The ten types of bad contracts (and how to avoid them)

On Tuesday, San Jose Sharks defenceman Brent Burns signed an eight-year extension that will pay him $64 million and carry an $8 million cap hit.

It’s a huge contract — the biggest since Jamie Benn‘s deal this past summer and almost certainly the largest that we’ll see signed during the 2016-17 season.

But none of that really matters.

What fans want to know about the Burns contract is this: Is it a good deal or a bad one?

We can't know for sure yet, although we can already compare it to those of his peers.

The early consensus seems to point to a deal that carries a fair cap hit for a player of his caliber, but with a length that makes it a high-risk gamble on a player who'll have turned 40 by the time the contract expires. Only time will tell whether the deal ends up being worth the risk for the Sharks.

But even if the Burns deal does end up backfiring for San Jose, they'll have plenty of company. The NHL is littered with bad contracts; every team has at least a couple.

Twelve seasons into the salary cap era, you'd think general managers would be learning how to avoid some of these mistakes. But we still see them made all the time, and they usually fall into one of a few categories.

So today, let's look through those categories, and see if we can give our friends in NHL front offices some tips on avoiding them.

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THE JULY 1 MELTDOWN

The contract: This is the most obvious category, with a big chunk of the league's worst deals falling into it.

To put it simply, NHL GMs do their worst work when unrestricted free agency opens on July 1. You target a player, the bidding war starts, and next thing you know you're paying way more than you meant to.

We've actually seen a drop in truly terrible July 1 deals over the years, largely thanks to the new negotiation window that opens up a few days in advance. But we still see more mistakes made on that one day than any other.

Recent examples: Scott Gomez. Wade Redden. Danny Briere. Brad Richards. Stephen Weiss. Loui Eriksson. Andrew Ladd.

How to avoid it: Don't let anybody in the front office anywhere near a phone on July 1.

Seriously, how long will it be before some GM (or owner) makes this an official team policy? Every year, we see teams pay through the nose for players on July 1, and every year we see great bargains still sitting around a few days later for a fraction of the price.

Every GM thinks they can be the one who makes the smart deal on UFA day, but history has shown us that most of them are wrong.

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PAYING FOR INTANGIBLES

The contract: Look, intangibles exist. Just because something is hard to measure doesn't mean it's not important, and that's especially true in a sport like hockey.

Leadership matters. So does work ethic. And yes, even heart. But the waiver wire is filled with guys with plenty of heart and leadership. Paying top dollar for it rarely works out well.

Recent examples: Ryan Kesler. Ryan Callahan. Casey Cizikas.

How to avoid it: If your star player is also your hard-working leader, then great, go ahead and pay him. But if not, smart GMs will focus on pouring as much talent as possible into the core and save the intangibles for the (far cheaper) depth pieces.

If there are two mistakes on this list that can torpedo a team's cap situation, it's paying for intangibles and the July 1 meltdown. In fact, it's hard to even imagine anything worse…

Oh, hey, what's this next section…

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THE JULY 1 MELTDOWN THAT INVOLVES PAYING FOR INTANGIBLES

The contract: Oh no.

Recent examples: Dave Bolland. Deryk Engelland. Ryane Clowe. Dale Weise. Clayton Stoner. Stephane Robidas. And the worst of them all: David Clarkson.

How to avoid it: If anyone in your front office so much as utters the words "compete level" on July 1, fire them immediately.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Handing out some quarter-mark awards

Teams around the NHL have started hitting the 20-game mark, with most of the league reaching that milestone over the next few days.

That means that this is the week when we’re officially a quarter of the way into the season.

And that means three things.

First, we can stop prefacing every observation with “It’s still early, but…”

Second, it will be fun to spend the next few days making repeated references to this being the "quarter pole" just to annoy the sort of pedants who get worked up over that that kind of thing.

And third, sports writing bylaws dictate that we have to hand out some awards.

Let's take care of that last one today. We'll do the standard NHL awards, plus a few more to keep it interesting.

And we'll start with the big one.

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MOST VALUABLE PLAYER

MVP awards are always fun because we get to argue over what "value" actually means.

