Five high-flying, exciting NHL teams of the past (that didn't end well)

Last week, I wrote about the high-powered Dallas Stars, and how hockey fans everywhere should be cheering them on. Many of you agreed, and I’m pleased to confirm that the Stars’ bandwagon is now standing-room only.

But not everyone was on board, and there were two main objections that kept coming up. The first could be summarized as “Tell me to cheer for the Dallas Star one more time and I will and burn your house to the ground,” which came pretty much exclusively from Sabres fans. Come to think of it, I can’t really argue there. That one’s on me, Buffalo.

The second objection was something along the lines of: Why bother? Offense-first teams like the Stars may be fun, the argument went, but they never win in the modern NHL. Dallas will put up gaudy numbers, sure, but when the playoffs come along they’ll eventually run into some boring defense-first team that will shut them down. That’s how it always happens.

And while that’s not entirely true – we have seen some high-skill teams win it all over the years – it does have a familiar ring to it. So today, let’s take a look back at five teams from the past two decades who tried some variation of what the Stars are doing this year, only to see it all end in heartbreak.

It will be painful, but we need to do it. We’re all Dallas Stars fans now. We might as well prepare ourselves for what’s coming.

It’s a trap: The 1994-95 Red Wings

Why they were great: The early 90’s Red Wings were one of the best offensive teams of their generation, and by 1995 they’d led the Western Conference in scoring for four straight years. But they couldn’t seem to break through in the playoffs, and were coming off two straight first round exits.

The 1995 squad was stacked with offensive talent, including future Hall-of-Famers Sergei Fedorov, Paul Coffey and Dino Ciccarelli, a young Nicklas Lidstrom, and captain Steve Yzerman, who missed half the season with an injury but returned for the playoffs. When they hit the postseason, they looked unstoppable through the first three rounds, losing just two games as they rolled into the final as a heavy favorite.

But then they ran into: The New Jersey Devils, a low-scoring collection of pluggers under the guidance of defensive mastermind Jacques Lemaire. They played the neutral zone trap and relied on blatant clutch-and-grab tactics to slow down more offensively skilled teams and the goaltending of Martin Brodeur to shut the door on the few scoring chances they did allow. The high-powered Red Wings never had a chance, held to two goals or less in every contest of a four-game sweep. The rest of the NHL realized that the trap could trump skill, and the dark cloud of the Dead Puck Era settled over the league, never to be dispelled.

Or at least, that’s the story we all seem to have agreed on over the years. The reality is a little bit more complicated. For example, those defense-first Devils actually allowed more goals during the 94-95 season than the high-flying Red Wings did. And while they didn’t score much in that year’s lockout-shortened season, they’d led the Eastern Conference in goals scored in the previous year, so it’s not like they didn’t have a few guys who could put the puck in the net.

For the most part, hockey fans haven’t let any of that get in the way of a good narrative. And it’s certainly true that the 1995 final was an example of defense beating offense. But this upset probably gets too much credit for ushering in the defensive era; it’s not like it was some sort of unstoppable juggernaut getting derailed by an expansion team.

No, that came next year…

>> Read the full post on ESPN.com

Enough is enough with the NHL's stupid "terms were not disclosed" policy

Derek Stepan’s final score was nine minutes.

That’s how long it took yesterday, from the Rangers officially announcing the star center’s new contract while pointedly declining to include the actual terms, to the moment we knew the exact dollar value involved. That just barely beats Michael Del Zotto and Alexander Semin (both of whom clocked in at an even 10), but falls well short of Brandon Saad (four) and Gustav Nyquist (the unofficial record holder, at two).

It’s become an offseason hobby for NHL fans on Twitter, one popularized by TSN analytics columnist Scott Cullen: Wait for a team to publicly announce a signing, note its refusal to actually mention the dollar value of the deal, and then see how many minutes it takes for a media insider to get the goods. So far, nobody has made it past 10.

All of which raises an obvious question: Why are NHL teams doing this? Why bother taking the time to announce news without bothering to include, you know, the actual news?

If there’s a good reason for the practice, it’s a well-kept secret. I recently asked one PR rep from an NHL team that doesn’t disclose terms about the logic behind the practice, and he admitted he wasn’t aware of any particularly good reason for the policy. A player agent offered up the theory that some teams may exclude salary info “based on a philosophical belief the information is confidential,” but quickly added that “there is no legal basis for this assumption and contract terms are readily available on the NHLPA’s public website.” As for what other benefit the teams could be hoping to achieve by leaving details out, he was also stumped.

The NHL has had a tricky history with player salaries. For years they were tightly kept secrets, as owners reasoned (correctly) that having the information made public would just drive up prices around the league. Through the ’80s and early ’90s, it was rare to hear specifics about a player’s contract. But by the late ’90s, salaries for star players were well-publicized, and fans became used to knowing exactly how much top players were signing for. That was all well and good, and it gave the fans a sense of empowerment — after all, if you’re going to scream “we pay your salary” at some underachieving third-liner, it’s nice to know what that salary is.

But the 2005 lockout changed everything. That’s when the league introduced a hard salary cap, and information about how much each player makes went from nice-to-know to downright crucial. In a pre-cap world, a bad contract could strain a team’s budget and affect how it built the rest of the roster, but it could usually be dealt with. And “bad contract” was strictly a relative term — Bobby Holik was never worth $9 million a year, but if that money was coming from the Rangers’ bottomless pit, who really cared? Once the cap was in place, every contract mattered, with small mistakes adding up into big problems and some players even ending up representing negative value.

Hockey fans understand this. The league and its teams apparently don’t, or at least wants to act that way. After becoming the only pro sports league to lose an entire season to a work stoppage, all in the name of establishing a hard cap, the NHL now wants to selectively act like that cap doesn’t exist.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

The ten most intriguing free agents left

We’re into mid-July, which means sunshine and cookouts and cold beer on the patio. It also means that, if you’re an NHL unrestricted free agent who hasn’t signed a contract yet, you’re probably screwed.

The market for UFAs dries up around the second week of July every year, with limited cap space leaguewide meaning fewer dollars available to the unfortunate leftovers still looking for work. That’s been especially true this year; the market was uncharacteristically reasonable at the start, indicating that the league’s GMs had finally realized that good teams aren’t built by throwing around millions in July.

That all paints a grim picture for the many players still available. If there’s any good news, it’s that at least a few of the remaining names present some interesting possibilities for the right team. There’s not much point trying to rank the available players in terms of best or worst; at this point, success or failure is as much about fit as anything, and one team’s best will be another team’s bust. So instead, let’s pick out a few guys who are still on the market and rank them from least to most intriguing. That’s a broad term that leaves us with plenty of room to get subjective, granted, but here are 10 names that would be worth keeping an eye on in between cold ones.

10. Christian Ehrhoff

2014-15 numbers: 49 GP, 3 G, 11 A, 14 pts; $4M cap hit

Why teams should sign him: Ehrhoff spent the first few years of his career in San Jose and Vancouver as a “so underrated he might be overrated” defenseman, topping out with an impressive 50 points as part of the Canucks’ near-Cup-winning team in 2011. That earned him a ridiculous 10-year, $40 million contract with the Sabres, one that was heavily front-loaded to keep the cap hit down. That front-loading made it a mild surprise when he was bought out last summer — the Sabres had already paid him $23.6 million for three years’ work — and his one-year deal with Pittsburgh seemed like one of the best bargains of the summer.

Why they haven’t: A disappointing season in Pittsburgh seems to have dampened any enthusiasm for Ehrhoff’s services. He missed a big chunk of the season because of injuries and wasn’t especially productive when he did play. With a surprisingly cool market and better blue-line options available, there’s been almost no buzz around Ehrhoff’s status.

What comes next: Like many players on this list, Ehrhoff will likely have to settle for a short-term deal and a pay cut. That’s fair — he just turned 33, so teams are right to be nervous about whether last season was a fluke or the start of a decline. But keep an eye on him; in the right situation, he could be one of those late-summer bargains that ends up making GMs wonder why they didn’t make a phone call.

9. Brad Boyes

2014-15 numbers: 78 GP, 14 G, 24 A, 38 pts; $2.625M cap hit

Why teams should sign him: Boyes has had a weird career path, bouncing around the league early on, briefly looking like a star in St. Louis, and then resuming his NHL-wide tour in recent years. But wherever he’s been, he’s almost always chipped in offensively. Not a ton — his days as a 40-goal scorer are long gone — but he’s scored 35 goals over the past two seasons, and plenty of teams could use that kind of scoring from their third line.

Why they haven’t: The Panthers clearly didn’t like what they saw, buying Boyes out despite those goals. He’s not a guy who really impresses you when he isn’t scoring, and it’s possible he doesn’t do that often enough these days to be worth a roster spot over a younger, cheaper option.

What comes next: There’s been speculation that Boyes may have to wait for a training camp tryout invite, which wouldn’t be unprecedented; that’s how he wound up in Florida two years ago. Still, it would be surprising if not one team could find space for a potential 20-goal scorer on the roster between now and then.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Free agency preview

NHL unrestricted free agency is awful. Let’s just put that out there to start. In the salary-cap era, good players rarely make it to the market, and the ones that do get ridiculous deals that almost always end up being viewed as mistakes. Meanwhile, miscellaneous depth guys somehow transform into stars for one day, get paid accordingly, and then go right back to being what they’ve always been. It’s a mess.

We’ve been doing this for a decade now, and it just keeps getting worse and worse. At some point, smart teams are going to start sitting out July 1 entirely and wait around for prices to come down and bargains to emerge. But the lure of getting a player for nothing — and the ability to ignore the fact that a cap-crippling contract is certainly not “nothing” — almost always seems to prove too powerful.

So here’s your free-agency preview: Your favorite team won’t do anything. You’ll complain. Then your favorite team will do something. You’ll feel vaguely uneasy about it. Months later, you’ll realize they made a horrible mistake, and you’ll vow never to get suckered in by July 1 ever again. You will break this vow.

This year could be even worse than usual, because there’s a distinct lack of talent available. Remember last year, when free agency featured reasonably big names like Ryan Miller, Paul Stastny, and Thomas Vanek? Good times. (Well, except for the teams that signed those guys.) This year’s list pales in comparison, with very few players who could be considered stars, or potential stars, or even former stars.

But teams have cap space and impatient GMs, so somebody is going to get paid. Here are 10 players to watch as the action unfolds today.

Mike Green

Former team: Washington Capitals

2014-15 salary: $6.25 million ($6.08 million cap hit)

He’d be great for: A team looking for a veteran blueliner and power-play quarterback. Green is the biggest name available among defensemen, and maybe the biggest at any position. He can eat minutes, and he’s a big right-handed shot in a league where that’s rare. And he has a résumé; he’s the only defenseman this century to score more than 30 goals in a season, and he’s twice been the runner-up for the Norris Trophy.

As long as you can ignore: Those big seasons were a long time ago. Green hasn’t been a star since 2010, and last year he spent most of the season playing on the Capitals’ third pairing. He’s not awful defensively, but it’s not a strength, and he’ll turn 30 in the season’s first week. If you sign him for anything close to last year’s money, you’re basically paying for the past instead of the present. Someone will.

Justin Williams

Former team: Los Angeles Kings

2014-15 salary: $3.05 million ($3.65 million cap hit)

He’d be great for: A contender with its eye on the Stanley Cup. Williams would be a good fit just about anywhere — he’s always been an excellent possession player, so stats guys get little hearts in their eyes when they talk about him — but he’d be especially attractive to a team that considered itself a Cup favorite. That’s because of his track record in crunch time; he has a history of coming up big in Game 7s, and he won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP in 2014. If you believe in “clutch,” Williams is your guy.

As long as you can ignore: For one, the Game 7 stuff is based on a grand total of seven career games, so all standard disclaimers about small sample size apply. More importantly, Williams will be 34 on opening night and has been a 40-point player in each of the last two seasons. That’s still worth paying for, but any team that goes longer than three years will probably regret it down the line.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Grab bag: Round One edition

In the return of the grab bag:
- Why can't suspension rulings just be consistent?
- Don Cherry needs a reboot
- First round comedy stars
- An obscure player with a very sad record
- And we celebrate the fierce Rangers/Capitals rivalry with a classic throwdown...

>> Read the full post on Grantland

In praise of the Negative Value Guy

In the NHL’s salary cap era, a good player with a bad contract is not a good player.

Or at least, he’s not a good asset, which these days is essentially the same thing. It’s no longer enough to judge players based on what they can do on the ice while letting the front-office accountants worry about who makes what and for how long. In a league that features a hard cap and guaranteed deals, a player’s value is inescapably tied to his contract.

None of what I just wrote is remotely controversial. On its own, it’s probably not even all that interesting. Every NHL fan understands this sort of thing on some level, and talk of contracts and cap hits permeates the discussion of any player. It’s why we all lost our minds when CapGeek went away — smart fans need this stuff to function. And it’s why we can have those fun arguments over whether you’d rather have Jonathan Toews and his monster contract or John Tavares and his bargain one.

But a funny thing happens when you start working your way down the list and follow this kind of thinking as far as it can go. As sports fans, we’re used to valuing players on a sliding scale from “really valuable” to “not valuable at all.” We’ll argue over who gets what label, of course, but the basic rules remain the same. A good player is worth a lot; a bad player is worth next to nothing; a truly terrible player may even be worth nothing at all.

Once a hard cap comes into play, things can get unintuitive. You start to realize that “no value” isn’t really the bottom of the scale after all. A player with an especially bad contract can’t really be said to be worth nothing, because that’s being too kind. He might actually be worth less than nothing. We’ve hit the floor and kept on digging, and down there we meet a relatively new specimen in the hockey world: the Negative Value Guy.

Again, this isn’t some sort of new concept — in other sports, fancy stats based on concepts like VORP (value over replacement player) and WAR (wins above replacement) have flagged players with negative value for years. But that’s based on what happens on the field, and those players tend to be rare, a type of outlier you rarely see sticking around for long. Hockey doesn’t have a widely accepted all-in-one value stat like that yet, but if it did we’d no doubt see the same thing: a handful of players kicking around the league who probably didn’t really belong based on their production.

I’d argue that once you start factoring in contracts and cap hits, we’re no longer talking about a handful of fringe players who dip ever so slightly into negative territory. There are lots of negative value guys, and you’ll find them on just about every NHL team. That’s because we’re no longer talking about a player’s value to his team in between whistles during a given game, but his value to his franchise as an asset.

Here’s one way to think of it: An NHL player is a negative value guy if he can be made available on the open market, at no cost, and nobody would want him. If that happened, we’d know that even “free” was too high a price to pay to acquire someone. That’s negative value.

And of course, that exact scenario plays out all the time. It’s called waivers, and it’s the way that NHL teams can make a player available to any other team in the league. Here he is, they say. If you want him, he’s all yours. You just have to assume his full contract.

Sure enough, on most days during the season, a player or two hits the waiver wire. And in the vast majority of cases, the player clears. Those guys, at least temporarily, have negative value in the eyes of the free market. Around the league, 29 other teams take a look at a potential asset being offered up for free and say, “No thanks, you go ahead and keep him.”

A lot of those players are fringe NHLers whom fans have barely heard of. But bigger names occasionally go through the process, and we saw one example just two weeks ago, when the Los Angeles Kings waived center Mike Richards.

Richards is a reliable two-way player, one who’s won gold on the Canadian Olympic team and two Stanley Cups. He’s certainly not the player he once was — he scored 80 points as a 23-year-old in 2008-09, but his offensive numbers have been dropping steadily for five seasons. This year, he’d spent time on the Kings fourth line and was even a healthy scratch on some nights, so his days of making all-star teams appear over. But on the verge of turning 30 and in his 10th NHL season, Richards is exactly the sort of battle-tested veteran with a winning pedigree over whom teams used to get into bidding wars. Even if his game isn’t what it once was, you’d think he belongs on an NHL roster.

And yet he cleared waivers. Richards may not be a bad player, but he comes with a terrible contract, one that carries a $5.75 million cap hit through 2020. That’s too much money and way too many years for a guy who contributes what Richards does. And in today’s NHL, that makes him a negative value guy.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Checking in on the NHL stars playing in Europe

Meet you back here for the 2017 lockout?

The NHL's work stoppage continues to drag on, leaving locked out players unemployed and on the sidelines. Or at least it does for the players who haven't already found a job somewhere else—and lately that list is shrinking rapidly.

It seems as if most of the league's top players have already found new jobs in one of the various European leagues, with new names being added to the list every day. So let's take a moment to catch up with the some of the NHL stars who are currently playing overseas.

Rick Nash - Agreed to terms with Swiss league powerhouse HC Davos after they were willing to meet his critical contract demand that they be absolutely 100% sure that they don't play in Columbus.

Paul Bissonnette - His new contract with the British league's Cardiff Devils gives the veteran enforcer the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be known as "the guy with the relatively nice teeth".

Nicklas Backstrom - Briefly created controversy by wearing #99, which is associated with Wayne Gretzky, before switching to #69, which is associated with that fat guy with the mullet in your ball hockey league.

Alexander Semin - Got tired of constantly being referred to as "the enigmatic Russian"; signed with his hometown team in Russia so that he could try constantly being referred to as "the enigmatic local boy" instead.

Read the rest of this post...

Twelve big names who could be on the move at the 2012 trade deadline

Eventually Getzlaf began to wonder if his poor
season could have something to do with having
one skate blade six inches higher than the other.

It’s February, the all-star weekend has come and gone, and we’re still a month away from the final playoff push. Hockey fans know what that means: it must be time for several weeks’ worth of wall-to-wall trade deadline coverage.

This year’s official deadline doesn’t arrive until 3:00 pm on February 27 for all teams except the Kings, who for some reason will get until 3:00:01. But even though we’re still almost three weeks away, the rumor mill is already churning out plenty of names, big and small.

Of course, most of those names will belong to players who won’t end up going anywhere. In fact, if history has taught us anything it’s that we should all relax and just wait to see what happens. But that’s no fun, so instead let’s feed into the hype with a dozen big name players who’ve been rumored to be on the market leading up to the deadline.

Jeff Carter, Columbus Blue Jackets – Recent reports have indicated that his no-trade clause is no longer in effect due to a loophole in the collective bargaining agreement, and also because he set it on fire on top of Scott Howson’s desk three months ago.

Ryan Getzlaf, Anaheim Ducks – The Duck seem to be intent on entering a rebuilding phase, and if there’s one thing we know about successful rebuilds it’s that they always start with trading your best young player when he’s at his absolute lowest possible value.

Ryan Miller, Buffalo Sabres – Plenty of teams will be making offers for the star goaltender but they probably won’t even have their calls returned, since nobody who takes a run at Ryan Miller ever gets a response.

Read the rest of this post...

A fond farewell to the NHL's fired coaches

"Wait a second," thought Getzlaf, "Why do
I have to be the baldest guy on the bench?"

It's been a bad week for NHL coaches. After a relatively stable first two months of the season, NHL teams apparently decided it was time to start handing out pink slips.

Both Carolina's Paul Maurice and Washington's Bruce Boudreau were fired on Monday, and they were joined on the sidelines a few days later by Anaheim's Randy Carlyle. Or at least Maurice was; Boudreau was busy taking Carlyle's job.

The week's action brings this season's total number of fired coaches to four once you count Davis Payne, who got a head start when he was fired by the Blues three weeks ago. No doubt they'll be joined by others as the season wears on, but for now the latest round of coaching musical chairs seems to have ended.

But before we all move on, let's take one last fond look back and the four coaches who've been shown the door since the season began.

Davis Payne, St. Louis Blues

Previous experience: Was a virtual unknown in the hockey world when he was hired to coach the Blues in 2010, but things are much different these days because it's now 2011.
Career highlight: In one of those crazy little bits of trivia that nobody ever remembers but that's still technically true, was once the head coach of the St. Louis Blues.
Eventual downfall: Like other coaches who've lost their jobs to Ken Hitchcock, just couldn't win back the fans once they'd grown tired of watching vaguely entertaining hockey.
Future outlook: Is apparently working on a long-term deal with Calgary, according to hockey experts overheard mumbling something about Flames fans being in for another decade of constant Payne.

Read the rest of this post...

Signs you're not getting drafted this weekend

We're now just days away from the NHL draft, which begins on Friday night and concludes Saturday. Most of this week's coverage will focus Taylor Hall vs Tyler Seguin for the top overall spot, as well as which players will fill out the rest of the first round.

But there's another side to the story: There are hundreds of players hoping to hear their names called this weekend, and many will come away disappointed. Watching a player who wasn't picked file out of the arena at the draft's conclusion can be one of the most heartbreaking spectacles in sports. And it doesn't have to be that way.

So since a significant portion of DGB readers are draft eligible hockey players, this seems like a good time to inject some harsh reality into the week's proceedings. If you're hoping to hear your name called this weekend, read on for some signs that you may not be picked after all. It might spoil the surprise, but it's better to know the truth now.

• Current estimated population of the earth: 6,828,300,000. Your current Central Scouting ranking: 6,828,300,001.
  
  
• At the combine, the only workout event anyone ever asked you to do was the "100 meter dash to that exit door over there".
  
  
• When a scout asks you whether you shoot right-handed or left-handed, you answer "You know, it's never come up".
  
  
• Scouts unanimously agree that you're at your best in the faceoff circle, which is odd because you're a goalie.
  
  
• Brian Burke scouted you for one game and immediately started trading away all his draft picks "just in case".
  
  
• Instead of a cool nickname like "Ace" or "Boom Boom", everyone just refers to you as "That guy over there with his helmet on backwards".
  
  
• You had a disappointing result on the Wingate test after the effort of climbing onto the stationary bike caused your lungs to explode.
  
  
• The hour-long highlight DVD your agent sent around the league consisted entirely of a slow-motion loop of the one time you remembered to take your skate guards off before your first shift.
  
  
• Lou Lamoriello promised to draft you just as soon as he wraps up the paperwork on that Brodeur-for-Semin deal.
  
  
• Scouting reports describe you as "Alexei Kovalev without the commitment to winning".
  
  
• Your entire segment on TSN's draft preview show consisted of Pierre McGuire asking NHL GMs to lean into their TV screen, then smacking the camera with a rolled up newspaper and yelling "NO!"
  
  
• During your sit-down interviews with various teams at the combine, you answered every question with a 30-second long blast on the vuvuzela.
  
  
• Despite your excellent dressing room presence and leadership skills, NHL front office executives can't seem to get past the whole "never played organized hockey before" thing.
  
  
• You're so awful that the Habs are currently trying to figure out how to trade their best player for you.

Round two scouting reports

A few days ago, we took a look at the NHL's 22 losers that are sitting at home. Now let's turn our attention to the teams that are still alive, with a round two scouting report.

---

Washington Capitals

Strengths:

• Are wisely keeping starting goaltender Jose Theodore extremely well-rested.
  
• Have so much depth that they were somehow able to win a game seven despite absence of Donald Brashear
  
• Intimidating fans are known to loudly questions opposing players' sexuality, which is pretty rich coming from guys who chant "We Want Semin".

Weakness:

• Star player Alexander Ovechkin often spends as much as four of five minutes every period just sitting on bench, doing nothing.

How to beat them:

• Let Ovechkin get a few goals early; hope he tires himself out celebrating.

-- vs. --

Pittsburgh Penguins

Strengths:

• Feature a roster full of excellent young players due to strong scouting, patient coaching, and drafting first overall ten years in a row.
  
• Have drawn inspiration from undisputed locker room leader, the mummified corpse of Gary Roberts.
  
• In the long history of talented players to come out of Russia, Evgeni Malkin will quite possibly go down as the second best one to ever play in this series.

Weakness:

• Extra slippery ice at Mellon Arena sometimes causes team's star players to fall down for no reason at all.

How to beat them:

• Don't punch the crap out of Maxime Talbot, apparently.

---

Carolina Hurricanes

Strengths:

• Coach Paul Maurice has referred to leadership core as "easily the most dedicated group of players I've seen in, oh, three years".
  
• Enjoy unrivaled home ice advantage thanks to savvy fans who save up energy by only remembering that hockey exists once the playoffs start.
  
• Is probably not mathematically impossible for them to win the Cup this year.

Weakness:

• Are still, when you get right down to it, the Hartford Whalers.

How to beat them:

• Employ a goalie who is not so fat that he gets winded at the very end of every close game.

-- vs. --

Boston Bruins

Strengths:

• In recent big games, have been pretty good at remembering how many players you're allowed to have on the ice.
  
• Zdeno Chara able to calmly clear puck from goalmouth scrambles without leaving bench.
  
• Will be feeding off the energy of an entire state full of douchey, bandwagon-jumping sports fans who haven't had a championship to celebrate in like ten whole months

Weakness:

• May be rusty coming off of first-round bye.

How to beat them:

• Remind Tim Thomas that he is, in fact, Tim Thomas.

---

Anaheim Ducks

Strengths:

• Roster was largely assembled by Brian Burke, who is unanimously considered the smartest man alive.
  
• Disorient opponents by annoyingly playing all their home games way later than everyone else.
  
• Virtually every player on roster is an experienced fighter not intimidated by violence, which will come in handy if team bus breaks down on way to arena in Detroit

Weakness:

• It's possible that Ryan Getzlaf may have got some choking loser germs on him while fighting Joe Thornton.

How to beat them:

• Somehow trick them into thinking it's the regular season.
  

-- vs. --

Detroit Red Wings

Strengths:

• Are known for superior conditioning, which will allow players to recover more quickly from Chris Pronger cheapshots.
  
• Are so solid defensively that even terrible goaltender Chris Osgood can win multiple championships for them.
  
• In a pinch, some guy they drafted 200th overall last year will just emerge as a future hall-of-famer.

Weakness:

• Might be getting bored of winning the Stanley Cup by now.

How to beat them:

• Get to overtime of game seven. Let tiny Russian man-child do the rest.
  

---

Chicago Blackhawks

Strengths:

• Winning percentage is significantly higher indoors than out.
  
• Martin Havlat has bought into team's disciplined approach so much that he hardly ever kicks anyone in the groin any more.
  
• Somehow managed to turn an old man dying of cancer into a feel-good story.

Weakness:

• Winning game one of the Flames series 12 seconds into sudden death was a foolish waste of an opportunity to amass valuable overtime experience.

How to beat them:

• Hold all games in a nightclub that checks ID, thus eliminating most of the Hawks best players.
  

-- vs. --

Vancouver Canucks

Strengths:

• Have this guy named Sedin who is so lightning quick that he often sets himself up for one-timers.
  
• Own an excellent record when scoring first, largely because their goalie gets a shutout every game.
  
• Are lead by veteran Mats Sundin, for whom "winning a Stanley Cup" is unquestionably a top ten non-poker-related personal goal.

Weakness:

• Players run slightly higher than average risk of contracting lice due to habit of pulling opponent's hair when getting ass kicked in fight.

How to beat them:

• Hope that Roberto Luongo's wife has a baby three or four times during the series.

How to fix All-Star Weekend

Let's face it, all-star weekend sucks.

The young stars game is a joke. The actual all-star game is a complete writeoff, since nobody plays defence, the "one player per team" rule dilutes the roster, and anyone with so much as a hangnail decides not to play.

The skills competition is probably the highlight of the weekend, but that's not saying much. While the NHL has tried to spice up the events over the years, there's still an element of "been there, done that" to the whole proceedings. Does anybody really want to see another puck relay?

The NHL needs to get creative. So in the spirit of innovation, here are a few suggestions for new events the league could add to better capture the current flavor of the game.

Who are you and
why are you yelling at me?

Mainstream Media Fake Outrage-a-thon - Media superstars such as Pierre McGuire, Nick Kypreos and Mike Milbury will be given a controversial subject to discuss and will earn points by screaming well-rehearsed sound bites at each other while a producer shouts into their earpiece to be more animated. Topics will include fighting, the CBA, head shots, fighting, goalie equipment and also fighting. As in the real world, the media members will only be told which side of the debate they're on shortly before they go on air.

Where's Dany? - After Dany Heatley is hypnotized into believing he's playing in an important playoff game, all 20,000 fans will be given binoculars and forensics kits to see if they can find any evidence of him being in the arena.

American Anthem Endurance Contest - Wannabe singers and American Idol rejects from around the United States will compete to see who can take the most time to sing the pre-game national anthem, completely sapping any energy from the players and crowd. Last singer standing wins. Fans are encouraged to participate by throwing coins and shoes.

Credibility-Destroying Fan Ballot Box Stuffing Contest - Oops, they did that one already.

Let's just save time and
leave the red light on

Vesa Toskala Accuracy Shooting - From the slot, NHL snipers try their best to take shots that actually make contact with Toskala's glove or blocker.

Revenue Share Scramble - Representatives from southern US markets have sixty seconds to crawl around on their hands and knees and grab for any loose change that falls out of the pockets of the Leafs, Habs and Rangers. Special bonus: During this event, Gary Bettman will stand in the background and proclaim that the game's economics are just great.

Neglected Toddler - During the downtime in between events, Sean Avery wanders around the ice begging someone, anyone, to pay attention to him.

Goal Judge Skills Competition - Video replay goal judges from around the league compete to see who can up with the most unique and creative way to screw the Buffalo Sabres.

"How Much Was It Worth?" - At the conclusion of the All-Star game, one lucky fan gets to spin the Gary Bettman Wheel of Randomness to determine how many points the game was actually worth.

Delay of Blame - A puck is flipped up into the stands from the defensive zone, and six players per side compete to see who can be the first to point, wave their arms and otherwise browbeat the referee who actually did know that rule already, thanks.

Looking to go five-hole

Sissy Fight! - Skill players compete in a series of events to see which player fights most like a girl. Events include the Alexander Semin Slap Party, the Mikhail Grabovski Linesman Tickle, and of course the Sidney Crosby Package Punch

Icing Murder - Players compete to inflict the most damage to a helpless defenceman on an otherwise meaningless icing play. Bonus points will be awared for broken bones, career-ending injuries, or fatalities. (Note: In order to make this event competitive, members of the Montreal Canadiens will not be allowed to compete.)

And finally...

The NHL Superstar Decision-Making Sprint - NHL stars such as Mats Sundin, Scott Niedermayer, Joe Sakic and Brendan Shanahan are given a list of basic decision-making tasks to complete. Events will include ordering a sandwich at a deli, accepting or declining a new Facebook friend, and choosing their next Netflix rental. (Note: This event is expected to conclude some time in early 2010.)