In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We react to the first few nights of NHL season
- It was a bad week for TV play-by-play guys
- The Maple Leafs name their new captain
- Which coach will be the first to be fired?
- An interview with Mike McKenna
- A "what do these three names have in common" quiz
- And lots more...
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In the Friday Grab Bag:
- There's another one of those insane NBC portraits, and it doesn't disappoint
- I have an idea for those NHL twitter hashtags
- An obscure player who shares a record with Paul Coffey and Ray Bourque
- The week's three comedy stars, featuring a callback to one of the great hockey tweets of all time
- And a YouTube breakdown of Dave Tippett trading his tools for Mike Liut's infant
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As the days until the season openers counted down, everyone who talks or writes about hockey for a living has spent the last week making their predictions. You can find a big batch of them from The Athletic’s hockey writers going up later today. A more in-depth look that’s based on the numbers is here. My attempt to make sense of everything is here. And every other site you read, podcast you listen to or insider you follow is doing the same thing. So many predictions.
Spoiler alert: They’re all wrong.
OK, almost all of them. The sheer volume of predictions that have been put out into the world over the past few days all but guarantees that at least one or two will be bang on. Blind squirrels and all that. But for the most part, we’ll all be wrong, because the modern NHL is just a Thunderdome of parity and chaos and randomness. Nobody knows anything.
Well, as longtime readers know, I have a personal philosophy that I stand by: If you’re going to be wrong, be really wrong. So every year, I make a list of predictions for the coming season that are way too specific. I’m not just going to be wrong, I’m going to be wrong down to a specific number or date or moment. Let’s really steer into the skid here.
Have any of these predictions ever turned out to be right over the years? Yeah, actually, a few times – check out last year’s picks for the Leafs, Canadiens and Blue Jackets. That’s always cool, and I try very hard not to look surprised when it happens. But the miss rate is running somewhere north of 95 percent. Which is to say, pretty much the same as everyone else. Let’s do this.
New Jersey Devils – There’s so much hype about Jack Hughes that you might think he’s the next Mario Lemieux. But that’s obviously ridiculous; Lemieux was dominant from his very first shift in the NHL, when he famously scored against the Bruins. Hughes should be great, but he’s not in that tier. So instead, let’s predict that he scores his first goal on his second shift.
Buffalo Sabres – By the end of October, the Sabres will have played 13 games. The NFL’s Bills will have played seven. Which team will have more wins? Trick question, they’ll both have five.
Colorado Avalanche – If we pencil in Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko as the two obvious Calder finalists, who gets the last slot? Voters might find the brother vs. brother storyline irresistible and give the nod to Quinn Hughes or it could be a dark horse like Nick Suzuki or Dante Fabbro. But the fact that I’m mentioning this in the Avs section might tip my hand that I’m calling it for Cale Makar. And I’ll go one further: He finishes second, not third.
Florida Panthers – We tiptoed around it in yesterday’s post, but let’s go there: The Panthers beat the Lightning in back-to-back games to open the season, sending a message to the league that they may or may not actually deliver on.
Calgary Flames – Last year, I picked Mike Smith to score the second goal of his career. He let me down, and the Flames ran him out of town because of it. (Shut up, that was totally the reason.) I’m still not over it, though, so here’s this year’s Flames pick: They get scored on by a goaltender, for the first time in franchise history.
Washington Capitals – Can Tom Wilson make it through an entire year without getting suspended? He sure can! A calendar year, that is, as Wilson manages to escape 2019 unscathed before picking up his first suspension of this season in January.
Ottawa Senators – The Senators had the fewest shootouts in the league last year, with just one. The Leafs had the second fewest, with two. Neither team managed a shootout win all year. You know where this is headed: Tonight’s Leafs/Sens game goes to a shootout.
Vegas Golden Knights – The schedule serves up a home-and-home with the Sharks to start the season. The hockey gods love to twist the knife, so let’s say the Knights take a five-minute major in one of those games. (And it goes without saying that they kill it off.)
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It’s going to be a big week for the “it’s still early” crowd. The regular season is here, we’re getting our first look at games that actually matter, and by the end of the weekend we’ll have seen every team at least a few times. And that means we can expect constant reminders that we shouldn’t overreact to anything that happens this week.
On the one hand, it’s good advice. Last year, the season’s first few nights included the Ducks beating the Sharks, the Canucks rolling over the Flames, the Jets blowing out the Blues, and oh yeah, the Bruins losing their opener 7-0 and then complaining about how the other team had too much fun and it hurt their feelings. In hindsight, none of it mattered, and we didn’t learn anything. The rational thing to do would have been to just ignore all of it.
On the other hand, being rational is no fun, so let’s ignore the “it’s too early” scolds and get ready to flip out over every little thing that happens this week. After all, we didn’t sit through an entire offseason and an interminable exhibition schedule just so we could be all measured and patient now. Let’s get crazy.
But let’s get crazy with a plan. Here are a half-dozen scenarios that could realistically play out over the next few days that could cause us all to freak out and how we should approach them.
What could happen: The schedule offers an easy layup for the Leafs’ opener, with last-place Ottawa and their thread-bare roster in town. But whoops, a bounce here, a missed assignment there, some hot goaltending and the young Sens are celebrating a confidence-building road win against a rival.
What it would mean: Pick your narrative. The Leafs are distracted by the Auston Matthews situation. Mitch Marner and the rest of the big contracts have made it impossible to build a contending roster. The remade blueline is a dud. They never shook off last year’s playoff loss, the captaincy saga took more of a toll than we thought, they miss Nazem Kadri’s grit and Ron Hainsey’s presence and Patrick Marleau’s dad-like leadership. Fire Babcock!
It will be ridiculous, but this is Toronto. And after a legitimately rough offseason highlighted by the Marner negotiations and Matthews’ off-ice embarrassment, the early schedule isn’t really doing the Leafs any favors. They open with the rebuilding Sens followed by the decimated Blue Jackets, two opponents they won’t get any credit for beating but had better not lose to. Then it’s the Canadiens on a Saturday night showcase, a home game in which the Leafs will have played on the road the night before while the Habs will be rested. And if those three games don’t go well, look out, because the next two bring the defending Cup champs and the reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners.
If the Leafs are five games into the season and sitting with one or two wins, Marner and/or Matthews are off to slow starts, and the Lightning just spanked them on home ice, Toronto fans and media will be chill about it, right? Sure they will.
Or maybe not: The thing about this Maple Leafs season is that whatever happens between now and April doesn’t really matter all that much. As long as they make the playoffs – and they should – then we’ll judge the year based almost entirely on what happens when they get there. Sure, home ice would be nice. Avoiding the Bruins in the first round feels important. And it would be great to see everything click into one of those monster seasons where a young team takes a big leap forward and challenges for first overall. But none of it will matter if they don’t win at least a round or two.