Is it just the best player? The guy who's most important to his team? The player with the biggest impact on the standings? Luckily, through the first quarter this year, we can go with all of the above.

Names worth considering: Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Mark Scheifele.

But the winner is… Carey Price.

The Montreal Canadiens seem like two different teams these days. There's the non-Price version, which is fine – they're 3-3-1 in games that Al Montoya starts, and other than that one disaster in Columbus, they've been competitive in all of them. The Montoya version of the Habs is OK.

But the Carey Price version is darn near unbeatable, picking up 23 of a possible 24 points in his dozen starts.

His numbers are ridiculous – his .950 save percentage is the best among full-time starters – and he hasn't shown any signs of lingering problems from last year's injury.

Mix in his dominant performance at the World Cup of Hockey, and he's entering that Dominik Hasek zone where teams feel like they'll need a shutout from their own goalie just to have a chance.

Hart voters tend to like to cast their ballots for players who put up big scoring numbers. But anyone who can single-handedly transform a team from merely mediocre to Cup favorite is an easy MVP call, so Price gets the nod here.

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BEST GOALTENDER

It goes without saying that if Price wins MVP, he'll almost certainly also take home the Vezina, too.

But for sake of argument — and to avoid just writing the same thing two sections in a row — let's pretend that he has to make room for somebody else to take the goaltending honours.

Names worth considering: Corey Crawford, Sergei Bobrovsky, Devan Dubnyk.

But the winner is… Tuukka Rask.

This one's a much closer call, and you could make a case for any of the guys listed above and probably a few more.

But Rask is putting up some of the best numbers of his career, and he's doing it on a team that most of us didn't view as anything more than an also-ran. Maybe that's all the Boston Bruins are, and Rask is just papering over a flawed lineup. But that's what you want your star goalie to do, and Rask has been up to the task so far this year.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Don't panic (yet)

Don’t panic.

It’s a phrase worth keeping in mind as you make your way through life. It’s calming, and helps keep things in perspective. Somebody should put it on the cover of a book someday.

And “don’t panic” is especially good advice when it comes to an NHL season that’s still just three weeks old. Every team in the league has over 70 games left to play, which is plenty of time to fix any flaws that may have emerged over the season’s first few matchups.

That said, we could all use a reminder every now and then. So today, let’s look at five situations around the league that have been a cause for concern, and why it might not be time to panic quite yet.

The team: Chicago Blackhawks

The panic: Their penalty killing is the worst.

Literally. It might be the worst we've ever seen. Through nine games, the Blackhawks are killing penalties at a rate of just 53 per cent. They'd been at just 50 per cent before Sunday night's performance against the Kings, the first game all season that the Hawks hadn't allowed a power-play goal. Granted, they only went 2-for-2, but hey, baby steps.

But wait: We'll start with the obvious, which is that there's simply no way the Blackhawks' penalty kill can continue to this bad. They've quite literally been historically bad, or at least as far back into history as our numbers can go. There's simply no way that a team that employs guys like Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith and Marian Hossa can be that bad over the long haul.

According to STATS, the #Blackhawks have the worst PK percentage over first 7 games as far back as STATS can go, which is 1987-88.

— Chris Hine (@ChristopherHine) October 27, 2016

But while it's tempting to just say "small sample size" and move on, the Blackhawks struggled last year too, ranking 22nd in the league. That's a big drop from the strong PK that was a big part of their championship runs as recently as 2013 and 2015. Something is going on here, and a special teams unit doesn't have to be historically bad to derail a season.

So what's happening? That's a question that seems to have stumped most observers. There doesn't appear to have been any kind of strategic shift, nor have we seen any key penalty killers leave the team. A breakdown of some of the early goals against revealed that many were coming from right on the doorstep, but didn't reveal any obvious tactical issues.

One area that does stand out is the goaltending; Corey Crawford is posting a short-handed save percentage of just .683, compared to a career average of .861. That doesn't necessarily tell us a ton, since we know that a goalie's penalty-kill save percentage is heavily influenced by how the team plays in front of him. But a nearly 200-point drop is hard to ignore, and it suggests that there may be something to the whole sample size argument.

