Six times NHL fans thought their teams were getting a superstar, and were wrong

It’s hockey season, and Toronto sports fans are sad, as usual. But for once, it’s not the Maple Leafs’ fault.

After weeks of speculation turned into a whirlwind few days of hype, the Toronto Blue Jays did not sign Shohei Ohtani. The world’s greatest baseball player, an unprecedented unicorn who can both hit and pitch like a superstar, chose Los Angeles over Toronto in a record-shattering $700-million deal.

Ohtani joining the Dodgers isn’t much of a surprise, and in fact was the expected outcome all along. But where things get cruel for Blue Jays fans is in terms of expectations. As the process played out, they went from underdogs to dark horse to legitimate contender. And then, on Friday, fans were told that the deal was all but done, with private planes and celebratory dinner reservations already booked; they’d landed the biggest name to ever hit baseball free agent market. But the reports were wrong, and the fan base was duped, their expectations raised up only to be shattered.

Here's where hockey comes in.

While no NHL player can touch Ohtani’s price tag – there are a few teams with full rosters that can’t – that doesn’t mean that hockey fans can’t appreciate getting their hopes up only to have the rug pulled out from under them. So today, we’re going to go back and remember six times that an entire NHL fan base thought they were getting a superstar, only to find out that they weren’t.

To be clear, we’re not talking about the blockbusters that were close in hindsight, like Steve Yzerman to Ottawa or the infamous Vincent Lecavalier to Montreal rumors. Those moves were whispered about at the time, but we didn’t learn just how close they came until after the fact. We’re looking for moments in NHL history where a fan base thought they had a star signed and sealed, then were disappointed.

It happens more often than you might think. Here are six examples, starting with maybe the most famous of them all.

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Introducing the “they had him but he never played there” all-stars

With the season just over a month away, it will be time to get back to real content soon. It’s been a fun summer of time-wasting challenges and random rankings, but soon it’s going to be time get serious.

Soon, but not quite yet. So today, we’re going to get to a topic that shows up in a lot of your requests: Superstar players, and the teams they never actually played for. Specifically, we’re looking for players who belonged to a team at some point, be it a few years or a few hours, but never suited up for them. Along the way, we should run into some interesting stories.

But first, a few ground rules™:

- We’re going to be building a 20-man roster out of 12 forwards, six defensemen and two goalies.

- We’re looking for overall star power. Normally this is the part where I give you the whole “only get credit for what a player did on your team” caveat, but… (gestures at entire concept). Full careers on this one.

- Finally, we’re limiting each team to one representative. Call this the Arizona Coyotes rule.

Sound good? Let’s do this. One full roster, full of stars who never played for the teams they were one.

---

We’ll start our squad with a Hall-of-Famer and all-time great, who’s also kind enough to be a simple example of what we’re looking for here. Six years before he arrived in Montreal and gave the Habs nearly a decade of Cup-winning goaltending, Ken Dryden was a Bruins third-round pick. Boston held onto him for all of three weeks before trading him to Montreal, and the rest was history. Unlike the Bruins, we’ll give him a chance as our starter.

The second goalie spot has a few worthy candidates. We could go with Tim Thomas, a Nordiques pick who never got a chance there. There’s also Olaf Kolzig, who was technically Maple Leafs property for a few weeks in 2009, or another not-quite-Leaf in Tuukka Rask. Or Mike Richter, a lifelong Ranger who was briefly a member of both the Predators and Oilers due to offseason shenanigans. Evgeni Nabokov was a Red Wing for a few hours before the Islanders sniped him off the waiver wire. The Canucks acquired John Vanbiesbrouck for a few days before the 1993 expansion draft. We could even dip back into very recent history to go with the Blue Jackets’ brief Jonathan Quick era. And the best of the bunch might be Henrik Lundqvist, who signed with the Capitals but was never healthy enough to suit up for them.

All else being equal, I’d go with Lundqvist here. But without giving too much away, I don’t want to use my Capitals slot this early. So instead, let’s go with Hall-of-Famer Eddie Belfour and his brief and forgotten two-day stint with the Nashville Predators in 2002. Yes, really.

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NHL99: Jarome Iginla, the last of the NHL’s great power forwards

I want you to stop for a moment and picture the most iconic Jarome Iginla moment. Not your personal favorite, or even the most important, but the one that best represents who he was to you. If a brand new hockey fan showed up and wanted to know why everyone – not just Flames fans, but everyone -- seems to love this Iginla guy so much and you had time to show them one clip, which one would it be?

You’d have a ton of choices. You  could show them a goal; counting the playoffs, you’d have over 650 to choose from. You might go with a milestone moment, like his 500th goal or 1,000th point, or when he became the Flames’ all-time leading scorer. His epic overtime shift in the 2004 final would have to be way up there on the list. You might choose one of his Team Canada highlights, like his laser beam one-timer late in the 2002 gold medal game, or the time that he and everyone else heard the infamous IGGY. You might even go off the board and choose the time he led the Flames in paying respect to Trevor Linden after his long-time rival’s final game, the sort of pure-class gesture we don’t see often in sports these days.

Any of those would be great choices. But I’m guessing they may not be what came to mind first. Instead, there’s a good chance you thought of this:

That's Iginla and Tampa’s Vincent Lecavalier dropping the gloves in early in Game 3 of the 2004 Stanley Cup final. Iginla is Calgary’s biggest star and their captain; Lecavalier is the franchise player the Lightning have been building around. A fight between two superstars, in a crucial playoff game, just isn’t supposed to happen. But it does, because this is a battle for a championship and neither player is willing to give an inch.

You don’t have to like fighting in hockey or even understand it to get what’s happening here. There’s nothing dirty, and it’s not some staged production between two guys with nothing better to do. It’s just two stars on a collision course, staring each other down and saying “I’m not going anywhere and I know you’re not either, so what do you want to do about it?”

Iginla wins the fight, of course, because he almost always did. He didn’t fight often, maybe a handful of times a year, because he didn’t have to. But if it needed to be done, he was there. That was what made Iginla such a special player – he could do just about anything that his team needed him to do. A goal? Of course. A dominating shift? Yes. Win the crucial battles in his own zone? Often. A crushing open ice hit to flip the momentum? More than a few. And yes, if somebody needed to step up and trade punches, putting themselves at risk just to make it clear that this team wasn’t backing down from anyone, Iginla was willing and able to do that too.

Jarome Iginla kicked ass. Sometimes, literally. And there’s a very good chance that we’ll never see a player quite like him ever again.

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Building a roster of players whose goals and assists were perfectly balanced, as all things should be

We’ve arrived at what’s often the first lull of an NHL season, with a long way to go to the playoffs but enough games in the bank that we’re not overreacting to every result. We’re past a wild October and the dreaded U.S. Thanksgiving milestone but have a few weeks to the holiday freeze, and still months to wait for the Olympics (maybe) and trade deadline.

In other words, it’s the perfect opportunity to waste some time with a roster-building challenge.

We haven’t done one of these in a while. If you’re new to this, the whole idea is to take a challenge from a reader and use it to construct the best team we can. It’s a chance to dip into history and Remember Some Guys, with no higher purpose than that. Oh, and then you go into the comments and tell me I got it all wrong, and we argue about whether some dude from the 70s was better than your favorite team’s current third-liner. That part’s fun too.

Today’s question comes from reader Rodney:

What’s the best team you can assemble from players who had a year where their total goals equalled total assists?

