Weekend rankings: How the trade deadline changed my mind on several teams

The trade deadline has come and gone, and… it wasn’t bad, right? It didn’t quite live up to the type, but deadlines never do. And while there are ways we could give the annual market a boost, this one delivered some interesting moves.

It also should probably shuffle up our rankings, although I’m still working through that part. Let’s dig through a few of the teams that made the strongest case to move up or down based on what they did or didn’t do.

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How can the NHL make the trade deadline more exciting? 10 ideas that could fix it

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the NHL’s trade deadline day was a bit of a bust.

After weeks — OK, make that months — of round-the-clock hype, the day came and went with only one true blockbuster, the buzzer-beating Tomas Hertl to Vegas shocker. We ended up with 21 trades in all, but it was mostly quantity over quality, as many of the biggest names on the board either stayed put or had already been moved.

The day had its other moments, including interesting moves involving Tyler Toffoli and Evgeni Kuznetsov. We’d already seen names like Jake Guentzel and Noah Hanifin move in the days prior, plus a fun Casey Mittelstadt/Bowen Byram deal. It certainly wasn’t a bad deadline. It just left you wanting more, just like pretty much every year recently. No Jacob Markström, no Linus Ullmark, no Jakob Chychrun or Jusse Saros or Trevor Zegras or even Elias Lindholm, the sequel. Where have you gone, Butch Goring, Ron Francis, Ray Bourque and Roberto Luongo?

At this point, it’s tempting to just shrug and say that’s life in the modern NHL, where the cap makes trading too complicated and parity means there aren’t enough clear sellers to feed all the buyers. As fans, we should accept reality, take what we can get, and move on. But that’s not the only option. So today, let’s mark the passing of the deadline by coming up with some steps we could take to help this day live up to the hype.

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Mailbag: The Gold Plan debate, Hall-of-Fame immortals, and all-old-guy teams

We’re just two days away from a trade deadline in which all hell will break loose, or maybe nothing all that interesting will happen. As we count down the hours, let’s see what’s on your mind…

You keep talking about how great the Gold Plan is because it would eliminate tanking. But doesn’t the whole thing fall apart because teams would just tank earlier, to make sure they were eliminated from playoff contention as soon as possible? – A whole lot of you.

Now that we officially have a pro league using the Gold Plan, the old debates about whether the NHL should adopt it are back. Some are on board, others are just wrong, and that’s OK. But this seems to have emerged as the main objection, so let’s cover it here.

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Weekend rankings: Deadline week stories to watch, plus the unbeatable Predators

Welcome to trade deadline week. We’ve got five days left, building up to a Friday afternoon deadline that will either rock the hockey world or leave us feeling let down. We’re all pretty sure that we can guess which of those two options it’s going to be, but we don’t know for sure, and that’s where the excitement comes in. Let’s get ourselves psyched up.

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All 419 PIM from the Flyers/Senators brawl, ranked from least to most ridiculous

The Flyers are hosting the Senators tonight, and you can expect to see a lot of highlights featuring the two teams this week.

Not from tonight’s game. I’m sure it will be fine, maybe even a good game, and if we’re lucky we’ll get an exciting moment or two. But I’m willing to bet that it won’t end up being more memorable than the meeting between these two teams from almost exactly 20 years ago.

Yes, it’s time to mark the anniversary of That Game – a contest so infamous that it has its own Wikipedia page. Nearly two decades ago, the Senators and Flyers met in a matchup that ended up setting the NHL’s all-time record for penalty minutes in a single game.

A total of 419, to be exact, more than any game the 1970s Broad Street Bullies ever played. More than the Battle of Alberta ever served up. More than the St. Patrick’s Day Massacre or any other Norris Division game, or the Good Friday Massacre or any other Battle of Quebec meeting. And more – just barely – than the brawl-filled Boston/Minnesota game in 1981 that had held the record for over 23 years until these two teams came along.

The 20-year anniversary arrives on Tuesday, and we’ll mark the anniversary with a thorough, well-reported oral history from Ian Mendes and Kevin Kurtz. Today, we’re just going to get weird.

We’re going to rank those penalty minutes. Yes, every single one of them, from the least to most ridiculous.

But first, let’s refresh your memory and/or relive the game’s wildest moments. Through the first 58 minutes, there had been only 11 penalties called, all of them minors. But at the 58:15 mark of the third period, with the Flyers leading 5-2, things went decidedly off the rails.

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