DGB Mailbag: Ovechkin’s record-breaker, the Jack Adams curse, and 4 Nations fights

We haven’t done a mailbag since just after the season started. Remember back then? When the Rangers and Bruins were elite, the Predators were ready to contend, the Habs and Blue Jackets were write-offs and the Sabres were going to take the Capitals’ playoff spot? Good times. In related news, it’s possible we’re all dumb.

On that note, let’s see what was on your mind this time around.

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Ranking 25 of the NHL's biggest blockbuster trades from the last 25 years

Happy new year. How did you enjoy the first quarter-century of the 2000s?

That question probably makes you either feel old (because there’s no way it’s been that long) or young (because you haven’t even been around that whole time). I’m solidly in the first camp, and that’s why I’m going to distract myself from my feelings by talking about trades.

Today’s topic: Let’s rank 25 of the biggest trades of the last 25 years. Specifically, we’re going to pick the single biggest trade of each calendar year from 2000 through 2024, then rank those from least to most important. Admittedly, “biggest” and “most important” are pretty vague criteria with tons of room for subjectivity, but that’s the way we like it.

To give you an idea of how much time we have to work through, the very first NHL trade of the 2000s involved Stephane Richer. Yes, the guy who used to score 50 goals for the Canadiens back in the 80s. He was apparently a St. Louis Blue for a minute way back when. You learn something new everyday, even when you are extremely old.

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NHL weekend rankings: Offseason regrets, Lightning surge, and are the Habs good?

The holidays are done, you’re sitting in a home surrounded by all your new stuff, and you’re probably thinking: I don’t need some of this junk after all. I hope I kept the receipts.

A few NHL teams know how you feel.

We did this last year, and it’s interesting to go back and look at that list. I think it holds up fine – there aren’t any obvious cases where a player turned it around and made the doubters look bad. But what stands out is that even with a couple of honorable mentions slipped in, only one name from the list is still on the same team. That would be Anaheim’s Alex Killorn and his long-term UFA deal that everyone thought was too expensive. But the six other names had all found new homes by opening night, including three – Pierre-Luc Dubois, Joonas Korpisalo and Ryan Johansen – who were traded, despite having contracts that felt unmovable. I guess there’s some optimism to be found there if you see a guy on your favorite team on the list below.

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Florida vs. California: Debating the NHL's best state of the salary cap era

Which state has been the NHL’s best of the cap era?

There are four states with multiple NHL teams, but two stand out above the others for our purposes today. New York has three teams but no championships to show for the cap era, and are, to put it mildly, going through it right now. And while Pennsylvania has three titles to go with plenty of big stars and memorable moments, virtually all of those have come from the Penguins, which would make for a one-sided combination.

That leaves us with two contenders, at least for today: Florida and California, the only two states who can boast multiple cap-era Cup winners. And with the Tampa Bay Lightning arriving in California for a three-game road swing that starts on Thursday, this feels like as good a time as any to have the debate.

We’ll divide the question into categories, and then make the case for each side. Eric Stephens will represent California, because he pulls double-duty covering the Ducks and Kings and knows the state’s NHL situation better than anyone. And Sean McIndoe will take Florida, because he’s an eastern-based writer and has therefore never watched a West Coast team play in his life. (That was, of course, a harmless little joke. Sean has indeed watched a California team play. Once. It did not go well.)

It's California vs. Florida, and Eric vs. Sean. Ring the bell, and let's see where this goes.

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Ranking the 10 best (and 5 worst) games for Alex Ovechkin to break the record

Alexander Ovechkin is back, and the chase for history has resumed.

Ovechkin returned to the Washington lineup on Friday, needing 27 goals to pass Wayne Gretzky for the all-time crown. He wasted little time in getting the first of those that night, and then added enough on Sunday in Detroit, bringing him to 870 on his career heading into last night’s matchup with Boston.

A broken leg ended up costing Ovechkin just 16 games, which is on the low end of what we were told to expect. It’s still a decent chunk of time, and mean that catching Gretzky this season is far from a sure thing. Can he still do it? Of course he can, and everyone knows it.

But when? After all, if you’re going to build towards the fall of arguably the greatest individual record in the sport, you’d at least hope that the hockey gods have a sense of drama. And now that he’s back, it’s not too early to look ahead at the Capitals’ schedule and wonder: Which games would be the best ones to see some history?

Luckily for those hockey gods, I’ve gone ahead and done the work for them. Heading into last night, Ovechkin was 25 goals away from the record, and the Caps had 46 games left. If we assume that even the sport’s greatest sniper’s absolute ceiling would be to score at a goal-per-game pace, that takes us to the first week of March and a roughly 20-game window in which the record could realistically fall (although we’ll bend that rule with one exception you’ll see below).

Let’s rank the best and worst games for it to happen.

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