The other good news is that the Blackhawks have one of the league's best coach-GM combos, so you'd have to figure that they find a way to make whatever changes need to be made. In the meantime, Chicago has still managed to win five of nine. That's not great, but it's good enough to keep them in the Central Division picture. You'll probably take that when a big part of your game has been historically bad.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

With the San Jose Sharks eliminating the St. Louis Blues Wednesday night and the Tampa Bay Lightning and Pittsburgh Penguins headed to a seventh game Thursday, we’re just hours away from having our Stanley Cup Final matchup set. We’ll be down to the best of the best, going head-to-head with the greatest trophy in sports on the line.

And so today, let’s do what any true hockey fan does when confronted with greatness. Let’s ignore it, and pick on the guys who weren’t quite good enough instead.

We’re going to assemble a full lineup of the biggest disappointments from the 2016 playoffs – four centres, eight wingers, six defencemen, two goalies, and even a coach and GM. And we won’t shy away from including some big names. In fact, the bigger the name the better, since high expectations bring more disappointment when they’re not met.

When you look at it that way, finding someone from your favourite team on this list could be considered a compliment, which you should definitely keep in mind before immediately heading into the comments section to call me an idiot. (You still will.)

So here we go, starting up front. (All stats are from hockey-reference.com and war-on-ice-com.)

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CENTRES

Evgeny Kuznetsov, Washington Capitals

Let's get this out of the way first: No, Alex Ovechkin, the Caps' leading playoff scorer, did not make this team.

True, as Ovechkin's critics love to point out, maybe he didn't elevate his game – by which they presumably mean he should float around three feet over the ice by sheer force of will. But he wasn't a bust, or anything close to it.

Kuznetsov, on the other hand… ouch. After leading the Capitals with 77 points in a breakout regular season, Kuznetsov was limited to just two points in two rounds of the playoffs, which works out to an average of — *tries to do math in head* — not enough.

As with many guys on our list, a lot of that was bad luck – he went from 11.4 per cent on-ice shooting across all situations during the regular season to an almost comically awful 0.9 per cent in the playoffs. That's not a player (and all of his teammates) forgetting how to play, it's random chance striking at the worst possible time. Still, for a team that was desperate to go deep, having their leading scorer go cold at exactly the wrong time stings badly.

Pavel Datsyuk, Detroit Red Wings

Yeah, I know, I don't like this any more than you do.

Heading into what was likely to be his last NHL post-season, Datsyuk had the makings of a feel-good playoff story.

Instead, the 37-year-old was held pointless as the Wings bowed out to the Tampa Bay Lightning in five. We're still not sure if he's heading home, although recent reports sure make it sound that way. If this really is the end, it wasn't the one his magnificent career deserves.

Eric Staal, New York Rangers

When the Rangers acquired Staal at the deadline, everyone cautioned that expectations should be reasonable. This wasn't the 2006 version of Staal, after all. New York was getting a guy on the wrong side of 30 who was having a tough season. And the relatively cheap price they paid reflected that – for once, they didn't even give up a first round pick.

But even given all that, they had to be hoping that a change of scenery and chance to play on a potential Cup contender would give Staal some sort of boost. Instead, they got six points in 20 regular season games and none at all in their first round loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins. The bar was low; Staal sailed well under it.

Claude Giroux, Philadelphia Flyers

Typically, a one-point post-season from one of the league's best offensive players would be enough to earn a spot at the very top of the list. But given the injuries Giroux was battling, we'll bump him down to fourth-line duties. That will keep Flyers fans happy, right?

[Gets pelted with souvenir bracelets.]

Thought so.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Weekend report: Trade deadline preview

Faceoff: Deadline day arrives

Welcome to the only Monday morning anyone will be happy to see all year.

At least, I hope it's Monday morning. Things move fast on trade deadline day, and if you're only reading this in the early afternoon then half of what you're about to see will be obsolete. If it's Monday evening, forget it. (But feel free to read on, then tell me how wrong I was about everything.)

After an unusually quiet run up to deadline week, we finally saw some action over the weekend. Stan Bowman got his shopping done early, landing Jets captain Andrew Ladd in a major deal on Thursday and then stocking his roster with reinforcements by adding Dale Weise, Tomas Fleischmann and Christian Ehrhoff.

