NHL weekend rankings: Change finally comes in Detroit, plus I was wrong but it's fine

We’re right in the middle of the holiday season, meaning you’re probably still fighting off a turkey coma and/or dealing with overstimulated kids and/or planning your New Year’s party. What you’re probably not doing is obsessing about the NHL, which makes this the perfect time for my annual admission of all the ways I’ve been wrong so far this year. Pro tip: If you’re going to admit to being dumb, do it when nobody’s paying attention.

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Filling in history's awards gaps with once-a-decade bonus trophies that I made up

We’re almost at the end of 2024, which means we’re almost half through the 2020s. That reminded me of a decades-based idea I’ve had kicking around for a while, and since I don’t have the patience to wait five more years, we’re doing it today.

What if, at the end of every decade, we went back over the last ten years’ of major award winners and gave out one bonus award to someone who’d deserved one but never won?

The idea would be simple enough, and it would annoy the sort of people who performatively complain about participation trophies, and those are both good things. So today, I’m going back to the 1980s to figure out who’d deserve the bonus trophy for four awards: The Hart, Norris, Vezina and Jack Adams. I’m not including the Selke because I feel like defensive play is too subjective, or the Lady Byng because it isn’t a real award, or the Mark Messier because I don’t want to doom anyone. But I think the big four should make for some fun arguments, so let’s do this.

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New York state of maligned: Who has it worse this year, the Sabres or the Rangers?

It hasn’t been a great start to the season in the state of New York. How bad has it been? Bad enough that today’s post is a “Which team in the state has it worst?”, and we’re not even including the ones that’s only won 13 of their 35 games under the new coach who was supposed to turn things around. Sorry, Islanders fans, you get the bronze medal of misery. Stop being such overachievers if you want to be included next time.

Instead, today’s post is Sabres vs. Rangers. The simple question: Whose season has been worse? The slightly less simple but more accurate question: Is it possible that anyone can compete with what’s going on in Buffalo right now?

I’m not sure that it is, but the Rangers are our best contender, at least until Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller becomes the first teammates in NHL history to drop the gloves with each other off an opening faceoff. So we’re going to limit ourselves to these two teams, and try to answer the question using a highly calibrated scientific method of me randomly coming up with an unlucky 13 categories and seeing where it leads us.

Sabres or Rangers, who you got? For your sake, let’s hope it’s neither, but let’s dive in.

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NHL weekend rankings: Vancouver drama, Dallas dropping, and holiday wishes for all

Happy holidays, at least once we get one last night of action out of the way tonight. We’ve got a busy schedule of 13 games on the slate, at which point everyone gets a few days off to relax and unwind, spend time with family, and give thanks that you’re not a Sabres fan.

To mark the occasion, here are my five Christmas wishes for all the NHL fans out there.

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Tax-adjusted salary cap? Single game playoff tie-breakers? NHL Rules Court returns

Welcome back to Rules Court, where things will look a little different this time around.

Without digging into the details, we had to make the difficult decision to fire one of our long-serving judges because he knows what he did. That opens a spot for Shayna Goldman to join holdovers Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoe. Welcome, Shayna, and we hope you realize what you’ve signed up for.

The rest of the gimmick hasn’t changed. You send in your proposals for changes to the NHL rulebook, CBA or whatever else. The three of us consider your argument and cast our vote. Convince at least two of us, and your new rule becomes reality, just as soon as Gary Bettman gets back to us.

We have eight cases on the docket this time. Let’s see how many can make the grade.

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Trying to find a precedent for the Rangers' ongoing Presidents' Trophy plummet

The New York Rangers are in freefall, suffering through the kind of in-season implosion we rarely see from a contender. The captain has been traded, the longest-serving star is on the block, the coach is on thin ice, and the GM is getting blasted from all sides. It’s a mess, to put it lightly.

And it’s all coming after a 2023-24 season that saw the Rangers produce the best record in the league. That led me to an idea for a post: Which team put together the worst season immediately following a Presidents’ Trophy win? I could go through the history and find other teams that had similar falls, and highlight the ones that were good comparisons for this year’s Rangers.

Then I ran into a problem: I’m not sure there are any.

With the obvious caveat that the season isn’t over and there’s plenty of time for the Rangers to turn this back around, what’s happening in New York right now is verging on unprecedented. We’ve seen Presidents’ Trophy winner take a step back; that’s almost to be expected. We’ve even seen a few miss the playoffs, although that’s extremely rare. But this level of full-fledged meltdown? I don’t know.

Let’s do it anyway, if only to make Rangers fans feel like they’re not completely alone. I’ve picked out seven of the worst seasons by teams that had just won the Presidents’ Trophy. That award dates back to 1986, meaning we have nearly four decades to work with. Surely we can find hope for our pals in New York, he said, not especially confidently.

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NHL weekend rankings: Avalanche, Red Wings, and way too many teams in crisis

It’s mid-December. Do you know what level of crisis your favorite team is in?

Chances are, the answer is “pretty darn high”. This is the time of year when we normally see a few teams figuring out that reality isn’t going to match their hopes; that’s just how the season works.

But this? I’m not sue I can remember a season where this many teams felt like full-fledged disasters. I’m not even referring to teams like the Sharks who have bad records like we expected. That’s business as usual for a rebuilding team. I’m talking about the kind of seasons that get lots of people fired.

How bad is it? Bad enough that we need more than our usual five spots, and we still won’t be able to cover everyone.

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Various Mark Messier leadership award winners, ranked by how poorly they held up

I’m not sure the NHL has a weirder annual award than the Mark Messier Leadership Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Leadership.

It’s not quite a slam dunk, because the Lady Byng exists. But at least that award has been around for a century, and is voted on by a pool of writers who’ll always get it right because democracy never fails. The Mark Messier is a relatively new award that, as far as anyone can tell, just goes to whoever Mark Messier himself deems worthy. What’s the criteria? Nobody really knows. Leadership, apparently.

The award started off in 2006 as a monthly honor, before quickly being retconned into a more traditional annual award. That version has been handed out 18 times, with no repeat winners, because it’s just really hard to be a good leader more than once in your career. And while some of those winners are guys with reputations as legitimately great leaders like Sidney Crosby, Patrice Bergeron and Jonathan Toews, other winners haven’t held up quite as well. We got a reminder of that this week, when the reigning Messier winner was traded after the team that had been trying to dump him for months threatened to waive him. You know, typical leader stuff.

So today, let’s look back at that list of 18 winners, and remember X times that the award didn’t turn out to be a great omen for the future.

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Five season storylines that we were all wrong about (except, were we really?)

One of the most important things a sportswriter can do is admit when they’re wrong. Or at least, that’s what I’ve been told. For me, personally, it never really comes up.

OK, that’s not quite true. I suppose it’s possible that I’ve been wrong once or twice, in between my normal bouts of absolutely nailing pretty much every prediction I make. And in those rare cases where it happens, I should probably try out this whole self-reflection thing I can keep hearing about.

But there’s a problem: That nagging doubt that maybe I’m not so wrong after all.

You might experience the same thing. So today, let’s take a look at a few things we all thought we knew about the 2024-25 NHL season that are trending solidly towards the “oops” category, and see if we really need to concede defeat quite yet. After all, it’s important to admit when you’re wrong… but were we really?

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NHL weekend rankings: Kings roll, Sabres spiral, and a wild weekend in New York

Remember a few years ago when the NHL had that weird marketing campaign promising “no soap operas, just hockey”? I don’t think they got the memo in New York.

The Rangers have been tumbling down the standings lately, but they’ve shot to the top of the rankings of the league’s most interesting teams. Just two months into the season, we’d already had a hot start and a losing streak and a mysterious trade memo and all sorts of rumors. Then Friday rolled around, and it all blew up.

Let’s work our way through some thoughts on some of the news.

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Baggy nets and blue undershirts: 6 more things I miss from the NHL’s ancient days

Exactly one year ago today, I wrote a column about being old, and the subtle things I miss about what hockey used to be. No big issues, to be clear – we’re talking stuff like how the water bottles used to pop off the nets, and how linesmen used to have to climb the glass to avoid the puck. If I’m being honest, I figured it would be a bit of a throwaway, the kind of mid-season filler that’s fun for a day and then fades quickly. Instead, it ended up being one of my more popular columns of the season, and I decided to make it a regular feature.

Then I forgot. Because I am old.

But if there’s anything us old fogies do better than the occasional memory lapse, it’s celebrating the random anniversary of things that weren’t all that important to begin with. So today, one year later to the day, I’m bringing the gimmick back, with a half dozen new items. Well, old ones. You’ll figure it out.

But first, just like last time, a disclaimer: This is all in good fun, and very much not meant to be some whiny screed about how much better things used to be, and how Gary Bettman has ruined everything by dragging the game into the 20th century. If you have strong feelings about that stuff, please take them elsewhere, because I am decrepit and fragile.

Let’s get old.

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Which NHL players are the best at each age right now? Who are the best all-time?

If you’re a sports fan, you’re familiar with the adage “Father Time is undefeated.”

It’s ubiquitous because it’s true. It’s why we talk about the dreaded “wrong side” of 30, and even fret over long-term deals signed by 29-year-olds; even the greatest athletes on earth are still subject to aging.

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Which bad team's fan base might be nearing a tipping point of hopelessness?

Somebody should probably check on Duane.

You remember Duane, the disgruntled Buffalo fan who reached his breaking point in January 2020. Frustrated after watching his beloved Sabres spin their wheels on their way to what would be their 10th straight playoff miss, Duane decided he had to do something. So he called into a local radio station, took a deep breath, and then opened up an emotional vein.

He went in on the players. He went in on management. He went in (especially) on ownership. It was a hard listen, but no real fan could turn away, because we’ve all been there at some point. As I wrote at the time, we were all Duane.

But some of us were more Duane than others, because some teams are more hopeless than others. And so a few days after Duane’s meltdown, I went through the league to try to figure out which fan base would be the next to hit rock bottom. And almost five full years later, it’s time to ask that question again.

We can start with some good news. Of the nine teams in that 2020 post, three have been reasonably good in the years since – the Rangers, Wild and Devils haven’t won any Cups, but they’ve all had more ups than downs over the last five years. Sometimes, there really is a reason for hope.

Other teams haven’t been as lucky. So today, we’re going to use the same scoring system as last time to figure out which team’s fans should be closest to a Duane-like nadir. To qualify for consideration, a team has to be in danger of missing the playoffs for at least a third straight season. You wouldn’t think a league with as much parity as the NHL would have all that many teams on their way to a three-peat, but it’s a longer list than you’d think, with 12 teams in all. It's a group that doesn’t even include a few fan bases who probably feel pretty miserable right now, including the Bruins, Rangers, Islanders and Predators, since they all made the playoffs last year. All I can say is wait your turn, guys.

This is always a tricky exercise, since (as you’ll no doubt see in the comments), some fans insist on eternal optimism while others take pride in being as miserable as possible. The reality is that all of these fan bases have it bad. But who’s got it the worst? Let’s start counting down…

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NHL weekend rankings: Rangers, Kraken, a November blockbuster, and a new Top 5 team

A big NHL trade in November? Are they allowed to do that?

Apparently they are. And while Saturday’s deal that sent David Jiricek from Columbus to Minnesota may not quite rise to the level of a certified blockbuster, but it's at least enough to be the November equivalent, and it’s a fascinating trade. Let’s dive into it a little deeper.

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