Puck Soup: Hall of Fame before and after

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Ryan and I discuss who should get the HHOF call, then reconvene and react after the announcement is made
- The OEL buyout, Bratt signing, Karlsson trade maybe coming
- What's the deal with Matvei Michkov?
- We try the Immaculate Grid game, NHL style
- And more...

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Assembling the NHL's all-time snub team

With the all-star rosters announced last week, everyone has spent the last few days compiling their lists of snubs. That’s pretty much an annual tradition at this point, and it’s all in good fun, even though a lot of the “snubs” are players who probably didn’t want to go in the first place.

But what if we aimed a little higher? What’s the best all-time roster you could assemble out of players who went their entire career without ever being recognized with a significant NHL honour?

We’re not talking midseason all-star picks here – with the one-player-per-team rule, those don’t really tell us much about who deserved what. Instead, let’s go with the big stuff. We’re looking for players who went their entire NHL career without ever:

1) Being a finalist for one of the major awards: Hart, Norris, Vezina or Calder; or

2) Being voted a first- or second-team all-star at the end of the season

You can call them the all-snub squad if you want to. Personally, I’m going to go with the Flying Federkos, in honour of the player who pretty much epitomizes the concept. Longtime Blues centre Bernie Federko scored 1,130 points over a 14-year career, which was good enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. But he never finished higher than fourth in all-star voting, and a 10th-place finish in 1986 was his best Hart Trophy showing.

So Federko’s our captain. But without getting ahead of ourselves, he’s not our best player, or even our first-line centre. And he’s far from the only Hall of Famer who’s going to make our squad. Let’s start up front, where there’s plenty of firepower to go around.

(All award-voting data comes from the invaluable Hockey Reference site.)

—

FIRST LINE

Centre: Ron Francis

Yes, despite a 22-season career that left him holding down spots in the all-time top five for points, assists and games played, Francis qualifies for our team. He did win some secondary honours, such as a Selke and three Lady Byngs. But he was never a post-season all-star, and never even finished in the top five in Hart voting.

How is that possible for a guy widely regarded as an all-time legend? For one, Francis was a two-way player, and they often don’t get the respect they deserve. But the bigger problem here can be summed up in two words: Gretzky and Lemieux. The two greatest centres of all time dominated the ’80s and early ’90s, leaving players like Francis and Federko — whose career overlapped theirs — with a tough path to recognition.

Winger: Mike Gartner

Despite finishing as one of only seven members of the 700-goal club, Gartner never earned so much as a single Hart Trophy vote during an 18-season career. And his best finish in all-star voting was fourth, which he managed twice.

Winger: Glenn Anderson

We’ll finish off our first line with another Hall of Fame winger who never received a Hart vote. It’s not hard to see why — during the Oilers glory years, Anderson was typically only the fourth-best forward on his own team. He came close to earning an all-star spot in 1986, but finished just behind Mats Naslund for second-team honours. It was one of five top-five finishes in Anderson’s career.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

10 Facts About a Fun Team: The 1988-89 Sabres

10 Facts About a Fun Team is a new feature in which we’ll take a look back at a notable team and season from NHL history. That team may have been good. It may been bad. But it was definitely interesting, and as such it deserves to be remembered.

Being a Sabres fan is a fairly miserable existence these days. The team is stuck in the midst of an 11-game losing streak, it’s mired in last place overall, and local media are writing stories with headlines that feature phrases like “taint on the sport.”

So yeah, the Buffalo Sabres are pretty bad. That’s largely by design, and it’s all in the service of a larger goal, so someday their fans might look back on the 2014-15 season and smile. But right now, it can’t be very fun.

Let’s try to cheer up those fans with memories of a better time. Not an especially good time, mind you, because these are still the Sabres and franchise history is relatively thin on those. But a better time, featuring a team that may not have been all that great, but was at least interesting. Let’s use this edition of 10 Facts About a Fun Team to travel back 26 seasons and relive the magical weirdness of the 1988-89 Buffalo Sabres.

1. The 1988-89 Sabres were … OK.

From a standings standpoint, the Sabres were a fairly unremarkable team. They weren’t great, but they certainly weren’t awful. They finished 38-35-7 for 83 points, slightly above .500 in an era when .500 actually meant something. They finished third in the Adams Division, like they did most years.

Under normal circumstances, that sort of record would render the ’88-89 Sabres largely forgettable, just one of the many mediocre teams in any given season that nobody ever thinks about again. And indeed, the Sabres have been largely forgotten. But they shouldn’t be, because once you get past the record, this was one odd team.

We’ll get to all of that in a second. But first, let’s set the mood by enjoying this long-distance Handycam footage of the Sabres beating Mario Lemieux and the Penguins.

2. The roster didn’t feature a single future Hall of Famer.

That may not sound all that surprising, considering we’re dealing with a mediocre team. But back then, it was actually fairly unusual to ice a roster without even one future Hall of Famer. For example, the worst team in the league in 1988-89, the Quebec Nordiques, had three Hall of Famers, and would go on to draft another and sign one more the following offseason. Even other awful teams, like the 61-point Islanders and the 62-point Maple Leafs, had one.

But not the Sabres. They were a decent enough team, but despite that, not one of the 42 players who suited up for them that season would go on to earn hockey’s highest honor.

That’s not to say that nobody came close, though, which is where things get fun. The ’88-89 Sabres may be the greatest team hockey has ever seen when it comes to assembling a collection of near-miss Hall of Famers.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

A brief history of playoff violence

"I sure hope Tucker was suspended for
that high hit!" said Brad Marchand.

The first round of the 2012 playoffs has been marked by wild brawls, questionable hits and an unprecedented string of suspensions. From Raffi Torres to Matt Carkner to Shea Weber to virtually the entire Penguins roster, it seems like each night of action brings another embarrassing incident to keep the referees and Brendan Shanahan busy.

But despite what some recent coverage might lead you to believe, playoff violence is hardly a new phenomenon in the NHL. In fact, the league has a long history of regrettable incidents in the postseason, many of which would put this year's displays to shame.

Let's take a look back through the history books at some of the other black eyes, literal and figurative, that the NHL playoffs have provided over the years.

May 16, 1987 - Montreal and Philadelphia engage in a wild pre-game brawl that all starts over the sight of opposing players shooting a puck into an open net, which come to think of it may also explain all the bad blood in this year's Flyers/Penguins series.

April 26, 2002 - New York Islanders star Michael Peca suffers significant ligament damage after being hit in the knee by Darcy Tucker. A defiant Tucker will later strenuously deny that the hit was low, while awkwardly refusing to answer reporters' questions about the shovel and mining helmet he's holding behind his back.

June 6, 2011 - Aaron Rome knocks Nathan Horton out of the Stanley Cup Finals with a late hit that the media at the time refers to as "vicious" and "an unprecedented act of horrific violence", and which the league head office now refers to as "the good old days".

May 22, 1997 - The Red Wings and Avalanche engage in a series of fights that only end when everyone gets sick of Detroit's Brendan Shanahan constantly skating around and telling everyone that they owe him $2,500.

Read the rest of this post...