Re-evaluating the HHOF cases for John Tavares, Jamie Benn, Corey Perry and more

It’s Hall of Fame induction week, and the class of 2025 is an interesting one. Of the four players on the men’s side, we had two absolute locks (Zdeno Chara and Joe Thornton), plus one guy who was very close (Duncan Keith) and another who should have been (Alexander Mogilny). While you never quite know how the committee will judge a candidate, all four players absolutely felt like future Hall-of-Famers midway through their careers.

Many eventual HHOFers fit that pattern. That said, it’s possible for a player to feel like a borderline candidate in their prime, only to have the sort of finishing kick that flips them to a sure thing. We saw that with Marc-Andre Fleury, who I had as “not there yet” back in 2019 when he was already well into his mid-30s, but who added a Vezina to his trophy case two years later to seal the deal. Fellow goalie Sergei Bobrovsky was “very” close as recently as early 2024, then won back-to-back Cups and is essentially a lock. And in 2019, Shea Weber was a strong candidate who felt like he just needed to close the case – which he emphatically did with the Habs 2021 playoff run, leading to his induction last year.

Then again, some players start off looking like they’re on the HHOF fast track but then fade before the finish line. You never really know until a player’s career is over. And sometimes, we’re not even sure then.

That’s why it’s worthwhile checking in on a star player as their career is still going on. You won’t get a definitive answer, obviously, but there’s still value in a quick temperature check. We’ve been doing that for years, on this site and others. And a few years ago, we went back for another look at some veterans who’d been borderline calls before.

We’re going to do that again today, as we revisit the HHOF cases of six active players who might make for tricky calls.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free trial.)

The Athletic Hockey Show: Deadline headlines

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- Has this been a great deadline, or just a busy one?
- Thoughts on some of the recent deals, including Tyler Bertuzzi to Boston
- The David Pastrnak news breaks as ww're recording
- Jesse Granger on whether the Golden Knights will trade for Jonathan Quick
- A weird Arizona Coyotes stat, remembering the 1996 Blues, a great magic draft pick idea 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)

Debating the Hall of Fame cases of Brad Marchand, Jonathan Quick, Jason Spezza and others

It’s Hall-of-Fame induction week, as the class of 2020 finally gets their moment in the spotlight after a year of COVID delays. It’s a strong class, with Jarome Iginla, Marian Hossa, Kim St-Pierre, Doug Wilson and Kevin Lowe joining builder Ken Holland.

Great, who’s next?

That’s the fun part of having a Hall-of-Fame. Sure, it’s nice to honor the game’s greats. But what we really want to do is argue over the players who might make it some day. And that’s especially fun when it comes to the guys who are still active, since there’s still time for them to flip the script and make us all look bad. Plus I’m always fascinated by the players that you guys think are easy calls, since there are always one or two where the public consensus seems way off from what my ballot would look like.

We’ve done this a few times in recent years. We argued about Nicklas Backstrom, Ryan Getzlaf, Phil Kessel, Patrick Marleau, Shea Weber and Marc-Andre Fleury in this post, then tackled Brent Burns, Ilya Kovalchuk, Pekka Rinne, Ryan Suter, Justin Williams and Claude Giroux in this one.

Some of those guys are still a tough call, but we won’t revisit any of their cases today. Instead, let’s find a half-dozen new names to debate. We’re looking for players who are already over 30 and still active in the NHL. A few of these guys are names that readers bring up often, while others are ones I go back and forth on.

Eric Staal

Why it’s a tough one: We’re cheating a bit here because while Staal hasn’t retired, he’s not currently on a team so his “active” status is a little fuzzy. He still wants to play, but his current lack of a job makes this debate a bit easier, since it’s safe to assume that his career numbers won’t change much. And those numbers, as we’ll see, are right on the borderline.

The case for: The typical HHOF case comes down to two categories: How good was the player at their peak, and did they stick around long enough to hit major career milestones. Staal checks both boxes; he hit the 100-point mark in a breakout 2005-06 season that ended with him leading the playoffs in scoring on the way to a Stanley Cup, then stuck around as a consistent producer longer enough to join the 1,000-point club in an era where that’s tough to do.

The case against: Apart from that one big year, Staal never really had a dominant season. He was a second-team all-star in 2006, but that was the only year he earned any kind of award, and his fourth-place finish in Hart voting that year was his only top-ten season. We’ve seen guys make the Hall with a similar lack of awards recognition, including Dave Andreychuk, Mark Recchi, and even Marian Hossa this year. But those guys all racked up bigger career totals, while Staal barely inching past 1,000 points shouldn’t be enough.

Worth remembering: Staal ranks seventh among active scorers today, and the guys ahead of him are five slam-dunk HHOFers and Patrick Marleau, who’s also probably getting in.

Should he get in? Barring a comeback and late-career renascence, I wouldn’t have him on my ballot.

Will he get in? I don’t think it’s out of the question, especially with the Hall’s recent habit of going off the board on a pick most years. But I’m filing it under unlikely. He just needed another big year or two that never came.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

(Want to read this post on The Athletic for free? Sign up for a free trial.)

Get ready for Halloween with this team full of the NHL’s scariest starts

It’s Halloween tomorrow. Do you have a scary costume?

If not, don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. If you want to frighten anyone this week, all you’ll need is an NHL jersey, a hockey stick and a stats sheet to point at. Other props are optional, although you might want to invest in accessories like hands of stone, a turnstile or a great big goose egg.