There will be time for freaking out in April (or May or June), and by then a few games in October will have been long forgotten. Overreacting is what Maple Leafs fans do, but they should keep their powder dry until the spring.
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The hockey world has spent the last few weeks on a familiar topic for NHL fans: work stoppages. And for once, the news was mostly positive, as the NHL and NHLPA have decided not to end the current CBA early. That means we won’t have a lockout in 2020, although one could still happen two years later when the CBA expires as scheduled.
A 2022 work stoppage, if it came to that, would be the fourth of the Gary Bettman era. Just about all of us still have fresh memories of the 2012 lockout, which wiped out half a season. And we all know the story of the 2004 version, the most divisive and protracted in North American pro sports history. That lockout saw the owners win their ultimate goal of a hard salary cap while becoming the only league to cancel an entire season in the process.
But while the impact of those fights, both good and bad, are still being felt around the league to this day, the original NHL lockout seems to have largely been forgotten. That one came way back in 1994 when Bettman was in just the second year of his new job. It dragged into January 1995 and ultimately cost the league half a season. And in hindsight, it didn’t achieve all that much, with an eventual agreement that mostly retained the status quo. At the time, that deal was seen as a win for the owners, but it quickly became apparent that they hadn’t gained enough. As trilogies go, Part 1 of the NHL’s lockout series didn’t pack in much in the way of drama or major plot twists, but it did introduce the important themes and characters while setting the stage for the bigger productions come.
Next week will mark the 25th anniversary of the official start of the NHL’s first lockout. To celebrate, let’s look back on what happened a quarter-century ago, and how the league might look if things had played out differently. Here are five “what if” scenarios to ponder.
Let’s start with the big one. The owners headed into the 1994 negotiations looking to remake the league’s economic system. Bettman was hesitant to use the words “salary cap,” but he’d been hired two years earlier at least in part due to his role in helping the NBA create a cap system. It wasn’t hard to read the writing on the wall.
But any talk of a hard cap seemed to fade early in the negotiations, with the two sides instead focusing on a payroll tax. The league’s reported proposal was punitive enough – more than a dollar taxed for every dollar spent over a set limit – that Bob Goodenow and the NHLPA viewed it as all but a de facto hard cap, a scenario they weren’t interested in accepting. So the players sat back and waited for the owners to fold. Eventually, they did.
That came as a surprise to Bettman, who’d gone into the battle with assurances from his owners that they had his back and were prepared to strap in for a long fight. He’d certainly acted like a guy who was willing to play the villain, firing the first shot in August by unilaterally withdrawing some player benefits. The animosity between the sides got so bad that at one point, Chris Chelios even appeared to threaten Bettman’s safety, a moment for which he later apologized.
As the lockout dragged on and games were canceled for the first time in league history, the owners continued to put on a united front, even authorizing Bettman to cancel the entire season. But behind the scenes, that solidarity was crumbling. (For a more in-depth look at the politics of the 1994 lockout, I highly recommend “The Instigator,” Jonathon Gatehouse’s must-read look at Bettman’s tenure.) It eventually became clear that Goodenow and the players weren’t going to cave, and the league’s richer teams began to wonder if losing an entire season was really worth it. The players had offered a handful of concessions, including a rookie salary cap. With the deadline to cancel the season looming, the owners decided that those small wins were enough.
What if they hadn’t? What if the owners had remained united behind Bettman? Or maybe more realistically, what if Bettman had done a better job of making sure that his owners had no choice? The commissioner learned a tough lesson from the 1994 lockout, and made sure that he went into the 2004 version with more power and less vulnerability to his owners getting cold feet. What would have happened if he’d been able to get his charges to hold the line in 1994 instead?
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In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast, it's our season preview show. Greg, Ryan and I work our way through the odds for all 31 teams and figure out which teams will exceed expectations and which ones are in for a long year.
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We’re now just one week away from opening night. And you know what that means: If you can go just one more week without putting your predictions for the 2019-20 season in writing, you can pretend that everything that’s about to happen was stuff you knew all along.
Unfortunately for me, no such luck. So today, I’m unveiling my annual attempt to break the NHL down into four divisions. Not the Central and Metro and all that. I mean real divisions. As in the Bottom-Feeders, the Middle-of-the-Pack, the True Contenders and the always popular Your-Guess-Is-As-Good-As-Mine group.
That’s it. Unlike some poor folks I could mention, I don’t have to predict exact point totals or even who’s going to make the playoffs and who won’t. Just four relatively simple divisions. How badly could I screw that up? (Narrator’s voice: He would screw it up very badly.)
The teams aren’t listed in any particular order within each group, but in terms of the divisions we’ll start at the bottom and work our way up. Here we go …
These are the teams that everyone with half a brain knows will be bad this year. Previous editions have included such obvious trainwrecks as the 2017-18 Golden Knights and last year’s Islanders.
Also, I’d just like to say that this is the section that makes me really regret going with a division-based format that forces me into groups of seven or eight teams. There aren’t seven teams that are definitely going to be bad this year. There are maybe three. The odds that at least one of these teams makes the playoffs and I never hear the end of it from their fans are like 90 percent. I hope you all appreciate the sacrifice I’m making here.
Ottawa Senators
Last season: 29-47-6, 64 points, dead last in the league
Their offseason in two sentences: They collected a bunch of ex-Maple Leafs, which was weird. But they re-signed Thomas Chabot, which was the important part.
Why they’re here: Because even the most optimistic Senators fan knows they’ll be bad this year. Could they be better than last year? Sure, they’re a young team that added a few pieces, so they could improve. But even an extra 10 wins wouldn’t get them anywhere near the playoffs. And since they won’t be getting three-quarters of a season from Mark Stone and Matt Duchene, it’s possible that they’ll be even worse. Everyone knew the Sens would be in this section, and here they are.
Los Angeles Kings
Last season: 31-42-9, 71 points, last in the West
Their offseason in two sentences: They hired Todd McLellan. That was pretty much it.
Why they’re here: They’re rebuilding, they say, even though they haven’t exactly been shipping out veterans. Still, that suggests that they’re willing to accept another bad year as the price to be paid for waiting on one of the league’s better farm systems to produce enough NHL talent to shift their fortunes. That’s a decent plan, but unless McLellan can work miracles, it won’t be enough to get them back into contention this year.
Detroit Red Wings
Last season: 32-40-10, 74 points, missed the playoffs
Their offseason in two sentences: The roster is pretty much the same and they used their high pick on some kid in a bowtie. Nobody really cares, because Steve Yzerman is back to save us all.
Why they’re here: The Wings are the third of the three teams everyone agrees will be bad, and like the Kings and Senators, it’s all part of a plan. Replacing Ken Holland was always going to be a tall order, but Yzerman will get all the time in the world. If that means this year is a write-off, so be it. And it will be.
Buffalo Sabres
Last season: 33-39-10, 76 points, missed the playoffs for the eighth straight year
Their offseason in two sentences: They made some nice deals and hired Ralph Krueger as coach. Same goalies, though.
Why they’re here: This is the first team where the ground starts to feel at least a little bit shaky. Unlike the last three teams, the Sabres aren’t still lingering in the patient part of a rebuild. Instead, they’ve spent the last few seasons pumping the gas in time-to-win mode. So far that’s just meant a bunch of tire-spinning, apart from last year’s early win streak that didn’t fool anyone who wasn’t a gullible sap. But at some point, they need to either make some progress or fire everyone and start over yet again. If that progress arrives this year, it could be enough to move them out of this section. But I’m not betting on it.
Chicago Blackhawks
Last season: 36-34-12, 84 points, missed the playoffs
Their offseason in two sentences: They made a few additions, mostly involving the blueline. But the biggest move was signing Robin Lehner.
Why they’re here: If the ground felt shaky for the Sabres, it’s basically breaking the Richter scale here, because I hate this pick. The Hawks had lousy goaltending and defense last year and still only missed the playoffs by three wins, and they just signed the reigning Jennings winner. Plus, they’re the Hawks. They’re going to make the playoffs and make me look dumb. I don’t know what to tell you, I have a few other teams in this range that I like a bit better and I have to have at least seven teams in each division. Also, I don’t trust Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane to repeat their career years on the wrong side of 30, the defense still isn’t great and Islanders fans have assured me that Lehner isn’t actually good after all even though they all spent last year telling me that he was. But yes, future Blackhawks fans tracking me down to call me names after they win a round in the playoffs, I hear you.
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A new year of NHL action is almost here, which makes it a good time for some New Season Resolutions. Nobody’s perfect, and whether we’re diehard fans, relative newbies or cantankerous media, we can all strive to be a little bit better. The start of a new season is a chance for hockey fans to begin the year right, by setting goals for some self-improvement.
While your own personal resolutions are of course up to you, I can offer up a few suggestions to get you started. If you’re looking for some inspiration, here are a half-dozen potential resolutions for the new season.
Last year’s Blues were an amazing story. They went from preseason contender to first-half disappointment to dead last in the league to obvious trade deadline sellers to hey wait a minute to the Stanley Cup, all in one year. It was great. If you’re a fan of sports, stories like that are easy to love.
They’ve also very rare. Teams aren’t supposed to do what the Blues did last year. In fact, just about none of them do. That’s part of what made last year so fun.
And it’s something we’re going to have to remember this year, because oh man, every team that starts out slowly is going to point to the Blues as reason for optimism.
You can already feel it coming. Heck, we’ve already seen it during the offseason, when GMs were eager to tell us that if the Blues could win, their team could too. And it’s going to be out of control once we get a few weeks into the season and teams that have stumbled through a disappointing start are insisting that it’s all part of the plan.
It’s not hard to picture, right? Some poor GM or coach or team captain will be asked to explain why his team is already seven points out of the playoff race and whether fans should be worried that everything seems to be falling apart. And instead of actually having to come up with a reason for optimism, or worse, accept that the team isn’t all that good, he’ll just point to the Blues. They were bad. They were even in last place. And they won it all, so everyone just be patient and everything will be fine.
Let’s not fall for it.
For one thing, the Blues were always a good team, at least on paper. They’d made a big trade in the offseason, in an effort to get better. When they started slowly, they made a big move by switching coaches. And they solved their biggest problem by, uh, finding an amazing goaltender in the ECHL. Might not want to put that last one on the recommended list, but they pulled it off.
The key point here is that Doug Armstrong and friends didn’t just shrug and say “Oh well, we stink, let’s just stay the course and hope for a miracle.” And we shouldn’t let bad teams get away with doing that over the next few weeks and months.
Have you made a blockbuster trade? Did you fire the coach? Did you switch out your starting goaltender? Fine, do all of that and then maybe you can claim to be a candidate for Blues status. But if you’re just standing pat and trying to buy time by pointing to some other team’s miracle season, the rest of us shouldn’t be falling for it.
At this point, we’re not completely sure when we’ll get full puck and player tracking. It was supposed to arrive this season, then it was going to be the postseason. The league recently dropped its technology partner, but says that won’t delay the implementation. We’ll see.
But whenever player tracking does finally arrive, there’s one thing we can count on: Nobody will be quite sure how to use it.
The teams won’t know. The analytics experts you follow on Twitter won’t know. The average fan sure won’t. We’re all going to be figuring this out as we go.
That’s going to lead to a lot of confusion and to a lot of information being thrown out into the world without enough useful context. What if Connor McDavid skated further in tonight’s game that Auston Matthews did? OK. Is that good? Does it matter? Do any of these numbers tell us anything useful about who’s going to win?
While we’ll all be struggling with those sort of questions, they’ll especially apply to TV broadcasters, who are going to be flooded with new information that they’re not quite sure what to do with. TV is a visual medium, so you know we’re going to be inundated with flashy graphics and rapidly updating numbers about things like skating speeds and cumulative pass distances. Some will be helpful. Most probably won’t.
And when that happens, it’s going to be tempting to get up on a soapbox and put on a big show of complaining. Some of that will be justified, especially when our screens are all clogged up with obvious nonsense. But let’s resolve to remember that there’s going to be a learning period here for everyone, just like there was when we started getting better statistical data near the start of the cap era. We didn’t get it all right from Day 1 back then, and we definitely won’t now.
Eventually, we’ll look back on the first few years of players tracking and shake our heads at all the misplaced attention and useless red herrings we wasted our time on. We’ll figure it out. But in the meantime, let’s accept that some of this will get silly and that we won’t get anywhere if we don’t let people make some mistakes along the way.
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In the Friday Grab Bag:
- This week's CBA news was a good thing, but let's not celebrate yet
- I try to stay positive about this year's new rules
- An obscure player with lots of (Scrabble) points
- The month's three comedy stars
- And Survivor contestant Tom Laidlaw pranks the 1991 Kings, a team he was not on
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In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The weekly free shows are back for another season
- There won't be a lockout in 2020 after all, as the NHL and NHLPA decide to keep the peace for two more years
- Reactions to the Mitch Marner deal
- Thoughts on how Marner impacts Patrik Laine and the rest of the unsighed RFAs
- What's going on with Dustin Byfuglien, and what it might mean for the Jets
- Ryan tries to stump me with another round of "Is this a real movie?"
- An interview with director Gabe Polsky of the new hockey documentary “Red Penguins"
- And lots more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
Yesterday, we fired up the Bizarro-meter for our annual rundown of the offseason’s strangest moves, starting with the Eastern Conference. It barely registered a reading for the Capitals and Bruins, beeped a few times for the Islanders and Red Wings and was actually starting to smoke by the time we got to the Habs and Hurricanes.
