In this week's Biscuits hockey podcast:
- Dave and I react to all-star weekend
- The end(?) of Jaromir Jagr
- Is tweaking interference replay enough?
- Gary Bettman's 25th anniversary arrives
- The Rangers consider becoming deadline sellers
- Reader questions and lots more...
Listen here:
So the Vegas Golden Knights are having themselves a bit of a season.
With everyone assuming they’d struggle to stay in sight of the playoff race, if not finish dead last, they came out of the gates 8-1-0. Soon they’d established themselves as legitimate contenders for the Pacific crown. Then the Western Conference. Then the Presidents’ Trophy. They climbed all the way to first place overall. They’ve already been crowned the greatest expansion team ever in any sport. At this rate, we may be days away from the rest of the NHL just conceding the next few Stanley Cups and begging for mercy.
So how did we get here?
Wait, let’s rephrase that: So what the hell was the rest of the league thinking?
Sure, the Knights were gifted with friendlier expansion-draft rules than previous newcomers. For $500 million, they’d better have. But they were still left choosing from players who were each, at best, considered their team’s 10-most-valuable asset. (And that’s not even counting all the prospects and younger players who were ineligible.) You shouldn’t be able to build a contender out of those kinds of spare parts.
Well, unless some of the other teams screw up.
So today, with Vegas riding high and Seattle kicking down the door to get in on this action, let’s look back at the expansion draft and the trades that came around it with the benefit of a half-season’s worth of hindsight. We’ll do this in tiers, starting with the teams that came out OK and working our way up to the worst of the regrets.
As it turns out, an expansion draft doesn’t represent an opportunity for only one team.
Their trades: They traded a fifth-round pick to Vegas to get them to lay off veterans like Cam Ward and Lee Stempniak. Then they traded a second for Trevor van Riemsdyk, who the Knights had plucked from the Blackhawks, and later added Marcus Kruger for a fifth.
They lost: Connor Brickley
No team apart from the Knights themselves did more wheeling and dealing. Kruger hasn’t done much, but the Hurricanes managed to avoid losing anyone of consequence – Brickley was a pending UFA who ended up signing in Florida – and added yet another good young defenceman to an already strong blue line.
Their trades: None
They lost: Calvin Pickard
At the time, this seemed like yet another misplay by Joe Sakic, who let a reasonably well-regarded young goalie slip away despite Semyon Varlamov‘s struggles. Instead, the move freed up a roster spot for Jonathan Bernier, who’s been fantastic, and Pickard was on waivers (and eventually traded) by week one.
Oh, was there some sort of draft? We already forgot.
Their trades: Flipped first-round picks with Vegas, dropping from 13th to 24th, and threw in a 2019 third-round pick to steer the Knights away from everyone they wanted to keep.
They lost: Chris Thorburn
Dropping 11 spots in the draft isn’t nothing, but given the prices some other teams paid, the Jets seemed to get off easy. The Knights didn’t even bother to sign Thorburn.
Their trades: None
They lost: Deryk Engelland
Engelland’s a Vegas local who’s been a nice fit, but he probably wasn’t coming back to Calgary, meaning the Flames basically escaped untouched.
I make my living as a hockey writer. I’m also as big a fan of the sport as there is, and I love Olympic hockey.
But now that N.H.L. players won’t represent their countries in the Pyeongchang Games, will I even watch?
For hockey fans, the N.H.L.’s decision to send its players to the Winter Olympics beginning in 1998 was a dream come true. There had been major international tournaments, but never with these sorts of stakes on this big a stage. Finally, fans would get a true best-on-best Olympic tournament played in front of a worldwide audience, with dream rosters and genuine suspense over who would win the gold.
Through five Olympics, fans witnessed some of hockey’s most memorable moments, from Dominik Hasek’s brilliance in Nagano, Japan, to Sidney Crosby’s golden goal in Vancouver.
When the N.H.L. said it would not send players to the 2018 Games, many of us assumed it was a bluff. Surely some sort of last-minute deal would surely be found?
But it wasn’t a bluff. Fans were furious; players were furious. After the anger, the question: Is it worth watching?
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- I reveal my ballot for the PHWA's new midseason awards
- Seattle is narrowing down its list of expansion team names, and they're missing a top candidate
- An obscure player who scored a memorable Canucks goal
- The week's three stars, including a crotch goal
- And we celebrate Wayne Gretzky's birthday with a look back at his 1970's collar game, which may have been better than his hockey skills
In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- Thoughts on Kid Rock, and what I really hope the NHL isn't doing here
- The revamped skills competition might actually work
- Did the NHL rig the expansion draft to build a Vegas powerhouse?
- A story about a mind-blowing coincidence in Edmonton
- Dave pitches a fantastic idea for a movie starring Peter Chiarelli
- Reader questions and lots more.
>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.
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The Athletic Hockey Show runs four days a week during the season, and will feature me with Other Sean Gentille on Wednesdays.
Puck Soup is a podcast featuring me and Ryan Lambert. We release one free episode each week during the season, plus mailbags and other bonus episodes for Patreon subscribers.
"Biscuits" was the Vice Sports hockey podcast, hosted by DGB and Dave Lozo. It ran for two seasons; the final episode was in July, 2018. You can find the archives below:
As of the 2018-19 season, my work will appear exclusively at The Athletic.
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