In the Friday Grab Bag:
- My spies report on teams' top secret trade plans
- An obscure player who was kind of trade for a Hall-of-Famer
- January comedy stars
- An important proposal for the month before the deadline
- And a YouTube breakdown of Bruce Boudreau's first career goal
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
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On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Gary Bettman swears that nobody is tanking
- The Canucks finally fire Bruce Boudreau. Now what?
- Updating our all-star tiers
- What's happening with the Yzerplan in Detroit?
- Oilers up, Islanders down
- Barry Trotz media tour, and more...
>> Listen on The Athletic
>> Subscribe on iTunes
>> Listen on Spotify
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
No bonus top five this week because I’m cranky. Instead, I’m going to ask you to let me vent for a bit.
I’m a bit of an NHL history buff. You may have picked up on that based on roughly half the columns I post here. I also wrote a book on the subject. I’m not an expert, but I feel like I know my stuff.
I’ve never seen anything like this Bruce Boudreau story.
Never. And I lived through the era of Harold Ballard, an owner so mean and awful that he once asked Roger Neilson to wear a paper bag over his head. Neilson told him to get stuffed, and Ballard backed down, because even the worst of the worst are still capable of realizing when they've gone too far.
The Canucks went too far. Way too far. Their treatment of Boudreau over the last few months went from comical to bizarre to outright cruel, which is where it’s been for weeks now. Yesterday’s announcement of the inevitable was just one last act in a bad farce. The way this was handled makes Gerard Gallant’s infamous taxi look like a stretch limo.
Look, coaches get fired. It’s never pleasant, but it happens, to almost everyone, and it’s part of the game. You could absolutely make the case that Boudreau deserved a pink slip based on how this season went, or at least that the coach taking the fall for a flawed roster would be standard operating procedure in plenty of places around the league. That’s fine. Maybe Rick Tocchet will be the better fit.
But there’s no reason to do it like this. None. We’ve known the coaching change was coming. We knew who’d be replacing him. The exact date it would happen leaked out a while ago. And yet the team still sent Boudreau out there, night after night, as dead coach walking. Just fire him! If Tocchet can’t take the job right away because of TV commitments or whatever, then let Mike Yeo run the bench for a few games on an interim basis. There’s no reason to let a respected coach with over 600 career wins who almost saved your season last year twist in the wind like this. No reason to have Jim Rutherford periodically show up to kick him when he’s down. No reason to send him out there for what everyone knew would be his final games, then watch him have to clarify to the media that he hadn’t actually been fired yet.
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
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On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- What the hell is happening in Vancouver?
- A few new extensions, but no David Pastrnak yet
- Seattle looks like a contender... maybe
- Ivan Provorov sends an anti-LGBT message
- The Avalanche could miss the playoffs
- Jack Adams candidates, and lots more...
>> Listen on The Athletic
>> Subscribe on iTunes
>> Listen on Spotify
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
Gary Bettman made headlines this week when he defended the league’s foray into digital board ads. While many fans have complained that the animated ads are distracting and often glitchy, Bettman pushed back on the subject, calling it a “non-issue” and insisting that the league’s internal polling proves that fans actually find games more watchable with the new ads.
That struck many of us as odd. Sure, some fans don’t mind the board ads and everyone understands the desire for more revenue, but it’s hard to imagine how they’d made the game-watching experience better. But Bettman says he has the polling to back it up. Will he show us the numbers? No he will not, but when has he ever given you a reason not to trust him?
In an effort to turn this controversy into a teachable moment, I had my spies at the NHL head office infiltrate the market research department. They were able to smuggle out a list of Gary Bettman’s tips for keeping your finger on the pulse of your fan base.
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
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On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Thoughts on hockey's ongoing racism problem
- The Canucks make some intriguing hires
- The Flyers keep on losing
- Ryan tells a story about Keith Yandle in an Apple store
- Aaron Dell, the Blues, and lots more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- If you missed it we fired Greg
- Big changes for the Canucks and Flyers
- The NHL has a new program that's about respect
- Are we still going to the Olympics?
