Ten scary starts to the NHL season

It’s Halloween, which means most of us will want to shut off the lights tonight and settle in with a scary movie or two. There’s just something about Oct. 31 that makes you want to shudder in fear while waiting for some hapless character to get hacked to bits.

Then again, you could save yourself some time and skip the movie. If you want a good scare at this time of year, all you need to do is check out the NHL stats page, where some players are off to truly frightening starts.

So today, let’s take a look at 10 of the scariest starts we’re seeing around the league, and whether there’s any hope of ending of their stories ending happily.

Frederik Andersen, Maple Leafs

Through 11 starts, he’s sporting some ugly numbers, including an .896 save percentage and 3.46 goals against. And it’s not like those stats are being thrown off by one or two bad performances. If anything, it’s the opposite, as Andersen has had only five games with a save percentage over .870. And lately, Leafs fans are getting used to seeing him beaten clean on high shots, often barely moving as the puck blows by him.

For a quasi-Cup contender that doesn’t seem to have much confidence in its backups, that’s worrying. Last night’s strong effort in San Jose was a good sign, but there hasn’t been much consistency yet on the year.

If the season were a horror movie, he’d be: The big guy with the goalie mask who makes you feel really nervous every time he’s on the screen.

Odds of a happy ending: We’ve been down this road before with Andersen, who started slowly last year, too. He eventually got back on track, and was one of the league’s better goalies from November on. That was a good reminder that goaltending is voodoo, and that everyone has a bad stretch or two over the course of a season. There’s a good chance that’s the case here, too.

And as rough as Andersen’s start has been, he still has six wins, so it’s not like he’s sinking his team. Still, Leaf fans wouldn’t mind seeing him string together a few solid starts to ease the tension.

Kris Letang, Penguins

After missing last year’s entire post-season run due to a neck injury that required surgery, Letang’s return to the Penguins’ lineup was supposed to provide a big boost to a team that had lost several depth pieces. He’s put up eight points through 13 games, which isn’t bad. But he’s also a -14 on the year, ranking him dead last in the league. We all know that +/- is a flawed stat that has as much to do with circumstance as actual performance. But an extreme number can still tell you something, and in Letang’s case it’s not anything good.

If the season were a horror movie, he’d be: The good guy who seems to have done something to accidentally trigger an ancient curse.

Odds of a happy ending: In addition to missing a Stanley Cup run due to last year’s neck injury, Letang has also had to battle through multiple concussions, groin problems, various upper- and lower-body injuries, and even a stroke. Now he’s getting pummelled by a stat that’s largely luck-based. Chances are his numbers even out over time, and here’s hoping he can stay healthy this year. But just in case, maybe don’t let him pick your lotto numbers.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Dispatches from the 2014 NHL draft

The NHL draft was held over the weekend in Philadelphia, a fact that would have been hard to miss if you were a hockey fan in the city. If the bright orange draft-themed banners that seemed to have been hung on every square inch of available space didn’t tip you off, the steady stream of hockey personalities who took over much of the downtown area would have.

They were everywhere. There’s Gary Bettman wandering by a hotel. There’s David Poile chilling out on a patio. There’s some random teenager who you don’t recognize, but his neck is the width of your chest so he’s clearly going in the first round. At some point, your brain switches over to assuming that everyone in the city is secretly an NHL employee, and you start eavesdropping on random conversations in hopes of overhearing some top-secret info. (One guy even managed to get this strategy to work.)

The opening round was held Friday night, just 24 hours after the NBA held its draft in New York City. The leagues share some common traits when it’s time to divvy up the next generation of players, but the NHL draft is distinct in several notable ways. For one, there’s no guarantee a Canadian will be picked first overall. More important, the teams themselves play a much more prominent role in the NHL draft than in any other league. The front offices and scouting staffs fill up the draft floor, with GMs (or other team personnel) announcing the first-round picks themselves. That creates a fun dynamic and offers up plenty of opportunities for the host team’s crowd to play a role. Did I mention this year’s draft was in Philadelphia? Yeah, Flyers fans were going to make themselves heard.

That became clear almost immediately, before the draft had even officially begun. Minutes before the first pick, the NHL attempted to run through a quick roll call, giving each team the chance to confirm its presence and inform the league of who’d be making the picks. It’s supposed to be a formality. Flyers fans had other ideas, quickly deciding to greet the announcement of each team with loud “SUCKS” chants. They weren’t equally distributed — the Kings actually got some tepid applause and the Penguins, naturally, got it worst of all — but it set the tone for what was to come.

(And by the way … why does the NHL have a pre-draft roll call? I get that you need to know who’s authorized to make each team’s picks, but that seems like something that could be handled with an email. Are they concerned that the Carolina Hurricanes might not show up? Do the Dallas Stars sometimes wander in late to these things? Did the Winnipeg Jets’ mom forget to let the league know about their dentist appointment? It’s very confusing.)

After warming up, the Philly crowd got down to the real order of business: mercilessly booing Bettman every time he got near the lectern. The crowd gave it to him with both barrels, and they didn’t even let up when he tried one of his now-traditional cheesy jokes (“I thought this was the city of Brotherly Love?”). It was a strong performance, but not a perfect one, because they still let themselves get suckered in by the now-traditional sight of GMs thanking the host city for its hospitality. The supposedly hard-nosed Flyers fans went for it every time, rewarding the gambit with cheers, which resulted in more and more teams pulling it out as the night went on. You are only encouraging them, Philadelphia. If you don’t boo them for transparently sucking up to you, how will they ever learn?

Once the GMs managed to make their picks, the first round played out largely as expected. The Panthers held on to the first overall pick despite spending the week teasing the hockey world with talk of trading down. They chose Aaron Ekblad, a well-rounded defenseman who’d emerged as the consensus top player on most draft boards.

Ekblad was followed by the “big three” centers: Sam Reinhart (to Buffalo), Leon Draisaitl (to Edmonton), and Samuel Bennett (to Calgary). That set the tone for a first round that was dominated by forwards, with 25 of 30 picks being used on centers or wingers. The other five picks were defensemen; no goalie was taken until Saturday, when a mini-run on the position opened the second round.

Mix in a disappointing lack of trades — there were a few, which we’ll get to in a second, but nowhere near the parade of blockbusters we’d been hoping for — and you had a first round that didn’t offer up much in the way of shockers. That may explain why the fans were as loud as they were; once they realized the league’s GMs were planning on business as usual, the Flyers faithful decided to make their own fun.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

2014 draft preview: Ten players, ten questions

The NHL draft will be held this weekend in Philadelphia. The first round goes Friday night, with the rest held throughout the day on Saturday.

Drafts are a fascinating business; everyone comes up with their rankings and mocks, and then inevitably some sure-thing prospect starts sliding, someone else goes too early, and some team comes along and blows it all up by going completely off the board.

That’s partly due to the inherent difficulty in scouting and projecting teenagers. But it also speaks to the different philosophies that organizations have when it comes to drafting prospects. So instead of running down each and every name that could go off the board, I thought it might be more interesting to focus on some of those key philosophical questions, and how they could impact tomorrow’s opening round.

So let’s take a look at 10 names that will factor prominently into the weekend’s action. These aren’t the 10 best players in the draft (I’ve left out some possible top 10 picks like Michael Dal Colle and Jake Virtanen), but they may end up being the 10 most interesting to keep an eye on. And where they end up going could tell us a lot about how teams think about the draft.

The player: Aaron Ekblad, D, Barrie (OHL)

Ekblad is pretty much the unanimous pick as the top defenseman in the draft, and he may well go first overall. He’s got everything scouts love in a blueliner: size, vision, hockey sense, and a big shot that netted 23 goals last year.

Whenever his name comes up, the conversation inevitably turns to his maturity. Every draft class seems to have one player who seems 10 years older than everyone else (call it Landeskog Syndrome), and this year that’s Ekblad. The NHL brought a few of the top prospects to a few events during the Stanley Cup final, and at first I thought Ekblad was a league employee hired to shepherd the younger kids around. It’s increasingly rare to see a defenseman be able to step into the league and have any sort of impact right out of junior, but Ekblad could be the guy who can do it.

The bigger question: How do you feel about using a high pick on a defenseman?

If he goes first overall, Ekblad will be the first defenseman taken with the top pick since Erik Johnson in 2006, and just the second since a streak of three straight from 1994 to 1996. That’s largely because defensemen typically take longer to develop than forwards, making them tougher to project at this age. Everyone wants to build around a guy like Drew Doughty, taken second overall by the Kings in 2008, but the last decade has also seen teams use top-five picks on blueline disappointments like Cam Barker, Thomas Hickey, and Luke Schenn. Forwards can be busts, too, of course, but they’re generally the safer pick because they arrive closer to their NHL peak.

It’s possible Ekblad could face a situation similar to Seth Jones’s last year. Jones spent most of the season as the expected top pick, only to drop all the way to no. 4 on draft day as the Avs, Panthers, and Lightning all opted for forwards. It’s unlikely Ekblad will fall that far, since you’d have to assume the forward-heavy Oilers would snap him up if he fell to them at no. 3, but he’s far from a sure thing at no. 1.

The player: Sam Reinhart, C, Kootenay (WHL)

Reinhart has been on the radar as a possible first-overall choice for years, and while Central Scouting has him ranked third, he could still go with the top pick. He’s not a can’t-miss prospect in the mold of Sidney Crosby or John Tavares (or even Connor McDavid, next year’s presumptive top pick). But he is an impressively complete player for an 18-year-old, and projects as a first-line center who’ll be able to play in all situations.

Reinhart’s brother Griffin went fourth overall in 2012. That seems to be the worst-case scenario for Sam, and there’s a decent chance he goes first. That could depend on the Florida Panthers, who own that pick right now but may not by the time the draft starts.

The bigger question: What should it cost to trade up to no. 1?

It has become an annual draft tradition: The team that owns the no. 1 pick advertises that it’s available, we all go into a frenzy of trade rumors and scenarios, and then the team keeps the pick after all. The first-overall pick hasn’t actually been traded since 2003. We may be headed down the same path this year, although the Panthers seem more interested in dealing down than most teams. It’s yet another new era in Florida, with new ownership and a new coach in Gerard Gallant, and GM Dale Tallon seems intent on improving the team right now. That could mean dropping down a few spots in exchange for some immediate NHL help.

As you’d expect, that has led to every team in the top eight being linked to some sort of deal with the Panthers. Determining draft pick value is notoriously difficult — this may be the best attempt I’ve seen so far — and that’s especially true when veteran players are added into the mix. Despite all the talk, the odds are good the Panthers end up keeping the pick. But if some team wants to move up and snag a potential franchise player like Reinhart, the Panthers swear they’re open for business.

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