In a special Thursday edition of the Grab Bag:
- Penguins and Lightning excuses
- Breaking down a week of first-round outrage
- An obscure player who was at least consistent
- The week's three comedy stars
- And our old friend Alan Thicke helps us remember when the Lightning were just starting out...
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In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Brad Marchand trolls Mitch Marner and the Maple Leafs
- The Oilers GM candidates include some interesting names
- Final thoughts on John Tavares and Islander fans
- The wildcard races heat up
- The GM meetings don't bring much news
- The passing of Ted Lindsay
- Greg ranks the ten best movie performances by pro wrestlers
- 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.
Last week we tried to figure out the identity of NHL history’s most entertaining trader by assembling starting lineups based on players a single GM had traded for. Once we rigged the rules to keep Sam Pollock from rolling over the competition, it turned out to be a tight race.
But plenty of you had the same request: Now do it for players a GM had traded away. Or, as we took to calling it in the comment section, The Chiarelli Cup. OK, the customer is always right. You get your wish. Let’s do this.
A few notes before we get to the teams. First, we’re working with slightly different rules than last week. We’ll keep the Sam Pollock rule – the player himself has to be in the trade, not the draft pick used to select him. But last time, we were only giving GMs credit for what a player did on their team. Today, we’re giving credit for everything a player did in their career after the trade. So in theory, today’s rosters should be slightly better than last week’s.
It’s also worth pointing out that the easiest way to make the cut on a list like this is to have lots of trades to work from. Somebody who was only a GM for a few seasons just isn’t going to have the body of work to compete with somebody who was around for three decades (well, with one exception that we’ll get to). So this doesn’t actually end up being a list of history’s worst GMs like you might think. Guys who are widely considered to have been poor traders, like John Ferguson Jr., Réjean Houle or Mel Bridgman don’t show up here. They didn’t keep the job long enough and didn’t have enough talent to work with when they did.
And here’s one final note: There shouldn’t actually be any suspense here, since the answer is actually kind of obvious. Or at least, it should be. But maybe it isn’t, because of all the names I saw thrown around last week, almost nobody mentioned the actual frontrunner. So let’s see if you can figure it out before we get to the end of the list.
But we’ll begin at the beginning, with the man this exercise was named after.
Goalie: Tim Thomas
Defensemen: Johnny Boychuk, Justin Schultz
Forwards: Taylor Hall, Tyler Seguin, Phil Kessel
It’s a solid group. That forward line is a killer and we could follow it up with a second unit that includes Jordan Eberle and Blake Wheeler. There’s depth all up and down the roster, to be honest, and the Pollock rule means we’re not even giving credit for the Mathew Barzal pick here. But the starting blueliners are just OK and the goaltending isn’t great – Thomas should barely even count, since he was traded to the Islanders, never played and then left as a free agent before playing one more decent NHL season.
So Chiarelli’s not bad. But we can definitely do better. Let’s try the other name that probably popped into your head as soon as you heard the concept.
Goalie: Roberto Luongo
Defensemen: Zdeno Chara, Darius Kasparaitis
Forwards: Ziggy Palffy, Olli Jokinen, Todd Bertuzzi
Even without quite as much star power up front, this team beats Chiarelli’s pretty easily. It’s more balanced, with first-ballot Hall of Famers in goal and on the blueline. And it’s deep too, with names like Chris Osgood, Mathieu Schneider, Bryan McCabe, Bryan Berard, Michael Peca and Wendel Clark available.
Maybe even more impressively, it’s not like Milbury builds this roster by swinging high-profile but well-balanced blockbusters like some of his colleagues – he lost pretty much every trade that leads to that starting six. And you could make a strong case that we should waive the Pollock rule for Jason Spezza, since Milbury traded the second-overall pick on draft day and it was well-known at the time who the Senators would be using it on. We won’t do that here – rules are rules – but we all know what’s up.
So with apologies to its namesake, it’s Milbury who stakes out the early leader status for the Chiarelli Cup. But the competition is about to heat up.
Goalie: Devan Dubnyk
Defensemen: Larry Murphy, Seth Jones
Forwards: Mike Gartner, Dino Ciccarelli, Jason Allison
Yikes. This loaded lineup is basically the anti-Milbury team; Poile did well on several of these trades, but has always been willing to give up something to get something. Still, that’s three Hall of Famers from his Washington days, plus two current all-stars – not to mention Shea Weber, who you could swap in on the blueline if you wanted. The third forward is really the only iffy spot, as Allison edges out a three-way Matt Duchene deal that only kind of counts.
The Dubnyk deal is a little bit of a sneaky addition, since he was barely considered an NHLer at that point and was basically given away to Montreal for nothing in return. Still, it counts, and based on his career resurgence in Minnesota it gives Team Poile a potential goaltending controversy with guys like Byron Dafoe and Tomas Vokoun. And as a side note, the Pollock Rule comes into play yet again, and it keeps a couple of big-name draft picks out of the Team Poile lineup: Joe Sakic and Erik Karlsson.
And just like that, I think we’ve got Milbury beat. With the two early favorites already out of the running, let’s see if we can find someone to challenge Poile.
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In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Breaking down the pros and cons for six of the top candidates for the Oilers' GM job
- Please stop giving hockey lines nicknames based on their initials
- An obscure player who held an amazing Vancouver Canucks record
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube breakdown of the 1985 all-star game, in which everyone is dressed up like a cowboy for some reason
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In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Greg and I react to the firing of Peter Chiarelli
- Was this the right time to make a move?
- Who should be the Oilers' next GM?
- Greg interviews Nick Hirshon, Islander fan and author of "We Want Fishsticks"
- We reveal out votes for the PHWA midseason awards
- Man there have been a lot of trades lately
- Greg has a pet peeve about fellow fans at NHL games and I'm not sure I'm on board
- Oscar talk 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.
