On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We talk about everything making news in the NHL, which is to say not much
- People are mad about Matt Murray going on the LTIR
- The remaining UFAs and RFAs
- A new game debuts
- And more! But honestly, not much 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.
On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- The NHL stars everyone likes
- Ian wants to know if I'm sold on Matt Murray yet
- Jack Edwards vs. Pat Maroon
- Ovechkin breaks another record
- Jesse Granger defends the honor of goalies everywhere
- I have to eat crow about Lindy Ruff
- Plus listener mail, goalies scoring goals 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:
- Won't somebody please think of the goaltenders
- What rule changes do we need after a weird week?
- We run down and rank all of the wild streaks we've seen so far this year
- Kraken: good!
- Rangers: bad!
- Lindy Ruff hits 800 wins, and more...
>> Listen on The Athletic >> Subscribe on iTunes.
>> Listen on Spotify>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Jonas Siegel joins is as we revisit and debate the Matt Murray trade
- Jason Robertson gets a deal done with Dallas
- We place some over/under bets for this season's top scorers
- I am vindicated on the PIM thing
- Plus this week in hockey 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)
On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Johnny Hockey makes his choice, and it's a big surprise
- Blue Jackets' beat writer Aaron Portzline joins is to break it down
- Ian tries to sell me on Matt Murray
- What I texted Ian about Kyle Dubas on the moment, and whether I stand by it
- The return of the Battle of Ontario, the Blackhawks tank, and what's next for the Flames
- Plus listener questions, this week in hockey 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 react to the developing story about Bob Murray
- My defense of that Mike Babcock article
- Jeremy Colliton is fired
- Connor McDavid's goal of the year
- Jack Eichel arrives in Vegas
- The weird Cole Caufield twitter story
- OUFL fancy stats, and more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
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)
Every now and then, a reader will reach out to me with a question. Sometimes, I already know the answer. Often, I have no idea where I’d even start. But the best kind of questions are the ones that make me think: “Huh, I’m not sure, but I bet it would be fun to find out.”
I got one of those a little while ago from a reader named Bryce. It was nice and simple. Bryce wanted to know which NHL player had scored the most goals in a single season in which their total matched their jersey number.
That’s kind of a cool question. And it’s one that shouldn’t be all that hard to figure out. I couldn’t come up with an answer off the top of my head, but I knew how to find one: just crack open a list of the highest single-season goal totals and work backward.
So that’s what I did. It will be fun, right?
Let’s begin, the way all great journeys do, at the beginning. In this case, that meant a list of every NHL player to ever score 60 goals or more in a season. It’s not a long list, but it’s probably longer than you might think. There have been 39 seasons of 60+ goals in NHL history. Could we find our answer in that list? I wasn’t sure, but it was the right place to start.
Five of those 39 seasons belong to Wayne Gretzky, and we can obviously eliminate him; he wore No. 99 for his entire NHL career, and he never got that many goals in a season. He came reasonably close, topping out at 92 in 1981-82, which still stands as the all-time record and probably always will. But we’re not looking for close here, so Wayne’s not our man.
He does have an impact, though, because his iconic No. 99 encouraged a generation of stars that followed to wear distinctive high numbers of their own. That was a new thing, and it should make our search easier.
Here’s where we run into our first problem: A lot of history’s greatest offensive talents have worn high numbers, but they were too high. Gretzky’s the only player to ever crack the 90-goal plateau, which wipes out the chances of plenty of today’s 90-wearing stars, like Connor McDavid and Steven Stamkos. Eric Lindros and Patrick Kane have posted big goal-scoring years, but neither got anywhere close to the 88 they wore. Alexander Mogilny’s 76 goals in 1992-93 is tied for the fifth-most ever, but he had a long way to go since he was wearing No. 89. Sidney Crosby’s great, but he hasn’t come anywhere near 87.
Brett Hull did, scoring 86 in 1990-91 and hitting the rarified 70-goal mark on two other occasions. But he did that while wearing No. 16, which leads to our second problem: Star forwards who don’t wear really high numbers usually wear relatively low ones. It’s a tradition thing. So right off the bat, we know we can rule out low-numbered stars like Rocket Richard and Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull (all No. 9), Alexander Ovechkin and Cam Neely (No. 8), Guy Lafleur and Pavel Bure (No. 10). Mike Bossy, Teemu Selanne, Steve Yzerman, Luc Robitaille or Jari Kurri? Sorry. All wore good, solid, traditional numbers that are way too low for what we’re looking for.
There is one player who wore a number in the 70s and had a 70-goal season. But that’s Phil Esposito, and he scored 76 in 1970-71 while wearing No. 7; he didn’t switch to No. 77 until he was traded to the Rangers, so he’s one goal and five years away from being our answer.
After dropping down into the 60s, optimism kicks in because there are two legendary scorers who both wore numbers in this range – Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr, with both showing up on the list of 60-goal scorers. But Jagr topped out at 62 goals in 1995-96, missing his iconic No. 68 by a half-dozen. And while Lemieux had two seasons of 69 goals, one of 70, and one of 85, he never landed on exactly 66. He goes down in history as the highest jersey number to be exceeded by his goal total, but our search for an exact match carries on.
The only other candidates left on our initial list are Lanny McDonald, Dennis Maruk, Steve Shutt and Reggie Leach, and they all came along before higher vanity numbers were a thing. So no, we won’t find our answer in the 60+ club after all. No worries, though – we’ll just have to open up the search to the 50-goal club. And as it turns out, that’s a very big club indeed. Dropping our cutoff down to 50 goals opens the floodgates enough to allow 157 new seasons onto our list, so surely we’ll find our answer here.
The good news is that our list now includes dozens of names that we haven’t seen yet. The bad news is that a glance at some of the guys who had seasons in the high 50s tells us that we’re going to immediately run into the same two problems as before. Marcel Dionne, Tim Kerr and Michel Goulet? Traditional numbers that are too low. Pierre Turgeon or Sergei Fedorov? Too high.
And then, the first sense of doubt creeps in: Wait, what kind of star forward wears a number in the 50s?
There sure aren’t many. Typically, if they hand you a number in the 50s in training camp, it’s because they don’t expect you to stick around long. If you do, you get yourself a real number as soon as possible. What kind of self-respecting sniper is going to wear No. 58?
Not many. But that’s OK because we only need one. And the 50-goal tier is where we start to see some names where I wasn’t sure what number they wore. Charlie Simmer? Craig Simpson? Blaine Stoughton? Rick Kehoe? Nope across the board. John Ogrodnick, Wayne Babych or Pierre Larouche? Negative. I held out some hope for No. 55 since the double-digit thing was in vogue after Gretzky, Lemieux and Lindros. But no such luck, as guys like Keith Primeau, Jason Blake and Eric Daze fall well short, and Mark Scheifele has yet to come close. Dave Andreychuk did wear No. 52, but only for one season in 2000-01 when his 50-goal days were well behind him. Same with Dany Heatley wearing No. 51 for the Ducks.
I had a brief flutter of optimism when I remembered Jonathan Cheechoo’s 56-goal season. Did Cheechoo wear No. 56? It seems like the sort of number he might wear, right? He’d never been an elite goal-scorer before that wild 2005-06 season, so maybe he was still wearing a scrub’s number when he broke through. Alas, he was not. He wore No. 14 that year. Not even close.
By the time I got into the low 50s – Rick Martin? Blaine Stoughton? Ray Freaking Sheppard? – desperation was beginning to set in. I felt like I may have made a terrible mistake.
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free 90-day trial.)
We’re one week into the NHL season. How’s your team doing?
If you’re a fan of someone like the Hurricanes, Blues or Bruins you’re probably in a pretty good mood. Even fans of supposedly bad teams like the Oilers, Ducks and Sabres are feeling OK so far. All those teams are off to strong starts, the kind that inspire plenty of confidence and maybe even generate a little self-fulfilling “we can do this” momentum. At the very least, those October points count just as much as the ones in March and April and it’s nice to get a few in the bank.
But what if your team is off to a rough start? They might still be winless, or already a few points out of a playoff spot. Maybe they’ve already had a loss that was so bad, so embarrassing, that it made you start asking tough questions. Maybe they’re the Sharks and it’s all of the above. What happens when the season has just started and every warning light on the dashboard is already flashing?
Are you screwed?
Well … yeah, maybe. You definitely could be. Recent history is filled with teams that came into a season with high expectations, stumbled out of the gate and never recovered. Heck, the Coyotes do it pretty much every year. In this age of parity, where three-quarters of the league finishes over .500 and the mushy middle accounts for roughly 20 teams, even a bad week or two can make the difference between the playoffs and the lottery. Mix in the sort of bad vibes and occasional panic decisions that a slow start can generate and there’s every reason to be worried.
So yeah, if your team has looked bad, they might absolutely be screwed. But maybe not, because while we’ve seen plenty of teams start poorly and never recover, that’s hardly a guarantee. Remember, last year opened with the Bruins losing 7-0 and the Blues dropping five of six and eight months later they were playing for the Stanley Cup. Sometimes a good team just starts slow, shrugs it off and gets back to playing at a high level. And in those cases, we often don’t even remember how the first few weeks went.
So today, let’s offer up some optimism for those fans who are watching their teams flatline early, by looking back through history at a half-dozen examples of terrible starts that turned out not to matter at all. Whether it was an embarrassing early performance, an immediate losing streak or even a rotten October start-to-finish, these teams gave us plenty of reason to worry. Then they figured it out, rolled through the rest of the year, and all was forgiven.
Could your struggling team enjoy the same sort of turnaround, or at least flip their seasons into something positive? Maybe. And at this point, for some teams, “maybe” will have to do. Let’s crack open those history books …
The team: The Ducks were entering their fourth full season with Bruce Boudreau behind the bench and had already won three straight Pacific titles. They were the heavy favorites to capture another, coming off a 109-point season and a trip to the conference final. With a strong mix of youth and veterans and a top-tier goaltending tandem of John Gibson and Frederik Andersen, the bigger question was whether they could go further and maybe even win the franchise’s second Stanley Cup.
The bad start: Their first four games were a nightmare, as the Ducks only scored one goal on the way to four straight losses. They snapped the streak with a home win over the Wild, but then lost five more. Ten games into the season, they had one win, just 10 goals, and had already been shutout five times. And on top of all that, an appendectomy had just taken Ryan Getzlaf out of the lineup.
The easy narrative: The window had closed, Boudreau had lost the room and it was time to fire everyone and tear down the roster.
Sample reaction: “While the Ducks are off to a horrendous 1-7-2 start as they prepare to face the Nashville Predators Sunday, many around the league are starting to wonder if (GM Bob) Murray himself will take the fall for this awful first month because, after all, he’s the architect of this mess.” – From the Ottawa Sun on Oct. 31, 2015.
But then: Despite the rumor mill, Murray didn’t end up doing much of anything at all. The Ducks eased the pressure by rolling off four straight wins, starting on the road back to respectability. It was a slow climb, and they went into the Christmas break having won just 12 of 33 games. But they caught fire the rest of the way and eventually passed the Kings to take yet another division title by a single point on the season’s final night.
How it all ended: The Ducks didn’t exactly get the happy ending their second half seemed to be building to. That first-place finish earned them an opening round matchup with the Predators, who pulled off a seven-game upset that cost Boudreau his job. Still, based on where they were at the end of October, even being in a position to be upset in the first round was pretty amazing.
They could be inspiration for: The Sharks. Just like those Ducks, this year’s Sharks went from Pacific favorites to looking old and washed up almost overnight. They’re not a perfect team, and they certainly don’t have that Ducks team’s elite goaltending. But it’s a long season, and talent tends to win out over time. That’s worth remembering if you’re a Stars fan too.
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free seven-day trial.)
The first two rounds of the playoffs are over, and we’ve made it through one of the most unpredictable and outright shocking months of postseason action we’ve ever seen. Twelve teams are out and four more are on to the conference final, just eight wins away from the sport’s ultimate prize. So you know what time it is now.
No, not time to celebrate the accomplishments of the winners. Ew. Is this your first day here?
No, we’re hockey fans, so we’re going to do what we do best: Point and yell “SHAME” at those who have displeased us. So today, let’s assemble a full roster’s worth of playoff disappointment. These are the players who didn’t live up to expectations once the postseason started, and may now be part of the reason their team isn’t playing anymore.
And why did they let us down? (Ignores that one guy with a pocket protector shouting “Small sample size!”) That’s right – they didn’t want it bad enough. Try harder next time, guys, and everything will work out fine. Consider it a lesson learned.
Like all great teams, we’ll build from the net out. Please welcome your 2019 All Playoff Disappointment Team.
Andrei Vasilevskiy, Lightning: Spoiler alert – Vasilevskiy won’t be the only Lightning player to show up on this list. And in a sense, that should shield him from some criticism, since a goalie is only as good as the team in front of him. But the series between the Lightning and Blue Jackets was closer than you probably remember it, and an extra save here or there could have at least extended it, if not changed the outcome. The Lightning never seemed to get that save. Put it this way: So far, 17 goalies have started at least one playoff game, and 16 of them have posted a save percentage over .900. The 17th is Vasilevskiy, with a downright ugly .856.
Matt Murray, Penguins: The story of the Islanders’ surprising sweep over the Penguins was how Pittsburgh just couldn’t ever seem to hold any momentum. They’d score a big goal, you’d think “OK, here we go,” and then the Islanders would come right back down and score almost immediately. Those goals weren’t always Murray’s fault, but some sure were, and the Penguins were always going to need something more than .906 goaltending to get past Robin Lehner and the Islanders.
Missed the cut: Martin Jones looked like he had a spot on this team all wrapped up after the first week, but he’s been fantastic ever since. Pekka Rinne has a stronger case, and he certainly didn’t get that redemption he was looking for after last year’s disastrous finish. But he had three games where he was .950 or better, including 49 saves in the OT loss that ended the Predators’ season. And unlike Murray or Vasilevskiy, at least he won a game. Marc-Andre Fleury did too, and would have won a series if the Knights could kill off a penalty.
Kris Letang, Penguins: You can’t accuse him of not showing up, as he averaged over 27 minutes a game. But in a series where the Penguins always seemed one goal away from turning things around, their only high-scoring defenseman managed just one assist. Worse, he was front and center on several key goals against, as his aggressive style seemed to backfire just about every time. As Letang himself pointed out, you can’t just tell an offensive defenseman not to make mistakes. But when your style is high risk/high reward, sometimes you wind up high on the list of goats.
Jacob Trouba, Jets: In what could be his last games in a Jets uniform, Trouba had a rough series against the Blues. His offense dried up, to the tune of just one assist in six games. But his most memorable moment came in his own end, where a disastrous decision may have been the series turning point.
>> Read the full post at The Athletic
(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free seven-day trial.)
In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Lots of trade deadline talk
- Reacting to the Randy Carlyle firing
- Breaking down Ryan's latest feud with the Edmonton media
- David Pastrnak's mysterious late-night injury
- I try to explain how federal politics works in Canada to two confused Americans
- Some movies or something I don't know
- Plus an interview with Wild writer Michael Russo and lots more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The Three Stars of Comedy hall of fame class of 2019 is here, and it needs your vote
- A power ranking of the ten most entertaining choices for Seattle's new GM
- The NHL really needs to stop putting one player from every team in the all-star game
- An obscure player who's basically just there so I could make a bad Christmas pun
- And a YouTube look back at the modern NHL's original outdoor classic
The Philadelphia Flyers dropped a bomb on Monday, announcing that GM Ron Hextall had been fired midway through his fifth season on the job. The move comes as a shock, partly because of Hextall’s long history with the franchise and partly because many figured that coach Dave Hakstol would be the first to go.
But there’s another reason the Hextall firing caught so many of us off guard: It’s extremely rare to see a team change its GM midway through a season. Putting a roster together is a big job, one that’s even harder to do when you don’t start until late November. Teams almost always prefer to let a new GM come in early in the offseason, with time to organize the front office, run the draft, and come up with a strategy for free agency and the salary cap. Changing coaches midway through a season often works out well, as we broke down last week. But GMs? That’s a whole different scenario.
Still, it does happen, including last season’s demotion of Ron Francis in Carolina. As we work through the fallout of the Hextall news, let’s take a look back at ten times in modern NHL history that a team has changed GMs during the regular season. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list, but we’ll try to pick out examples that demonstrate both the good and the bad of this sort of move.
The old GM: One month into the lockout-shortened 2013 season, with the Blue Jackets having lost eight of their last ten, Columbus fired GM Scott Howson. The move came just months after he’d pulled off the biggest trade in franchise history, sending an unhappy Rick Nash to the Rangers.
The new GM: The team turned to Jarmo Kekalainen, making him the first European GM in NHL history.
How it worked out: Reasonably well, even as some observers thought Howson got a raw deal. (He memorably received two votes in GM of the Year balloting despite being unemployed.) Kekalainen remains on the job to this day – along with Bob Murray of the Ducks*, he’s the only current GM who was a midseason hire – and has built the Blue Jackets into Cup contenders.
The old GM: We may never see another GM like Harry Sinden, who’d been on the job for 28 years when he finally stepped down in November 2000. He remained on as president, a role he’d hold until 2006, but the Bruins would have a new GM for the first time since the days of Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito.
The new GM: Mike O’Connell took on the dubious job of replacing a franchise icon.
How it worked out: The Bruins were well into rebuilding mode – this move came a few months after they’d traded Ray Bourque to the Avalanche – but O’Connell got them back to the playoffs by 2002, winning the Northeast Division in the process. But he never won a playoff round and was fired at the end of the 2005-06 season. Fairly or not, he’s probably best remembered for being the only GM in North American pro sports history to trade a player in the middle of a season in which he won MVP.
The old GM: Darcy Regier, who’d been on the job since 1997 and had led the team to the Stanley Cup final in 1999. But after a 4-15-1 start and with Buffalo fans chanting “Fire Darcy” at home games, a move seemed inevitable. It was.
The new GM: This is where things get a bit weird. The Sabres didn’t immediately name a new GM, but did appoint Pat LaFontaine as the president of hockey operations and Regier’s de facto replacement. LaFontaine eventually hired Tim Murray away from the Senators in January, in a move that was widely applauded. But by March LaFontaine was gone too, resigning amid reports of an “ugly” conflict with Murray over player personnel decisions.
How it worked out: Murray initially seemed like a great hire; he did well on the Ryan Miller trade, and did the dirty work to prepare the Sabres for the 2014-15 tank job that landed them Jack Eichel. But he couldn’t turn the team around once they’d hit rock bottom and was fired as part of yet another Sabres housecleaning in 2017.
Hockey fans love to review, rank and debate draft classes. Is this year’s any good? Was 2003 better than 1979? How does the Oilers’ class of 1980 hold up against the Red Wings’ haul in 1989?
But what about the guys who make those draft picks? Each year also brings a new class of NHL GMs, and like draft picks, some years are better than others. This off-season is shaping up to be a busy one in that regard, with plenty of GMs on the hot seat and the possibility of some major changes around NHL front offices.
With that in mind, it seems like a good time to look back at the 2014 off-season that saw eight teams anoint a new GM. According to the archives over at NHL Trade Tracker, that was the busiest single year of turnover since 2006, which was the year a bunch of NHL teams realized that the new post-lockout rules would require some fresh thinking. Other high-turnover years include 2000 (eight new GMs), 1997 (nine, including the expansion Predators), 1994 (eight) and 1974 (nine, including the expansion Scouts and Capitals).
Why was 2014 so busy? It’s hard to say, although history shows that the years immediately before and after lockouts tend to bring significant change to NHL front offices. The 2013 class had been busy in its own right, with six changes, and seven if you count coach Patrick Roy being briefly slotted in ahead of Greg Sherman on the Avs’ org chart. But the years before had been unusually stable, with just one new GM each in 2011 and 2012, so there was some pent-up demand for change. That feels a little like the situation right now, with only six GM changes (including the first hire for the expansion Golden Knights) since July 2015. That’s not quite as extreme as the situation heading into 2013 and 2014, but it’s not far off, so we could be in for a rocky few months ahead.
Of those eight GMs hired in 2014, seven are still on the job. (We pause here to sadly pour one out for Tim Murray.) But the clock may be ticking on them. We often say that a new GM deserves five years to implement a plan, and the Class of 2014 is about to head into year five. And history suggests that we should expect at least a few to not even make it that far – from that busy class of 2013, only Jim Nill and Jarmo Kekalainen are still employed.
So which of the 2014 GMs is in the most danger of not making it to 2019? And who’s got the best shot of being remembered as the class of the, uh, class? Let’s run through the seven names and see if we can figure it out.
The hiring: After missing the playoffs and firing Mike Gillis at the end of the season, the Canucks hired Benning away from the Boston Bruins, where he’d served as assistant GM, on May 21.
Record since: 133-142-36, one playoff appearance
Best moves: Benning came into the job with a reputation for drafting well, and he’s largely lived up to that. Getting Brock Boeser 23rd overall in 2015 was a major win, and 2017 fifth-overall pick Elias Pettersson looks like the real deal. Benning also landed a good prospect from Ottawa for the husk of Alex Burrows, and turned Sven Baertschi into a reasonably successful reclamation project from the Flames.
Worst moves: Given Benning’s image as a draft guru, 2016 pick Olli Juolevi looks like a miss. Worse, the Loui Eriksson signing felt like a flat-out disaster from day one. But the biggest objection to Benning’s tenure in Vancouver is probably the moves he didn’t make. From rarely acquiring draft picks to re-signing Erik Gudbranson to holding onto Chris Tanev, Benning hasn’t tried for the sort of full-scale teardown many fans seem to want to see.
Current outlook: A lot better than it was a month ago, thanks to the three-year extension he signed in February. That move came as a bit of a surprise, with the team on track to finish in the bottom five for the third straight year. Rebuilds take time, sure, but often it doesn’t seem like Benning knows the Canucks are rebuilding.
Odds of seeing 2019: Excellent. The importance of GM extensions can be overstated – remember when Dave Nonis got a five-year deal in 2013, Leafs fans freaked out, and then he was gone less than two years later? – but the vote of confidence from ownership and Trevor Linden means Benning will make it to the new year. Will he see his five-year anniversary in May? That looks likely, too, but another year without progress could call it into question.
In the latest (and last?) Friday Grab Bag:
- One simple trick for enjoying Gary Bettman sound bites
- The NBA offseason is just way more fun that's the NHL's, and that's OK
- An obscure player with a two-pack-a-day habit who confused Bob McKenzie
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a week after basking in how wonderful Alexei Kovalev could be, we take a look at the other side of the coin.
>> Read the full post at Vice Sports
In other news: As you may have heard, Vice Sports is apparently shutting down and/or pivoting to video and/or something. Right now, I don't know what this means for the future of the Grab Bag, the Biscuits podcast, the Lozo mailbags or anything else I was doing with Vice (although I think we can probably guess). All I can say right now is that you'll know when I do.
Jake Guentzel is having the sort of rookie playoff year that every NHL player dreams of. To play well under the pressure of the post-season as an NHL rookie is rare, and for most players it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Or, in the case of Matt Murray, twice in a lifetime.
Yes, Murray is technically still a rookie, even though he's on the verge of winning his second Stanley Cup as a starting goaltender. That's because he only played a handful of games during the 2015-16 regular season, meaning he didn't lose his rookie eligibility. He'll probably be named the goalie on this year's all-rookie team, and he might collect the award with two Cup rings in his pocket.
Murray is an extreme case, but it's actually not all that rare for NHL players to get multiple playoff runs when they're still considered rookies. It happened to current players like Torey Krug, Chris Kreider, Logan Couture and Tyler Toffoli. One of the Predators trying to prevent Murray from repeating as champion, P.K. Subban, pulled it off a few years ago.
And so did some of the best players in NHL history. So today, let's look back at five Hall of Famers who played well in the post-season as a rookie, and enjoyed it so much they did it again.
Before Murray came along, Dryden was the go-to case for establishing playoff dominance right out of the gate. He'd only played in six regular season games when he took over as Montreal's starter for the 1971 playoffs, but he was fantastic, posting a very good (for the time) 3.00 goals-against average while leading the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup. For his performance, Dryden earned the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP.
He continued his dominance into the following season, finishing second to Bobby Orr in the Hart Trophy race and earning the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year. But his second playoff run wasn't quite as successful as his first. While he posted an even better GAA of 2.83, Dryden and the Canadiens had their reign ended by the Rangers in six games.
That loss ended up being a minor detour for Dryden on the way to six Stanley Cup rings, making him one of only two goaltenders to ever hit that mark.
Six weeks ago, the NHL playoffs started with 16 teams. Now, after last night's epic double-overtime win by the Penguins, we're down to two, and the Stanley Cup Final is here. Well, not quite here, because this is the NHL and we all have to wait around for a few days for anything to start, but it's close enough for a preview.
There's no denying that this year's final presents an intriguing matchup. In one corner, you've got the defending champs, bruised and exhausted but still fighting to become the first repeat winners in nearly two decades. In the other, a team that went into the postseason with the worst record among playoff teams and had never even been out of the second round in franchise history.
It's been an unpredictable ride through this year's playoffs. Well, unless you read our third-round preview, which nailed the winner and games played for each of the conference finals series. Consider this your spoiler warning: We'll get to the Cup Final prediction at the end, so skip the last section if you want to be surprised.
In this corner: The Pittsburgh Penguins (50-21-11, 111 points, +49 goals differential excluding shootouts), who posted the second best regular-season record in the league.
The road so far: It's been a weird one, thanks to the NHL's unique playoff format. The Penguins faced a pair of top-five teams in the opening two rounds, knocking off the Blue Jackets easily and then dispatching the Presidents' Trophy-winning Capitals in seven. That earned them a date with the 12th-ranked Senators, who gave them everything they could handle. And now they close against the 16-seed.
The history books: The Penguins are chasing their fifth Stanley Cup in franchise history. In addition to becoming the first back-to-back champs since the 97/98 Red Wings, they'll be looking to tie the Blackhawks with their third title of the salary cap era.
Injury report: They've been banged up pretty badly all postseason, although they had several players return to the lineup during the Ottawa series. Patric Hornqvist missed Game 7 but was rumored to be close, so he could be back soon. Chad Ruhwedel sounds less likely. And of course, Kris Letang remains out for the playoffs after neck surgery.
One player to watch: Evgeni Malkin. The second half of the league's best one-two punch down the middle doesn't get quite as much attention as Sidney Crosby, but he's been almost as good for most of their careers. During this year's playoffs, he's been even better, leading the team in scoring and looking dangerous just about every time he's on the ice. Crosby still doesn't look completely right after suffering that concussion against the Capitals; he was great on the powerplay against Ottawa but less noticeable at 5-on-5. Malkin is rolling right now, and with Phil Kessel on his wing he'll give the Predators nightmares.
Key number: 95.0%—The Penguins' penalty-kill rate against Ottawa, which pretty much won them the series. The Senators were shut out completely at 5-on-4, with their only powerplay goal coming with a two-man advantage. That mismatch felt more like Ottawa being bad than Pittsburgh being good, but the Predators have been struggling on the powerplay all postseason long. If the Penguins can hold a major edge on special teams, Nashville is going to have a very tough time making up enough ground elsewhere to stay in this.
The Ottawa Senators came through on Tuesday night, holding on for a 2–1 win to stave off elimination and send the Eastern Conference Final back to Pittsburgh. And so, for the third time in this year’s playoffs, fans will be treated to a winner-take-all seventh game.
Who’ll win? We have no idea. In today’s parity-stricken NHL, anyone who tells you that they know who’ll come out on top in a single game is full of it. We’re pretty close to coin-flip territory here, and anything could happen tonight.
But of course, that doesn’t really cut it when it comes to analysis. The rules of sports writing say we’re supposed to dress it all up in absolutes. So let’s break out a gimmick that worked well for last round’s Pittsburgh/Washington showdown, and come up with five reasons why the Penguins are definitely going to win this thing. And then, five more for the Senators.
The Penguins most recent Game 7 win came two weeks ago. That was when they went into Washington, shrugged off two straight losses, and drove a stake through the heart of the Capitals franchise. They also beat the Lighting last year in this exact situation: Game 7 on home ice in the Conference Final. And some of these players were around in 2009, when the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in a seventh-game classic with the Red Wings.
By comparison, the Senators most recent Game 7 win came... never. They've literally never had one in the history of the franchise. That seems like it should be impossible given how often Ottawa has been in the playoffs over the years, but here we are. And some of those losses have come in truly heart-breaking fashion.
Granted, most of that is ancient history for today's Senators roster; their last Game 7 came back in 2012. But the point remains: The Penguins roster is packed with guys who've been here before and know what it takes to win a do-or-die game. Most of the Senators have never played in a Game 7 at all, and a few of the ones who have won't want to remember how it turned out.
If you believe that big-game experience matters, this one is as easy a call as they come.
We always hear teams talk about how you play all season long to earn home ice in a Game 7. And sure, home teams have historically had an edge in a seventh-game situation. That's good news for the Penguins.
But not all road teams are created equal, and the Senators are just about the ideal team to go into an opponent's building and shut down the party. Much has been made about whether Guy Boucher's squad is boring, but that misses the point. In today's NHL, boring wins. And it's just about the perfect style for a big road game.
Maybe the Penguins come out flying and put this one away early. But it's not hard to picture a game where goals are tough to come by, and we're drifting into the second period or beyond still sitting at 0–0 while the crowd gets quiet and everyone starts muttering about how it feels like we're already in overtime. The Senators would be perfectly happy to play that sort of game. It's become Boucher's specialty.
For what it's worth, the Senators haven't won a playoff series on home ice since the opening round in 2007. In the decade since, all five of their series wins have come on the road, including both of this year's. They've been here before. They know what it takes to close out a team in their opponent's building. And if they need to, they're perfectly willing to be boring to do it.
It's the playoffs, so you could argue that wins are all that matter and by that measure these two teams have been equal.
But it's 2017, and we're smarter than that. We know that the scoreboard doesn't tell us everything, and by just about every other metric, the Penguins have been the best team in this series. They're outshooting the Senators by over five shots a game. They're dominating possession. Their special teams have been far better. And even if you want to be old-school and only point at the scoreboard, they're winning there, too, outscoring the Senators by a half-goal a game over the course of the series.
With the exception of the first period of Game 3, which featured several fluky goals, it's hard to point to any sustained stretch in this series in which the Senators have clearly been better. Meanwhile, in the last two games, Pittsburgh won a 7–0 blowout and followed that up with a dominant 46-shot performance on Tuesday.
Being the better team doesn't guarantee anything in today's NHL. But the Penguins are playing well enough to win, and they know it.
This sounds crazy. The Penguins have Sidney Crosby, the consensus top player in the world. They have the best player in every series they play, and will right up until they face Connor McDavid and the Oilers in the Stanley Cup final a few years down the road.
But this isn't about the best player in the big picture. It's about right now. And in the 2017 playoffs, Erik Karlsson has been better than Crosby and everyone else. If he can be that player tonight, the Penguins aren't likely to have an answer for him.
In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- Dave and I talk about the (maybe) boring Senators and their (definitely) over-sensitive fanbase
- We debate Murray vs. Fleury, and one of us is right
- Thoughts on Ryan Johansen calling out Ryan Kesler
- That terrible new playoff ad that everyone seems to love
- The NHL unveils its list of the 20 greatest teams and it's wrong
- And lots more
>> Stream it now on Vice Sports
>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.
In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- Dave and I digest the breaking news of the Sabres cleaning house
- The one thing the Sabres can't do right now, and probably will
- My thoughts on where the Leafs/Capitals series is at
- A look at the rest of the first round
- My longshot prediction of who'll be playing goal for the Flames next year
- We make predictions on Thursday night games that have already happened by now, for some reason
- Reader questions
- And lots more...
>> Stream it now on Vice Sports
>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.
 |
 |  |
The Athletic Hockey Show runs four days a week during the season, and will feature me with Other Sean Gentille on Wednesdays.
Puck Soup is a podcast featuring me and Ryan Lambert. We release one free episode each week during the season, plus mailbags and other bonus episodes for Patreon subscribers.
"Biscuits" was the Vice Sports hockey podcast, hosted by DGB and Dave Lozo. It ran for two seasons; the final episode was in July, 2018. You can find the archives below:
As of the 2018-19 season, my work will appear exclusively at The Athletic.
Don't have a subscription? You can sign up today by clicking the offer link at the bottom of my posts, or read for free with a one-week trial.
My archives from other sites can be found here:
