On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Every veteran defenseman retires
- We remember how cool P.K. Subban and Zdeno Chara were
- Nathan MacKinnon gets a new contract
- Blake Wheeler is out as Jets captain
- The Oilers have a type
- Ryan quizzes me on all the new coaches
- Survivor talk and lots more...
>> Listen on The Athletic >> Subscribe on iTunes.
>> Listen on Spotify>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
The NHL is good right now, and I’m confused and frightened.
This is mostly new ground for me. As long-time readers know, I’m never shy about aiming criticism at the NHL, and pointing out the product’s flaws when they become apparent. Critics would say that I complain aboutt the NHL basically all the time. I’d respond that I only criticize when it’s actually deserved, which is to say basically all the time.
But not now, because the 2022 playoffs have been good.
Like, really good. So, so good. And I find this deeply unsettling.
The first round delivered seven very good series out of eight, with five of those going the full seven games, which is almost unheard of. We had one team come all the way back from down 3-1 in the series, and two more come from down 3-2. We were teased with what could have been an epic upset in the Washington/Florida series. The Leafs and Lightning was great theater and delivered the result that most of you seemed to be rooting for. And even the one sweep served a purpose, with the Avalanche taking out the Predators with the sort of dominant trouncing that established a clear favorite for the rounds to come.
The round ended with a wild weekend, one that served up three Game 7s on a Saturday night (one short of the record), then two more on Sunday that both went to overtime. That was the first time in 25 years that we’ve had two Game 7 overtimes on the same day, and these two both ended with a team’s biggest offensive star scoring the winning goal.
Oh, and that entire round unfolded with a perfectly constructed schedule, one that saw each and every series playing out on alternating days with no gaps or back-to-backs. The league even seemed to realize that they could stagger start times, meaning there was pretty much always playoff hockey on whenever you wanted it.
It would have been impossible for the second round to match the first, but then… well, it almost did, right? We had another sweep, but while the Lightning and Panthers rematch was a bit of a dud, it was still a fascinating storyline to see the little brother spend the year bulking up just to get sand kicked in his face yet again. The Blues gave the Avalanche everything they could handle, including a Game 5 win that may have been the most dramatic of the playoffs so far. The Rangers and Hurricanes are going to a Game 7 tonight, and the series is already close to a classic, with Carolina’s home/road splits hitting never-before-seen territory.
And of course, the big one: After 31 years, we finally got a Battle of Alberta. Then the action somehow lived up to the hype, if not more. That opening game will live in infamy, and for once it’s going to be the good kind.
That’s a solid month’s worth of hockey, and just about all of it was fantastic. We had lots of goals, continuing a trend from the regular season. There were some epic comebacks, enough that we got used to feeling like a two or even three-goal lead wasn’t some insurmountable deficit. There was enough bad blood to keep everything spicy, but nothing that went so far overboard that it hung over a series. For once, it just felt like everything that can be fun about the NHL clicked into place.
Look at all of that. I’m pretty sure that’s the most words I’ve ever strung together in a row about the NHL without ranting about how much I hated something. What’s happening to me? Have I mellowed in my old age? Did I secretly get hired on as the league’s PR guy? There’s got to be something I can grumble about.
Uh… those CGI ads on the ice are kind of weird, I guess.
Yeah, I can’t do it. Or rather, I can do it, but I don’t want to, because it wouldn’t be deserved. It would feel forced. I’d be playing a character, waving my cane at the world beyond my porch just because that’s my comfort zone. It would feel cheap.
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
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On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- The Avs and Blues serve up one of the best games of the years
- Is this the beginning of another Colorado collapse?
- Where MacKinnon vs. McDavid would rank among superstar matchups
- Who would you want in a Game 7: McDavid or Vasilevskiy?
- Jesse Granger on on this year's weird home ice advantage numbers
- I have an idea for messing with goalies that's just crazy enough to work
- Listener mail, this week in history 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)
On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We talk through as many trade deadline possibilities as we can think of
- A look at every contender and whether they should be upgrading their goaltending
- The Pacific Division is weird and fun
- In an oddly positive segment, we gush over Zdeno Chara and Alexander Ovechkin
- Martin St. Louis is the greatest coach ever, apparently
- It is legal to slash linesmen now
- Broken records, Sean Avery returns and lots more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Aaron Dell gets a three-game suspension
- Remembering the short list of other goalie suspensions
- Breaking down Taylor Hall's hit on Nathan MacKinnon
- The Coyotes think they're going to play where?
- Keith Yandle sets the ironman record, but Phil Kessel is on his trail
- Four teams with strength-of-schedule issues worth watching in the second half
- Marc-Andre Fleury to the Caps, goalie ironman streaks 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)
On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Nathan MacKinnon turns out to be a huge weirdo
- John Tortorella heads to ESPN, where he will probably be boring
- Thoughts on my prediction contest
- Jesse Granger explains the NHL's apparent double-standard when it comes to gambling
- Debating the league's worst current contract
- Lots of listener questions, remembering the Hasek trade, 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)
On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Connor McDavid throws and elbow and Nathan MacKinnon flips his lid
- A brief history of gentlemanly stars getting in trouble
- The Sabres... win?
- The Flyers steal the crown of the league's biggest trainwreck
- A discussion about Erik Karlsson's apple goes off the rails
- We talk about some of those weird NHL rules
- April Fools, EBUG history, Civ's burner account writes in 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)
Five years ago this week, hockey fans got their first look at the roster for what would become one of the most unique teams in international sports history. In organizing the 2016 World Cup tournament, the NHL went off the board with their decision to include a Team North America, an unprecedented combo platter of Canadian and American stars who were 23 or under.
Did it make sense to have two counties combining for an entry in an international tournament, let alone when those two nations were rivals? Not really. Was it fair to weaken those countries’ main rosters by ruling out some of the game’s best young stars? Probably not. Was the whole thing a good idea? It’s fair to say that the initial reaction was mixed.
But then we got a look at the first draft of the roster, and even a traditionalist had to be intrigued. That initial March 2016 list featured 16 names, including established stars like Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel. They’d eventually be joined by a group that included Auston Matthews (who’d yet to play an NHL game) and Mark Scheifele.
We weren’t sure if they’d be all that good, but we knew they’d be fun. It turned out they were both, stealing the show at the tournament with a run-and-gun style and all sorts of skill. They failed to medal, but beat Finland and Sweden. In terms of NHL star power, the future looked bright.
Five years later, the future is here. So today, I want to tackle a question sent in by Puck Soup listener Manny: Could a reunited Team North America beat an all-star squad made up of everyone else in a series played right now?
It’s a big ask. We’ve got a huge swath of the league to choose from, including stars who were too old for Team North America consideration, guys who hadn’t entered the league yet, and a handful of snubs. And we’ve got the benefit of hindsight, because while most of the 2016 team holds up well, a few haven’t seen their pro careers pan out as well as we all expected. Team Everyone Else should have a big advantage. But Team North America has Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews, so let’s do this.
One caveat: We’re doing North American players only. I originally thought about making it the kids against the world, but throwing names like Victor Hedman, David Pastrnak and Nikita Kucherov into the mix just tilts the scales too far in one direction. It’s Canadian and American stars only, and if you show up in the comments going “Uh, Leon Draisaitl?” then you have to do ten pushups and we all get to make fun of you. Let’s see where this takes us.
Let’s start with the main course, because the Team North America forwards are ridiculous. McDavid, Matthews and MacKinnon may be the three best players in the league right now, so we’re absolutely loaded with top-end star power. But we’re not completely top heavy, with some excellent options for all four lines. Some of the names aren’t exactly Hart candidates, like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. J.T. Miller or Vincent Trochek, but they’ve developed into very good players.
In fact, among the names on the final 2016 roster, there isn’t a single one that you’d describe as a bust five years down the road. And the only ones who’ve struggled to establish themselves as legitimate top-end players are Brandon Saad and maybe Jonathan Drouin.
Here’s how my Team North America lines would look in 2021:
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We’re into holiday mode, where everything is supposed to be about peace and goodwill. Love thy neighbor and that sort of thing.
That’s nice and all, but it can be tough for hockey fans, who are preconditioned to be mad at just about everything. Pretty soon we’ll hit the Christmas trade freeze, meaning we can’t even sit around and imagine that bum who’s clogging up our team’s salary cap being traded for a ransom of picks and prospects. Now you want us to be nice to the jerks on the other teams too? It’s a rough time of year when you’re a diehard hockey fan who hates everyone.
Well, almost everyone. Because at any given time, there are always a few players who just about everyone seems to like. It’s been a rough few years for that crowd, as we’ve said goodbye to guys like Roberto Luongo, Pavel Datsyuk, Teemu Selanne and Jarome Iginla. But that just creates some extra room on the nice list.
