Puck Soup: Kane, Klingberg, Rask, and the debut of Gordle

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- More Evander Kane drama, and why the NHLPA needs to fight this
- We try to figure out which team might give him another chance
- The John Klingberg trade watch has arrived
- We get into just how bad this Coyotes rebuild could get
- Running down the various weird Atlantic goalie situations, including Tuukka Rask
- Plus Marc Bergevin, Bob Saget, and the debut of a new game called Gordle

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Puck Soup: Montreal mess

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Big changes in Montreal
- Should more be on the way in Vancouver?
- We have a biting suspension
- Time to reset the "days since Brad Marchand did something dirty" sign
- The Penguins are sold
- Playoff bubble, holiday stuff, a quiz and lots more...

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Weekend rankings: How do you make a Top 5 when there are 10 deserving teams? Plus changes in Montreal, Islanders cancellations and more.

What if five is the wrong number?

This came up in the comment section of last week’s post, but it’s worth exploring in a bit more detail here. I do a top and bottom five every week in this column, because that seems like a good number to let us explore the most newsworthy teams without getting bogged down in the mushy middle that’s often just not that interesting in this league.

But the thing is that it’s five teams every week, no matter what. That might seem to imply that there’s always a five-team tier at each end of the spectrum, and of course that’s not always true. Often, the gap between fifth and sixth is a small one, if it’s even there at all. Sometimes, there isn’t much gap between third or fourth and ninth or tenth.

That’s kind of what’s happening so far this year, at least for one of the rankings. At the bottom, we really are starting to get some separation with five bad teams. But on the good side of the ledger, there’s a very strong case to be made for a handful of teams we don’t have room for. I think we’d all agree the Panthers and Hurricanes are still safely top-five teams. My long-term view means the Avalanche have to be there, and the Lightning should get some benefit of the doubt. I’ve mostly bought into the Oilers. That’s five teams right there, and I don’t think anyone would argue that any of those are controversial picks. But it still leaves us with at least five teams that have an extremely strong case for a spot. The “really good teams” club is a very crowded place right now.

I can’t fit everyone in, but in the interest of inclusion (and a futile attempt to limit the number of angry “BUT WHAT ABOUT” screeds in the comment section), let’s make the case for five more teams.

Calgary Flames: They’ve already won four in a row twice this year and are so good defensively that they’ve yet to go more than three games without a shutout. The underlying numbers are very good, the way they always are with Darryl Sutter teams. If the Oilers are going to get a spot each and every week, a Flames team that’s been keeping pace with them all year should be there too, right?

Vegas Golden Knights: They’ve been inconsistent all year, but at their best, they can look scary good. We didn’t see that on Saturday, but they’re getting healthy again, and if we’re looking long-term then we should probably discount the stretch where they were missing Mark Stone and Max Pacioretty. Oh, and Jack Eichel is waiting in the wings. If everyone’s in place by the time the playoffs start, do you really think there will be five teams with better Cup odds?

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When should the Habs tank? Plus Sabres vs. Canucks misery, Quebec City expansion, and more in the mailbag

An interesting fact about mailbags is that nobody reads the intro. You still have to have one, because it will look weird if you just jump directly into the questions without some sort of preamble. But as soon as your readers see “mailbag” in the headline they just automatically skip ahead to the bolded section that means the first question, so you can pretty much write anything you want and it’s fine because literally nobody will see it. When I was three my parents dressed me up as a Habs fan for Halloween and they still have the photos. On to this month’s questions!

Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and style.

---

When is the right time for the Habs to start the official tank? Assuming it hasn’t started already? – Christopher C.

I’m a Habs fan, and I’ve switched over to rooting against them this year so we can get Shane Wright. Some of my friends think it’s too early for that. Could you provide us with some guidance? – Dan H.

Two separate but related questions. But first, Gary Bettman has asked me to remind you all that tanking isn’t a real thing. It doesn’t happen. NHL GMs would never tank, even though the league’s entire system of incentives means that it is very clearly the optimal strategy for bad teams, because dot dot dot reasons. Please ignore decades of circumstantial evidence, outright confessions, and basic common sense. Tanking isn’t real, and the media made it up.

Now that we have that out of the way, yes, of course the Habs should tank.

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The Bizarro-meter’s Eastern Conference offseason rankings

We’ve fired up the bizarro-meter for our annual attempt to figure out which NHL teams had the strangest offseason. Not the best or the worst or the busiest, mind you, but just the strangest.

Yesterday, we looked at the Western Conference, with top scores going to Golden Knights and Blackhawks, and the buyout-happy Minnesota Wild leading the way with a score of 8.6. Can anyone from the East compete with that score? [Remembers what the East teams were up to this year.] Yeah, I feel like a few of them can, but let’s see where this goes…

Atlantic Division

Tampa Bay Lightning

The offseason so far: We knew that cap Armageddon was coming, and it wasn’t pretty. The Lightning lost an entire line in Yanni Gourde, Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow, plus David Savard and Tyler Johnson. They offset those losses with a few cheap veteran signings, highlighted by Corey Perry, but overall it was a whole lot of talent hitting the road.

But their strangest story was: Losing all those good players and still looking like every bit like an elite Cup-worthy roster. These guys are annoying.

Bizarro-meter ranking: 2.5/10. Newsworthy, sure, but not especially bizarre. Maybe the only weird part for Julien BriseBoise is that he didn’t have to do this last year.

Detroit Red Wings

The offseason so far: It was basically the Alex Nedeljkovic trade and then a handful of depth moves.

But their strangest story was: If Nedeljkovic turns out to be the answer in goal, Steve Yzerman will have added a key piece at a low price.

Bizarro-meter ranking: 3.4/10. Yzerman continues his slow-but-steady rebuild. Every year, we say that he’ll eventually have to get more aggressive, but apparently that point hasn’t arrived yet. The Wings are on track, but it’s hard to see how they’ll be all that much better this year unless Nedeljkovic goes full superstar.

Florida Panthers

The offseason so far: The big news was landing Sam Reinhart from the Sabres at a reasonable price. They lost Chris Driedger and Alex Wennberg to Seattle, the former through the expansion draft and the latter as a UFA, and also said goodbye to veteran defensemen Keith Yandle and Anton Stralman.

But their strangest story was: The Panthers once again losing two good players to an expansion team was pretty funny after the whole Vegas disaster, even though they pretty much played this one fine.

Bizarro-meter ranking: 4.1/10. It feels like this could be nearing make-or-break time in Florida, with Aleksander Barkov in the last year of his deal and Jonathan Huberdeau a year behind him, so maybe there’s an argument that the Panthers should have been more aggressive. But they landed a big player and didn’t lose anyone crucial, so they should be better.

Boston Bruins

The offseason so far: The Bruins didn’t pull off any blockbuster moves, but they certainly churned through a big chunk of the roster, with lots of names moving in and out. The biggest change is in goal, where Linus Ullmark takes over from Tuukka Rask, at least until we know if and when Rask is coming back. They signed Nick Foligno but lost David Krejci, who was more important than most of us gave him credit for. And they re-signed deadline acquisition Taylor Hall to a fairly reasonable deal.

But their strangest story was: Probably the whole Rask/Ullmark thing, since it feels like we could be headed for anything from Rask being done in the NHL to him returning midway through the season to reclaim his starter’s job (at which point Ullmark’s contract feels onerous).

Bizarro-meter ranking: 5.2/10. The Bruins were busy, and it’s rare to see a contender have his much uncertainty about their goaltending heading into a season, but nothing they did seemed especially surprising under the circumstances.

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What lessons will the rest of the NHL learn from the Jesperi Kotkaniemi offer sheet?

The Carolina Hurricanes offer sheet to Jesperi Kotkaniemi has become the talk of the NHL. While that’s not an especially high bar in August, this is a pretty irresistible story for a hockey fan. It’s got the novelty of the rarely seen offer sheet, some genuine intrigue over how it will all play out, and a solid dose of pettiness to add to the mix.

That last bit is the angle that’s getting most of the attention these days, and rightly so given how clearly this move was inspired by the Habs’ 2019 offer sheet to Sebastian Aho. NHL front offices are filled with bitter grumps with long memories, but they’re usually not this over-the-top. From the $20 signing bonus to the word-for-for press release, apparently the Hurricanes don’t do subtle.

But while I can appreciate some junior high-level drama as much as the next guy, I’m wondering about a different angle: Where does the NHL go from here? After all, this a copycat league that’s notorious for GMs reacting to anything that happens by immediately shifting strategy to… well, something different. Sometimes they learn the right lesson. Often, they don’t. So what are NHL GMs going to talk themselves into after watching this whole mess unfold from their cottages?

I’m not sure, but I’ve got a few possibilities. Let’s work through how this might play out.

Lesson 1: Offer sheets are too dangerous, never try them

This one’s simple. The Canadiens’ offer sheet to Aho was the first one the league had seen in six years, and the biggest since Shea Weber in 2012. In between, hockey fans were left wondering why nobody was using a powerful weapon that was sitting right there in the rulebook. We could argue over whether Montreal’s move had any chance of succeeding – it didn’t – but at least they tried, which is more than you can say for anyone else.

And now, they have their reward: A retaliatory offer sheet aimed at one of their key young players. The lesson, it would seem, is to stay away from offer sheets entirely. You’ll just about never get the player, you get your fans’ hopes up for nothing, and you might just be putting a target on your own RFAs a year or two down the line.

Let’s be honest, we’re all pretty sure that this is the lesson that NHL GMs will end up learning from all this. But is it the right one?