The Ladd deal was pricey, coming at the cost of a first-round pick and a top prospect, but the Hawks are clearly in win-now mode and it's a testament to Bowman's cap management skills that he had room to add as much as he did without being forced to pay someone to take Bryan Bickell's deal off his hands. (Of course, if he did find a taker for Bickell's deal today, he could add even more, which has to be a scary thought for the teams below.)

Other deals soon followed. The Panthers were a mild surprise as the next team to load up, making three deals on Saturday to bring in Jiri Hudler, Terry Purcell and Jakub Kindl. The Penguins rolled the dice on Justin Schultz, who'd never lived up to expectations in Edmonton but could give Pittsburgh's powerplay a nice boost. The Blues added some goaltending depth by sending a pick and a prospect to the Oilers for Anders Nilsson, and the Sharks did the same by landing James Reimer.

The Blackhawks have already done some major lifting, highlighted by the Ladd deal. —Photo Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

That set the stage for Sunday's big deal, which saw the Hurricanes send captain Eric Staal to the Rangers for two second-round picks and prospect Aleksi Saarela. It's yet another big midseason move for the Rangers, who've made a habit of making these sorts of deals over the years. This one came relatively cheap—they didn't give up a first-round pick, and Saarela is a good prospect but far from a sure thing—and the Hurricanes retained half of Staal's salary to make the dollars work.

So are any names left on the market? Not as many as you'd like if you're a TV producer putting together a full day's worth of coverage, but deadline day is always busy. Several teams still haven't made moves, or at least not the kind of moves they'd like to, and there are always a few unexpected names that shake loose in the final hours. One way or another, today should be busy.

To mark the occasion, we'll dispense with the usual power rankings this week. Why bother, really, given that both the league's best and worst teams figure to look a lot different by the end of the day. Instead, let's borrow the format to take a look at the remaining buyers and sellers under the most pressure as the clock ticks down.

The buyers

The five contenders with the most work to do today.

Now that Bowman and the Hawks have set the goalposts, the league's other top contenders have some work to do to catch up—or to explain to frustrated fan bases why they chose not to.

5. Washington Capitals

On the one hand, they're already an excellent team—one that would go into the playoffs as the Eastern Conference's prohibitive favourite even if they didn't add anyone at all. On the other, the entire season has been played under a cloud of "Yeah, but..." as fans wait to see whether this is all just a setup for yet another chapter of playoff heartbreak. This is quite possibly the best team in franchise history, and that makes the question of how big a move to make a tricky one.

So what do you do if you're Brian MacLellan? Adding Mike Weber last week was a depth move, but he doesn't qualify as a major piece and the loss of John Carlsson to the IR and last night's Brooks Laich trade creates enough cap room to add something. The Caps were heavily rumoured to be in on Ladd, which suggests that one of the other top wingers could be a fallback.

The team is good enough that MacLellan could probably get away with standing pat, using the old "Don't want to disrupt the room" standby. You'd figure that Caps fans, antsy as they are, would accept that today. But check with them in June—or earlier—and they may have a different view.

4. Los Angeles Kings

They've added Rob Scuderi, but you'd figure they're not done yet. No GM has had more deadline success than Dean Lombardi, who has twice pulled off major trades that helped pave the way to Stanley Cup wins. Last year's Andrej Sekera deal didn't work out so well, and Lombardi doesn't have a first rounder or much cap space to work with. They already picked up Kris Versteeg, but the Kings may feel pressure to do something more, especially if we see reinforcements headed to our next team...

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Grab bag: Trade rumors, CATLAGs, and Patrick Roy vs. the Wings

In this week's Friday grab bag:
- Your favorite team might trade a guy, but will they get something in return?
- Introducing the CATLAG player, the deadline's most inescapable storyline
- An obscure player gets traded for Wayne Gretzky
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a look back at a classic highlight of the greatest rivalry of all-time

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Five high-risk high-reward trade deadline options

Every trade made by an NHL GM involves an element of risk.