Today, let’s get into the holiday spirit with a list of the ten players in the NHL that nobody can hate. (And then the reasons why maybe you can hate them just a little.)
Why almost everyone loves him: First of all, he’s the best player in the league, with maybe the most pure skill since Mario Lemieux. Even in a league with more dominant young talent than ever before, McDavid still occasionally does things that you’ve never seen, or ever thought possible. He’s one of the rare players who’d be worth paying full price just to watch on his own and brings back that pre-Dead Puck Era feeling of excitement you used to get whenever a star player had the puck on his stick.
Second of all, he’s signed long-term in Edmonton, so the sympathy factor is off the charts.
The one group that still kind of hates him: Flames fans get a pass, as they do for any Oiler. Beyond that, nobody really dislikes him, although you get the sense that there’s an undercurrent of aggravation from other fan bases who keep waiting for him to stomp out of Edmonton and demand a trade. Come on, they’re terrible, and he looked vaguely sad at his draft lottery. Surely he wants to play somewhere else. Specifically, for my favorite team. Come on Connor, blink twice if you want us to send in a chopper to airlift you out.
Why almost everyone loves him: He’s been around forever, his speed means he’s been fun to watch over the years and he always seems disturbingly happy. He became the team father figure in Toronto – literally – and then headed home to San Jose to finish out his career. Plus he’s still chasing that elusive Stanley Cup, and everybody loves a good OGWAC story. Uh, please don’t check the standings to see how that quest is going for him.
The one group that still kind of hates him: Nobody right now, although we’ll save a spot for Leaf fans when they miss the playoffs and end up having to send the 11th overall pick to the Hurricanes for getting out of the last year of his contract. Also, it’s going to be kind of weird if he sticks around next year and ends up breaking Gordie Howe’s all-time games played record. See, you didn’t realize that was going to happen, and now you feel just a little conflicted, right?
Why almost everyone loves him: He’s a former first overall pick who’s smiled his way through a very good NHL career, without ever being so dominating that you resented him. He was part of three Cup winners in Pittsburgh, then handled what could have been a tricky Matt Murray situation and eventual exit with class and good humor. That was supposed to lead to him spending his last few years getting shelled for the expansion Knights, but instead, he’s played some of the best hockey of his career while leaning hard into his likable personality to sell the game in a new market.
The one group that still kind of hates him: Man, I’m not even sure. That Sharks/Knights rivalry is pretty solid, so maybe you allow San Jose fans to sneer at him just a bit. Beyond that, his only natural enemy at this point are Canadians who still aren’t over how the 2004 World Juniors ended and Hall of Fame sticklers who’ll be mad when he makes it in on the first ballot.
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
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It’s another year without a Stanley Cup for Canada but at least the hockey gods didn’t toy with us for too long this time. Four of the country’s seven teams didn’t make the playoffs at all and the three that did all made first-round exits. When the Maple Leafs are your longest surviving team, it hasn’t been a great year.
And if we’re being honest, most Canadian fans are probably fine with that. The whole national Cup drought thing has always been the sort of narrative that seems to be more important to the media than to most of the fans. Let’s face it, most of the country’s fans don’t want to see any Canadian team other than their own win a Cup. When our team is out, we don’t jump on the bandwagon of the Leafs or Jets or whoever. We want everyone else in the country to be miserable too.
But now everyone is miserable and we’ve still got three rounds to get through. And that’s had some fans wondering what comes next:
Would love to see a guide from @DownGoesBrown for which remaining team Canadians should adopt for the rest of the playoffs.
— Dan Greenberg (@dmgreenberg340) April 24, 2019
That’s a great question. We’ve already done the annual guide for bandwagon-hopping, but that was a league-wide initiative. Today, we’re looking for the best remaining bandwagon for fans of each Canadian team. We’ll consider a few factors, like rivalries and history, hometown players on the roster and any popular former figures who might show up in another team’s story.
And since Canadian fans don’t do unity, let’s make sure that each fan base gets a team of its own, with no duplicates. We’ll go through all seven teams, starting with the easiest pairing we’re going to find …
The Senators give us a couple of obvious options to consider. The first is in Columbus, which is writing the kind of underdog success story that Ottawa will be shooting for over the next few years. More importantly, they’re doing it with a pair of former Sens in Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel. Granted, there may be some mixed feelings towards Duchene given how his tenure in Ottawa played out. But if he’s happy in Columbus, he’s more likely to re-sign there, which would deliver another first-round pick to the Senators. That makes the Blue Jackets a decent choice.
