With Gretzky's goal mark gone, how many NHL records are truly unbreakable?

And just like that, Wayne Gretzky’s unbreakable record has been broken.

Well, one of them. Gretzky had more than his share. But for hockey fans of my generation, it really is hard to believe that Alexander Ovechkin actually did it. He broke Gretzky’s career goals record. That wasn’t supposed to be possible.

For decades, old-timers like me figured there was just no way that anyone could get to 894. Not in the Dead Puck Era, which eventually gave way to the Only Comatose Puck Era. Not when it meant scoring at a 45-goal pace for 20 consecutive seasons. Not in an era where players were bigger and stronger, meaning just staying healthy was a challenge. Not in a league where forwards were supposed to peak in their mid-20s and then give way to the next generation.

But here we are. So now we have to ask: What other “unbreakable” records could we be wrong about?

We’ve had some fun in the past with unbreakable records, as well as a few breakable ones. But today, let’s look at some of the sport’s marks that have at some point seemed unreachable, and try to figure out if they could actually be in play.

Jesse already took a look at Gretzky’s other records, and I’m mostly on the same page. I’d argue that the nine Hart Trophies is probably unbreakable, given how much modern sportswriters seem to value the novelty of getting new names on their ballots. But I’d agree that the career points and assists records are untouchable, and I like Jesse stopping just short of taking the 92-goal regular season record off the table.

What about the records that aren’t Gretzky’s? Let’s have a look at 15 of the most imposing, and see if we can imagine them being broken someday.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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12 of NHL history's greatest record-breaking goals, ranked from worst to best

With the Alex Ovechkin goals chase now down to single digits, it no longer feels like a question of if he’ll break Wayne Gretzky’s mark this season, but rather when.

We’ve already covered that question, a few weeks back. But there’s a second, and maybe even more important question that’s now looming: Will the record-breaking goal be any good?

The NHL is already worrying about this, especially the possibility that the record-breaker falls victim to their very bad and nit-picky replay review system. Other fans have been openly antagonizing the hockey gods with ideas for the most Team Chaos-worthy way the record could fall. (Personally, I’m a big fan of the “Ovechkin has an empty-net look against the Penguins but Sidney Crosby throws his stick for an automatic goal, meaning Sid's the one who actually ‘scores’ the record-breaker” scenario.)

Whatever happens, it will be a cool moment. But how cool? Just in case Ovechkin is looking for inspiration, today’s column is going to look at a dozen historic NHL goals that broke an important record. To be clear, we’re not worried about individual milestones, or important game-winners or sudden death snipes. We want the guys who broke a significant record, did it with a goal, and did it in style. Just like how we all hope Ovechkin will over the next few weeks.

We’ll use a modified version of the scale we established for the goalie goals ranking, with an emphasis on the creativity and/or skill of the goal itself. We’ll go from worst to best, which means there’s really only one pick for 12th spot…

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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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.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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What’s the best roster you could make from modern NHL history, while only using players who never played together?

For today’s post, we’re going to work through a simple question suggested by a reader.

I know what you’re thinking. The last time we tried the whole “simple question from a reader” thing, it didn’t go especially well for my psychological health. I’m pleased to report that won’t be the case this time; this question was actually a lot of fun to work through. Thank you, Kris B. from the comments section. This didn’t ruin my whole week.

That’s partly because unlike last time, we’re not looking for one right answer. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you might be able to come up with a better answer than I can. But that doesn’t mean the question is easy, because it’s not – it’s deceptively tricky and gets harder as you go.

Here it is: What’s the best roster you could make from modern NHL history, while only using players who never played together?

That’s it. Nice and easy. You’re probably already filling in spots in your head, right?

Before we dive in, let’s nail down a few quick ground rules:

• “Playing together” means they were on the same roster at the same time during a season or playoffs. This is NHL only – we don’t care about the minor leagues or the WHA or international play or All-Star games or old-timer rosters.
• Positions matter. We need four centers, four guys at each wing, six defensemen and two goalies. No forwards playing out of position. (We’ll use hockey-reference as the arbiter of who plays where.)
• Because the records of who played on which team can get a little dicey in the league’s early days, I’m only going to go back to the start of the Original Six era. Apologies to “Phantom” Joe Malone.

Makes sense? Then let’s get started. And we’ll start in the obvious place: With the best player the sport has ever had.

Our first pick can be literally anyone from NHL history, so let’s start with Wayne Gretzky.

Gretzky is the perfect starting point for this game, for two reasons. For one, every fan would agree that he’s either the best player ever or at least very close. If you get a blank canvas to build any roster you want, of course you’re going to start with Gretzky.

The second reason is that he illustrates the dilemma we’re dealing with here. Gretzky played with a ton of elite players, meaning we can start scratching a whole lot of big names of our list right away.

His Oilers days cost us Mark Messier, Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey, not to mention Grant Fuhr and Glenn Anderson. The trade to the Kings wipes out Luc Robitaille and Rob Blake, among others. The Rangers years mean we lose Brian Leetch and Pat LaFontaine. And his stint with the Blues, even though it only lasted a few weeks, ends up wiping out a surprising number of big names, including Brett Hull, Al MacInnis, Chris Pronger and even (by just a few days) Dale Hawerchuk.

Yikes. It’s enough to have us already doubting ourselves. Do we … do we leave Wayne Gretzky off our roster?

There’s a case that we should, since it’s not like we’re going to be hurting for offensive center options. The counterargument is that this is Wayne Freaking Gretzky. He’s the NHL’s all-time scoring leader by nearly 1,000 points. Of course he’s on the team. Don’t galaxy-brain this. Write him in as the No. 1 center and don’t look back.

That’s the camp I’m in, so Gretzky’s on the team. Still, we’re one name in and you can already see how this is going to get tricky.

We’ve still got lots of room to work with for our next few picks. We said Gretzky was probably the greatest player ever, but some fans would argue that. Luckily, we don’t have to pick and choose among the top candidates – none of them ever played together, meaning we can fit them all onto the roster. So welcome aboard Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe and Mario Lemieux.

Those are all easy calls, right? They do come at a cost – Howe means we can’t use an entire generation of Red Wings, including Terry Sawchuk, Ted Lindsay, Johnny Bucyk or Red Kelly. And his brief stint with the Whalers ends up being surprisingly costly, as we lose access to Bobby Hull and Dave Keon. Orr means we can’t use fellow Bruins stars like Phil Esposito or Brad Park, and his stint in Chicago costs us Phil’s brother Tony, as well as Stan Mikita, who was still a Hawk well into the late-70s. Still, I can’t imagine anyone objecting to paying the price to have Orr and Howe on the team.

And then there’s Mario. He ends up being the first addition from what will turn out to be an important subset of players for this game: Guys who only ever played for one team. As we’ll see, guys who move around a lot end up being harder to fit in. Lemieux still costs us, though, because those early-90s Penguins teams were stacked with Hall of Famers, so we’re going to lose access to Ron Francis, Larry Murphy and even Bryan Trottier. Not bad names, but we’re not losing sleep over them.

And yeah, we also lose out on Jaromir Jagr, and that hurts, especially since winger figures to be a tough spot to fill. But come on, this is Mario Lemieux. There’s no way we don’t have him on the team.

Or is there …

Problem #1: The Mario Conundrum

Here’s the thing about picking between Lemieux and Jagr: It’s an easy call. Jagr was great, but Lemieux was legendary. There might be five players in NHL history that you take over Jagr without even thinking about it, but Mario’s one of them.

But then you remember Lemieux’s comeback, and that it stretched all the way into playing a few games in the post-lockout season in 2005-06. And that means he was briefly teammates with Sidney Crosby.

Mario Lemieux … or Jaromir Jagr and Sidney Crosby?

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Hockey nicknames are broken. Here’s how we fix them

The NHL has a rich history of cool nicknames. Classic monikers like The China Wall, Old Poison or the Golden Jet evoke memories of larger than life stars, while memories of legendary moments can be summoned just by mentioning The Rocket, Mr. Hockey, Boom-Boom or, simply, The Great One.

But with a small handful of exceptions, all the sport’s best nicknames are from long ago. These days, star players get half-hearted variations of their last names, if they get anything at all. Nicknames used to matter in hockey, but not anymore. The entire concept is broken.

But we can fix this. And all it will take is five steps. Here’s what we need to do:

Step one: Stop accepting what we have now

Ask around an NHL dressing room over the past few decades and you’ll find out that most players are just referred to by modified versions of their last name. Usually, you just take the first syllable or two of their surname, maybe slap on an “er” or a “y” to the end, and you’re done. Sometimes you don’t even do that much. Jonesy. Kaner. Gio. Alfie. Iggy. Ovi.

Everyone agrees that these are terrible sports nicknames. But everyone is wrong.

No, those aren’t bad sports nicknames, because they’re not sports nicknames at all. They’re abbreviations. If you want to get technical, you could call them diminutive hypocorisms. Terms of affection between friends, in some cases. They’re nicknames, I guess, if only in the broadest possible sense.

But they’re not sports nicknames. Sports nicknames are a special class. They’re supposed to be descriptive, or at least creative. Fun, even. Vaguely interesting, at a bare minimum. (An academic paper by Robert Kennedy and Tania Zamuner calls these kinds of nicknames “Homeric,” which I kind of love because it’s a reference to the poet Homer but also captures that homer sports fan vibe).

The key point is that most modern hockey nicknames aren’t good nicknames because they’re not real nicknames at all. If your last name is Jones and people call you Jonesy, you don’t have a nickname. Yet. But maybe you should.

But first, we have to do something very important …

Step two: Stop asking the players what their nicknames are

Sure, players are terrible at assigning nicknames, at least publicly. Therefore, the whole problem is their fault, right? No. Not at all.

It’s not their fault. It’s ours.

All of us. The media. The fans. We’re the ones who are supposed to be coming up with nicknames. That’s supposed to be our job. But at some point along the way, we all decided to offload it onto the players. And again, they’re terrible at it.

The problem was buried right there in the first sentence of step one. “Ask around an NHL dressing room.” Why are we doing that? Who cares what the players call each other? That’s not where great nicknames come from.

Do you think Georges Vezina’s teammates were calling him “The Chicoutimi Cucumber” when they played cards on the train? Of course not. They probably called him Vezzy. But we don’t know that, because nobody ever asked them, and rightly so. Some old-timey sportswriter came up with The Chicoutimi Cucumber, everyone else went “that’s awesome” and a nickname was born. Vezina himself didn’t get a say. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Back then, you had to rely on a handful of anointed media to come up with creative names, which worked well enough because most of the good ones were drunk at all times. Later, as cable TV and sports talk radio spread, you might occasionally get something generated by fans that was able to break through the filters. But today, in the age of social media, literally anyone can send a thought out into the world and see it gain traction. And sports nicknames are exactly the sort of fun-but-meaningless content that should be thriving on Twitter. We should be living in a golden age of nicknames.

But we’re not. And it’s because literally, nothing good has ever come from Twitter we all got lazy and just decided to ask the players to do it. Shame on us. It’s not their job, it’s ours. Let’s take it back.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Let’s play the $200 Lineup Game

It’s August. Nothing much is happening in the NHL. Nothing much will be happening in the NHL. If anything did happen, we might not find out about it because Pierre is on vacation. Outside of whatever the Wild are doing, there’s nothing to talk about.

It’s a perfect time to play The $200 Lineup Game.

This game is based on some Twitter fun we had a few years ago. The rules are simple. You’re going to build the best starting lineup out of players who’ve played for your favorite NHL team. Here’s how it works.

• You need three forwards, two defensemen and a goalie. Other than that, we don’t care about position, so you can mix wingers and centers and don’t need to worry about which side your defensemen play on.
• You have a salary cap of $200 to work with to build your full lineup.
• Each player you pick will cost you a salary of $1 per regular-season game that they ever played for your favorite team. If you want a guy who played one full 82-game season, that’s $82 of your cap gone.
• Here’s the key, and the part that’s going to screw up the people who skip the intro on these things: Once you fit a player onto your roster, you get credit for their entire NHL career. Not just the games they played for your team – everything they did in the NHL.

In other words, you’re looking for star players who had the briefest possible stint with your team. Guy Lafleur isn’t worth anything to the Canadiens, because he’d cost way too much. But his one season in New York means that a Rangers team could squeeze him in for $67, and they’d get credit for the full Flower experience. Want Brett Hull and his 700+ career goals? You’re out of luck if you’re the Blues or even the Stars. But a Flames team could fit him in for just $57. And the Coyotes could get him for just $5.

A few more rules, just for your loophole-seekers out there.

• A player must have played at least one regular-season game to qualify for a team’s roster. There are no freebies. That means, for example, that the Stars can’t claim Jarome Iginla even though they drafted him and the Oilers and Predators can’t claim Mike Richter even though both teams technically acquired him during his career. Coyotes fans don’t get Pronger, Datsyuk and Hossa. Same goes for any cases where a team only ever dressed a player in the postseason. Basically, if you think you’ve found a way to get a guy for free, you’re cheating.
• We’re going by franchise here, so we’ll combine the Nordiques with the Avs, the Whalers with the Hurricanes, the Thrashers and the new Jets, etc. That cuts both ways; it gives those teams more players to work with, but also prevents any shady picks like trying to claim Owen Nolan as a $9 Avalanche despite his five full seasons as a Nordique.
• You can use active players, but you only get credit for what they’ve done in the NHL as of today, not what they might do in the future. So if Canucks fans want to spend $71 on Elias Pettersson, they only get one season of him.
• If a player had multiple stints with a team, they all combine together to produce his price tag. The Leafs can’t try to claim Doug Gilmour for $1 based on his brief return to the team in 2003.

Speaking of the Leafs, let’s use them as our first example …

Toronto Maple Leafs

Forwards: Ron Francis ($12), Eric Lindros ($33), Dickie Moore ($38)

Defense: Brian Leetch ($15), Phil Housley ($1)

Goaltender: Terry Sawchuk ($91)

Total: $190

That’s not a bad lineup, featuring six Hall-of-Famers. The Pat Quinn years are fruitful here, as late-season acquisitions of Francis, Leetch and Housley give us a cheap backbone and help us have enough left over to spend a relatively hefty $91 on Sawchuk (or, if you prefer, $95 on Grant Fuhr). If you’d rather go with a post-expansion look, you could swap out old-timers Moore and Sawchuk and bring in Joe Nieuwendyk ($64) and Bernie Parent ($65) instead for the same combined price. Or you could use Gerry Cheevers in goal for just $2 and spend more elsewhere. But whichever way you go, the Leafs are solid.

Makes sense? Do you see what we’re going for? Cool. Then let’s try some other teams around the league because as you’re going to see, there are a few teams that can give the Leafs a run for their $200 worth of money. We’re going to serve up a dozen teams in all, which doesn’t cover everyone but is more than enough to get your brain working and then turn it over to you to come up with your own.

Boston Bruins

Forwards: Jaromir Jagr ($11), Cy Denneny ($23), Dave Andreychuk ($63)

Defense: Paul Coffey ($18), Brian Leetch ($61)

Goaltender: Jacques Plante ($8)

Total: $184

You could say that this concept already has a playoff atmosphere because the Bruins immediately knock off the Maple Leafs. And to add insult to injury, they even do it with one of the same players off of the Leafs’ roster, as Leetch makes like a free agent and jumps to a rival for more money. They pair him with Coffey, who (spoiler alert) will also show up on more than one of these lists.

Other possibilities on the backend include Sergei Gonchar for $15 or Babe Pratt for $31. But the real options are up front. To be honest, I went with Andreychuk mainly to eat up a big chunk of the cap space that was going to be leftover, but you could go with somebody like Joey Mullen at $37 or even Rick Nash for $11 and just pocket the rest. Not that Boston ownership would ever do that.

So yeah, the Bruins are now our team to beat. Let’s see if anyone can do it.

Detroit Red Wings

Forwards: Darryl Sittler ($61), Mike Modano ($40), Charlie Conacher ($40)

Defense: Doug Harvey ($2), Borje Salming ($49)

Goaltender: Bill Ranford ($4)

Total: $196

In theory, the Red Wings seem like a team that would be made for this sort of game, since modern history is filled with Hall of Famers finishing their careers with brief stopovers in Detroit. But many of them aren’t brief enough, as guys like Daniel Alfredsson and Bernie Federko played enough games in their one season with the Wings to price them out of our budget. Marian Hossa did too.

We can squeeze in Modano and Sittler, though, largely because Harvey gives us a monster value on the blue line. We get more solid value in goal with a Conn Smythe winner in Ranford at just $4, but he makes Detroit our first entry that isn’t made up entirely of current or future Hall of Famers. The Wings’ entry is a solid one, but I don’t think they top the Bruins.

Let’s take a break from the Original Six teams and try a few who have a little less history to work with.

Pittsburgh Penguins

Forwards: Jarome Iginla ($13), Luc Robitaille ($46), Marian Hossa ($12)

Defense: Tim Horton ($44), Sergei Zubov ($64)

Goaltender: Tomas Vokoun ($20)

Total: $199

The Penguins benefit from our rule about just using three forwards without worrying about position, as they’ll roll with over 1,800 goals worth of wingers and apparently just hope that nobody ever has to take a faceoff.

Those three bargains up front allow us to spend some extra money on the blue line, which we kind of need to do – there aren’t any obvious sub-$40 bargains to be found here. We get a pair of Hall of Famers, though, so we’ll take it. We don’t have as much luck in goal, where the good-but-not-great Vokoun is really the only option. That takes this team down a notch after a promising start.

We’ve been heavy on the Eastern Conference so far, so let’s head to the West for the next few.

Grab bag: Drugs are bad

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The NHL's new lottery reveal plan is good and you're all crazy for hating it
- A conversation is derailed by a visit from Hockey Pedant Man
- An obscure player who starred in another sport and helped create a hockey legend
- The week's three comedy stars
- And the 1986 Buffalo Sabres have an important message for you about drugs

https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/9kg4k3/dgb-grab-bag-shut-up-hockey-pedant-man-good-refs-and-malaise

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Introducing the all-time Almost-a-Leaf roster

Did you hear that John Tavares is going to sign with the Toronto Maple Leafs this summer? They just have to figure out how to work in his cap hit after trading for Drew Doughty and Erik Karlsson.

OK, nobody really thinks that will happen. But you’ve probably heard some jokes about the possibility, since it plays into an old stereotype about Leaf fans — that they arrogantly assume that every star player is destined to wear the blue and white before their career is up, and anyone who doesn’t wind up in Toronto must have just missed.

Like most stereotypes, this one is hurtful and untrue. So just for the record: No, Maple Leafs fans don’t actually believe that every single star player to ever grace the league was this close to playing in Toronto.

Just almost all of them.

Seriously, it’s kind of a thing. And in fairness to Leafs fans, it’s not like we’re all just engaging in wishful thinking. There’s a long history of star players being linked to the Maple Leafs. Whether it’s a trade, a free-agent signing, or something more nefarious, the list of hockey legends linked to the Leafs is a long one. And most of those stories don’t come from delusional fans, but rather from media, executives or even the players themselves.

How long a list? Well, long enough to fill out a full roster. Which is what we’re going to do today. Consider it a warmup as we head towards the trade deadline and the Maple Leafs hype train revs up. And also a reminder that every Leaf fan you know might not be as crazy as they sound.

First line

Centre: Wayne Gretzky

Our first pick is an easy call. Gretzky was rumoured to be headed towards Toronto pretty much since he first arrived on the hockey scene, although much of that was admittedly just the fever dream of desperate 1980s Leafs fans. But the Great One really did almost become a Maple Leafs during the 1996 off-season. He was an unrestricted free agent and wanted to finish his career in Toronto. Leafs GM Cliff Fletcher was on board, but the Leafs’ board of directors shot the idea down for financial reasons.

Winger: Rocket Richard

The idea of Richard in a Maple Leafs’ sweater seems unthinkable — the sort of sacrilege worthy of 100 million moths. But while Richard would become the Canadiens’ most iconic superstar, there was a time early in his career when he was viewed as an injury-prone disappointment, and the team was reported to be shopping him to Toronto, among other teams. The Leafs missed their chance at the time, but GM Conn Smythe would later set his sights on The Rocket, offering a ransom to pry the winger away in both 1949 and 1951. The Canadiens resisted the temptation, and Richard finished his career in Montreal.

Winger: Ted Lindsay

The Maple Leafs were the first team to get wind of the future Hall of Famer’s prowess, and they dispatched a scout to put Lindsay on the team’s negotiation list. But an injury led to a mix-up, and the Leafs ended up adding the wrong player. That opened the door for the Red Wings, and the rest was history.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Defensemen don't win the Hart

Brent Burns is on fire. The Sharks' defenseman is enjoying one of the best goal-scoring seasons by a blueliner in recent memory while leading his team to first place in the Pacific. He's emerged as the runaway favorite for the Norris Trophy. And now, he's even starting to get some Hart Trophy buzz.

He almost certainly won't win – this year's MVP vote has been shaping up as the first of many Sidney Crosby vs. Connor McDavid referendums. Barring an injury or something entirely unexpected, that won't change. It's Crosby vs. McDavid, and everyone else is gunning for third place.

But third place would still be a historic achievement for Burns. A defenseman hasn't been a serious Hart Trophy candidate since 2000, when Chris Pronger won. For whatever reason, blueliners just don't get much respect from Hart voters. Pronger remains the only defenseman to win MVP honors since Bobby Orr in the early 70s, and nobody since 2000 has even finished as a finalist.

That's kind of weird when you think about it. Ask any NHL GM about how to build a championship contender, and they'll rave about the importance of a blueline stud. But when it comes to naming the league's most valuable player, the entire position ends up being an afterthought at best.