Maybe you get caught up in a bidding war and end up paying more than you wanted to. Maybe the guy you acquire blows out his knee on his first shift. Maybe that fifth-round draft pick you throw in ends up being used on a future all-star, and your fans never let you hear the end of it.

But some deals are riskier than others. And as we approach this year’s deadline, GMs looking to minimize that uncertainty will have plenty of options. Guys like Loui Eriksson or Jiri Hudler won’t come cheap, but if you land one them at least you’re going to feel pretty confident that you know what you’re getting.

That makes it easier to gauge just how much risk you’re taking on, and narrows the gap between your realistic best and worst case scenarios. Nobody’s ever a sure thing in this league, but certain players feel like safer bets than others.

On the other hand, some of the players who could be on the move over the next few days fall solidly into what you could call the high-risk, high-reward category. They’re the sort of players who could turn out to be steals, the kind of acquisitions that shift the balance of power. They could also end up being overpriced busts who get their new GMs fired.

Are you feeling lucky?

Here are five names from this year’s rumour mill who could represent big risks – and big opportunities – as we head towards the deadline.

Eric Staal

Best case: Based on name value, Staal may be the biggest star available at this year’s deadline. He’s a four-time all-star who’s had a 100-point season and once topped 70 points for seven straight years. Nobody else rumoured to be on the block has that sort of resume. And at 31 years old, he’s not so far removed from his best years that it’s not hard to imagine him finding that magic again, at least for a few months.

It’s no sure thing that the Hurricanes will move him, since they’re still hanging around the Eastern Conference playoff picture, and he also has a no-trade clause. But if he was made available, teams will be interested. It’s hard to resist the idea of a change of scenery and a chance at another Stanley Cup, reinvigorating a guy who’s looked like a potential Hall-of-Famer for long stretches of his career.

If you’re a contender looking to give your Top 6 some marquee value, Staal is the swing-for-the-fences play.

Worst case: The resume is impressive, sure, but there’s a whole lot of past tense in there. Staal isn’t having an especially impressive season, recording just nine goals and 31 points. And those numbers are probably flattering. Since Jan. 1, he’s managed just a single goal to go with six assists. That’s not much to get excited about, especially when it comes with an $8.25 million cap hit and (presumably) a high price to pry him out of Carolina.

Elite talent wins championships, and Staal has been one over the course of his career. But he hasn’t looked like it recently, and it’s not hard to imagine some team looking back and regretting how they overpaid to get a big name instead of big numbers.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Weekend report: Lightning drama, Habs hope, and the Jets need a miracle

Faceoff: Lightning rods of controversy

If you were going purely by the off-ice headlines, you could be forgiven for assuming the Lightning were a franchise in disarray. These days, it seems as if the only weeks that don't bring a new crisis in Tampa are the ones that bring an escalation of an existing one instead.

Start with the ongoing Steven Stamkos saga, which continues to drag on with little evidence of progress beyond the occasional lowball offer. With Anze Kopitar's extension with the Kings now signed and sealed, the lack of a Stamkos deal stands out even more. Until something gets done, fans will be left wondering if the Lightning might be forced to trade their superstar captain—a scenario that already played out once before in Tampa, just two years earlier, with Martin St. Louis.

But the Stamkos situation has been overshadowed this month by the drama around Jonathan Drouin, the talented 20-year-old who's yet to really break through at the NHL level. It's probably fair to go ahead and describe Drouin as an ex-Lightning now, after he walked away from the team's AHL affiliate last week in an attempt to force a trade. What remains to be seen is where he ends up, and how long general manager Steve Yzerman decides to make him wait before it happens.

In the meantime, Drouin is getting at least lukewarm support from his former teammates, including Victor Hedman, the star defenceman who'll need a new contract and big raise of his own next year (and who's represented by the same agency, though not the same agent, that handles Drouin). Between St. Louis, Stamkos/Drouin and Hedman, we may be looking at the ghost of Lightning headaches past, present and future.

So sure, it's tough times for the Lightning—right up until they take the ice. The team has been on fire lately, winning seven straight heading into the weekend and moving to within three points of the lead in the Atlantic. After a slow start that dragged on through the season's first two months, the Lightning suddenly look like the team that went to the final last year, not to mention the team that plenty of us were picking as Stanley Cup favourites.

That win streak came to an end Saturday, when the Lightning dropped a 5-2 decision to the Panthers in an entertaining game that featured plenty of action at both ends. The loss leaves the Lightning tied with the Red Wings for second place in the Atlantic, five back of Florida for the division lead. Not bad for a team that was tenth in the conference less than three weeks ago and out of the playoffs entirely.

And as for the off-ice drama, it could still all work out in the team's favor. Yzerman insists that he'll be able to extract maximum value for Drouin even while his hand is largely being forced, and given how the St. Louis situation turned out, we tend to believe him. As for Stamkos, the Lightning's recent surge probably quiets some of the trade talk that would have otherwise built toward the deadline. After all, if the sniper really is set on hitting free agency, who'd be most willing to sacrifice the future to have him aboard for a stretch drive and playoff push? Only an elite team that had the talent to take a serious run at a Stanley Cup—and right now, that description sounds a lot like the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Race to the Cup

The five teams with the best shot at winning the Stanley Cup.

5. Florida Panthers (28-15-5, +19 true goals differential)—After losing four straight, they spent the weekend posting convincing wins over both the Hawks and Lightning to re-establish their top-tier credentials.

4. Dallas Stars (30-14-5, +28)—They dominated everywhere but the scoreboard in dropping a 3-1 decision to the Avalanche on Saturday. Still, they flip spots with the Kings for a very good reason.

3. Los Angeles Kings (30-15-3, +17)—Is that reason "So we could avoid having the exact same top five as last week?" Cannot confirm or deny.

>> Read the full post at Vice.com

Things just got interesting in Winnipeg

In a league where the best of the best monopolize most of the attention, there aren’t many sixth-place teams that could be described as “fascinating.” The Winnipeg Jets are becoming the exception that proves the rule.

The Jets are a deep team, one that’s stacked with young players at both the NHL level and beyond. They have an excellent blue line and an underrated cast of forwards. They have the talent to beat any team in the league on any given night, and they’ve already notched wins over the New York Rangers and Chicago Blackhawks. They’re a darn good team.

They’re also in the Central Division, where “darn good” isn’t good enough. At 10-9-2, they’ve banked 10 ROWs and 22 points, which would be good for third in the Pacific. In the Central, that leaves them sixth, looking up at five excellent teams, none of whom seem likely to have the sort of extended cold streak that would allow a team chasing them to gain big ground. A recent six-game losing streak appeared to have the Jets in danger of falling out of the hunt entirely, even before the calendar flipped to December.

>> Read the full post on ESPN.com

The return of the Whiteout

You have to be careful about trusting hockey fans. We’re generally an honest and principled bunch — call it the Canadian influence — but we’ve been conditioned to lie pathologically about certain subjects. My favorite player never dives. (Yes he does, all the time.) Our gimmicky anthem singer is endearing. (No, he’s really not.) Montreal Canadiens ceremonies are always the best. (Only most of them.)

And there’s no bigger hockey lie at this time of year than this one: “the loudest building in the NHL.” That’s because, come playoff time, virtually every building in the league gets that designation from someone, somewhere. It’s become an annual tradition around the hockey world, this daily anointing of some random town as the loudest building in the league, simply because the fans finally bothered to show up and make some noise for a change. There’s nothing quite like sitting in a press box watching tweets scroll by about how noisy it is while thinking, Wait, did I show up at the wrong building? Because it’s not that loud in here.

And so I went into last night’s heavily anticipated Ducks-Jets game in Winnipeg, the first NHL playoff game played in the city in 19 years, fully prepared for noise. I was expecting noise, even hoping for it. But I also came in carrying along a good dose of prove-it-to-me cynicism. And I held on to that cynicism right up until the moment it melted out of my ears and trickled down onto my shoulders, along with what used to be my eustachian tubes and an undetermined number of brain cells. That moment came midway through pregame warm-ups.

Good lord, Jets fans. Maybe ease it up just a bit. Some of us might want to go home and hear our children’s laughter again someday.

