Brady Tkachuk and Nikita Kucherov lead the 2026 NHL playoffs all-bust team

The NHL playoffs have been going on for over a month now, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that we’re very disappointed.

Not over everything, because a lot of this year’s postseason has been pretty fun. But we’re hockey fans, and we like to be cranky. And like every season, the playoffs give us plenty of opportunity to single out individual players for a disapproving head-shake or two.

Today, we’re making a team out of those guys. We’ll be building a full 21-man roster, which is to say 12 forwards, six blueliners and three goalies, because bad teams always need an extra option in net. As always, we’ll work with two key rules. First, no team can have more than three players, because we want to spread the love resentment. And second, all 16 playoff teams need to have at least one rep.

And yes, that rule also applies to the four teams that are still alive, meaning we’re virtually guaranteed to pick at least one player who immediately blows up and causes a flood of “this aged well” comments to come our way. That’s the risk we’re willing to take, because we do not learn from past mistakes around here.

Like all great teams, we’ll build from the net out.

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NHL weekend rankings: A wild Friday shakes up the league, and our Top 5

December can be a boring month in the NHL. Opening night optimism is a faded memory, the deadline is still months away, the playoff picture is jumbled, and not much is happening.

And then, every once in a while, we get a day like Friday.

We got one of the biggest midseason blockbusters in years, with the Quinn Hughes trade to Minnesota. We got the long-awaited Oilers goalie trade, with Tristan Jarry coming over from the Penguins. Oh, and before those two deals dropped, we also found out that the Sabres might be on the verge of a front office shakeup.

Other than all that, pretty quiet day.

Let’s dig into those two big trades, with a few lingering thoughts…

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Every goalie goal ever scored, ranked, in way too much detail

These goalies are out of control.

You already know about Alex Nedeljkovic’s record-breaking Friday night, as he became the first goaltender in NHL to record a goal and an assist in the same game. But that goal doubled down on the history by also making the 2024-25 season the first to ever feature multiple goalie goals.

In fact, we’ve now had four goalie goals in less than two years, with Linus Ullmark in February of 2023 and Tristan Jarry that November. And yes, Jarry and Nedeljkovic both pulling it off means the Penguins go in the books as the first team to have two different goalies score goals.

That’s a lot of history. And it probably makes this a good time to regroup, with a way-too-in-depth ranking of every goalie goal the NHL has ever seen.

To be clear, for our purposes today, a “goalie goal” is when they shoot the puck the length of the ice into the net. We’re not counting all the times that a goalie has been credited with a goal after being the last player to touch the puck before a team scores on itself. Those moments are neat too, but they’re more statistical quirks than they are actual achievements. So with apologies to legendary offensive names like Damian Rhodes, Chris Mason and Mika Noronen, we’re looking for shooters today. Please don't come to my house and hack my ankles, Billy Smith.

As it turns out, we have an even dozen to choose from. We’ll rank them from worst to best, factoring in crucial criteria like the circumstances and the degree of difficulty, as well as important factors like the crowd, the call and the celebration. Let's do this.

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Do Mark Scheifele or Mika Zibanejad have bad contracts? NHL Cap Court returns

Welcome back to Cap Court, where we put the questionable deals of NHL stars on trial to find out whether they deserve the dreaded "bad contract" label.

As always, we’re viewing “bad” contracts through the lens of the team that’s stuck with them, since that’s ultimately how fans are forced to do it, even though we’d never begrudge a player taking on offer that’s put in front of them. Importantly, we’re also only looking at contracts from this day forward – a deal could have made sense and even provided value for the first few years, but we’re only looking at what’s left on the books.

We’ve been doing this long enough that names like Jonathan Toews, Carey Pruce and Jakub Voracek have been on the docket. Heck, one of the early editions featured Ryan Suter and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, a combined five teams and three buyouts ago. Have all of our calls been proven right? Look, we’ll do the cross-examining around here, thank you very much.

This time around, we’ve got five more names. We'll start with a big-market blueliner...

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The Athletic Hockey Show: Oilers, Penguins, Chets, and a new award

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Digging through the wreckage in Edmonton
- Trying to figure out the Penguins
- We invent a brand new NHL award that absolutely needs to happen
- How cool was that Cale Makar goal?
- Lots of listener emails, including an explanation of that Devils replay debacle
- The NHL's best-ever Chet
- Remembering Eddie Shore's overnight blizzard adventure to get to a Bruins game
- (Also, see if you can pinpoint the exact moment the NY Times news breaks as we're recording and we have to no-sell it)

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

The Athletic Hockey Show: Intrigue, hopelessness, and dress codes

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Running through some of the league's most intriguing names heading into the new season
- Finding hope for the league's most hopeless teams
- The Coyotes push back on the league's official dress code
- How you can compete against Ian and I in a new hockey pool
- Listener mail about renaming trophies and a 2006 what-if
- Remembering the ridiculous 1991 outdoor game in Las Vegas and more...

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

The Athletic Hockey Show: Penguins out, a Game 7 in Vegas, and has Leafs/Habs been a bust?

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Ian thinks Leafs/Habs has been boring, is he right?
- A short rant about goaltending interference reviews
- The Penguins are out, now what?
- The Knights and Wild head to Game 7
- What should the Panthers do with their goaltending?
- Playoff trends, Mark Messier's guarantee, coach vs. GMs and more...

Plus a special bonus segment: Ian hits me with one of his patented trivia questions

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)