Remembering the supplemental draft, the entry draft's weird and short-lived cousin

Hockey history nerds: Are you all ready for the big anniversary? Got your balloons, streamers, and wall-length banners reading “Happy 37th”?

Literally everyone else: It’s OK that you have no idea what I’m talking about. You’re about to learn something, and while I can’t promise it will be educational or enriching, it will be weird.

This coming Sunday marks 37 years since the debut of a brief and essentially forgotten piece of the NHL offseason known as the supplemental draft. Not to be confused with the far more well-known entry draft (or the equally forgotten waiver draft), the supplemental draft was a special event specifically for college players. Not all of them, mind you, but we’ll get to that.

Of course, this being the NHL, even the simplest concepts inevitably go sideways. So as we get ready to celebrate the anniversary, let’s remember (and/or learn for the first time) 10 fun facts about the old supplemental draft.

1. The concept was relatively straightforward

So what was the supplemental draft? Basically, it was a way to assign the NHL rights of college players who were too old for the standard entry draft.

The supplemental draft was first established for the 1986 offseason. To be eligible, a player would have to be 21 or older and undrafted, with at least a year of college play but no professional experience. In its original form, the draft would last two rounds, with the first open only to non-playoff teams and the second open to everyone.

Simple enough, you might think. But why have the draft at all? And specifically, why suddenly implement it in the mid-80s, years after all the other draft rules had already been established?

Well, about that…

2. The draft was born because one team was annoying everyone

As with most things in life, the problem starts with the Detroit Red Wings.

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Who wins, a team of coaches who coached their own team or those that never did?

NHL teams love hiring former players as coaches. You could argue that makes perfect sense, since nobody is better suited to understand the details of the game than somebody who spent years learning it up close. You could also argue that this is just more evidence of hockey’s old boys club, with the same names recycling through the league because their buddies keep hiring them. Whichever side you’re on, you could certainly find a few coaching stints that would support your view.

Today, we’re going to try a different angle, with a pair of rosters made up of modern-era NHL stars who became coaches. Who you got: Guys who went on to coach one of their former teams, or guys who coached elsewhere?

I kind of love this concept, because in theory it shouldn’t be close. We’re talking about an era with more than 20 franchises, so even if the average star suits up for a few teams in their career, the odds are solidly stacked against the “own team” side. The numbers are just overwhelmingly against them. But of course, we know it won’t work out that way, because star players always seem to wind up coaching the same team they played for.

Or do they? It’s not universal, and you can probably already think of one star who’s going to wind up on the “other teams” squad that could tilt the balance. I’m genuinely curious how this will turn out.

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What’s the best roster you could make out of NHL stars who were clearly not the best player in history to have those initials?

What’s the best possible roster you could make out of NHL stars who were clearly not the best player in league history to have those initials? Let’s find out!

A few ground rules:

• We’re going to let hockey-reference.com be our guide on the question of the “best” players. This turns out to be deceptively simple since their search engine defaults to sorting by a player’s importance. I think this is based largely (but not entirely) on point shares, which isn’t a perfect stat but will work well enough for our purposes. We search for a set of initials, and the first result that matches them is the best player and can’t be on our roster.
• Except … I know this is all subjective, but I did run into a few cases where the search engine was just wrong, or at least where it felt like the top two guys were too close to call. When that happens, I reserve the right to overrule the site and disqualify a player we could otherwise use. This will make things harder, but it also means I won’t have to wade through 100 comments from people who think I took the easy way out because Mats Sundin is clearly better than Martin St. Louis no matter what some computer says. Remember, we said “clearly not the best,” so we only want guys where there’s no real case to be made that they could be at the top of their list.
• Active players are in play, but we only get credit for what they’ve done in their careers so far. Connor McDavid has two Art Ross trophies, but with less than 500 career points might not make the roster yet. (And he’s already the best C.M. in league history, so we couldn’t use him anyway.)
• We’re using whatever was considered a player’s most common name during their playing days.
• We’re filling out a 20-man roster with four centers, four right wings, four left wings, six defensemen and a goalie.

Sounds like fun? (Crickets chirp.) Awesome, let’s do this!

We’ll start with the obvious problem: By definition, we’re not going to be able to use any of the NHL’s true all-time greats. Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Mario Lemieux … they’re all out.

