Who is Canada's most depressing team?

With the NHL season at its midway mark, it’s time for Canadian hockey fans to start getting excited. Stake out your ground, and let the debates begin. Which Canadian team will earn the most coveted title in the land?

No, not the Stanley Cup. We all know that thing never lands north of the border anymore. No, we’re talking about something that fits better with the modern-day Canadian NHL psyche: the title of Most Depressing Team In The Nation.

Put two random Canadian fans in a room together, and it probably won’t be long before they’re arguing over which ones deserves to be the most miserable. Some years, it’s a crowded field — we all remember the entire country missing the playoffs back in 2015–16. Other years, like last season, there are fewer candidates. But it’s always a hotly contested title.

So the first order of business is to figure out who gets to be in the running. Obviously, we don’t need to consider the Jets or the Maple Leafs, two teams that are solidly holding down playoff spots. The Flames are a tougher call, as a recent slide had them drifting out of playoff contention (and their coach having temper tantrums) before their latest win streak. But they’re over .500 and only a point out of a playoff spot, so they’re out of the running.

That still leaves us with four contenders for the title of Canada’s most depressing team. The Canadiens, Senators, Canucks and Oilers are all well out of the playoff race, and all four are under .500 in terms of points percentage. That’s a crowded field, so let’s start sorting this out as we work our way through an unlucky 13 categories.

Expectations vs. reality

It’s one thing to be bad. It’s another entirely to be bad when everyone thought you’d be good. So who came into the season with the highest expectations?

Canadiens: They were the Atlantic’s top seed last year, and while they were far from a sure thing to repeat that title, most expected them to at least make the playoffs.

Senators: They went deeper than any Canadian team last year, but most seemed to expect them to take a step back this season. Some pessimists even had them missing the playoffs. But close to dead last? No way.

Canucks: Nobody thought they’d be all that good. As bad as this year has been, they’re actually on pace to improve on last year’s record.

Oilers: When the Sportsnet crew did our pre-season predictions, seven out of 16 of us had the Oilers winning the West, and two had them winning the Stanley Cup.

Edge: Oilers, and it’s not all that close.

Painful ex-player

When things are going bad, the two most painful words are “What if?” Seeing a former player lighting it up somewhere else only adds to the misery.

Senators: While the current roster struggles, they get to watch one-time Senator building blocks like Mika Zibanejad and Jakob Silfverberg blossom elsewhere. But the worst has been watching Kyle Turris fit right in as a Predator while Matt Duchene struggles in Ottawa.

Canucks: Luca Sbisa gets to be part of the fun in Vegas, and Ryan Miller‘s been fine in Anaheim. That’s about it.

Oilers: While only one is technically an ex-player, they gave the Islanders both Jordan Eberle and the draft pick that was used on Mathew Barzal. Then they get to watch those two do stuff like this:

This is amazing.

Barzal "takes the tour" and @jeberle_7 scores to make it 2-0 #Isles pic.twitter.com/XaZli3CgUY

— IslesBlog (@IslesBlog) November 26, 2017

Meanwhile, Taylor Hall looks like he’s going to lead the Devils to the playoffs.

Canadiens: Last year, it would have been P.K. Subban, who led his Predators all the way to the Stanley Cup final in his first year away from Montreal. This year, we might have to go with Mikhail Sergachev, who looks like a Calder candidate in Tampa. This time next year, Max Pacioretty.

Edge: It’s a close race, but the Canadiens take the crown on the strength of Subban just being voted an all-star captain.

Salary-cap situation

In today’s NHL, a flexible cap situation can fix a lot of problems. By the same token, making a mess of the cap can doom a team to years of suffering.

Oilers: Tight, thanks to the McDavid/Draisaitl deals, not to mention big commitments to Milan Lucic and Kris Russell. Trading Ryan Nugent-Hopkins would help, and they may be forced to do just that.

Canadiens: Not all that bad, depending on how you feel about the Carey Price deal. But Karl Alzner‘s signing already looks like a mistake, and that Shea Weber contract is going to be nightmare well before it runs out in 2026.