This was the sound of one town unleashing almost two decades of pent-up … I’m not even sure what the right word would be. What’s it called when relief and happiness and civic pride become indistinguishable from primal rage? Whatever it is, it was that. A whole lot of that.

And with the noise came the return of one of hockey’s greatest sights: the whiteout. The real one, not the Phoenix version or one of the various other rip-offs out there. We can argue over whether the Jets invented it,¹ but there’s no doubt they’ve perfected it. In the years since the last playoff game in Winnipeg, the concept has been borrowed and repackaged by dozens of teams in various sports, almost always supplemented by free T-shirts left on seats by corporate sponsors, all the better to awkwardly pull over a suit jacket. Not in Winnipeg. They don’t do freebies here. They bring their own white shirts. And pants. And hats, and shoes, and wigs, and face paint, and you name it. I’m pretty sure I saw one guy in a hazmat suit. Leading up to the game, Jets fans’ biggest concern was about whether the team’s white jerseys were white enough.²

And so, 19 years after the original Jets fled to Phoenix, four years after the lowly Atlanta Thrashers moved north to be reborn as Jets 2.0, and two games after the Jets and Ducks kicked off their first-round series, the playoffs had come back to Winnipeg.

Oh, right, the Anaheim Ducks. That’s where this whole feel-good story is going to get a little rough around the edges. The Ducks finished the season with the West’s best record for the second consecutive year.³ With a surprisingly weak Pacific Division fading below them, they feel very much like a Cup-or-bust team, certainly not the kind that would accept losing to a mere wild-card crossover like the Jets.

And through the first two games, the Ducks looked the part. Both times, the Jets held a lead in the third period. Both times, the Ducks roared back to win in regulation. Anaheim came into Monday without having even played its best game but was still just a win away from all but ending the series. It was also the West’s best road team, so if anyone could come into Winnipeg and steal one, it should be the Ducks.

But still, that crowd. Players and coaches had talked about its impact earlier in the day. Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau predicted the fans would be “rabid,” adding, “we hope it’s not too intimidating.” He seemed to be only half-joking. Jets coach Paul Maurice talked about Winnipeg fans coming up to him in the streets to say thank you, and how he felt like a teacher who’d finally helped struggling kids turn their grades around. Winnipeg captain Andrew Ladd said everyone would be excited to see the crowd’s reaction — “It’s going to give us some energy,” he said, before adding, “we’ll see if we use it the right way.”

In the first, there was plenty of energy available to be used. The crowd cheered icings and offsides like most crowds cheer big hits. They cheered big hits like most crowds cheer goals. And they cheered goals, well, they cheered goals like Jets fans cheer goals. Sorry, that’s where the comparison breaks down.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Countdown to opening night: Remaining offseason tasks for the Winnipeg Jets

And nine months later, a beautiful
leafy-airplane baby was born.

The Winnipeg Jets took their latest step in their NHL rebirth on Friday when they released their much anticipated logo. After months of speculation, fans now have a visual representation of Canada's newest team.

The logo was just the latest step in a long process that began in May when the rumoured relocation of the Atlanta Thrashers became reality. Since then the Jets have sold thousands of season tickets, announced their team name, made their first draft picks, hired a new GM and coaching staff, and resigned captain Andrew Ladd.

That's an impressive start, but there's still more to do. Getting a NHL team up and running is a daunting job, and with less than two months until training camp the Jets still have plenty of outstanding items left on their checklist. Here's a sample of some of the work the team still has to do before they hit the ice.

• Create a promotional DVD to get fans excited about young star Evander Kane, which shouldn't take long since it just needs to be a clip of the Matt Cooke fight on a 90-minute loop.
  
  
• Organize some sort of orientation for lifelong Atlanta Thrasher players who will be now dealing with issues they've never faced before such as a harsh climate, Canadian tax laws, and fans.
  
  
• Figure out some way to make ice in time for the home opener on October 9th, since every flat surface in Winnipeg isn't normally covered in several inches of ice until October 15th.
  
  
• File the paperwork to have that playground near the arena renamed "Hey Bryzgalov, enjoy getting booed and pelted with batteries in Philadelphia" Memorial Park.
  

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