Today, we move on to the Western Conference. Will anyone top Carolina’s East-leading score of 9.1? Let’s find out.
Anaheim Ducks
The offseason so far: They didn’t add much to a roster that missed the playoffs. But they did subtract — getting younger in the process — by using a buyout on Corey Perry and preparing for a future without injured veterans Ryan Kesler and Patrick Eaves.
But their strangest story was: They made the expected choice behind the bench when they hired Dallas Eakins as coach, although it took long enough that by the time they actually announced it you went “Wait, didn’t that already happen a month ago?”
Bizarro-meter ranking: 3.5/10. The Eakins hiring took longer than it should have and the Perry move was jarring, but both made sense.
Arizona Coyotes
The offseason so far: They added Carl Soderberg and hired former Sabres coach Phil Housley as an assistant. But their biggest move was a blockbuster trade that brought in Phil Kessel, who should address their lack of scoring right up until Rick Tocchet strangles him. So, mid-October.
But their strangest story was: Signing Clayton Keller to an eight-year, $57.2-million extension that everyone agrees was either way too much money or a brilliant bargain.
Bizarro-meter ranking: 3.8/10. The Kessel deal, while big and not without some risk, fit where this team is at right now, and locking up a young star long-term usually works out. But I did award a few bonus points for this quote.
Los Angeles Kings
The offseason so far: The big news was the hiring of Todd McLellan, who replaces interim boss Willie Desjardins. They also bought out veteran Dion Phaneuf.
But their strangest story was: Not really doing anything else aside from a few extensions. You might figure that a team that just finished 30th overall would do more to reshape the roster, but the Kings pretty much stood pat.
Bizarro-meter ranking: 4.2/10. A little bit of patience with a rebuild isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if the alternative is throwing money at bad-fit veterans. Still, you’d typically see a bit more turnover from a last-place team.
Seattle Something-or-Others
The offseason so far: They hired Ron Francis as the team’s first GM, and started filling out the front office. That included hiring analytics guru Alexandra Mandrycky away from the Wild, having her sit in on the hiring process for the new GM, and declaring that analytics is going to be “a way of life.” Uh oh, this team doesn’t even have a name yet and it’s already smarter than most of the competition.
But their strangest story was: Existing.
Bizarro-meter ranking: 4.5/10. How many times do you think Francis has already called Dale Tallon, just to mess with him?
Calgary Flames
The offseason so far: They looked at last year’s Oilers and said: “Let’s be more like them.”
But their strangest story was: Gambling on Cam Talbot to rebound enough to be an upgrade over Mike Smith seems reasonable. But the Milan Lucic trade was a head-scratcher, as they took a mistake in the James Neal contract and flipped it into something worse.
Bizarro-meter ranking: 5.4/10. We’re having some fun with the Oiler stuff, but for the most part, the Flames are a good team who didn’t change much, and that makes sense. Like a few other teams, their grade is subject to change based on how their ongoing RFA drama plays out, but unless the Matthew Tkachuk situation gets crazy then the Flames will stay near the middle-of-the-pack.
Oh hey, speaking of Edmonton …
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We made it. With training camps now in full swing around the league, the NHL offseason is officially over. Teams had their chance to remake their rosters, hire new people and set a course for the upcoming season. Now, that season is here. Pencils down, everyone. (Not you, teams with unsigned RFAs. You still have work to do.)
Looking back on the last few months, some teams did well. Some teams came up empty. And some teams, well, they just got weird. Those are the teams I’m interested in. As a diehard fan of Team Chaos, I’m always happy to see a team do things that confuse the rest of us. And that’s where the Bizarro-meter comes in.
I wrote my first Bizarro-meter column way back in 2013 when I was trying to make sense of the infamous Maple Leafs offseason that saw them make a series of truly confusing moves. Did it work? It did not. To this day, nobody has been able to figure out what the Leafs thought they were doing that summer. But the concept was fun and morphed into an annual league-wide ranking. And now it’s time to blow the dust off of the Bizarro-meter, plug it in and spit out some 2019 ratings.
As always, remember that a bizarre offseason is not necessarily bad. Sometimes, the decisions that leave everyone scratching their heads are the ones that work out the best. And often, a safe, by-the-numbers approach is exactly the wrong choice for a team that needs a more creative approach. This isn’t about picking winners and losers. It’s about recognizing those teams who failed at the NHL’s prime directive of being dull and predictable.
We’ll do this by division, starting with the Atlantic and Metro today and wrapping with the Pacific and Central tomorrow. As always, we’ll work our way up the scale as we go.
Boston Bruins
The offseason so far: They didn’t do much, which was no surprise. They’re already good, the cap situation is manageable and Don Sweeney never makes trades during the summer and we’ve all just apparently decided to act like that’s not weird. Their biggest story was probably yesterday’s Charlie McAvoy signing to a thoroughly team-friendly deal, which might have been surprising from another team but was par for the course for the Bruins.
But their strangest story was: Jeremy Jacobs not being the owner anymore. He’s keeping the team in the family, handing it over to his six children, and will presumably still have an important voice in guiding the franchise. But one of the most influential names in modern NHL history will be stepping back, which will take some getting used to.
Bizarro-meter ranking: 3.2/10. I guess Jacobs felt it was important to make his exit at the right time. Maybe now he can explain the concept to Brad Marchand.
Buffalo Sabres
The offseason so far: They didn’t make any blockbusters like last year’s Ryan O’Reilly or Jeff Skinner moves, but they did add Marcus Johansson in free agency and swung deals for Colin Miller, Jimmy Vesey and Henri Jokiharju. The bigger move was bringing in Ralph Krueger to replace Phil Housley behind the bench.
But their strangest story was: Not really addressing the goaltending. It’s back to the tandem of Carter Hutton and Linus Ullmark, which was a bust last year (especially in the second half). There’s something to be said for consistency and not just chasing last year’s hot hand, but the status quo is a gamble.
Bizarro-meter ranking: 4.1/10. They were busy. But given the pressure on Jason Botterill and company to finally breakthrough, you wonder if they were busy enough.
Tampa Bay Lightning
The offseason so far: The first real offseason of the Julien BriseBois era didn’t produce many big headlines. Unloading Ryan Callahan’s deal helped, and they did well on the J.T. Miller trade. Their main goal was to clear out some cap deadwood, and they did it well.
But their strangest story was: The fact that their offseason started in April, not June. But mainly the lack of a Brayden Point deal, largely because we all assumed he was going to sign some ridiculously team-friendly contract that would make fans of every other team tear their hair out. And he still might, at least if the Lightning get their way. It’s just taking longer than we thought.
Bizarro-meter ranking: 4.5/10 for now, pending whatever happens with Point.
