The most (and least) surprising moments from NHL draft weekend

The NHL’s draft weekend is, in theory, a pretty straightforward affair. It’s the annual chance to divide up all the incoming young talent, with teams making their picks, posing for a few photos, and heading home.

In reality, draft weekend often ends up feeling like 90 percent of the league’s offseason crammed into a few days. The combination of having all 30 front offices in one city, incoming cap space, and free agency looming just days away builds up into a whirlwind of rumors, speculation, and (eventually) action.

Some of it works out the way we expect. Some of it doesn’t. So let’s take a look back at this year’s just-concluded draft weekend in stifling Sunrise, Florida, by breaking down all the major moves based on just how surprising they were.

Connor McDavid going first overall: 0/100 — No surprise here; we’ve known that McDavid would be the first overall pick of the 2015 draft for the last three years. He’s the most heavily hyped prospect since Sidney Crosby, and his ridiculous numbers in junior this year — he had 120 points in just 47 games — just reaffirmed his status as the game’s Next Big Thing.

The question now is this: How big? And how quickly? McDavid goes to an Oilers franchise that hasn’t been good at anything other than winning draft lotteries in almost a decade. His arrival, and the front office overhaul the franchise underwent while anticipating it, should spell the end of the Oilers’ misery. The question is how quickly he can get them into the playoffs, and then into Cup contention.

We have some history to look back on. Crosby had 102 points as a rookie in the high-scoring post-lockout 2005-06 season, but Pittsburgh didn’t return to the playoffs until the following year. The Penguins went to the Cup final the year after that, and then won it all in 2009. Alexander Ovechkin debuted the same year as Crosby, but the Caps didn’t make the playoffs until his third season, and they still haven’t been to a final. The Blackhawks debuted the double whammy of Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane in 2007-08, missed the playoffs, and had won their first Stanley Cup by 2010.

So if you’re an Oilers fan, there’s your realistic window: one more tough season, playoff favorite status the year after that, and Stanley Cup contention soon after. It’s no sure thing, of course, but I’m guessing long-suffering Oilers fans will take it.

McDavid’s selection was the least surprising moment of the entire weekend. Well, except for this one …

This whole thing being a disaster: 0/100 — Let’s play a game called “How the hell did this happen?”

Scene: League headquarters.

NHL executive: “So, Connor McDavid has finally arrived in the NHL. How can we make the best possible first impression with this incredibly marketable new asset?”

Intern: “Hey, has anyone checked to see if the owner of the Oilers would want to awkwardly corner him on live television, then babble on about how wonderful his terrible organization is while blatantly reading off a cue card?”

NHL executive: “Great idea. Did anyone check it with Connor?”

Intern: “Sure did. He said he’d spend the entire segment visibly trying to swallow his own tongue.”

NHL executive: “Awesome, let’s do it!”

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How history's worst teams can offer up some hope for Oiler fans

So stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the Edmonton Oilers seem like they might be terrible this year.

Last night’s win over the Lightning moved them to 1-4-1 and one point clear of dead last place in the league. They’ve been a mess defensively, the goaltending has been shaky, and the young forwards have often looked overwhelmed. While it’s still reasonably early, so far the Oilers are on track to miss the playoffs, and probably by a lot.

You should have stopped me by now because of course you have heard this one before. You’ve heard it for most of the past eight seasons, ever since the Oilers fell one game short of a shocking Stanley Cup upset back in 2006. At the time, it seemed like Edmonton was on the verge of something special. Ever since, they’ve become a punch line.¹

If it’s any comfort to Oilers fans, they’re not the first team to endure this much misery. While the modern NHL draft system is meant to encourage quick turnarounds for the league’s worst teams, it doesn’t always work out that way, and Edmonton isn’t the first team to go through an extended stretch of bottom-feeding. So rather than pile on the Oilers today, I figured it would be nice to remind them that they’re not alone. If misery loves company, then Oilers fans should feel right at home as we look back at some other teams from the post-expansion era that suffered through at least five years of utter failure.

Washington Capitals, 1974-82

How bad were they? Worse than any team has ever been.

That’s not an exaggeration – the 1974-75 Caps were the worst team in NHL history, going 8-67-5 for 21 points and surrendering a record 446 goals. Only one player on the team managed more than 35 points, and their season included an NHL record 17-game losing streak.² Their goal differential that year was an almost unfathomable minus-265, meaning that on an average they were outscored by more than three goals in each and every game.

