The Contrarian: That famous Bobby Orr photo is bad, and other fake arguments

Welcome back to The Contrarian, one of the most beloved and popular features that I write. Unless it isn't.

The concept here is simple. Readers send me statements about the NHL which they believe to be obviously true, bordering on the inarguable. Then I argue against those statements anyway, and see if I can convince you to start thinking the unthinkable.

Do I actually believe any of this? Maybe, but that’s not the point. The point is that I’m a sportswriter, and if I’m going to have any success in this media world, I need to master the art of making ridiculous contrarian arguments that make just enough sense to be infuriating.

Previous editions of The Contrarian have seen me make the case that Mark Messier was a great Canuck, Ray Bourque’s long-awaited championship was bad,  and Brett Hull’s skate-in-crease goal was actually fine. Today, we’ve got a new batch of reader statements that can’t be argued. Spoiler alert: All of them will be.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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

NHL weekend rankings: Change in Boston, déjà vu in Ottawa, and expected storylines

We’re a quarter of the way through the NHL season, which means it’s time for two things: Saying “quarter-pole” around your most pedantic friends just to annoy them, and writing pieces about how nothing is going the way we expected.

We’ve been covering that latter ground for most of the season around here, including last week’s reminder that you were wrong about all this stuff too. So this time, let’s switch it up. Sure, this is a league where almost nothing is playing out the way we thought: the Oilers are bad, the Flames are good, the Predators are terrible, the Capitals and Wild are great, the Jet are dominant, the Avalanche are .500, and the Bruins are collapsing. Connor McDavid is outside the top ten in points, Connor McMichael is unstoppable, and Connor Bedard is regressing in year two. None of it makes any sense. But if we dig deep enough, surely we can find a few things that are actually playing out pretty much the way we all expected, right?

Of course we can. I’m not sure we can find five, but let’s try.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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

Remembering 10 times a season's list of Jack Adams finalists did not hold up well

The firing of Jim Montgomery this week was newsworthy for plenty of reasons, mostly surrounding what it means for the spiralling Bruins. But it was also interesting for awards watchers, who probably recall Montgomery winning the Jack Adams as coach of the year in 2023. It’s fair to say that the list of that year’s finalists has, as the kids say these days, not aged well.

Ruff didn’t even make it through the 2023-24 season, while Hakstol was gone early in the offseason. Montgomery was the comparative ironman, making it all the way until Tuesday.

Three coaches, the apparent very best of the best in 2023, all fired before the end of 2024. We have to ask the question: Is the Jack Adams cursed?

No, because curses aren’t real. But it is a weird award, one that’s typically voted on as much based on short-term surprise factor as long-term excellence. If the trophy truly went to the best coach in the league every year, we’d expect to see plenty of names listed as multiple-time winners, just like we do for the Hart or the Vezina. With the exceedingly rare Jim Carey-level exception that proves the rule, you almost never see nominations for major player awards go to guys who are out of a job entirely within a few years.

But you do see it with the Jack Adams, in part because the broadcasters who vote on it typically lean towards coaches whose teams have exceeded expectations, which is nice but not the same as being the best at the job. Worse, a spot as a Jack Adams finalist combined with an surprisingly strong season often raises expectations, and expectations can be an NHL coach’s worst enemy.

So maybe it’s not surprising that we see the occasional outlier like that 2023 trio of soon-to-deposed coaches. The problem is it’s not much of an outlier at all. So today, let’s look through the Jack Adams finalists for every season of the cap era and ask a simple question: How well did the list hold up, in terms of those guys clearing the low bar of simply keeping their jobs?

I’ve pulled ten years where the answer ranges from “not great” to “big oof”, which seems like a lot considering we’ve only got 19 years to choose from. Let’s count down those 10 lists of finalists, from bad to worse.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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

It's not just you, Sid: Remembering six legends whose careers ended with playoff droughts

Sidney Crosby is bumming me out these days.

Not because he’s playing poorly. Quite the opposite – even at 37, he’s still scoring and playing a strong two-way game. No, the sad part is that it’s not anywhere near enough for the Penguins. With a sub-.500 record in a surprisingly tough division, their seasons already looks like a lost cause.

If so, it will be third straight year that Crosby misses the playoffs. And with two more years left on his extension, and little in the way of optimism that the aging Penguins can get any better, getting to five straight doesn’t seem unrealistic. Assuming he doesn’t push for a trade, it’s legitimately possible that we’ve already seen the last of Sidney Crosby in NHL games that actually matter.

Maybe things will turn around in Pittsburgh. But if not, Crosby could at least take some solace in knowing that he won’t be the only legend to end his career with little or no playoff action. It happens more than you might think, especially when we’re talking about players who are still performing at a high level. You’d think the hockey gods would make sure that every star got the sendoff they deserve. But for every Ray Bourque or Lanny McDonald or Mark Recchi who goes out on top, or even an Adam Oates who at least comes close, there are stars who never get that chance.

Let’s remember a few of those guys today, if only to make Sid feel better. OK, fine, to make me feel better about where Crosby might be headed.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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

NHL weekend rankings: Avs, Blues, a new bottom team, and we were all so wrong

We’re over a month in the NHL season, just days away from US Thanksgiving. Are you ready to admit you were wrong?

I am. When it came to predicting how the 2024-25 season would play out, I was very wrong. I almost always am. I’m bad at this, and you should not trust anything I say about anything.

But you’re bad at it too, and I have proof. For the last few years, we’ve had the prediction contest as a permanent record of where the general preseason consensus was among hockey fans, or at least my readers. And one month into this season… woof, you guys are looking bad.

So before we get to my rankings, which will be wrong, let’s humble the howling mob with a look back at five key developments you totally whiffed on.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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

Take the quiz: "Satan's Wallpaper", and other fake nicknames you've never heard

We were treated to the top comedy moment of the hockey season this week, and we have a former Devils goaltender to thank for it.

No, not Mackenzie Blackwood hanging a 44-save shutout on his former team, although that was pretty funny too. This was about Martin Brodeur. Or, as he’s apparently now known, “Satan’s Wallpaper”.

That’s his nickname, you see. At least it is according to fine folks at Jeopardy, the famous quiz show that featured him in a question on Monday night. It’s always neat when the NHL gets some mainstream pop culture rub. And this time, the reaction from fans was unanimous. And that reaction was… “what?”

Nobody seems to have any recollection of that actually being Brodeur’s nickname. Not among fans, or media, or his fellow players. When I asked about it, I got hundreds of replies from confused Devils fans, many of whom had watched Brodeur for decades, and not one told me that they’d heard of this so-called nickname. The confusion spread to reddit and social media and news organizations.

Two things here. First, fake or not, “Satan’s Wallpaper” is an absolutely A+ nickname. Seriously, that’s right up there with The Chicoutimi Cucumber. Whoever came up with this needs to be in charge of fixing modern hockey’s broken nicknames.

And second, I’m pretty sure I know what happened here.

>> 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 skate-in-crease reviews, an awful rule some of you seem to want to go back to

The NHL’s GMs are meeting this week, and one of the items expected to be discussed is the replay review system. It’s mostly working fine, the league’s powerbrokers seem to agree. But reviews are taking too long, and maybe we should learn from the NFL’s recent changes that allow replay officials to nudge referees over missed calls. And, of course, people are mad about goaltender interference reviews. As always.

This latest flare-up in the debate was prompted by a close call in a recent game between the Jets and Lightning. That one initially went against Winnipeg and was upheld after a coach’s challenge, much to the frustration of Jets’ goaltender Connor Hellebuyck. You wouldn’t think that “guy whose whole job is preventing goals thinks goal he allowed shouldn’t have counted” would be major news, but here we are.

It’s all led to another round of the usual “nobody knows how interference works” hysteria, the sort of performative confusion that certain fans, media and even coaches love to put on whenever a call goes against their team (but weirdly, never when it goes the other way). It’s also led to the latest appearance of what seems like a reasonable question: Why is this all so subjective? Why can’t we just have a black-and-white rule that works the same way every time, and that we don’t have to argue about?

It’s a fair question. And apparently, some of you are either too young or too new to the sport to know that there's an answer. So on behalf of us old-timers, here's the short version: We tried that, it was a disaster, and everyone hated it.

We also vowed never to do it again, but lately it feels like that might not last. If the “just get it right” crowd forms a coalition with the “just keep it simple” brigade, maybe we’re headed back to the cut-and-dried interference calls of the past. It’s might even be inevitable; if we really can’t stomach any ambiguity on these calls, then we don't really have any other options.

But if so, we should at least know what we’re getting into. And if you’re the sort of fan who’s found themselves wondering why we can’t just do this the easy way, you should know the history of how we got here.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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

NHL weekend rankings: Canucks, Predators, and 5 way-too-early offseason lessons

We’re a month into the season, which seems like more than enough time to look back at the offseason and use the benefit of hindsight to completely shift our opinions of everything that happened.

You remember the offseason, right? The Predators were the big winners, the Jets were huge losers, the goalie carousel ended up with everyone in exactly the right spot, and a few teams would pay the price after chickening out on making big trades. After watching each team play a dozen games or so, we now know that we were completely wrong. We're so much smarter now.

Will we be completely wrong again, in slightly different ways, a few weeks from now? Almost definitely. But for now, let’s take a look back at the best and worst of what did (and didn’t) happen.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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

Help me become a better contrarian

Hey folks…

Thinking of doing another edition of The Contrarian. You send in a statement that you think is obvious or inarguable, and I’ll try to come up with the contrarian view.

We've done a few of these, and the ones that work best find that sweet spot of feeling difficult but not impossible. "Mark Messier was a bad signing for the Canucks" and "Ray Bourque's Cup win was good" worked great. Stuff like "Connor McDavid is good at hockey" or "The Leafs have a bad playoff record", not so much.

Send me your sure-thing statement via email at dgbcontrarian@gmail.com.

Making the HHOF case against Pekka Rinne, P.K. Subban and even Alexander Mogilny

The Hockey Hall of Fame will welcome seven new members this weekend, including three players from the men’s side. That’s one fewer than the committee is allowed to induct, meaning they didn’t run out of room; they just decided that some of the bigger names weren’t worthy.

Good.  The Hall is supposed to be tough to get into, and we should be slamming the door on some of the names that just don’t deserve a spot.

At least, that’s the angle we’re taking today. I’m not necessarily a Small Hall guy, and I’ve spent plenty of time over the years making the cases for various stars. But I think there’s value in trying the other side sometimes, if only to force the supporters of certain stars to sharpen their arguments. So today, I’m going to make the case against 10 names that could be front and center when the HHOF committee holds their next meeting.

We tried this a while ago, with a list 15 players. That was two years’ worth of inductions ago, and four names from that piece have got the call: Mike Vernon and Tom Barrasso in 2023, then Jeremy Roenick and Pierre Turgeon this year. Apparently my other 11 arguments were just more convincing.

We won’t be doing any repeats this time around, so check that older post if you want to see my case against names like Rod Brind’Amour, Patrik Elias, Ryan Miller or anyone else you're expecting to see today but don't. This time, the group of 10 will be made up of some names that I left off last time, as well as a few new that are new to the mix. I won’t bother with a few players I think are easy slam dunks, including Zdeno Chara, Joe Thornton and Patrice Bergeron, and we’re not tackling anyone who isn’t eligible until 2027 or beyond, including anyone who's still active.

That still leaves us with plenty of names to consider, including several who’d probably have my vote. Here’s why none of them should make it – just for argument’s sake.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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

What was NHL history's worst team to have a bunch of Hall-of-Famers?

I’ve had the Hall of Fame on my mind this week, mostly because it’s induction weekend. That’s the fun part of the calendar that starts with you going “Oh yeah, that’s who they picked back in the summer” and ends with a cool ceremony that honors the game’s legacy.

It’s also a good time to debate that legacy, and argue about bests and worsts and in-betweens. That’s what we’re going to do today.

About a year ago, I wrote a post where based on a simple question: What was the best team that had no Hall-of-Famers? I settled on the 2006-07 Sabres as the winner, in case you’re wondering. You had plenty of your own suggestions, and we wasted the entire day arguing about it, which is what the hockey gods want us to do with HHOF debates.

Today, let’s flip the question: What was the worst team to have the most Hall-of-Famers? That’s a little tricker, just because we’re not dealing with an absolute value like “none”, but I think we can feel our way through some sort of weird ratio of team quality to HHOF totals. We should probably have a cutoff, though. Five? Five sounds good. Let’s find some really bad teams that at least five Hall-of-Famers in the organization.

I’ve come up with five teams that I think make for solid candidates. Have a look, then make your pick and/or tell me why I’m wrong.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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

NHL weekend rankings: Playoff outsiders I still believe in, at least for now

It was a rough year for one of my favorite stats. Years ago, when Elliotte Friedman introduced his curse of November 1, I had the same reaction that most fans seemed to: It didn’t make sense. Over a decade ago, Friedman pointed out how rare it is for a team to be four points out of the playoffs at the start of November and end up making it, but the results felt wrong. After all, you can make up four points in two games – doing it in five months should be easy. And yet, Friedman found that the failure rate was close to 90%.

So can any teams break the curse this year? Yes. Two of them, and that’s it, because only two teams were four points back as of Friday. Those teams would be the Predators and Blackhawks, and yeah, I think one of them is a little more likely to make the push than the other. But thanks to a late start and Gary Bettman’s beloved leaguewide parity, almost everyone is close enough not to panic yet. (In the East, nobody was even two points back when the new month began.)

OK, so much for this year’s early season curse narrative, at least until US Thanksgiving arrives and we can switch to that one. But there are still lots of good teams that are outside the playoffs right now, including some we all assumed would make it. So today, I’m going to see if I can name five teams that wouldn’t be in the playoffs if they started today (based on points percentage), but that have a good shot to be in when it matters.

That’s going to be tougher than it could have been, since the Oilers moved back into a spot after last night's win and robbed me of a freebie. But we love a challenge, so let’s do this from least to most confidence.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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