This is the year that the combination of a fourth consecutive season under the zero-tolerance cap and a staggering number of injuries has expanded the NHL’s mushy middle over perhaps two-thirds of the landscape.
The talent keeps getting better. Teams keep getting worse. Parity has finally struck in a league whose agenda has always been to cater to the least common denominator. Except the common denominator is mediocrity.
We can have differing opinions on whether super teams are beneficial. I have always believed that excellence elevates a league. There are examples of individual excellence on YouTube every single day. But it does not translate collectively.
The unyielding cap has prevented general managers from addressing weaknesses. The number of significant injuries and the prevalent use of the Long Term Injury — currently 17 by the count of CapFriendly on Saturday morning — has created a scenario under which multiple AHL players dot nearly every club’s roster.
In a league where you can have a night where, officially, 16 teams win and not one loses, 24 clubs started Saturday with records above NHL .500 even while 15 teams had not won more than half of their games. The new math is the old voodoo arithmetic. Every GM wins! Ticket-price increases are justified! The owners win, too!
(Please, just because the NHL refuses to quantify overtime and shootout defeats as, well, defeats, there is no obligation for independent thinkers to adopt their language. If a team loses four straight in regulation, two more in extra time then another five in regulation, that club is on an 11-game losing streak, plain and simple.)
There are no breakaway teams this year. Who’s the team to beat? Well, other than the San Jose team that has been beaten in 35 of their 45 contests (four in a shootout), it is difficult to identify a front-runner. Do you believe in Winnipeg or Vancouver? Boston, but what about last year? Toronto, which entered Saturday with 22 victories and 21 defeats? How has that happened?
Goaltending is a big part of what happened to the Maple Leafs. It is a big part of what has happened to the Devils and multiple teams around the league. All those goalies who were out there at the start of the year are still out there. All those teams that have needed a netminder all year still do. All those GMs who have hoarded netminders expecting to receive a bounty in exchange at the deadline are licking their lips.
But will this type of parity in which teams have not separated themselves from the teeming masses promote more or less movement at the deadline? How many true impact players will be on the market? Elias Lindholm of the Flames? Noah Hanifin? Chris Tanev? Are these game-changers worth what will surely be exorbitant costs?
I am keeping my hands in my pockets if first-rounders or blue-chip entry level guys are the price of admission to the trade cotillion.
The paragraph above is in bold for Chris Drury.
What team in the crowded marshland is one player away from winning 16 playoff games? By the way, if you have watched the Devils, you’re not going to say New Jersey, are you?
Here’s one to ponder: The Rangers have not played at UBS since Oct. 22, 2022. The Blueshirts’ next visit to the Islanders home rink is set for April 9.
A 531-day gap, but who’s counting?
Quite the bang for the season subscriber buck.
Shane Pinto is expected to return to the Ottawa lineup Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia after serving his 41-game suspension for … well, we don’t actually know, do we?
There’s something about “activities related to sports wagering,” but no indication of what the 23-year-old native of Long Island actually did. He didn’t bet on hockey, everyone in authority rushed to assure us of that, but that’s about the sum and substance of the transparency of this matter.
In 1963, when NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle suspended Green Bay’s Paul Hornung and Detroit’s Alex Karras for the season, he announced that they had bet on football games.
But six decades later, everything is a secret.
We know more than ever about players through their social media accounts but somehow know less than ever about issues that have direct impact on the ticket-buying customers.
If you’re going to be morally outraged when a contender signs Corey Perry to a contract, you have to be able to tell me what specifically you are outraged about.
Do you think it was a good thing for the Blackhawks to refuse to make Connor Bedard available to the press after a defeat to the Rangers at the Garden on Jan. 4, the very day the wunderkind became the youngest player ever to be named to play for an NHL All-Star team?
Wait a second. This can’t be.
But it is.
Ryan Hartman of the Wild has a no-move clause?
What. Is. Happening?
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