- Four controversial hits from three players leads to two suspensions and we have thoughts
- And more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
In this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Ian and I try to figure out what just happened in Pittsburgh
- My thoughts on Muzzin vs. Tkachuk
- The NFL has a marquee fin al matchup, why are they so rare in the NHL?
- Could any NHL team be a feel-good Buffalo Bills story everyone roots for?
- Granger Things checks in with betting talk
- This week in history, listener questions and more...
The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Breaking down the pros and cons of the HHOF class of 2019
- A debate about free agency that gets kind of taxing
- An obscure American hero who tried to slam Yokozuna
- The three stars section says goodbye to a legend
- And a YouTube look back at a time when goalies could be interesting
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free seven-day trial.)
In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Reacting to this week's HHOF announcement
- Our thoughts on who'll be next, including one player I think just moved into the "sure thing" category
- Our thoughts on the draft, the PK Subban trade,the Marleau deal and more...
- This whole Mitch Marner recap and why it might be about to get worse
- Saying goodbye to Roberto Luongo and Bob McCown
- Ryan and I face off in a quiz over what actually happened during the 2018-19 season
- And more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
Hockey fans love to review, rank and debate draft classes. Is this year’s any good? Was 2003 better than 1979? How does the Oilers’ class of 1980 hold up against the Red Wings’ haul in 1989?
But what about the guys who make those draft picks? Each year also brings a new class of NHL GMs, and like draft picks, some years are better than others. This off-season is shaping up to be a busy one in that regard, with plenty of GMs on the hot seat and the possibility of some major changes around NHL front offices.
With that in mind, it seems like a good time to look back at the 2014 off-season that saw eight teams anoint a new GM. According to the archives over at NHL Trade Tracker, that was the busiest single year of turnover since 2006, which was the year a bunch of NHL teams realized that the new post-lockout rules would require some fresh thinking. Other high-turnover years include 2000 (eight new GMs), 1997 (nine, including the expansion Predators), 1994 (eight) and 1974 (nine, including the expansion Scouts and Capitals).
Why was 2014 so busy? It’s hard to say, although history shows that the years immediately before and after lockouts tend to bring significant change to NHL front offices. The 2013 class had been busy in its own right, with six changes, and seven if you count coach Patrick Roy being briefly slotted in ahead of Greg Sherman on the Avs’ org chart. But the years before had been unusually stable, with just one new GM each in 2011 and 2012, so there was some pent-up demand for change. That feels a little like the situation right now, with only six GM changes (including the first hire for the expansion Golden Knights) since July 2015. That’s not quite as extreme as the situation heading into 2013 and 2014, but it’s not far off, so we could be in for a rocky few months ahead.
Of those eight GMs hired in 2014, seven are still on the job. (We pause here to sadly pour one out for Tim Murray.) But the clock may be ticking on them. We often say that a new GM deserves five years to implement a plan, and the Class of 2014 is about to head into year five. And history suggests that we should expect at least a few to not even make it that far – from that busy class of 2013, only Jim Nill and Jarmo Kekalainen are still employed.
So which of the 2014 GMs is in the most danger of not making it to 2019? And who’s got the best shot of being remembered as the class of the, uh, class? Let’s run through the seven names and see if we can figure it out.
The hiring: After missing the playoffs and firing Mike Gillis at the end of the season, the Canucks hired Benning away from the Boston Bruins, where he’d served as assistant GM, on May 21.
Record since: 133-142-36, one playoff appearance
Best moves: Benning came into the job with a reputation for drafting well, and he’s largely lived up to that. Getting Brock Boeser 23rd overall in 2015 was a major win, and 2017 fifth-overall pick Elias Pettersson looks like the real deal. Benning also landed a good prospect from Ottawa for the husk of Alex Burrows, and turned Sven Baertschi into a reasonably successful reclamation project from the Flames.
