Puck Soup: The week that was

On this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- We cover all the stuff that happened like three minutes after we finished last week's show
- The Habs hire Martin St. Louis
- Ken Holland finally fires a coach
- The Flames land Tyler Toffoli
- The Knights get Jack Eichel but might need a goalie
- We try to figure out the Pacific
- Sidney Crosby hits 500 goals
- We pretend to care about men's Olympic hockey and get ready for the main event on the women's side
- And lots more...

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Mailbag: Could you save half the shots in an NHL game? Plus a Lindros what-if, a Scrabble challenge and more

I forgot to do a January mailbag. Does that mean you’ll get two in February? It does not. Look, if the Habs can take an entire month off then I can too.

Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and style.

My question is one that has been furiously debated amongst my friends for years. If an average beer league hockey player (skater, not a goalie) were to suit up as a goalie in an NHL game, what would be a reasonable estimate of that person’s save percentage?

The only caveats to the hypothetical would be that the other players on the ice wouldn’t be “aware” of the person’s lack of goaltending skill, and the person wouldn’t get pulled from the net despite the clear underperformance in goal (they could finish the entire game). Most of us believe that our save percentage would be infinitesimally small, however we do have one friend that ardently posts his own over/under at 50%.

As the internet’s foremost authority on hockey hypotheticals, help us settle this debate once and for all. Has history shown that a 0.500 save percentage is doable for a run-of-the-mill men’s leaguer? Has goalie equipment gotten big enough for even the average skater to step in the way of a majority of NHL shots? Have players gotten so skilled at defensive play they’d be able to reasonably offset this obvious detriment in net? Would attempting to stop an Alex Ovechkin one-timer send the average person to the hospital? Appreciate your input. – Bryan C.

I read this submission, stared at it for a while, and then had to email Bryan back with a follow-up question: Do the other players on the ice not realize the goalie is just a regular guy at first, or can they somehow not figure it out through the entire game? Bryan clarified that it’s the latter – nobody else changes anything about their game, meaning your team can’t go all-out on defense and the other team isn’t bombing shots from the red line. It’s a normal NHL game in every way except for you, an average beer leaguer who’s never played net until right now.

My verdict: Bryan’s friend who thinks he could finish a game over .500 is out of his mind.

I mean, come on. Yes, you’d make some saves, just by virtue of the puck hitting you. (And that’s all it would be; you would absolutely not be able to move in time to do anything to an NHL player’s slapshot.) But if you’re going to play a full game and face, let’s say, 30 shots, there’s virtually zero chance you’re lucky enough to have half of them go into your chest.

Remember: David Ayres, who had a few decades of experience as a goaltender and will live in history forever as the gold standard for miracle “regular guy” performances, only had an .800 save percentage in that game. You think somebody who doesn’t even know which leg the pads go on is going to get anywhere close to that? Madness.

The only caveat I’ll allow for is that Bryan doesn’t say anything about injuries, and there’s an excellent chance that any NHL shot you faced would destroy you. If your first play is an Ovechkin one-timer that turns your collarbone into powder and you leave on a stretcher having made one save on one shot, I guess that would count. But that’s your only hope.

Is it too soon to say Kakko and Lafreniere are busts? Because I’m starting to worry. What does history say about players their age with their expectations/hype? – Skinny Peet

Oh good, I’m sure all the Rangers fans who complain I don’t talk about their team enough will be thrilled now.

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Fresh starts in Montreal and Edmonton, a bad week for the Bruins, and the Ducks face some tough decisions

We had two more coaching changes this week, and both had been feeling inevitable for weeks. The only question in Edmonton was whether things would get bad enough for Ken Holland to actually fire a coach for the first time in his career, rather than wait for their contract to expire like he usually does. And the only question in Montreal was whether there was even any point in trying to make things better during a season so bad it’s been bordering on farce.

The answer to both questions turned out to be yes, and so we say goodbye to Dave Tippett and Dominique Ducharme and (a maybe temporary) hello to Jay Woodcroft and Martin St. Louis. This weekend, we had our first opportunity to get a real look at what both teams might look like for the rest of the year.

We’ll start in Edmonton, where Tippett somehow survived an awful stretch long enough to get his team back in track, but couldn’t weather a two-game losing streak coming out of the All-Star break. Woodcroft comes up from the AHL, and seems to be a generally well-regarded young coach who’ll have a decent shot to earn the long-term job. He started off his tenure by dialing back the ice time for Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, which took some guts, but it largely worked in Friday’s 3-1 win. Beating the struggling Islanders is hardly a sign the Oilers are fixed, but it’s a start, and they’ve got their next four games against good but beatable teams, so we’ll have a sense of where Woodcroft’s team is at by next week.

The Oilers are still very much in the playoff hunt, so every win matters. But in the big picture, the more important impact of the change is that Ken Holland has now played the one card he had left in his hand. He did the gritty leadership thing in the summer. He rolled the dice on Evander Kane a few weeks ago. Now he’s made the coaching change. There are no more easy targets, and if it doesn’t work now then there won’t be any question that it’s on the GM.

An even more interesting change came in Montreal, where the Habs put Ducharme out of his misery and brought in a guy with next to no coaching experience. I don’t get it, as you already know if you listen to the podcast, but it’s impossible not to root for St. Louis. He’s been an underdog story his whole career, everyone who played with or coached him seems to love the guy, and if you’re a fan of offense like I am then you have to perk up when you hear a new coach saying stuff like this:

Love it Coach St. Louis! This is what we are trying to teach our players at the 12U level. Having structure within concepts and making reads. Don’t box players into systems! pic.twitter.com/sFJvFjI0HY

— Dan Richard (@DRich1020) February 11, 2022

Will it work? It did for the first three games, as the Canadiens looked far more competitive. Of course, the bar has been set so low this year in Montreal that “far more competitive” still means three losses, running their streak to ten straight. But they were in the games, or at least close enough, and Cole Caufield looked dangerous again, which might be more important to the long-term future in Montreal than anything else that could happen. In one sense, maybe that’s the best-case scenario for St. Louis as coach — the Habs get better, the young players take a step forward, and nobody really cares that they’re still losing enough to secure top lottery odds.

Sometimes a midseason coaching change works out great, sometimes they don’t. We’ve seen the Canucks turn their season around under Bruce Boudreau, including Thatcher Demko stealing a very entertaining win over the Leafs on Saturday. It hasn’t gone as well in Winnipeg or Philadelphia. My guess is that this might be it for the year, unless the Devils decide to move on from Lindy Ruff, but we’ll see.

On to the top five, only one of which has made a coaching change this year …

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Remember Some Guys: We built a roster made up of the the best ex-NHL players in Beijing

When the NHL bailed on the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, you had your choice of two doors.

The first was an exit. No NHL players, no dice. Fair enough. The second — the product of hundreds of roster spots opened across 12 teams — was a lot more fun.

The men’s hockey tournament, you see, is now filled with Guys. Guys you’ve probably heard of. Guys you probably remember.

Thusly, The Athletic’s chief Guy Rememberer and his American understudy got together to build the best possible roster (outside of the Canadian and American teams, because we’ve talked about them enough) of players who a) were good enough to make some sort of impression in the NHL and b) are no longer good enough to hold down an NHL roster spot themselves.

The rules are simple enough; they had to play NHL games, but they couldn’t have been that good. We invoked that rule once.

Most of all, they were available. They are now Olympians. You probably remember them. Let’s go.

Finland

Gentille: The Finns took as hard a hit as any team when NHL participation went out the window — no Aleksander Barkov, no Sebastian Aho, no Juuse Saros — but they’re still a pre-tournament favorite for a few reasons; part of that comes from the system they play and the culture they’ve built. “The Pesky Finns” is a moniker for a reason, and their recent history of international success speaks for itself.

Beyond that, they were able to reshape a roster that would’ve been top-to-bottom NHL players with some guys who, not long ago, were in the big league themselves. Valtteri Filppula and Sami Vatanen had been roster staples for most of this century. Leo Komarov was close enough. Mikko Lehtonen played for the Leafs, so he’s automatically important.

There are other forwards that could help. Markus Granlund had a 19-goal season with the Canucks in 2016-17, and he’s Finland’s first-line center. Teemu Hartikainen, after years of failing to stick with the Oilers, has become a point-per-game guy in the KHL and is playing on Finland’s wing. We’ve got options here

The question here, I guess, is whether Filppula and Vatanen transcend Remember That Guy status.

McIndoe: First of all, put some respect on Leo Komarov’s name. That’s “former Maple Leafs representative at the all-star game because of the one-player-per-team rule” Leo Komarov to you.

Also, I can’t wait to go “Wait, isn’t he on the Predators right now?” every time Markus Granlund’s name is mentioned throughout this entire tournament. So, maybe twice.

Gentille: I thought both brothers played for the Wild at some point. Nope — just Mikael. That’s a That Guy.

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The Athletic Hockey Show: St. Louis blues

On this week's episode of The Athletic Hockey Show:
- The Canadiens hire a coach with no coaching experience
- What's the worst-case scenario for Martin St. Louis in Montreal?
- We can hate Brad Marchand again
- Has any coach had a weirder calendar year than Dominique Ducharme just did?
- Sidney Crosby approaches a milestone
- Is Darryl Sittler's ten-point night an unbreakable record?
- Listener mail, this week in history 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)