DGB weekend power rankings: The Oilers retool, the Predators fade, and the Stars do whatever the #### that was

The​ rankings took last​ week​ off,​ so​ with​ two​ weeks of​ action to account​ for we should​ expect​ to see a higher-than-usual​​ level of turnover in both the top and bottom five to the extent that blah blah blah let’s talk about how the Dallas Stars have gone looney tunes.

Seriously, I realize that this is a power rankings piece and I should stay focused on which teams go where. But I have a few rules in life, and one of them is that if a team’s CEO kicks off the weekend by going on an expletive-laden rant that would make the corpse of Harold Ballard blush, it gets to be the lead story.

If you haven’t read the rundown in Sean Shapiro’s piece yet, you must do so immediately. And if you have read it, you need to read it again to convince yourself that you didn’t dream it. Go do that now, then come back.

Done? Cool. Now that you’ve read the story, learned some new curse words, and your screen is covered with the singed hair that used to be your eyebrows, let’s figure out what all of this means.

Point one: I don’t think Dallas Stars CEO Jim Lites is super-happy with Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn, you guys. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Is he right? Well, no, not really – Seguin and Benn don’t seem to be the problem in Dallas. But that hardly matters now, since it’s not like these are the sort of comments you can walk back.

Point two: Man, the timing is weird here. The rant came the night after the Stars went into Nashville and shut out the defending Presidents’ Trophy winners. That win was their third in five games, and moved them back into a wild-card spot. You’d think you might want to build on that, not use it as a starting point to go scorched earth on your two franchise players.

And finally, the biggest point of all: It’s hard to imagine any way in which this helps the Stars, either now or in the future. Benn and Seguin didn’t sound happy on Saturday, as you’d expect, and while neither poured any additional gas on the fire the NHLPA is now getting involved. Both players are signed to long-term deals, and even if the Stars wanted to trade them – ownership denies that they do – it would be hard to pull it off in a way that made the team better. And which players are going to be lining up to replace them at the top of the lineup, now that the entire league knows that the Stars are an organization that will publicly humiliate its top players when things are going well?

And it wasn’t just about Benn and Seguin. Lites’ comments didn’t just bury his two stars; they sure seemed to imply that GM Jim Nill could be under the gun too. He probably should be, given the teams’ recent record, but having management advertise the fact publicly can’t make his job any easier.

Maybe the biggest problem with Friday’s meltdown is that it wasn’t spontaneous or off-the-cuff, meaning it appears to reflect the agreed-upon thinking of the organization from the top down. And when you strip away the profanity and the hyperbole, that thinking seems to boil down to: We’re already good enough – “too good”, in fact – and we just need to try harder. Not scoring enough goals? Just “get a little bit closer to the action”, as Lites put it, and the problem is solved.

It sure sounds easy when you put it that way. Unfortunately, that’s not the sort of thing that a struggling team comes up with after any sort of serious self-reflection. It’s wishful thinking, the sort of feel-good story you tell yourself when you don’t have the guts to admit that there are bigger flaws in play.

Maybe it works, and Lites’ tirade ends up inspiring the team. Maybe it doesn’t but ends up coinciding with a win streak and we all decide to pretend it somehow helped. Or maybe the boss just torpedoed a season, or even more than that. We’ll find out. At the very least, we can say the Stars are interesting again. For three years they’ve been that team you forget about when you’re going through the Central in your head and get stuck at six teams. Not anymore.

On to the power rankings. We have two weeks to work with, which should shake up our rankings. Let’s find out just how much.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed toward a summer of keg stands and fountain pool parties.

Saturday was the rare case of the league breaking out the maximum 15-game schedule. Then they went and played just one game last night. That’s a bit weird for fans, but as someone who writes most of a weekend wrap column on Sunday afternoon, I’m all for it.

5. Winnipeg Jets (24-12-2, +22 true goals differential*) – They’re opening up some space on top of the Central. But the loss of Dustin Byfuglien will hurt, and the offence has only managed multiple goals in one of their last five games. This week’s schedule is a fun one, with the Oilers, Penguins and Stars on tap.

4. Calgary Flames (23-12-4, +28) – Flames or Sharks? That’s the tough call in the Pacific these days. The Flames hold a slight lead, but the Sharks are the hotter team right now. Some models like Calgary. Others prefer San Jose. We’ll get to see them head-to-head tonight, but for now I’m leaning toward the Flames. (Now they just need to avoid any unnecessary distractions…)

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

2017 Trade Grades: Western Conference

Our annual trade grades post continues today, as we look back at every deal from 2017 that involved at least one player. Yesterday, we went through the Eastern Conference. Today, it’s the West’s turn.

Anaheim Ducks

Best deal: It’s early, but so far the Sami Vatanen-for-Adam Henrique seems like a classic case of two teams both using an area of strength to patch holes in the lineup.

Worst deal: Giving up Shea Theodore for expansion draft considerations. On its own, the move works, since it allowed the team to keep Vatanen and Josh Manson. But it highlights the fact that the Ducks were as poorly positioned for expansion as just about anyone, and couldn’t find a way to avoid paying a price for it.

To be determined: Just how much the first-rounder they gave up for Patrick Eaves comes back to bite them; the fact that he re-signed eases the pain a bit.

Total trades: Seven.

Overall grade: B-. Bob Murray worked hard, and probably salvaged as much as he could from a brutal expansion situation.

Arizona Coyotes

Best deal: John Chayka managed to turn Martin Hanzal into one of the deadline’s biggest names, and reaped a windfall for doing so.

Worst deal: The Derek Stepan/Antti Raanta deal signalled that the Coyotes were ready to move into win-now mode. Their start to this season signalled that they were not.

To be determined: Whether Niklas Hjalmarsson can get back on track; that deal looked like a steal for the Coyotes at the time.

Total trades: Fourteen, tying the Canadiens for the league high.

Overall grade: B. Chayka made lots of deals, several of them big – we didn’t even mention Mike Smith – and he’s clearly not intimidated despite his relative youth and lack of experience. But the disastrous start to the season calls into question whether the Coyotes were addressing the right areas.

Calgary Flames

Best deal: Getting Mike Smith from the Coyotes. I was skeptical at the time, but so far Smith has been exactly what they hoped they were getting.

Worst deal: As mentioned yesterday, giving up a second for Curtis Lazar seemed like a major overpayment on a longshot gamble.

To be determined: Whether Travis Hamonic can settle in; they’d better hope so, given the price they paid to get him.

Total trades: Six.

Overall grade: B. But if Hamonic gets back to his Islanders level, this could move into the A- territority.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Making the case for each lottery team to trade their first round pick

Once the ping pong balls had stopped bouncing and Saturday’s draft-lottery announcement was complete, we knew two things: 1) That the hockey gods hate the Colorado Avalanche, and 2) The order for this year’s top 15 picks. The bottom half of the draft is still sorting itself out in the playoffs, but the top half is locked in.

Well, at least for now.

While the order is set in stone, the picks themselves could still change hands via trade. This year’s first round has been unusually stable as far as deals go. Only two picks have changed hands, with the Blues getting Washington’s pick in the Kevin Shattenkirk deal and the Coyotes getting Minnesota’s for Martin Hanzal. (A third pick is still up in the air, as the Stars could still get Anaheim’s first from the Patrick Eaves trade.)

That said, "easy" isn’t necessarily fun, and we like to have some fun around here. In what's expected to be a weaker draft, maybe this is the year that we can talk some GMs into shopping their picks. So today, let's see if we can make a case for each of the lottery teams to trade its first-round pick. This will get tougher as we get closer to the first-overall pick, so we'll start out easy and work our way up to it.

Pick No. 15: New York Islanders

The case for a trade: The Islanders just endured a disappointing season, following up their first playoff series win in 23 years by missing the playoffs and firing their coach. But they only missed the wild card by one point, so it's not like they're a candidate for a full-on reset.

Maybe more importantly, this is a team that has some serious incentive to win now. They're looking for a new arena deal, and those can be easier to come by when you've got some positive momentum to build on. There's also the John Tavares situation; the Islanders' franchise player is eligible to sign an extension on July 1, and he may not be interested in spending what's left of his prime treading water for a middle-of-the-pack team.

Add it all up, and mix in some new ownership that's going to want to see some progress, and waiting around two or three years for another prospect to be ready is going to be a hard sell for Garth Snow.

Does it hold up?: It's a pretty solid case. It's not like Snow is going to be able to land a superstar for a mid-round pick in a weak draft, but using the 15th choice as an asset in a deal would make a lot of sense.

Pick No. 14: Tampa Bay Lightning

The case for a trade: We all figured they were Stanley Cup contenders, and maybe they still are. But after a season where just about everything went wrong, their window seems a lot smaller than most of us thought. Trading their top pick for immediate help would make a lot of sense, especially since anyone they draft from this spot isn't likely to be a difference-maker any time soon.

Does it hold up?: On the surface, sure. But the problem in Tampa is the salary cap, where Steve Yzerman barely has enough room to handle all the guys on his current roster. Adding another veteran would be tricky, so while the Lightning's focus should be on right now, Yzerman may not have any choice but to bank this pick for down the line.

Pick No. 13: Winnipeg Jets

The case for a trade: This year's Jets season played out just like all the others since the team's return — lots of young talent and plenty of potential, but, ultimately, zero playoff wins. Kevin Cheveldayoff has been preaching patience for years now, but at some point you need to start winning.

Fans in Winnipeg are among the most loyal in the league, but they've been looking one or two years down the road for six seasons now. The team needs to take a step forward someday. If not now, when?

Does it hold up?: You'd think so. Dangling the team's top pick – maybe for goaltending help — seems like a reasonable play. But no team in the league has been more reluctant to make big trades than Cheveldayoff and the Jets, so let's file this one under "unlikely."

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

NHL stock watch: February

As of this weekend, the NHL regular season will be four months old. We’re a few weeks away from the trade deadline, and then it’s straight into the home stretch as we head towards the playoffs. Those early-season weeks can sometimes feel like they’re dragging on, but from this point forward things start moving quickly.

That makes it a good time to check in with some of the trends that are rising and falling around the league. Let’s see how everyone’s portfolio is doing.

Stock rising: Competitive balance

It’s Gary Bettman’s favourite buzzword, and the league’s go-to example of everything that’s right with the cap era. In today’s NHL, we’re constantly told, almost everyone is a contender, and the playoff races come right down to the final weekend.

Most years, it's just marketing. But this season, it just might turn out to be true. As of today, only the Coyotes and Avalanche are truly done, with the other 28 teams all within seven points of a playoff spot. That means the entire Eastern Conference, and almost all of the West, are either in the mix or at least close enough to seem like they are.

Is that actually a good thing? That depends on your perspective. As we covered on Monday, it could definitely mess up the trade deadline. And for a lot of fans, this league is starting to feel like we're just flipping coins. But there's no question that seeing your favourite team in a playoff race is more fun than having them eliminated by February, and right now 28 out of the league's 30 fan bases have at least some vague reason to keep watching.

So what's behind the standings mashup? The salary cap is a big part of it, but doesn't explain why this year would be different than most. Some of that is probably just random luck, and we may see that even out as the year goes on.

But there's another key factor at play, and it's one the league won't want to acknowledge: Nobody is tanking this year. In years where there was a Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews waiting at the top of the draft, some teams were willing to take a knee on the season, and plenty more joined them as soon as things started to go bad. But with apologies to Nolan Patrick, a top pick in this year's draft doesn't carry anywhere near the same value. And so far, nobody's in any hurry to join the Avs and Coyotes in a race to the bottom.

And while we're at it, we may as well give some grudging credit to one other factor: The loser point. It's no secret that we hate it, and think that its parity-inducing properties are wildly exaggerated. But in the East, at least for this year, it really does seem to be keeping the races tighter – the average Eastern playoff team has 6.1 loser points, while the average non-playoff team has 8.6.

That's probably a fluke. We don't see the same effect in the West, where the distribution is the largely random sprinkling we normally see; Western playoff teams have 6.0 loser points compared to 5.3 for non-playoff teams, and the team with the fewest, Colorado, is buried in dead last. Still, for once the NHL's loser point spin might hold true in at least one conference.

The log jam won't last, of course — by the end of the month, anyone who's still six or seven points out will have to acknowledge that it's over, and the trade deadline will force teams to throw in the towel. But for now, over 90 per cent of the league still has something to play for, or at least can plausibly pretend that they do.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

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Which GMs are facing the most deadline pressure? (Western Conference edition)

The NHL hit the midway mark on its schedule a few weeks ago. But for many, the true halfway point of the season is the all-star weekend. That’s the event that closes the book on the first half, and officially sends us towards the homestretch.

For some teams around the league, that’s good news. The season is going well and the roster is largely set, so bring on the playoffs. But most teams still have some work cut out for them. And those are the teams whose GMs will find themselves in the spotlight with the trade deadline just four weeks away.

Are they buying? Selling? Standing pat? If prices start rising, how long can they stay at the table before folding their hand?

And maybe even more importantly: Can they afford to be wrong?

Some of these guys have a tougher few weeks ahead of them than others. So let's take a look around the league at all 31 GMs, and figure out which ones are under the most pressure as we head towards the deadline.

We'll start with the Western Conference today; we'll be back tomorrow with the East.

Peter Chiarelli, Edmonton Oilers

The Oilers are finally headed back to the playoffs for the first time in a decade, and Chiarelli gets a big chunk of the credit for that. We can argue over how much credit he should get, but that's not really the point. He pulled off the Taylor Hall/Adam Larsson trade and landed Milan Lucic and Kris Russell, and now the Oilers are good again.

Could they be better? Sure. And you could make a case that this year's Western Conference is there for the taking, and the Oilers have as good a shot as anyone. But the team is finally headed in the right direction, and even an early exit this year wouldn't be viewed as a failure. Chiarelli can pick his spots; in the eyes of the fans, his big moves have already paid off.

Pressure rating: 2/10

Stan Bowman, Chicago Blackhawks

In theory, Bowman won't be under much pressure at all. His Blackhawks are already good, if flawed, and they're sitting solidly in a playoff spot and still within range of the Wild for a division title. And they've won three of the last seven Stanley Cups, so nobody will be calling for his head even if the rest of the season goes bad.

Will that matter to Bowman? Probably not — he's long been one of the more aggressive GMs in the league, which is a big part of why his teams are always so good.

So sure, Bowman will probably be front and centre over the next weeks. Not because he has to, but because that's just how he operates.

Pressure rating: 3/10

Doug Wilson, San Jose Sharks

The Sharks are facing what could be the end of an era, with both Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau heading to UFA status in the summer. In a perfect world, they'd load up and make one last run before losing one or both of their longest-serving players. They've got the cap room to add some help, so it will be interesting to see how Wilson plays it. But with the team playing well and no obvious weak spots in the lineup, it's unlikely to be anything major.

Pressure rating: 3/10

George McPhee, Vegas Golden Knights

Sure, the team doesn't exist yet. But the league has ruled that the Golden Knights will be able to start making trades as soon as their final payment has been made, which should be in early March. That's after the trade deadline, but the types of moves the Knights will be making — those involving draft picks, prospects or expansion draft considerations — wouldn’t be affected by that.

That doesn't mean that McPhee will be pulling off any blockbusters quite yet, and he can't make any moves at all until that last check clears. But at the very least, he's going to be very busy laying the groundwork for the Knights earliest days, and the decisions he makes now could have an impact for years to come.

Pressure rating: 3/10

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

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The five most entertaining destinations for Jarome Iginla's inevitable trade deadline deal

I've always liked Jarome Iginla. I'm not sure I know anyone who doesn't. Even if he never played for your favorite team, he's one of those guys that you have to at the very least respect, if not outright admire. He'd be on pretty much any list of my favorite players of the last few decades.

And so, it goes without saying, Saturday night made me sad.

That was the night that Iginla celebrated his 1,500^th regular season game. It's a major milestone, one that only 15 other players have reached. And Iginla got to spend that historic game getting pummeled in a 10-1 loss to the Canadiens. 

The Avalanche are awful this year, and while a struggling Iginla hasn't helped much, he deserves better. So let's figure out a way to set him free. It seems like a good day for it — Iginla and the Avs are in action tonight, and two of his former teams, the Penguins and Bruins, are facing each other. And the team he started his NHL career with is even in action too, as the Flames face the Lightning. Maybe they'll even count all the goals this time.

So it's pretty much Jarome Iginla night in the NHL. In his honor, let's run down the five best destinations for when he inevitably waives his no-trade clause in the leadup to this year's trade deadline. 

To be fair, these aren't necessarily the best destinations for Iginla himself, but rather the ones that would be the most entertaining for us, the fans. Still, he'd go into this year's playoffs as perhaps the best Old Guy Without A Cup story since Ray Bourque, so it's important that we get this right. 

Let's begin, fittingly, where it all began.

5. Dallas Stars

The irresistible narrative: The team that drafted Iginla and then traded him away before his first game all those years ago brings him back into the fold just in time to win a Cup.

Could it happen? OK, there's a glaring problem with this idea that I'm sure you're already muttering about: The Stars don't need offense. They're struggling this year because their goaltending is shaky and their blueline misses Alex Goligoski more than anyone thought. The forwards are banged up, sure, but once everyone is healthy the Stars will be fine when it comes to scoring. It's keeping the puck out that's been the problem.

And yet… hockey is a game of outscoring your opponent, right? Sure, ideally Jim Nill would be able to go out and get a Ben Bishop or a Kevin Shattenkirk instead. But if those deals don't materialize, there's always plan B. A 6-5 win is still a win, after all, even in the playoffs. And it's not like Iginla is some flashy perimeter guy who'll wilt from the post-season grind.

The last time the Dallas Stars made a Jarome Iginla trade, it led to a Stanley Cup. It could happen again.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

An NHL fan's guide to overreacting to opening week

The NHL is finally back. After a busy offseason, weeks of training camp and a World Cup thrown in for good measure, we’re just one more day away from watching NHL games that matter again.

By tomorrow night, the season will have started. By the weekend, we’ll have seen each team at least once or twice. And by Sunday, we’ll have freaked out over the results of those one or two games, because they’ll have told us everything we need to know about how the season will turn out.

We probably shouldn’t do that last one. But we can’t help it – we’re hockey fans, and overreacting is in our nature. And if we know we’re going to do it anyway, we might as well go into the first slate of games with a plan.

So here are eight key games to watch over the next few days, the results that would have us all jumping to conclusions, and why we may want to hold off just in case we’re wrong.

Flames at Oilers (Wednesday)

What could happen: In the official unveiling of their new Rogers Place home, the Oilers lose to their provincial rivals.

What it would mean: Oh no, here we go again.

Or maybe not: Stop me if you've heard this one before, but the Oilers are heading into the season with high hopes that this is the year they finally rejoin the Western Conference playoff race. For once, there's some legitimate reason for that confidence: Connor McDavid is healthy, Milan Lucic is here, the blue line is better, and the new arena should add to the excitement.

But there's still a decade of history here, and it wouldn't take much to for some of that negativity to creep back into the season after a few bad losses. Granted, we're being a little bit overdramatic here, as you'd have to think that even battle-scarred Edmonton fans will give the team more than a game or two before panicking. So instead, let's pencil them in for three. (But all bets are off if Taylor Hall gets off to a quick start in New Jersey.)

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

What went wrong for the playoff losers (and can they fix it)?

With the conference finals underway, we’re down to the NHL’s final four. The eyes of the hockey world are focused on the Sharks, Blues, Lightning and Penguins, and rightly so. One of those four teams will be our next Stanley Cup champion.

But four teams in the conference final also means 12 playoff teams sitting at home, wondering where it all went wrong. So let’s help those teams out and look at each of the dozen franchises that didn’t make the cut, and try to pinpoint the key flaw that sent them packing. And, more importantly, let’s ask the question: Can they fix it?

Dallas Stars

What went wrong? Goaltending. Hey, we might as well start off with the easy one, right?

The Stars were one of the league’s best stories, roaring back from a playoff miss to finish as the West’s top seed while leading the league in goals scored. They were also one of the most entertaining teams we’ve seen in years. But they went through the season with a massive question mark, and we all saw it: the goaltending duo was weak. Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi were good enough to get them to the second round, but a Game 7 meltdown against the Blues ended their season and drew a big red circle around the sport’s most important position.

Can they fix it? It won’t be easy. Before they can add anyone, the Stars will presumably need to subtract, and that’s no simple task. Their two incumbents carried a combined cap hit of $10.4 million, and both are locked in for two more years. Neither will have much trade value at that price. That doesn’t mean they can’t be traded – a willingness to retain salary and/or taking back an equally bad deal can open doors – but it’s possible that a buyout ends up being Jim Nill’s best option.

Even assuming that Nill can clear a spot on the roster, who does he go out and get? There are always goalies available in the off-season, but the tough part is finding the right one. The reality is that this is a league with about a half dozen sure-thing goalies, and a whole lot of question marks after that. Those sure-things aren’t going to be available, so Nill and the Stars will have to roll the dice.

History has shown that you don’t need a future Hall-of-Famer in net to win in this league. This year’s final four has shown it too. But you do need a guy you can trust, and the Stars just reminded us that finding that guy is no simple task. They’ll try again this summer, but it’s no sure thing that they’ll do any better.

Detroit Red Wings

What went wrong? The offence couldn’t finish. The Red Wings produced plenty of pressure against the Lightning, averaging 32 shots per game. But they never managed to score more than two goals in any game of the series, and ended up with just eight goals total. That included just one on the power play despite 25 attempts.

Can they fix it? We’ll cut the Wings some slack here. They were facing a strong defensive team with a hot goaltender, and their power play was decent over the regular season, ranking 13th. But the lack of offence wasn’t strictly a post-season problem. Detroit only scored 209 goals on the season, ranking just 23rd overall, and didn’t have a single player finish with more than 50 points.

So how do they get better? Losing Pavel Datsyuk won’t help, and if he heads home for Russia, as expected, he’ll leave a huge void. Henrik Zetterberg is 35-years-old, and his production has dropped sharply in each of the last two years. On the other hand, guys like Tomas Tatar and Gustav Nyquist should improve with age and expanded roles, and Dylan Larkin is only just getting started.

Add it all up, and the Red Wings probably need help from outside the organization, either via free agency or trade. And to do that, they’ll likely need to find a home for Datsyuk’s cap hit first. That won’t be impossible, but Ken Holland has got some work cut out for him this summer.

Minnesota Wild

What went wrong? After splashing out on big-money franchise players in Ryan Suter and Zach Parise, the Wild have failed to surround them with enough talent to truly compete in a very tough Central Division.

The Wild spent big to build a team that could contend, but they could never beat the Blackhawks, and this year they were eliminated by what turned out to be a very flawed Stars team. Now they’re left with a core that’s old and expensive, most of whom are well into the stage of their careers where we should start expecting to see a decline.

Can they fix it? They’ve already made a big improvement, upgrading to Bruce Boudreau behind the bench. Adding one of the best coaches in the league could go a long way.

It may have to, because upgrading the roster is going to be a massive challenge for GM Chuck Fletcher. He’s largely locked into this core – they have nearly $50 million tied up in just nine players through 2017-18, and six of those guys are already over 30 today. Finding takers for any of those players in trades will be tough, and buyouts just kick the cap pain down the road.

Maybe Boudreau can work his magic and turn this group into contenders. The Wild had better hope so, because if there’s another realistic path to improvement here, it’s a tough one to find.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Retroactively re-awarding the NHL GM of the Year award

Let’s just come right out and say it: The General Manager of the Year is a weird award.

Oh, it’s a nice idea. If players and coaches can be honoured for a good season, then GMs should too. But the award, first introduced in 2010, has never really seemed to work. A GM’s job involves building a roster over multiple seasons, often through moves that don’t pay off until years down the line. Even if you wanted to honour the guy who had the best single season, you wouldn’t be able to know who that was without the benefit of hindsight.

Luckily, we have that hindsight available to us now. So today, let’s go back over the history of the GM of the Year trophy, and retroactively re-award it to the guy who actually deserved it.

First, a few ground rules. We’re looking at everything a GM is responsible for, including the draft, free agency and trades. We don’t care about anything that came before the season; you don’t get GM of the Year credit because a prospect you drafted three years ago had a great rookie year, or a guy you traded for the previous season had a breakthrough. We also don’t care about mistakes made in the future, so if you built yourself a nice little sand castle one year, you don’t lose points for kicking it over the next.

The standings matter, although not all that much because they'll heavily reflect work that had been done in previous years. And the playoffs matter more, because it's completely insane to create an award for the guys trying to build championship rosters and then vote on it before the post-season is even over. Which is what the league does, by the way.

Finally, we're going to define the "season" as everything that happens in between Stanley Cup presentations. So from the moment the last chorus of boos reign down on Gary Bettman, NHL GMs are competing for next year's award.

We've got six seasons to work with. Let's go back and get it right.

2009-10

The actual winner was: Don Maloney of the Coyotes. (For the award's first few years, no other finalists were announced.)

But in hindsight: Maloney didn't really do much during the season beyond landing Radim Vrbata in a trade. The Coyotes did make the playoffs for the first time in seven years, but wouldn't actually win a round until their deep run in 2012.

So on paper, this was an odd pick. But really, this was less about what Maloney did with the roster and more about everything he'd put up with over the years in Arizona. The team had just gone through a bankruptcy and was constantly rumoured to be on the verge of moving, so Maloney was managing with one hand tied behind his back. His colleagues apparently wanted to recognize that, which is probably as good a reason as any to hand out this kind of award.

It could have gone to: One of the strongest performances came from Greg Sherman of the Avalanche, and yes, I'm as surprised as you are. But the Avs had the league's best draft, hitting hard on Matt Duchene third overall and Ryan O'Reilly at No. 33. Sherman also signed Craig Anderson as a reasonably cheap free agent, then saw him win the starter's job while helping the team to a 26-point improvement in the standings.

There's also a strong case for Paul Holmgrem, who got a Flyers team just three years removed from finishing dead last all the way to the Final, largely on the strength of an aggressive off-season trade for Chris Pronger. And Peter Chiarelli took a potentially disastrous Phil Kessel situation and turned it into a big win.

You could also make an argument for the Blackhawks, who won the Stanley Cup after landing the best UFA signing of the '09 off-season in Marian Hossa. But that gets tricky, because this was the year that Dale Tallon was demoted in mid-July after mishandling the Hawks' offer sheets, making way for Stan Bowman to assume the role.

Tallon deserves most of the credit for building those 2010 champs, but even in our alternate universe, giving the trophy to a guy who'd already been relieved of his duties seems like a stretch.

But the winner should have been: Glen Sather. The Rangers missed the playoffs for the first time in six years, but in hindsight Sather was laying the groundwork for the team that would emerge as one of the league's best just a few seasons later. He hit on his first round pick, landing Chris Kreider at 19th overall in a first round that thinned out quickly after the first few picks. And he made a big splash in free agency by signing Marian Gaborik, who'd score 40 goals twice over the next three seasons and represent one of the few big-money free agent signings of recent years that actually worked out.

But Sather's best move remains one of his most infamous – the June, 2009 trade that sent Scott Gomez to Montreal for a package that included a young Ryan McDonagh. Given Gomez's ridiculous contract, the deal seemed like a miracle for the Rangers at the time, and it only looks better in hindsight.

McDonagh may be the most valuable current Ranger apart from Henrik Lundqvist, and Sather landed him in a deal where he should've been giving the Habs young players just to take on dead money. That alone is enough to earn him some hardware.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet.ca

The NHL GM trade power rankings (part two)

15. Doug Wilson, San Jose Sharks

Current standings: 15-14-1, second place in the Pacific

Estimated cap room: $1 million (assuming Ben Smith is on the LTIR)

Remember when a Patrick Marleau deal felt like a sure thing? That was only a few weeks ago, but the buzz around that move has quieted down significantly. The wide-open Pacific says Wilson should be looking to deal; the cap says he might not be able to. Either way, he tends to do most of his trading in the offseason or at the trade deadline. And history says we shouldn't expect anything over the next few weeks; he hasn't made a deal in December since 2006.

14. Don Sweeney, Boston Bruins

Current standings: 17-9-4, second place in the Atlantic

Estimated cap room: $600,000

You have to hand it to Sweeney -- the rookie GM certainly wasn't shy about pulling the trigger after being promoted in the offseason. He made several big trades, including those involving Dougie Hamilton, Milan Lucic and Martin Jones (twice). Granted, those deals got mixed reviews, but the key point is that Sweeney doesn't seem to have gotten the memo in his orientation package about being timid on the trade front. The only thing keeping him from ranking higher is the Bruins' tight cap and their place in the standings -- not bad enough to rebuild, not quite good enough to go try to load up.

>> Read the full post on ESPN.com (scroll down to get to entries 15 thru 1)