Maybe, but there’s one problem with that theory: We’ve been hearing about the risk of retaliatory offer sheets for years. It comes up every summer, as yet another crop of top-tier RFAs would come and go without a single attempt. When fans would wonder why GMs were so hesitant to even try an offer sheet, one of the first reasons offered was always the threat of payback. But it basically never happened; before this weekend, the last time a team tried a retribution-based offer sheet was in 2008, when the Blues responded to the Canucks signing David Backes by going after Steve Bernier.

That was it. The Predators never went after a Flyer after the Weber offer. The Avs didn’t target any Flames after Ryan O’Reilly. The Sabres didn’t go after any Oilers after Thomas Vanek. Until this week, a GM who tried an offer sheet had as much chance of being challenged to a barn fight as they did of facing a return attempt. But they kept bringing it up anyway, hiding behind a mostly imagined threat as a reason to avoid doing their jobs.

Now it’s finally happened. But it sure seems like the fear of this kind of situation was already baked into whatever calculations teams were doing. It was the monster under the bed that they were already afraid of. Now that the monster is real, does that really change anything?

It might, which is why we’re all assuming that we’ll hear this excuse even more often in the coming years. But in the interest of encouraging GMs to keep their options open, let’s see if we can flip this one around…

Lesson 2: Offer sheets can actually work, so use them more

All those offer sheets we mentioned in the last section were matched. So was every offer sheet of the last 24 years, with one exception: the infamous Dustin Penner deal in 2007, which led to the Brian Burke/Kevin Lowe feud. Penner was a decent player in his day, but he wasn’t exactly anyone’s idea of a star. The last genuine difference-maker to switch teams after an offer sheet was… geez, does Chris Gratton in 1997 count? Shayne Corson in 95? Do we have to go all the way back to the Scott Stevens/Brendan Shanahan days in the early 90s?

You get the point. Offer sheets just don’t work. The incentive for teams to hold onto their own RFAs is just too high. That’s always been the system’s biggest problem. Why bother signing another team’s star to an offer sheet that won’t work? Sure, you can mess with their cap situation a bit, but that’s about the only benefit. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time, because teams always match.

Except along comes the Kotkaniemi deal, and the Habs… might not?

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Puck Soup: Free agency winners and losers

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Thoughts on everything that's happened since last week. It's a long episode.

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Working through a week of expansion moves, blockbuster trades and draft surprises

Well that was a week.

Seven days ago, we were mulling over the just-released protected lists for an upcoming expansion draft, and trying to figure out how many teams had already cut side deals with the Kraken. One week later, we’ve seen what Seattle did (and didn’t do), watched an entry draft, and seen about a half-dozen legitimately big trades. It was not a boring week.

Are you surprised? That’s always a fun question at this time of year, because while big moves always happen, they’re often expected. But every now and then, something catches us completely off guard, and those are often the moves that end up being the most memorably.

So today, let’s break out a gimmick we used a few years ago, back in the before times: the Surprise Scale, where we go through some of the biggest stories of the last few days and try to figure out how shocking each one actually was. As the hockey world takes a breath and gets ready for more action in the week to come, here are the stories from the last week that may or may not have caught you off guard.

The Kraken (mostly) avoid the big names

There was plenty of star power available to Seattle, at least in terms of name value. They had a shot at Carey Price, Vladimir Tarasenko, Mark Giordano, plus early access to unrestricted free agents like Gabriel Landeskog and Dougie Hamilton. The Flyers dangled James van Riemsdyk and Jakub Voracek, while the Predators offered Ryan Johansen or Matt Duchene. Jonathan Quick, Matt Murray and Braden Holtby were options in net, and Max Domi or even P.K. Subban were possibilities. If you wanted to, you could have put together a dream roster of big names.

Ron Francis apparently didn’t want to, because he didn’t take any of those players except for Giordano. Other than plucking the Flames’ captain, the biggest names from Wednesday’s draft were probably Jordan Eberle and maybe Yanni Gourde. Several players taken were guys some of us had never heard of.

Was that a surprise? A little bit, sure – our final mock draft had Seattle rolling the dice on Landeskog and van Riemsdyk. But the Kraken were never going to go crazy on big names, especially when most of them are long past their peak. Recreating the 2016 all-star team doesn’t help you much in 2021 and the Kraken were too smart for that plan, even if it would have been all sorts of fun for the rest of us to watch them try

Surprise scale: 30/100. And besides, we all knew that the real value in the expansion draft would come from all the teams Seattle would squeeze in their side deals…

The Kraken don’t make any side deals

Oh.

Yeah, I just don’t get this. I’ve ranted a bit on Twitter about it, and I’ve heard the counterarguments. The rest of the league was always going to learn some lessons from Vegas, and wouldn’t want to overpay like they did in 2017. The timid teams were going to be so scared that they wouldn’t even pick up the phone when Francis called. And with years to prepare, smart teams had already positioned themselves well, so they weren’t scared of losing a player.

All of that is true enough, and it was a good reason to expect that the Kraken weren’t going to be able to reap the kind of harvest that the Golden Knights did. There wasn’t going to be a Shea Theodore available. They weren’t going to swing side deals with ten different teams.

