Lose-lose trades, potato GMs, gold medals vs. Stanley Cups, and more: DGB mailbag

Today is a slow news day in the hockey world, so let’s do a mailbag.

All I ask from you with these questions is three things: Ask about trade deadline stuff, keep it fun, and don’t get all weird on me. Can you guys handle that for an entire mailbag? Let’s find out.

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Let's get spooky, with the roster for this year's Scary Start team

Friday night is the scariest night of the year. Call it spooky season, or call it fright-fest, or whatever else you might want, but it’s the one night where everyone huddles up and lets cold shivers race up and down our spines.

Yes, it’s October 31 – the last night for NHL teams to get within four points of a playoff spot before Elliotte Friedman’s fabled Curse of November 1st kicks in and all but officially starts eliminating also-rans from the playoff race.

Oh, it’s also Halloween, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Either way, it’s time for our annual roster of the NHL’s scariest starts, relative to expectations. As always, we do the full roster plus an extra goalie, with a limit of one player per team. That means 11 teams will get away unscathed, which will somehow upset their fans even though it’s mostly a good thing. That's OK, this time of year doesn't have to make sense. The bones are the skeletons' money, in their world bones equal dollars.

Where were we? Rigbt, it’s spooky season. Time to yell “boo!”

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Draft lottery power rankings: Who needs it, who deserves it, who might trade it?

It’s now been ten years since I wrote a column that lives in infamy.

Back then, while working for a site called Grantland, I decided it would be fun to write a power rankings-style column about the upcoming NHL draft lottery. There was a kid named Connor McDavid available that year, so the lottery had huge ramifications for the teams involved. So I wrote the piece, one that built towards the main punchline that any result would be fine as long as the Oilers didn’t win. And everyone had a good laugh.

Then the lottery happened, and nobody was laughing anymore.

It all worked out for the best, he said, in case any Oiler fans were reading, and the lottery power rankings went on to become a tradition. A decade later, it’s time to dig into our annual lists of who needs it, who deserves it, and who Gary Bettman is going to rig it for.

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Should your team make a big bold move at the deadline? Yes, and here's why

The trade deadline is just over a week away. Is your team going to make a blockbuster move?

No, because this is the NHL, where all the GMs are whiny babies and making trades is too hard. There will be trades over the next few days, maybe even lots of them. But they’ll be by-the-numbers stuff, a pick here for a rental there, not anything big and bold. Given the extremely middling talent expected to be available, that’s all anyone can do. Your team will play it safe.

But should they? That’s a different question. And for just about every team in the league, we could at least make the case that they should be aiming much higher than they inevitably will.

So that’s what we’ll do today. Every team gets the cursory nod towards why they won’t make a blockbuster, and then a longer section on on why they should. Is that fair? No, because we’re putting a thumb on the scale here, because trades are fun and we want all of the (many) NHL GMs who read my column to get to work. Here we go...

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DGB Mailbag: Ovechkin’s record-breaker, the Jack Adams curse, and 4 Nations fights

We haven’t done a mailbag since just after the season started. Remember back then? When the Rangers and Bruins were elite, the Predators were ready to contend, the Habs and Blue Jackets were write-offs and the Sabres were going to take the Capitals’ playoff spot? Good times. In related news, it’s possible we’re all dumb.

On that note, let’s see what was on your mind this time around.

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