In the Friday Grab Bag:
- My spies report on teams' top secret trade plans
- An obscure player who was kind of trade for a Hall-of-Famer
- January comedy stars
- An important proposal for the month before the deadline
- And a YouTube breakdown of Bruce Boudreau's first career goal
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On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Gary Bettman swears that nobody is tanking
- The Canucks finally fire Bruce Boudreau. Now what?
- Updating our all-star tiers
- What's happening with the Yzerplan in Detroit?
- Oilers up, Islanders down
- Barry Trotz media tour, and more...
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>> Subscribe on iTunes
>> Listen on Spotify
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
No bonus top five this week because I’m cranky. Instead, I’m going to ask you to let me vent for a bit.
I’m a bit of an NHL history buff. You may have picked up on that based on roughly half the columns I post here. I also wrote a book on the subject. I’m not an expert, but I feel like I know my stuff.
I’ve never seen anything like this Bruce Boudreau story.
Never. And I lived through the era of Harold Ballard, an owner so mean and awful that he once asked Roger Neilson to wear a paper bag over his head. Neilson told him to get stuffed, and Ballard backed down, because even the worst of the worst are still capable of realizing when they've gone too far.
The Canucks went too far. Way too far. Their treatment of Boudreau over the last few months went from comical to bizarre to outright cruel, which is where it’s been for weeks now. Yesterday’s announcement of the inevitable was just one last act in a bad farce. The way this was handled makes Gerard Gallant’s infamous taxi look like a stretch limo.
Look, coaches get fired. It’s never pleasant, but it happens, to almost everyone, and it’s part of the game. You could absolutely make the case that Boudreau deserved a pink slip based on how this season went, or at least that the coach taking the fall for a flawed roster would be standard operating procedure in plenty of places around the league. That’s fine. Maybe Rick Tocchet will be the better fit.
But there’s no reason to do it like this. None. We’ve known the coaching change was coming. We knew who’d be replacing him. The exact date it would happen leaked out a while ago. And yet the team still sent Boudreau out there, night after night, as dead coach walking. Just fire him! If Tocchet can’t take the job right away because of TV commitments or whatever, then let Mike Yeo run the bench for a few games on an interim basis. There’s no reason to let a respected coach with over 600 career wins who almost saved your season last year twist in the wind like this. No reason to have Jim Rutherford periodically show up to kick him when he’s down. No reason to send him out there for what everyone knew would be his final games, then watch him have to clarify to the media that he hadn’t actually been fired yet.
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On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- What the hell is happening in Vancouver?
- A few new extensions, but no David Pastrnak yet
- Seattle looks like a contender... maybe
- Ivan Provorov sends an anti-LGBT message
- The Avalanche could miss the playoffs
- Jack Adams candidates, and lots more...
>> Listen on The Athletic
>> Subscribe on iTunes
>> Listen on Spotify
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- It's really bad in Vancouver, and we talk about it for a long time
- JT Miller in a pumpkin patch, Mike Yeo in the wings, and whether its too early for changes
- Phil Kessel is the NHL's new ironman and we love him
- The Sabres are good but it might not be real
- The Flames, Knights and Bruins are good and it probably is real
- Plus Shane Wright barely playing and lots more...
>> Listen on The Athletic >> Subscribe on iTunes.
>> Listen on Spotify>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We look at what comes next for all eight teams that lost
- Oh cool, the Leafs are one of those teams, can't wait
- Thoughts on the four second-round series
- Boudreau stays, DeBoer fired, Lambert hired. No, the other one.
- Award finalist thoughts, featuring a weird Masterton rant
- The Coyotes get put on their best behavior, and more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We go through each of the eight series to see what we know after one game
- The Leafs look amazing, the Oilers cough it up, the Pens and Rangers work overtime
- Are the Wild or Panthers in trouble
- No, the NHL is not biased against its largest US market
- A roundup of the coaches who got fired and, maybe more surprisingly, who didn't (yet)
- Why we're not sure yet which category Bruce Boudreau is in
- And more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- COVID is everywhere - so how long can the NHL keep going like this>
- The Paul Maurice news breaks in the middle of the episode and we read tweets about it to you
- The Canucks are fixed
- The Oilers are not
- Are the eight Eastern playoff teams already set?
- Plus I have to read this week's Manscaped ad and much more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
We’ve hit the two-month mark of the season. Who wants to check in on how the prediction contest is going?
Maybe not many of you, because it’s been a rough start. If you’re not familiar with the contest, it’s a chance to predict the things that definitely will and won’t happen during the season. Just the easy stuff – the sort of calls that are obvious to anyone. Except that they often don’t end up being all that easy or obvious, and when that happens it can torpedo your entry. You can find this year’s contest, and the 1,582 entries, right here.
So how’s it going? The good news is that a lot of the biggest stories haven’t caught many of you off-guard. It’s been a surprisingly busy first few months in terms of coaches and GMs leaving their jobs, with four changes in each category. (We’re not counting Doug Wilson’s medical leave here, as it’s only expected to be temporary.) Those changes included a pair of teams pulling the trigger on Monday, with the Flyers firing Alain Vigneault while the Canucks confirmed the reports that they were moving on from Travis Green and Jim Benning. But that didn’t trip up many of you in the “definitely won’t lose their job” questions, with only five entries naming Benning and Vigneault and about 30 having Green. A little over 30 had Marc Bergevin being safe and almost 20 had Jeremy Colliton, so none of the standard-issue firings did much damage. Neither did Bob Murray’s exit, which hit less than ten of you, and Stan Bowman only got 14. But the Joel Quenneville firing was the big one, with 856 entries naming him as completely safe back in the days before the full scope of the Blackhawks scandal came into focus.
All in all, that’s not bad – eight firings, but only one that did real damage. That’s the good news. The bad news is that a few of the other questions are looking rough. Cole Caufield showed up as a Calder candidate sure-thing on a remarkable 1,511 entries, or over 95%, and that’s not looking great. Over 700 of you had Spencer Knight for the Calder question. There’s still time for both guys to rebound, but it’s a nervous start for just about everyone. And for what it’s worth, possible front-runner Lucas Raymond was only named by about 70 of you.
The playoff team questions are also looking scary for some of you. Just over 900 of you had the Islanders as a sure-thing playoff team, which seems unlikely, and over 140 were completely confident about the Jets. On the other side, a whopping 1,540 had the surprising Ducks as a lock to miss, along with over 1,300 entries that named the Red Wings, 800 for the Blue Jackets and over 500 for the Sharks. By contrast, things look OK on the Norris question, we haven’t had any major goalie injuries yet (although four of you somehow missed the Carey Price news when filling out your entries), and it’s too soon to rule any of the big stars out of the Hart race except for an injured Nikita Kucherov, which will cost about 600 of you.
But for a lot of you, none of that will matter. That’s because of this year’s new bonus questions, which offered you the chance to risk your entire entry by naming a player other than Connor McDavid who’d have 100 points, an opportunity that about three-quarters of you took. The good news is that 663 of you picked Leon Draisaitl, which looks like a lock if he stays healthy. But 154 had Nathan MacKinnon, who has to make up ground after missing time due to injury. And 219 had Kucherov, so you’re basically done.
Also, uh, it’s not great news for the one and only one entry that risked it all on Roope Hintz as their 100-point player.
Two months down, four to go, and already some of you are looking good while others are thinking ahead to next year. The same is true of a lot of NHL teams, and I suppose we should stop stalling and get to another week of power rankings you won’t agree with…
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On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- If you missed it we fired Greg
- Big changes for the Canucks and Flyers
- The NHL has a new program that's about respect
- Are we still going to the Olympics?
- Four controversial hits from three players leads to two suspensions and we have thoughts
- And more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- A debate about Bruce Boudreau gets a little heated
- What's up with the Leafs?
- Yet another outdoor game
- I have a hot take about speaking to the manager and rating employees
- Evander Kane's player safety criticism
- Thoughts on the trades so far
- Greg and Ryan place their bets on my trade deadline odds
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
We had our first coaching change on the 2019-20 season last week. You may have missed it since it came in Toronto and that team tends to fly under the radar. But with Mike Babcock handed his walking papers and Sheldon Keefe installed behind the Leafs’ bench, we can now settle those “first coach fired” bets from October.
Great. So who’s going to be second?
It’s kind of a macabre question – we’re talking about people losing their jobs, after all – but it’s unavoidable in a league where midseason changes are taking on increased importance. This time last year, we’d already had four, including one by the eventual Cup winners. The Babcock firing came one year and one day after the Blues replaced Mike Yeo with Craig Berube, en route to becoming the fourth team in a decade to fire their coach and win a Cup in the same year.
The Leafs hope they can pull off the same sort of turnaround. But history tells us that they won’t be the only candidate. We’ll probably see another coach sent packing before long. But who is the most likely candidate?
It’s a tricky question, and perceptions can shift quickly. Go back even a few weeks, and the odds-on favorite was clear: Dallas coach Jim Montgomery, whose Cup-worthy roster was spinning its wheels. But the Stars have been on fire lately, so Montgomery suddenly seems as safe as can be. At least until the next losing streak.
A few of his Central division colleagues may not be so lucky. Bruce Boudreau’s Wild continue to flounder, and with an expiring coaching contract and a new GM in place who didn’t hire him, there’s little reason to think he’ll be Bill Guerin’s long-term answer. It feels like more of a when-not-if situation in Minnesota, so the question might be whether somebody else beats them to the punch.
Another Central candidate: the Predators, whose recent losing streak dropped them all the way out of a playoff spot. Adam Vingan explored the question of Peter Laviolette’s job security last week, and the coach doesn’t seem overly worried. But as the league’s third longest-serving coach, and with a veteran roster that’s built to win it all right now, he probably should be.
The only other two coaches with longer tenures may have worries of their own, although Paul Maurice has his Jets hanging around the wildcard race. Jon Cooper and the Lightning have been underwhelming, but he feels like a guy who’d be in danger after another first-round exit, not during the season. Then again, we all said that about Babcock too.
The Pacific offers up a few candidates, with Peter DeBoer’s Sharks and Bill Peters’ Flames both underachieving. San Jose is at least trending in the right direction, and you’d think Peters would get the benefit of the doubt after last year’s turnaround. But six straight losses were starting to feel like a crisis, so somebody getting fired in Calgary no longer feels impossible. The question might be who.
Shifting to the East, the bottom of the standings reveals a few candidates. Jeff Blashill’s been showing up on hot seat lists for a few years now, and while we thought he’d received a vote of confidence last year in the form of an extension, that was under a different GM. Furthermore, the extension reportedly includes a club option, so he isn’t as secure as it looked. The question in Detroit might be whether Steve Yzerman would bother with a midseason change, rather than waiting out a rebuilding year, banking some high lottery odds and then making a change in the offseason.
David Quinn’s Rangers are underachieving in what was supposed to be a transition year back to contention, although he’s only in Year 2. John Tortorella’s Blue Jackets are outside of the playoff picture, although most of us expected that after their offseason exodus. And then there’s John Hynes, who is somehow the fifth longest-serving coach in the league now. His Devils continue to be inconsistent at best, and while he can’t strap on the pads and play goal, you get the sense that patience is running out in New Jersey.
Did we miss anyone? I’m not counting any first-year coaches, on the assumption that nobody’s going to get Sparky Allison’ed. We’ll assume that anyone whose team is overachieving or securely in a playoff spot is safe for now, although two bad weeks can change that. And while his team is playing below expectations, I can’t imagine Gerard Gallant being in any danger, so we won’t call a cab for him anytime soon.
Who’s the favorite? Of all the candidates, Hynes stands out – he’s been around forever, his team looks awful and there’s pressure to win right now thanks to the looming Taylor Hall decision. But Babcock’s availability could shift some equations; we’ve seen teams make surprise moves to grab recently fired coaches before, and Babcock speculation is already popping up around some of the teams on our list. A veteran, win-now team like the Sharks or Predators could make sense if he wanted to jump right back into the mix. And if he doesn’t, a Maple Leafs turnaround after making a switch will just ramp up the pressure on anyone else who seems to be on the fence.
We’re at that time of year. It’s officially no longer early. And as the Blues showed us last year, a big move at the right time can save a season. One team’s already taken the plunge; let’s see who’s next.
The five teams that look like they’re headed towards a summer of keg stands and fountain pool parties.
Under Babcock, the Leafs had won just two games over teams currently holding a playoff spot, and neither of those had come in regulation. Under Keefe so far, the Leafs are 2-0-0, with impressive road wins over the Coyotes and Avalanche. Thursday’s win over the Coyotes was a strong 60-minute performance, while Saturday’s victory against the Avs was more of an up-and-down affair. Still, the two wins snap a six-game losing streak, and combined with Keefe’s strategic shifts, they offer some hope that the season can be salvaged, or maybe more than that.
Is that enough for a top-five spot? Well …
5. Toronto Maple Leafs (11-10-4, -3 true goals differential*) – I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Calm down everyone. The Leafs aren’t in the top five based on two games. I’m not that much of a homer, come on.
(But check back next week.)
5. Tampa Bay Lightning (11-7-2, +8 true goals differential*) – They’ve won two straight and five of seven, and looked at least a little like their old selves while rolling over the Ducks on Saturday. They’ve played the fewest games in the entire league, with just 20 on the books, so the point total isn’t impressive. But in terms of points percentage, they’ve already climbed back into an Eastern playoff spot. In fact, they’ve passed by the wildcards and are sitting in third in the Atlantic.
4. St. Louis Blues (14-5-5, +8) – How did you celebrate Mike Yeo Anniversary week? The Blues recognized the occasion with home wins against last year’s top two regular-season teams, as they beat the Lightning and Flames. Then they lost to the Predators on Saturday; they’ll get a rematch tonight.
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In the Friday Grab Bag:
- A look at some of the coaches around the league who could be on the hot seat
- Everybody needs to ease up on the "Ref you suck" chant
- An obscure player who has nothing to do with politics
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a look back at teenage rookie Joe Sakic, who can ride a stationary bike with one leg
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We’re one week into the NHL season. How’s your team doing?
If you’re a fan of someone like the Hurricanes, Blues or Bruins you’re probably in a pretty good mood. Even fans of supposedly bad teams like the Oilers, Ducks and Sabres are feeling OK so far. All those teams are off to strong starts, the kind that inspire plenty of confidence and maybe even generate a little self-fulfilling “we can do this” momentum. At the very least, those October points count just as much as the ones in March and April and it’s nice to get a few in the bank.
But what if your team is off to a rough start? They might still be winless, or already a few points out of a playoff spot. Maybe they’ve already had a loss that was so bad, so embarrassing, that it made you start asking tough questions. Maybe they’re the Sharks and it’s all of the above. What happens when the season has just started and every warning light on the dashboard is already flashing?
Are you screwed?
Well … yeah, maybe. You definitely could be. Recent history is filled with teams that came into a season with high expectations, stumbled out of the gate and never recovered. Heck, the Coyotes do it pretty much every year. In this age of parity, where three-quarters of the league finishes over .500 and the mushy middle accounts for roughly 20 teams, even a bad week or two can make the difference between the playoffs and the lottery. Mix in the sort of bad vibes and occasional panic decisions that a slow start can generate and there’s every reason to be worried.
So yeah, if your team has looked bad, they might absolutely be screwed. But maybe not, because while we’ve seen plenty of teams start poorly and never recover, that’s hardly a guarantee. Remember, last year opened with the Bruins losing 7-0 and the Blues dropping five of six and eight months later they were playing for the Stanley Cup. Sometimes a good team just starts slow, shrugs it off and gets back to playing at a high level. And in those cases, we often don’t even remember how the first few weeks went.
So today, let’s offer up some optimism for those fans who are watching their teams flatline early, by looking back through history at a half-dozen examples of terrible starts that turned out not to matter at all. Whether it was an embarrassing early performance, an immediate losing streak or even a rotten October start-to-finish, these teams gave us plenty of reason to worry. Then they figured it out, rolled through the rest of the year, and all was forgiven.
Could your struggling team enjoy the same sort of turnaround, or at least flip their seasons into something positive? Maybe. And at this point, for some teams, “maybe” will have to do. Let’s crack open those history books …
The team: The Ducks were entering their fourth full season with Bruce Boudreau behind the bench and had already won three straight Pacific titles. They were the heavy favorites to capture another, coming off a 109-point season and a trip to the conference final. With a strong mix of youth and veterans and a top-tier goaltending tandem of John Gibson and Frederik Andersen, the bigger question was whether they could go further and maybe even win the franchise’s second Stanley Cup.
The bad start: Their first four games were a nightmare, as the Ducks only scored one goal on the way to four straight losses. They snapped the streak with a home win over the Wild, but then lost five more. Ten games into the season, they had one win, just 10 goals, and had already been shutout five times. And on top of all that, an appendectomy had just taken Ryan Getzlaf out of the lineup.
The easy narrative: The window had closed, Boudreau had lost the room and it was time to fire everyone and tear down the roster.
Sample reaction: “While the Ducks are off to a horrendous 1-7-2 start as they prepare to face the Nashville Predators Sunday, many around the league are starting to wonder if (GM Bob) Murray himself will take the fall for this awful first month because, after all, he’s the architect of this mess.” – From the Ottawa Sun on Oct. 31, 2015.
But then: Despite the rumor mill, Murray didn’t end up doing much of anything at all. The Ducks eased the pressure by rolling off four straight wins, starting on the road back to respectability. It was a slow climb, and they went into the Christmas break having won just 12 of 33 games. But they caught fire the rest of the way and eventually passed the Kings to take yet another division title by a single point on the season’s final night.
How it all ended: The Ducks didn’t exactly get the happy ending their second half seemed to be building to. That first-place finish earned them an opening round matchup with the Predators, who pulled off a seven-game upset that cost Boudreau his job. Still, based on where they were at the end of October, even being in a position to be upset in the first round was pretty amazing.
They could be inspiration for: The Sharks. Just like those Ducks, this year’s Sharks went from Pacific favorites to looking old and washed up almost overnight. They’re not a perfect team, and they certainly don’t have that Ducks team’s elite goaltending. But it’s a long season, and talent tends to win out over time. That’s worth remembering if you’re a Stars fan too.
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Welcome to the NHL’s “Centennial Birthday Weekend,” in which the league celebrates its 100th birthday. It’s not the anniversary of the first ever games, since that’s in December, or of the league officially forming, since that’s next week. It’s just … uh … a centennial birthday. Stop asking questions. Look, do you want some cake or not?
This is the second time this season that we’ve featured a Leafs-Habs game in this spot, and it probably won’t be the last. There’s just something special about a Saturday night matchup between the two long-time rivals. And since the league is using the meeting as an opportunity to douse us with history, all the better.
It’s worth revisiting what we wrote about these two teams the last time they played, if only to serve as a reminder of how many twists and turns can be packed into five weeks. Back on the season’s second weekend, we were wondering if the Maple Leafs could snap Montreal’s 14-game win streak in head-to-head matchups. They did, earning a 4-3 overtime win on an Auston Matthews goal.
We were also wondering if Montreal was ever going to get the offence going. That happened too, although it took a little longer. The Habs’ inability to score went from a curiosity to problem to an outright crisis over the course of the season’s first few weeks, before the floodgates finally opened and all those stats guys were proven right about percentages and regression and sample sizes. The Canadiens aren’t exactly lighting up scoreboards – they still rank just 24th in total goals – and Thursday’s loss to the Coyotes was the first time they’ve scored more than three in a game since Nov. 4. But at least nobody’s panicking about the offence anymore in Montreal. They’ve got other things to worry about.
Instead, we’re all wondering what’s up with Carey Price, who’s “minor” injury has kept him out for two weeks now. He still says it’s no big deal, assuring fans that they “don’t have to be concerned” and that this isn’t a repeat of 2015. That’s reassuring, and with rookie Charlie Lindgren looking fantastic, the Canadiens haven’t missed their superstar all that much yet. But seeing Price try to play through a second pre-game injury raises some fair questions about the relationship between the team and its expensive star. And you can forgive Montreal fans for being a little nervous about the situation, especially when Antti Niemi suddenly shows up via waivers? If Niemi is ever the answer, the question probably isn’t anything good.
As for the Maple Leafs, the last time they were in Montreal they were riding high and scoring a ton. Since then, we’ve seen them boost their record to 6-1-0, be declared Cup favourites, cool off, hit an outright slump, and then reel off five straight wins even though they were missing Matthews for most of that stretch. It’s been quite a journey. And these days, the Maple Leafs are winning thanks to solid goaltending and team defence instead of by just blowing the doors off whoever’s in the opposing net. They even managed a 1-0 overtime win their last time out. That’s not quite as much fun, but it probably makes Mike Babcock a lot less cranky, and that’s worth something.
Hearing about the hot seat is a fact of life for NHL coaches. From pretty much the moment you’re hired, somebody somewhere is already trying to figure out how close you are to getting fired. We already got a head start on this season’s hot-seat watch over the weekend, based on what the oddsmakers were forecasting.
It always feels a little bit awkward to dig into those kinds of discussions. Sure, hiring and firing is a part of the game, but you’re still dealing with people’s livelihoods. Speculating over who might be next to lose their job isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time.
So today, let’s stay positive by coming at the question from the other side: Who are the five NHL coaches who come into the season with the coldest seat? In other words, who are the five guys who are the least likely to get fired this year?
It’s a tougher task than you might think, especially since we’re going to tack on one important caveat that none of the people who are already complaining in the comment section will bother to read: Anyone who was hired in the 2017 off-season doesn’t count. After all, that would be too easy. Aside from the occasional Barry Melrose or John Maclean situation, virtually nobody gets fired during their very first season with a team. So the seven guys who were hired over the summer are off the board.
That still leaves 24 coaches with at least a little bit of tenure. Surely we can find five of them that are stone-cold locks to keep their jobs until next season, right? I think we can. And if not, at least it should be fun for all of you to send me the link to this post in a few months when one of these guys gets a pink slip. Either way, here we go.
Why he’s completely safe: Babcock is one of the most respected coaches in the league, and he worked a near-miracle by taking the Maple Leafs from a dead-last laughingstock into a playoff team in one season. This year, he’s got the team playing well enough to look like an early contender for the Atlantic Division title.
But as impressive as all that may be, it’s not why Babcock is one of the easiest cold-seat picks. That has more to do with his contract, which makes him the highest-paid coach in hockey and runs until just after the Sun explodes. Granted, the Maple Leafs have all the money, and Babcock wouldn’t be the first Leafs coach to walk the plank with time left on his deal. But Brendan Shanahan didn’t sign Babcock to this sort of deal because he was thinking of firing him three years in. Even if the Leafs wobble off the playoff path, Babcock’s not going anywhere, at least not any time soon.
Well, unless…: I mean, this is a Lou Lamoriello team, so we can’t completely rule out a day when Babcock shows up at practice with sideburns and gets fired just on principle. But other than that, or some sort of major off-ice scandal, Babcock is as safe as they come, even in a market where weird stuff seems to happen to coaches.
If you’re the sort of fan who likes to crunch numbers, there are various sites out there that will offer projected odds for each team making the playoffs. You can find them at sites like sportsclubstats.com, hockeyviz.com and hockeyreference.com. The sites use different methods and get different results, but there’s a solid consensus forming around several teams.