It’s been a weird year in Edmonton. The Oilers came in with high hopes, struggled early, fired their coach, seemed to rebound and lately have struggled again. There are calls for Peter Chiarelli to be fired, and it’s widely assumed that he will be if the team misses the playoffs, if not sooner. And as you might expect, there’s been all sorts of speculation about what moves he might be willing to make to turn things around.
Among all the rumors, one name keeps coming up: 20-year-old winger Jesse Puljujarvi. On one hand, that’s surprising, since Puljujarvi is less than three years removed from being the fourth-overall pick in the 2016 draft. Then again, he’s had a disappointing year, and his lackluster career offensive totals mean he’s getting dangerously close to having the “bust” label slapped on him.
Still, would it really make sense for the Oilers to trade a young player so quickly after spending a top-five pick on him? Does that kind of move ever work out?
Let’s crack open the history books and find out.
We’re going to go looking for examples of teams making trades like the rumored Puljujarvi deal, and see what we can learn from the results. We’ll start our search at the onset of the entry draft era (when the league lowered the eligibility age to 18), meaning we’re going back to 1979 and have exactly 40 drafts to work with. We want to find players who fit these criteria:
Note that the last point is important – we’re looking for players who were traded before finishing their third NHL season. If you expand the criteria to include players who are traded immediately after completing their third season, you start to see some bigger names show up, including Ed Olczyk, Dany Heatley, James van Riemsdyk, Jonathan Drouin, Tyler Seguin and Phil Kessel. That’s our first interesting takeaway. Three years seems to be a tipping point of sorts for NHL GMs; once you’ve put in three full seasons, they get more likely to pull the chute and move you. And yes, those last two players were both traded away by Chiarelli. That could offer a hint about how the Puljujarvi situation plays out.
But let’s assume that the rumor mill is right, and that the Oilers really are thinking about moving Puljujarvi right now, before he’s spent three seasons in the NHL, despite recently spending a top-five draft pick on him. How rare would that be?
Rare, as it turns out. But maybe not as rare as you might think.
By my count, there are 26 players in the entry draft era that meet our criteria. We’re dealing with 40 years of drafts, so we’ve got a pool of 200 players here. Of those, 13 percent were moved within three years, or a little more than one every two years. I don’t know about you, but that’s a higher percentage than I would have expected. Maybe the Oilers aren’t crazy to be considering this.
But there are a couple of important qualifiers to put on that 26 number. The first is that these sorts of moves have become significantly rarer in the salary cap era, with only three of our trades involving players drafted after 2004. That’s 14 drafts involving 70 top-five picks, so our cap era percentage plunges down to four percent.
The second thing to keep in mind is that the trades on our list came out of a variety of different circumstances, not all of which have much to do with what Puljujarvi and the Oilers are facing right now. In order to find any meaning in the history of these sorts of moves, it’s probably helpful to divide them up into a few categories. So let’s do that.
Our first category is one we don’t see much of anymore: The old school blockbuster trade, in which a surefire Hall of Fame superstar is traded in their prime. These deals used to happen every few years, but almost never do in the cap era. (That’s partly because players used to be able to force them by holding out, which doesn’t happen anymore.)
But when these deals did happen, the asking price would often involve one or more players who’d recently been high picks. Those players weren’t busts. In fact, it was the opposite – they were highly regarded prospects that a team insisted on receiving in return for a star. You’ve got to give something to get something, after all.
I’ve got four trades in this category, including the most famous one of all: The 1988 deal that sent Wayne Gretzky from the Oilers to the Kings in exchange for a package built around cash, draft picks, more cash, and 1986 second-overall pick Jimmy Carson. At the time, Carson was considered one of the best young players in the game, having just scored 55 goals as a 19-year-old. He only lasted one full year in Edmonton, scoring 100 points, and never really lived up to his early hype; he bounced around three more teams and was out of the league by 1996. But at the time, he was an established stud.
A year before the Gretzky deal, the Oilers traded another certified superstar when they sent an unhappy Paul Coffey to Pittsburgh in 1987 for a package that included a pair of players who meet our criteria: 1985 second-overall pick Craig Simpson and 1987 fifth-overall pick Chris Joseph. Joseph had just been drafted and had only played 17 NHL games, while Simpson was off to a great start in his third season. Simpson would become the first player to score 50 goals while being traded midway through the season, although that turned out to be a career high and injuries slowed his production. Joseph turned into a journeyman defenseman who played for seven teams in 14 years.
The other two deals involve two of the most productive stars of the 1990s. The Flyers included 1990 fourth-overall pick Mike Ricci in the massive package they put together to pry Eric Lindros out of Quebec in 1992. And the Ducks included 1994 second-overall pick Oleg Tverdovsky and 1995 fourth-overall pick Chad Kilger in their 1996 deal for Winnipeg’s Teemu Selanne. All three of those players had productive NHL careers, and Ricci and Tverdovsky were borderline stars. But it’s fair to say that neither the Ducks or Flyers really regret giving them up in those deals. (Peter Forsberg would be another question, but he was a sixth-overall pick and hadn’t yet played in the NHL when the Flyers included him in the Lindros trade.)
These were all blockbuster trades, and it’s fun to look back at them. But unless Peter Chiarelli is about to pull off a miracle that nobody sees coming, it’s probably safe to assume that any Puljujarvi trade isn’t going to look like this. So on to the next section…
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The rankings took last week off, so with two weeks of action to account for we should expect to see a higher-than-usual level of turnover in both the top and bottom five to the extent that blah blah blah let’s talk about how the Dallas Stars have gone looney tunes.
Seriously, I realize that this is a power rankings piece and I should stay focused on which teams go where. But I have a few rules in life, and one of them is that if a team’s CEO kicks off the weekend by going on an expletive-laden rant that would make the corpse of Harold Ballard blush, it gets to be the lead story.
