Get ready for holiday shopping regret with the NHL’s all buyer’s remorse team

Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S., and if I know my Americans friends, that means two things: Some of you are reading this through the haze of a turkey coma and you’re going to do some serious shopping tomorrow.

The whole Black Friday thing isn’t as much of a thing in Canada yet, at least in its full-on “fight a stranger to save $20 on a blender” form. But we get the gist of it. You’ve got a list of stuff you need. You’ve got a chance to get that stuff. You go out and get the stuff, and hope you don’t regret your spending spree when it’s all over.

It’s kind of like the NHL offseason. Except that the offseason has hockey players instead of electronics, it lasts three months instead of a few days, and nobody gets a discount. So really, it’s nothing like the NHL offseason. But it’s too late now because I’m committed to the bit and we’re going with it.

Today, we’re going to celebrate this weekend’s shopping spree by looking back at the NHL’s version. With a few months’ worth of hindsight, some of those offseason trades and free-agent signings look pretty good. But others haven’t aged well, and like a cheap TV that stopped working after a few days, they may be causing some buyer’s remorse.

We’re two months into the season, which means there’s still plenty of time for some of these moves to work out in the long run. That’s part of the fun. But for now, let’s put together a roster of players who switched teams in the offseason and may have their new GMs looking around to see if the receipt has a return policy on it.

Goaltenders

Sergei Bobrovsky, Panthers

Twenty starts into the season, and one of the offseason’s biggest prizes is still sporting a save percentage well under .900. The good news is that there’s still plenty of time for him to get into a groove. Almost seven years, to be exact. So assuming this is a slump, and not a guy hitting the downside of the aging curve at 31, he should be fine. Of course, with the second-highest cap hit at his position, the Panthers might want more than just “fine.”

Cam Talbot, Flames

He wasn’t traded for Mike Smith – he signed as a free agent after a quick stop in Philadelphia – but it kind of felt that way. And it seemed like a decent exchange because even coming off of a brutal season, you figured a change of scenery could get Talbot back on track. Instead, he’s only had six starts, and hasn’t looked great in most of them. He comes cheaper than Smith, and it’s just a one-year deal, so this signing has hardly been a disaster. It hasn’t been much of anything.

Late cuts

Other than Bobrovsky, the two biggest crease names to move in the offseason was Robin Lehner leaving the Islanders for Chicago and Semyon Varlamov coming into New York. Both have been very good in their new homes. Smith’s been fine in Edmonton, James Reimer has been OK in Carolina and nobody else who switched teams were expected to do much more than mop-up.

First pairing

P.K. Subban, Devils

Given his name value and Norris Trophy pedigree, you figured that the Devils got him so cheap that the trade had to work out. Maybe it still will, but with just five points through two months, Subban’s been a bust in New Jersey. The analytics say he’s been a little bit better than his boxcars would suggest. But only a little, and the Devils are on the hook for another two expensive years after this.

Justin Faulk, Blues

He’s scored double-digit goals in four of his last five seasons but doesn’t have even one in St. Louis yet. Instead, he’s stuck at six assists and hasn’t recorded a primary point in over a month. Even the head coach trying to pump his tires can only come up with “he’s been fine.” The only good news for the Blues is that they didn’t rush into handing him a huge extension before they’d seen how he’d fit in. (Double-checks notes.) Well then.

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Get ready for Halloween with this team full of the NHL’s scariest starts

It’s Halloween tomorrow. Do you have a scary costume?

If not, don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. If you want to frighten anyone this week, all you’ll need is an NHL jersey, a hockey stick and a stats sheet to point at. Other props are optional, although you might want to invest in accessories like hands of stone, a turnstile or a great big goose egg.

Yes, it’s time for our annual tribute to the league’s scariest starts, where we build an entire roster out of some of the biggest names having the ugliest Octobers we can find. Some of these are bad signs for the rest of the year. Most of them will be forgotten by mid-November. We’ll try to figure out which is which as we go, but in the meantime, you can get into the Halloween spirit by yelling “Boo!” at each guy. It probably won’t be the first time this year that they’ve heard it.

Forwards

The player: Jonathan Toews, Blackhawks

The start: On the heels of a career year at the age of 30, the Hawks’ captain has managed just two points on the season so far. We already had our first wave of “Is Toews breaking out of his slump?” stories two weeks ago; since then he’s been pointless in six.

Odds it ends well: Toews will get going offensively at some point. But for now, at least, last year’s 81-point season is looking like an aberration for a player who’d been in the 50-something range for the three years before that. That’s not good news for a Hawks team that needs all the help it can get these days.

The player: Sebastian Aho, Hurricanes

The start: Three goals and three assists through a dozen games, with only one of those goals coming against an actual goaltender. To put that in historical context, it’s the worst start in six years for a player who had just signed an offer sheet.

