Should this team make a big deadline deal? (Spoiler: Yes, but they probably won't)

It’s trade deadline week. Should your favorite team do something big? Yes. Will they? Probably not.

That’s life in the NHL, a results-oriented league where the outcome is all that matters unless you’re a GM, in which case you’re allowed to mumble about your job being hard and everyone is supposed to feel sorry for you. These guys have only had four months to figure this stuff out since the season started, including two weeks off during the Olympics. Be reasonable.

Or don’t. Today, we’re going to give that option a try. We’ll pick a team and lay out the honest and yes, reasonable view for why they should play it safe and avoid any truly major moves. And then we’ll try to make the case for why they should break the mold and actually take a big swing.

We tried this last year, with all 32 teams. This year, we’re going to cut that list down. Some teams are obvious sellers who shouldn’t any convincing. Others will obviously buy. By my count, there are at least five scenarios that could see a team on the fence about a blockbuster.

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NHL weekend rankings: 5 post-Olympic break overreactions (unless they're not)

Welcome back to the NHL weekend rankings, returning after a three-week Olympic break. Aw, I missed you too.

Of course, those three weeks only contained a handful of NHL games for each team, so in theory our outlook on the league shouldn’t have changed too much. In theory, sure. But this is the real world, where half our job as fans is to overreact to anything and everything.

So today, before we get to the Top Five and Bottom Five, let’s first take a moment to pick a few teams and go way overboard based on their first few games back from the Olympic break.

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Deadline week mailbag?

Hey folks...

The trade deadline is this week, so let's try a mailbag.

I'm looking for your questions, comments, rants and hypotheticals. Trade talk/speculation/proposals are fun, although remember this won't run until deadline day.

Clever is good. Straight down the middle is good too, so don't feel like you have to steal the show if you'd rather ask something simple. Anything can work.

Send your stuff via email at dgbmailbag@gmail.com.

Thanks,
Sean

After Olympic gold, where does Connor Hellebuyck rank among history's best?

Connor Hellebuyck has had a good month. You might have heard about it.

The three-time Vezina winner and defending Hart Trophy winner as NHL MVP was the story of the story of Team USA’s gold medal win over Canada on Sunday, making 41 saves in a 2-1 OT win. It was the sort of signature game that a goaltender’s reputation can built on. After years of hearing about how he couldn’t win the big one, Hellebuyck went out and almost single-handedly won one of the biggest ones that there’s ever been. Then he became the first hockey player to earn the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And also, one of Frankie’s dudes.

Not bad. So now what?

That’s the question that comes up when a hockey history buff and a goaltending guru get together. So today, Sean McIndoe and Jesse Granger are teaming up to try to figure out where Hellebuyck stands in modern NHL history.

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Should the NHL learn from the Olympics and switch to a 3-2-1-0 standings format?

With the Olympics in the rearview mirror, we’re back to… what was it again? That league with all the teams and the six-month season? Right, the NHL, that was it. The NHL is back. Feel the excitement.

But while the Olympic tournament is over and some of us might be eager to move on, now might be a good time to wonder about whether the NHL could learn something from how the tournament was structured.

No, I don’t mean using 3-on-3 overtime to settle championships – fans around the world seem to agree that that part was bad. And I don’t mean the smaller rules that we debated last week in Rules Court. I’m thinking of an element you may have already forgotten about, since it was only in place for the round robin: Should the NHL borrow a page from the Olympics and move to a 3-2-1-0 points system?

That’s where teams receive three points for a regulation win, two points for an overtime/shootout win, one point for an overtime/shootout loss, and zero points for a regulation loss. Is that better than what we have now?

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