Worst moves: Given Benning’s image as a draft guru, 2016 pick Olli Juolevi looks like a miss. Worse, the Loui Eriksson signing felt like a flat-out disaster from day one. But the biggest objection to Benning’s tenure in Vancouver is probably the moves he didn’t make. From rarely acquiring draft picks to re-signing Erik Gudbranson to holding onto Chris Tanev, Benning hasn’t tried for the sort of full-scale teardown many fans seem to want to see.
Current outlook: A lot better than it was a month ago, thanks to the three-year extension he signed in February. That move came as a bit of a surprise, with the team on track to finish in the bottom five for the third straight year. Rebuilds take time, sure, but often it doesn’t seem like Benning knows the Canucks are rebuilding.
Odds of seeing 2019: Excellent. The importance of GM extensions can be overstated – remember when Dave Nonis got a five-year deal in 2013, Leafs fans freaked out, and then he was gone less than two years later? – but the vote of confidence from ownership and Trevor Linden means Benning will make it to the new year. Will he see his five-year anniversary in May? That looks likely, too, but another year without progress could call it into question.
The NHL’s holiday trade freeze ends at midnight tomorrow. That leaves the league’s GMs with four more days to get any last-minute deals into the “2017” file.
This year, it sounds like some teams might be looking to do exactly that. But most will probably call it a year. These days, trades are relatively rare in the NHL, with many teams going an entire year without making any moves of any real significance.
And that’s all the more reason to celebrate the deals we do get. So today, as NHL GMs enjoy their last few days off before having to answer their phones again, it’s time for our annual trade grades column, in which we hand every team their marks for all the deals they’ve made over the course of the calendar year.
One ground rule: As always, we’re only counting trades that involve at least one actual player. That rules out the kinds of pick-for-pick trades that happen on the draft floor, since those are typically more math exercises than actual hockey trades. This year, that also means we’ll be skipping some of the Golden Knights’ trades that fell into the “draft pick for expansion draft considerations” category, since the league in its infinite wisdom decided not to tell us what those considerations were.
That still leaves us with plenty to work with, even if most of the deals fall well below the blockbuster level. Today, we lead off with the Eastern Conference. Tomorrow, it’s on to the West.
Best deal: Getting Trevor van Riemsdyk for a second-round pick from Vegas at the expansion draft. He’s been a decent fit on a team already flush with young blueliners.
Worst deal: Getting Marcus Kruger for a fifth hasn’t yielded much yet, although it also didn’t cost much.
To be determined: Scott Darling hasn’t looked great in Carolina so far. But he only cost them a third-rounder, so we’ll hold off on judging that deal for now.
Total trades: Seven.
Overall grade: A-. The Hurricanes did some nice work, both as deadline sellers and offseason buyers. But this grade will look too high in hindsight if Darling doesn’t come around.
Best deal: Artemi Panarin for Brandon Saad is one of those fun deals we’ll be debating for years to come, but for now it’s advantage Blue Jackets.
Worst deal: Sending prospect Dillon Heatherington to Dallas for Lauri Korpikoski. The Jackets’ deadline was a bit of a dud given how strong their season had been, yielding only Korpikoski and Kyle Quincey. Neither stuck around, but at least Quincey saw the ice during the playoffs.
To be determined: Whether giving up a first and a second was worth unloading David Clarkson’s albatross of a contract on the Golden Knights.
Total trades: Five.
Overall grade: B+. A stronger deadline push would have been nice, but the Panarin deal takes away some of that sting.
Best deal: While there were smaller pieces involved, getting Sami Vatanen from the Ducks for Adam Henrique felt like an old school hockey trade, and it’s one that should end up being a win for both teams involved.
Well, as long as this doesn’t happen again:
Worst deal: Giving up a second and a fourth for Mirco Mueller and a fifth seemed like an overpay at the time, and remains so today.
To be determined: Whether Marcus Johansson can get back to being healthy and productive. It looked like the Devils had taken the cap-strapped Capitals to the cleaners when they landed Johansson for two picks in the offseason, but so far it hasn’t paid off like we thought.
Total trades: Ten.
Overall grade: B. Ray Shero knows what he’s doing, and the standings show it.
With Sunday night’s win over the Nashville Predators, the Pittsburgh Penguins captured their second-straight Stanley Cup, becoming the first team to repeat as champions since the 1997-98 Detroit Red Wings. That’s an impressive feat, especially in today’s parity-driven age.
But the Penguins also reached another important milestone: Three Stanley Cup wins since the 2005 lockout, which ties them with the Chicago Blackhawks for the most titles under the salary cap system.
Well, this is the NHL, and we’re not allowed to have ties. So today, let’s pit the last dozen years of the Blackhawks against the Penguins as we attempt to determine which team deserves to be called the best of its era.
While any comparison between the Penguins and Blackhawks will focus on their playoff success, the regular season matters too. In fact, because teams play so many more games during the season than in the playoffs, it can often tell us more about a team’s overall quality.
The case for the Penguins: Pittsburgh has racked up more regular-season points since 2005, out-pacing Chicago by an average of three points per season. It’s made the playoffs 11 times to Chicago’s nine, and also holds an edge in 100-point seasons, with nine to the Blackhawks’ eight.
The case for the Blackhawks: You could argue that the regular season gap between the two teams is more about timing than quality – the Blackhawks didn’t emerge as a true contender until 2008, giving the Penguins a two-year head start. Despite that disadvantage, the Hawks have matched the Penguins in division titles with three, and hold a 1-0 edge in Presidents’ Trophy seasons.
Edge: Penguins. We did say we were looking at the entire cap era, so those first few post-lockout years have to count – but only a little.
The two teams may be tied in Cup wins, but that’s not the only way to measure post-season dominance.
The case for the Penguins: The Penguins have done more winning in the playoffs, and it’s not all that close. Pittsburgh has won 19 series in the cap era, well ahead of Chicago’s 13. The Penguins made it out of the first round seven times, while the Blackhawks have managed only five. They’ve been to one more Cup final and they hold a significant edge in playoff games won.
The case for the Blackhawks: They held the edge in this category in 2015, but that was a long time ago. There’s really no case to be made on the Chicago side here, unless you want to play the “Cups are all that matter” card.
Edge: Penguins. Pittsburgh jumps out to an early 2-0 lead, and this time it’s not even Pekka Rinne’s fault.
Consistency is nice. Long-term success is better. But when you’re evaluating a team, you also want to know what they could do when they were at their absolute best. We took a run at this question last week, when we ranked the ten best single-season teams of the cap era.
The case for the Penguins: This year’s Penguins took seventh spot on our ten-best list, and that was before they’d wrapped up the Cup. You could probably nudge them up a spot or two now that they’ve made it official. The other two Cup-winning teams were honorable mentions.
The case for the Blackhawks: The Blackhawks placed two teams on the list, including the team we called the best of the entire era. That was the 2012-13 Hawks, who started the year by going undefeated in 24 straight, won the Presidents’ Trophy and then took home the Cup. The 2009-10 team ranked fourth, while the 2014-15 team was an honorable mention.
Edge: Blackhawks. We’re looking at over a decade here, so the overall record is what should matter most, but there’s a good chance that the Hawks’ best team of the era could beat Pittsburgh’s, and that counts for something.
>> Read the full post at Sportsnet
Tomorrow marks the start of February. More importantly for hockey fans, it also marks four weeks until the trade deadline. With more teams than ever hanging around the playoff race, we could be in for a wild month.
Or maybe not. This is the NHL, after all, where most of the league’s GMs have proven very adept at coming up with reasons to stand pat. You can already hear the well-worn excuses being dusted off — the cap makes trading too hard, the market wasn’t quite right, we just couldn’t find the right deal. Most of these guys will probably figure out a way to tinker here and there and then call it a day.
And for some teams, that will make sense. Others, not so much. So this week, we’re going through the league team-by-team to figure out which GMs are under the most pressure over the next four weeks. Yesterday, we covered the Western Conference. Today, it’s onto the East.
Rutherford's Penguins are the defending Cup champs, they don't have any obvious holes, and they've all but clinched a playoff spot already. It's not all smooth-sailing; he does still need to figure out what to do about his goaltending and the upcoming expansion draft, although that can wait for the off-season. And the Metro is going to be tough, with the possibility that a deadline arms race could break out between the division's top contenders. But for now, Rutherford's in as good a shape as anyone.
Pressure rating: 2/10
Few GMs came into the season on a hotter seat than Kekalainen. His cap was a mess, he'd made a controversial pick at the top of the draft, he hadn't done much to improve over the off-season, and nobody expected his team to be any good. On opening night, Kekalainen looked like a guy who could be hard-pressed to make it through the season. Fast forward to today, and he's probably in the running for GM of the Year. The Blue Jackets are going to make the playoffs, and they've even got a shot at a Presidents' Trophy.
That doesn't remove all the pressure from Kekalainen, since this is the time of year that Cup contenders are expected to load up, and the Blue Jackets have shown some signs of fading over recent weeks. If you're a Columbus fan who's been waiting nearly two decades for a playoff run, you might figure now's the time to go all-in. But right now, Kekalainen's job looks an awful lot easier — not to mention more secure — than it did just a few months ago.
Pressure rating: 4/10
Is anyone actually out of the playoff hunt in the East? If so, it's New Jersey, and that's a disappointing result for a team that seemed headed in the right direction. The good news is that it could position the Devils as one of the few sellers in the league, which in theory should drive up prices on anyone they want to move. That's the kind of opportunity that a smart GM can take advantage of.
Pressure rating: 4/10
The Senators have been a pleasant surprise so far, and are holding down a reasonably firm grip on a playoff spot. In his first season as an NHL GM, Dorion has suggested that he'd like to add help at forward. The Senators have been linked to some of the bigger names out there, and given that the playoff format is likely to serve up a winnable first-round matchup, there's been some talk that this might the year for Dorion to make a big push. It could happen, but right now the Senators don't look like a team that absolutely needs to make a move.
Pressure rating: 4/10
>> Read the full post at Sportsnet
New book:
THE 100 GREATEST PLAYERS IN NHL HISTORY (AND OTHER STUFF): AN ARBITRARY COLLECTION OF ARBITRARY LISTS
Welcome to the NHL off-season, Penguins and Sharks fans. The rest of us have been here for weeks, and in some cases months. It’s been pretty slow, to be honest. But now that everyone’s arrived, we can finally kick this thing into high gear.
So what will the summer hold? Nobody knows, but as with most things in life, we can find some clues in what’s come before. After all, the NHL tends to be a copycat league where new fads can take hold quickly and teams can sometimes change direction on a dime. One year’s surprise might end up foreshadowing the next year’s must-have trend.
Let’s prepare for the future by looking back at the past. Here’s a look back at a half-dozen of the biggest stories from the 2015 off-season, and what they could teach us about what to expect this year.
The story: The Phil Kessel deal. In arguably the biggest trade of the off-season, the Penguins sent a first round pick, a prospect and some smaller parts to the Maple Leafs for Kessel, with Toronto retaining a chunk of his salary. It was a deal that had been rumoured for weeks, and it saw the two teams make clear their intentions for the coming season: the teardown was on in Toronto, while the Penguins were all-in on a Stanley Cup run.
The lesson: Sometimes, bold trades really do work out.
We all know how this ended for the Penguins, with the vision of Kessel skating the Stanley Cup around the rink in San Jose still fresh in our memories. The trade looked dicey as Pittsburgh tumbled off to a rough start, and even as the team turned around, Kessel's numbers never approached the sky-high expectations the deal created. But he found his groove in the playoffs, leading the team in scoring and even earning some Conn Smythe Trophy love.
While the deal was a major win for the Penguins, it worked out for Toronto too. None of the pieces it acquired in the trade had much impact during the season, but the Leafs cleared cap room and added depth to their prospect pipeline. And maybe more importantly, Kessel's absence helped contribute to a last place finish that will yield Auston Matthews next week. One year in, the Kessel trade looks like one of those deals where both teams won.
Who it could impact: Any GM who's still trotting out the "You just can't trade in today's NHL" line. Fans have been hearing that for years, from various GMs around the league. And it's undoubtedly true that making trades is more difficult under a cap system; just look at the first few months of this season, where we didn't see a single deal involving an NHL player until mid-December.
But as Jim Rutherford went out and proved, difficult doesn't mean impossible. Between the Kessel deal and other trades for Nick Bonino, Carl Hagelin, Travor Daley and Justin Schultz, the veteran GM helped turn the Penguins from a top-heavy pretender into a well-balanced contender. Fans in other cities who are used to being serenaded with excuses from risk-adverse GMs may want to take note.
The story: Offer sheet worries lead to big trades. Dougie Hamilton and Brandon Saad both went from young franchise cornerstones to trade bait within days of the draft, with Hamilton heading from Boston to Calgary and Saad going from Chicago to Columbus. In both cases, the deals were inspired at least partly by fear that the players, who were both RFAs, could be offer sheet targets.
The lesson: NHL GMs hate having their hands forced, and would rather trade a player on their own terms than risk the threat of losing a player to an offer sheet.
The irony, of course, is that that tends to be all an offer sheet ever is: a threat. It's been over three years since one was actually signed (Ryan O'Reilly, which almost led to disaster for Calgary), and almost nine since one actually worked (Dustin Penner, which almost led to a barn fight).
And yet, GMs apparently still worry about falling victim to one. In theory, that's the sort of thing a team could use to their advantage.
Who it could impact: The list of this summer's RFAs features some decent names, including Nikita Kucherov, Seth Jones, Nathan MacKinnon and Jacob Trouba. It's hard to imagine any of those guys switching teams this summer. Then again, we could have said the same for Hamilton and Saad around this time last year, and we saw how that worked out. At the very least, don't be surprised if some sneaky front offices find a way to float a few rumors over the coming weeks.
The Pittsburgh Penguins are Stanley Cup champions. After a challenging season and a long and winding road through the playoffs, the team and its fans deserve nothing more than the opportunity to take a moment to savour the magnitude of the accomplishment.
OK, that’ll do. We said a moment. Don’t get greedy here, Pittsburgh, the rest of us have an offseason to get to.
Nobody gets to rest on their laurels for long in the hockey world, so before all those Penguins-inspired hangovers have even faded, it’s time to start figuring out whether they can do it again. There hasn’t been a repeat Cup champion since the 1997 and 1998 Red Wings, so the odds seem slim. But the Penguins pulled it off in 1991 and 1992, and appeared in back-to-back finals less than a decade ago. Can they pull it off next year?
Spoiler alert: Maybe.
Here are five reasons why the Penguins really could repeat, and five more why they probably won't.
Change is inevitable in the NHL, and every team adds and subtracts over the course of an offseason. The Penguins will be no exception, and next year's opening night roster won't look the same as the one that skated the Cup around the ice on Sunday.
But it won't look all that different because, in terms of the core, the Penguins have all the key pieces locked in. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Phil Kessel are all on long-term deals. So is Marc-Andre Fleury, and Matt Murray is under team control for years to come. And while some of those players are getting up there, none are so old that you'd expect a major decline any time soon.
In fact, the Penguins already have a barely-full NHL roster signed to contracts for next year before the offseason even gets underway. True, the Penguins could always decide to shake things up with a trade or some other unexpected move. But if they don't want to, they won't need to.
We're used to seeing recent champs like the Chicago Blackhawks forced into rebuilding on the fly before they've even finished the parade cleanup, but that won't be the case in Pittsburgh. And that's going to mean that for all intents and purposes, they'll be able to defend their title with essentially the same team that just won it.
One of the keys to the Penguins' championship was their impressive depth, a factor that allowed them to roll four lines and overcome some key injuries. For years, the knock on the Penguins was that they were top-heavy -- a team built around elite talent but lacking the supporting pieces to push it over the top. Jim Rutherford spent much of the last year addressing that issue with smart under-the-radar acquisitions, and it paid off.
While the big-name core is locked in, some of those depth pieces are unlikely to return. Matt Cullen and Ben Lovejoy are unrestricted free agents, and Justin Schultz is set to hit RFA status. None are what you'd call crucial pieces, but each played a role in the Penguins' run.
There's also not much in the way of reinforcements on the way from inside the organization; the Penguins prospect pipeline isn't strong, and cap pressure and the lack of a first round pick this year will make finding help on the trade market a challenge. Rutherford will have some work cut out for him.
>> Read the full post at Sportsnet
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)
If the last few days of NHL transactions have reminded us of anything, it’s this: There’s a huge difference between the trade you choose to make and the one you need to make.
After a round of failed contract talks with Dougie Hamilton and a growing sense that he wanted out, the Boston Bruins felt like they needed to trade him. With a cap crunch and the threat, real or perceived, of an offer sheet looming, the Blackhawks felt like they needed to trade Brandon Saad. In both cases, the return was underwhelming and widely panned. That’s what happens when it’s a trade you need to make — you end up taking what you can get when you can get it, even if that means you’re selling at a discount.
On the surface, the Maple Leafs didn’t need to trade Phil Kessel. The 27-year-old sniper has seven years left on his contract, so he wasn’t hitting the open market anytime soon. At an $8 million cap hit, he certainly wasn’t cheap, but he also wasn’t especially overpaid based on his production. And he was easily the team’s best player, and among the very best in the league when it comes to what he does best; only Alexander Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, and Corey Perry have scored more goals over the last five years, and Kessel managed that while dragging Tyler Bozak around the ice as his center.
Now, the Leafs did need to trade someone — president Brendan Shanahan had said as much in April, acknowledging that “for whatever reason, the mix doesn’t work” — and after yet another disastrous season, nobody on the roster deserved to be untouchable. If the right offer came along, anyone was available. But if there was one guy among the team’s core that you’d be happy to keep, you’d think Kessel would be that guy. The Maple Leafs could certainly choose to trade him, but they didn’t need to.
Or did they? Yesterday, the Maple Leafs sent Kessel to the Penguins in a trade that would make sense only if it were one they thought they needed to make. The full deal has Toronto sending Kessel to Pittsburgh along with a second-round pick, Tyler Biggs, and Tim Erixon. In exchange, they get prospects Kasperi Kapanen and Scott Harrington, forward Nick Spaling, a first, and a third.
That’s a mouthful, but we can trim it down for evaluation purposes. Biggs and Erixon are minor pieces that were presumably included primarily to free up contract spots, and Spaling is a mildly useful player who’s mostly a salary dump. It’s not unfair to think of this trade as boiling down to Kessel for Kapanen, Harrington, and a first.
That’s not an awful return, but it’s not the sort of package that typically makes a team move its top player. Kapanen is a good prospect, a skilled winger who was the Penguins’ top pick in 2014 and still hasn’t turned 19. He projects as a top-six guy, maybe even a future first-liner if everything breaks just right. Harrington is a 22-year-old defenseman who could still top out as a solid second-pairing guy. Both have value; neither is a sure thing. As for the first-rounder, it’s actually a conditional pick that can’t fall into the lottery, and could revert down to a second-rounder if the Penguins miss the playoffs in each of the next two years.
Then there’s the not-so-small matter of salary retention. The Leafs will eat $1.2 million of Kessel’s salary and cap hit for all seven years left on his deal. Shanahan has (correctly) refused to put a timeline on the Maple Leafs’ rebuild, but it’s safe to say that it’s not “eight years or more.” At some point when the plan calls for them to be contending for a championship, the Leafs will still be sitting with $1.2 million in dead cap space on the books from this deal. That hurts.
So if that’s the best Toronto could do for Kessel, why trade him at all? Why not focus on moving out other players and hold on to the guy you can pencil in for 30 goals and 80 points most years? And in fact, the Leafs had spent the last few weeks assuring everyone that they were perfectly prepared to do just that. If the market wasn’t there, why not wait it out?
Today, the answer seems clear: They were bluffing. They were always going to move Kessel this summer. They didn’t think they had a choice.
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