Florida Panthers
The offseason so far: They upgraded on and off the ice, landing two of the biggest free agents in the sport in Joel Quenneville and Sergei Bobrovsky. They also added Anton Stralman and Brett Connolly.
But their strangest story was: Roberto Luongo announcing his retirement. Wait, players can do that? They don’t just have to come up with a suspicious “injury” and finish their career on the LTIR?
Bizarro-meter ranking: 4.8/10. The Panthers were certainly among the biggest newsmakers of the offseason. But it feels like we had Quenneville and Bobrovsky penciled in here since January, so nothing they did felt all that surprising.
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The NHL season is almost here, which means it won’t be long before we start hearing about all the hot seats around the league. Is Mike Babcock in trouble in Toronto? Does John Chayka need to make the playoffs in Arizona? Would Minnesota’s Bill Guerin prefer his own guy to Bruce Boudreau? Can Jason Botterill afford another miserable season in Buffalo?
But while the hot seat conversation is standard issue in pro sports, it always feels a bit awkward. We’re talking about people’s livelihoods here. We have to cover this stuff, but it’s not a pleasant topic.
So let’s turn it around and stay positive: Who’s on the cold seat? In other words, which NHL coaches and GMs are all but assured of still being on the job one full year from now?
It’s a tougher question than you might think. Everyone in the NHL is hired to be fired eventually, and just about everyone’s job security is one bad losing streak from coming into question. I wanted to come up with 10 names, and honestly, that might be too many. But we’ll do it anyway, because half the fun of doing this sort of list is so that when one (or more) of these guys inevitably gets fired in a few months, you can all come back here to point and laugh at me. It’s OK, I’m used to it by now.
Before we start, there’s one important ground rule: No picking any recent hires who’ve been on the job for less than one full year. That’s too easy. With apologies to Paul Fenton, even the worst coaches and GM usually get at least a year or two on the job in the NHL, so picking a brand-new hire is cheating. You won’t be seeing slam dunk names like Joel Quenneville or Steve Yzerman on the list, which increase the degree of difficulty.
We’ll try to come up with five coaches and five GMs. And we’ll start in the front office, where the job tends to be a little bit more secure.
Doug Armstrong
We might as well lead off with the one name on the list that feels like a genuine sure thing. Armstrong is the reigning Cup winner, and getting fired after a championship is just about impossible. (Sorry, Al MacNeil.) And even if the Blues got off to an absolutely terrible start, well, they did that last year too and things worked out OK.
Armstrong is a well-respected GM with plenty of experience and doesn’t seem like he’d want to leave on his own anytime soon, so barring some sort of scandal or falling out with ownership, he’s just about as safe as anyone could possibly be. Which isn’t completely safe, because this is still the NHL. But it’s pretty safe.
Doug Wilson
We’re two names in, and this one already feels at least a little risky. But only a little. I think Wilson is the very best GM in the league today, and the Sharks should be a very good team. It’s hard to imagine them having a bad year unless they run into major injury problems, which GMs usually escape the blame for. With 16 years on the job and counting, this is Wilson’ team, and it’s a very good one.
That doesn’t mean it couldn’t all blow up in his face. We thought it already had a few years ago, when the Sharks were missing the playoffs and the franchise player was telling Wilson to shut his mouth. The GM survived that, so he should be able to weather any unexpected hurdles this year throws at him. If the aging Sharks hit a wall and miss the playoffs, could ownership decide that it’s time for a new direction and a fresh set of eyes? Nothing’s impossible, but it would take a total disaster.
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The NHL’s CBA is making headlines again and for a change, the news might actually be good. The league announced last week that they’ll decline their option to reopen the agreement next year, and there’s a chance that the NHLPA will decide to do the same. If so, what had seemed like an inevitable 2020 lockout would be avoided, or at least pushed back until 2022.
But whether the next CBA comes in a year or down the road, it probably won’t represent a radical change in the way the league does business. The 2005 deal that ushered in a hard cap was quite literally a game-changer, one that reshaped just about everything about how the league operated. But the 2013 deal didn’t change all that much. And even as both sides eye each other warily and stake out their PR ground, there doesn’t seem to be much appetite to make major changes to a system that seems to be working reasonably well.
That’s almost certainly a good thing, at least from the perspective of fans who just want to see a new deal get done without yet another lockout. But it’s always possible that one side (or both) might decide to ask for bigger changes. And they wouldn’t have to look far for inspiration, because the three largest North American pro leagues could all offer up some ideas from their current agreements.
Today, let’s imagine a world where the current CBA needed more than minor tinkering. Here are ten CBA ideas that the NHL could borrow from the NBA, NFL and MLB, and how they’d impact the sport.
We’ll start with the big one …
Borrowed from: NFL
How it works: The NFL is the only major league where contracts aren’t guaranteed, so teams can essentially walk away from a deal whenever they want. If a big star signs a five-year extension for mega-dollars and then doesn’t live up to the deal through the first year, his team can just cut him and move on. (It’s a little more complicated than that, but we’ll stay out of the weeds here.)
What it would mean for the NHL: Armageddon, probably. Whenever you talk about worst-case scenarios for NHL labor talks, this is the one demand the league could make that could lead to another 2004-05 type of shutdown. The players would have no choice but to push back as hard as possible. Most CBA demands that either side could make would be the equivalent of face washes in a scrum; this one would empty both benches.
But let’s pretend it happened. What would a new NHL without guaranteed contracts look like? Not necessarily like you think it would, because many fans don’t really understand how the NFL system works.
While it’s true that NFL contracts aren’t guaranteed, that doesn’t mean that terminating them is painless. NFL players (and their agents) know that they don’t have long-term security, so they make sure to get as much of their total as possible through signing bonuses and other guaranteed money. It’s not unusual for most of the money in a big NFL contract to be guaranteed on day one. NHL players would demand the same security.
Most of the money isn’t all of the money, and the NFL’s system still tilts heavily in favor of the teams over the players – especially the ones who aren’t big stars and can’t insist on huge bonuses. But cutting a player on a long-term deal can have serious cap implications, often creating big chunks of immediate dead money. Hockey fans dreaming of a world where their favorite team could just painlessly wash their hands of all of its worst signings won’t find the answer in the NFL’s system.
And remember, nonguaranteed contracts can cut both ways. The NHL’s ironclad deals mean that, for example, Connor McDavid is locked into his current eight-year contract, even as inferior players eventually blow by him with better deals. If contracts weren’t guaranteed, he could eventually demand that the Oilers tear up his deal and give him something better, the way that many NFL stars do. Back before the 2005 CBA, the NHL used to see big-name holdouts with some frequency, but they were essentially eliminated once contracts couldn’t be renegotiated by either side.
Will we ever see it?: Let’s hope not. Even though the NFL offers more security than you might think and empowers their biggest stars, its system is still stacked against the majority of players. Given everything we know about risks to players’ long-term health, nobody should be rooting for a massive work stoppage just to take away more of their security.