Most of those are the ones you’d expect—first-place teams like Montreal, Chicago and New York are among the locks, while teams like the Islanders and Avalanche are all but done. No shockers there.
But there's another team that all the projections seem to think is a lock, and it's a bit of a surprise: the Minnesota Wild, who clock in at 96 percent or better in all three systems. That seems a little strange for a team that's not even close to leading its own division. At eight points back of the Blackhawks, the Wild are closer to missing the playoffs altogether than winning the Central.
So why is their outlook so rosy? Well, a big part of it is fairly simple—they've got games in hand on just about everyone. No team in the NHL has played fewer than Minnesota's 30 games, and they've got four to make up on the Blackhawks, so the division is very much still in play.
But maybe more importantly, the Wild are looking like a very good team these days. They've won seven straight, and have picked up points in 12 of their last 13 games. They've also got the best goals differential in the West by a wide margin.
And they're doing it with a team-wide effort. Sure, Devan Dubnyk has been fantastic, and would probably get plenty of Vezina love if we held the vote today. But he's been supported by a balanced offence led by a rejuvenated Eric Staal. And in what stands as a nice change for the Wild, they've been getting production from some of their younger players.
There are a handful of red flags here, however: The Wild aren't a great possession team, and they've got a league-high PDO at even strength. Some of that can be chalked up to score effects and Dubnyk, but it's worth keeping an eye on.
But even with that said, there's a nice story playing out in Minnesota, one featuring a team that many of us weren't all that high on heading into the season. Remember, Bruce Boudreau has never had a full NHL season where he didn't win his division. That seemed like a longshot to continue this year, but the Wild are making it interesting. And even if they can't catch the Blackhawks, the numbers guys seem to think that they're already all but in the playoffs.
If the Wild are a genuine contender, they'll get a chance to show it over the next few days. After hosting the lowly Avalanche tomorrow, they'll finish the week with back-to-back road games against the Canadiens and Rangers. It's probably too early to talk about those games as potential Cup final previews, but Minnesota fans are allowed to at least think it.
The five teams that look like they're headed towards Stanley Cup favourite status.
5. Chicago Blackhawks (22-8-4, +17 true goals differential*): After all of that, it's tempting to slip the Wild past the Blackhawks and into the top five. Maybe next week.
4. Columbus Blue Jackets (20-5-4, +37): Congratulations to John Tortorella, who picked up his 500th career win yesterday in Vancouver. Here's hoping he remembers who got him there.
With the San Jose Sharks eliminating the St. Louis Blues Wednesday night and the Tampa Bay Lightning and Pittsburgh Penguins headed to a seventh game Thursday, we’re just hours away from having our Stanley Cup Final matchup set. We’ll be down to the best of the best, going head-to-head with the greatest trophy in sports on the line.
And so today, let’s do what any true hockey fan does when confronted with greatness. Let’s ignore it, and pick on the guys who weren’t quite good enough instead.
We’re going to assemble a full lineup of the biggest disappointments from the 2016 playoffs – four centres, eight wingers, six defencemen, two goalies, and even a coach and GM. And we won’t shy away from including some big names. In fact, the bigger the name the better, since high expectations bring more disappointment when they’re not met.
When you look at it that way, finding someone from your favourite team on this list could be considered a compliment, which you should definitely keep in mind before immediately heading into the comments section to call me an idiot. (You still will.)
So here we go, starting up front. (All stats are from hockey-reference.com and war-on-ice-com.)
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Evgeny Kuznetsov, Washington Capitals
Let's get this out of the way first: No, Alex Ovechkin, the Caps' leading playoff scorer, did not make this team.
True, as Ovechkin's critics love to point out, maybe he didn't elevate his game – by which they presumably mean he should float around three feet over the ice by sheer force of will. But he wasn't a bust, or anything close to it.
Kuznetsov, on the other hand… ouch. After leading the Capitals with 77 points in a breakout regular season, Kuznetsov was limited to just two points in two rounds of the playoffs, which works out to an average of — *tries to do math in head* — not enough.
As with many guys on our list, a lot of that was bad luck – he went from 11.4 per cent on-ice shooting across all situations during the regular season to an almost comically awful 0.9 per cent in the playoffs. That's not a player (and all of his teammates) forgetting how to play, it's random chance striking at the worst possible time. Still, for a team that was desperate to go deep, having their leading scorer go cold at exactly the wrong time stings badly.
Pavel Datsyuk, Detroit Red Wings
Yeah, I know, I don't like this any more than you do.
Heading into what was likely to be his last NHL post-season, Datsyuk had the makings of a feel-good playoff story.
Instead, the 37-year-old was held pointless as the Wings bowed out to the Tampa Bay Lightning in five. We're still not sure if he's heading home, although recent reports sure make it sound that way. If this really is the end, it wasn't the one his magnificent career deserves.
Eric Staal, New York Rangers
When the Rangers acquired Staal at the deadline, everyone cautioned that expectations should be reasonable. This wasn't the 2006 version of Staal, after all. New York was getting a guy on the wrong side of 30 who was having a tough season. And the relatively cheap price they paid reflected that – for once, they didn't even give up a first round pick.
But even given all that, they had to be hoping that a change of scenery and chance to play on a potential Cup contender would give Staal some sort of boost. Instead, they got six points in 20 regular season games and none at all in their first round loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins. The bar was low; Staal sailed well under it.
Claude Giroux, Philadelphia Flyers
Typically, a one-point post-season from one of the league's best offensive players would be enough to earn a spot at the very top of the list. But given the injuries Giroux was battling, we'll bump him down to fourth-line duties. That will keep Flyers fans happy, right?
[Gets pelted with souvenir bracelets.]
Thought so.
>> Read the full post at Sportsnet
With the conference finals underway, we’re down to the NHL’s final four. The eyes of the hockey world are focused on the Sharks, Blues, Lightning and Penguins, and rightly so. One of those four teams will be our next Stanley Cup champion.
But four teams in the conference final also means 12 playoff teams sitting at home, wondering where it all went wrong. So let’s help those teams out and look at each of the dozen franchises that didn’t make the cut, and try to pinpoint the key flaw that sent them packing. And, more importantly, let’s ask the question: Can they fix it?
The Stars were one of the league’s best stories, roaring back from a playoff miss to finish as the West’s top seed while leading the league in goals scored. They were also one of the most entertaining teams we’ve seen in years. But they went through the season with a massive question mark, and we all saw it: the goaltending duo was weak. Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi were good enough to get them to the second round, but a Game 7 meltdown against the Blues ended their season and drew a big red circle around the sport’s most important position.
Can they fix it? It won’t be easy. Before they can add anyone, the Stars will presumably need to subtract, and that’s no simple task. Their two incumbents carried a combined cap hit of $10.4 million, and both are locked in for two more years. Neither will have much trade value at that price. That doesn’t mean they can’t be traded – a willingness to retain salary and/or taking back an equally bad deal can open doors – but it’s possible that a buyout ends up being Jim Nill’s best option.
Even assuming that Nill can clear a spot on the roster, who does he go out and get? There are always goalies available in the off-season, but the tough part is finding the right one. The reality is that this is a league with about a half dozen sure-thing goalies, and a whole lot of question marks after that. Those sure-things aren’t going to be available, so Nill and the Stars will have to roll the dice.
History has shown that you don’t need a future Hall-of-Famer in net to win in this league. This year’s final four has shown it too. But you do need a guy you can trust, and the Stars just reminded us that finding that guy is no simple task. They’ll try again this summer, but it’s no sure thing that they’ll do any better.
Can they fix it? We’ll cut the Wings some slack here. They were facing a strong defensive team with a hot goaltender, and their power play was decent over the regular season, ranking 13th. But the lack of offence wasn’t strictly a post-season problem. Detroit only scored 209 goals on the season, ranking just 23rd overall, and didn’t have a single player finish with more than 50 points.
So how do they get better? Losing Pavel Datsyuk won’t help, and if he heads home for Russia, as expected, he’ll leave a huge void. Henrik Zetterberg is 35-years-old, and his production has dropped sharply in each of the last two years. On the other hand, guys like Tomas Tatar and Gustav Nyquist should improve with age and expanded roles, and Dylan Larkin is only just getting started.
Add it all up, and the Red Wings probably need help from outside the organization, either via free agency or trade. And to do that, they’ll likely need to find a home for Datsyuk’s cap hit first. That won’t be impossible, but Ken Holland has got some work cut out for him this summer.
The Wild spent big to build a team that could contend, but they could never beat the Blackhawks, and this year they were eliminated by what turned out to be a very flawed Stars team. Now they’re left with a core that’s old and expensive, most of whom are well into the stage of their careers where we should start expecting to see a decline.
Can they fix it? They’ve already made a big improvement, upgrading to Bruce Boudreau behind the bench. Adding one of the best coaches in the league could go a long way.
It may have to, because upgrading the roster is going to be a massive challenge for GM Chuck Fletcher. He’s largely locked into this core – they have nearly $50 million tied up in just nine players through 2017-18, and six of those guys are already over 30 today. Finding takers for any of those players in trades will be tough, and buyouts just kick the cap pain down the road.
Maybe Boudreau can work his magic and turn this group into contenders. The Wild had better hope so, because if there’s another realistic path to improvement here, it’s a tough one to find.
Before we get to the power rankings, let's talk about the only four-letter word you're not allowed to say at a hockey rink: Luck. Everyone stay cool, we can do this.
