Today, we’re unveiling a new fake trophy, for the best combination NHL and Olympic performance in the same season. Please ooh and awe at the shiny new Teemu Selanne Trophy.
Selanne was a relatively easy choice for the honor of having the award named after him. After all, he’s the all-time leading scorer in Olympic hockey among NHLers, and it’s not all that close. He’d also been tied for the most points in any NHL-attended tournament until Connor McDavid broke the record this year. Oh, and when Selanne wasn’t dominating best-on-best, he found time to score nearly 700 NHL goals. He was good.
With the Alex Ovechkin goals chase now down to single digits, it no longer feels like a question of if he’ll break Wayne Gretzky’s mark this season, but rather when.
We’ve already covered that question, a few weeks back. But there’s a second, and maybe even more important question that’s now looming: Will the record-breaking goal be any good?
The NHL is already worrying about this, especially the possibility that the record-breaker falls victim to their very bad and nit-picky replay review system. Other fans have been openly antagonizing the hockey gods with ideas for the most Team Chaos-worthy way the record could fall. (Personally, I’m a big fan of the “Ovechkin has an empty-net look against the Penguins but Sidney Crosby throws his stick for an automatic goal, meaning Sid's the one who actually ‘scores’ the record-breaker” scenario.)
Whatever happens, it will be a cool moment. But how cool? Just in case Ovechkin is looking for inspiration, today’s column is going to look at a dozen historic NHL goals that broke an important record. To be clear, we’re not worried about individual milestones, or important game-winners or sudden death snipes. We want the guys who broke a significant record, did it with a goal, and did it in style. Just like how we all hope Ovechkin will over the next few weeks.
We’ll use a modified version of the scale we established for the goalie goals ranking, with an emphasis on the creativity and/or skill of the goal itself. We’ll go from worst to best, which means there’s really only one pick for 12th spot…
On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- We wrap up the trade deadline
- On Taylor Hall and his NTC
- Where Nick and Mike Foligno rank among father/son combos on the same team
- Jesse Granger lets us know if any deals changed the Cup odds
- T.J. Miller speaks out; should the Canucks be playing?
- Remembering Frank McCool's record, and our picks for the best hockey names
- Listener mail, Teemu Selanne's unbreakable record 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 Athletic Hockey Show:
- Zach Parise becomes the latest star to get benched
- Was this the right time for Dean Evason to play it tough?
- We both agree on the worst benching of all-time
- The Habs fire a coach during a game; did Carey Price know?
- The timing of a potential Jack Eichel trade
- The Leafs are running away with the North
- This week in history, featuring the night that Teemu's record-breaker was only the second best highlight
- Listener questions 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)
There’s an interesting phenomenon in pop psychology called the Mandela Effect, in which a large number of people tend to remember something incorrectly. Named after South African political leader Nelson Mandela, it’s based on the widely held belief that he died in the 1980s. He didn’t, but lots of people remember that he did, which leads to an interesting case of …
Got that out of your system? Cool, because today we’re going to look at some candidates for hockey examples of the Mandela Effect. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that everyone remembers all of these moments the same way. If you remember these moments correctly, cool. You’re certainly not alone. But in my travels around the hockey fan world, I’ve run into repeated cases where memories of these moments aren’t quite right.
That’s always been kind of interesting to me. So today, let’s dig into six famous moments from hockey history that might not have actually happened the way you remember them.
When golden moments aren’t so golden
The memory: We might as well start with what’s no doubt the most famous hockey Mandela moment — the Miracle on Ice, in which an underdog Team USA beat the Soviets for the gold medal in one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports. Millions of fans around the world watched as the final seconds ticked down to Al Michaels’ legendary call of “Do you believe in miracles?” with the American players spilling off the bench to celebrate their golden moment.
The problem: That wasn’t the gold medal game.
OK, I’m guessing you knew that. This is one of those moments where so many fans had it wrong for so many years that by now, we’ve all been corrected. That happens sometimes with these things. The myth that the Miracle on Ice happened in the gold medal game was around for so long that most fans probably believed it at some point, but now we all know the truth. Any real hockey fan can tell you: Team USA still had to beat Finland in the gold medal game two nights later.
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- OK, fine, I'm on board with letting coaches challenge anything they want -- on one condition.
- Debating NHL playoff game broadcasts
- An obscure player who went to John Cena's high school
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube look back at Gary Bettman trying to present the Cup in front of a very hostile crowd
Last week, we had some fun with a few of the contenders for the title of second most important trade ever made. These weren’t just the biggest trades in terms of the talent involved on the impact on individual teams – they were the deals that actually changed the course of NHL history.
Now clearly, we could get a little silly here. Wayne Gretzky for Mario Lemieux was a huge trade that wasn’t made. Same with Rocket Richard for Gordie Howe, or Sidney Crosby for Alexander Ovechkin. Any one of those deals would have changed the course of history, but none of them happened. There’s also no evidence that any of them were ever even discussed, so it feels ridiculous to spend any time thinking about them.
But there have been other blockbuster non-trades that really did come close to happening, or at least seemed that way at the time. So today, let’s look at eight deals that didn’t happen, but that we know were at least considered. I’ll give you a legitimate source for the trade and you let me speculate wildly about the rest. Do we have a deal?
If so, we’re one step ahead of these teams. But a few of them at least came close. Here are eight contenders for the most important NHL trade that didn’t happen.
1992: Eric Lindros to the Rangers
The trade: The Quebec Nordiques send Lindros to New York in exchange for cash, draft picks and a package of players including names like Tony Amonte, Alexei Kovalev, Sergei Nemchinov, James Patrick and John Vanbiesbrouck.
The source: There’s some question over the specific names involved in the deal; for example, Mike Richter occasionally shows up instead of Vanbiesbrouck. But we know the Rangers and Nordiques had a deal of some sort, because it was at the center of the arbitration case that transfixed the hockey world during that 1992 offseason.
Why it didn’t happen: Blame Larry Bertuzzi. The NHL arbitrator ruled that the Nordiques had made their deal with the Flyers first and would have to abide by it.
But what if it did?: If Bertuzzi sends Lindros to New York – which is what most observers had expected at the time – then we change the next decade or more of history for at least three franchises. The Flyers don’t get Lindros, but they also don’t dismantle their team to do it, and they hold onto the rights to Peter Forsberg. The Rangers land the biggest prospect in NHL history, but might not have enough depth left over to win the Stanley Cup in 1994. And without Forsberg turning into one of the best two-way centers ever, the Nordiques/Avalanche might not win it all in 1996 and 2001.
As for Lindros himself, he’d have had the chance to start his career while playing behind and learning from the player he was most often compared to, Mark Messier. And maybe he avoids all the off-ice battles that defined his time in Philadelphia.
1962: Frank Mahovlich to Chicago
The trade: Maybe “trade” isn’t the right word. This one was a sale. Specifically, the deal would have seen the Maple Leafs send Mahovlich to the ‘Hawks in exchange for $1 million.
The source: This one was splashed all over the front page of sports sections around North America in the days after the deal, given that the two teams had agreed on it and word leaked out to reporters. The story has since been repeated often; here’s a detailed look back from NHL.com.
Why it didn’t happen: The deal was struck between Leafs co-owner Harold Ballard and ‘Hawks owner James Norris during a late-night meeting in which they were, in the words of immortal Toronto sportswriter Milt Dunnell, “fortified by the gargle.” In other words, they were both hammered, and that led to some second thoughts on the Leafs side, with Stafford Smythe claiming that “we never rolled a drunk yet and we don’t have to start now.”
That noble high-road stance lasted for all of a few days, at which point the Leafs realized that there was a million dollars on the line. They tried to rekindle the deal, but by that point Norris’ brother Bruce had talked him out of it.
But what if it did?: Mahovlich and Bobby Hull were the two best left wingers of the era, and this trade would have put them both on the same team. If the ‘Hawks didn’t go bankrupt from the payout, they almost certainly would have challenged for another Cup or two over the decade to come. And the Leafs may not have won the three more Cups they’d capture with Mahovlich, including that famous 1967 win.
But the trade’s impact would have been even bigger, not just in the NHL but throughout the sports world. The $1 million price tag wasn’t far off from what some teams made in ticket sales in a year, and would have been unprecedented for a single player – as Stan Fischler put it a few years ago, imagine Sidney Crosby being sold for $95 million today. The sale would have redefined how professional athletes were viewed, and would’ve probably made it much tougher for owners to hold down salaries on what would now be million-dollar assets.
It’s been a weird year in Edmonton. The Oilers came in with high hopes, struggled early, fired their coach, seemed to rebound and lately have struggled again. There are calls for Peter Chiarelli to be fired, and it’s widely assumed that he will be if the team misses the playoffs, if not sooner. And as you might expect, there’s been all sorts of speculation about what moves he might be willing to make to turn things around.
Among all the rumors, one name keeps coming up: 20-year-old winger Jesse Puljujarvi. On one hand, that’s surprising, since Puljujarvi is less than three years removed from being the fourth-overall pick in the 2016 draft. Then again, he’s had a disappointing year, and his lackluster career offensive totals mean he’s getting dangerously close to having the “bust” label slapped on him.
Still, would it really make sense for the Oilers to trade a young player so quickly after spending a top-five pick on him? Does that kind of move ever work out?
Let’s crack open the history books and find out.
We’re going to go looking for examples of teams making trades like the rumored Puljujarvi deal, and see what we can learn from the results. We’ll start our search at the onset of the entry draft era (when the league lowered the eligibility age to 18), meaning we’re going back to 1979 and have exactly 40 drafts to work with. We want to find players who fit these criteria:
They were taken with one of the draft’s first five picks.
They made it to the NHL with the team that drafted them. Players who were traded before appearing in the NHL don’t count, because we want cases where the player’s NHL coach and GM got to watch them up close before deciding to move on from them. Sorry, Eric Lindros.
They were traded before finishing their third NHL season. Note that that doesn’t necessarily mean it was within three years of their draft year, since some players start in the minors or in Europe. But we’re looking for players who were given fewer than three full NHL seasons to establish themselves before their team gave up and dealt them.
Note that the last point is important – we’re looking for players who were traded before finishing their third NHL season. If you expand the criteria to include players who are traded immediately after completing their third season, you start to see some bigger names show up, including Ed Olczyk, Dany Heatley, James van Riemsdyk, Jonathan Drouin, Tyler Seguin and Phil Kessel. That’s our first interesting takeaway. Three years seems to be a tipping point of sorts for NHL GMs; once you’ve put in three full seasons, they get more likely to pull the chute and move you. And yes, those last two players were both traded away by Chiarelli. That could offer a hint about how the Puljujarvi situation plays out.
But let’s assume that the rumor mill is right, and that the Oilers really are thinking about moving Puljujarvi right now, before he’s spent three seasons in the NHL, despite recently spending a top-five draft pick on him. How rare would that be?
Rare, as it turns out. But maybe not as rare as you might think.
By my count, there are 26 players in the entry draft era that meet our criteria. We’re dealing with 40 years of drafts, so we’ve got a pool of 200 players here. Of those, 13 percent were moved within three years, or a little more than one every two years. I don’t know about you, but that’s a higher percentage than I would have expected. Maybe the Oilers aren’t crazy to be considering this.
But there are a couple of important qualifiers to put on that 26 number. The first is that these sorts of moves have become significantly rarer in the salary cap era, with only three of our trades involving players drafted after 2004. That’s 14 drafts involving 70 top-five picks, so our cap era percentage plunges down to four percent.
The second thing to keep in mind is that the trades on our list came out of a variety of different circumstances, not all of which have much to do with what Puljujarvi and the Oilers are facing right now. In order to find any meaning in the history of these sorts of moves, it’s probably helpful to divide them up into a few categories. So let’s do that.
Category 1: The mega-blockbusters
Our first category is one we don’t see much of anymore: The old school blockbuster trade, in which a surefire Hall of Fame superstar is traded in their prime. These deals used to happen every few years, but almost never do in the cap era. (That’s partly because players used to be able to force them by holding out, which doesn’t happen anymore.)
But when these deals did happen, the asking price would often involve one or more players who’d recently been high picks. Those players weren’t busts. In fact, it was the opposite – they were highly regarded prospects that a team insisted on receiving in return for a star. You’ve got to give something to get something, after all.
I’ve got four trades in this category, including the most famous one of all: The 1988 deal that sent Wayne Gretzky from the Oilers to the Kings in exchange for a package built around cash, draft picks, more cash, and 1986 second-overall pick Jimmy Carson. At the time, Carson was considered one of the best young players in the game, having just scored 55 goals as a 19-year-old. He only lasted one full year in Edmonton, scoring 100 points, and never really lived up to his early hype; he bounced around three more teams and was out of the league by 1996. But at the time, he was an established stud.
A year before the Gretzky deal, the Oilers traded another certified superstar when they sent an unhappy Paul Coffey to Pittsburgh in 1987 for a package that included a pair of players who meet our criteria: 1985 second-overall pick Craig Simpson and 1987 fifth-overall pick Chris Joseph. Joseph had just been drafted and had only played 17 NHL games, while Simpson was off to a great start in his third season. Simpson would become the first player to score 50 goals while being traded midway through the season, although that turned out to be a career high and injuries slowed his production. Joseph turned into a journeyman defenseman who played for seven teams in 14 years.
The other two deals involve two of the most productive stars of the 1990s. The Flyers included 1990 fourth-overall pick Mike Ricci in the massive package they put together to pry Eric Lindros out of Quebec in 1992. And the Ducks included 1994 second-overall pick Oleg Tverdovsky and 1995 fourth-overall pick Chad Kilger in their 1996 deal for Winnipeg’s Teemu Selanne. All three of those players had productive NHL careers, and Ricci and Tverdovsky were borderline stars. But it’s fair to say that neither the Ducks or Flyers really regret giving them up in those deals. (Peter Forsberg would be another question, but he was a sixth-overall pick and hadn’t yet played in the NHL when the Flyers included him in the Lindros trade.)
These were all blockbuster trades, and it’s fun to look back at them. But unless Peter Chiarelli is about to pull off a miracle that nobody sees coming, it’s probably safe to assume that any Puljujarvi trade isn’t going to look like this. So on to the next section…
With eight teams left in the NHL playoffs, it’s still too early to start worrying about potential final matchups or Conn Smythe favourites. But it’s not too soon to start thinking ahead to one of the league’s best annual stories: the Old Guy Without a Cup.
Rallying behind the Old Guy Without a Cup (a.k.a. the OGWAC) is one of hockey’s great playoff traditions. Ray Bourque is probably the greatest OGWAC of all-time, finally capturing his first Stanley Cup at the age of 40 in what would turn out to be the last game of his career. Lanny McDonald’s 1989 championship was another classic OGWAC story, as was Teemu Selanne’s in 2007.
Last year it was Ron Hainsey, making his playoff debut as a 36-year-old. Like many OGWACs, Hainsey also received the honour of the first Cup handoff. There’s a good chance that this year’s playoffs end with a similar scene, since there are potential Old Guy stories lurking on almost every team left standing. But which one is the best?
Let’s define an “old guy” as someone who’s at least 35 or has been in the league for the entire salary-cap era. We’re also looking for players with a chance to actually be in the lineup for that Cup handoff, so we want guys who have either played in this year’s post-season or are likely to suit up soon.
That narrows our field a bit, but we’ve still got a decent group to choose from in this year’s OGWAC crop. Here are the 10 best remaining candidates, counting down to the best possible story.
We’ll call this one a tie so we can squeeze both Sharks into our top 10. Maybe that’s a little cheap, but both guys deserve a spot so here we are.
Ward didn’t become a full-time NHLer until he was 27, so even though he’s only been in the league for a decade he’s older than you probably think at 37. He’s had a few second-round exits over the years, and was part of the Sharks’ run to the final in 2016, so he’s had a taste. And his contract is up this year, meaning there’s no guarantee he gets another chance.
Meanwhile, Martin shows up on this list every year, and every year I have to double-check that he actually belongs here. Didn’t he win at least one Cup with the Devils or Penguins somewhere along the way?
Nope, although he just missed a few times — he debuted in New Jersey a season after their 2003 Cup win, then arrived a year after Pittsburgh’s 2009 title and left a year before they won again in 2016. To make matters worse, he had a front row seat to that last one, since it came against the Sharks.
Maybe he’s due. We also can’t rule out the possibility that he may be cursed.
Hartnell’s 36 years old and has been in the league since 2000, so he certainly fits the OGWAC profile. He’s also had a near-miss, coming within two wins of a Cup with the 2010 Flyers, and he’s another guy whose contract is expiring after this season, so this might well be his very last shot.
All that said, two things keep Hartnell from ranking higher on our list. First, the Predators are among this year’s deepest OGWAC teams, with two more strong candidates to consider. And Hartnell isn’t playing much so far in this year’s playoffs, appearing in just a single game so far, so there’s a good chance he wouldn’t even be in the lineup for a Predators’ Cup win.
Coburn barely sneaks onto our list by virtue of having played a few games during the 2005-06 season. But the Lightning are young enough that they don’t offer us much in the way of candidates – Dan Girardi and Ryan Callahan are both older than Coburn but didn’t enter the NHL until a year later, and our only other option is third-string goalie Peter Budaj.
With less than three weeks left in the season, most of the attention is focused on the playoff races. And rightly so, as teams battle it out down to the wire to see who’ll earn a spot and how the matchups will sort out.
But with all due respect to those races, the best of the bunch is for the Rocket Richard Trophy. The goal-scoring title is shaping up as a potential head-to-head fight to the finish between Alex Ovechkin and Patrik Laine, a classic contest between the old guard and the next generation. Laine is the teenaged whiz kid hungry to claim the title in just his second season, while Ovechkin represents the grizzled veteran who isn’t ready to give it up. Mix in Malkin, Eric Staal, the stunning underdog story of William Karlsson and a few others, and this one could come down to the wire. If so, it may be remembered as one of the greatest Rocket Richard races we’ve ever seen.
So today, let’s put together that list, if only to give Laine and Ovechkin something to aim for. The Rocket Richard Trophy has been around since the 1998–99 season, giving us 18 races to work with. Some of those were duds; even in the dead-puck era, the award has been won by a margin of 10 goals or more a half-dozen times. We’ll narrow it down to a top 10, counting our way down to the best race we’ve seen… at least until this year’s.
The race: One year after running away with the 2000 title by 14 goals, Pavel Bure had his sights set on a second straight win. It seemed like he’d get it by a similar margin, but a late-season slump saw him finish with just one goal in his final six. That opened the door for two veteran stars who finished hot: Jaromir Jagr, who scored nine in his last six games, and Joe Sakic, who had eight in his last four.
The winner: Bure had built such a big lead that the strong finishes only managed to make the gap respectable. Bure took home the crown with 59 goals, easily topping Sakic (54) and Jagr (52).
The legacy: As races go, it wasn’t all that dramatic. But the fact that it featured three first-ballot Hall-of-Famers earns it a spot in our top 10, narrowly beating out Corey Perry‘s win in the similarly lopsided 2011 race.
The race: The Rocket Richard didn’t even exist when the season began; it was only unveiled that January. Still, it looked like Teemu Selanne would capture the inaugural trophy relatively easily when he hit the 45-goal mark with eight games to play. But he went cold down the stretch, opening the door for a field that included Jagr, Alexie Yashin, Tony Amonte and John Leclair to at least make things interesting.
The winner: Jagr and Amonte made a late push, with each scoring four times in their final three games to hit the 44-goal mark. But Selanne coasted home to the crown, finishing the year with 47.
The legacy: The race was just OK, and is probably best remembered just for being the first for the new trophy. Still, given the increased profile that came with attaching Richard’s name to the goal-scoring race, Selanne felt like a worthy winner. An odd fact: The 47 goals made this only the fifth-highest goal-scoring season of his career, but it was the only time he ended up alone in top spot on the leaderboard.
The race: It came down to a two-horse race, with Alex Ovechkin gunning for his fourth straight crown while Patrick Kane looked for his first.
The winner: Kane finished the season with a two-goal performance, but Ovechkin topped him with a hat trick. That gave him the title by a four-goal cushion, and even that makes it sound closer than it really was — Kane needed seven goals in his last five to even get that close, and nobody else came within nine of Ovechkin.
The legacy: In terms of star power, this race was right up there; Kane took home the Hart Trophy that season, and Ovechkin had already won it three times. But there wasn’t much suspense, beyond wondering whether Ovechkin would get to 50. He did, with 10 minutes to spare.
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- I have an idea for how we handle Henrik Lundqvist during the Rangers rebuild.
- The Derick Brassard trade may have changed everything and we missed it.
- An obscure player from the deadline day Stastny trade. No, the other one.
- The week's three comedy stars
- And this week's YouTube breakdown marks the 25th anniversary of Teemu Selanne's most memorable moment...
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- That Wings/Flames brawl was crazy, but man times have changed
- Your guide to the GoalDNA project
- An obscure player who likes ice hockey, ice hockey
- The week's three comedy stars
- And new Hall-of-Famer Teemu Selanne has a song for you
Most of the dust has settled on the first few days of free agency, and a handful of themes have emerged. Fiscal sanity is one, as teams mostly stayed away from the sort of long-term mega-deals that almost always turn out to be mistakes. As always, much of the focus was on veteran defensemen. And the UFAs were largely overshadowed by the extensions being signed by players like Carey Price, Marc-Edouard Vlasic and (any minute now) Connor McDavid.
And then there was the heartwarming storyline that emerged on day one: homecomings. Not only did players like Joe Thornton and T.J. Oshie stay with their current teams, but plenty of guys returned to franchise they'd previously starred with. That list included names like Justin Williams, Mike Cammalleri, Scott Hartnell and Patrick Sharp.
Reunite! Saad, Sharp (CHI); Hartnell, Lindback (NSH); Dadonov (FLA); Pominville, Johnson (BUF); Cammalleri (LA); Moore (TOR); Williams (CAR)
Bringing back a familiar face makes for a nice storyline, and it's almost always an easy sell for fans. But the NHL has a long history of players using free agency to return to a former team, and results have been mixed. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a reminder that breakups happen for a reason.
So today, let's look back at five Hall of Fame stars who chose to return to their former team via free agency, and how those deals worked out for both sides.
Mark Messier, Rangers
The exit: After winning the Stanley Cup with the Rangers in 1994, you’d think that Messier would have been able to write his own ticket in New York. But his relationship with the Rangers' front office was always contentious, including a post-Cup holdout in 1994 that reportedly had the team thinking about trading him.
He ended up sticking around, but when free agency arrived in 1997, Messier kept his options open. Despite being widely expected to return to New York, he eventually bolted for the Canucks.
The return: It's fair to say that the Messier era did not go well in Vancouver; the whole thing was a PR disaster form Day 1, with the Rangers' great seeming to do everything short of tear the "C" off Trevor Linden's jersey and shove him onto an ice floe. By the time Messier had been bought out after three disappointing seasons, he stood as one of the most hated Canucks ever.
Meanwhile, the Rangers hadn't made the playoffs since Messier's exit. There wasn't much suspense over where he'd wind up, and he eventually signed a two-year deal, at which point he was immediately handed back the captaincy.
The result: Mixed. Messier had an impressive 67 points in his return to New York despite turning 40 during the season, and he managed to play three more seasons after that. But he never got the Rangers back to the postseason, meaning one of the greatest winners in the sport's history went his last seven seasons without appearing in a single playoff game.
On the one hand, the idea seems crazy. Even putting aside whether the Leafs should be trying to fast-track their rebuild, offer sheets almost never work — there’s only been one successful attempt since 1997. But Dellow lays out a convincing argument that this year’s Leafs are a rare case of a team that could pull it off, because they have lots of short-term cap room, an obvious hole in the roster, and draft picks that are unlikely to fall at the top of the draft.
So today, let's break out some alternate history as we look back at some of the bigger offer sheets over the years and ask: What might have happened if the team hadn't matched?
Michel Goulet, 1991
The offer sheet was still a relatively new weapon in 1991, having been in play for just five years, and at that point one had never actually been matched by the player's original team. The Blues had pulled off what still stands as the most successful offer sheet ever in 1990, when they'd pried Scott Stevens away from the Capitals. A year later, they decided to try again.
Their first target was Goulet, a veteran sniper coming off his first full season in Chicago. Going after Goulet served a dual purpose for the Blues, who could land a decent scorer while hurting their arch-rivals in the process. The Blues and Hawks had battled it out for the Presidents' Trophy in 1990–91, and Goulet's offer sheet continued the rivalry. St. Louis offered the veteran a four-year deal worth nearly $3 million, but Chicago matched, and the Blues had to turn elsewhere.
What if?: Goulet would play three more years and score 61 goals; decent numbers, but not enough to really change the course of history for either team. (Although he did help the Blackhawks make the final in 1992.)
But there may have been a crucial side effect of the Goulet deal. Having missed on one winger, the Blues turned their attention to a bigger offer-sheet prize: New Jersey's Brendan Shanahan. The good news is that they got him. The bad news is that it cost them far more than they imagined, when the Devils demanded Stevens as compensation. An arbitrator agreed, Stevens became a Devil (after a brief holdout) and the rest was history.
If the Blackhawks had let Goulet go to St. Louis, there's at least a decent change that the Blues never target Shanahan. And that means Stevens doesn't end up anchoring the Devils' blue line for the next dozen years.
Kevin Stevens, 1991
The Bruins and Penguins waged one of the better feuds of the early ’90s, spurred on by Cam Neely and Ulf Samuelsson. After the Pens knocked off the Bruins in the 1991 conference final, Boston decided to take the rivalry off the ice during the off-season by targeting one of the Penguins' best young players with an offer sheet.
Bruins' GM Mike Milbury gave the power winger a five-year deal reportedly worth over $1 million per season. The idea of Stevens, a local boy, playing on a line with Neely seemed irresistible. But after several days of suspense, the Penguins matched the offer.
What if?: Stevens scored 109 goals over the next two seasons and was a first-team all-star in 1992. The Penguins beat the Bruins in the conference final yet again that year, including a game in which Stevens scored four goals against his would-be team. Would the series have turned out differently if Stevens had been on the other side? It's unlikely — it was a four-game sweep — but we'll never know for sure.
Teemu Selanne, 1992
Here's a trivia question that would stump most fans: Who did Teemu Selanne sign his first NHL contract with?
Yes, despite being drafted by the Jets in 1988 and making his NHL debut in Winnipeg four years later, Selanne actually signed his first deal with Calgary, in the form of an offer sheet. The Flames gave the Finnish rookie a three-year deal worth $2.7 million, nearly double what the cash-strapped Jets were hoping to pay.
It was worth a shot, but Jets GM Mike Smith quickly matched. Any lingering bad feelings were quickly forgotten when Selanne took the league by storm with a 76-goal rookie season.
What if?: One can only imagine when Selanne could have done playing alongside Theo Fleury, Gary Roberts and Joe Nieuwendyk. At the very least, you'd have to assume the Flames wouldn't have gone a dozen years without winning a playoff round.
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- NHL GMs are lying to you, and the NBA trade deadline proved it
- Wait, is Patrik Laine chasing Teemu Selanne's team records or not?
- An obscure player who may have been the worst deadline pickup of all time
- The week's three comedy starts
- And in the YouTube section, things get ugly when a blockbuster trade between two notoriously cranky GMs falls apart.
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Do stars like Connor McDavid get enough protection from officials?
- An idea for making conditional trades a lot more fun.
- Week three of cute kids dominating the comedy stars
- An obscure player with a Christmas birthday who once got tomahawked by Teemu Selanne
- And a special holiday-themed YouTube breakdown, featuring the Islanders' infamous Santa brawl.
There’s no question that outdoor games have lost some of their luster over the years.
Once the league realized they had a hit on their hands, they started packing the schedule with outdoor games – in hindsight, probably too many. Yesterday was the 22nd time the league had gone outdoors, and the 18th since the first Winter Classic just eight years ago.
The novelty factor is all but gone, and more than a few fans were scratching their heads when they realized the league was headed outdoors again before the season was even two weeks old.
But as often seems to happen with these games, a big chunk of that cynicism fades away once the event arrives. The weekend in Winnipeg was undeniably fun, starting with a star-studded alumni game on Saturday that featured nearly all of the biggest names from the Smythe Division rivalry days, an appearance by Wayne Gretzky that may well have been his last, and a dramatic last-second winner by Teemu Selanne that was right out of a storybook.
That set a high bar for Sunday's real game.
Once things got going after a delay caused by bright sun, we were treated to a decent (if not especially exciting) 3-0 Oilers win — one that saw Cam Talbot make 31 saves on the way to his first shutout of the season.
It probably wasn't quite the sort of show the NHL was hoping for, especially given all the young talent involved in the game. But the overall spectacle of the game still worked, with a strong crowd of nearly 33,000 present and some nice shots of the stadium setup. We even got the return of the Ref Cam.
It may not have been a classic, but it all added up to an afternoon well spent.
The game will move back inside for the next two months or so, at which point we'll be treated to two outdoor games in two days (just in case anyone has gone into withdrawal).
In the meantime, let's see if we can figure out what to make of the season's first two weeks with our second crack at the power rankings.
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Road to the Cup
Here are the five teams that look like they're headed towards Stanley Cup favourite status.
5. New York Rangers (4-2-0, +6 true goals differential*) – I don't love this pick. I'm not even sure I like it. This week's top five is kind of a mess, as we'll explain below. But the Rangers have looked strong and beat the Capitals on Saturday, so sure, why not.
4. Montreal Canadiens (4-0-1, +12) – Yes, Habs fans, I know this seems too low for the only team without a regulation loss. Chalk it up as a reluctance to overreact to five games. But there's no arguing with the numbers, and the Canadiens have looked fantastic so far this year. By this time next week, there may be no choice but to move them up the list.
Free agency opens on Friday, as teams will be officially allowed to sign players on the open market, and fans around the league should be excited.
No, wait, excited isn’t the right word. What’s the one I’m looking for? Terrified. That’s the one. You should all be terrified.
That’s because, despite the occasional success story, NHL teams tend to be terrible at signing free agents. They can’t help themselves. And it rarely takes long for the initial excitement of a big signing to give way to the realization that a team has just handed out too much money for way too many years.
As we count down to Friday’s deadline, let’s take some time to look back at some cautionary examples of how quickly a big deal can go bad. Here are my picks for the five worst unrestricted free agency signings of the last two decades.
5. Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya, Colorado, 2003
The deal: The two friends (and former Ducks teammates) shopped themselves as a tandem deal, eventually signing cheap one-year contracts with the powerhouse Avalanche. How cheap? Selanne took a pay cut to $5.8 million after declining a $6.5 million option in San Jose. But that was nothing compared to Kariya, who took just $1.2 million after making $10 million the year before in Anaheim. Both players could have made much more elsewhere, but they were chasing their first Stanley Cup rings, and joining Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg and an already loaded Avalanche team seemed like the best way to do it.
Why it made sense at the time: Are you kidding? Go back and re-read those details – it was foolproof. When the deals were announced, hockey fans everywhere pretty much threw up their hands and conceded the 2004 Cup to the Avalanche.
How it ended: In what may stand as the NHL’s greatest example of a can’t miss move somehow missing, both Selanne and Kariya were busts in Colorado and the Avalanche lost in the second round. That latter part wasn’t a huge shock – while the Avs still had most of their big names from their Cup years, they’d lost Patrick Roy to retirement in the offseason, and winning a title with David Aebischer never felt like a safe bet. But the real surprises were Kariya and Selanne, neither of whom cracked 40 points. When Steve Konowalchuk is outscoring both of your sure-thing signings, it’s safe to say that something has gone terribly wrong.
4. Ville Leino, Buffalo, 2011
The deal: Coming off a career-best 53 points, the 27-year-old winger landed a six-year, $27 million deal from the Sabres.
Why it made sense at the time: After years of drifting into small market status, the Sabres had a rich new owner and were ready to spend some of Terry Pegula’s money. (They also gave Christian Ehrhoff a 10-year, $40-million deal.) Leino had just posted a career year while helping the Flyers make it to the Cup final, and it was time for the Sabres to make some noise.
How it ended: Leino was a massive bust in Buffalo; his eight goals and 25 points in year one ended up being by far his most productive season as a Sabre. He missed almost all of year two of the deal, then went the entire 2013-14 season without scoring a single goal before being mercifully bought out.
(By the way, Leino wasn’t close to the worst contract handed out during the summer of 2011. That honor would go to a deal you’re probably expecting to see on this list: Ilya Bryzgalov’s $51-million deal with the Flyers that led to a massive buyout just two years later. But that one wasn’t technically a free agency deal, since the Flyers had acquired his negotiating rights and signed the deal before he reached the open market on July 1. )
We may be days away from seeing the presentation of the Stanley Cup. It’s a scene that hockey fans know well: Gary Bettman wanders out, talks for way too long, forces the winning captain to pose awkwardly for photographs, and then finally relinquishes the trophy as the boos rain down around him.
And then, seconds later, all of that is washed away by one of the hockey world’s favourite traditions: the captain picking out a teammate to receive the first Cup handoff.
It’s a great sight. And it’s evolved into one of the highest honours that a player can receive. It typically goes to a respected veteran, often an Old Guy Without a Cup, or in many cases someone who’s had to overcome adversity to get to the moment. Depending on the circumstances, there may even be tears involved.
Hockey fans eat this stuff up. So today, we’ll relive those moments with a ranking of each and every Stanley Cup handoff dating back to 1994.
Why 1994? Because while it may seem like a longstanding tradition, the sight of a captain handing the Cup off to a teammate is relatively new one.
Before Bettman came along, it was far more common for the Cup to be accepted by the captain and his alternates together, at which point they'd quickly be mobbed by teammates, coaches and front office staff. (The Calgary Flames' 1989 win was a typical example of what things used to look like.)
That started to change with Bettman's first presentation in 1993; the Montreal Canadiens still surrounded the Cup, but captain Guy Carbonneau made a point of making sure that Denis Savard got the first touch. It wasn't until the New York Rangers’ win in 1994 that the winning captain handled the duties on his own, which quickly became the standard.
So that gives us 21 handoffs to work with, each one meaningful, and each one no doubt memorable for fans of the winning team. But some have stood the test of time more than others. So let's count them down, all the way to a shocking pick for No. 1. (Spoiler: You will not be remotely shocked.)
Who: After the Red Wings wrapped up their first Cup win in 43 years, Steve Yzerman takes an extended skate before handing the Cup to… owner Mike Ilitch?
Why: Because Yzerman knew who signs the checks, I guess.
Bonus points: Two members of the Russian Five, Igor Larianov and Slava Fetisov get the Cup next and skate with it together.
Overall score: 1.0/10. Ilitch had been the owner for 15 years, some of them tough, and I guess we can give some points for creativity here. But an owner? Thankfully, the trend did not catch on.
Why: Wesley was 37 years old and had been with the franchise for 12 years, not counting a brief stopover in Toronto that absolutely nobody remembers.
Bonus points: Wesley was once traded for three first-round draft picks, which then-Whalers GM Jim Rutherford justified by pointing out the team was terrible at drafting.
Overall score: 2.5/10. Not all that memorable. But in fairness, nothing could have lived up to the sight of Brind'Amour stealing the Cup from Bettman.
Who: Nobody had ever played longer without reaching the final than Lightning winger Dave Andreychuk, so he was the obvious choice for first handoff honors. But there was a problem: He was already the Lightning captain. So he went with the next oldest guy, Tim Taylor.
Why: Taylor was the other veteran on what was a young Lightning team.
Bonus points: We need more hockey players named after sitcom characters.
Overall score: 3.9/10. This is your semi-regular reminder that it's really weird that nobody ever talks about Andreychuk making the Hall of Fame.
Why: Guerin wasn't exactly a classic pick; he already had a Cup ring from his days in New Jersey, and he'd only been with the Penguins for a few weeks. But on a very young team, Crosby didn't have all that many options.
Bonus points: The 17-year age gap between Crosby and Guerin is a Cup handoff record that may never be broken.
Overall score: 4.2/10. Would Sergei Gonchar have been a better pick? I think he might have.
Who: The 1996 final was among the worst ever, one most fans would rather forget, so it makes sense that it's one of the few years where a video of the full Cup presentation is hard to find. This clip picks up after Bettman has made his appearance, but does capture Joe Sakic turning around to hand off to Curtis Leschyshyn.
Why: This one seems weird; Leschyshyn wasn't a veteran, or a star, or coming off any particular adversity, and at 26 I'm pretty sure he's the youngest player to ever get handoff honors. My first thought was that he just happened to be the guy standing there when Sakic turned around. But according to this forum post, Sakic was actually fulfilling a promise he'd made the night before, in recognition of a friendship dating back to their rookie season as Quebec Nordiques.
Overall score: 4.4/10. Not a bad moment, given the explanation. But it's fair to say that Sakic's next opportunity would end up being slightly more memorable.
Why: He'd only been there since the trade deadline, but the 36-year-old Handzus had undisputed OGWAC status on a Blackhawks team where most of the roster had already won in 2010.
Bonus points: "There you go big boy!" [butt slap]
Overall score: 4.5/10. Handzus had just missed a Cup in 2012, leaving the Kings a season before they won it all.
Who: The 2007 Ducks featured one of the greatest Old Guy Without a Cup stories of all-time: Teemu Selanne, who was days away from turning 37 and making his first ever appearance in the final. He was one of the league's most universally beloved players around the globe, and the NHL has prominently featured the image of a sobbing Selanne finally having his Cup moment in its marketing ever since.
Which is why it's kind of weird to look back and realize he didn't actually get first handoff honors. You might remember him getting it. I know I did. So did a few other people I asked. But he didn't. Instead, Scott Niedermayer handed off to his brother Rob.
Why: Nepotism.
OK, granted, handing the Stanley Cup to your brother is an undeniably cool moment, and it's hard to blame the Niedermayers for taking it. But Selanne would have been such a perfect choice, as evidenced by how many of us have apparently just decided to go ahead and remember it that way anyway.
Bonus points: Seriously, the number of hockey fans who remember a moment that never happened is weird, right?
Overall score: 4.8/10. Teemu Selanne getting the first handoff in 2007 is the Berenstein Bears book cover of NHL history.
Alex Ovechkin has been under the spotlight for the past week, following the premature end to the Washington Capitals’ dominant season at the hands of Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins. He’s been criticized for a lack of production at key moments and an inability to lead the Capitals to a deep playoff run, and took further heat for his decision to head to Russia right away for the World Championship.
Not everyone agrees, with plenty of voices defending Ovechkin’s track record. But the fact remains: 11 years into his NHL career, Ovechkin has racked up record-breaking numbers and plenty of individual awards, but no Stanley Cup.
So it may be worth remembering that still leaves him in pretty good company. Plenty of legendary NHLers never won it all, with names like Marcel Dionne, Gilbert Perrault and Darryl Sittler failing to earn a ring. But there have also been plenty of superstars who did get their Cup, but had to wait for it. And in some cases, they waited a lot longer than Ovechkin has.
So today, let’s offer up some hope to Ovechkin (not to mention guys like Henrik Lundqvist, Roberto Luongo, Joe Thornton and the Sedins) by remembering five legendary players who took until at least their 12th season to finally get their hands on a Stanley Cup.
Ray Bourque
The long wait: Probably the first name that came to your mind when you saw this list, Bourque’s drought lasted a stunning 21 years, during which he captured the Norris Trophy five times and was a first-team all-star 12 times. Despite being the generation’s best defenseman, he debuted in the 1970s and made it to the turn of the century without earning a ring.
Worst near-miss: The Bruins made the final twice during Bourque’s career, in 1988 and 1990. But both times, they ran into the Edmonton Oilers, and they only managed to win one game between the two series. (They also managed to become the only team in final history to be swept in five games, thanks to a Boston Garden power failure that forced the suspension of a game in 1988.)
How it finally ended: The good news for Ovechkin is that Bourque finally did get his Cup. The bad news for Caps fans is that it took a trade for it to happen. The Bruins dealt Bourque (at his request), sending him to Colorado at the trade deadline in 2000. The Avs didn’t win it all that year, but Bourque returned for one final run, and finally got his Cup in 2001, becoming the most iconic OGWAC story of all-time and leading to this moment that still makes you cry a little bit.
Dominik Hasek
The long wait: Hasek’s career was all about waiting. He didn’t make the NHL until he was 25, and didn’t become a fulltime starter until he was 28. But from there he quickly established himself as the league’s very best, winning the Vezina six times in eight years. But with the Sabres declining and a big option year payday looming, Hasek’s time in Buffalo came to an end in 2001 without a title.
How it finally ended: It’s easy to forget now, but the trade that sent Hasek to Detroit was an odd one at the time. The Red Wings already had Chris Osgood, who’d won two Cups for them. But Hasek represented a clear upgrade, so they made the move, and it paid off. They won the Cup, Hasek got his ring, and then retired. It was a storybook ending.
(Then he came back a year later, shivving Curtis Joseph and eventually teaming with a returning Osgood to win a second Cup in 2008. Look, it was Dominik Hasek, the storybook was always going to be a weird one.)
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:
