The Contrarian: That famous Bobby Orr photo is bad, and other fake arguments

Welcome back to The Contrarian, one of the most beloved and popular features that I write. Unless it isn't.

The concept here is simple. Readers send me statements about the NHL which they believe to be obviously true, bordering on the inarguable. Then I argue against those statements anyway, and see if I can convince you to start thinking the unthinkable.

Do I actually believe any of this? Maybe, but that’s not the point. The point is that I’m a sportswriter, and if I’m going to have any success in this media world, I need to master the art of making ridiculous contrarian arguments that make just enough sense to be infuriating.

Previous editions of The Contrarian have seen me make the case that Mark Messier was a great Canuck, Ray Bourque’s long-awaited championship was bad,  and Brett Hull’s skate-in-crease goal was actually fine. Today, we’ve got a new batch of reader statements that can’t be argued. Spoiler alert: All of them will be.

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NHL weekend rankings: Change in Boston, déjà vu in Ottawa, and expected storylines

We’re a quarter of the way through the NHL season, which means it’s time for two things: Saying “quarter-pole” around your most pedantic friends just to annoy them, and writing pieces about how nothing is going the way we expected.

We’ve been covering that latter ground for most of the season around here, including last week’s reminder that you were wrong about all this stuff too. So this time, let’s switch it up. Sure, this is a league where almost nothing is playing out the way we thought: the Oilers are bad, the Flames are good, the Predators are terrible, the Capitals and Wild are great, the Jet are dominant, the Avalanche are .500, and the Bruins are collapsing. Connor McDavid is outside the top ten in points, Connor McMichael is unstoppable, and Connor Bedard is regressing in year two. None of it makes any sense. But if we dig deep enough, surely we can find a few things that are actually playing out pretty much the way we all expected, right?

Of course we can. I’m not sure we can find five, but let’s try.

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Remembering 10 times a season's list of Jack Adams finalists did not hold up well

The firing of Jim Montgomery this week was newsworthy for plenty of reasons, mostly surrounding what it means for the spiralling Bruins. But it was also interesting for awards watchers, who probably recall Montgomery winning the Jack Adams as coach of the year in 2023. It’s fair to say that the list of that year’s finalists has, as the kids say these days, not aged well.

Ruff didn’t even make it through the 2023-24 season, while Hakstol was gone early in the offseason. Montgomery was the comparative ironman, making it all the way until Tuesday.

Three coaches, the apparent very best of the best in 2023, all fired before the end of 2024. We have to ask the question: Is the Jack Adams cursed?

No, because curses aren’t real. But it is a weird award, one that’s typically voted on as much based on short-term surprise factor as long-term excellence. If the trophy truly went to the best coach in the league every year, we’d expect to see plenty of names listed as multiple-time winners, just like we do for the Hart or the Vezina. With the exceedingly rare Jim Carey-level exception that proves the rule, you almost never see nominations for major player awards go to guys who are out of a job entirely within a few years.

But you do see it with the Jack Adams, in part because the broadcasters who vote on it typically lean towards coaches whose teams have exceeded expectations, which is nice but not the same as being the best at the job. Worse, a spot as a Jack Adams finalist combined with an surprisingly strong season often raises expectations, and expectations can be an NHL coach’s worst enemy.

So maybe it’s not surprising that we see the occasional outlier like that 2023 trio of soon-to-deposed coaches. The problem is it’s not much of an outlier at all. So today, let’s look through the Jack Adams finalists for every season of the cap era and ask a simple question: How well did the list hold up, in terms of those guys clearing the low bar of simply keeping their jobs?

I’ve pulled ten years where the answer ranges from “not great” to “big oof”, which seems like a lot considering we’ve only got 19 years to choose from. Let’s count down those 10 lists of finalists, from bad to worse.

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It's not just you, Sid: Remembering six legends whose careers ended with playoff droughts

Sidney Crosby is bumming me out these days.

Not because he’s playing poorly. Quite the opposite – even at 37, he’s still scoring and playing a strong two-way game. No, the sad part is that it’s not anywhere near enough for the Penguins. With a sub-.500 record in a surprisingly tough division, their seasons already looks like a lost cause.

If so, it will be third straight year that Crosby misses the playoffs. And with two more years left on his extension, and little in the way of optimism that the aging Penguins can get any better, getting to five straight doesn’t seem unrealistic. Assuming he doesn’t push for a trade, it’s legitimately possible that we’ve already seen the last of Sidney Crosby in NHL games that actually matter.

Maybe things will turn around in Pittsburgh. But if not, Crosby could at least take some solace in knowing that he won’t be the only legend to end his career with little or no playoff action. It happens more than you might think, especially when we’re talking about players who are still performing at a high level. You’d think the hockey gods would make sure that every star got the sendoff they deserve. But for every Ray Bourque or Lanny McDonald or Mark Recchi who goes out on top, or even an Adam Oates who at least comes close, there are stars who never get that chance.

Let’s remember a few of those guys today, if only to make Sid feel better. OK, fine, to make me feel better about where Crosby might be headed.

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NHL weekend rankings: Avs, Blues, a new bottom team, and we were all so wrong

We’re over a month in the NHL season, just days away from US Thanksgiving. Are you ready to admit you were wrong?

I am. When it came to predicting how the 2024-25 season would play out, I was very wrong. I almost always am. I’m bad at this, and you should not trust anything I say about anything.

But you’re bad at it too, and I have proof. For the last few years, we’ve had the prediction contest as a permanent record of where the general preseason consensus was among hockey fans, or at least my readers. And one month into this season… woof, you guys are looking bad.

So before we get to my rankings, which will be wrong, let’s humble the howling mob with a look back at five key developments you totally whiffed on.

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