That applies to pretty much all of the second tier too. It would be nice if a pair of top 10 players had been considerate enough to double up on initials, but that doesn’t really happen. There isn’t an NHL equivalent to the NBA’s Michael Jordan/Magic Johnson combo.

Well, except for maybe one: Who’s the best player in NHL history to have the initials D.H.?

That’s a tough one. You could make a case for Dominik Hasek, who might be the best goaltender of all-time. But there’s also Doug Harvey, who won seven Norris Trophies in eight years and was almost universally ranked as the best defenseman ever during the pre-Bobby Orr era.

I’d lean to Hasek, but the hockey-reference results go with Harvey. It’s a tough one because whichever way I go I’m going to have a big chunk of hockey fans mad at me. So I’m not going to pick at all, and instead, declare this one a tie – neither Hasek nor Harvey clearly fit our criteria, so neither can make our team.

The good news is that the D.H. listing still offers some possibilities, including Dany Heatley and Dale Hunter. But I’m going to go with 1980s legend Dale Hawerchuk, who can’t lay claim to a place in Hasek or Harvey’s tier but will slot in nicely as one of our centers.

And while we’re building from the middle, we should grab another obvious choice: Adam Oates, who brings us 1,400 points and a reputation as one of the greatest setup men of all time but still can’t get near the A.O. title when Alexander Ovechkin is around.

Let’s fill in a few more forward spots. Jean Beliveau is a consensus top-10 player of all-time, which means we can safely grab 500-goal man Johnny Bucyk at LW. And we find another strong LW choice in former MVP Taylor Hall, who’s available thanks to the 24-year career of Hall-of-Famer Tim Horton.

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Grab Bag: Trade deadline rumors, when goalies get traded and breaking down some awkward NHL ads

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The DGB spies report in on all the trade deadline news from around the league
- An idea for goalies who get traded
- An obscure player who fits the theme of the day
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a look back at the NHL's awkward mid-90s ad campaign of "all our stars are huge jerks"

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The story behind the Hall of Famer who played the fewest games for your favorite team

The Hockey Hall of Fame welcomed six new members this week, including three men in the player’s category. So congratulations to Sergei Zubov of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Vaclav Nedomansky of the New York Rangers and Guy Carbonneau of the St. Louis Blues.

OK, maybe those aren’t the teams you associate with those guys. But I’ve always been kind of fascinated by legendary players who briefly show up on weird teams. It always just looks wrong. You might even forget about those stints altogether. If you’re a new fan, maybe you’ve never heard that it happened.

So today, let’s say goodbye to another year of Hall of Fame festivities with a simple question: Which Hall of Fame player spent the least amount of time with your favorite team?

In some cases, the answer might seem easy. In others, we’ll have to dig a little. There are two teams that have never had a single Hall of Famer at all, one of which is obvious (Vegas) and one of which we’ll get to in a bit. Take a minute and see if you can figure out the answer for your favorite team before you read any further.

To be clear on the ground rules, we’re looking for guys who were inducted into the Hall of Fame as a player; no builders or other off-ice types who happened to have a cup of coffee in the big leagues. They have to have played for the team, not just worked there in the front office or behind the bench, and we’re looking at regular season games only. And we’re of course looking for somebody who played at least one game, so apologies in advance to everyone who was going to answer “Vladislav Tretiak” or something equally clever. We’ll be using the invaluable hockey-reference.com franchise histories, because I already spend eight hours a day on that site, so what’s a few more?

Do you have your guess for your favorite team, and maybe a few others in your back pocket? Think you’ve figured out the identity of that one non-Vegas franchise that’s never had even one Hall of Famer? Want to take a crack at the one outlier team that’s had multiple Hall of Famers, but somehow never a single one who played fewer than 500 games? And can you figure out which players will manage to show up as the fewest games “leader” for multiple teams?

Then let’s dive in. We’ll do this alphabetically.

Anaheim Ducks

The Ducks are a good team to start with, since they demonstrate the concept. You might think of Chris Pronger or Scott Niedermayer, but they both played several seasons in Anaheim. You probably remember Sergei Fedorov’s 85-game stopover, but maybe not Jari Kurri’s 82. But the winner here is a guy who dropped by for one season near the end of his career: Adam Oates, who had a forgettable 67-game regular season in 2002-03 but helped the team to a surprising playoff run that spring.

For what it’s worth, those 67 games from Oates will end up being one of the higher totals we’ll see on this list. Our next team can hit the under on that score by a decent margin.

Arizona Coyotes

The Coyotes have been a popular destination for veterans on the tail-end of their careers, and that’s even if we don’t count quasi-retired stars like Pronger and Pavel Datsyuk who wound up on the roster as cap-related paper transactions. Mike Gartner might come to mind, but he lasted two seasons. None of Owen Nolan, Tony Amonte or Curtis Joseph are in the Hall, at least not yet. But even if they were, they couldn’t beat out our easy winner: Brett Hull, who lasted just five games in a post-lockout comeback attempt in 2005 before abruptly calling it quits.

You might figure that it will be a while before we find a team that can undercut Hull’s total. As it turns out, we don’t have to wait long at all …

Boston Bruins

As you might expect, the Original Six teams do well on this scale; they just have more history to draw from. In Boston’s case, that history includes two Hall of Famers who played over 1,400 games for the franchise in Ray Bourque and Johnny Bucyk. It also included far briefer stopovers at the other of the scale, from guys like Mark Recchi (180), Sprague Cleghorn (109), Brian Leetch (61) and Paul Coffey (18). But you’ve got to keep scrolling all the way down to Sylvio Mantha, a Hall of Fame defenseman who played 13 seasons with Montreal in the 1920s and 1930s and then four games with the Bruins at the very end of his career.

Buffalo Sabres

The Sabres have a couple of classic “Oh, I forgot they had that guy” names, including Doug Gilmour (82 games) and Clark Gillies (86). But the winner here is Dick Duff, whose two partial seasons with the expansion Sabres in 1970-71 and 1971-72 add up to 61 games, narrowly beating out Grant Fuhr’s 64.

Calgary Flames

You might be expecting to see Brett Hull stake his claim as our first repeat winner here, and his 57 games puts him in the running, ahead of Martin St. Louis’s 69. But the winner, for now at least, is Grant Fuhr, whose 23 games in 1999-2000 take the crown. That “for now” is important, though, since Jaromir Jagr’s 22 games will steal the spot as soon as he goes in – unless Curtis Joseph and his nine games can sneak in before that.

Carolina Hurricanes

Are we counting the Whalers here? I’ll leave that call to Canes fans. If we are, then it’s Bobby Hull’s nine-game stint on the 1979-80 team that also featured Gordie Howe (80), Mark Howe (213) and Dave Keon (234). If you’d prefer to keep it in Carolina, we can go with Mark Recchi’s 20 games after coming over at the 2006 deadline.

Chicago Blackhawks

Another Original Six team means plenty of options, including Coffey (10), Lionel “Big Train” Conacher (48) and maybe most notably, Bobby Orr (26) and Dominik Hasek (25). But the crown here goes to Barney Stanley, a star from the pre-NHL days who was inducted based on his career in the PCHA but who appeared in his only NHL game with Chicago while coaching the team in 1927-28. If you’d prefer a player who was inducted based on his NHL career, we could also use the delightfully named Herb Gardiner, who won the Hart in 1926-27 with the Canadiens before appearing in just four games with the Hawks a few years later.

Colorado Avalanche

The Avs have had a few short stints by notable names, including the ill-fated 2003-04 duo of Teemu Selanne (78) and Paul Kariya (51). Their most famous temporary star was undoubtedly Ray Bourque, who stuck around for 94 games. But the winner here is a guy who tagged along in that famous Bourque trade – Dave Andreychuk and his 14 games.

Columbus Blue Jackets

Admit it, the Blue Jackets were your prime suspect for that other team that had never had a HHOFer, weren’t they? They’re close, since they’ve had only one. But let’s not forget the Sergei Fedorov era, which lasted parts of three seasons and 185 games.

Dallas Stars

Eric Lindros is probably the biggest name that comes to mind, at 49 games. Mike Gartner shows up too, with 80, as long as we’re counting the North Stars days. But we can aim way lower than that and find Sergei Makarov, a Russian star whose seven seasons in the NHL included 134 goals, the 1990 Calder Trophy and four whole games with Dallas in 1996.