But… zero? Not one? That just doesn’t make sense. And when you mix in just one minor post-draft deal – Tyler Pitlick to Calgary for a fourth – it all feels like a major missed opportunity for Seattle. The expansion draft is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for your franchise, and working the trade front is a big part of that. It sounds like Francis misread the initial market, then couldn’t (or wouldn’t) adjust.

Surprise scale: 90/100. It’s too early to pass judgment on the Kraken overall, because they still have a ton of cap space and we need to see how they use it. If we get to Wednesday and they’re announcing the signing of guys like Hamilton or Landeskog (or both), or weaponizing their cap room to land big picks or prospects from teams that are desperate for space, great. Nobody will care that they didn’t get midround picks on expansion day. Let’s give them some credit and see how it plays out, but for now the lack of trade action is surprising.

Oh, one more expansion point…

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Puck Soup: Dunk on Keith

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Reactions to the Duncan Keith trade and Pierre McGuire news
- Thoughts on the Lightning winning the Stanley Cup a month ago or whenever that was
- Nikita Kucherov had two beers and was mean to Habs fans
- Also the Stanley Cup is broken now
- The curious case of Marc Bergevin's contract status
- The NHL has decided cross-checking should be against the rules
- OUFL baseball sluggers, which just turns into us remembering how awesome a lot of guys were

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The 18th place team is on the verge of a Stanley Cup. It has to mean something. But what?

Here are the facts: The Montreal Canadiens went 24-21-11 this year, losing eight more games than they won. They finished with the 18th-best record in a league where 16 teams make the postseason, earning the last spot in the North Division by a mere four points. They were 19th in goals differential, and finished tied with Chicago and Arizona for 19th in wins. They were 17th in goals scored and 18th in goals against, the latter partly due to their star goalie finishing the season with the seventh-worst save percentage among goalies who played at least 25 games. They were the only playoff team to hit double-digits in loser points, with 11. They fired their coach a month into the season, then saw their record get even worse under the new one. Then they went into the playoffs cold, on the heels of a season-ending five-game losing streak.

Now they’re in the Stanley Cup final.

What?

On the surface, this doesn’t make sense. It’s sports, and sports is supposed to have upsets and underdogs, but this seems extreme. If you just look at those basic numbers up above, then what’s happening in Montreal seems borderline impossible. We haven’t seen a team turn a regular season like this into a championship since 1949, but the Habs are on the verge of doing it. And they’re kind of making it look easy.

It has to mean something. But what?

Spoiler alert: I have no idea. But I want to think it through, so I’ve come up with ten theories about what’s happened to the Montreal Canadiens over the course of this run, and what the rest of us can learn from it. There may be some truth to a few of them, or even most. They may all be wrong.

Let’s try to find out. I’ll give you ten theories, why they work, and why they might not, and then you head to the comments and tell me which ones I should buy into.

Theory #1: The Habs aren’t a bad team and never were

The theory: Let’s start with what might be both the easiest answer, and also the most complicated: The standings lied. The Canadiens went through their ups and down like any team, but they were always a good team that was a threat to have the sort of run they’re having. If you missed that because you didn’t look any deeper than what the standings page said, that’s on you.

Why it might work: There’s a decent argument to be made that a simple glance at the Canadiens’ record is at least misleading. For starters, they got all those loser points because they went 3-8 in overtime and 1-3 in shootouts; in regulation, when real hockey is played, they basically broke even (20 wins and 21 losses). That late-season losing streak came when they already had a playoff spot largely wrapped up, and they were tired from a condensed schedule due to COVID delays. Carey Price was hurt for a lot of the year, so throw his stats out the window. And the team’s underlying numbers were good, with Natural Stattrick’s numbers having them 10th in 5-on-5 expected goals percentage and second in 5-on-5 Corsi, but the seventh worst PDO in the league (and worst among playoff teams).

Why it might not: All of that does seem like a pretty convincing argument that the Canadiens weren’t a bad team, but I’m not sure it adds up to them being especially good. The various models out there, including Dom’s, all take underlying numbers into account, and most of them still didn’t think much of Montreal’s chances. So at best, this theory only gets us part of the way there. Let’s keep going…

Theory #2: The playoffs are just different and Marc Bergevin understood that

The theory: We’re constantly told that the playoffs are a different game. Marc Bergevin knew that, and he built a team that was designed for the postseason.

Why it might work: Go down the list of postseason cliches, and the Habs do check a lot of boxes. They play defense. They block shots. They’re good on special teams, especially the penalty kill. They don’t have any big-name stars who rack up stats and personal glory, but they do have a bunch of guys willing to lay it all on the line for the team.