— Rodney Payne (@gonebeancountin) November 22, 2021

That’s a beauty, because it’s amazingly simple but (as we’ll see) secretly complicated. Thankfully, I can tell you that it’s also reasonably straightforward to answer, unlike some questions we could mention, and it is also not staggeringly dumb, which is a nice change.

Let’s do this. A full roster of players who had a season where their goals total exactly matched their assists. One key ground rule here: We want to build the best roster we can, and we’re getting the player from that year. If we take Jean Beliveau based on his one goal and one assist in two games as a teenaged callup, that’s who we get – the wet-behind-the-ears rookie, not the all-time great. For that reason, we won’t be getting cute with partial seasons for guys that were injured or otherwise limited.

Single-season goals and assists, perfectly balanced, as all things should be. I have a concept, roughly seven dozen open hockey-reference tabs, and too much time on my hands. Let’s do this.

Forwards

The first hurdle we run into is one you’re probably already thinking about: Lots of history’s best players won’t fit well into this concept. That’s especially true for centers, especially playmakers, who almost always have more assists than goals, and usually many more.

For example, Wayne Gretzky doesn’t get anywhere close to our list at any point in his 20-season career; even when he was shattering all the goal-scoring records, his assist totals were way higher. The same is true of other centers you may be hoping to see, like Marcel Dionne, Connor McDavid, Bryan Trottier, Peter Forsberg, Joe Thornton, Mark Messier or Joe Sakic. Great players all, but not ones that will help us here. In fact, as we’ll see in a bit, centers are hard to find for this exercise.

On the other side of the coin, you have the pure snipers who almost always rack up more goals than assists. That problem isn’t quite as pronounced – there can be two assists for every goal, meaning there are more helpers available to be earned. It’s rare to see even a one-dimensional scorer have a very low assist total, although it’s always fun when it happens because we can all make jokes about them winning the Cy Young. (Or as it may be called soon, the Mangiapane.) For our purposes, the best years of guys like Rocket Richard, Steven Stamkos and Pavel Bure are too goals-heavy for this roster.

Then there are the agonizing near-misses, where more-balanced superstars just don’t quite land on the magic number we’re looking for. The worst of those is Mario Lemieux, who had 54 goals and 53 assists in 1986-87. That wasn’t even one of his ten best seasons, but we would have gladly taken it because Mario was awesome. We also just barely miss out on Sidney Crosby (44 goals and 45 assists in 2016-17), Teemu Selanne (48 and 46 in 2006-07), Luc Robitaille (63 and 62 in 1992-93), and Steve Yzerman (50 and 52 in 1987-88, then 62 and 65 in 1989-90). Jaromir Jagr somehow never pulled it off in his three centuries of playing, coming closest with a 47 and 48 in 1996-97. And we need to make a special mention of Mike Bossy, who went 60 and 58 in 1982-83 and then teased us by being one off in each of the last three years of his career.

Still, we have plenty of legendary forwards to choose from, so let’s start building out our roster with guys who did hit the sweet spot. We’ll start with one of the greatest of all-time in Gordie Howe, who had 43 goals and 43 assists in his Art Ross and Hart-winning 1950-51 season. On the other wing, we’ll go with Alexander Ovechkin, who followed up his Calder-winning rookie year with 46 goals and assists in 2006-07.

The center on our top line will be the greatest season we’ll find in our quest for perfect balance: Phil Esposito and his legendary 1970-71 campaign, which saw him shatter the single-season goals record with 76 and then exactly match that total with 76 assists. Espo always had a flare for the dramatic, and his inclusion here is no different – he was at 76/75 until recording a second assist on the Bruins last goal of the season, which came with two minutes left in their final game.

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The Athletic Hockey Show: A GM's perspective on the trade deadline

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:

Ian and I are joined by TSN analyst and former Flames GM Craig Button:
- What it's like to negotiate a deadline day deal
- Behind-the-scenes on the Iginla/Nieuwendyk trade
- The human side of trading players away
- Whether Craig is expecting a quiet deadline day on TSN
- What kind of GM is the most annoying to deal with

Plus
- More deadline thoughts
- The Devils and Islanders make a deal
- Should the Canucks finish the season?
- Which current coach would make the best emergency goalie
- Listener voice mails, the craziest final day in NHL history, 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)

Is Iginla for Nieuwendyk the greatest win-win trade in history?

This weekend will mark the 25-year anniversary of one of my favorite trades of all time: the Joe Nieuwendyk for Jarome Iginla blockbuster that reshaped two franchises.

It’s just such a great deal. You couldn’t ask for more star power, with both players going on to become Hall of Famers. It was the sort of big, gutsy move that used to happen back in the pre-cap days but has faded out of favor over time. And to this day, it still holds up as just about the archetypal veteran-for-prospect deal.

Like most legendary deals, it didn’t go down quite the way most of us remember it. For one thing, it wasn’t a one-for-one trade, even as important piece Corey Millen has largely been written out of the retellings. It was somewhat overshadowed at the time by the repercussions of an even bigger trade that had gone down just a few days earlier. The deal wasn’t exactly a Day 1 hit in Calgary, where a local newspaper ran a headline reading “Jarome Who?” And there’s the small matter of Nieuwendyk’s season-long holdout, one that had helped get Flames GM Doug Risebrough fired just weeks earlier. That part makes the story a little more complicated, and often gets left out.

But that’s all fine, because Jarome Iginla and Joe Nieuwendyk were both awesome. And that’s the real beauty of the trade: It worked out just about perfectly for everyone involved. Iginla went on to become quite possibly the greatest player in Flames history, while Nieuwendyk led the Stars to the franchise’s only Stanley Cup a few years later, winning the Conn Smythe along the way. Both sides got exactly what they were hoping for.

Most NHL blockbusters, in hindsight, have a winner and a loser. The Hawks got taken to the cleaners when they sent Phil Esposito to Boston, the Kings clearly won the Wayne Gretzky sale trade, the Leafs robbed the Flames in the Doug Gilmour deal, and so on. Most aren’t quite so lopsided, and a strong pair of homer glasses can occasionally make things seem a little better, but we can almost always look back and know which team would do the deal again and which might prefer a do-over.

But every now and then, we get a deal that works out for everyone. Is Iginla/Nieuwendyk history’s top trade in that category? Let’s try to figure that out, as we remember five more big deals that both sides would happily do all over again.

And we might as well start with another famous Flames trade …

The Brett Hull trade

The setup: Heading into the 1988 trade deadline, the Flames were a very good team two years removed from a loss in the Stanley Cup Final and well on their way to the best regular season finish in franchise history. But they still had Wayne Gretzky and the Oilers looming in the playoffs, and GM Cliff Fletcher wanted to load up on veteran depth for what he hoped could be a Cup run. If that meant he had to move a rookie sharpshooter with a famous last name and a shaky work ethic, he was willing to do that.

The trade: The Flames sent 23-year-old Brett Hull and Steve Bozek to the Blues for Rob Ramage and Rick Wamsley.

The impact on the Blues: Reasonably positive. Hull scored 40 goals in his first full year in St. Louis, then exploded for 228 over the next three seasons, leading the league each time. He won the Hart in 1991 and ended up scoring 527 goals in 11 seasons with the Blues

The impact on the Flames: Calgary lost to the Oilers again in that year’s playoffs, but that summer’s Gretzky trade opened the door, and Ramage and Wamsley helped the team finally take home the Cup in 1989.

Why it might be the best: On the surface, this is basically the early prototype of the Iginla/Nieuwendyk trade, as one team gives up a future stud but wins a Cup shortly after.

Why it might not: Wamsley was a decent backup during the 1988-89 season, but made just one quick relief appearance in the playoffs as Mike Vernon shouldered the load. Ramage was a dependable piece who ate minutes and could play at both ends. Neither guy was exactly a “Nieuwendyk wins the Conn Smythe” sort of impact. Do the Flames still win without them? They might, yeah.

Bottom line: Hull was so good for so long that this might be one of the only trades where a team that quickly won a championship might still want to at least think about a mulligan. I don’t mind keeping it in the win-win category because a Cup is a Cup, but the Iginla/Nieuwendyk deal checks all the same boxes and does them better.

Heatley for Hossa

The setup: Coming out of the 2004-05 lockout, Dany Heatley needed a fresh start after his role in tragedy in Atlanta. Meanwhile, Marian Hossa signed a three-year deal with Ottawa because he wanted to stay with the Senators, which meant he was in for a surprise.

The trade: Hours after getting the 26-year-old Hossa’s signature on an extension, the Senators flipped him to Atlanta for the 24-year-old Heatley. In a nice bit of symmetry with the Iginla/Nieuwendyk trade, this is another one of those deals that people incorrectly remember as being one-for-one, with defenseman Greg de Vries playing the role of Corey Millen.

The impact on the Senators: Heatley was everything the Senators were hoping for, slotting in on a formidable top line with Jason Spezza and Daniel Alfredsson and recording back-to-back 50-goal seasons, the only times in franchise history anyone has hit that mark. The good times lasted four seasons before a bitter fallout led to a trade demand and eventual deal to San Jose.

The impact on the Thrashers: Hossa clicked nicely with Ilya Kovalchuk, nearly matching Heatley’s offensive output while being the far better two-way player. He was traded at the end of his third year in Atlanta (for a disappointing return), but still had nearly a decade of excellent hockey left in him.

Why it might be the best: Considering this move was basically forced on one of the teams involved, it worked out about as evenly as it possibly could have, with both teams getting exactly what they were looking for.

Why it might not: The two stars combined to spend less than seven full seasons with their new teams, and neither turned into much on the way out of town, so the long-term influence here isn’t all that impressive.

Bottom line: This is a solid contender, and could take the title of best win-win trade of the cap era. I don’t think it beats Iginla/Nieuwendyk for overall impact, though.

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Five memorable NHL moments that wouldn’t have been the same without fans

The NHL is on the way back, and we’re just days away from seeing meaningful hockey played for the first time since March. Everything about the situation is deeply weird, from the hubs to the bubbles to the format. But once they actually get out onto the ice and drop the puck, there’s a chance that it might all feel normal.

Well, almost. There’s the small matter of playing without any fans in the building. Is that going to matter? We’ve had this argument before, and no doubt fans around the world will be having it over the next few weeks. For some of us, those empty arenas will be a big distraction. While others will barely notice it at all. Maybe we’ll get a better insight into what’s happening on the ice because we’ll be able to hear the players, coaches and officials more clearly. Or maybe TV will throw a bunch of weird sound effects and CGI into the mix to try to compensate.

Nobody knows what the future holds. And that’s OK because I’m not really the “future” guy around here. But I do know a thing or two about the past, which got me to thinking about some famous and not-so-famous games in NHL history that just wouldn’t have been the same without fans in the building. Today, let’s pay tribute to those die-hards who show up to cheer, boo, pound the glass, wave frantically at the camera and sometimes do a whole lot more than that. Here are five games from NHL history that wouldn’t be as memorable without the fans.

April 19, 2004: Flames at Canucks

The setup: The first-round playoff series between the two rivals had been a classic, and after the Canucks had survived a triple-overtime cliffhanger in Game 6, we headed back to Vancouver for a deciding game.

All of this would have been the same: We would have had a classic from the genre of tight, low-scoring games that defined the era. Jarome Iginla would have still opened the scoring in the first, Matt Cooke would have tied it midway through the third, and Iginla would have restored the lead minutes later. The Flames would have led 2-1 in the final minute, and after a controversial late call against Ed Jovanovski, would have had a chance to ice the game with the goalie out when Iginla got to a loose puck in the neutral zone with seconds left and nobody between him and the open net.

But without fans, we wouldn’t have seen: A fan fire their Canucks jersey on the ice just as Iginla took the shot, nearly landing on the puck and potentially distracting the Flames captain at the game’s most crucial moment.

The shot went just wide, the Canucks scored the tying goal seconds later, and we headed to overtime.

What it would have meant: Quite possibly, nothing. There’s a good case to be made that the toss came just slightly too late for Iginla to see it. Besides, NHL players can get so locked in with a game on the line that they wouldn’t notice a live bear on the ice with then, let alone somebody tossing a jersey on the ice.

Still … I mean, how crazy was that? It’s hard not to play what-if with that moment. What if the jersey had landed on the puck, or blocked it from heading towards the net? I’m not even sure what the rule would be there, and knowing obscure rules is pretty much my beat.

For the record, Iginla didn’t blame the jersey toss for missing the open net, although he was suspiciously noncommittal — his answer was “I don’t know, I was focused.” Since we all know he’s too classy to make excuses, I’m just going to go ahead and interpret that as “I 100 percent missed that empty net because some fan chucked a jersey at me.”

To make matters even crazier, just a few seconds later Iginla had his stick chopped out of his hand by Brendan Morrison, taking him out of the play just before the Canucks tied the game. It was a clear penalty that wasn’t called, and while officials often ignore stuff late, look what the ref is doing at that exact moment: picking up the stray jersey instead of watching Morrison’s hack.

It all could have added up to one of the most controversial moments in playoff history. Instead, the Flames ended up winning in overtime, so Cooke’s tying goal was a Zelepukin and everyone just kind of laughed it off. And the hockey gods got to work plotting a different way to screw over the 2004 Flames.

March 29, 2001: Maple Leafs at Flyers

The setup: Two good teams faced off in a late-season battle with playoff seeding implications, not to mention a rematch of a 1999 playoff meeting and a potential preview of a series that could happen in a few weeks.

All of this would have been the same: The two teams would have played a tight, hard-nosed game. Dan McGillis would have still opened the scoring in the first, with Gary Roberts answering for Toronto in the second. Early in the third, Luke Richardson still would have hit Darcy Tucker, who sold it like he was dead. Tie Domi would have still tried to get at Richardson. Kevin Collins would have intervened because Kevin Collins always intervened. And once things were under control, Domi and Richardson would have headed to the penalty box to serve matching minors for unsportsmanlike conduct.

But without fans, we wouldn’t have seen: Domi presumably wouldn’t have felt the need to squirt his water bottle into the empty stands. That wouldn’t have led to a Flyers fan deciding to get involved, leaning over the glass in the process. And we wouldn’t have all learned a valuable lesson about just how strong that glass actually is.

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Puck Soup: Hall of Fame highs and lowes

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We react to the Hall of Fame's Class of 2020
- An appreciation of Jarome Iginla
- Marian Hossa was good, but was he first-ballot good?
- Kevin Lowe. Huh.
- The lack of women, the builder conundrum, and the names that weren't called that we're not happy about
- The Auston Matthews controversy, Steve Simmons, and whether this story is being covered correctly
- The hub search narrows, and one city seems to want it more than others
- Plus 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.

Making the one-sentence case for and against 25 Hall of Fame candidates

The Hockey Hall of Fame will announce the class of 2020 today, and time will tell if they did a better job than our picks on Tuesday. For now, let’s consider the cases for and against some of the candidates, as we break down 25 of the biggest names up for consideration.

Wait, twenty-five?

Yeah, there are a lot of candidates out there who can, at the very least, make a plausible case for induction. I wound up with a list of 25, and I’ll still be excluding at least a few names that some readers will be expecting to see.

This is for the men’s player category only, since the drama around the women’s side appears to be mainly whether the committee stops at Jennifer Botterill or inducts two players for the first time since 2010, and the builder category always feels like a total crapshoot from the outside. I’ve also focused on players who made their names in the NHL, although the committee could look to some of the underrepresented international leagues for at least a spot or two.

Still, 25 names is a lot. I’m not even dipping all that far back into history with most of these, which may be a mistake since the committee will occasionally induct a player who’s been eligible forever. And of course, we occasionally get picks that seem to come out of nowhere; if I’d written this piece last year, I doubt I’d have included Guy Carbonneau, but he made it in. At the same time, the committee has 18 members and each can only nominate one candidate, so several of the names below won’t even be discussed in this year’s proceedings.

With 25 names to get through, we’ll limit the case for and against to one sentence each. In a few cases, one run-on sentence, but only one. And while the whole point of this sort of thing is to give us something to argue about, we’ll start with what should be the one candidate that everyone can agree on.

Jarome Iginla

The case for: He’s Jarome Iginla.

The case against: With over 600 goals and 1,300 points to go along with being one of the most respected leaders in the sport, there really isn’t one, and the committee should take roughly three minutes of discussion to wrap this one up before moving on to the tougher calls.

Daniel Alfredsson

The case for: He finished with 1,157 career points and won a Calder to go with a King Clancy and that weird Mark Messier award, not to mention Olympic gold, and if feels like we all just assumed he’d get in eventually when he first became eligible.

The case against: That eligibility came back in 2017, and every year it seems like there are a couple of new candidates that push him off enough ballots that you start to wonder if he’s destined to become the poster child for the Hall of Very Good.

Pierre Turgeon

The case for: At 1,327 points, he’s the leading scorer among eligible players who haven’t been inducted yet by well over 100 points.

The case against: With no awards except for a Lady Byng and only one season in a 19-year career where he received so much as a single Hart vote, Turgeon might be the all-time example of a player who racked up big numbers without ever being considered one of the game’s elite.

Doug Wilson

The case for: I made it in more detail earlier this week, but Wilson was one of the very best defensemen of the 1980s, winning a Norris and finishing in the top 15 in career scoring.

The case against: He was considered a tier below the Ray Bourques and Paul Coffeys of his generation, and his production trailed off just enough after the age of 32 to leave his career numbers a bit short of slam dunk territory.

Theo Fleury

The case for: One of the most memorable and entertaining players of his generation, the diminutive Fleury went from a longshot to even crack the NHL to a Cup-winner and 50-goal scorer who had two 100-point seasons and over 1,000 career points.

The case against: Partly because of some personal struggles, his career didn’t last long enough to rack up the sort of numbers the Hall typically looks for in an 80s/90s offensive star; he didn’t crack 500 goals and his 1,088 points rank just 70th all-time on an era-adjusted basis.

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Remembering the dramatic tying goals that went to waste (aka the Zelepukins)

With no new NHL action these days, the league’s broadcast partners have been dipping into their archives to fill airtime with memorable games from the past. And it’s been pretty cool. We all miss live hockey, but getting to rewatch some old classics isn’t a bad way to spend an evening.

For example, over the weekend Canadian viewers were treated to replays of a pair of classic Canucks Game 7s: their showdown against the Flames in 2004 and their grudge match against the Blackhawks in 2011. A few days earlier, both Sportsnet and Fox Sports West showed the Kerry Fraser game between the Leafs and Kings from 1993.

All memorable games. But they had something else in common, and you may have noticed it. They all featured a very specific type of goal. They all had a Zelepukin.

OK, I’m guessing you don’t call it that, since that’s a label I’ve been using in my own head over the years. But you know the moment. A Zelepukin is when a team scores a dramatic goal to tie a crucial game at the end of regulation but then goes on to lose that game in overtime.

A Zelepukin goal is always a weird moment in hindsight. When the tying goal happens, it’s euphoric for one fan base and crushing for the other. But then the script gets flipped in overtime, and you realize that the Zelepukin just prolonged the misery. Sometimes, the tying goal itself is all but forgotten, replaced in the collective memory by the overtime goal it spawned.

And that’s where the paradox of the Zelepukin kicks in – if your team scored it, you might end up wondering if you’d rather it had never happened at all.

That question has always kind of fascinated me. So today, let’s look at those three Zelepukin goals we’ve been able to relive in recent days, as well as a few more famous ones from hockey history. We’ll start with the one that might have been the most memorable in NHL history. If you’re not sure which one that is, well, the name might give you a hint.

May 27, 1994: Devils vs. Rangers

The setup: It’s Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final, with the Rangers hosting the Devils at Madison Square Garden. New York has won the Presidents’ Trophy and is looking to punch a ticket to the final and a chance to end a 54-year Cup drought. But the underdog Devils are giving them all they can handle. The series is already legendary, having featured Mark Messier’s infamous Guarantee that kept the Rangers alive in Game 6. Now it all comes down to one winner-take-all showdown.

The situation: Game 7 turns into a fierce defensive battle, with Mike Richter and Martin Brodeur trading saves in a 0-0 tie until Brian Leetch gets the Rangers on the board midway through the second. As the third period ticks away, it starts to look like that goal will hold up as the winner.

The Zelepukin: With Brodeur on the bench and 18 seconds left, the teams line up for a faceoff in the Rangers’ end. Messier wins the draw but the Rangers can’t clear, and a goalmouth scramble leads to a golden scoring opportunity. Richter makes what seems like an impossible save, but a certain Devil is there to hack away at the rebound: Tom Chorske!

No, just kidding. It is, of course, Valeri Zelepukin.

And just like that, 18,000 delirious Rangers fans go dead quiet. For at least a little while.

But then: In arguably the most famous overtime of the era, the two teams don’t score through one period before Stephane Matteau’s harmless-looking wraparound attempt ends it. The goal isn’t especially pretty, but the call will live forever.

Do you wish it never happened? If you’re a Devils fan, it’s quite possible that Zelepukin’s goal, at the moment it happened, was the highlight of your entire life as a sports fan. But in hindsight, if you could wave a magic wand and make it disappear, I think you’d have to. Sure, losing 1-0 on a Brian Leetch goal would have been painful. But if you never had to hear Stephane Matteau’s name screamed at you ever again, I think it would be worth it.

April 26, 2011: Blackhawks vs. Canucks

The setup: By 2011, the Hawks and Canucks had managed to brew up a surprisingly heated inter-division rivalry, one that had seen Chicago eliminate very good Vancouver teams in both 2009 and 2010. The Hawks had gone on to win the Cup after that second series, but the Canucks were the favorites heading into their 2011 rematch after a franchise-record 117-point season. All they had to do was slay the dragon.

And through three games, they did. The Canucks built a 3-0 series lead, one that the history books said should be all but insurmountable. But then the Hawks fought back with a blowout win, and then another, and then an overtime win in Game 6 to tie the series. That set up a Game 7 in Vancouver where the Canucks would either fight back with one of the biggest wins in franchise history, or suffer a loss so devastating that they’d have no choice but to detonate the roster. No middle ground.

The situation: Alex Burrows opened the scoring early in the first, and it seemed like that might be enough as Roberto Luongo held off a surprisingly toothless Chicago attack. Late in the third, the Hawks’ chances went from bad to worse when Duncan Keith took a tripping penalty to leave them shorthanded. All the Canucks had to do was play keep away for two minutes, then take it home.

The Zelepukin: A neutral zone turnover led to a harmless looking 2-on-4 rush for the Hawks. But as it turns out, Jonathan Toews is pretty dangerous, even from all fours.

And just like that, the Canucks were headed to sudden death on the verge of what would have been viewed as one of the most epic chokes in NHL history.

But then: Five minutes into overtime Chris Campoli’s failed clearing attempt wound up in Burrows’ glove, and he hammered one past Corey Crawford for the winner.

Do you wish it never happened? Watch that overtime winner again. Do you see how happy Burrows is? It’s the highlight of his entire career. If you were a Hawks fans, would you want to take that away from him? Of course you would. It’s not even a hard question. This Zelepukin clearly needs to go.

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Every trade deadline of salary cap era ranked

There have been 15 trade deadlines in the salary cap era, and out of all of them, 2020 was definitely the most recent.

That’s about all we can say with any certainty right now. Monday’s deadline was high on volume, but the impact of those moves remains to be seen, even as some initial reactions have already surfaced. That’s how these things work, after all – the deadline arrives, and we all start ranking the winners and losers.

Well, forget that. I say we aim a little bigger. Let’s not just stop at one trade deadline; let’s pass judgment on all of them. Or at least, all of them since the salary cap arrived, since we’re constantly told that that changed everything. So today, let’s count down all 15 deadlines of the cap era to remember the big deals, the worst busts, some random crap you’d long since forgotten, and which ones actually delivered for NHL fans.

#15. 2011

Biggest trade: The Oilers sending Dustin Penner to the Kings for prospect Colten Teubert, a first and a second. That’s right, we sat around all day to see where Dustin Penner wound end up. For what it’s worth, Teubert was a bust, but the first turned into Oscar Klefbom.

Most important trade: Probably Penner, as sad as that it is, since he helped the Kings win a Cup in 2012. Other than that, the Canucks traded for Maxim Lapierre and Chris Higgins to add depth for a long playoff run.

Worst trade: Fighting for top seed in the East, the Penguins had already pulled off a significant hockey trade to land James Neal. But they went cheap on their big deadline rental, sending a seventh-round pick to the Senators for 38-year-old Alexie Kovalev. He didn’t do much, and the Pens were upset in a first round that saw them lose game seven 1-0.

Trade you totally forgot about: Bryan McCabe to the Rangers. In related news, Bryan McCabe was apparently a Ranger?

OK, sure: The Canadiens added a future Wrestlemania main eventer.

Final grade: D. This could surprise you, since you might remember the 2011 season having more action. It did, but not in the days leading up to the deadline; big trades involving names like Tomas Kaberle, Kevin Shattenkirk, Blake Wheeler, Craig Anderson, Francois Beauchemin and Mike Fisher were all done in mid-February. If anything, 2011 marked the year when GMs realized they didn’t have to wait until the last minute to do their shopping, a trend that’s been looming over deadline days ever since.

 

#14. 2012

Biggest trade: Zack Kassian for Cody Hodgson. Yes, really. The deal broke late on deadline day, and with both players still early in their careers, it launched all sorts of debate over who won and how the trade would look years down the road.

Most important trade: Jeff Carter from Columbus to the Kings actually happened several days ahead of the deadline, but it’s pretty much the only pick we can make here. Johnny Oduya from the Jets to the Hawks is a distant second.

Worst trade: Buffalo sending Paul Gaustad to the Predators for a first-round pick. You know that thing where every fan base thinks their bottom-six depth guys should be worth a first on deadline day? Blame this trade.

Trade you totally forgot about: A still-figuring-it-out Ben Bishop going from St. Louis to Ottawa

OK, sure: Remember when Brian Burke said people would eventually remember the seven-player Dion Phaneuf blockbuster as the Keith Aulie trade? Two years later, the Leafs traded Aulie to Tampa for Carter Ashton, a forward who scored zero goals in 54 games in Toronto.

Final grade: D+. The Kings’ Carter deal saves it a bit, but otherwise this was almost as bad as 2011 without any of the pre-deadline fireworks. It’s the year that fans officially started to worry about the deadline.

 

#13. 2016

Biggest trade: Eric Staal going from Carolina to the Rangers for two second-rounders and a prospect who didn’t pan out. It was a classic case of a rebuilding team sending a longtime franchise player to chase a Cup with a contender, but Staal went pointless in the Rangers’ opening round playoff loss.

Most important trade: The Oilers gave up on Justin Schutlz, sending him to the Penguins for a third. He’d help the Pens win the next two Cups.

Worst trade: Dustin Jeffey, Dan O’Donoghue and James Melindy from Arizona to Pittsburgh for Matia Marcantuoni. I’m pretty sure at least three of these four players are made up.

Trade you totally forgot about: Niklas Backstrom to the Flames. Wait, he played for Calgary? (Double-checks.) Oh, that Niklas Backstrom.

OK, sure: Michael Sdao, Eric O’Dell, Cole Schneider and Alexander Guptill from Ottawa to Buffalo for Jason Akeson, Phil Varone and Jerome Leduc. I’m 100 percent sure that seven of these seven players are made up.

Final grade: C-. I got to be part of Sportsnet’s live broadcast of this one, so it was probably my fault.

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Puck Soup: The Babcock firing

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The Mike Babcock firing, and his potential next stops, where the Leafs go from here
- Garnet Hathaway's three-game suspension for spitting
- Does the NHL need to change the rules after the scary Matt Calvert incident
- Some final thoughts on the Hall of Fame, including predictions for next year's class
- We play "Hell Yes or B.S." with the Islanders, Senators, and David Pastrnak's goal-scoring
- Baby Yoda
- And lots more...

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>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.

>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

Let’s play the $200 Lineup Game

It’s August. Nothing much is happening in the NHL. Nothing much will be happening in the NHL. If anything did happen, we might not find out about it because Pierre is on vacation. Outside of whatever the Wild are doing, there’s nothing to talk about.

It’s a perfect time to play The $200 Lineup Game.

This game is based on some Twitter fun we had a few years ago. The rules are simple. You’re going to build the best starting lineup out of players who’ve played for your favorite NHL team. Here’s how it works.

• You need three forwards, two defensemen and a goalie. Other than that, we don’t care about position, so you can mix wingers and centers and don’t need to worry about which side your defensemen play on.
• You have a salary cap of $200 to work with to build your full lineup.
• Each player you pick will cost you a salary of $1 per regular-season game that they ever played for your favorite team. If you want a guy who played one full 82-game season, that’s $82 of your cap gone.
• Here’s the key, and the part that’s going to screw up the people who skip the intro on these things: Once you fit a player onto your roster, you get credit for their entire NHL career. Not just the games they played for your team – everything they did in the NHL.

In other words, you’re looking for star players who had the briefest possible stint with your team. Guy Lafleur isn’t worth anything to the Canadiens, because he’d cost way too much. But his one season in New York means that a Rangers team could squeeze him in for $67, and they’d get credit for the full Flower experience. Want Brett Hull and his 700+ career goals? You’re out of luck if you’re the Blues or even the Stars. But a Flames team could fit him in for just $57. And the Coyotes could get him for just $5.

A few more rules, just for your loophole-seekers out there.

• A player must have played at least one regular-season game to qualify for a team’s roster. There are no freebies. That means, for example, that the Stars can’t claim Jarome Iginla even though they drafted him and the Oilers and Predators can’t claim Mike Richter even though both teams technically acquired him during his career. Coyotes fans don’t get Pronger, Datsyuk and Hossa. Same goes for any cases where a team only ever dressed a player in the postseason. Basically, if you think you’ve found a way to get a guy for free, you’re cheating.
• We’re going by franchise here, so we’ll combine the Nordiques with the Avs, the Whalers with the Hurricanes, the Thrashers and the new Jets, etc. That cuts both ways; it gives those teams more players to work with, but also prevents any shady picks like trying to claim Owen Nolan as a $9 Avalanche despite his five full seasons as a Nordique.
• You can use active players, but you only get credit for what they’ve done in the NHL as of today, not what they might do in the future. So if Canucks fans want to spend $71 on Elias Pettersson, they only get one season of him.
• If a player had multiple stints with a team, they all combine together to produce his price tag. The Leafs can’t try to claim Doug Gilmour for $1 based on his brief return to the team in 2003.

Speaking of the Leafs, let’s use them as our first example …

Toronto Maple Leafs

Forwards: Ron Francis ($12), Eric Lindros ($33), Dickie Moore ($38)

Defense: Brian Leetch ($15), Phil Housley ($1)

Goaltender: Terry Sawchuk ($91)

Total: $190

That’s not a bad lineup, featuring six Hall-of-Famers. The Pat Quinn years are fruitful here, as late-season acquisitions of Francis, Leetch and Housley give us a cheap backbone and help us have enough left over to spend a relatively hefty $91 on Sawchuk (or, if you prefer, $95 on Grant Fuhr). If you’d rather go with a post-expansion look, you could swap out old-timers Moore and Sawchuk and bring in Joe Nieuwendyk ($64) and Bernie Parent ($65) instead for the same combined price. Or you could use Gerry Cheevers in goal for just $2 and spend more elsewhere. But whichever way you go, the Leafs are solid.

Makes sense? Do you see what we’re going for? Cool. Then let’s try some other teams around the league because as you’re going to see, there are a few teams that can give the Leafs a run for their $200 worth of money. We’re going to serve up a dozen teams in all, which doesn’t cover everyone but is more than enough to get your brain working and then turn it over to you to come up with your own.

Boston Bruins

Forwards: Jaromir Jagr ($11), Cy Denneny ($23), Dave Andreychuk ($63)

Defense: Paul Coffey ($18), Brian Leetch ($61)

Goaltender: Jacques Plante ($8)

Total: $184

You could say that this concept already has a playoff atmosphere because the Bruins immediately knock off the Maple Leafs. And to add insult to injury, they even do it with one of the same players off of the Leafs’ roster, as Leetch makes like a free agent and jumps to a rival for more money. They pair him with Coffey, who (spoiler alert) will also show up on more than one of these lists.

Other possibilities on the backend include Sergei Gonchar for $15 or Babe Pratt for $31. But the real options are up front. To be honest, I went with Andreychuk mainly to eat up a big chunk of the cap space that was going to be leftover, but you could go with somebody like Joey Mullen at $37 or even Rick Nash for $11 and just pocket the rest. Not that Boston ownership would ever do that.

So yeah, the Bruins are now our team to beat. Let’s see if anyone can do it.

Detroit Red Wings

Forwards: Darryl Sittler ($61), Mike Modano ($40), Charlie Conacher ($40)

Defense: Doug Harvey ($2), Borje Salming ($49)

Goaltender: Bill Ranford ($4)

Total: $196

In theory, the Red Wings seem like a team that would be made for this sort of game, since modern history is filled with Hall of Famers finishing their careers with brief stopovers in Detroit. But many of them aren’t brief enough, as guys like Daniel Alfredsson and Bernie Federko played enough games in their one season with the Wings to price them out of our budget. Marian Hossa did too.

We can squeeze in Modano and Sittler, though, largely because Harvey gives us a monster value on the blue line. We get more solid value in goal with a Conn Smythe winner in Ranford at just $4, but he makes Detroit our first entry that isn’t made up entirely of current or future Hall of Famers. The Wings’ entry is a solid one, but I don’t think they top the Bruins.

Let’s take a break from the Original Six teams and try a few who have a little less history to work with.

Pittsburgh Penguins

Forwards: Jarome Iginla ($13), Luc Robitaille ($46), Marian Hossa ($12)

Defense: Tim Horton ($44), Sergei Zubov ($64)

Goaltender: Tomas Vokoun ($20)

Total: $199

The Penguins benefit from our rule about just using three forwards without worrying about position, as they’ll roll with over 1,800 goals worth of wingers and apparently just hope that nobody ever has to take a faceoff.

Those three bargains up front allow us to spend some extra money on the blue line, which we kind of need to do – there aren’t any obvious sub-$40 bargains to be found here. We get a pair of Hall of Famers, though, so we’ll take it. We don’t have as much luck in goal, where the good-but-not-great Vokoun is really the only option. That takes this team down a notch after a promising start.

We’ve been heavy on the Eastern Conference so far, so let’s head to the West for the next few.

Finding optimism for the Senators in five of history’s most depressing trade deadlines

I​ think there’s a good​ case​ to​ be​ made​ that​ Ottawa Senators fans​ just endured one​ of the most​ depressing​ trade deadlines in​​ NHL history.

Ottawa ended up trading away three veterans, including the team’s most popular player in Mark Stone, plus their next two leading goal scorers in Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel. Just in terms of talent going out the door, the Senators’ 2019 deadline exodus is hard to match.

But that’s not what makes the weekend so depressing. Instead, it’s the context here that makes it all sting so much. The Senators wanted to re-sign Duchene and Stone, but apparently couldn’t get them to buy into the team’s long-term vision for a return to contention. Coming on the heels of the Erik Karlsson trade, it’s hard for fans to shake the feeling that their best players just don’t want to be there anymore. And so three more were traded away, leaving behind some good picks and prospects but also a husk of a roster that seems destined to finish dead last. And of course, the Sens can’t even look forward to the draft lottery, because they traded away their first-round pick for one of those players who just said goodbye.

So yeah … not fun. But we’re all about optimism around here, so let’s see if we can find some for Ottawa fans. I went back and looked at five other trade deadlines in modern NHL history that left fans feeling miserable, to see if we could find some small rays of positivity for the Senators.

This might feel like rock bottom in Ottawa. But it felt at least a little like that in these towns too, and maybe we can draw some lessons from that. Cheer up, Sens fans. There are brighter days ahead.

2013 Calgary Flames

The setup: The Flames were about to miss the playoffs for the fourth straight year and the team hadn’t won a round since their 2004 run to the final. For years, there had been rumors that the team would have no choice but to trade franchise icon Jarome Iginla. Year after year, the deadline would pass without a move, and with hope that Iginla could somehow lead the team on one more run at an elusive Cup. But with the Flames struggling and his contract expiring, the 2013 deadline really did feel like the time had come.

What happened: After nearly 17 years, Flames fans finally heard the news they’d been dreading: Iginla had been traded. And then, a few minutes later, they heard it again.

In one of the weirder deadline week moments in recent history, Iginla was reported to have been dealt to the Bruins, only to turn out to actually be headed to Pittsburgh. The deal ended up being Iginla for Kenny Agostino, Ben Hanowski and a first.

Why it hurt: Flames fans got to enjoy the gut punch of the first deal, followed by a momentary reprieve, and then a second uppercut. When the dust settled, the trade felt like the end of an era. And it really was – Iginla finished as the Flames’ career leader in just about every major scoring stat, but never did win that Stanley Cup.

To make matters worse, this is one of those deals that really didn’t work out for anyone in hindsight. Iginla and the Penguins ended up being swept by the Bruins in the playoffs. He’d bounce around three more teams in four years, missing the playoffs in each of his last three seasons. And the Flames didn’t really get anything out of the deal; Agostino and Hanowski didn’t contribute much and they used the first-round pick on Morgan Klimchuk.

In hindsight, both Iginla and the Flames waited too long to move on. You almost wonder if it wouldn’t have been better for everyone if he’d stuck around and just ended his career in Calgary.

But the good news is: The Flames struggled through one more miserable season, but were back in the playoffs by 2015, and even won a round. They haven’t won a playoff game since, but that should change this year. It’s been a long six years, but the Flames are contenders again. It can be done!

Sens fans optimism index: That’s … well, that’s not bad, I guess. But Senators fans are probably hoping to have more to look forward to than one playoff round win in the next five years or so. Let’s see if we can find a team that went on to win a Cup.

2000 Boston Bruins

The setup: Much like the Flames and Iginla, the Bruins were a bad team with an aging superstar running out of time to win a Cup. In this case, it was Ray Bourque, who was heading down the stretch on his 21st season in Boston. The Bruins had been reasonably good over the years, even winning a round in 1999. But the 1999-00 season had gone off the rails, and it was clear that a rebuild was on the way.

With Bourque nearing the end of his career, it was time for Bruins fans to consider the unthinkable: Watching him chase a Cup while wearing another team’s logo.

What happened: The rumor mill had Bourque staying east, with the Flyers emerging as the favorites. But in a mild surprise, the Bruins sent him to the Avalanche instead. Despite how you might remember it, Bourque didn’t go right out and win a Cup in Colorado that year. But he decided to come back for one final season, and this time he and the Avalanche went all the way, leading to the greatest Cup handoff in history.

Why it hurt: The Bruins didn’t get much out of the deal, although that wasn’t even really the point. Instead, it was about finding the right place for Bourque to chase his title. In that sense, the deal was a success, albeit a delayed one. But it was also an acknowledgement that an era was ending without a title in Boston. And while Bruins fans cheered Bourque on in Colorado, seeing him finally lift a Cup in another uniform was a bittersweet moment.

But the good news is: The Bruins did eventually recover and win that Stanley Cup, although it took 11 years to do it.

Sens fans optimism index: Guys, we’re trying to make Senators fans feel better here. Surely we can come up with a slightly better rebound story than one that takes over a decade. Come on, these folks are hurting here – let’s find them a team they can really look up to?

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Grab bag: Iggy gets trippy

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Arbitration is weird and slightly broken so let's not worry about the weird numbers it generates
- The NHL needs a Dubious Goals Committee
- An obscure player who was Tom Wilson without the money
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube look back at Jarome Iginla enjoying a nice trip

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Podcast: The final curtain

In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- I try to make the case for the Tom Wilson contract
- Dave and I look at Jarome Iginla's Hall-of-Fame case
- The Canucks part ways with Trevor Linden
- Cody Ceci wants $6 million, and other arbitration absurdities
- We try to guess what Mark Stone and William Karlsson will ask for
- Reader questions
- And we close things out with the long-awaited Sedin twins interview

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Grab bag: MLB enters its dead puck era

In this week's Friday Grab Bag:
- MLB is in the middle of a crisis that may seem familiar to hockey fans, although the way they're dealing with it won't
- Should fans be bothered by cap circumvention?
- We say goodbye to Trevor Linden with an obscure player who was once traded for him
- The week's three comedy stars
- And we mark Jarome Iginla's retirement with a YouTube look back at The Shift

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Ranking the ten best Rocket Richard races

With less than three weeks left in the season, most of the attention is focused on the playoff races. And rightly so, as teams battle it out down to the wire to see who’ll earn a spot and how the matchups will sort out.

But there are other races worth watching, including for some of the individual honours. The Art Ross battle is shaping up as a great one, with season-long leader Nikita Kucherov trying to fend off late surges from Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Evgeni Malkin among others. Meanwhile, Kucherov’s teammate Andrei Vasilevskiy is trying to hold off Pekka Rinne and Connor Hellebuyck for the wins title.

But with all due respect to those races, the best of the bunch is for the Rocket Richard Trophy. The goal-scoring title is shaping up as a potential head-to-head fight to the finish between Alex Ovechkin and Patrik Laine, a classic contest between the old guard and the next generation. Laine is the teenaged whiz kid hungry to claim the title in just his second season, while Ovechkin represents the grizzled veteran who isn’t ready to give it up. Mix in Malkin, Eric Staal, the stunning underdog story of William Karlsson and a few others, and this one could come down to the wire. If so, it may be remembered as one of the greatest Rocket Richard races we’ve ever seen.

So today, let’s put together that list, if only to give Laine and Ovechkin something to aim for. The Rocket Richard Trophy has been around since the 1998–99 season, giving us 18 races to work with. Some of those were duds; even in the dead-puck era, the award has been won by a margin of 10 goals or more a half-dozen times. We’ll narrow it down to a top 10, counting our way down to the best race we’ve seen… at least until this year’s.

No. 10: 2000–01

The race: One year after running away with the 2000 title by 14 goals, Pavel Bure had his sights set on a second straight win. It seemed like he’d get it by a similar margin, but a late-season slump saw him finish with just one goal in his final six. That opened the door for two veteran stars who finished hot: Jaromir Jagr, who scored nine in his last six games, and Joe Sakic, who had eight in his last four.

The winner: Bure had built such a big lead that the strong finishes only managed to make the gap respectable. Bure took home the crown with 59 goals, easily topping Sakic (54) and Jagr (52).

The legacy: As races go, it wasn’t all that dramatic. But the fact that it featured three first-ballot Hall-of-Famers earns it a spot in our top 10, narrowly beating out Corey Perry‘s win in the similarly lopsided 2011 race.

No. 9: 1998–99

The race: The Rocket Richard didn’t even exist when the season began; it was only unveiled that January. Still, it looked like Teemu Selanne would capture the inaugural trophy relatively easily when he hit the 45-goal mark with eight games to play. But he went cold down the stretch, opening the door for a field that included Jagr, Alexie Yashin, Tony Amonte and John Leclair to at least make things interesting.

The winner: Jagr and Amonte made a late push, with each scoring four times in their final three games to hit the 44-goal mark. But Selanne coasted home to the crown, finishing the year with 47.

The legacy: The race was just OK, and is probably best remembered just for being the first for the new trophy. Still, given the increased profile that came with attaching Richard’s name to the goal-scoring race, Selanne felt like a worthy winner. An odd fact: The 47 goals made this only the fifth-highest goal-scoring season of his career, but it was the only time he ended up alone in top spot on the leaderboard.

No. 8: 2015–16

The race: It came down to a two-horse race, with Alex Ovechkin gunning for his fourth straight crown while Patrick Kane looked for his first.

The winner: Kane finished the season with a two-goal performance, but Ovechkin topped him with a hat trick. That gave him the title by a four-goal cushion, and even that makes it sound closer than it really was — Kane needed seven goals in his last five to even get that close, and nobody else came within nine of Ovechkin.

The legacy: In terms of star power, this race was right up there; Kane took home the Hart Trophy that season, and Ovechkin had already won it three times. But there wasn’t much suspense, beyond wondering whether Ovechkin would get to 50. He did, with 10 minutes to spare.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Seven abandoned plot points from the NHL offseason

The writers in charge of the NHL’s off-season script are struggling.

They spent the last year opening up all sorts of interesting storylines and plot holes, with lots of fun ways they could go. But now the summer is here, the credits are about to roll, and there are still all sorts of loose ends to tie up.

They’ve wrapped up a few. The Dallas Stars finally got that goalie they’ve been hunting for years, the touching Kevin Shattenkirk homecoming played out pretty much like we all expected, and the Connor McDavid contract plotline came together nicely. Some of it feels kind of derivative – haven’t we seen this Blackhawks roster already? – but for the most part it’s been fine.

But as the off-season wears on and things start getting quiet, it’s hard not to notice that several key subplots seem to have been quietly dropped by the league’s writing staff. So today, let’s look at seven NHL offseason storylines that we’re still waiting on.

The Matt Duchene trade

The Duchene trade watch has been on in Colorado ever since his coach, Patrick Roy, ripped him at the end of the 2015–16 season for celebrating wrong. Roy’s surprise August resignation may have bought some time, but as last season wore on a trade started to feel inevitable, with even Duchene himself acknowledging he was open to a fresh start.

The only question was when it would happen. With the Avalanche flatlining, there was plenty of pressure on Joe Sakic to get the best possible deal for the former third-overall pick, and timing was important. The rumoured asking price was high, and as the season wore on, some began to wonder if it might not make more sense to wait until the off-season. When the deadline passed without the Avs doing much of anything at all, the focus shifted to what Sakic could do at the draft.

Well, the draft has come and gone. So has most of free agency. So has almost all of July. And not only is Duchene somehow still in Colorado, but the rumour mill seems to be falling silent.

Maybe that’s a good thing — the calm before the storm, and all that. But with August approaching and the number of teams that could plausibly put together a deal getting smaller, it’s starting to look like not getting a trade done during the season could end up as a costly miscalculation by Sakic and the Avs. Duchene finished the season ice cold, and with cap space disappearing around the league after nearly four weeks of free agency, it’s possible that there just isn’t anyone left out there willing to pay a fair price.

Could Duchene start the season in Colorado? It’s starting to look that way. And since early-season trades have become all but extinct, that would mean yet another year of Sakic waiting for the trade deadline. Or maybe the draft. Or maybe July. Or maybe… well, to be continued, apparently.

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Ranking the NHL's greatest Cinderella stories

On paper, the Stanley Cup Final looks like a classic battle between a team of unexpected underdogs and the powerhouse defending champs. The Pittsburgh Penguins are gunning for their second straight title, while the Nashville Predators have made the final despite finishing just 16th overall during the regular season. So far, the Predators’ playoff run is shaping up like a classic Cinderella story.

The NHL has seen more than a few such stories over the years, although (spoiler alert) they almost never end well. So today, let’s rank history’s best Cinderella stories.

We’ll go back to the advent of the 16-team playoff era in 1980, and we’ll define a Cinderella as a team that finished outside the top 10 in the regular-season standings but still made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final. (We’ll also slip in one other team that fell outside that category but are widely considered a Cinderella team anyway.)

Underdog status: Just how unlikely a finalist were they? None of these teams were expected to make a deep run, but some were more surprising than others.

Road to the final: Did they have a relatively easy trip through the playoffs, or did they have to fight and scrape through every round? The harder the journey, the higher the ranking.

Final chapter: Once they got to the final, how close did they come to winning it all?

Enduring image: Years after the run is over, what (if anything) still sticks with hockey fans?

Then we'll add it all up and crown an all-time Cinderella team. But we'll work our way down, which means we start in the pre-cap days.

13. 2001-02 Hurricanes

Underdog status: 7/10. The Hurricanes had finished 16th overall. But based on winning the lowly Southeast Division, they went into the playoffs as the East's third seed.

Road to the final: 6/10. They knocked off the Devils, Canadiens and Maple Leafs, each in six games. The Carolina/Montreal matchup took place in round two and featured the two playoff teams with the worst record, in case you thought the NHL playoff format being screwy was some sort of new development.

Final chapter: 5/10. Everybody assumed the Hurricanes had no chance against a Red Wings team packed with Hall of Famers. Everyone was right.

Enduring image: 1/10. None. Seriously, other than maybe Igor Larionov's overtime goal, nobody remembers anything about this series.

Final score: 19/40. This one doesn't hold up well, at least partly because the Hurricanes came back and won the Cup just four years later.

12. 2015-16 Sharks

Underdog status: 6/10. The Sharks finished 11th overall and were the West's sixth seed. And maybe more importantly, they came in dragging all of the baggage of years of playoff failure.

Road to the final: 6/10. They started strong, knocking out their arch-rivals and killing off at least a few playoff demons by dispatching the Kings in five games. They actually had home ice in the second round against the Predators, who they beat in seven, before eliminating the Blues in six.

Final chapter: 5/10. The Sharks played the Penguins tough but never really seemed like they'd win. They dropped the first two games in Pittsburgh and trailed 3-1 after four games before ultimately bowing out in six.

Enduring image: 3/10. Joe Thornton's playoff beard, which he's apparently just decided to keep.

Final score: 20/40. Maybe the Sharks are just too recent, or maybe the modern age of parity has made Cinderella stories tougher to appreciate. But the Sharks feel more like a good team that fell short than a memorable underdog.

11. 2013-14 Rangers

Underdog status: 2/10. Wait, were the Rangers a Cinderella team? That seems wrong; this team was in the middle of a stretch that saw New York make it to the conference final in three out of four seasons. But this year's team finished 12th overall, so they meet our cutoff even though they opened on home ice.

Road to the final: 9/10. It's hard to take a longer path to the final than the Rangers did. They knocked off the Flyers and Penguins in seventh games, then needed six games (and a controversial Carey Price injury) to knock off the Canadiens.

Final chapter: 4/10. The Rangers fell to the Kings in just five games. But it was closer than it sounds, with three of their losses coming in overtime.

Enduring image: 8/10. A devastated Henrik Lundqvist, slumped on the ice after Alec Martinez's Cup-winning goal.

Final score: 23/40. The Rangers had most of the elements of a classic Cinderella story, even if they never really felt like one.

10. 1981-82 Canucks

Underdog status: 7/10. They finished under .500, racking up just 77 points on the season. That was still good for 11th overall, and fourth in the Campbell Conference, because back then everyone didn't get points for losing.

Road to the final: 3/10. Amazingly, the Canucks made it all the way to the final without ever playing a single .500 team. They knocked off the Flames, Kings and Hawks, losing just two games in the process. The Cup final would prove slightly more challenging.

Final chapter: 4/10. The Canucks drew the Islanders, who'd already won two straight Cups. It didn't take them long to make it three, as they swept Vancouver aside in four straight.

Enduring image: 9/10. Roger Nielson waving the white towel at the officials in the Chicago series:

The moment has since been immortalized by a statue outside of Rogers Arena.

Final score: 23/40. Realistically, they never had a chance, but they were still fun along the way.

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