But there’s an even better one and it’s one of Pierre Dorion’s other key trading partners. That would be San Jose, where former captain Erik Karlsson is chasing the Cup he never managed to bring to Ottawa. Karlsson remains universally beloved among Senator fans, so it shouldn’t be tough to convince them to cheer him on. Let’s face it, most of them already are.
Mix in Logan Couture being a former 67s star and we’re all set. And if you’re a Sens fan who still somehow needs just a little extra incentive, remember that Ottawa can get the Sharks’ 2021 first-round pick if they make the final.
That covers Ottawa and it takes the Sharks off the board. That’s the easiest pick we’re going to able to find, but let’s see if we can pair up a few more Canadian fans with a temporary team that makes sense.
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
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From time to time, readers will send me story ideas. Some are good, some not so much, but they’re always appreciated. Every now and then someone will come up with something that is just the right mix of weird and fun and it turns into something cool.
But by far, there’s one idea that gets suggested the most: What’s the best cap-compliant roster you could build using all of today’s contracts?
It’s a neat idea, and we’ve seen it done well in other sports. But it never quite works in the NHL, because you just wind up with a roster stacked with entry-level deals. In an era where players (especially forwards) peak so quickly, those first contracts often represent such outrageous bargains that they make the exercise too easy. Let me start with Auston Matthews, Mikko Rantanen, Patrik Laine, Elias Pettersson and Brayden Point all at $900,000 or so, and I can stack the rest of the roster with pretty much whoever I want. Heck, give them all the bonuses too, they’re still dirt cheap. There’s no challenge to it.
You could get around that by limiting how many entry-level deals you could use. But today, let’s try something a little more challenging. We’re going to see if we can make the best cap-compliant roster that we can by using just existing contracts. But instead of building that team for this year, we’re going to try to do it for 2021-22.
Why 2021-22? The first reason is that it’s three years away, which means we lose access to all of those entry-level deals. Matthews, Rantanen and friends will all be on their second deals and making just slightly more than they are right now and the Jack Hughes cohort isn’t in the league yet so we can’t use them either. Three years also has the benefit of not being so far away that we’re just guessing about who’ll still be good by then. And there are more players than you’d think who already have contracts that reach into the 2021-22 season – 165 as of today according to Cap Friendly, including many of the league’s best players.
The idea comes with a couple of hurdles. The first is that we’ll probably have a new CBA by 2021-22, meaning there’s a chance that the cap system or HRR split could work differently by then. And even if we assume that nothing important will change, we don’t actually know what the salary cap is going to be by then.
That second problem is easy enough to solve by just picking a number that seems reasonable. Let’s go with $90 million, which would represent an increase of just over $10 million from where we are right now. The cap went up $8.1 million over the last three years, so mix in a little inflation and $90 million seems about right for 2021-22.
That leaves us with 165 players to choose from and a $90 million cap to work with to put together a 2021-22 roster that fits under the cap and looks like a Cup contender. How hard could that be? Spoiler: Harder than you might think …
(All salary information in this piece comes from CapFriendly.com. Also, all values listed are a player’s cap hit; we don’t care about the actual dollars due on the contract.)
They say that you should build from the net out, so we’ll follow that advice. But when we do, we run into our first problem almost immediately. Of those 165 players signed through 2022, only nine are goaltenders. And none of them look like major bargains.
When you think about it, that makes sense. There’s more supply than demand for goaltending these days, so teams aren’t making long-term commitments to guys unless they think they’re foundational pieces. Mix in deals like Henrik Lundqvist, Frederik Andersen and Tuukka Rask that all expire the year before our 2021-22 season, and it’s no surprise that the pickings are slim.
But it’s a problem for our roster because we’re going to be spending way more on goaltending than we’d like. Even if we went with the two most inexpensive options we can find, Ben Bishop and Roberto Luongo, we’re still paying over $10 million for a position where it’s often smart to go as cheap as possible. And even Luongo can’t realistically be a pick for three years down the road since he’ll be 42 years old by then.
Instead, we’ll hand the starting job to one of the few guys on the list who looks like he could be a bargain: Anaheim’s John Gibson at $6.4 million. He’s performing at a Vezina or even Hart Trophy level these days, and while that doesn’t guarantee anything about how he’ll be playing in three years (or even three weeks), we’ll take our chances.