Maybe the playoffs really are different. And more intriguingly, maybe Bergevin understood that in a way that most of us don’t, and built a team that was just good enough to get into the postseason and perfectly positioned to be a force once they were there. He added veterans with Cup rings, including Corey Perry and Eric Staal. He went out and got a big body in Josh Anderson, even coming off of a terrible season, because those are the guys who are hardest to handle in the playoffs. He had guys like Brendan Gallagher and Phillip Danault and Paul Byron who’d leave everything on the ice. And he built it all around Carey Price and Shea Weber, two Team Canada veterans who’ve played on the biggest stages but are hungry for their first Cups.

He built that team knowing that if they could be good enough during the season and have the old Price show up in time for the playoffs, they’d be contenders. He was right.

Why it might not: It starts sounding a little too convenient, right? Sure, the playoffs aren’t the same as the regular season, but it’s not a whole new sport. And it gets a little too easy for those of us in the narrative business to just wait until the final, then knowingly point at the two teams left and say that they “knew how to play playoff hockey” and all the other teams didn’t. It’s weird how we never manage to figure any of this out until we already know the right answer.

That’s not to say there isn’t anything to this idea, or that Bergevin doesn’t deserve credit. But if he’s truly cracked the code, this success should be sustainable and not just a one-year wonder. I guess time will tell.

Theory #3: It’s time to accept that the regular season doesn’t matter

The theory: This is a slightly more nihilistic version of Theory 2. It’s not just that the playoffs are different. It’s that they’re practically random, with tiny two-week sample sizes that lend themselves to flukes, hot streaks and weird bounces.

The regular season tells us which 16 teams make the playoffs, and that’s it. Once the postseason starts, we’re just flipping coins, which is why the 18th best team in the league basically has as good a shot as anyone.

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In the final days before the deadline, who’s under the most pressure to make a deal?

We’re down to less than a week until the trade deadline, and do you know who needs to make a deal? (Checks notes.) Everyone. Pretty much every team needs to find a move or two, at least according to their fans. And those fans are probably right, because there are no perfect teams in the modern NHL, so there’s always room for improvement.

But while everyone should do something, not all trade deadline pressure is created equal. Some teams want to make a move. Some should make a move. But some teams need to do something, and preferably something big. If they don’t, well, those GMs aren’t going to have a very good month.

We really don’t know what to expect over the next few days. The cap is tight, almost nobody has money to spend, the playoff bubble somehow has like three teams, and there may be more sellers than serious buyers. What does that mean? No idea, but let’s run through the entire league and work our way up to the ones under the most pressure to get something done. We’ll use some categories along the way, as we make our way through all 32 teams. Yes, 32. We’ll get to that.

The situation we’ve never seen before

Before we get to the rest of the list, we have to single one team out.

#32. Vancouver Canucks

In theory, Jim Benning and the Canucks should be staring down several tough deadline decisions after a disastrous season. But with a team-wide COVID-19 outbreak impacting players, staff, and families, all bets are off. How do you trade somebody away during this sort of situation? How do you bring somebody into it? I’m not sure you can. We’ve never this before, and here’s hoping we never see it again. The league and its business marches on, but if Benning decided that the Canucks had far bigger things to worry about right now, nobody could blame him.

Sellers without much to sell

The deadline can be kind of fun when your team is bad and you’re just collecting picks and prospects. But when you don’t really seem to have any big names on the block, you’re mostly left to make minor deals.

#31. Ottawa Senators

The Senators will almost certainly do something, because Pierre Dorion is low-key one of the most active traders in the league. But this isn’t the Mark Stone/Matt Duchene storm of 2019, so unless Dorion’s got a surprise up his sleeve, he’s probably taking calls on Erik Gudbranson and maybe Ryan Dzingel, and those names don’t scream blockbuster. The Derek Stepan injury hurts here.

#30. Detroit Red Wings

The Wings have a little more to offer, with the annual Luke Glendening sweepstakes and at least some potential for a Jonathan Bernier move. But for the most part, Steve Yzerman can make a few minor moves and then focus on losing the lottery again the offseason.

Contenders that are already really good

There’s always deadline pressure on the contenders, who are expected to make that one last move that will put them over the top. But these teams are already close to the top, which means that if they chose to stand pat (or swung big and came up empty), they could justify it.

#29. Tampa Bay Lightning

Julien BriseBois had a strong deadline last year, adding Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman, and both are still on the roster. You only get so many shots at a Cup, so you could understand if BriseBois wanted to keep pushing all-in and chase down a name like David Savard. But if he said he was sticking with what he’s got, could you blame him?

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The Athletic Hockey Show: When stars get benched

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Zach Parise becomes the latest star to get benched
- Was this the right time for Dean Evason to play it tough?
- We both agree on the worst benching of all-time
- The Habs fire a coach during a game; did Carey Price know?
- The timing of a potential Jack Eichel trade
- The Leafs are running away with the North
- This week in history, featuring the night that Teemu's record-breaker was only the second best highlight
- Listener questions and lots more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)

Weekend rankings: Can the Canadiens season be saved?

How’s that for a dramatic headline? Look, it’s the Habs and they’re losing. Nobody’s going to do subtlety and nuance.