Senators: Believe it or not, they’ve got more cap space tied up for next year than any other Canadian team by over $5 million, thanks in part to ugly deals for Bobby Ryan and Dion Phaneuf. It clears up after 2019, but only because key players like Erik Karlsson and Matt Duchene will need new contracts.

Canucks: Once again, they come out looking solid by comparison. That Loui Eriksson deal was a mistake form the day it was signed, but with both Sedin deals expiring after this season, the cap picture is actually in decent shape.

Edge: Ottawa, in a narrow upset over the Oilers, if only because at least Edmonton’s biggest deals on the books are to their best players. I’m no cap-ologist, but having the worst cap situation when you don’t even have the budget to be a cap team is not good.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Ten scary starts to the NHL season

It’s Halloween, which means most of us will want to shut off the lights tonight and settle in with a scary movie or two. There’s just something about Oct. 31 that makes you want to shudder in fear while waiting for some hapless character to get hacked to bits.

Then again, you could save yourself some time and skip the movie. If you want a good scare at this time of year, all you need to do is check out the NHL stats page, where some players are off to truly frightening starts.

So today, let’s take a look at 10 of the scariest starts we’re seeing around the league, and whether there’s any hope of ending of their stories ending happily.

Frederik Andersen, Maple Leafs

Through 11 starts, he’s sporting some ugly numbers, including an .896 save percentage and 3.46 goals against. And it’s not like those stats are being thrown off by one or two bad performances. If anything, it’s the opposite, as Andersen has had only five games with a save percentage over .870. And lately, Leafs fans are getting used to seeing him beaten clean on high shots, often barely moving as the puck blows by him.

For a quasi-Cup contender that doesn’t seem to have much confidence in its backups, that’s worrying. Last night’s strong effort in San Jose was a good sign, but there hasn’t been much consistency yet on the year.

If the season were a horror movie, he’d be: The big guy with the goalie mask who makes you feel really nervous every time he’s on the screen.

Odds of a happy ending: We’ve been down this road before with Andersen, who started slowly last year, too. He eventually got back on track, and was one of the league’s better goalies from November on. That was a good reminder that goaltending is voodoo, and that everyone has a bad stretch or two over the course of a season. There’s a good chance that’s the case here, too.

And as rough as Andersen’s start has been, he still has six wins, so it’s not like he’s sinking his team. Still, Leaf fans wouldn’t mind seeing him string together a few solid starts to ease the tension.

Kris Letang, Penguins

After missing last year’s entire post-season run due to a neck injury that required surgery, Letang’s return to the Penguins’ lineup was supposed to provide a big boost to a team that had lost several depth pieces. He’s put up eight points through 13 games, which isn’t bad. But he’s also a -14 on the year, ranking him dead last in the league. We all know that +/- is a flawed stat that has as much to do with circumstance as actual performance. But an extreme number can still tell you something, and in Letang’s case it’s not anything good.

If the season were a horror movie, he’d be: The good guy who seems to have done something to accidentally trigger an ancient curse.

Odds of a happy ending: In addition to missing a Stanley Cup run due to last year’s neck injury, Letang has also had to battle through multiple concussions, groin problems, various upper- and lower-body injuries, and even a stroke. Now he’s getting pummelled by a stat that’s largely luck-based. Chances are his numbers even out over time, and here’s hoping he can stay healthy this year. But just in case, maybe don’t let him pick your lotto numbers.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Weekend wrap: That was fun

It was a big weekend in the NHL. The arrival of the new year meant the official start of the league’s 100th anniversary celebrations, and the weekend was headlined by the Centennial Classic between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings.

We’d seen these two teams take it outside once before – this was the first rematch in NHL outdoor game history – and neither is sitting in a playoff spot right now.

And after two periods, it looks like the league might have delivered a dud, as a lackluster 1-0 game dragged into the third without much in the way of highlights.