They weren’t that much better the next year, putting up just 32 points, and they didn’t top 70 points over the franchise’s first eight seasons.

How they got so bad: They were an expansion team with bad timing. By adding the Capitals and the Kansas City Scouts, the NHL went from eight teams to 10. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but remember that the World Hockey Association was icing 14 teams of its own at the time. That added up to 24 professional teams in North America, at a time when Canada was supplying virtually all the talent. There just weren’t enough good players to go around, and anyone whom Washington or Kansas City could have targeted in the expansion draft or free agency likely just went to the WHA instead. (The Scouts were almost as bad, putting up seasons of 41 and 36 points before moving to Denver and later New Jersey.)

Rock bottom: They lost their first 37 road games. When they finally won one, they celebrated by skating a garbage can around the ice like it was the Stanley Cup.

Turning point: The Capitals were terrible for the rest of the ’70s and beyond. They finally turned things around in 1982-83, in Bryan Murray’s first full season behind the bench. They’d built up some decent youth, including Bobby Carpenter and future Hall of Famer Mike Gartner up front, and the blue line included a newly drafted teenager named Scott Stevens. They managed 94 points, the first time in nine seasons that they’d surpassed even 70, and made the playoffs for the first time in history.

Hope for Oilers fans: Even the worst team in the history of the NHL was bad for only eight straight seasons, which by my calculations means Edmonton has to be good this year. It’s science!

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Grab bag: Canada and the US drop the gloves

Debating the NHL's Olympic future; do you believe in Maracles?; a vintage Don Cherry anti-Russia rant; and a YouTube breakdown of Canada and the USA throwing down.

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NHLPA 93 vs NHL 94: The definitive head-to-head breakdown

Last week, Grantland published my version of the concise NHL Dictionary. I used the opportunity to make fun of Gary Bettman, the Lady Byng Trophy, enforcers, advanced stats, people who don’t get advanced stats, several players, and most teams. And as it turns out, everyone was fine with that.

Then I said NHLPA Hockey ’93 was a better game than NHL ’94. That part didn’t go over so well.

Look, I understand that this is a divisive issue that hockey fans feel strongly about, and I’m willing to admit that’s it not an easy call. It’s even possible that I’m wrong. That’s been known to happen once or twice a decade.

Clearly, we need to dig into this in a lot more detail. And so that’s what we’re going to do, 20 years later, by breaking down the head-to-head matchup in a dozen key categories.

♦♦♦

The Background

First, a little bit of history for those who may not be familiar with the two games because you’re too young or too old or your parents never loved you. NHLPA ’93 and NHL ’94 were the second and third versions of EA Sports’ NHL video game series, which — to this day — is easily the most famous and critically acclaimed hockey game ever made. (The first version was technically just called NHL Hockey, but for simplicity’s sake I’ll be referring to it as NHL ’92.) They were revolutionary, and along with Tecmo Bowl are the only things from the early ’90s that aren’t horribly embarrassing in hindsight.

And I think it’s fair to say that most people seem to like NHL ’94 better. That shouldn’t be a surprise; after all, NHL ’92 introduced the series and NHLPA ’93 advanced it, and all things being equal you’d expect NHL ’94 to take things another big step forward. And in many regards, it did. It was a very good game, and everyone loved it.

But was it really better than its predecessor? There’s only one way to find out: on to the head-to-head.

Licensing

NHLPA ’93: As the name suggests, the game was licensed by the NHLPA but not the NHL. That meant that all the real players were included, but there were no team names or logos to be found. (This was a reversal of the original NHL ’92, which had the teams but no players.)

That sounds like it would be a pretty big issue, but it was surprisingly easy to get past. Instead of the Montreal Canadiens, you just had “Montreal,” a nameless team that through a weird coincidence just happened to have the exact same uniform colors as the Habs. As long as you weren’t an Islanders fan stuck playing as “Long Island,” you might not even notice the lack of an NHL license.

NHL ’94: This was the first game in the series to hold both licenses. So you had everything: player names, team logos, and even the Stanley Cup (instead of the weird-looking knockoff in NHLPA ’93).

Edge: NHL ’94.