The other option here would have been Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck at $6.166 million. He was great last year but has looked pretty ordinary this season. Hellebuyck should be fine, but I prefer Gibson enough to spend a few extra bucks. Ideally, we’d pick both guys, but $12.5 million will be too much to spend on goaltending, so we have to make a call here.
For the backup spot, we’ll go with Ben Bishop at $4.917 million, mainly because he’s the cheapest option available. Do I feel good about this pick? No, I do not – he’ll be turning 35 in 2021-22, and he’s a big guy who’s had hip problems. There’s a good chance he’s not an effective goaltender in three years’ time and we just wasted a big chunk of our cap on a guy who’ll be on LTIR or a buyout target. We’re two picks into this thing and I’m already angry.
But really, what other choice do we have? Carey Price at $10.5 million? No thanks. Cory Schneider at $6 million? Not a chance. Marc-Andre Fleury at $7 million? Maybe, but he’ll turn 37 during the 2021-22 season. Jonathan Quick ($5.8 million) and Martin Jones ($5.75 million) are at least worth considering, but we’re going to need every penny we can scrounge to fill out the rest of the roster.
That means it’s Gibson and Bishop, at a total cost of over $11 million. That’s pricey. Let’s see if we can claw back some of that space on the blueline.
Cap space spent so far: $11.317 million on two players, an average of $5.66 million each. We have $78.683 million left for 18 roster spots, an average of just over $4.37 million per player.
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
Welcome back to the Saturday Storylines, and welcome to the post-season. We’re back for another week or two, since we’ll have enough on the plate each Saturday to keep the storylines coming through the opening round. We’ve got four Game 2s today, three of which feature the home team trying to take a 2-0 series lead. We’ll start our tour around the league in Boston.
Well, here’s the good news for the Maple Leafs: Tonight will probably go better than Thursday did.
Here’s the bad news: It had better.
Game 1 didn’t bring much in the way of positives for Toronto fans hoping to see their team win its first round since 2004. On paper, the matchup with Boston looked tough but winnable. On the ice, the Bruins looked like the better team for just about the entire night. They dominated possession, got the better of the matchups, and had the more effective special teams. The Bruins also got better goaltending, were more disciplined, and even won the coaching battle, with the Leafs failing to challenge what sure looked like an offside on the Bruins’ first goal.
Other than all that, it went fine for Toronto.
In fairness, the 5-1 final score may have been slightly more lopsided than the Leafs deserved – the game was tied until late in the second, and the Leafs were still vaguely in it until Nazem Kadri‘s third-period major for boarding Tommy Wingels. As far as opening-game disasters go, this wasn’t the Flyers losing 7-0 to the Penguins. Not quite.
But however you want to judge it, the loss still leaves Toronto needing a win to avoid heading home down 2-0 in the series. Tonight won’t quite be a must-win, but beating this Bruins team four out of five would be a daunting task, so the pressure is on. At the very least, they’ll want to show that they can look like they belong in the series.
They’ll have to do it without Kadri, who’ll sit out three games for his reckless hit. That’s a major blow to the Leafs’ chances, especially after many of the team’s top forwards had quiet nights on Thursday. The Bruins have a way of doing that to stars, but the Maple Leafs will need to see a lot more from Auston Matthews, William Nylander and James van Riemsdyk, among others, if they’re going to even things up. And with Kadri’s absence highlighting the team’s shaky depth down the middle, they’ll need to finally get something from trade deadline pickup Thomas Plekanec, assuming he even stays in the lineup.
A Leafs win sends us back to Toronto all square, and with a whole new set of narratives. A loss means we can expect to hear plenty of that old cliché about how you’re never really in trouble until you’ve lost at home, and there’s some truth to that. But another effort like the one we saw on Thursday will plant some serious doubt that the series will even still be going on by the time a scheduled Game 5 arrives this time next Saturday.
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The Hart Trophy debate gets complicated
- The NHL makes small progress in the replay review mess
- An obscure player from one of my favorite 1980s teams
- The week's three comedy stars make me worry for Winnipeg
- And a look back at the selection of the Sedins at the 1999 draft
With one week to go in the season, we can skip the dramatic preamble and cut right to the chase. Here’s where we’re at.
In the East, the Panthers are on life support, as a late-season slump threatens to derail their second-half comeback. They’ve dropped three straight, including Saturday’s loss in Boston. That one was especially demoralizing. Not only did they come away empty in a game where they needed to pick up some points, but the Bruins loom as their most likely first-round opponent if they do make it in, and the Panthers didn’t look like they could keep up. The news got even worse last night, as the Devils earned a comeback win in Montreal by a 2-1 final. The Panthers now trail New Jersey by seven points and the Flyers by eight for an Eastern wild card spot.
The only real good news for the Panthers is they still hold two games in hand over both New Jersey and Philadelphia. That’s a mixed blessing this late in the year, since it means five games crammed into seven nights for a team that already looks like it’s running out of steam. And some of those games will be tough ones, with two more against the Bruins and one against the Predators. It’s possible that one or both of those teams could be resting guys this week, and the other two games against the Sabres and Hurricanes are winnable. But right now, the situation in Florida is bleak, and even a 5-0-0 finish might not be enough.
Things are looking a lot more interesting out West, where we’ve got four teams still in it and three spots up for grabs. The biggest game of the weekend was Sunday’s matchup between Colorado and Anaheim, and it featured an early Avalanche lead, a third-period Ducks comeback, and an Ondrej Kase overtime winner. The win moved the Ducks to third in the Pacific, bumping the Kings back down to a wild card spot and officially eliminating the Stars. The Avalanche currently hold the other wild card, with the Blues lurking a point behind but holding a game in hand on all three teams.
There are lots of ways this could all play out over the next week, but it may come down to Saturday’s showdown between the Blues and Avalanche in Colorado. Despite holding a spot right now, the Avs may be facing the longest odds after learning that they’ll finish the season without Semyon Varlamov or Erik Johnson. They’re not the only team hurting, as the Ducks lost John Gibson and Cam Fowler last night and we’re not sure yet if either injury is serious.
Further up the standings, we still need to sort out the battle between the Bruins and Lightning for top seed in the Atlantic (and the Eastern Conference). The Capitals have clinched the Metro’s top spot after Sunday’s win over Pittsburgh, but the rest of the division’s seedings are up for grabs. The Jets won’t catch Nashville for first place in the Central, but they’re making the Predators work for it. And the Knights are home and cooled out in the Pacific, but still have something to play for thanks to an outside shot at the Presidents’ Trophy.
Of course, that only covers the races involving teams. At an individual level, there’s still plenty left to sort out, as we’ll see in the next section.
The five teams that look like they’re headed towards Stanley Cup-favourite status.
5. Vegas Golden Knights (50-22-7, plus-50 true goals differential*): The team raised a banner on Saturday honouring the 58 victims of the October shooting.
4. Winnipeg Jets (48-20-10, plus-51): They went into Toronto to preview a potential dream Cup final, and looked like the better team from start to finish.
>> Read the full post at Sportsnet
In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- A look at the playoff races with less than two weeks to go.
- We try very hard not to get back into the Hart Trophy debate and fail miserably.
- Randy Carlyle and the Ducks may have just broken 3-on-3 overtime
- The Georges Laraque/Taylor Hall mess
- Reader questions and lots more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Thoughts on the Penguins' White House controversy
- The NHL just made an update to its web site that changes hockey history
- An obscure player whose trophy case got weird
- The week's three comedy stars
- And we cheer up Avalanche fans with some shirtless lip-synching
The NHL scouting combine is being held this week in Toronto, which makes this as good a time as any to have a look at the top prospects for next month's draft.
Well, technically a better time would be right before the draft. But thanks to the lockout, there appears to be a good chance that this year's draft will be start 15 minutes after the conclusion of the Stanley Cup finals, so we might as well go ahead and do the preview now.
Here are sixteen top prospects who can expect to hear their names called at the 2013 entry draft in New Jersey.
Seth Jones - This big strong defenceman would be a perfect fit in Colorado thanks to his ability to protect goaltenders from traffic in the crease and forwards driving the net and crazy coaches who keep trying to fight them.
Nathan MacKinnon - Scouts in Florida say he's exactly the kind of player who could really bring Panthers fans out of their seats, so based on recent attendance figures he's apparently already been playing there for a few years.
Jonathan Drouin - Oh sure, he racked up the points in Halifax playing on a line with MacKinnon, but let's see what he can do when he's stuck in Tampa Bay playing with Steven Stamkos and wait actually he'll probably be pretty good at that too.
Nikita Zadorov - The 6'5" 230 pound teen did very well on the Wingate cycling test, assuming that the bicycle immediately exploding is considered a good thing.
Max Domi - Is well-known for having grown up with famous NHL bloodlines, in the sense that every time his dad came home from work he'd leave a trail of the blood of famous players all over the house.
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