Let's waste your Friday by building some NHL Olympic all-star teams

 We’re finally watching Olympic best-on-best hockey for the first time in 12 years. And so far, it kind of rules.

The last time the league sent its players to an Olympics, I wrote a piece where I picked the ten best NHL Olympians. The idea was to weight both sides equally – NHL success, and Olympic success – and rank the best of the best. It's been so long that I’d completely forgotten about that piece, and only stumbled on it recently. And it kind of made me want to revisit it.

Of course, there’s a problem: All these years later, we don’t have much in the way of new information to work with. So clearly, another top ten won’t do. We have to do what we do best around here: Take something that should be simple, and make it more complicated for no good reason other than it seems fun.

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NHL weekend rankings: A blockbuster trade, a midseason rankings reset, and more

Let’s get you caught up on all the NHL action you missed over the weekend.

There wasn’t any.

Cool, good column. See you next time.

OK, we won’t wrap it up quite that quickly. But with most teams getting only a couple of games in since this time last week, don’t expect any major changes in the rankings.

Instead, let’s use this week as a bit of a reset and regroup before the rankings take a few weeks off. For example, now would be a good time to look at which teams have been on which lists so far this year.

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The long and surprisingly weird history of players scoring 8 points in a game

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of Darryl Sittler’s legendary 10-point game. On February 7, 1976, Sittler scored six times and added four assists to power the Leafs to a win over the Bruins. With the feat coming on a nationally televised Hockey Night in Canada game, the record became a defining moment of 1970s hockey. The record still stands to this day.

Sittler’s record was recognized by the Maple Leafs during a ceremony last week, in the last home game before the anniversary. We dug into that record-breaking night in more detail that week’s newsletter, including an interesting bit of trivia: Not only has nobody ever matched Sittler’s 10 points, nobody in NHL history has even reached nine points in a game.

But while the ten-point club is exclusive and the nine-point club remains empty, the eight-point club is more crowded than you might think. There have been 15 eight-point games in NHL history, by a total of 12 different players. And let’s just say it’s an eclectic group.

On Sunday, we can celebrate Sittler’s night for the ages. But today, let’s recognize the 15 times that somebody has hit the eight-point mark, going chronologically from the first to the most recent.

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Remembering 10 stars who lost their best Olympic opportunity in 2018 and 2022

We’re about to hit a whole bunch of important Olympic milestones. The NHL break starts tomorrow night. The first preliminary round games are next Wednesday. The medal round starts two weeks from tomorrow. Construction on the arena should be finished shortly after that.

The point is, this happening. And that’s big, because as every hockey fan knows, the NHL hasn’t been to an Olympics since 2014.

That’s 12 years ago, which is a long wait for fans. But it’s also a big gap for the players – big enough that some legitimate stars have seen their peak come and go since the last time they had the opportunity to play on the world’ biggest stage. We’re talking about players who were almost certainly good enough to make an Olympic team, but just never got the chance.

Let’s recognize a few of those guys today.

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NHL weekend rankings: It’s not too early to imagine a dream first playoff round

We’re just hitting the two-thirds mark of the regular season. The Olympic break is days away, the trade deadline is still over a month away, and a million things can change between now and April.

Is it too early to start thinking about the playoffs?

Probably. But like a little kid noticing the Christmas decorations starting to go up in November, it’s OK to start looking ahead just a bit. And that feels especially true right now, when a peek at the standings hints at a first round that could be especially intriguing.

Most years, I end up writing a full column sometime in March on the best potential matchups that realistically in play. That’s still the plan this year, unless I forget, which is always a solid possibility. But this week, let’s fire off a preemptive strike, with a look at five of the best first-round matchups that we could be headed towards.

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