That covers the elephant in the room. But there are other ideas that the NHL could borrow from the competition …
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We’ve almost made it through August. We’re just a few days away from September, which means we’re just a few weeks away from training camp, which means soon we’ll have some actual hockey to talk about.
Which also means, tragically, that we’re running out of chances to spend our days building fake rosters based on arbitrary rules. We’ve already done first names and the $200 challenge. Today, let’s celebrate the spirit of teamwork with a question: Which two franchises could combine to hold the NHL’s tag team championship belts?
In other words, which two teams could produce the best starting lineup entirely out of players who played for both of them?
This idea comes to me from a reader who pointed out a weird fact: You could build an entire 20-man roster just using players who played for the Islanders and the Oilers within a few years of each other. That seems like an extreme example, but we can certainly find a few combos that will give us a strong starting six. So let’s do that. Come on, it’s not like you wanted to work today.
As always, let’s lay out some ground rules:
– For each combo, we’re looking to build a six-man starting roster of players who played for both franchises. That means a minimum of one game – players who were technically acquired but never suited up do not count.
– We want each lineup to have three forwards, two defensemen and one goalie, but other than that position doesn’t matter.
– Here’s the important part that will mess up the people who don’t read it: For these rosters, you get credit for everything a player did on those two teams only. That doesn’t mean that a player had to have been a superstar for both teams – Gordie Howe only scored 15 NHL goals in Hartford, but he’d did still be a monster for a Whalers/Red Wings tag team. But Eric Lindros on a Leafs/Stars team? Not great.
Got the idea? We’re going to come up with 10 entries to get you started. Then you can head to the comments and unveil you challenger to the tag team title.
Older teams have a big advantage here, so let’s get started with a few Original Six combos to help us get our heads around the concept…
Forwards: Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge, Pit Martin
Defensemen: Bobby Orr, Allan Stanley
Goaltender: Frank Brimsek
The 1967 Esposito trade is the key here, giving us all three of our forwards. Sure, we could have used the other Esposito trade to form a Bruins/Rangers tag team that would also feature Brad Park, Jean Ratelle and Rick Middleton. But we can’t resist the chance to build around Orr’s entire career, so the Hawks are the pick. And that means we can also take Brimsek, giving us the full decade-long resume of a Hall-of-Famer and eight-time all-star, even though he only played the final one of those seasons in Chicago.
But apart from Esposito, Orr and Brimsek, the rest of the lineup is hit-and-miss. The “only get credit for what they did on your team” rule means we can’t sneak in Paul Coffey here, and Stanley isn’t as impressive as he seems because we’re only getting the seasons he squeezed in between his stronger runs with New York and Toronto.
So it’s not a bad roster. But honestly, it’s not as good as you might expect once you get past the Orr/Esposito combo. Let’s have another Original Six team challenge them for the title…
Forwards: Frank Mahovlich, Darryl Sittler, Norm Ullman
Defensemen: Red Kelly, Borje Salming
Goaltender: Terry Sawchuk
There’s no Orr-level deity here, but it’s a more well-rounded lineup than the Hawks and Bruins could offer. We’ve got Hall-of-Famers at every position, with basically every one of their best seasons is represented. The only controversy might be over how you slot Kelly into the lineup, since he went from defense to center once he was traded to Toronto. Still, that just shows that he could play both, so we’ll use him on the blue line, if only so that we don’t have to mention the Larry Murphy trade.
So there you have it: The Leafs and Wings have captured our tag team championship. Can anyone beat them? We could probably keep going with various combos using just the Original Six teams, but while we’re not done with the glory days quite yet, let’s let some of the more modern franchises have a shot at the title.
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In he Friday Grab Bag:
- What's up with all those unsigned RFAs? My spies got the scoop.
- Another unpopular opinion I can share because it's summer and nobody's paying attention
- An obscure player who didn't have to be a goalie
- The month's three comedy stars, featuring dad jokes
- And a YouTube look back at my origin story in hockey comedy, featuring Jim Ralph and 1993-94 Leafs
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I have kind of a love-hate relationship with preseason predictions.
On the one hand, they’re all sorts of fun. Readers flock to them, even when they disagree. And I’ve always believed that everyone should put their predictions on the record before the season starts, if only as a form of accountability for when something unexpected happens and we all pretend we knew it all along.
On the other hand, well, I’m bad at this. And I’m not alone. Every year, there are a few teams that everyone agrees will be terrible who turn out to be pretty good. Two years ago it was the Golden Knights, Avalanche and Devils. Last year, it was the Islanders, not to mention the mid-season turnaround from the Blues. Sometimes we underestimate the impact of an offseason change, or we fall in love with a narrative. Sometimes, hockey is just weird and stuff happens. But I’m always very wrong about at least a few teams, and you probably are too.
Well, the first step in solving any problem is to recognize that you have one. The second step is to overcompensate by steering way too far in the other direction. That’s what we’re going to do today. My pal Dom Luszczyszyn has kindly given me a sneak peek at the ten teams his model expects to have the worst seasons in 2019-20. I’m going to try to figure out why it’s wrong, and why those bottom-feeders will actually turn out to be playoff teams, if not Cup contenders.
Can I do it? Let’s just say that some teams will be easier than others. To keep from pulling a muscle on some of these reaches, I’ll warm up by starting with the best teams on Dom’s bottom-ten list and working my way down to the dregs.
Dom says: A point total in the high 80s and a roughly 1-in-4 chance of making the playoffs. (We won’t reveal the model’s exact predictions until a little closer to the season, and the specific order for the bottom ten could shift between now and then.)
Why he’s probably right: The Blue Jackets’ offseason drama has been well-documented. They went all-in on the 2019 playoffs and pulled off a legendary first-round upset that provided the greatest moment in franchise history, but then watched all their top UFAs walk away, including Sergei Bobrovsky and Artemi Panarin. When a team that barely squeezed into the playoffs in the final week loses two of its three best players, it’s not hard to see where things are headed.
But hear me out … : Losing Bobrovsky should hurt. But it might not because they’ve got a couple of good young goaltenders in Joonas Korpisalo and Elvis Merzlikins. If one of them runs with the job, the Blue Jackets should be fine in goal, and maybe even improved. Will that happen? Maybe, because as we’ll probably end up saying in just about all of these, goaltending is voodoo and unexpected things happen every year.
The loss of Panarin is tougher, and with apologies to Gustav Nyquist, there’s really no replacing his production. So how can a team recover from watching their best forward walk for nothing in return? Well, let’s ask the Islanders, who did exactly that last year. And that Islanders surprise came on the heels of a year where the team wasn’t very good. The 2018-19 Blue Jackets had 47 wins and 98 points. They probably don’t even need to improve to be playoff contenders. They just need to fall a few points rather than a whole bunch.