But that's when things got a little crazy, as the Leafs poured home four straight to build a 4-1 lead, only to watch the Red Wings mount a furious comeback to tie the game with a second left on the clock. That set up a back-and-forth overtime, one that Auston Matthews ended with his first career overtime goal.

It was all a lot of fun, and the weekend in Toronto even included a memorable alumni game—one highlighted by a ridiculous Mike Palmateer save, some good-natured toque-theft by Chris Chelios, and a decidedly not good-natured exchange between Kris Draper and Gary Roberts.

We also had the St. Louis Blues/Chicago Blackhawks alumni game—one featuring Wayne Gretzky's return to the ice, and we'll get the real thing Monday afternoon when the Winter Classic goes in St. Louis.

But despite all the hype that comes with the league's various outdoor events, the highlight of the weekend was probably a game that nobody paid any attention to when the schedule was released. That was Saturday's contest between the Minnesota Wild and Columbus Blue Jackets, a meeting of two teams riding double-digit win streaks.

It was a history-making matchup, marking the first-ever game between teams riding win streaks of 12 or more across all of major North American pro sports.

And despite various attempts by both teams to remind us that this was still just a regular season game, it felt like something bigger. Maybe that's because fans are finally giving these two teams some respect. Or maybe it's because we were just waiting to see whether one would be exposed.

Either way, the game managed to live up to expectations, delivering an entertaining game that ended with a 4-2 Blue Jackets win. We got some nice goals, a few big saves, and even a couple of scraps. It all played out in front of a loud Minnesota crowd, giving the whole thing a true big game feel.

So… did we just see a Stanley Cup Final preview?

That still seems like a stretch; June is still a long way away, and you can bet that teams like the Pittsburgh Penguins and Blackhawks will have a thing or two to say along the way. But at least a few fans may be holding out hope, given how Saturday night's meeting played out.

And if you prefer to keep things a little more realistic, we'll at least get a regular season rematch in early March.

The game snapped the Wild's streak at 12, and gives the Blue Jackets 15 straight. That's tied for the second longest streak in league history, and they'll have a chance to break the record this week with games against the Edmonton Oilers, Washington Capitals and New York Rangers.

—

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they're headed towards Stanley Cup favourite status.

5. Chicago Blackhawks (23-11-5, plus-13 true goals differential*) – The Wild are getting all the attention right now—and rightly so—but the Blackhawks are technically still the Central's top seed.

4. New York Rangers (26-12-1, plus-37) – They closed out 2016 with a pair of road games against the league's worst teams, putting up a half-dozen goals on both the Coyotes and Avalanche.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Grab Bag: Please don't screw around when you vote on things

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- We're doing the all-star vote joke again, aren't we?
- The NHL's weird nine-game cutoff rule for junior players
- The week's three stars of comedy
- An important apology to all of my readers
- And a YouTube clip for American fans that's about the 2007 all-star game, and not anything else.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

The next wave: The NHL's ten most exciting 21-and-under players

It feels like we may be nearing a changing of the guard in the NHL. The Sidney Crosby/Alexander Ovechkin generation continues to dominate, as it has for most of the last decade. But there's growing excitement over the next wave, one highlighted by the success of Team North America at the recent World Cup, and we're already getting a strong sense of what the future looks like.

So today, let's identify some of the most exciting young players in the league who'll be 21 or under as of opening night. (This isn't meant to be a comprehensive list of every good young prospect in the league, but just to save everyone time: If I left out your personal favorite player, it's because I hate them.) We'll look at what they are now, and what they might end up becoming. And we'll also look at their odds of actually reaching the top tier.

That last one may seem a bit odd—most of these guys are having an impact already, so aren't they all basically locks for stardom? You'd think so—but then you remember guys like Jim Carey, Jimmy Carson and Erik Johnson, and you remember that nothing in the NHL is inevitable. History tells us that some of these guys will end up falling short of the heights we all assume they'll hit. We just don't know who it will be... yet.

We'll divide our players into a few groups to keep everything straight. And we'll start at the top, with the guy everyone is chasing.

Group 1: Connor McDavid

Hell yes he gets his own group.

Connor McDavid, Edmonton Oilers

His game: McDavid is a classic once-in-a-generation franchise player who can do just about everything. His skating, hockey sense and creativity are phenomenal, and he can generate offense with elite-level passing and shooting. But what really strikes you about his game is the speed—he just does everything faster than seems possible. If and when the Oilers can surround him with the sort of talent that can keep up, he'll be unstoppable.

His ceiling: We could say it's being the best player in the league, but that might actually be selling McDavid short. The question is how good he can be. Better than Crosby? In the Steve Yzerman/Joe Sakic zone? Maybe even the Wayne Gretzky/Mario Lemieux range (albeit with overall numbers watered down by the dead puck era)? At this point, nothing is off the table.

Superstar odds: 99%. Barring a significant injury, it's all but impossible to imagine McDavid not having a dominant career.

Group 2: The non-McDavid forwards

There was a time when it wasn't unusual to see young forwards playing big roles in the NHL. In the high-flying 80s, players like Lemieux, Dale Hawerchuk and even Carson put up 100-plus point seasons as teenagers, while guys like Gretzky and Yzerman were established first line players almost immediately. But as the game evolved and defensive systems took over, the learning curve for a young forward increased, and it became rare to see a young player excel without a few years of apprenticing first.

We've seen a bit of a shift back toward young players in recent years, partly thanks to teams realizing the importance of maximizing the value of entry-level deals. These five players aren't making anyone think of Lemieux or Yzerman just yet, but they've all established themselves as top six NHLers, and a few have already been all-stars.

Jack Eichel, Buffalo Sabres

His game: The consolation prize of the 2015 lottery would have been the first overall pick in just about any other year, and he's the cornerstone of a Sabres rebuild that's been long and painful but could be about to pay off. He's big and smooth, and after dominating the college ranks he put up a very good rookie season in Buffalo last year.

His ceiling: He projects as a first-line center who could someday put up a point-per-game or better without hurting you defensively. There aren't many of those guys, and the few that exist tend to spend a lot of time in the Hart Trophy conversation.

Superstar odds: 90%. There's not quite a unanimous consensus that Eichel is destined for stardom—I've heard from a few smart people who think he'll top out at merely "very good" instead of truly great. But with one good NHL season already under his belt, Sabres fans have to feel pretty confident about what the future holds.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

The most (and least) surprising moments from NHL draft weekend

The NHL’s draft weekend is, in theory, a pretty straightforward affair. It’s the annual chance to divide up all the incoming young talent, with teams making their picks, posing for a few photos, and heading home.

In reality, draft weekend often ends up feeling like 90 percent of the league’s offseason crammed into a few days. The combination of having all 30 front offices in one city, incoming cap space, and free agency looming just days away builds up into a whirlwind of rumors, speculation, and (eventually) action.

Some of it works out the way we expect. Some of it doesn’t. So let’s take a look back at this year’s just-concluded draft weekend in stifling Sunrise, Florida, by breaking down all the major moves based on just how surprising they were.

Connor McDavid going first overall: 0/100 — No surprise here; we’ve known that McDavid would be the first overall pick of the 2015 draft for the last three years. He’s the most heavily hyped prospect since Sidney Crosby, and his ridiculous numbers in junior this year — he had 120 points in just 47 games — just reaffirmed his status as the game’s Next Big Thing.

The question now is this: How big? And how quickly? McDavid goes to an Oilers franchise that hasn’t been good at anything other than winning draft lotteries in almost a decade. His arrival, and the front office overhaul the franchise underwent while anticipating it, should spell the end of the Oilers’ misery. The question is how quickly he can get them into the playoffs, and then into Cup contention.

We have some history to look back on. Crosby had 102 points as a rookie in the high-scoring post-lockout 2005-06 season, but Pittsburgh didn’t return to the playoffs until the following year. The Penguins went to the Cup final the year after that, and then won it all in 2009. Alexander Ovechkin debuted the same year as Crosby, but the Caps didn’t make the playoffs until his third season, and they still haven’t been to a final. The Blackhawks debuted the double whammy of Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane in 2007-08, missed the playoffs, and had won their first Stanley Cup by 2010.

So if you’re an Oilers fan, there’s your realistic window: one more tough season, playoff favorite status the year after that, and Stanley Cup contention soon after. It’s no sure thing, of course, but I’m guessing long-suffering Oilers fans will take it.

McDavid’s selection was the least surprising moment of the entire weekend. Well, except for this one …

This whole thing being a disaster: 0/100 — Let’s play a game called “How the hell did this happen?”

Scene: League headquarters.

NHL executive: “So, Connor McDavid has finally arrived in the NHL. How can we make the best possible first impression with this incredibly marketable new asset?”

Intern: “Hey, has anyone checked to see if the owner of the Oilers would want to awkwardly corner him on live television, then babble on about how wonderful his terrible organization is while blatantly reading off a cue card?”

NHL executive: “Great idea. Did anyone check it with Connor?”

Intern: “Sure did. He said he’d spend the entire segment visibly trying to swallow his own tongue.”

NHL executive: “Awesome, let’s do it!”

>> Read the full post on Grantland

2105 NHL draft preview

The history of the NHL draft has been, to use a polite term, inconsistent. In the 1970s, when the whole concept was still relatively new, nothing made the slightest bit of sense. Things had stabilized a bit by the 1980s, although there were still wide disparities in approaches and every now and then a team would just decide not to show up. The 1990s were filled with draft floor intrigue and costly busts, and even at the turn of the century, it was still fairly common to see the no. 1 pick traded away.

But by the time this current decade arrived, we were well into the cap era and most teams were approaching things in pretty much the same way. “Build through the draft” is every team’s mantra, top picks are almost never traded, the days of the overseas sleeper are long past, and everyone seems to be working from essentially the same information. The bad news is that all of this makes the draft a lot less fun. The good news is that, in theory at least, it should make things a little bit easier to predict.

This year’s draft is in Sunrise, Florida, with Round 1 happening tonight in prime time and everything else squished into a few hours tomorrow. In an attempt to figure out what might happen, let’s take a look at some pieces of conventional wisdom that have emerged over the years, and how they could apply to some of the top prospects who’ll be hearing their names called.

Conventional wisdom no. 1: Sure-thing franchise players are gold

In the cap era, there’s been at least some vague sense of uncertainty over the top pick in every year with the exception of 2005 (Sidney Crosby) and maybe 2008 (Steven Stamkos). Other than that, we’ve always had some degree of suspense over whose name would be called first.

That ends this year. Breaking: The Oilers are going to take Connor McDavid with the no. 1 overall pick. And after that, inside sources indicate that the Sabres are leaning toward Jack Eichel.

And that makes perfect sense, because McDavid and Eichel are two of the most highly regarded draft prospects the league has ever seen. McDavid has been hyped as the next Crosby for years, and he’s considered such a sure thing that there was plenty of speculation certain teams were tanking the 2014-15 season to increase their odds of landing him. (But don’t worry, the NHL assured us this never happens.)

Ironically, after all of that intentional losing, the draft lottery was won by the one terrible team in the league that really was trying its very best. While the Oilers’ lottery win wasn’t the ideal outcome for the league, it certainly shook up a franchise that’s been mired in misery for almost a decade. McDavid has the talent to single-handedly make the Oilers an instant playoff possibility, and he probably makes them Stanley Cup contenders sooner or later. He’s that good.

Eichel is good, too, and in any other year he would be a lock to go no. 1. This isn’t any other year, though, so when the Sabres lost the lottery and GM Tim Murray didn’t try especially hard to mask his disappointment, it was natural to view Eichel as a consolation prize. True as that may be, he’s one hell of a Plan B, and the few Sabres fans who haven’t already moved into the “We never wanted McDavid anyway” denial stage will get there pretty quickly once they get to watch him up close.

So McDavid will go first and Eichel will go second. That much we know. After that, things get interesting.

>> Read the full post on Grantland