Grab Bag: Awards thoughts, MLB lessons and the 1994 Rangers visit David Letterman

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- My spies have the scoop on what the voters really thought about all your favorite awards candidates
- A lesson hockey can learn from this MLB mess
- An obscure player who could have been an off-brand all-star
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube look back at the 1994 Rangers celebrating their Cup win in a David Letterman top ten

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Grab Bag: The great goalie equipment debate of 2018 (and 1998)

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Goalies don't like the new equipment rules, and think the changes are unsafe. OK. So now what?
- What may be my most petty Trivial Annoyance ever
- An obscure player with a ridiculously fake name
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a look back on the NHL's 1998 goalie summit, where they can really close to almost kind of doing something about the equipment

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

Five forgotten expansion draft picks

Now that the Vegas Golden Knights have a name, a logo, and a future head coach, everyone is turning their attention to June's expansion draft. Who will the Knights end up with? Matt Murray? Jakob Silfverberg? Trevor van Riemsdyk? Maybe even an established veteran who waives a no-movement clause, like Dion Phaneuf or Rick Nash?

Those are all reasonably big names, and if the Golden Knights wound up picking any of them, you'd think it would make for a memorable moment.

Then again, maybe not. You see, sometimes NHL expansion teams end up taking big name players, and everyone just kind of forgets about it. That's because there's no guarantee that any player taken by an expansion team will ever actually play for that expansion team.

So today, let's take a look back at five fairly big names that have been called at expansion drafts of the past, and how they managed to avoid ever actually suiting up for the fledgling franchises that chose them.

Tim Kerr, 1991

Early NHL expansion drafts of the 60s and 70s were fairly standard. A handful of good players were picked, including names like Terry Sawchuk, Glenn Hall and Bernie Parent. But for the most part, the established teams didn't offer much in the way of talent, and the expansion franchises patched together a team with whatever they could find. That's why most of the early expansion teams were awful.

But by the time the second wave of expansion had hit in the 1990s, the new teams were willing to get a little more creative. Oh, they'd still be awful. But they realized that just because they drafted a player didn't mean they had to keep him, and it became common to see trades worked out as soon as the expansion draft was over (and sometimes even sooner).

Take the 1991 draft, for example. That was the weird expansion/dispersal hybrid that featured the San Jose Sharks and the Minnesota North Stars, which we covered in some depth over the summer. The most famous weird pick from that draft was the very last one, in which the North Stars picked quasi-retired Hall of Famer Guy Lafleur because they didn't want any Quebec Nordiques and the rules wouldn't allow them to pass. But another well-known sniper was also taken that day.

That would be Tim Kerr, a four-time 50-goal scorer for the Flyers who'd been slowed down by injuries. By 1991, he hadn't put together a full season in four years. But he was still scoring at well over a point-per-game pace when he did play, and seemed like the sort of guy who could be a good gamble for a contender.

The Sharks weren't a contender, but the Rangers were. And so the Sharks grabbed Kerr off of the Flyer's unprotected list, and then immediately flipped him to the Rangers in exchange for Brian Mullen. It was a smart deal for San Jose; Mullen ended up being their second-leading scorer in their debut season. It worked out worse for the Rangers, as Kerr struggled through another injury-shortened year before being dealt to Hartford.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

NHLPA ready to rumble over McCabe

I wrote a post last month about whether we'd see Bryan McCabe sent home by the Leafs. I warned against the idea because, as much as I'd like to see the guy brought down a peg or two, it wouldn't be a good long term business move for the Leafs.

Well, Howard Berger had an excellent column yesterday that confirmed my fears. Berger asked new NHLPA director of player affairs Glenn Healy for this thoughts on the Leafs possible stance.

The entire thing should be mandatory reading for any Leaf fan who thinks Fletcher should play hardball, but here are some choice quotes.

"They do not have the right to destroy Bryan McCabe’s career. They gave him as restrictive a contract as there is in the NHL today. If they want to go to the most extreme of situations and tell him they will pay him to stay at home, the artillery will be released from our end. The P.A. will back Bryan to the grave, I guarantee it.”

“Bryan McCabe has lots of hockey left, and the Toronto Maple Leafs are not going to tell him to stay at home… not a chance... You can’t destroy a player’s craft by sitting him at home and basically telling him, ‘your career is over.’ That type of action would be something for the legal minds at the P.A. to deal with...

With that type of a welcome mat, I can’t see why there isn’t a rush for all the free agents in the world to come and sign with the hockey club. I mean, that’s just a wonderful way to treat a player...

But, there will be absolutely no limit to what the Players’ Association will try to throw at [the Leafs]. We’ll go at it hard."

If you're a Leaf fan, that last line should scare you. I don't claim to be fluent in Healey-ese, but when he says there's "absolutely no limit" to what the PA would do, I get very nervous.

Would the PA actively discourage future free agents from signing in Toronto? We know that the PA has leaned on players in the past to make sure they got maximum value on their deals. Would they try to keep top players out of Toronto as retribution for McCabe's treatment.

Is it really worth it for the Leafs to find out?