Yes, it’s time for our annual tribute to the league’s scariest starts, where we build an entire roster out of some of the biggest names having the ugliest Octobers we can find. Some of these are bad signs for the rest of the year. Most of them will be forgotten by mid-November. We’ll try to figure out which is which as we go, but in the meantime, you can get into the Halloween spirit by yelling “Boo!” at each guy. It probably won’t be the first time this year that they’ve heard it.

Forwards

The player: Jonathan Toews, Blackhawks

The start: On the heels of a career year at the age of 30, the Hawks’ captain has managed just two points on the season so far. We already had our first wave of “Is Toews breaking out of his slump?” stories two weeks ago; since then he’s been pointless in six.

Odds it ends well: Toews will get going offensively at some point. But for now, at least, last year’s 81-point season is looking like an aberration for a player who’d been in the 50-something range for the three years before that. That’s not good news for a Hawks team that needs all the help it can get these days.

The player: Sebastian Aho, Hurricanes

The start: Three goals and three assists through a dozen games, with only one of those goals coming against an actual goaltender. To put that in historical context, it’s the worst start in six years for a player who had just signed an offer sheet.

Odds it ends well: Aho’s been heating up lately, or at least getting back to lukewarm. He had that first real goal on Thursday and followed that up with his first multi-point game of the season on Saturday. He can be his own toughest critic, so once he gets a few more solid games under him, he could take off.

The player: Taylor Hall, Devils

The start: On the bright side, Hall is the only player on this roster who is also his team’s leading scorer. On the not-so-bright side, he has just seven points and, well, (gestures at the Devils’ entire season). We could just as easily go with fellow forwards like Jack Hughes or Nikita Gusev, since they’re underperforming Hall. But with apologies to the all-about-the-team narratives, the former MVP has a lot more on the line than his younger teammates. With an extension or unrestricted free agency on the horizon, this isn’t a great time to be sitting with just one goal in the first month.

Odds it ends well: Hall is still generating a ton of shots, and has somehow managed six assists, which doesn’t sound impressive until you realize the Devils are dead last in scoring with just 22 goals on the season. He’s doing his part, even if the numbers don’t look great. The question now is whether he’ll finish the season still doing it for the Devils.

The player: Kaapo Kakko, Rangers

The start: He has just two goals and an assist, is getting caved in on possession and has been on the ice for just one even-strength goal for vs. eleven against. Other than that, things are going great.

Odds it ends well: I think we’ve seen enough to know the kid is a bust. (He’s 18, he’ll be fine.)

The player: Joe Pavelski, Stars

The start: Six points in 14 games for one of the biggest UFA signings of the offseason, half of which came last night. Maybe more concerning, his shots rate has dropped by over a shot-per-game compared to his last few seasons.

Odds it ends well: The shots rate is a concern for sure. But I think we can give Pavelski a bit of a break here; after 16 years and thirteen NHL seasons with the same organization, a bit of an adjustment period after switching teams for the first time seems reasonable. Now if only he could play the Wild every night …

>> 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.)

Revisiting eight closing Cup windows

Their window is closed.

That’s a phrase you hear a lot around the NHL, especially at this time of year. When a team’s window is closed, it means they’re no longer a real threat to win the Stanley Cup. Maybe they won a Cup or two, but now those days are gone for good, and it’s time to figure out what comes next.

It’s the sort of thing we say a lot. Probably too much. Over the last few years, there may not have been a team we said it about more than the Washington Capitals. Even as the team was winning back-to-back Presidents’ Trophies in 2016 and 2017, their constant playoff failures made it clear that something was wrong. After last year’s devastating loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, we wondered what they would do next and struggled to find a good option. There was talk of trading Alexander Ovechkin, and the Caps didn’t exactly deny that they were thinking about it.

Ovechkin was well into his 30s. Nicklas Backstrom was almost there, and Braden Holtby wasn’t far off. The expensive core that had been so dominant in the regular season but always come up small in the playoffs was old enough that we knew what we were getting. They’d tried, they’ve come close, but they failed. And now some fans figured it might be time to burn it all down. The window was well and truly closed.

Except, of course, that it wasn’t. As the Caps’ summer-long Stanley Cup celebration wears on, it’s fair to wonder if some of us are a little too eager to declare that a team’s window has slammed shut. Maybe they stay open longer than we thought. Maybe they can even be reopened.

And if that’s true, then what other NHL teams might we be wrong about? Today, let’s look at eight teams around the league that, to at least some extent, have received the “your window is closed” treatment from the hockey world. If we were wrong about the Caps, could we be wrong about these teams too?

Chicago Blackhawks

Why their window seems closed: The Blackhawks may be the best team of the salary cap era, winning three titles in six seasons. But the last of those came in 2015, and they haven’t won a playoff round since. Even worse, the trend in the wrong direction is hard to miss: They dropped a seventh game to the Blues in 2016, were swept in 2017, and didn’t even make the playoffs this year.

What’s worse, the three-year stumble coincides with the matching $10.5-million extensions for Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane kicking in.

Combined with Duncan Keith and (especially) Brent Seabrook, that suggests that the Hawks just have too much money tied up in an aging core, and even Stan Bowman won’t be able to find enough cheap depth to get this team back into the title picture. Even getting back to the playoffs seems like a long road right now.

Why it might not be: As bad as this season was, this is still the same core that won three titles. They’re older, sure, and in today’s NHL that can matter a lot. But the veteran talent is there, and younger pieces like Brandon Saad, Alex DeBrincat and Nick Schmaltz are on hand to support and maybe even eventually supplant the old-timers.

And remember, the 2017-18 season really went off the rails when two-time Cup winner Corey Crawford was out of the lineup. If he’s back and healthy, this team doesn’t look all that different from the one that finished first in the Central in 2017.

Bottom line: The Blackhawks seem like they’ve got a long way to go, especially now that the Jets and Predators have emerged as Central juggernauts. But would anybody be surprised to see them rebound into the playoffs next year? And if so, are we sure we want to count them out as legitimate contenders?

Los Angeles Kings

Why their window seems closed: A lot of what we just said about the Blackhawks could apply to the Kings too. They won multiple titles, but the last of those came years ago, and they haven’t won a playoff round since. In fact, in four years since their 2014 championship, the Kings have only won a single playoff game. Their core is getting older and more expensive, including a Toews-like extension for Anze Kopitar. Oh, and there’s at least a chance that Drew Doughty could be leaving in 2019.

Why it might not be: Let’s assume that Doughty sticks around, since all signs point in that direction. His new deal will be expensive, and will tighten the screws on the Kings’ cap even more than it already is. But it will keep the core together, and unlike in Chicago, this team is at least coming off a decent season. They made the playoffs, Kopitar played at an MVP level, Dustin Brown rediscovered his game, and Jonathan Quick still looks like a guy who can steal a series or two.

Bottom line: Another advantage the Kings hold over the Blackhawks: the Pacific Division doesn’t seem all that scary, so a return trip to the playoffs seems like a good bet. Once they’re there, some of that old Quick magic could take them a long way. All the way to another Cup? That seems unlikely, but it seemed that way in Washington too.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Podcast: Buttng heads

In this week's episode of Biscuits: A Hockey Podcast...
- We spend an uncomfortably long amount of time talking about Joe Thornton's butt check to TJ Oshie's face
- A breakdown of what's going on with Drew Doughty and Erik Karlsson
- We sort out last week's goalie fight debacle
- The Flyers finally win a game, but at least they're not the Sabres
- Dave basically admits he was wrong about 3-on-3 overtime and the shootout
- Reader questions, and lots more.

>> Stream it now on Vice Sports

>> Or subscribe on iTunes.

Podcast: Price fixing

In this week's episode of Biscuits, the Vice Sports hockey podcast:
- Carey Price is back. Are the Canadiens saved?
- Scoring is up and nobody can figure out why. Dave and I have a theory.
- The Flyers are flatlining and change has to be on the way soon.
- Which two active players would combine for the best goalie fight?
- And lots more...

>> Stream it now on Vice Sports

>> Or, subscribe on iTunes.

Grab bag: Don't panic

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Breaking down that whole mess with Jonathan Quick and the phantom concussion
- A word to NHL GMs about making panic moves
- A novel approach to the obscure player of the week
- The three comedy stars
- And a look back at the NHL's earliest efforts to introduce a coherent replay review policy

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Five teams that used way too many goalies

Last week, we looked at five goalies who played for way too many teams. This week, let's flip that premise on its head, with a look at five teams who used way too many goalies.

Typically, an NHL team heads into a season with two goalies and hopes that's all they'll need. Realistically, somebody's going to get hurt, or traded, or demoted, so you're probably going to end up using three, or maybe even four. But more than that? Not unless something's gone really wrong.

This year's Bruins could tell you a thing or two about that. In the season's first two weeks, injuries forced them to use four different starters in four games, which is exceedingly rare. But the good news for Boston is that they've got a long way to go to make NHL history. That's because the record for most goalies to see action in a season is seven, held by three teams. And 16 more teams have ended up using six.

We don't have room to dive into every one of those. But today, let's look back at five teams that needed way too many goaltenders just to get through a single season.

 

1989-90 Quebec Nordiques (Seven goalies)

In theory, the starter was: A young Ron Tugnutt was probably the best known name of the bunch. He appeared in 35 games, and led the team in wins with five. That's right, five. The 1989-90 Nordiques were one of the worst teams of all-time, winning just 12 games all season.

You may also recognize: Greg Millen arrived in a trade midway through the year, played in 18 games, and then was dealt away near the deadline. Somehow, those two trades ended up costing the Nordiques Jeff Brown and Michel Goulet. Did we mention this team was bad?

You probably also remember Stephane Fiset, who was actually the opening night starter as a 19-year-old but lasted just six games. And then there was Scott Gordon, who played ten games in what was one of just two NHL seasons, then returned to the league two decades later as coach of the Islanders.

Plus these guys you've never heard of: In addition to the four guys already mentioned, the Nordiques also used Sergei Mylnikov (who played ten games in his only NHL season), as well as Mario Brunetta (for six games) and 19-year-old John Tanner (for one). Those three combined to win two games.

For what it's worth, the Nordiques used five guys during the 1990-91 season, and never really had a solid starter until Ron Hextall briefly arrived in the Eric Lindros trade for the 1992-93 campaign.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Friday Grab Bag: New fans, old feuds, and a YouTube clip that ends badly

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- A word about Dan Boyle, Cal Clutterbuck, and when players yell at the media
- The award finalists are being announced, and they're all wrong
- The three comedy stars, including the Blues' newest fan
- An obscure lottery winner
- And a YouTube clip that's light and fun and features the darkest ending in the section's history

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

California Dreaming: The NHL Takes It Back Outside

On Saturday, they played a hockey game outdoors in California, and it says something about the evolution of the NHL that the whole thing didn’t seem all that remarkable.

That’s not supposed to be the case with these outdoor games, and it certainly wasn’t the case last year when the league set up shop at Dodger Stadium. That game felt like something wholly unique, with beach volleyball and a marching band and a performance by Kiss, as hockey fans across the continent tuned in to find out whether the ice would melt. It didn’t. In the end, it all came together perfectly.

This year’s game, played in front of just more than 70,000 fans at Levi’s Stadium, didn’t carry that same first-time curiosity factor, and that may help explain why there seemed to be so little buzz about it. Heading into Saturday, there was as much focus on the standings as on the setting. This was perhaps the league’s first outdoor game where the emphasis was firmly on the “game” part of the equation.

In the last decade, the state of California has won three Stanley Cups, one Presidents’ Trophy, and two MVPs, all while serving up the best three-way rivalry in the sport. The state’s teams have been so good for so long that fans around the league now warily eye their favorite team’s schedule for the dreaded California Road Trip of Doom.

So when it comes to California hockey, there’s an overwhelming temptation to ignore the past, because the present is just so much better. But you’d be missing out if you did, because the history of the NHL in California is rich and deep and completely ridiculous. And it was hard not to think about that on a Saturday night at a football stadium.

♦♦♦

The L.A. Kings arrived in 1967 as part of the NHL’s first wave of expansion, and they weren’t very good. In the ’70s, they were best known for helping to build the Canadiens’ dynasty by continually giving their top draft picks to Sam Pollock. In the ’80s, their main job was to be just competitive enough to occasionally make the powerhouse Oilers (and later Flames) break a sweat. And they looked ridiculous, wearing awful yellow and purple uniforms. If you squinted just right, it looked like Wayne Gretzky and friends were skating circles around a bunch of bruised bananas.

That Gretzky guy turned out to be pretty important a few years later, when he was traded to the Kings in 1988. That move put the Kings on the map. They switched to modern-looking black and silver uniforms, and suddenly, almost overnight, the Los Angeles Kings were cool. But it was an L.A. cool, and in hockey, that’s not a compliment. After all, you still had the B-list celebrities and Barry Melrose’s mullet and that blue bandanna thing that Kelly Hrudey wore.

For most of their first four decades, the Kings were one big punch line. Two Stanley Cups later, nobody’s laughing anymore.

♦♦♦

The San Jose Sharks entered the league in 1991 as a quasi expansion team, part of a complicated split from the Minnesota North Stars that nobody really seemed to fully understand. They played in something called the Cow Palace, took to the ice by skating through a giant shark’s head, and introduced the word “teal” to the hockey world’s vocabulary.

They were also terrible. They finished dead last in each of their first two years, establishing a league record for most losses in a season in 1992-93. But they made the playoffs in 1994 and even won a round thanks to Chris Osgood’s brain cramp. That would start a run of 17 playoff appearances in 20 years. They’ve won six division titles and had seven 100-point seasons.

They’ve also never lost a Stanley Cup final game, which sounds nice except that they’ve never won one either. That’s the reputation the Sharks have forged over two decades: Year after year, they’re good in the regular season and then find a way to fall apart in the playoffs.

And that brings us back to the Los Angeles Kings.

♦♦♦

Until very recently, the Kings had spent the entire season desperately trying to look like a bad team and not fooling anyone.

When the matchup between the Sharks and Kings was announced last summer, it was projected as a grudge match between two of the league’s elite teams. The Kings are the defending champions. The Sharks have been one of the league’s top regular-season teams for more than a decade but just can’t get over the hump in the playoffs, and in each of the last two years that hump has been the Kings. These were two very good teams that didn’t like each other very much. That was the plan.

The first part of that plan hasn’t really worked out. Both teams have struggled, and instead of Saturday’s game being a showdown for top spot in the Pacific, it was a battle for the conference’s final wild-card spot. Despite a six-game winning streak, the Kings went into the weekend having lost more games than they’d won. They’ve been chasing a playoff spot for most of the last few months. And yet nobody seems to want to count them out, because they’ve been down this road before in 2012 and 2014, and we know how that turned out. A few Stanley Cup rings will buy you some benefit of the doubt.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

In celebration of the truly terrible goal

Jonathan Bernier had an interesting night last week. On Thursday, his Toronto Maple Leafs were hosting the Arizona Coyotes, and they weren’t playing especially well. Through two periods they’d been badly outplayed, surrendering 32 shots on goal. But Bernier had been flawless and was almost single-handedly responsible for his team clinging to a 1-0 lead as the third period began.

And then, this happened …

This isn’t the first time Bernier has been caught napping, and it might not even be the worst goal he’s ever given up. And if they’re being honest, most goalies have been there. Hockey is a funny game, and sometimes even the best goaltender has a momentary lapse, or a brain cramp, or just plain bad luck.

And so today we’re going to take some time to celebrate the terrible goal. And by celebrate, of course, I mean rate, using an arbitrary scale I made up just now. We’re going to look at 10 of the worst goals from hockey history and rate them based on the following criteria:

Ugliness: Pretty self-explanatory. How bad did it look? And more importantly, how hard did you laugh?

Importance: When it comes to bad goals, the “when” can be every bit as important as the “how.” A bad goal in the second period of a meaningless game isn’t the same as one that happens in overtime or a Game 7.

Notoriety: For whatever reason, some awful goals are largely forgiven, while others stick to a goalie forever, like a bad rash.

We’ll rate the goals in each category before assigning a final overall score, which won’t be an actual average, because this is a nonscientific exercise and I’m basically pulling these numbers out of the air.

By the way, this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list — I’m sure fans of every NHL team can remember a few stinkers that don’t appear below. I’ve also limited the list to goals that are available on YouTube,¹ since having access to the visual evidence is most of the fun here.

Vesa Toskala’s 197-footer

Ugliness: 8.8/10. It would be just about impossible to give up a goal from any farther away than this masterpiece. You could argue that it’s a tougher play than it looks like — note the way announcer Joe Bowen’s voice betrays a rising sense of panic as the puck starts bouncing — and the last hop really is a crazy one when you see it from the behind-the-net angle. But in real time, this was unbelievably bad, and that’s how everyone remembers it.

Importance: 2.6/10. This was from an Islanders-Leafs regular-season game in March that the Leafs still ended up winning. It didn’t really matter.

Notoriety: 9.9/10. This has become the gold standard for awful goals, so much so that “Toskala” was trending across Canada immediately after Bernier’s gaffe Thursday. Toskala was awful in Toronto, and while you could argue that this goal isn’t even his worst — at least he didn’t direct it into his own net — it’s the one that will always come to mind when his name is mentioned.

Overall: 8.3/10. Like we said, this one has become the gold standard. But should it be? Let’s run through some other candidates.

Sebastien Caron Goes Full Toskala

Ugliness: 8.7/10. This is basically a carbon copy of Toskala’s effort (although if you want to get technical, this one actually came first). That bounce at the end is brutal — you can almost imagine Caron’s slow-motion “Noooo” as he slides helplessly in the wrong direction.

Importance: 2.3/10. This is a March game between the two worst teams in the conference. I’m pretty sure I’ve scored more important goals in NHL ’94.

Notoriety: 4.2/10. Maybe it’s just me, but I had no recollection of this happening until I started researching this post. Sorry to blow your cover, Sebastien.

Overall: 6.3/10. A fun side note: Caron was also on the ice for another awful goal that season; he was in the Penguins’ net when Maxime Talbot scored this monstrosity against Flyers goalie Antero Niittymaki. It was the first goal of Talbot’s career.

Tim Thomas Whiffs

Ugliness: 8.9/10. This is pretty comical — there’s no bad bounce, no equipment problem, no fluke distraction. Thomas just tries to sweep the puck, whiffs completely, and watches it trickle in through his legs.

Importance: 5.3/10. This was another regular-season game in March, and it didn’t mean much to the last-place Bruins. But the Devils were in a battle for the top spot in a tight Atlantic, and this win ended up making the difference between them finishing first and third.

Notoriety: 4.5/10. Thomas would do this every now and then — this 80-foot overtime winner against the Caps results in one of the great Losing Goalie Sprints of all time. But on the list of things Tim Thomas is notorious for, I’m not sure this goal cracks the top 10.

Overall: 6.8/10. Apparently, NHL goalies on bad teams have a real problem staying focused during games in March. Doesn’t anyone give up terrible goals on opening night anymore? Oh, wait …

>> Read the full post on Grantland

The not-supposed-to Stanley Cup champions

The Kings will parade the Stanley Cup through Los Angeles today, after earning the title by beating the Rangers on Friday night. You’ve seen the highlight by now — defenseman Alec Martinez jumping into the rush, then burying a rebound to end the game and make the Kings the first team in 34 years to win the Cup in overtime on their home ice. The goal ended the series in five remarkably close games, marking the third time in the final that the Kings beat New York in sudden death.

The win didn’t come as much of a surprise; just two years removed from a championship in 2012, the Kings weren’t exactly a long-shot pick heading into this year’s postseason, and by the time they reached the final they’d established themselves as the favorite.

But while the end result was predictable, the path the Kings followed to get there was not. In fact, the team spent much of the season defying conventional wisdom about how championship teams are supposed to be built. And in doing so, the Los Angeles Kings became the not-supposed-to Stanley Cup champs.

You’re not supposed to come back from down 3-0 in a series. Let’s start there, because it’s where the Kings themselves started, almost eight weeks ago. They opened the playoffs against the San Jose Sharks, a regular-season powerhouse who’d finished 11 points ahead of them in the standings. The Sharks won the first two games in San Jose, pummeling the Kings by scores of 6-3 and 7-2, and then took Game 3 in Los Angeles on a Patrick Marleau overtime winner that should have ended the Kings’ run before it ever really began.

Here’s one of those dirty little secrets of playoff hockey: When a series gets to 3-0, we all close the book. It’s over. We can’t say that out loud, because hey, anything can happen, right? Well, no, it’s can’t, we think to ourselves, and history has shown that we’re almost always right. When the horn sounds on Game 3 and it’s the same team celebrating for the third time in a row, we lift up the losing team by the scruff of its neck and gently place it into a pile labeled “Done.”

But the Kings crawled out of the pile and kept on, staving off elimination with a Game 4 win. There was talk last week of players later telling people that they left the ice after that game already knowing they had the series won, and Drew Doughty came right out said that they could see the panic in the Sharks players’ eyes. There’s probably more than a little bit of revisionist history going on here, but you know what they say about the winners and the history books.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Dispatches from a Cup Final

New York, New York. The city so nice, they played here twice.

Wait, I may have gotten that line wrong. Which would be fitting, given that so many of us got much of this Stanley Cup final wrong too. Like most, I picked the Kings to win, but I figured it would be a long series in which L.A. controlled the play but New York held on thanks to a pronounced goaltending edge. Instead, the Rangers went into last night having been every bit as good or better than the Kings for long stretches, but on the verge of being swept anyway thanks largely to Jonathan Quick’s brilliance.

In last night’s Game 4, the script finally held. The Kings were dominant, coming at the Rangers in waves and eventually outshooting them 41-19. But this time it was Henrik Lundqvist who slammed the door, keeping the Rangers alive.

And because of that, we’re headed back to L.A. for Game 5 Friday night. If the Kings win, they lift the Cup on home ice. If they lose, what seemed like a sure thing this time yesterday suddenly gets really, really interesting.

I spent the week in New York, covering Games 3 and 4 and all the talk in between. Here are 10 quasi-related dispatches from the City That Never Sweeps.

1. It’s Better to Be Lucky Than Good

Most playoff series end up being defined by a theme, and this one was shaping up as a battle between two contenders. In one corner: puck luck, specifically the Rangers’ almost total lack of it when it mattered. In the other: the dreaded two-goal lead and the Kings’ continuing ability to overcome it.

Last night, both themes got flipped. The Rangers jumped out to a 2-0 lead for the third time in the series, thanks to a nifty first-period deflection by Benoit Pouliot and a Martin St. Louis rebound goal in the second. That led to lots of cracks about the Kings having them right where they wanted them, and Rangers fans weren’t laughing when Dustin Brown cut the lead to one on a short-handed breakaway.

But this time the lead held. And it held in part thanks to an almost extraordinary sequence late in the third that saw a puck squeeze by Lundqvist only to die in a pile of ice shavings on the goal line. Derek Stepan had the presence of mind to swat the puck away with his hand without covering it,¹ and the Rangers survived. It echoed a similar play in the first, in which Jeff Carter somehow couldn’t get a stick on another goal-line puck.

After the game, Kings captain Dustin Brown didn’t want to talk about bad luck. “You make your own bounces this time of year,” he told us. And then he repeated himself, in slightly different words, when asked about it again. New reporters would arrive and ask yet again, and by the third or fourth time through the same question, he seemed almost pained.

Rangers coach Alain Vigneault, not surprisingly, was in a somewhat better mood when the topic came up. “I’ve been in the game a long time to know that sometimes the hockey gods are there,” he said. “They were there tonight.”

2. The Series of Girardi’s Discontent

The luck didn’t all go the Rangers’ way. Brown’s breakaway came after Dan Girardi’s stick decided that a harmless-looking offensive zone pass attempt would be a good time to explode. Brown picked up the puck and skated in alone, beating Lundqvist on a slick move that left the Rangers goalie tumbling backward into his own net.

It was just the latest forgettable moment in what has become a brutal series for Girardi, who’s usually a dependable defensive presence. His fanned clearing attempt led to Justin Williams’s overtime winner in Game 1, and he’s spent most of the series looking slow, indecisive, and vulnerable, to the extent that you start to wonder if he’s hurt. None of that has gone unnoticed by Rangers fans, who spent much of the game politely encouraging him to play better.

Part of me was relieved to see Girardi avoid wearing the goat horns in another loss. The other part shudders to think what the hockey gods have in store for him tomorrow.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

2014 Stanley Cup Preview

The Kings and Rangers drop the puck in Los Angeles tonight to open the Stanley Cup final. The Kings are looking for their second title in three years, and the oddsmakers have made them the favorites. That’s no surprise — we’ve spent most of the year talking about how much stronger the Western Conference has looked, and the Kings have already beaten three excellent teams to get here.

But while the Rangers may have had the easier path to the final, they’re a dangerous team to dismiss. After a rocky first half, they’ve come together nicely under a new coach, and they’re riding the most dangerous weapon in playoff hockey: a hot goaltender.

So are the Kings really better? And if so, by how much? To find out, let’s have a look at who owns the edge in 10 key categories, along with our official Stanley Cup prediction.

Goaltending

Rangers: We might as well get this category out of the way first, since it’s going to be the big story. Goaltending is always the most-dissected factor in any playoff series, and it’s hard to remember a final in which the matchup has seemed as crucial as this one.

Henrik Lundqvist is the most important player in the series, and no individual performance will go further in deciding who comes away with the Cup. The math is fairly simple: No team does a better job of controlling possession and winning the shot battle than the Kings, and if that continues, the only way the Rangers can win is if their goaltender outplays the other guy.

Luckily, that’s essentially what Lundqvist has been doing for the last six weeks, and it’s why the Rangers are here. He hasn’t been unbeatable — he’s been pulled twice, including as recently as Game 5 against the Canadiens. But he’s been remarkably consistent, giving up two goals or fewer in 15 of his 20 starts. And when he’s playing well, he exudes the sort of “can’t beat this guy” vibe that can get teams to change their style, forcing extra passes and waiting for the perfect shot.

A skeptic might point out that in Ray Emery, Steve Mason, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Dustin Tokarski, Lundqvist hasn’t had to outplay an elite goaltender yet. Against the Kings, he will. Maybe.

Kings: Jonathan Quick remains one of the most divisive players in hockey. Where some see a superstar who has the ability to elevate his game at crucial moments (and has a Cup ring to prove it), others see a goaltender who’s been merely average over the course of his career while playing on a great defensive team. Some see a stunning history of highlight reel saves; others see a guy who’s often left diving across the net in desperation after overplaying the puck. Some see a goalie who could outplay Lundqvist; others see one who struggled just to stay even with Corey Crawford.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, although it’s worth pointing out that Quick isn’t exactly coming into the final on a hot streak, having given up 13 goals over the Kings’ last three games. But he did earn his ring in 2012 by beating a future Hall of Famer in Martin Brodeur, so it’s not like the Lundqvist matchup is going to intimidate him. And the Kings probably don’t need him to win the head-to-head matchup — a draw would suit them just fine.

Edge: A big edge to the Rangers. Goaltending is notoriously difficult to predict, and anything can happen in a short series. Quick could absolutely outplay Lundqvist, and if he does, the Kings should win the series easily. But if not, the Rangers have a real shot at the Cup, and Lundqvist would be a sure thing for the Conn Smythe.

Defense

Kings: Drew Doughty is probably the league’s best young defenseman, and you could make a decent argument for him being the league’s best, period.¹ The rest of the blue line is also young, with Slava Voynov (24) and Doughty’s partner, Jake Muzzin (25), both logging big minutes, while dependable third-pairing guy Alec Martinez (26) recently added Game 7 OT winners to his skill set. Those four are supported by veterans Willie Mitchell and Matt Greene, while Robyn Regehr could return from injury later in the series.

Rangers: Like L.A., New York’s blue line is young and talented. The oldest defenseman on the roster is Dan Girardi, which doesn’t seem right because he has never seemed that old.² His partner, Ryan McDonagh, has been one of the breakout stars of the playoffs, and is tied for the team lead in scoring after lighting up the Canadiens. The Marc Staal–Anton Stralman pairing doesn’t get much attention but has been very solid. Kevin Klein and John Moore make up the third pairing, or at least they will once Moore returns from suspension after Game 1.

Edge: The Kings, although not by as much as you might think.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

How long will the western reign of the Kings and Blackhawks last?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: The Los Angeles Kings and Chicago Blackhawks are locked in a battle for Western Conference supremacy, with the winner heading on to play for the Stanley Cup.

Oh, right — you have heard that one, because this year’s Western Conference final is a repeat of last year’s matchup. It’s also L.A.’s third straight trip to the final four, and Chicago’s fourth in six years. The two teams have combined to win the last two Stanley Cups, and three of the last four. And with all due respect to the Rangers and the Habs, the winner of this year’s series will likely be a solid favorite to take home the championship yet again next year.

There sure seems to be a pattern developing here — a two-headed Western monster that isn’t leaving much room for other contenders. That’s not good news for teams like the Blues, Sharks, and Ducks, who’d like to think of themselves as having legitimate Cup chances. And it’s especially rough on teams like the Avs, Wild, and Stars, who seem to be on the verge of breaking into that group. As for teams like the Oilers, Flames, and Predators — well, they probably feel like they should just give up now.

But hold on. After all, this is the NHL, where fortunes can change quickly. All hockey fans need to do is take a look at the Vancouver Canucks to see how quickly an elite team can crumble. If you’re a fan of a Western Conference team, maybe there’s still hope.

So let’s take a deeper look at how the Hawks and Kings got here, and whether we can find any signs that they’re on the verge of letting somebody else have a chance any time soon.

The Talent

Let’s start with the easy one: Both of these teams have a ton of really, really good players. I know, that’s not exactly breaking news. But the Kings and Blackhawks aren’t just stacked with talent; they’re stacked with talent in remarkably similar ways.

Both teams are built around a top two-way center, with Chicago captain Jonathan Toews getting some recent “best player in hockey” talk and L.A.’s Anze Kopitar not far behind. Both players are surrounded by a very good top six, with the Kings boasting big names like Jeff Carter, Marian Gaborik, and Mike Richards, while the Hawks can send out an even better trio in Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, and Marian Hossa.

Both teams feature a stud defenseman anchoring the blue line (Chicago’s Duncan Keith and L.A.’s Drew Doughty), both have a very good no. 2 defenseman who could be a top guy on many teams (Brent Seabrook and Slava Voynov, respectively), and both supplement that top pairing with a solid complement of supporting pieces.

Then there’s goaltending. In Corey Crawford and Jonathan Quick, each team has a solid goalie who seems to elevate his game in the playoffs. We’ll leave that “seems to” in there since there’s always the risk that playoff sample sizes can be misleading — but both guys have been excellent again this year, and it’s fair to say both teams are very comfortable with their goaltending when the games start to matter.

So, yeah, both teams have deep rosters featuring plenty of great players. After all, that’s what you’d expect from a pair of Stanley Cup contenders. But if you’re a Western Conference team hoping the Kings and Hawks will come back to the pack over the next few years, the depressing parts come next.

The Salary Cap

The NHL has been a salary cap league since 2005, and we’ve become used to seeing top teams feel the strain of financial pressure within a few years. The best teams end up overspending on their elite talent, the supporting guys have to seek their fortunes elsewhere, and the resulting lack of depth brings the top team back to the pack. Call it the Pittsburgh Model.¹

And in fact we’ve already seen that scenario play out with one of these teams. When the Blackhawks won the Cup in 2010, they were forced to part ways with a big chunk of their roster, including good players like starting goalie Antti Niemi, defenseman Dustin Byfuglien, and forward Andrew Ladd. It was exactly the sort of enforced parity that hockey fans had been promised under a cap system.

And all of that kept the Blackhawks from the ranks of the elite teams for … two whole years. They’d win another Cup by 2013, and now they’re on the verge of yet another. And looking ahead, they’re not exactly in bad shape for next year and beyond.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Playoff goalie stock watch

At times, the NHL playoffs can feel like they’re all about the goaltenders. It’s the most highly visible position in the sport, and in a short series where an entire season can come down to one play, the goalies are often the first to get the credit, and always the first to get the blame.

One guy stands on his head and steals a game. Another gives up a bad goal and loses his job. And then someone else has 20,000 fans booing him, right up until he makes a game-saving stop and everyone goes back to pretending they loved him all along. Sometimes, if a series goes long enough, one goalie gets to be all three of those guys.

It can be hard to keep track of it all. So with the second round almost over, this seemed like a good time to take stock of the market and check in with the goalies who’ve played key roles in this year’s postseason.

Stock Rising: Carey Price, Montreal Canadiens

Price had the best season of his career, which was good. He was the starter on gold medal–winning Team Canada in Sochi, which was better. But now that he’s led the Canadiens into the Eastern Conference finals, vanquishing the heavily favored Bruins along the way, he may be approaching legend status. He’s not there yet — this is Montreal, after all, where you either win the Cup or apologize to everyone for wasting their time. But if Price keeps generating stats like this one, it’s hard to bet against him.

The almost creepily stoic Price was good against the Lightning and great against the Bruins. In between, he managed to work in an adorable dog-rescue story. Can he keep it going? I wouldn’t put it past him. Then again, these days nobody is putting anything past him.¹

Holding Steady: Jonathan Quick, Los Angeles Kings

Quick’s reputation has always been tied directly to his playoff performance, since his career regular-season numbers are only a little better than average. But it’s his postseason play that has earned him his elite status (and massive contract). He was unbeatable during the Kings’ 2012 Cup run, and almost as good during last year’s trip to the conference finals.

He hasn’t managed to perform the same magic this year, and that’s a big part of the reason the Kings are facing a Game 7 against Anaheim on Friday night. He looked like he was back in beast mode during a six-game win streak that eliminated the Sharks and put the Ducks in a 2-0 hole, but returned to earth while Anaheim clawed back.

If the Kings lose Friday, Quick’s postseason will go down as a disappointment. If they win, his stature as one of the league’s best big-game goalies will be set to grow yet again.

Stock Rising: Corey Crawford, Chicago Blackhawks

Bruce Kluckhohn/NHLI via Getty Images

Like Quick, Crawford has his share of doubters based on his regular-season numbers. And his postseason totals hadn’t been especially impressive, either, right up until he led the Blackhawks to last year’s Stanley Cup. That was enough to earn him a big contract extension, one that some pointed to as a possible overpay based on one random hot streak.

Well, make it two random hot streaks, because Crawford’s been fantastic so far this postseason. His Game 3 shutout against the Blues helped turn that series around, and he went into lockdown mode on Tuesday to eliminate the Wild. His .931 save percentage and 1.97 GAA are among the league leaders, and he’s doing it with the type of saves that leave opponents making adorably sad faces.

It’s been more than two decades since a starting goalie won back-to-back Cups.² Crawford is halfway there.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

What went wrong? Excuses from the NHL's losers

It's called Therriening. It's just like Tebowing,
except for the part where you have a prayer.

The first round of the playoffs is finally over, which means we're down to eight teams left standing. Those teams deserve a round of applause, and they'll get it… somewhere else. Because as long-time readers know, the end of the first round also means it's time for our annual tribute to the 22 teams whose seasons ended without even winning a single series.

Yes, the losers. The also-rans. The teams that, if we're being honest, basically wasted everyone's time by even bothering to show up this year.

Luckily, every loser has an excuse, and these 22 teams are no exception. So while everyone else is focused on the eight remaining teams, here's a look back at what went wrong for the rest of the league.

Anaheim Ducks - Over the last few days, every time Bruce Boudreau started a team meeting by shouting "Let's come up with a plan for finishing off those Wings!" we'd all sit there in the dark for an hour before realizing he'd just gone to lunch.

Montreal Canadiens - Should probably have let Carey Price do the triple-low-five in the playoffs against the Senators, since it would have been nice to see his glove hand actually make contact with something every now and then.

New York Islanders - When coaches urged the team to go out and match the Penguins in every area of the game during their first round series, in hindsight they probably should have made a point to exclude "terrible goaltending".

New Jersey Devils - Never got over the loss of that 29th overall first round pick we forfeited last year, we assume, because man it would have been completely ridiculous for us not to.

Read the rest of this post...

Grantland: The 10 Commandments of NHL Shootouts

Just when we thought we’d seen it all in NHL shootout action, Alex Burrows proved us wrong. Plenty of players have used the ol’ spinorama in a shootout. But none of them ever came up with that whole “ignore the puck entirely when you do it” angle that Burrows broke out Monday:

Presumably, Burrows was hoping Kings goalie Jonathan Quick would be so mesmerized by his moves that he’d vacate the net entirely. Quick refused to bite, unlike some people we could mention.

So yes, the move was a disaster. (And be sure to check out this fantastic frame-by-frame breakdown of Burrows watching the replay.) But in a sense, you can understand what happened here. During regulation play, a breakaway is almost by definition a surprise play that develops in an instant. There’s a smart breakout pass or a great individual effort or a bad turnover, and suddenly someone’s in all alone. At most, that player gets a few seconds to decide what to do. Instinct takes over.

But when the actual hockey game is over and the convoluted individual skills competition starts, players suddenly have time to think about what they should do. And in some cases, as Burrows showed us, they can use that time to over-think things.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. By following just a few simple rules, players could avoid becoming the next Alex Burrows. All they need to do is know their history, learn from the mistakes of others, and observe the 10 Commandments of NHL Shootouts.

>> Read the full post at Grantland

2013 NHL Season Preview - Western Conference

"Uh, guys, somebody better call Fehr,
I don't think he's going to let go.

Today we continue our pre-season tour through the NHL's 30 teams. Yesterday we went through the Eastern Conference, so today let's turn out attention to the West.

Calgary Flames - Expect Jarome Iginla's trademark smile and infectious laugh to light up the dressing room, right up until he realizes the reporters were actually serious when they asked about the Flames making the playoffs.

St. Louis Blues - Every contender has to go through adversity at some point, so it will be interesting to see how the team responds in late March when they give up their first goal.

Phoenix Coyotes - Kings' goalie Jonathan Quick earned a $58 million deal in part based on his dominating performance against Phoenix in the conference finals, so it will be interesting to see how the Coyotes react to being owned by somebody with actual money.

Los Angeles Kings - Have lost some momentum in the fickle LA market due to the lockout, but should gain it back by the season's second week when they pass the Lakers in wins.

Read the rest of this post...