But I’ll blow the suspense by revealing the answer in the second paragraph. Can this season be saved? Yes, of course. They’re still holding down a playoff spot, we’ve already seen this lineup rack up wins early on, and they’re still one of the better possession teams at 5-on-5, which we’re told is a good predictor of future success. Nothing’s hopeless here.

Will it be saved? That gets dicier, because man, things are not good right now.

Let’s reset on a nightmare February. On Groundhog Day, the Habs beat the Canucks, ending a two-week stretch that saw them face Vancouver five times and take nine of 10 points, all while scoring at will. That ran their overall record to 7-1-2, and they were all but anointed the division’s best team. Marc Bergevin’s moves had all worked perfectly, and the relatively small number of skeptics had been proven wrong. (I was one of those offseason skeptics, but I bailed on it quickly, because even when I’m right I find a way to be wrong.) With four good lines and a smart system and nobody playing poorly, the team was so good it was getting boring.

Two nights after that win over the hapless Canucks, the Habs lost to the Senators. No big deal, it was a trap game against a bad team and they got their revenge in a rematch. But then came a loss to the Maple Leafs, and then another to the Oilers, and soon they’d lost seven of eight, including five straight. Last week, they fired coach Claude Julien, a move that would have seemed unthinkable just two weeks ago.

So now what?

New head coach Dominique Ducharme has already made some tweaks, but a pair of losses to the Jets means there won’t be an instant turnaround. Ducharme was Julien’s assistant, so he should be able to maintain that successful 5-on-5 system while concentrating on upgrading the lackluster special teams. But 5-on-5 possession only gets you so far if you can’t finish, and that’s where Bergevin’s decision to abandon his years-long pursuit of top-line talent in favor of a more balanced approach may not be the success it seemed like. The Canadiens can roll out three or four lines that can score, but who’s the go-to guy when you absolutely need a big goal? OK, Tyler Toffoli if it’s against the Canucks, but what about the rest of the time? Right now, the team’s leading scorer is 33-year-old defenseman Jeff Petry, which probably isn’t how Bergevin drew it up.

But maybe that doesn’t matter, because we haven’t mentioned the elephant in the room. Like so many other slumping teams, all the analysis in the world can just be boiled down to one short sentence: The goaltending is bad. That’s it. Bad goaltending sinks good teams, and that’s what Montreal’s been getting on too many nights.

In a weird way, that might be good news for Ducharme, because he has two established goaltenders and only one has been struggling. Jake Allen has played well, including in a Saturday loss in which Montreal was clearly the better team. Go with the hot hand for a little bit, and get the season back under control. Simple enough. But of course it isn’t, because the other goalie is Carey Price, a 33-year-old carrying the league’s highest cap hit for five more years after this one. The plan was that Allen wouldn’t just upgrade the backup slot, but that he’d give Price enough nights off that the starter would get back to the elite level of play that the league still insists he’s capable of, even if the last few years of numbers disagree. It hasn’t worked. Price is muddling through yet another shaky season.

Does Ducharme sit his star and go with the guy who’s playing better? That sounds like the obvious answer, and maybe it is, but where does that leave you next year and beyond? And does that even matter, when you’ve got one year to work with in a very winnable Canadian division before you presumably go back to sharing the Atlantic with the Bruins and Lightning? If this keeps going off the rails and the Habs miss the playoffs, it’s possible that neither Ducharme nor Bergevin are around to worry about the fallout. (And yes, the rest of us have our popcorn ready in case Patrick Roy’s music hits.)

Or maybe Price heats up, the special teams get a few bounces, the team plays like it did on Saturday but without the other team’s goalie stealing it, Montreal makes the playoffs and beats the Maple Leafs and everyone is happy. The turnaround would need to start soon, but they’ve got a winnable slate of games coming up, with the Senators tomorrow, two more against the Jets and then, like a shimmering oasis on the horizon, two more against the Washington Generals Canucks.

Can the season be saved? Yes, of course it can. Will it? We’ll find out, and maybe soon. And it’s Montreal, so whether you want to or not, you’ll hear all about it.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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The Athletic Hockey Show: The season's first pink slip

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- The Habs fire Claude Julien
- Were Ian and I wrong about Marc Bergevin?
- Our bets on which coach might be next
- Which team's success is the biggest surprise, Chicago or L.A.?
- Jesse Granger on this year's fantasy league-winners
- Neutral site games, the other Gretzky trade and more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)

The Athletic Hockey Show: Tuukka Rask's brain cramp, Ron Hextall becomes Penguins GM, drama in Columbus and more

In this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Tuukka Rask forgets the score
- What's the NHL's all time worst in-game brain cramp?
- Ron Hextall and Brian Burke arrive in Pittsburgh
- What should the Penguins do with Evgeni Malkin?
- More drama in Columbus
- Granger Things on the teams that are consistently landing one side of the over/under lines
- Remembering a record-breaking night for Theo Fleury and the Flames - Listener questions and lots more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)

The Athletic Hockey Show: Tony DeAngelo, Bettman's legacy, and are the Senators among the worst teams ever?