See? This hope stuff is easy. Let’s keep the positivity going with Dom’s next team.
Dom says: A point total in the high 80s and a roughly 1-in-4 chance of making the playoffs.
Why he’s probably right: The Hawks weren’t great last year, and that was with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews having unlikely career seasons at 30 years old. If those two revert a bit, look out.
But hear me out … : For the second straight entry, we can invoke last year’s Islanders to give hope to one of this year’s also-rans. The Hawks’ biggest offseason acquisition was goalie Robin Lehner, who was so good for the Islanders last year that he somehow won the Jennings for the Rangers. Between adding Lehner and the possibility of Corey Crawford getting back to full health, the Hawks looks pretty set in goal after watching Cam Ward torpedo half their season last year.
Mix in the possibility of Kane and Toews continuing to play at a high level and continued development from youngsters like Alex DeBrincat and Dylan Strome, and there’s some decent room for improvement here. And don’t forget that this will be the first full season for head coach Jeremy Colliton. Everyone was ready to write off Jared Bednar in Colorado after one year despite being hired on the eve of the season starting, but he’s settled in as a solid coach once he had a full offseason to work with. Colliton is young and learning, so as he gets better, the Hawks should too.
Will it be enough to compete in a Central that may not be top-heavy but should be deep? Probably, because these are the Blackhawks and the dressing room is still knee-deep in Cup rings and magical know-how-to-win dust. See? Optimism!
Dom says: A point total in the mid-80s and a roughly 1-in-4 chance of making the playoffs.
Why he’s probably right: They haven’t finished over .500 in terms of points percentage in four years, in a league where the standings are rigged so that everyone can finish over .500. They’re bad.
But hear me out … : They’re a young team that took a decent step forward last year, improving by eight points. If they do that again, they’re at least in the playoff mix.
Can they? Sure. Most of their best players are young enough that they should improve just based on aging curves. They added guys like Tyler Myers, Micheal Ferland and J.T. Miller, and while we can debate the long-term wisdom of those moves, they should make the team better in the short term. And Jacob Markstrom continues to develop into a legitimate No. 1 goaltender.
Add it all up, and the Canucks should improve at least a bit. But if Elias Pettersson or Brock Boeser have the sort of big breakout that players their age sometimes have, or Markstrom reaches the next level, the Canucks could move up significantly. And if all of those guys make the leap – which hardly seems impossible – the Canucks could be that team that hits fast forward on the rebuild and zooms straight to contention.
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Do you know which NHL team I just can’t figure out?
Well, all of them. I’m not very good at the whole “predicting” thing. Whenever I start thinking I know where a team is headed, you can probably make some money by betting the other way. Never listen to me about anything, is what I’m trying to say.
But when it comes to the 2019-20 season, there are a few teams I feel at least reasonably confident about. The Lightning will be good! So will the Sharks, and Bruins and probably the Knights and Leafs and Capitals. On the other side, the Senators should be bad, along with the Kings and Red Wings. The Blue Jackets will be worse than last year, maybe a lot worse. The Blues will be good again as long as Jordan Binnington plays well. The Coyotes, Hurricanes and Panthers are on the way up. The Penguins are not, but will still be the Penguins right up until they’re not.
I’ll end up being dead wrong about roughly half of that last paragraph, but for now, I feel like I’m on reasonably solid ground. But then I get to the teams where I have no earthly idea what’s going to happen. It’s just total confusion, either because I can’t figure out what they’re doing or where they’re headed or (in some cases) still can’t get my head around what happened last season or over the summer.
I still have a few weeks to figure it all out, but for these six teams, time is running out for me to get a handle on their situation and it’s not looking good. Let’s just put the cards on the table right now. Here are the half-dozen teams that I just can’t figure out heading into the season. Please help me.
They’ll be good because: Every good player who was available in the offseason plays for New Jersey now.
OK, that’s an exaggeration. But by adding Jack Hughes, P.K. Subban, Nikita Gusev and even Wayne Simmonds on a manageable one-year deal, the Devils had one of the best offseasons of anyone. And they didn’t really give up anything of note to do it. They’re pretty much guaranteed to be way better.
They’ll be bad because: “Way better” than 72 points still might not get them anywhere near the playoffs.
The Devils were a mess last year, ranking 26th in both goals for and against. The offseason additions should help boost the offensive side, but the goaltending hopes seem to rest on either MacKenzie Blackwood breaking out despite being just 22 years old with only 21 NHL starts to his name, or Cory Schneider regaining the form he hasn’t had since 2016. Either of those things could happen, because goaltending is voodoo. But when you need to improve by about 25 points just to make the playoffs, I’m not sure that having to cross your fingers for a goaltending miracle is a great sign.
But they’ll probably be fine because: Every year, we see at least a few teams go from near the basement to the playoffs in one shot, often despite nobody seeing it coming. Last year, it was the Islanders. The year before that, it was the Avalanche, Knights and oh yeah, these same Devils. Most of those teams didn’t add anywhere near as much talent as New Jersey just did.
And speaking of talent, they’ve got a former MVP in Taylor Hall who’s healthy and ready to go, and who should be motivated to tear up the league in a contract year.
Unless they’re not because: Yeah, about that contract. Hall hasn’t re-signed yet, which means his status could become the dreaded off-ice distraction if it doesn’t get done by opening night. And if they can’t lock him down, don’t they have to consider trading him? That could torpedo a promising season, but you don’t have to look much further than Columbus to see how this can play out if a team tries to stand pat.
The verdict: The Devils are going rank very high on my watchability ratings for the year, but I really have no idea where they’re going to end up in the standings.
They’ll be really good because: They’re already good, and they’re young enough that they should get even better just by virtue of their stars developing. Every arrow on the dashboard is pointing in the same direction, and that direction is up.
And that’s why just about everyone seems to agree that they’re contenders. There are probably more than a few people reading this who aren’t even sure what there is to be confused about. They’re one of the best young teams in the league, they won a round last year and might have won another if the league’s replay review rules weren’t so dumb. They’re all set. What are we even talking about here?
They’ll be disappointing because: They won 38 games last year. That’s not great. They still made the playoffs, because they were in a conference where you could make the playoffs with 90 points. And they needed a league-leading 14 loser points just to get to that total.
Loser points are still points, so we can’t call the 2018-19 Avalanche a fluke; they earned their playoff spot based on the same system everyone else plays with. But if winning is the name of the game, this is a team that won fewer games than the Coyotes, just one more than the Flyers and Wild and just three more than the lowly Oilers.
Are we absolutely sure they should be anointed as some sort of guaranteed Cup contender?
But they’ll probably be great because: Well, yeah, they sure do seem like a Cup contender.
First of all, if winning is what matters then we need to factor in that the Avs did a fair amount of it during the playoffs, including knocking off the Flames in five and nearly beating the Sharks. The playoffs are a smaller sample size, but not too many bad teams make it within a misplaced toenail of the conference final.