If you haven’t read the rundown in Sean Shapiro’s piece yet, you must do so immediately. And if you have read it, you need to read it again to convince yourself that you didn’t dream it. Go do that now, then come back.
Done? Cool. Now that you’ve read the story, learned some new curse words, and your screen is covered with the singed hair that used to be your eyebrows, let’s figure out what all of this means.
Point one: I don’t think Dallas Stars CEO Jim Lites is super-happy with Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn, you guys. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Is he right? Well, no, not really – Seguin and Benn don’t seem to be the problem in Dallas. But that hardly matters now, since it’s not like these are the sort of comments you can walk back.
Point two: Man, the timing is weird here. The rant came the night after the Stars went into Nashville and shut out the defending Presidents’ Trophy winners. That win was their third in five games, and moved them back into a wild-card spot. You’d think you might want to build on that, not use it as a starting point to go scorched earth on your two franchise players.
And finally, the biggest point of all: It’s hard to imagine any way in which this helps the Stars, either now or in the future. Benn and Seguin didn’t sound happy on Saturday, as you’d expect, and while neither poured any additional gas on the fire the NHLPA is now getting involved. Both players are signed to long-term deals, and even if the Stars wanted to trade them – ownership denies that they do – it would be hard to pull it off in a way that made the team better. And which players are going to be lining up to replace them at the top of the lineup, now that the entire league knows that the Stars are an organization that will publicly humiliate its top players when things are going well?
And it wasn’t just about Benn and Seguin. Lites’ comments didn’t just bury his two stars; they sure seemed to imply that GM Jim Nill could be under the gun too. He probably should be, given the teams’ recent record, but having management advertise the fact publicly can’t make his job any easier.
Maybe the biggest problem with Friday’s meltdown is that it wasn’t spontaneous or off-the-cuff, meaning it appears to reflect the agreed-upon thinking of the organization from the top down. And when you strip away the profanity and the hyperbole, that thinking seems to boil down to: We’re already good enough – “too good”, in fact – and we just need to try harder. Not scoring enough goals? Just “get a little bit closer to the action”, as Lites put it, and the problem is solved.
It sure sounds easy when you put it that way. Unfortunately, that’s not the sort of thing that a struggling team comes up with after any sort of serious self-reflection. It’s wishful thinking, the sort of feel-good story you tell yourself when you don’t have the guts to admit that there are bigger flaws in play.
Maybe it works, and Lites’ tirade ends up inspiring the team. Maybe it doesn’t but ends up coinciding with a win streak and we all decide to pretend it somehow helped. Or maybe the boss just torpedoed a season, or even more than that. We’ll find out. At the very least, we can say the Stars are interesting again. For three years they’ve been that team you forget about when you’re going through the Central in your head and get stuck at six teams. Not anymore.
On to the power rankings. We have two weeks to work with, which should shake up our rankings. Let’s find out just how much.
The five teams that look like they’re headed toward a summer of keg stands and fountain pool parties.
Saturday was the rare case of the league breaking out the maximum 15-game schedule. Then they went and played just one game last night. That’s a bit weird for fans, but as someone who writes most of a weekend wrap column on Sunday afternoon, I’m all for it.
5. Winnipeg Jets (24-12-2, +22 true goals differential*) – They’re opening up some space on top of the Central. But the loss of Dustin Byfuglien will hurt, and the offence has only managed multiple goals in one of their last five games. This week’s schedule is a fun one, with the Oilers, Penguins and Stars on tap.
4. Calgary Flames (23-12-4, +28) – Flames or Sharks? That’s the tough call in the Pacific these days. The Flames hold a slight lead, but the Sharks are the hotter team right now. Some models like Calgary. Others prefer San Jose. We’ll get to see them head-to-head tonight, but for now I’m leaning toward the Flames. (Now they just need to avoid any unnecessary distractions…)
If you had to guess, how many current NHL head coaches do you think have held that job for at least one other team during their careers?
You might assume the number would be fairly high. After all, the NHL is often accused of being an old boys’ club, where teams prefer the safety of a familiar name to taking a chance on a fresh face.
If so, you’d be right. The vast majority of current coaches – 21 out of 31 – are on at least their second head coaching job. That includes nine coaches who are on their second chance, eight who are on their third, and four who are on their fourth. John Tortorella is actually on his fifth if you count his brief interim stint with the Rangers in 1999-00.
OK, now let’s move up the org chart and try the same question for the front office. How many of today’s 31 GMs are on at least their second chance at the job? If anything, we might think that the old boys’ club effect would be even more pronounced here. GM jobs don’t open up very often and they typically require plenty of experience, so you might expect to see the same old faces being recycled through the league.
But we don’t. In fact, only 10 of the league’s current GMs are on their second full-time job. (It’s 11 if you count Jeff Gorton’s interim stint with Boston, although that only lasted a few months.) Two-thirds of today’s GMs are on their first shot at the job. And only one GM in the entire league, Lou Lamoriello, has done it for more than two teams.
That seems pretty amazing. It didn’t used to be like this – even a decade or so ago, it wasn’t unusual to see guys like Cliff Fletcher, Bobby Clarke, Brian Burke or Bryan Murray show up for third, fourth and even fifth cracks at a GM’s job. But these days, most teams don’t seem interested in hiring a retread. More often than not, a GM’s career is one-and-done.
The trend gets even more pronounced if you look at the 10 GMs who did manage to get a second chance. Almost all of them fall into one of two categories: Stanley Cup winners, or guys who held their first job forever.
The Cup winner category includes names like Ray Shero and Peter Chiarelli, as well as Dale Tallon, who built pretty much the entire Blackhawks’ 2009-2010 roster before being fired after free agency. The Blackhawks made a point of giving him a ring even though he wasn’t employed by the team anymore, so we’ll defer to their judgment and consider him a Cup winner.
Then there’s the guys who didn’t win a Cup, but held their previous job forever. That would include George McPhee (17 years in Washington before going to Vegas); David Poile (15 years in Washington before Nashville); and Don Waddell (12 years in Atlanta before getting the Carolina job this summer).