Detroit Red Wings

Hoo boy. The Red Wings aren’t just an Original Six team, they’re the franchise that specializes in squeezing one last year out of other team’s franchise players. You might be thinking of names like Mike Modano (40), Borje Salming (49), Darryl Sittler (61) or Bernie Federko (73) here. But none of them end up coming all that close. Instead, it’s Doug Harvey, the five-time Norris winner who sadly did not earn the honor based on either of his two games as a Red Wing in 1966-67.

Edmonton Oilers

Edmonton’s a bit of a strange one, since it’s usually longtime Oilers who end up making brief appearances with other teams late in their career. There’s also the Chris Pronger factor; he stuck around for 80 games. But they’re notable here for giving us our first repeat winner: Adam Oates doubles down on his Ducks honors thanks to spending the final 60 games of his career in Edmonton.

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The NHL's Kobes: Ten legends who held on too long

The big sports story of the weekend: Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant announced that this will be his final season. He made the announcement Sunday, then went out and had the chance to tie the game on a dramatic, last-second shot. It did not go well.

That has led to plenty of talk about how Bryant has held on too long. You never want to say a player should have retired before he or she was ready -- after all, their job is to play. And if someone is still willing to pay them to do it, they're under no obligation to go out on our terms. But it's probably fair to see that some players' final years end up being, um, slightly below peak productivity. Yes, let's go with that.

That's true for the NHL, too, of course. Sometimes, a legendary player ends his career with an exclamation point. And sometimes, the end comes as more of an ellipsis, trailing off into an awkward silence, followed by a shrug and a "never mind."

So, in an effort to make Kobe feel better about how things are ending, here are 10 examples of NHL legends whose final seasons didn't quite meet the high standards they'd established over the rest of their careers.

Brett Hull

It's fun to remember him as: Perhaps the greatest pure goal scorer the league has ever seen.

So let's forget the part where: ... he tried to hang on for one more post-lockout year with the Arizona Coyotes.

In his prime, Hull was the answer to the question "What would happen if a guy with the goal-scoring skills and instincts of Alexander Ovechkin played in an era where you could actually score goals?" That answer involved three straight seasons with 70-plus goals and a grand total of 741 career goals.

But none of those goals came with the Coyotes. Hull signed a two-year contract with the team as a free agent in 2004, then saw the first year of the deal wiped out by the lockout. When play resumed in 2005, a 41-year-old Hull didn't exactly look like a great fit for the new, faster NHL, and he lasted just five games before calling it quits.

Hull was all sorts of fun to watch for the better part of two decades. But when your retirement headline includes the words "effective immediately," you've probably held on too long.

Martin Brodeur

It's fun to remember him as: One of the most decorated goaltenders of all time, a three-time champion and the league's ultimate "can't-picture-him-in-any-other-uniform" guy.

So let's forget the part where: ... he tried a seven-game comeback with the St. Louis Blues.

Brodeur spent 21 years with the New Jersey Devils, winning three Cups, earning a trophy case full or hardware and firmly establishing himself as a Devils legend. When he and the franchise parted ways after the 2014 season and he made it through the offseason without signing elsewhere, hockey fans celebrated a terrific career while breathing a sigh of relief that we wouldn't have to see the NHL's "Willie Mays-as-a-Met" moment.

But then came December and a call from the Blues. St. Louis already had Jake Allen, and Brian Elliott was on his way back from a knee injury, but they wanted another experienced goalie because, well, nobody was quite sure, but that's a story for another time.

Brodeur came in, started five games, and played fine. He wasn't good, but he didn't embarrass himself. But when Elliott returned a month later, Brodeur dropped to third on the depth chart and never played again. He retired midseason and took a front-office job in St. Louis.

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Weekend wrap: Is it time for Lou to go?

A look back at the biggest games and emerging story lines of the NHL weekend.

Theme of the Week: Giving the Devils Their Lou

The New Jersey Devils are a mess. That in itself feels like news, since this has been one of the league’s model franchises going back almost a quarter century. Over the last two decades, the Devils have won three Stanley Cups, made five appearances in the final, finished with 100-plus points in 13 seasons while missing the playoffs in just four, and finished with a points percentage under .500 just once (by a single point, in 2011).

So it would be strange enough to say that they’re a standard-issue mess. At 12-18-7, they’re tied with Buffalo for the second-worst record in the East, and have already been all but eliminated from playoff contention before the season’s second half even arrives. But even that doesn’t go far enough, because as of this weekend, the Devils have now become a mess in ways we’ve never quite seen before.

On Friday, the team announced the firing of coach Peter DeBoer, who becomes the third NHL coach this year to lose his job. DeBoer is a good coach who’ll work again somewhere, but he’s certainly not blameless here. While he guided the Devils to the Cup final in 2012, he left plenty of points on the table last year by insisting on starting Martin Brodeur in half the team’s games, and then seemingly overcompensated this season by using Cory Schneider to the point of exhaustion.

DeBoer’s firing led to the usual speculation as to who would replace him, with early reports suggesting Paul MacLean would get the job. Instead, the team announced a highly unusual co-coaching scenario, with Hall of Fame players Adam Oates and Scott Stevens splitting the job. Oates will coach the forwards, Stevens will take the defensemen, and neither will get an official head coach title or, we’re told, be allowed to speak to the media. And overseeing it all, at least temporarily, will be good ol’ Lou Lamoriello, the longtime GM who steps behind the Devils’ bench on an interim basis for the third time.

The whole thing is bizarre, and it’s led to what would have once been unthinkable: calls for Lamoriello to follow DeBoer into unemployment. Lamoriello has been the Devils’ GM since 1987, almost a full decade longer than any other current GM in the league. He took over a Mickey Mouse organization and turned them into champions, and no front-office face is as tightly linked to his franchise as Lamoriello’s.

And yet some pundits, both locally and beyond, are now asking whether the time has come for Lou to move on, too. This current Devils team bears little resemblance to the one that went to the final just a few years ago, and is largely made up of a mishmash of players and features just a marginal talent level. And they’re old — almost ridiculously old, featuring 16 players over the age of 30 (six of whom are 35-plus).

With the season all but lost, at this point the organization’s best bet is probably to just bottom out and hope for Connor McDavid. If so, maybe this odd three-headed coaching monster is all part of the plan. That may be the only way that it makes much sense — both for the franchise, and for the man who’s calling the shots, at least for now.

Cup Watch: The League’s Five Best

The five teams that seem most likely to earn the league’s top prize: the Stanley Cup.

5. St. Louis Blues (21-11-3, plus-13 goals differential). After dropping a 4-3 decision to the Stars, they’ve now lost four straight and given up 18 goals in doing so.

4. Nashville Predators (23-9-2, plus-28). They’re two back of Chicago for first in the Central. They also face the Blackhawks tonight.

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Pick your cap: What if hockey's hall of fame worked like Cooperstown

The Hockey Hall of Fame officially welcomed six new members Monday night at the annual induction ceremony in Toronto. As per tradition, there were speeches, highlights, and the unveiling of each member’s plaque.

What there was not was any kind of formal emphasis on specific teams. That’s because, unlike baseball’s Hall of Fame, the hockey version doesn’t associate each new member with one team. Cooperstown inducts each player wearing a cap of the team he’s most associated with, which can lead to plenty of debate.

Hockey doesn’t do that. But what if we did?

It wouldn’t be an especially tough question for this year’s four player inductees; Dominik Hasek would go in as a Sabre, Peter Forsberg as an Av, Rob Blake as a King, and Mike Modano as a Star. But other years, it wouldn’t have been such an easy call. Some of hockey’s greatest stars split their prime years between two or more teams, and choosing just one franchise to induct a player under would lead to all sorts of arguments, hyperbole, and hurt feelings.

That sounds like fun, so let’s give it a try. Let’s reimagine the Hockey Hall of Fame under Cooperstown rules: Each player has to go in as a representative of one team, and one team only.

First, let’s get a few of the easier ones out of the way. Consider this a pregame stretch:

Brendan Shanahan: Red Wings

He played the majority of his 21-year career elsewhere, but the three Stanley Cups in Detroit make this one an easy call.

Doug Gilmour: Maple Leafs

He spent more time in Toronto than anywhere else and had his best seasons there; that’s enough to trump the Cup he won in Calgary.

Dino Ciccarelli: North Stars

He moved around a lot, but he scored three times as many goals with Minnesota as anywhere else.

Al MacInnis: Flames

A tougher call than I expected; he played 10 years in St. Louis and won his only Norris there. But his offensive totals (and Stanley Cup) from his 13 years in Calgary tip the scales.

Paul Coffey: Oilers

Played just seven of his 21 seasons in Edmonton, but they were his best.

Pat LaFontaine: Islanders

A tougher call than you’d think, since his crazy 1992-93 in Buffalo was his signature season. But injuries just limited his games played as a Sabre too much.

Wayne Gretzky: Oilers

Come on.

♦♦♦

Now that we’re all warmed up, let’s move on to some tougher cases. Here are eight Hockey Hall of Famers who’d be tougher to nail down.

Patrick Roy: Canadiens or Avalanche?

Roy played 10 full seasons in Montreal to just seven in Colorado, with one season split between the two. But in terms of games played, it’s much closer, at just a 53 percent–to–47 percent edge for the Canadiens. And that’s for the regular season; in the playoffs, Roy actually played 133 games in Colorado to 114 in Montreal.

He split his four Stanley Cups between the two teams. Roy’s numbers in Colorado were significantly better than in Montreal, with his six best seasons in terms of GAA all coming as an Av. But that’s a function of the high-flying ’80s and early ’90s versus the dead puck decade that followed; adjusted for era, his numbers with both teams largely even out.

Perhaps the best argument for the Avalanche is that those were the years that Roy seemed to go from “very good goaltender” to “all-time great” in the eyes of most fans. But that’s because it was the second half of his career, when he started passing milestones and breaking records. As good as he was in Colorado, he was objectively better in Montreal — he won all three of his Vezinas there, and was a postseason first- or second-team All-Star five times, compared to just once in Colorado.

The verdict: Roy goes into the Hall as a Hab, in a decision that wasn’t as close as I thought it would be. By the way, Roy himself was asked about this when he was inducted, and dodged the question.

Brad Park: Rangers or Bruins?

Park isn’t as well known to the current generation of fans as fellow ’70s blueliners like Bobby Orr or Denis Potvin. In fact, that’s a big part of his legacy — he was the runner-up for the Norris Trophy six times over nine seasons without ever winning, the first four to Orr and the last two to Potvin.

With the exception of two years with the Wings, he split his career between the Rangers and Bruins. And it was just about as even a split as you could imagine. He played seven full seasons with each team, plus one year split between them. And his productivity with each team was eerily similar. Via Hockey-Reference.com, here were Park’s per-game averages with each team:

Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty close.

The verdict: The Rangers. They drafted and developed him, and he earned the majority of his All-Star selections (and Norris second-place finishes) in New York.

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Firing squad: Who's in and who's out around the NHL

With the end of the second round of the NHL playoffs, we have reached an unofficial milestone on hockey’s calendar: the end of the annual coach and GM firing season.

It’s unlikely any of the four remaining teams will be making changes to their bench or front office, which means everyone (with one odd exception we’ll get to in a moment) who is going to get fired has been fired. And that makes this a good time to run through the current openings to see if we can figure out who could wind up with those jobs.

But first, here’s a recap of the teams that have already filled vacancies since the regular season ended:

• The Predators fired Barry Trotz, the only coach in the team’s 15-season history, and moved quickly to replace him with former Flyers coach Peter Laviolette.
• The Hurricanes replaced longtime GM Jim Rutherford with director of hockey ops (and former Hurricanes/Whalers franchise player) Ron Francis. For now, Rutherford remains in the role of team president.
• The Flames ended their five-month search for a new GM by plucking former Coyotes assistant GM Brad Treliving out of Phoenix.
• The Flyers “promoted” Paul Holmgren to president, making room for Ron Hextall to take over the GM’s job. Incidentally, the move came just days after team owner Ed Snider told the media that wouldn’t be making the change.

That’s a lot of movement, but it still leaves several openings around the league, with more than a few big-name candidates available to fill them.

Pittsburgh Penguins

Who they fired: General manager Ray Shero and head coach Dan Bylsma. Wait, no, not Bylsma. Yet.

The Penguins were expected to make changes after another disappointing playoff run, with Bylsma’s firing considered all but a sure thing and Shero also a possible casualty. So when the team called a press conference just days after being eliminated by the Rangers, it wasn’t hard to figure out what was coming. And pretty soon, various media were reporting the news: Bylsma and Shero were both gone.

Then the press conference got started, and it turned out Bylsma hadn’t been fired after all. This was … strange. You get false reports circulating on Twitter all the time, but this wasn’t some random blogger looking for a lucky scoop; it was several of hockey’s most trusted insiders all getting the same bad info. It’s almost enough to make you wonder if something changed at the last minute.

In any case, Shero is out and Bylsma probably will be too. The Penguins say the new GM will make the call on the coaching staff, and the assumption is that Bylsma will still end up getting the pink slip. It will just come a few days (or weeks) later than everyone expected.

Intriguing candidate: One interesting name that surfaced in multiple reports was player agent Pat Brisson, whose clients include franchise player Sidney Crosby. That would have certainly made it clear who was running the team, and Brisson has been linked with GM openings in the past. But he’s apparently decided not to pursue the job, possibly because he couldn’t afford the pay cut. That leaves a wide-open field that includes former Shero assistant and current interim GM Jason Botterill.

As for that likely head coach opening … I’ll just leave this here.

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Grantland: Eight Great NHL Trade Breakouts

If you’re an NHL general manager pulling the trigger on a trade, there are a few ways the move can blow up in your face. Maybe the star player you get back has nothing left. Maybe the deal messes up your team chemistry. Maybe somebody gets hurt. Maybe your owner panics and forces you to overpay.

Or every once in a while, maybe you get what has to be a GM’s worst nightmare: when an established player you’ve traded away suddenly takes his game to the next level.

We’re not talking about the long shot prospect who develops into a star down the road. We mean the guy you had on your roster and thought you knew pretty well, who almost immediately transforms into one of the league’s elite players. Suddenly, a deal that might look defensible or even downright smart at the time it's made ends up haunting a franchise for a generation.

Here are eight deals that saw teams give up on a player who turned out to be a year or less away from making the leap to superstardom...

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A look back at the superstar careers cut short by the last NHL lockout

How YOU doin'? Oh, right, I knocked you unconscious.

As the lockout continues to drag on, some pessimistic fans have already started wondering which players may not return if the 2012-13 season is cancelled. If the NHL and NHLPA can't figure out a way to make a deal and save the season, we may have seen the last of popular veterans like Teemu Selanne, Martin Brodeur, and Daniel Alfredsson.

Hockey fans have been through this before. When the 2004-05 season was cancelled, it cost fans the chance to see one more year from several hockey legends. Here's a look back at some of star players whose careers were cut short the last time the NHL scrapped an entire season.

Adam Oates - Retired after the lockout but attempted a brief comeback in 2009, we assume, since that's the only logical way to explain a guy with 1,400 career points not making the Hall of Fame until this year.

Al MacInnis - Decided to use some downtime during the last lockout to try out his slapshot with one of those fancy modern superfelx sticks, at which point he was immediately kidnapped by government scientists who used him to power the Large Hadron Collider.

Ron Francis - Was so well-respected during his long career with the Whalers, Penguins and Hurricanes that some fans paid tribute to him upon retirement by creating bizarre Photoshops of him wearing a Maple Leafs uniform for some reason.

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Grantland: The first draft of Gary Bettman's awkward Hall of Fame speech

You may have seen Gary Bettman's speech at this week's Hall of Fame induction ceremony. It was mostly awkward and completely unnecessary... but if not for some last-minute edits, it could have been a lot worse.

Click to visit Grantland and read: The First Draft of Gary Bettman's Hockey Hall of Fame Induction Speech

Things overheard at last night's Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony

"Almost as cool as a Cup ring, am I right?" joked
Joe Sakic right before the uncomfortable silence.

In a welcome break from the never-ending CBA negotiations, last night saw a positive NHL story: the induction of the four newest members of the Hockey Hall of Fame. During an evening of celebration in Toronto, the Hall welcomed Joe Sakic, Mats Sundin, Adam Oates and Pavel Bure to its ranks.

DGB spies were in attendance, and reported back on some of the most common things heard during the evening's festivities.

• Uh oh, Mats Sundin has become confused and disoriented. Pavel Bure stood beside him for a few seconds, and it was the first time he'd ever had a decent winger next to him.
  
  
• Joe Sakic's speech tonight was incredibly gracious without a hint of negativity, which is a nice change from that time they tried inducting him into the international snowblowing hall of fame.
  