Beyond that, you just have to look at the roster. They’ve got one of the very best players in the league on perhaps the very best contract in Nathan MacKinnon, who’ll only be 24 on opening night. Mikko Rantanen will be 23, and presumably, will have been signed by then. Basically all of the other key contributors are in their mid-20s, including new addition Nazem Kadri and starting goalie Philipp Grubauer. And maybe most impressive of all, the blue line is stacked with young talent, with Samuel Girard and Cale Makar looking like future stars and Bowen Byram on the way.
It’s awfully hard to imagine this team not being even better next year.
Unless they’re not because: The blue line is indeed stacked with stud prospects, but young defenseman tend to have their ups and downs in the NHL, so the defense won’t necessarily be a sure thing in 2019-20. Grubauer’s never been a full-time starter and there’s no safety net with Semyon Varlamov gone. And while MacKinnon and Rantanen were both fantastic last year, there’s a flip side to that: Their two best forwards both had years where they looked unstoppable and the team still only won 38 games.
I know we keep coming back to that but look at this way. If we think that the Avalanche are going to be eight wins better than they were last year – which is a lot to improve in one offseason – they’re still behind the pace of teams like last year’s Jets, Predators, Islanders and Blue Jackets. They’d be a playoff team for sure. But are they more than that?
The verdict: If Grubauer disappoints and the younger players are inconsistent, they could conceivably take a step back. That feels unlikely and penciling the Avs in for improvement seems reasonable. But I think some of us are underestimating how far they may have to go to reach the league’s top tier, and this seems like a case where we’re all getting ahead of ourselves, if only by a season or two.
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It’s August. Nothing much is happening in the NHL. Nothing much will be happening in the NHL. If anything did happen, we might not find out about it because Pierre is on vacation. Outside of whatever the Wild are doing, there’s nothing to talk about.
It’s a perfect time to play The $200 Lineup Game.
This game is based on some Twitter fun we had a few years ago. The rules are simple. You’re going to build the best starting lineup out of players who’ve played for your favorite NHL team. Here’s how it works.
In other words, you’re looking for star players who had the briefest possible stint with your team. Guy Lafleur isn’t worth anything to the Canadiens, because he’d cost way too much. But his one season in New York means that a Rangers team could squeeze him in for $67, and they’d get credit for the full Flower experience. Want Brett Hull and his 700+ career goals? You’re out of luck if you’re the Blues or even the Stars. But a Flames team could fit him in for just $57. And the Coyotes could get him for just $5.
A few more rules, just for your loophole-seekers out there.
Speaking of the Leafs, let’s use them as our first example …
Forwards: Ron Francis ($12), Eric Lindros ($33), Dickie Moore ($38)
Defense: Brian Leetch ($15), Phil Housley ($1)
Goaltender: Terry Sawchuk ($91)
Total: $190
That’s not a bad lineup, featuring six Hall-of-Famers. The Pat Quinn years are fruitful here, as late-season acquisitions of Francis, Leetch and Housley give us a cheap backbone and help us have enough left over to spend a relatively hefty $91 on Sawchuk (or, if you prefer, $95 on Grant Fuhr). If you’d rather go with a post-expansion look, you could swap out old-timers Moore and Sawchuk and bring in Joe Nieuwendyk ($64) and Bernie Parent ($65) instead for the same combined price. Or you could use Gerry Cheevers in goal for just $2 and spend more elsewhere. But whichever way you go, the Leafs are solid.
Makes sense? Do you see what we’re going for? Cool. Then let’s try some other teams around the league because as you’re going to see, there are a few teams that can give the Leafs a run for their $200 worth of money. We’re going to serve up a dozen teams in all, which doesn’t cover everyone but is more than enough to get your brain working and then turn it over to you to come up with your own.
Forwards: Jaromir Jagr ($11), Cy Denneny ($23), Dave Andreychuk ($63)
Defense: Paul Coffey ($18), Brian Leetch ($61)
Goaltender: Jacques Plante ($8)
Total: $184
You could say that this concept already has a playoff atmosphere because the Bruins immediately knock off the Maple Leafs. And to add insult to injury, they even do it with one of the same players off of the Leafs’ roster, as Leetch makes like a free agent and jumps to a rival for more money. They pair him with Coffey, who (spoiler alert) will also show up on more than one of these lists.
Other possibilities on the backend include Sergei Gonchar for $15 or Babe Pratt for $31. But the real options are up front. To be honest, I went with Andreychuk mainly to eat up a big chunk of the cap space that was going to be leftover, but you could go with somebody like Joey Mullen at $37 or even Rick Nash for $11 and just pocket the rest. Not that Boston ownership would ever do that.
So yeah, the Bruins are now our team to beat. Let’s see if anyone can do it.
Forwards: Darryl Sittler ($61), Mike Modano ($40), Charlie Conacher ($40)
Defense: Doug Harvey ($2), Borje Salming ($49)
Goaltender: Bill Ranford ($4)
Total: $196
In theory, the Red Wings seem like a team that would be made for this sort of game, since modern history is filled with Hall of Famers finishing their careers with brief stopovers in Detroit. But many of them aren’t brief enough, as guys like Daniel Alfredsson and Bernie Federko played enough games in their one season with the Wings to price them out of our budget. Marian Hossa did too.
We can squeeze in Modano and Sittler, though, largely because Harvey gives us a monster value on the blue line. We get more solid value in goal with a Conn Smythe winner in Ranford at just $4, but he makes Detroit our first entry that isn’t made up entirely of current or future Hall of Famers. The Wings’ entry is a solid one, but I don’t think they top the Bruins.
Let’s take a break from the Original Six teams and try a few who have a little less history to work with.
Forwards: Jarome Iginla ($13), Luc Robitaille ($46), Marian Hossa ($12)
Defense: Tim Horton ($44), Sergei Zubov ($64)
Goaltender: Tomas Vokoun ($20)
Total: $199
The Penguins benefit from our rule about just using three forwards without worrying about position, as they’ll roll with over 1,800 goals worth of wingers and apparently just hope that nobody ever has to take a faceoff.
Those three bargains up front allow us to spend some extra money on the blue line, which we kind of need to do – there aren’t any obvious sub-$40 bargains to be found here. We get a pair of Hall of Famers, though, so we’ll take it. We don’t have as much luck in goal, where the good-but-not-great Vokoun is really the only option. That takes this team down a notch after a promising start.
We’ve been heavy on the Eastern Conference so far, so let’s head to the West for the next few.
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Paul Fenton was fired after just one year and my spies found out why
- Thoughts on players taking famous numbers
- The comedy stars return
- An obscure player who was once traded straight-up for Fenton
- And a YouTube look back at a very weird piece of 1979 hockey comedy
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