Two more guys, Lamoriello and Jim Rutherford, fit into both categories, having held previous jobs for well over a decade while winning Cups in the process.
That leaves us with just two current GMs in the entire league who managed to get a second crack at the job despite not either winning a Cup or sticking around forever in their first.
The first is Doug Armstrong. He does have a Cup ring, earned as an assistant in Dallas, but didn’t have much success in five years as GM there. He still managed to work his way back to the big chair in St. Louis in 2010, and he’s held it ever since.
The second is Anaheim GM Bob Murray. You may not even remember his previous time as a GM, because it came back in the 1990s. He had a quick stint as GM in Chicago from 1997 to 1999, then waited nearly 10 years before getting a second shot with Anaheim in 2008.
That’s it. Two guys in the entire league who didn’t succeed in their first crack at being a GM and still got a second chance. One of them had to wait nearly a decade. And neither was hired within the last eight years.
We’re several days into the off-season, and so far it’s been a slow start. That’s to be expected. After all, we’re 10 days away from the draft, which is when business tends to pick up. We’re still waiting on a final number for next year’s salary cap, which is important. Also, and we’re not naming any names here, certain teams are still drunk right now.
So as we wait for the action to start, let’s figure out which teams are facing the toughest decisions as we head into the off-season. Everybody has a lot on their to-do list at this time of year, and some GMs will need a strong showing over the next few weeks to ensure they still have a job this time next year. But some teams are facing more pressure than others, so let’s count down 10 that will be under a spotlight over the coming days.
10. Calgary Flames
Already done: They changed coaches, clearing out Glen Gulutzan to make room for former Hurricanes’ boss Bill Peters. The bench will also feature two new assistants, including Geoff Ward, who’ll be tasked with fixing the anemic power play. And the team parted ways with team president Brian Burke.
The job ahead: The Flames don’t need a massive overhaul. But something clearly isn’t clicking in Calgary, where a talented young roster hasn’t won a playoff game in three years. There have been rumbling that the effort level isn’t where it needs to be, which Peters will have to address. And Brad Treliving will be looking to add offence, ideally a top-line winger to slot in with Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau.
GM hot-seat factor: Treliving signed an extension last year, so he’s relatively safe for now. But the team is underperforming and he’s just played his coaching card, so another underwhelming season will turn up the temperature. How high? He’d probably rather not find out.
Bottom line: Treliving will have to walk the line of worrying about right now while keeping an eye on the future; the Flames only have four picks in this year’s draft, none of which are in the first three rounds.
Already done: They drank the alcohol. All of it. It’s gone now; we have no more alcohol.
The job ahead: Once he’s done celebrating, Brian MacLellan is faced with the possibility of losing two of the league’s top free agents. The first is John Carlson, who’ll likely prove too rich for the Caps and land elsewhere. The second is Barry Trotz, which should be a fascinating situation to watch. MacLellan was apparently close to firing Trotz during the season, and it was only a few weeks ago that the coach himself seemed to think he was all but gone. But with a Cup win and an expiring contract, now it’s Trotz who holds the power. He’ll likely be back with a hefty raise, but there’s at least a chance he becomes the first coach since Mike Keenan to leave a Cup winner for work elsewhere. The question is how hard MacLellan wants to work to prevent that.
GM hot-seat factor: None.
Bottom line: Heavy is the head that wears the crown. MacLellan also needs to re-sign Tom Wilson and figure out what to do with Philipp Grubauer. This will be a challenging off-season in Washington, but it will be a lot more fun than the last few.
In the Friday Grab bag:
- Examining both sides of the Olympics shootout debate
- The secret to getting the trade market moving may be some long-term thinking
- The very rare obscure Montreal Canadiens captain
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube look at an NHL front office talking themselves into a terrible trade...
We’ve got 11 games on tap tonight, including six of the seven Canadian teams in action. With the races tightening and the trade deadline looming, it’s getting tense out there. So let’s try to keep things calm by starting with two teams that are pretty much already in the playoffs…
It’s officially time to be afraid of the Penguins again.
After two straight Stanley Cups, they were kind enough to give us a bit of a break early in the season. The Pens stumbled out of the gate, including an embarrassing 10-1 loss to the Blackhawks during the season’s first week, and never seemed quite right through the first few months. As late as the first week of January, they’d lost more games than they’d won. They were dipping in and out of a wild-card spot, and GM Jim Rutherford was reportedly ready to make major changes to try to save the season.
But while it didn’t seem like it at the time, a 4-0 win over the Islanders on Jan. 5 now looks like a turning point. They followed that by beating a red-hot Bruins team in overtime, then added wins over the Red Wings and Rangers. They’ve stayed hot ever since — they haven’t lost two straight since the end of December. In all, the Penguins are rolling to the tune of a 13-3-1 record during the stretch, blowing by the wild-card traffic jam and putting them within range of the Capitals for the Metro title.
And they’ve looked scary doing it, scoring five or more goals seven times and winning eight games by three goals or more. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are back to their old selves after slow starts, and Phil Kessel continues to rack up the points.
Maybe most frightening of all, they’re still not at their best. Matt Murray has been much better lately, but has still been inconsistent. If he were to heat up, the Penguins might start to look unbeatable. Then again, Murray tends to do his best work in the playoffs, and that’s where he and his team are headed. At this rate, they’ll be back among the favourites once they get there.
The Maple Leafs are headed to the post-season too, although their status as legitimate contenders is still in question. It’s been a weird season for Toronto, who’ve spent much of the year all but locked into the third spot in the Atlantic. The Leafs are trying to make that interesting, taking a run at the Lightning and Bruins in an effort to at least land home-ice advantage in the first round, although that’s still a longshot. But with nine wins in their last ten and two lines filling the net, they’re at least looking more like the team that was briefly considered a Stanley Cup favourite back in October. That stretch has included wins over a couple of legitimate Cup contenders in the Predators and Lightning. Tonight, they get a shot at another one.
