Which draft year makes the best lineup of players traded for first-round picks?

Hidden away on my laptop is a list that’s simply labeled “ideas”. It’s where I keep all those potential columns that I haven’t got around to yet, or in some cases haven’t worked up the courage to try. A lot of them are weird. Some are probably just flat-out dumb. In some cases I’m waiting for some sort of news hook; in others I’m just holding off until Slow News Summer hits its peak. A lot of them just aren’t there yet in terms of supporting a whole piece, but might be some day if I get desperate enough circumstances change.

The point is, sometimes it just makes sense to wait on an idea. And yes, I’ll pause here so you can think about the stuff I have published and then wonder what isn't making the cut.

But there’s a downside to this approach: It turns out that if you wait too long on a given idea, the NHL might just decide to make it moot.

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Which syllable combination makes history's best roster? Welcome to Slow News Summer

So… we’re well into July.

Most of the big offseason action is over. Things are largely quietly. Pierre is at his cottage. Most importantly, my editors are exhausted and not paying attention. And longtime readers know what that means.

Welcome to Slow News Summer. It is time to get well and truly weird.

OK, sure, a lot of what we do around here is weird anyway. I’ll grant you that. But the dog days of summer? That’s when its time to reach down deep on the ideas list.

If that’s going to bother you, consider this your fair warning to tag out now, and we’ll see you in September. If you’re the sort of person who likes to post “slow news day?” in the column, then yes, it absolutely is, so kick rocks. But for everyone else, let’s get weird.

Today’s question: Which combination of syllables can build the all-time best starting lineup from NHL history?

In other words, you count the syllables in both of a player’s first and last name, and that’s their team. Wayne Gretzky has one syllable in his first name and two in his second, so he’s the captain of Team 1-2. Mario Lemieux is Team 3-2, Bobby Orr is Team 2-1, and so on.

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Let's build the worst possible roster of contracts that's still somehow cap compliant

Six years ago, I wrote a post based on a premise that I thought was stupid, bordering on pointlessly absurd. If you know my work, that’s really saying something.

A few days earlier, I’d tried to build a roster using the best players and contracts that I could fit under the salary cap, which is not as especially dumb idea and was actually kind of fun. But then, somebody asked me to flip the script, and build a cap-compliant roster of the league’s worst contracts. At first, that seems fine. But then you get into it and realize that “bad contracts” and “cap compliant” don’t work together at all, as you find yourself being priced out of some of the very worst deals because you don’t have room for them. The whole thing didn’t make one bit of sense.

Needless to say, I did it anyway, the readers made it one of my most popular posts of the season, and lately some of you have been bugging me to do it again. Fine, why not, it’s August and nobody will remember this ever happened.

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A brief history of the Thornton Award, a fake trophy for best debut with a new team

It’s summer and nothing’s happening. Let’s make up another fake award.

We did this last summer, when we introduced the Pollock Trophy for a season’s best trade. Prior to that, we’ve also done the Carson Trophy for best sophomore season, as well as the Bourque Trophy for best final season. None of these actually exist, but they should, and that’s enough for our purposes.

For today’s award, we’re going to create the Joe Thornton Award for the best debut with a new team.

A couple of quick rules: Rookie debuts have their own award, so they don’t count – a player has to have previously played for another NHL team before joining a new one. Unlike most awards, we're taking the playoffs into consideration. And finally, a player has to have played at least half the season with his new team, because I don’t feel like figuring out how to rate deadline pickups. Other that that, the field is open – we can be looking at trades, free agent signings, waiver pickups or whatever else.

We’ll cover the cap era, starting with a 2006 recipient. It’s Slow News Summer, let’s argue about an award that doesn’t exist.

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1980s Alberta vs. 2020s Florida: Which two-team dynasty was more impressive?

At the start of 2025, I worked with Eric Stephens on a post that asked the question: Which state has been the NHL’s best of the cap era, California or Florida? It was a fun debate, and at the end we let you have your say in a reader survey that came out almost exactly 50/50.

Then the Panthers rolled to yet another Stanley Cup, and kind of ruined the bit. Finally, a valid reason to dislike that team.

But it’s fine, because now it’s Slow News Summer and we can get a little more eccentric. So today, I’m going to tackle a question originally posted by a Puck Soup listener a few weeks ago: Has the 2020s state of Florida passed the 1980s Alberta dynasty?

It’s a tough one. It’s also, you could argue, four years early, which is a fair point in Florida’s favor. Still, you never know what the future will bring. And it’s not like our arbitrary end points don’t hurt Alberta too, since they lose the 1990 Cup by a few months, the Flames were still in Atlanta until the summer of 1980, and the decade’s first few years are basically a write off.

So let’s do this. It’s basically a battle of Old School Canada vs. New Era Southern Markets, which means everyone should be very chill and reasonable about it. Off we go…

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Which team makes the best lineup with no repeated initials? Slow news summer returns

It’s summer and nothing is happening. Let’s play some weird roster games.

This one comes from reader Darryl F., who tweeted it at me five years ago. Yes, the “weird ideas” list goes back that far. Much further, actually. Look, you probably don’t want to know some of the stuff that’s been sitting there for going on a decade, but I can’t guarantee you won’t find out by mid-August.

For now, the game is simple: Make the best six-man starting lineup possible for your favorite team, without repeating any initials. So if you want to use Joe Smith, that’s your J and your S spoken for, meaning you can’t also use John Williams, or Tommy Simpson.

Easy enough, right? But first, a few ground rules™:

- We want three forwards, two defensemen and a goalie. No other positional requirements.

- You get credit for whatever that player did on that team. If the Blues want to use Martin Brodeur, they get seven games, not four Vezinas.

- In cases where there’s confusion over what a player’s actual name was, we’ll go by whatever hockey-reference uses. So it’s Maurice Richard (not Rocket), but Gump Worsley (not Lorne).

As always, we’ll do about a dozen teams and then hand it over to you in the comments to fill out any others. We’ll start with the team that’s become our unofficial leadoff hitter for these sorts of things…

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