In this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Would you want Tony DeAngelo on your team?
- The one Leafs rival I couldn't forgive when he joined the team
- We wonder if Marc Bergevin has already won the GM of the Year award
- The Senators are very bad, but are they historically bad?
- Looking ahead to Team Canada 2022
- Granger Things features a weird NHL-themed Super Bowl bet
- Gary Bettman's legacy, Sam Gagner's big night and lots more...

The Athletic Hockey Show runs most days of the week during the season, with Ian and I hosting every Thursday. There are two versions of each episode available:
- An ad-free version for subscribers that you can find here
- An ad-supported version you can get for free wherever you normally find your podcasts (like Apple or Spotify)

The top secret transcript of Gary Bettman’s Fourth of July party

As my longtime readers know, Gary Bettman loves nothing more than hosting the entire NHL world at one of his world-famous parties. This year was no different, as all the most important names in the hockey world were invited to Bettman’s home for a backyard cookout to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Somehow, I didn’t get an invite. But luckily, my spies were able to sneak in, and they sent me a top secret transcript of the entire event.

(Scene: It’s the backyard of a large home in a trendy New York suburb. Gary Bettman is wearing a “Kiss the Chef” apron as he works the grill and welcomes guests. He’s approached by an old friend.)

Bill Daly: Gary, thanks for the invite. How this year’s party shaping up?

Bettman: We’re just getting started, but so far, so good.

Daly: Great. Got enough food?

Bettman: I think so. I’ve got a few packs of frozen burgers, a couple of steaks and sausages, and several hundred hot dogs that Mike Sullivan dropped off.

Daly: That seems like a lot.

Bettman: Apparently all the hot dog carts near the arena were having going-out-of-business sales.

Daly: I see.

Bettman: He seemed pretty happy about it.

Daly: Are all the guests here?

Bettman: Well, not all of them. Gabriel Landeskog been has been standing on the porch for half an hour, waiting for somebody to open the door for him. Jake Gardiner couldn’t make it because he’s waiting for a repairmen to show up and get his phone line working. And Paul Fenton was on his way up the driveway when he thought he saw a lizard, and now he’s trying to sign it to a contract.

Daly: Does that make sense to anybody?

Bettman: Not remotely, no.

Daly: OK, just checking.

Bettman: Anyway, time to start serving up some food. Hey Sebastian Aho, want a burger?

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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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.

Which early-season success story could be on this year's Senators?

We’re​ halfway into November,​ which​ means​ the​ NHL​ is​ settling into​ that mid-season grind.​ Teams have largely​ started​ sorting themselves out,​​ and we have a pretty solid idea which ones are good and which are bad, at least in general terms. There’s still lots of hockey left, and plenty of twists and turns for various stories to take. But for the most part, by this point on the calendar we usually know where most teams stand.

But not always.

One year ago today, the Ottawa Senators had just returned to North America after a two-game series against the Avalanche in Sweden. They’d won both of those games, running their record to 8-3-5. They were third in their division and comfortably in a playoff spot with multiple games in hand. Even better, they’d just pulled off a blockbuster trade to add Matt Duchene to the lineup. And remember, they were still just a few months removed from a dramatic playoff run that left them one goal shy of a trip to the Stanley Cup final.

Things were good. And then, almost overnight, they weren’t. As we all know, last year’s Senators were about to fall off a cliff. They’d lose their next seven straight and end up finishing with the second-worst record in the league. Mix in off-ice scandals that dragged into a relentlessly bizarre offseason, and the last 12 months have been a nightmare.

We can hope that no team is about to embark on a similar year, at least in terms of off-ice drama – the Senators feel like a once-in-a-generation outlier there. But in terms of wins and losses, is it possible that any teams that are feeling good about themselves right now might have a cliff of their own looming just around the corner?

Let’s see if we can figure that out. We’ll skip over the team that are already in crisis mode (like the ‘Hawks, Devils, Ducks, Oilers and seemingly half the rest of the league). Instead, we’ll look for five teams that roughly match that 2017-18 Senators profile – over .500, in the playoffs or close to it and generally feeling good like the season is going well. And then we’ll try to ruin those good vibes by figuring out whether it could all go wrong.

Montreal Canadiens

Where they’re at: At 9-5-3, the Canadiens are holding strong in the Eastern wild-card race, not to mention staying within range of the Bruins and Leafs for a top-three spot in the Atlantic. They haven’t gone back-to-back games without a point all season, and the offense has hovered around the top five.

And as an added bonus, the season’s first month has felt like at least a small redemption for the much-maligned Marc Bergevin. The team’s top three scorers are Max Domi, Tomas Tatar and Jonathan Drouin – all players he recently acquired in trades that many of us questioned.