It all adds up to a good test for both teams, and a decent measuring stick of where we’re at in an Eastern Conference that suddenly seems wide open. We’ll hold off on any conference final preview hyperbole for now, since the Lightning, Bruins and Capitals will all have something to say about that. But if both of these teams keep rolling the way they have, we make no promises about where the hype machine may be at when they face off again three weeks from now.
We’re less than three weeks away from the trade deadline, which means GMs around the league are huddling with their scouts, putting together their wish lists, and working the phones. But which ones are under the most pressure as the clock ticks down?
The short answer, of course, is “all of them.” Nobody gets to take the month off when the deadline is closing in, and every team will be expected to do something. Even minor moves can make or break a team’s hopes, so all 31 GMs are feeling the heat.
But that heat isn’t the same for everyone. I’m sure George McPhee wants to make the right moves for his Golden Knights, but he’s basically playing with house money at this point. But other GMs around the league aren’t so lucky. In some cases, their jobs may be on the line. In others, the short or even long-term future of their teams are at stake.
That’s not fun for the GMs. But it’s fun for us as fans, as we wait to see how (or if) they can maneuver their way through the coming weeks. So today, let’s pick out a dozen GMs who are facing the most pressure over the next few days and weeks, and count them down as the temperature climbs up.
The league’s youngest GM is watching his team stumble through a disastrous season. Normally that would be a recipe for a high-pressure deadline as he faced down the need to salvage some sort of value out of a nightmare year.
But the Coyotes aren’t a team with any obvious rentals in play. That’s too bad, because Chayka did a great job on last year’s Martin Hanzal trade. This year’s roster doesn’t seem like it will yield any similar opportunities, short of an unexpected move involving Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Chayka is already managing expectations towards a quiet deadline. That will make for a relatively low-pressure February compared to a typical last-place team. His off-season might be a different story.
Rutherford’s a good example of the difference between being under pressure and being on the hot seat. While there’s obviously a big overlap between those two categories, Rutherford’s a guy who could sit back and watch his team crash and burn without being in any danger of losing his job. Two consecutive Cup rings will do that for a guy.
But you know what’s better than two straight Cups? Three straight. That’s the opportunity Rutherford and the Penguins have, and it’s one that nobody’s managed to pull off in almost 35 years. Wayne Gretzky’s Oilers, Mario Lemieux’s Penguins, Steve Yzerman’s Red Wings… they all managed two straight titles, but couldn’t three-peat. The Pens have a chance, and lately they’ve finally started looking the part. But they still have their share of holes, and reinforcements would help.
We’ve been hearing all year that Rutherford was working on something big. With the opportunity at achieving genuine dynasty status sitting right in front of him, it’s going to be tempting to do everything he can to give his team its best shot.
Here are two words that always bring the pressure for an NHL GM: “playoff drought.” Here are two more: “new owner.” Francis checks both boxes, with a league-leading eight-season absence from the post-season and a new owner in Tom Dundon who probably wouldn’t like to see that continue. In theory, that should be keeping Francis awake at night.
But, of course, this isn’t an ordinary situation. Francis isn’t just the GM; he’s the best player the team has ever had. Even if the Hurricanes miss the playoffs yet again, is an owner who’s been embracing the team’s history really going to fire a guy who was literally nicknamed “Ronnie Franchise”? It feels unlikely. But would he boot him upstairs to bring in new blood? Francis may prefer not to find out.
In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- Thoughts on Kid Rock, and what I really hope the NHL isn't doing here
- The revamped skills competition might actually work
- Did the NHL rig the expansion draft to build a Vegas powerhouse?
- A story about a mind-blowing coincidence in Edmonton
- Dave pitches a fantastic idea for a movie starring Peter Chiarelli
- Reader questions and lots more.
>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.
In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- The Oilers are a mess and Dave and I don't know how to fix them
- A fun fact about Connor McDavid's 21st birthday
- The total lack of coaching changes, which is unprecedented in the modern era
- We try to figure out who'll be the first to go
- On Canada's WJC gold, and Sweden's silver medal toss
- I go full homer to defend Nazem Kadri against charges of beard-yanking
- Lots of reader questions, including who'll screw up the trade deadline, OT rule changes, and what's up with those weird empty ad breaks
- And plenty more...
>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.
With the NHL season at its midway mark, it’s time for Canadian hockey fans to start getting excited. Stake out your ground, and let the debates begin. Which Canadian team will earn the most coveted title in the land?
No, not the Stanley Cup. We all know that thing never lands north of the border anymore. No, we’re talking about something that fits better with the modern-day Canadian NHL psyche: the title of Most Depressing Team In The Nation.
Put two random Canadian fans in a room together, and it probably won’t be long before they’re arguing over which ones deserves to be the most miserable. Some years, it’s a crowded field — we all remember the entire country missing the playoffs back in 2015–16. Other years, like last season, there are fewer candidates. But it’s always a hotly contested title.
So the first order of business is to figure out who gets to be in the running. Obviously, we don’t need to consider the Jets or the Maple Leafs, two teams that are solidly holding down playoff spots. The Flames are a tougher call, as a recent slide had them drifting out of playoff contention (and their coach having temper tantrums) before their latest win streak. But they’re over .500 and only a point out of a playoff spot, so they’re out of the running.
That still leaves us with four contenders for the title of Canada’s most depressing team. The Canadiens, Senators, Canucks and Oilers are all well out of the playoff race, and all four are under .500 in terms of points percentage. That’s a crowded field, so let’s start sorting this out as we work our way through an unlucky 13 categories.
It’s one thing to be bad. It’s another entirely to be bad when everyone thought you’d be good. So who came into the season with the highest expectations?
Canadiens: They were the Atlantic’s top seed last year, and while they were far from a sure thing to repeat that title, most expected them to at least make the playoffs.
Senators: They went deeper than any Canadian team last year, but most seemed to expect them to take a step back this season. Some pessimists even had them missing the playoffs. But close to dead last? No way.
Canucks: Nobody thought they’d be all that good. As bad as this year has been, they’re actually on pace to improve on last year’s record.
Oilers: When the Sportsnet crew did our pre-season predictions, seven out of 16 of us had the Oilers winning the West, and two had them winning the Stanley Cup.
Edge: Oilers, and it’s not all that close.
When things are going bad, the two most painful words are “What if?” Seeing a former player lighting it up somewhere else only adds to the misery.
Senators: While the current roster struggles, they get to watch one-time Senator building blocks like Mika Zibanejad and Jakob Silfverberg blossom elsewhere. But the worst has been watching Kyle Turris fit right in as a Predator while Matt Duchene struggles in Ottawa.
Canucks: Luca Sbisa gets to be part of the fun in Vegas, and Ryan Miller‘s been fine in Anaheim. That’s about it.
Oilers: While only one is technically an ex-player, they gave the Islanders both Jordan Eberle and the draft pick that was used on Mathew Barzal. Then they get to watch those two do stuff like this:
Meanwhile, Taylor Hall looks like he’s going to lead the Devils to the playoffs.
Canadiens: Last year, it would have been P.K. Subban, who led his Predators all the way to the Stanley Cup final in his first year away from Montreal. This year, we might have to go with Mikhail Sergachev, who looks like a Calder candidate in Tampa. This time next year, Max Pacioretty.
Edge: It’s a close race, but the Canadiens take the crown on the strength of Subban just being voted an all-star captain.
In today’s NHL, a flexible cap situation can fix a lot of problems. By the same token, making a mess of the cap can doom a team to years of suffering.
Oilers: Tight, thanks to the McDavid/Draisaitl deals, not to mention big commitments to Milan Lucic and Kris Russell. Trading Ryan Nugent-Hopkins would help, and they may be forced to do just that.
Canadiens: Not all that bad, depending on how you feel about the Carey Price deal. But Karl Alzner‘s signing already looks like a mistake, and that Shea Weber contract is going to be nightmare well before it runs out in 2026.
Senators: Believe it or not, they’ve got more cap space tied up for next year than any other Canadian team by over $5 million, thanks in part to ugly deals for Bobby Ryan and Dion Phaneuf. It clears up after 2019, but only because key players like Erik Karlsson and Matt Duchene will need new contracts.
Canucks: Once again, they come out looking solid by comparison. That Loui Eriksson deal was a mistake form the day it was signed, but with both Sedin deals expiring after this season, the cap picture is actually in decent shape.
Edge: Ottawa, in a narrow upset over the Oilers, if only because at least Edmonton’s biggest deals on the books are to their best players. I’m no cap-ologist, but having the worst cap situation when you don’t even have the budget to be a cap team is not good.
Do you remember where you were one year ago this afternoon?
If you’re a hockey fan, there’s a good chance you do. That’s because today marks the one-year anniversary of the craziest 23 minutes in NHL off-season history. In less than the time it takes to deliver a pizza, NHL front offices delivered three of the biggest stories of the entire year: Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson, P.K. Subban for Shea Weber, and Steven Stamkos re-signing in Tampa.
Sports fan like to talk about days and moments that change everything, and it’s almost always hyperbole. But June 29, 2016, might qualify. We woke up thinking that certain players were untradeable, that the art of the one-for-one deal was all but dead, and that a superstar in his prime really could reach free agency and switch teams.
By the end of the day, none of those things was true anymore, along with thoughts like, “Nothing that happens in an NHL off-season could truly shock me.”
So yes, a lot changed in just 23 minutes. But a lot can change in 12 months, too, and some of the things we were left believing a year ago have evolved since. Today, let’s mark the anniversary of that wild day by comparing how things looked in the immediate aftermath of the madness compared to how they look right now.
The view a year ago: Trading P.K. Subban is the kind of thing that could come back to bite Marc Bergevin.
The view today: Trading P.K. Subban has come back to bite Marc Bergevin.
We’re not declaring winners or losers in the Subban/Weber deal yet — we’ve still got another decade or so to decide that. But when you look at everyone involved in that wild afternoon, you could make a case that nobody’s reputation has taken more of a hit than Bergevin’s.
Being the GM of the Canadiens may be one of the toughest jobs in sports, and Bergevin has been doing it for five years now, so it was inevitable that some of the shine would come off. But it wasn’t all that long ago that Bergevin was pretty darn shiny. He’d been named a finalist for GM of the Year in just his second season, and notoriously hard-to-please Montreal fans seemed cautiously optimistic about the job he was doing. He’d locked down Max Pacioretty on a fantastic deal, and got Carey Price at what turned out to be decent value. The Thomas Vanek rental hadn’t really worked, but Jeff Petry seemed like a smart pickup, and Habs fans seemed OK with the recent Andrew Shaw trade.
And then came Subban/Weber, a blockbuster so big that nothing else really seemed to matter anymore.
Many fans and analysts absolutely hated the trade, calling it a huge mistake, maybe even the worst in team history. That view was far from unanimous, and even today many Habs fans are perfectly fine with the swap.
But after watching the Canadiens make a first-round exit while the Predators rolled all the way to Cup final, everything Bergevin does is viewed through the Subban/Weber lens. And it didn’t help that it sure looked like the Habs were choosing Michel Therrien over Subban, only to fire the coach midway through the season.
By the time the 2017 trade deadline arrived and Bergevin was remaking the bottom of his roster on the fly, the skepticism was palpable, and today many Habs fans seem to be holding their breath over his attempts to trade Alexander Galchenyuk and/or acquire a top-line centre. Bergevin is facing more off-season pressure than any GM in the league, and his fan base seems a lot less willing to give him the benefit of the doubt than they were before that fateful day a year ago.
The view a year ago: The Oilers don’t know what they’re doing.
The view today: The Oilers might know what they’re doing.
Here’s the other side of the criticism coin. While Bergevin was questioned about his trade, Peter Chiarelli was outright roasted for his. The Hall trade became an immediate punchline, with a consensus forming almost instantly. The Oilers had made a huge mistake. They needed to get a bigger return. The Devils had pulled off a robbery. One so-called expert even said Edmonton had finally “worked up the nerve to talk to the pretty girl across the street, then stepped right into an open manhole cover”. (That last one was me. Look, I’m a Leafs fan — bad trades are kind of an area of expertise.)
One year later, well, it’s funny what a 103-point season and a return to the playoffs after over a decade can do to perceptions.
The NHL hit the midway mark on its schedule a few weeks ago. But for many, the true halfway point of the season is the all-star weekend. That’s the event that closes the book on the first half, and officially sends us towards the homestretch.
For some teams around the league, that’s good news. The season is going well and the roster is largely set, so bring on the playoffs. But most teams still have some work cut out for them. And those are the teams whose GMs will find themselves in the spotlight with the trade deadline just four weeks away.
Are they buying? Selling? Standing pat? If prices start rising, how long can they stay at the table before folding their hand?
And maybe even more importantly: Can they afford to be wrong?
Some of these guys have a tougher few weeks ahead of them than others. So let's take a look around the league at all 31 GMs, and figure out which ones are under the most pressure as we head towards the deadline.
We'll start with the Western Conference today; we'll be back tomorrow with the East.
The Oilers are finally headed back to the playoffs for the first time in a decade, and Chiarelli gets a big chunk of the credit for that. We can argue over how much credit he should get, but that's not really the point. He pulled off the Taylor Hall/Adam Larsson trade and landed Milan Lucic and Kris Russell, and now the Oilers are good again.
Could they be better? Sure. And you could make a case that this year's Western Conference is there for the taking, and the Oilers have as good a shot as anyone. But the team is finally headed in the right direction, and even an early exit this year wouldn't be viewed as a failure. Chiarelli can pick his spots; in the eyes of the fans, his big moves have already paid off.
Pressure rating: 2/10
In theory, Bowman won't be under much pressure at all. His Blackhawks are already good, if flawed, and they're sitting solidly in a playoff spot and still within range of the Wild for a division title. And they've won three of the last seven Stanley Cups, so nobody will be calling for his head even if the rest of the season goes bad.
Will that matter to Bowman? Probably not — he's long been one of the more aggressive GMs in the league, which is a big part of why his teams are always so good.
So sure, Bowman will probably be front and centre over the next weeks. Not because he has to, but because that's just how he operates.
Pressure rating: 3/10
The Sharks are facing what could be the end of an era, with both Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau heading to UFA status in the summer. In a perfect world, they'd load up and make one last run before losing one or both of their longest-serving players. They've got the cap room to add some help, so it will be interesting to see how Wilson plays it. But with the team playing well and no obvious weak spots in the lineup, it's unlikely to be anything major.
Pressure rating: 3/10
Sure, the team doesn't exist yet. But the league has ruled that the Golden Knights will be able to start making trades as soon as their final payment has been made, which should be in early March. That's after the trade deadline, but the types of moves the Knights will be making — those involving draft picks, prospects or expansion draft considerations — wouldn’t be affected by that.
That doesn't mean that McPhee will be pulling off any blockbusters quite yet, and he can't make any moves at all until that last check clears. But at the very least, he's going to be very busy laying the groundwork for the Knights earliest days, and the decisions he makes now could have an impact for years to come.
Pressure rating: 3/10
>> Read the full post at Sportsnet
New book:
THE 100 GREATEST PLAYERS IN NHL HISTORY (AND OTHER STUFF): AN ARBITRARY COLLECTION OF ARBITRARY LISTS
The round robin portion of the World Cup has officially hit the halfway point. And that means that for four of the eight teams, the tournament itself is half over, since they’ll be going home empty-handed once the round wraps up on Thursday night.
We don’t know which teams those are yet, and there’s still plenty of time for this year’s tournament to take a few more twists and turns. But it’s fair to say that the pressure is building. And for some of those who are front and centre in this tournament, the pressure has been higher than for others.
So today, let’s take a look some of those who find themselves under an especially bright spotlight this week. Here are the eight names who have the most to gain – or lose – from their time on the World Cup stage.
But Price is an exception. After missing most of last year with an injury, his performance in the tournament will be watched closely for any hint that he's not 100 per cent back to his old Hart Trophy form.
Fans of Team Canada will want to see him do well, although with Braden Holtby and Corey Crawford waiting in the wings, it's not make-or-break. But fans of the Montreal Canadiens will be living and dying with each shot on net, hoping that their franchise player looks like his old self.
Saturday's opening-night shutout against an overmatched Czech squad was certainly a good sign. If Price is back to his old tricks, everyone will breathe a sigh of relief. But if he struggles, even briefly, well…. Montreal fans aren't the sort to panic, right?
Honourable mentions: When Habs fans need a break from overanalyzing Price, they can overanalyze new acquisition Shea Weber. Sidney Crosby will be under the spotlight because he's Sidney Crosby. And after taking over the GM duties from two-time winner Steve Yzerman, Doug Armstrong will take plenty of heat if Canada doesn't win it all.
After Saturday's disastrous opener that saw them drop a 3-0 decision to an underdog Team Europe, the Americans are in serious danger of missing the playoffs.
The heat on the management group has been cranked up, and there's lots more to come if Team USA can't come through in a literal must-win against Canada tonight. Plenty of that will fall on the shoulders of GM Dean Lombardi, who had the final call on the roster. But Lombardi still has two Cup rings in the last four years and plenty of credibility to draw from, so he'll get at least some benefit of the doubt.
Not so for Tortorella. He may have a Cup ring of his own, but 2004 was a long time and three jobs ago, and his reputation has taken a beating in recent years.
The coach already put himself in the spotlight earlier in the tournament with his musings on the national anthem, and he made that spotlight even brighter with some odd lineup decisions, including Saturday's puzzling scratch of Dustin Byfuglien and tonight's apparent line combos.
Tortorella's hard-nosed style is well-known, and he has a team that seems to have been designed in his image. If that team turns out not to be good enough, the coach will end up wearing that.
Tortorella still has his defenders, and Team USA can silence the doubters with a big effort tonight against the team they were built to beat. But if they can't pull it off and end up going home before the final four, there will be plenty of finger-pointing to go around. And a lot of them will be aimed behind the bench.
Honourable mentions: Yet another Hab makes an appearance, as Max Pacioretty was called out by Tortorella during the exhibition round. Patrick Kane will be under plenty of pressure as the team's best player, and his ugly defensive gaffe in the opener didn't help matters.
The NHL's annual free agent frenzy opened on Friday at noon. Within hours, most of the big names were gone. By the end of the first day, only a handful of major names were left. And by the end of days two and three... well, actually, pretty much nothing happened on days two and three. Seriously, the weekend was weird. I think everyone already went on vacation. Am I the only one left? Because I don't know how to work the coffee machine.
Anyway, the slow weekend was bad news for a handful of decent players who are still available, most notably Kris Russell, Shane Doan, Matt Cullen and James Wisniewski (a latecomer to the part after being bought out the day before bidding opened). History tells us that those guys better hope they find a home soon, because as the summer wears on and cap dollars become scarce, the market dries up quickly. Maybe it already has.
Let's skip the preamble and get right to what you came for: Instantaneous declarations of winners and losers, most of which will be proven wrong by midway through training camp. Here are the five best and five worst from a busy start to the NHL's new year, along with one signing that fits both categories.
The biggest winners of the market's early days.
5. Montreal signs Alexander Radulov—What does the art of comedy have in common with infuriating the Montreal Canadiens fan base? As GM Marc Bergevin could tell you after this week, the secret is in the timing.
At any other time, signing recent KHL star and former NHL castoff Alexander Radulov to a one-year, $5.75 million deal would seem like a reasonable move, albeit a risky one. Radulov has tons of talent; he also has a history of immaturity, most famously when he was benched for a playoff game after missing curfew with the Predators in 2012. He hasn't been seen in the NHL since, heading to the KHL where he put up four solid seasons. Now he's back, and the Habs hope he's smartened up.
And maybe he has. But again, there's that issue of timing. The signing came just two days after the Canadiens shocked everyone by trading P.K. Subban, taking back an inferior, older player with a worse contract in the process. The reason, the whispers went, was character. And then the team goes out and signs the poster boy for lack of it? It's all very confusing, and Bergevin didn't do much to explain himself on Friday. You could forgive Habs fans for throwing their hands in the air and concluding that this franchise doesn't have the first clue what it actually wants.
When you search your own name on Twitter after trading PK Subban. Photo by Eric Bolte-USA TODAY Sports
But all of that overshadows an important point: This is a great deal for Montreal. Radulov is a wild card, and even if he has his head on straight, we really have no idea what he'll be in the NHL after four years away. He might not work out. But he could also be a star, the sort of first-line talent that's virtually impossible to add during an NHL offseason. And Montreal got him on a very reasonable one-year deal.
Best case, he's a monster and the Canadiens have a massive bargain to help lead them back to the playoffs. Worst case, he's a bust and you can write him off as a failed experiment that you cut your losses with without any future exposure. That looks a lot like the sort of medium-risk, high-reward deal that any team should jump on. Bergevin deserves credit, even if his timing was awful.
4. The David Backes fake out—The Bruins signed David Backes to a five-year, $30 million deal that wasn't especially remarkable. It was a little too much money and way too much term for a 32-year-old coming off his worst season in years, but it addressed a need and looked like a good fit between player and team. For a July 1 signing, it was fine.
But for a moment, it seemed like it was much more than that. When the signing first broke, it was widely but incorrectly reported as a one-year deal. Both Canadian networks covering the day's news—why yes, just like trade deadline day, NHL free agency gets covered by two full networks up here, thanks for asking—ran with the bad info, with both panels praising the Bruins for their restraint and common sense in not overcommitting to an aging player. Finally, they all agreed, some sanity. Don Sweeney is figuring this stuff out. Hey, at least it wasn't five years, right?
And then, minutes later, we found out that it was five years, and everyone just kind of looked at each other sheepishly and then changed the subject. And I laughed for about eight solid minutes.
Current standings: 15-14-1, second place in the Pacific
Estimated cap room: $1 million (assuming Ben Smith is on the LTIR)
Remember when a Patrick Marleau deal felt like a sure thing? That was only a few weeks ago, but the buzz around that move has quieted down significantly. The wide-open Pacific says Wilson should be looking to deal; the cap says he might not be able to. Either way, he tends to do most of his trading in the offseason or at the trade deadline. And history says we shouldn't expect anything over the next few weeks; he hasn't made a deal in December since 2006.
Current standings: 17-9-4, second place in the Atlantic
Estimated cap room: $600,000
You have to hand it to Sweeney -- the rookie GM certainly wasn't shy about pulling the trigger after being promoted in the offseason. He made several big trades, including those involving Dougie Hamilton, Milan Lucic and Martin Jones (twice). Granted, those deals got mixed reviews, but the key point is that Sweeney doesn't seem to have gotten the memo in his orientation package about being timid on the trade front. The only thing keeping him from ranking higher is the Bruins' tight cap and their place in the standings -- not bad enough to rebuild, not quite good enough to go try to load up.
>> Read the full post on ESPN.com (scroll down to get to entries 15 thru 1)
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