One-timers

NHLPA ’93: There were no one-timers, which meant that if you wanted to score you had to get creative. Plays had to be set up, shots chosen carefully, and specific players used in the roles for which they were best suited. Scoring goals in NHLPA ’93 was hard.

Unless, of course, you just used one of the many glitchy moves that seemed to work all the time, like piling into the crease, doing that wraparound move, or flipping the puck in so it bounced off the goalie’s head and then scoring into the empty net while he was stunned. But I’m assuming you were an honorable person who would never resort to such chicanery.

NHL ’94: The addition of one-timers was the single biggest improvement to NHL ’94, and is a big reason why so many people still love it. And understandably so — one-timers were super fun. They were easy enough to execute once you got the hang of it, and they worked.

In fact, they probably worked too well, and this is where I part ways with some NHL ’94 fans. While it was cool to have a new way to score, it quickly became apparent that the one-timer was essentially unstoppable. It didn’t matter who the shooter was, or whether they were in position. If you could get the puck to Stu Grimson on his backhand while he was facing the wrong way, he was going to roof a laser beam. And the AI rarely used them, so it basically became impossible to lose to the computer in a game of NHL ’94.

Edge: NHL ’94. In hindsight, the one-timer probably ruined a decade’s worth of EA Sports hockey games. The problem got even worse in NHL ’95, with its weird Pacman-on-ice skating system, and to this day the old “skate down the wing, circle back, and throw it blindly out front for the one-timer” move is still a staple of the NHL series.

But when it debuted it was great, and way more fun than the dirty goals you had to rely on in NHLPA ’93.

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Weekend wrap: Blues, Wild, Senators and more

Each Monday, we’ll wrap up three of the biggest stories from the weekend and how they’ll play into the coming week.

Blues May Be the Best

The St. Louis Blues are the NHL’s hottest team, and right now you could make a good case that they are the league’s best, period. They’ve won five straight and collected 15 points over their last eight games. And as we’ve come to expect, they’re doing it with defense, giving up 2.27 goals per game, the third-best mark in the league. They give up fewer shots than any team outside of New Jersey, and they have received dependable goaltending from the Jaroslav Halak–Brian Elliott combo.

In a typical season, this would be the part of our St. Louis Blues summary when we’d point out that all that defense is compensating for a lack of scoring. After all, the Blues have only finished in the top 10 in goals per game once since the 2005 lockout (they were 10th in 2010-11). But that caveat doesn’t apply this year; the Blues are scoring 3.56 goals per game, good for second-best in the league. They lead the league in shooting percentage by a wide margin, and their power play is top five. If anything, their offense has been even better than their defense.

Add it all up, and you’ve got a team whose plus-55 goal differential leads the league by 12 over second-place Chicago, with no other team even cracking the plus-40 mark. The Blues have padded those numbers in January with a pair of blowout home wins, blanking the Kings 5-0 on Thursday and following that up with a 6-2 stomping of the Blue Jackets on Saturday. They were kind enough to spot Columbus a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes in that one, before pulling away in the second period on the way to scoring six unanswered. Patrik Berglund had a pair of goals, and Vladimir Sobotka added a goal and an assist.

Despite the hot streak, the Blues are still just tied for third overall, four points back of the Hawks and Ducks. But they have four games in hand on Chicago and three on Anaheim, and the Blues get the woeful Flames and Oilers in their next two matchups. And while leading scorer Alexander Steen remains out with a concussion, they did get David Backes and Jordan Leopold back in the lineup over the weekend.

So are the Blues the league’s best team right now? Maybe, though there’s some evidence that they’ve also benefitted from above-average luck. They lead the league in PDO by almost a full point, powered largely by that 12-plus percentage team shooting that’s likely to drop as the season continues. And while the team’s overall goaltending numbers have been decent, that’s been driven largely by Elliott; Halak’s .907 save percentage ranks him outside the NHL’s top 30.

Still, even if their luck starts to even out, the Blues are still going to be very good. And if they don’t think their goaltending is championship-caliber, well, let’s just say there are options available. It feels wrong to anoint anyone else in the West as the Stanley Cup favorite as long as the defending champs are still on top of the conference, but the Blues may not give us much choice.

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Grantland grab bag: Important advice on your fake deadline day twitter account

In the weekly Grantland grab bag: a good week for comedy, whiny GMs, and the time a Kings fan threw a live chicken on the ice.

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