The Athletic Hockey Show: Gull you know it's true

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Ian gives us an update on Alex DeBrincat
- My theory on what's really going on here
- Should teams trade within their own division?
- Vladimir Tarasenko switches agents
- Father-son combos on the same team
- The 1991-92 San Diego Gulls for some reason, 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)

Puck Soup: UFA winners and losers

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Free agency winners and losers
- Small trades that have been made
- Big ones that haven't (yet/)
- Changes in the women's pro game
- And 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.

A brief history of the Shiny New Toy contract, the NHL’s most dangerous deal

It’s been a fascinating offseason so far. The Flames and Panthers pulled off one of the biggest blockbusters of the last decade, a truly shocking late-night swap that saw Matthew Tkachuk head to Florida for a package that included Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar. The Blackhawks are openly tanking while the Senators are loading up, with both situations highlighted by the deal that sent Alex DeBrincat to Ottawa. The Knights dumped Max Pacioretty on Carolina for next-to-nothing, while the Wild had to move Kevin Fiala to the Kings. And we may not even be done, as trade rumors swirl around guys like Patrick Kane, J.T. Miller and David Pastrnak.

All of those moves were stunning in their own way, or would be. But that’s not the most important thing they have in common.

We need to talk about the Shiny New Toy scenario.

It’s dangerous. It’s potentially bad news for fans in Ottawa, Calgary or Carolina, as well as whichever team might be tempted on guys like Miller or Kane. And it makes it feel significantly likely that we’re about to see at least a few teams make cap-crushing mistakes that they’ll regret for years to come.

Let’s explain what’s going on, how it’s played out in the past, and what we can learn from that.

What is a Shiny New Toy?

Negotiating a contract in the NHL is all about leverage. Sometimes the team has it, like when a young player’s ELC expires and his rights are still under team control for years to come. Sometimes the player has it, like when an established star hits free agency, or a beloved franchise stalwart is on an expiring deal and needs an extension before he walks away for nothing. In those cases, teams often overpay, because they may feel like they have little choice.

As a big fan of debating bad contracts, I don’t say this lightly: There may not be a more dangerous set of circumstances for a team, or a more advantageous one for a player and his agent, then the dreaded Shiny New Toy. It’s a category of bad contract that I first proposed in a piece I wrote six years ago. I don’t know if you read that one or not, but I’m pretty sure that NHL GMs didn’t, because if anything the list of mistakes has been getting worse.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Rating the biggest NHL draft moments from draft weekend on the Surprise Scale

For the first time in three years, the NHL held its annual entry draft in person. While the league did what it had to do in Zoom era, it’s probably fair to say that those drafts won’t stand out as being especially memorable. This one will, and as always with a good draft week, it’s at least partly because of how it surprised us.

That seems like a good excuse to break out the Surprise Scale for the first time since those distant days of 2019. This is the gimmick where we look at the draft through the lens of how much it was able to deliver on the unexpected. Whether it’s a surprising pick, a big trade, or just something weird, it’s always great when an event that gets previewed and mocked and hyper-analyzed as much as the draft can still surprise us.

As always, surprises are rated on a scale of 0 to 100 based on a scientific model of me just making it up as I go along. We’ll start in the hours leading up to the draft, when the Blackhawks decided to throw a wrench into everyone’s afternoon off…

The Alex DeBrincat Trade

We knew the deal was coming, because the Hawks kept telling us it was even though it didn’t make all that much sense. Chicago is rebuilding, but that feels like all the more reason to hold onto a 24-year-old who scores 40 goals. The one argument in favor of a deal was that DeBrincat was easily the team’s top trade chip, so maybe somebody would step up with an offer that was just too good to say no to.

Then the deal went down with the Senators and… well, it’s fair to say the return wasn’t overwhelming. Two draft picks, including the seventh overall and an early second-rounder, and that was it. No prospects, no picks in future drafts to file away, just two picks in a decent draft in exchange for your best player.

As far as surprises go, this deal shouldn’t have ranked all that high, if only because we knew it was coming. But given how uninspiring the return was for Chicago and what a potential steal this looks like for Ottawa, we can bump it up a few points.

Surprise scale: 60/100. Seriously, the Hawks know that Ottawa has like a dozen solid prospects, right?

With no other major moves breaking in the leadup to the big night, let’s move on to the draft itself…

The Crowd in Montreal

They were amazing. An absolute A+. Being in the building on Thursday night was one of the highlights of my life as a hockey writer. I can’t pump their tires enough.

For the first few decades of the amateur and entry draft, the event was always held in Montreal. Honestly, at this point I think I’m willing to support going back to that. You rock, Montreal fans.

Surprise scale: 90/100. Look, I know Montreal fans are great, and my expectations were high. You blew them away.

And of course, we can’t talk about the crowd without a mention of…

Gary Bettman gets booed

It was brutal. We’re talking a 1995 Devils fans level of heat. And as always, Bettman seemed completely thrown off. He came with the same condescending jokes he always tries, and even worked in a new angle by speaking some truly awful French (although we’ll give him credit at least memorizing it this time, instead of reading it off a gum wrapper). But within a few seconds it was clear that this was going to be ugly.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Puck Soup: Final countdown

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The final matchup is set, and it's legitimately great
- Thoughts on the Avs and Lightning, plus our picks
- Is Tampa already the best team of the cap era?
- Ryan has crunched the numbers and will tell us how many Cups this season is worth
- We say goodbye to the Rangers, wonder what's next, and debate the Kakko scratch
- The Knights get Bruce Cassidy, the Flyers get John Tortorella (we think), but where's Barry Trotz?
- Trade talk around Alex DeBrincat and John Gibson
- The weird new MLS TV contract and what the NHL could learn from it, Ryan's Jurrasic World review, 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.