  
• Is it just me, or is Adam Oates asking Bure a lot of oddly specific questions about the best way to deal with overly cocky Russian snipers?
  
  
• Did you hear, Brendan Shanahan just suspended the entire Hall of Fame induction committee! No, really, they're all dangling from a frayed rope under the 401 overpass.
  

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A look at the 2012 Hall of Fame candidates

The Hockey Hall of Fame's selection committee is scheduled to hold its annual meeting this Tuesday in Toronto. By the end of the day, the committee is expected to formally announce who it will induct as part of the Class of 2012.

It won't be an easy job. This year's list of possible inductees is one of the strongest ever, featuring an excellent crop of newly eligible stars and several strong candidates who've fallen just short in recent years. With a limited number of spots available each year, there's no doubt that some deserving candidates will be snubbed.

Here's a look at some of the names that the selection committee will be considering this year.

Jeremy Roenick - Recently made an extremely eloquent and impressive case for his induction to the members of the selection committee, and was disappointed at the end when they all took their Stanley Cup rings out of their ears and said "sorry, what?"

Mats Sundin - Leaf fans are eager to see him take his place in the Great Hall, partly due to his accomplishments and career statistics but mostly because they just want a chance to see him surrounded by some decent wingers for once.

Markus Naslund - No player who was primarily known as a Vancouver Canuck has ever been inducted into the Hall of Fame but Naslund has a chance to finally change that, assuming he spends some time emailing the selection committee YouTube videos of how awesome Pavel Bure was.

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Things overheard at the Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony

By the third time he ordered them to punch
an invisible midget, the inductees had begun
to realize the photographer may be crazy.

Last night saw four former NHL stars receive the highest honour the sport has to offer when they were inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Doug Gilmour, Eddie Belfour, Joe Nieuwendyk and Mark Howe will each now see their names included among the legends that line the wall in the Great Hall.

The induction ceremony capped off several days of celebration, which included the annual Hall of Fame Game, a fan forum, and a legends game. It all makes up one of the most popular weekends on the NHL's calendar, with many of the biggest names in the sport gathered to take part in the festivities.

Needless to say, my sources were there with tape recorders rolling. And they put together a list of the most interesting comments overheard during the course of the evening.

• Wow, Doug Gilmour sure is getting emotional during his acceptance speech. Wait, what do you mean you can't see him? He's standing right in front of you, Mr. Fraser.
  
  
• That's a great question, Mr. Belfour, I'm not sure why your plaque has that asterisk next to the mention of your Stanley Cup win. I'll ask the engraver, he's the guy over there in the Sabres jersey.
  
  
• Mr. Nieuwendyk, how does it feel to be the only player in NHL history to have ever been traded for Jarome Iginla? You know, until next March.
  
  
• BOOOOOOO! Oh, sorry Mr. Bettman, I saw you brush up against the Stanley Cup display and I guess it was just force of habit.
  
  
• Come quick! Mark Howe is telling some great stories about how in the old days the Flyers would respond to a tough defence by working harder instead of just refusing to play any more like spoiled toddlers.
  

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Upcoming NHL records and milestones

Every Hab, photographed from five feet high.

"History will be made" has been the NHL's playoff slogan for the past few years, but it could also be applied to the upcoming season. That's because while it's still early, this year is shaping up to be one that could rewrite a few pages of the NHL's history book.

With several hockey legends winding down their careers and a new generation of stars just hitting their prime, some of the game's most cherished records and milestones are within reach. So if you've ever wanted a chance to see history be made, now may be a good time to tune in.

Here are a few of the upcoming records and milestones that fans may have a chance to witness during the 2011-12 season.

Marc Savard - Is just one assist away from 500 for his career, which he should get this season if you're willing to count him assisting Matt Cooke in becoming known as "that jerk who ended Marc Savard's career".

Craig Anderson - Is currently 2,100 goals away from breaking the all-time record for goals allowed in a career, so given how the Senators' season is going so far let's just go ahead and pencil him in for next Friday.

Ray Whitney - Has a chance to join the 1,000 point club this year, which would be a memorable moment for him since it would be guaranteed to happen against a team he once played for.

Adam Oates - Out of all current Hall Of Fame-eligible players, his 1,420 career points will once again make him by far the all-time leader among those angrily standing in line to purchase admission.

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