11 NHL teams riding statistical droughts that feel impossible but apparently aren’t

One of my favorite streaks in all of sports was in serious danger this weekend, but just barely survived: The Chicago Bears have still never had a 4,000-yard passer.

(Yes, I know you think you clicked on an NHL article. Don't worry, you did. We’re just going to use the NFL as a jumping off point. Give me a few paragraphs and we’ll get to the hockey, I promise.)

The thing about passing for 4,000 yards in an NFL season is that while it’s certainly not easy, it’s also not especially rare. Six players did it this year. Same with the year before. Ten did it the year before that, which was one off of the record for the most in a single season. All told, it’s a mark that’s been reached 238 times in league history.

Just never by a Chicago Bear. And that’s weird, because the Bears are one of the league’s oldest teams. But for a variety of reasons, ranging from injury to identity to (most often) ineptitude, they never seem to have a quarterback who can get to 4,000 yards. Even when they shuffled their way to a Super Bowl in 1985, they didn’t come close. This year, recent first overall pick Caleb Williams went into the season’s final game needing 270 yards to finally end the drought; he wound up with 212, good enough to break the franchise single-season record, but not to get to 4,000.

I love “never” stats like that – the ones that feel like they shouldn’t be possible over a long enough timeline, but somehow are. So today, let’s look back at 11 common stats and milestones that specific NHL teams have never hit, or in a few cases at least have an impossible-seeming drought hanging over them.

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NHL weekend rankings: On the Rangers, the Wings, and the awful Pacific Division

In a perfect world, I think the top five should have one team from each division. That’s not about spreading the hype or artificial parity. It’s just the reality of the current playoff format, where each division is virtually assured of sending one team to the final four. (The exception would be a crossover wildcard “winning” a division it wasn’t even in, which would be very funny but has sadly never happened. Yet.)

If our top five is about the long-term view, projecting ahead to an eventual Cup winner, that final four feels like it should be our starting point. And that means every division would ideally be represented. Remember, we’re not trying to figure out if a team is better than, say, the Wild. It’s about whether their Cup chances are higher, and not having to go through Dallas and Colorado to get to the conference final should count for something. Maybe even a lot.

All that said… I’m officially giving the Pacific Division a top five timeout.

I tried. I’ve spent the majority of the season with a Pacific rep in the top five somewhere – first with the Oilers way back in week one, and then with Vegas showing up eight times in the next 11 weeks. The division never went back-to-back without a top five team. Until now, because man, this division is a mess.

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Experience some buyer's remorse with our all "did we save the receipt?" team

The holidays are done, and right now there’s a good chance that you’re looking around your home and thinking: Man, I paid way too much for stuff I didn’t really need.

If so, welcome to life as an NHL GM.

In most of the front offices around the league, there’s probably been a similar feeling, one that’s been growing as the season went on. It’s the classic buyer’s remorse, where a move that seemed to make sense in the summer now feels like a mistake.

Today, we’re going to build out our all-buyer’s remorse team, based on players who were acquired over the offseason via trade and free agency and aren’t working out for their new teams. We’ll do 12 forwards, six defensemen and two goalies, with a limit of three players per team so that it’s not all your favorite team fair.

(As a side note, tradition tells us that most of the players I choose for this piece will immediately heat up and play like MVP candidates for the rest of the year. If this happens, you are not allowed to send me “this aged poorly” jabs. Instead, you have to thank me for personally motivating the player to turn things around. These are the rules and you’ve legally agreed to them by reading this article.)

Great teams are built from the net out. But so are regrettable ones, so we’ll start there…

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NHL weekend rankings: The good, the bad, and the teams I can't figure out

With three nights off last week, we didn’t have as many games as usual this week. That means that our rankings won’t move all that much from last time. And more importantly, it means fewer opportunities to learn anything new.

That’s bad news for me, because there are a handful of teams where I need all the information I can get, because I just can’t figure them out.

I’m not clueless about absolutely everyone. I know that the Avalanche are good, and that the Blackhawks are bad, and that all of this is futile because the Sabres will never lose again. But for more than a few teams, I can cram everything I think I know into my hockey fan brain and all that comes out is a shrug emoji.

I’ve narrowed the list down to five. Help me, readers, because I can’t figure these teams out.

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Wait, is it weird that it's so hard to name the Eastern Conference's best player?

Who’s the best player in the NHL right now? What about the top five?

Connor McDavid is the most talented player in the world. You could argue that Nathan MacKinnon is best player this season, which is a slightly different category. Leon Draisaitl is right behind those two. Kirill Kaprizov has the biggest contract, and he’s mostly lived up to it so far. On the blueline, the eternal Cale Makar vs. Quinn Hughes debate rages on. And in goal, Connor Hellebuyck is the reigning Vezina winner, not to mention the MVP. Of course, all those guys are established veterans, but if you were building a team right now you might use your top pick on Connor Bedard or Macklin Celebrini instead.

Do you notice something odd about that paragraph?

It’s all Western Conference guys. Every one of them. And we didn’t even mention names like Jack Eichel, or Mikko Rantanen, or Leo Carlsson. The West is stacked. When you really think about it, there’s an embarrassment of riches stuffed into one conference.

And then you start to wonder: Wait, who is the best player in the East? And where would that player even rank leaguewide?

This came up last week on Puck Soup, where my beloved co-host Ryan Lambert had recently guested on a Canucks pod. They’d asked a seemingly simple question: If Quinn Hughes had gone to the Devils like we all expected, would he have instantly become the East’s best player?

We agreed that yeah, he probably would have. But instead, he stayed in the West, since that’s apparently where all the brightest stars have to be.

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