In a Friday blog post titled "If you get emotionally invested in a playoff hockey team, you're a masochist," Washington Post columnist Dan Steinberg railed against the playoffs. Not this year's playoffs, or a particular series, but the entire concept as it exists in the modern NHL. It's all become a crapshoot, Steinberg argues, one where the actual performance of the teams involved has little to do with the outcomes. We're just watching two teams skate around for 60 minutes (or more) and waiting for a handful of lucky bounces to determine the winner, at which point we all get to work filling in narratives about grit and heart to convince ourselves that the right team won.
Steinberg's argument is controversial, one that suggests that maybe we're all just wasting our time here. It's also absolutely and indisputably correct.
It might be tempting to accuse Steinberg of sour grapes here. After all, he's a Capitals writer, and they're down 3-2 in their series with the Penguins. But he shows his work, and the numbers are hard to argue with. By almost any reasonable measure, the Caps outplayed the Penguins for most of Games 3 and 4. But they lost anyway. And this happens all the time in the NHL. It's not, as Steinberg makes clear, a case of a good team having a bad night, or failing to execute a game plan, or being outworked by an opponent who just wants it more. It's about one side going out and being the better team and then losing, anyway.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the NHL's era of unprecedented parity. In that post, I ended up hitting on the same metaphor that Steinberg did: It's starting to feel like we're just flipping coins here. Maybe not during the regular season, when bigger sample sizes and a wider disparity between teams result in a standings page that feels like at least a rough approximation of overall quality. But in the playoffs, with two roughly even teams facing off in a short series of low-scoring games, well... heads or tails?
Let's be clear: Hockey fans, in general, hate this sort of argument. Many have a visceral reaction to the entire concept of results being anything other than earned. We've spent years being conditioned to believe that hockey is a morality play where the best man always wins, and that if a team like the Capitals keeps failing when it seems like the odds should be in their favor, it must be because they're suffering from some sort of fatal flaw. Luck? Good teams make their own luck, as the old saying goes. Of course, that old saying makes zero sense if you think about it for even a moment. So we don't.
And this isn't just something that fans tell themselves—everyone from team owners to GMs to coaches buy in, and spend the offseason trying desperately to find the right mix of character and leadership that will finally make them a deserving team in the eyes of the hockey gods. The players themselves aren't even allowed to acknowledge the luck factor. And the media beat the character drum constantly, because we have to. It's our job to tell you why a team won, and these days, as often as not, we really don't have a good answer for you. So we either talk about heart and compete level, or we're left with this.
It's not even a homer thing. Two years ago, while covering the Kings/Rangers final, I wrote that the Rangers were trailing the series 3-0 largely due to bad luck. That seemed like an obvious point to make—the Kings had won the first two games without holding the lead for a single second of playing time, and the Rangers had suffered a series of bad bounces that cost them critical goals. But as soon as I mentioned the L-word, the pushback from fans was immediate. And not just Kings fans—you'd expect that—but Rangers fans, too, who refused to believe their team was losing because of random chance. It was something more. It had to be.
But most of the time, it just isn't. And as Steinberg writes, that leaves a hockey fan with a handful of unpalatable choices. You could stop caring, which seems logical but, let's face it, isn't going to happen. You can sit back and enjoy the show, accepting it for great entertainment even if it's all largely random; that might make you, as Steinberg concludes, a "masochist" but at least you'd occasionally be a happy one. Or you can decide that it's easier to just keep up the act, focusing on the small handful of lucky moments that seem to swing each series and convincing yourself that they really are the meaningful result of... something.
Let's stick with that last option. On to the week's five best and worst, all of whom earned their way on to the list based on sheer force of will.
Celebrating those who've had the best week.
5. Bruce Boudreau—Speaking of playoff narratives...
Boudreau was fired last week after yet another Game 7 loss, but his reputation for losing the big one didn't seem to dissuade teams from lining up to hire him. The Wild and Senators both interviewed him, with Ottawa flying him into town late in the week. Boudreau has family in Ottawa and was giving odd media interviews that all but screamed "Hire me." Even with a somewhat unexpected vacancy in Calgary opening up, by the time the weekend arrived this sure looked like the Senators' contest to lose.
And then, on Saturday, they did. Boudreau chose the Wild, agreeing to a four-year contract that will pay him nearly $3 million a season. The Senators responded by hiring Guy Boucher on Sunday, which is a reasonably decent Plan B. That leaves Calgary to pick through the next tier of candidates, one that features names like Marc Crawford, Mike Yeo and even, believe it or not, Randy Carlyle. Those are (almost) all solid candidates, but none are in Boudreau's class.
As for the Wild, they've still got a steep road ahead—the core is old, expensive and locked up on very long deals that may be unmovable. But with Boudreau behind the bench, they'll at least have a puncher's chance in a very tough Central.
4. Gustav Nyquist—Hey look, a Red Wing finally won something during the second round.
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