Grantland: The Brady Andersons of the NHL

Baltimore Orioles’ first baseman Chris Davis continues to lead the major leagues in home runs, hitting his 46th last week. At his current pace, it won’t be long before he’ll hit his 51st, breaking the franchise record currently held by Brady Anderson.

Anderson was a good player who was named to three All-Star games during his career, but his 1996 season was one of the great outliers in baseball history. He hit 50 home runs that year, more than twice the total he’d manage in any of his other 14 major league seasons. Fair or not, Anderson’s name has become a synonym in the sports world for a one-year wonder. (And for being suspected for some other stuff, but let's not get into that today.)

What does any of this have to do with hockey? Nothing, in theory. But it’s August and there’s nothing else to write about, so we’ll just go ahead and steal this story line from another sport and make it about hockey.

So in honor of the soon-to-be-former Orioles record-holder, here are 10 of the greatest Brady Anderson seasons in NHL history.

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Grantland: The offseason story lines we all just kind of forgot about

If you follow a television series long enough, you’ll eventually hit one of those story lines: The one that is set up brilliantly, seems to be building to an intriguing payoff, and then … just kind of gets forgotten about.

The NHL offseason isn’t a scripted TV show. (We know this because scripted TV shows don’t go weeks at a time with absolutely nothing happening.) But that hasn’t stopped this year’s edition from featuring its share of abandoned story lines.

Here are five subplots that seemed like they’d be important pieces of the 2013 offseason but (so far) have turned out to be duds.

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Grantland: The 13 types of unsigned free agents in August

August is the dead zone of the NHL offseason. After the excitement of the playoffs, followed immediately by the draft, free agency, and a handful of major trades, August shows up and ruins everything. You suck, August.

Although we sometimes do see a meaningful late-summer signing or trade, most of the league seems to take the month off. And that’s bad news for the dozens of players who are still free agents. Some will still sign between now and opening night, but their options are narrowing and their odds of finding a job are getting worse by the day.

If you’re an NHL free agent who’s still unemployed in mid-August, chances are that you fall into one of 13 categories. Let’s walk through them and see if we can figure out what fans should expect.

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Grantland: Thoughts on the Alfredsson press conference

Five weeks after stunning the hockey world by signing with the Detroit Red Wings, former Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson addressed the Ottawa media for the first time Thursday.

It was meant to be a chance for Alfredsson to talk about his decision and some of the bad feelings created in its wake, and it was. It was also meant to be the end of a bittersweet offseason story. If the immediate reactions to the event are any indication, that part may not work out so well.

Here are eight things you need to know about Thursday’s press conference and its fallout.

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Beyond the DMV: Other ways NHL stars get preferential treatment

They told him he couldn't smile for his license photo,
so he thought about Marc-Andre Fleury in the playoffs

.

It's August and there's not much happening in the NHL, which means it's time for the hockey world to find something completely harmless and blow it up into a manufactured controversy. Luckily, Sidney Crosby was kind enough to get the ball rolling for us.

In what's become a major story in Pittsburgh, Crosby was apparently allowed to skip to the front of the line at a local DMV over the weekend. This has led to accusations of preferential treatment and has some fans painting Crosby as a diva who can't be bothered to follow the same rules as everyone else.

It's all nonsense, of course. Expecting a celebrity to sit and wait for an hour while getting mobbed by fans would be silly. And besides, it's not like Crosby is the only NHL player who occasionally gets to experience the benefits of fame.

In fact, sources tell me that some of the biggest names in the hockey world often get special treatment:

Roberto Luongo - The managers at the moving supplies store never call security on him even though he goes in once a day to randomly yell "No I don't need any packing tape or boxes today thanks!" and then runs out of the room crying.

Dustin Byfuglien - Managers at the local grocery store have confirmed that they would let him cut in front of the other customers in the checkout line, in theory, if he ever left any food behind for anyone else to buy.

Alexander Ovechkin - Cops are always letting him off the hook for making illegal turns, since it's not like anyone could reasonably be expected to remember the difference between left and right.

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