Odds it ends well: Aho’s been heating up lately, or at least getting back to lukewarm. He had that first real goal on Thursday and followed that up with his first multi-point game of the season on Saturday. He can be his own toughest critic, so once he gets a few more solid games under him, he could take off.

The player: Taylor Hall, Devils

The start: On the bright side, Hall is the only player on this roster who is also his team’s leading scorer. On the not-so-bright side, he has just seven points and, well, (gestures at the Devils’ entire season). We could just as easily go with fellow forwards like Jack Hughes or Nikita Gusev, since they’re underperforming Hall. But with apologies to the all-about-the-team narratives, the former MVP has a lot more on the line than his younger teammates. With an extension or unrestricted free agency on the horizon, this isn’t a great time to be sitting with just one goal in the first month.

Odds it ends well: Hall is still generating a ton of shots, and has somehow managed six assists, which doesn’t sound impressive until you realize the Devils are dead last in scoring with just 22 goals on the season. He’s doing his part, even if the numbers don’t look great. The question now is whether he’ll finish the season still doing it for the Devils.

The player: Kaapo Kakko, Rangers

The start: He has just two goals and an assist, is getting caved in on possession and has been on the ice for just one even-strength goal for vs. eleven against. Other than that, things are going great.

Odds it ends well: I think we’ve seen enough to know the kid is a bust. (He’s 18, he’ll be fine.)

The player: Joe Pavelski, Stars

The start: Six points in 14 games for one of the biggest UFA signings of the offseason, half of which came last night. Maybe more concerning, his shots rate has dropped by over a shot-per-game compared to his last few seasons.

Odds it ends well: The shots rate is a concern for sure. But I think we can give Pavelski a bit of a break here; after 16 years and thirteen NHL seasons with the same organization, a bit of an adjustment period after switching teams for the first time seems reasonable. Now if only he could play the Wild every night …

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Puck Soup: Season finale

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We try to figure out what the deal was with the Sebastian Aho offer sheet
- One of us thinks the Habs did a good thing; two of us do not
- Rounding up the rest of the free agency action
- Our thoughts on the big Leafs/Avalanche trade
- Greg and Ryan get into a heated argument over Joe Pavelski, Ben Bishop and the Stars
- Darryl Sutter joiins the Duck
- Something about Spiderman that I didn't pay attention to
- Plus Paul Fenton's weird comments about lizards and lots more...

>> Stream it now:

>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.

>> This is the final free episode of Puck Soup for the summer, but you can still get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

Five expected offseason moves we're still waiting for

The dog days of the NHL offseason got a nice jolt on Monday when the Senators and Rangers hooked up on a decent-sized trade. The deal sends Derick Brassard and a seventh to Ottawa in exchange for Mika Zibanejad and a second, improving the Senators’ top six while adding some youth to the Rangers and giving them some additional cap room to work with.

The trade also answered one of the offseason’s lingering questions, which was: When are the Rangers going to get around to doing something? We were all told to expect a busy offseason in New York, as GM Jeff Gorton would look to shake up his aging and expensive core. But until this week, not much had happened aside from a few minor free agency signings. Trading Brassard isn’t exactly a blockbuster, but at least now the Rangers are on the board.

But that still leaves a few more stories lingering in the “still waiting” file. Here are five moves everyone went into the offseason expecting to see that still haven’t happened yet.

The move: The Kevin Shattenkirk trade.

Heading into the offseason, it seemed as if Shattenkirk was the most likely blueliner to be on the move. With UFA status a year away, it just didn’t seem as if he was part of the Blues long-term plans. And with holes in the lineup created by other departures and several teams on the market in the hunt for defensive help, trading Shattenkirk seemed like the most obvious move for Blues’ GM Doug Armstrong.

Why hasn’t it happened yet?: The short answer is that Armstrong hasn’t found the right deal yet. But that just leads to the next question: Why not? It’s not like the market for defensemen suddenly dried up this summer; between P.K. Subban, Shea Weber and Adam Larsson, there’s been as much talent on the move as ever, and maybe more. But in Shattenkirk’s case, the move might get complicated. He’s one year away from free agency, so teams may be reluctant to acquire him without a firm sense of how much they’ll have to pay to keep him.

Odds that it still will: High. It just seems like this one has gone too far down the road to be pulled back now, with Shattenkirk’s agent going as far as calling a deal “inevitable” a few weeks ago. Maybe Armstrong has to lower his asking price, and maybe that brings teams like Edmonton back into the mix.

What if it doesn’t?: It’s going to seem awkward if training camp arrives and Shattenkirk is still a Blue. Still, having him in the lineup wouldn’t be the worst thing in the word for a legitimate Cup contender. Conventional wisdom says that you just can’t let a player like that reach free agency without trading him first, but as the Lightning showed with Steven Stamkos last year, sometimes it’s better to stay the course. Still, that’s risky territory for the Blues, and it’s hard to see how this gets that far.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News