How it could all go wrong: To some extent, maybe it’s already started to. If you ignore the loser point, they’ve lost almost as many as they’ve won, and they haven’t managed consecutive wins since the season was two weeks old.

Beyond that, they’re currently shooting 10 per cent across all situations, which seems on the high side given the talent level on the roster. Considering how much they give up, it wouldn’t take much of a drop in scoring for the Canadiens to go from decidedly average to something south of that.

And if that happens, Montreal is the kind of town where a losing streak can spiral into a crisis. We’ve seen it before, with many of these same players and coaches involved.

Why it won’t: The weird thing about this year’s Habs is that this is the sort of exercise where we’d normally be saying something like “They’re doing it on the back of Carey Price, so if he gets cold then look out.” But they’re not. In fact, Price hasn’t been good at all this year, and wasn’t all that good last year either.

On the one hand, that’s a terrifying red flag; his eight-year extension just kicked in this year, and if they find themselves paying $84 million for sub-.900 goaltending, they’re pretty much screwed. But in terms of right now, you can twist it into a reason for optimism. This is Carey Price, after all. The guy is good. So if they’re already winning when he’s getting lit up, how good will they be if he settles back into looking like a Vezina contender?

As an added bonus, we could point out that Shea Weber will be back at some point over the next month or so, which should give the team a big boost. And with the Panthers, Wings and Senators all struggling, a playoff spot in the Atlantic is there for the taking.

Odds that they’re this year’s Senators: There’s certainly a bit of that vibe, if only based on recent history. But preseason consensus aside, there isn’t all that much telling us that the Canadiens are a bad team right now.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

NHL GMs don’t get second chances anymore. That might change how your favorite team is run.

If​ you had to​ guess,​ how​ many​ current​ NHL​ head coaches​ do you think​ have held that​ job​ for at least​​ one other team during their careers?

You might assume the number would be fairly high. After all, the NHL is often accused of being an old boys’ club, where teams prefer the safety of a familiar name to taking a chance on a fresh face.

If so, you’d be right. The vast majority of current coaches – 21 out of 31 – are on at least their second head coaching job. That includes nine coaches who are on their second chance, eight who are on their third, and four who are on their fourth. John Tortorella is actually on his fifth if you count his brief interim stint with the Rangers in 1999-00.

OK, now let’s move up the org chart and try the same question for the front office. How many of today’s 31 GMs are on at least their second chance at the job? If anything, we might think that the old boys’ club effect would be even more pronounced here. GM jobs don’t open up very often and they typically require plenty of experience, so you might expect to see the same old faces being recycled through the league.

But we don’t. In fact, only 10 of the league’s current GMs are on their second full-time job. (It’s 11 if you count Jeff Gorton’s interim stint with Boston, although that only lasted a few months.) Two-thirds of today’s GMs are on their first shot at the job. And only one GM in the entire league, Lou Lamoriello, has done it for more than two teams.

That seems pretty amazing. It didn’t used to be like this – even a decade or so ago, it wasn’t unusual to see guys like Cliff Fletcher, Bobby Clarke, Brian Burke or Bryan Murray show up for third, fourth and even fifth cracks at a GM’s job. But these days, most teams don’t seem interested in hiring a retread. More often than not, a GM’s career is one-and-done.

The two types of second-chance GMs

The trend gets even more pronounced if you look at the 10 GMs who did manage to get a second chance. Almost all of them fall into one of two categories: Stanley Cup winners, or guys who held their first job forever.

The Cup winner category includes names like Ray Shero and Peter Chiarelli, as well as Dale Tallon, who built pretty much the entire Blackhawks’ 2009-2010 roster before being fired after free agency. The Blackhawks made a point of giving him a ring even though he wasn’t employed by the team anymore, so we’ll defer to their judgment and consider him a Cup winner.

Then there’s the guys who didn’t win a Cup, but held their previous job forever. That would include George McPhee (17 years in Washington before going to Vegas); David Poile (15 years in Washington before Nashville); and Don Waddell (12 years in Atlanta before getting the Carolina job this summer).

Two more guys, Lamoriello and Jim Rutherford, fit into both categories, having held previous jobs for well over a decade while winning Cups in the process.

That leaves us with just two current GMs in the entire league who managed to get a second crack at the job despite not either winning a Cup or sticking around forever in their first.

The first is Doug Armstrong. He does have a Cup ring, earned as an assistant in Dallas, but didn’t have much success in five years as GM there. He still managed to work his way back to the big chair in St. Louis in 2010, and he’s held it ever since.

The second is Anaheim GM Bob Murray. You may not even remember his previous time as a GM, because it came back in the 1990s. He had a quick stint as GM in Chicago from 1997 to 1999, then waited nearly 10 years before getting a second shot with Anaheim in 2008.

That’s it. Two guys in the entire league who didn’t succeed in their first crack at being a GM and still got a second chance. One of them had to wait nearly a decade. And neither was hired within the last eight years.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic