’t an evaluation so much as an opportunity to recognize the teams that kept things interesting over a long summer.

Yesterday was the Eastern Conference, with the Capitals and Lightning leading the way. Can anyone from the west top their scores? Spoiler: Yes. But who? Let’s find out.

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A Stamkos exit, deferred payments and more: Rating the East’s offseason with the Bizarro-meter

Slow news summer is finally over, meaningful hockey is almost here, and it’s time to get up to speed on the offseason. Let’s get weird, by firing up the trusty Bizarro-meter to measure which teams had the strangest summers.

If you’ve been following this gimmick for years, maybe even dating back to the original Leafs-only test run from the infamous David Clarkson offseason, then you know the drill and can just skip ahead to the rankings. But if you’re new to this, please consider this very important caveat: “Bizarre” does not necessarily mean “bad”. Teams can do strange things that work out brilliantly. And far more often, teams can take the predictable path of least resistance and end up wishing they’d been more creative. Over here at Bizarro-meter Industries, we are neutral on questions of good and bad. We’re just looking for what was weird.

As always, we’ll do this in two parts by conference. Today is the East, with the West coming tomorrow. Let’s start in the Atlantic.

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Dear TV producers: One fan’s six small requests for the 2024-25 season

While the never-ending dead zone of the offseason drags on, we’re actually getting close to meaningful hockey. Rookie camps are already happening, and the real training camps will open soon. From there, we’ll only have to get past a few weeks of “best shape of his life” chatter, awkward PTOs, and half-speed preseason games before things finally start to matter.

That means that it’s also the time of year when the TV broadcasters are holed up in the spacious meeting rooms in their office towers, holding top-secret meetings to plan out what their coverage for the new season will look like. (Note: I have no idea if this is true.) And that’s good, because this post is for them.

I have a few requests.

Nothing unreasonable. I know that some fans have big-picture changes they’d love to see from the league’s TV partners, but that’s not the point of today’s post. Instead, I’ve got what I think are a half-dozen relatively minor tweaks I’d love to see to the broadcasts. OK, sure, it’s basically a list of pet peeves that I’d like to see addressed, and maybe they only apply to me. But that’s fine, because I’m the main character and everything the NHL does should be tailored to my individual whims, so I’m sure the TV big wigs will be hanging on every word.

Grab a note pad, TV producers and directors, and get ready to make your product way better… at least in one viewer’s eyes.

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Find your team's best roster of short-term stars in the return of The $200 Game

Today’s somehow-still-the-offseason time-waster is the long-awaited return of The $200 Game.

We first tried this a little over five years ago, so a refresher is in order. We’re building six-man rosters – three forwards, two defenseman and a goalie, with no other positional requirements – for individual NHL franchises. The salary cap is $200, and each player costs $1 per regular season game that he played with that team. Each player must have played at least one game, meaning no sneaky zeroes allowed (i.e. the Coyotes Rule).

You get credit for the player’s entire career, so the key is to find guys who had very short stops with one team during a great career spent almost entirely elsewhere. Martin Brodeur in St. Louis, that sort of thing. As we found out last time, that means that trade deadline rentals are our friend, as are stars-turned-journeymen who bounced around a lot over their last few seasons.

I highly recommend going back and checking that original post from five years ago, which will give you the hang of this. Back then, we covered a dozen teams: The Original Six, plus the Penguins, Avalanche, Kings, Stars, Hurricanes and Blues. The consensus was that that the two best teams were the Blues, led by Brodeur and Wayne Gretzky, and the Hawks, led by Bobby Orr and Dominik Hasek.

Today, we’ll see if we can top that with 12 new teams, starting with one that can walk us through how all this works.

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What your favorite NHL penalty says about you, Hat Trick Fever and more: DGB Grab Bag

The hockey world just went an absolutely miserable week, probably one of its worst ever. That might make it a weird time to pull out the old Grab Bag gimmick. Or maybe not, because we could all probably use a laugh right now. Unfortunately you’re stuck with me, so “laugh” might be asking too much, but maybe I can at least get a slightly louder than normal exhale out of you. Let’s see if we can find a way to have some fun.

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