So even if Burns won't win, just being in the conversation is impressive. As we watch his record-breaking season unfold, let's look back at the five defensemen who came closest to cracking the Hart Trophy puzzle in the years since Pronger took the trophy home.

(All award vote data via hockey-reference.com.)

Nicklas Lidstrom

No surprise here. Lidstrom was the runner-up to Pronger for the Norris Trophy as best defenseman in 2000, then dominated the voting for that award for most of the next decade, winning seven times.

What's somewhat surprising is that Lidstrom never came especially close to contending for a Hart Trophy, and he was only the top vote-getter among blueliners four times. In two of his Norris-winning years (2003 and 2011), MVP voters showed more love to someone else at the position. And one time, in 2002, nobody cast so much as a single Hart ballot for any defensemen at all.

Lidstrom's closest call to finalist status came in 2008, when he finished fourth. It wasn't an especially near miss – Lidstrom finished well back of Evgeni Malkin and Jarome Iginla, neither of whom were close to threatening Alex Ovechkin's near-unanimous win. But Lidstrom did receive two first-place votes, tied for the most since Pronger's 25, and that fourth-place finish remains the only time since Pronger's win that a defenseman has even finished in the top five.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

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New book:
THE 100 GREATEST PLAYERS IN NHL HISTORY (AND OTHER STUFF): AN ARBITRARY COLLECTION OF ARBITRARY LISTS

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Things you learn when you make your own NHL Top 100 ranking

The NHL will release its long-awaited list of the top 100 players of all-time tomorrow night as part of the all-star weekend festivities in Los Angeles. It’s a neat concept, and it’s already inspired plenty of debate and discussion among fans.

But it’s also just a little bit of a copout. The league isn’t actually ranking the players; they’re just giving us a list. It seems like if you’re going to go to the trouble of narrowing down NHL history to its very best 100 players, you might as well go all the way and count them down.

So a few of us decided to do just that. Working with Vice’s Dave Lozo and Yahoo’s Greg Wyshynski, I recently released an e-book that features our own picks for the best 100 players the NHL has ever seen, listed in order. And after weeks of ranking, debating, re-ranking and more debating, we ended up with a list that looked very different from how I assumed it would going in.

The whole thing was a lot of fun. It was also educational. Here are eight things I learned while trying to rank the NHL’s top 100 players of all-time.

1. It's a lot harder than it sounds.

Let's just say I can understand why the NHL shied away from doing a full ranking. When I first heard that they were just doing one big list, I figured it was because the league didn't want to anger any legendary players (or their fans).

That’s probably true. But it's also possible that the league realized that sorting through the best of the best is tough enough; actually figuring out who should slot in where can get downright onerous.

We were eventually able to settle on a list we were happy with for the book. Then again, we don't have to deal with team owners calling us up at league headquarters to yell about their guy coming at No. 21 instead of No. 20. Having been through the process, I can see why the league may have given the whole concept a pass.

2. You'll be surprised at some of the names that don't make it.

From a distance, "top 100" feels like a vague concept. You know that anyone who makes the list will have to be really good, so you brain starts coming up with names that fit that description. Chances are, you hone in on some of the top players from your favorite team's history. And you figure that most of them will probably make the list.

Don't be so sure. While 100 players may seem like a lot, we're also dealing with 100 years of history here, and the list fills up quickly. Remember, there are 271 players who've been honoured with induction in the Hockey Hall of Fame; we've only got 100 spots to work with on a list that includes active players and guys that aren't eligible yet.

For our version, we ended up having to leave out more than a few Hall of Famers who seemed like no-brainers. I'm a Maple Leafs fan, and I went in assuming that Doug Gilmour and Mats Sundin would make the cut. Neither did. Maybe one or both guys will make the NHL's official version; as a fan, I hope they do. But if so, it will be at the expense of some other deserving candidates.

The league has already released the first 33 names, featuring players who starred before 1967, and they've already been hammered for it. And that's for players most of today's fans never saw with their own eyes. Wait until the rest of the list comes out, and some of the guys you grew up idolizing aren't on it.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

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What if the NHL gave out two of every award like MLB?

It’s awards week in Major League Baseball. The sport doesn’t handle their honours the way hockey does; there’s no cheesy Vegas ceremony, with B-list celebrities and awkward acceptance speeches. Instead, we just get a series of announcements throughout the week, with each day bringing new winners.

That’s winners, plural, which is the other key difference from the NHL. Baseball gives out separate awards to both the American and National Leagues, meaning that twice as many players get to win an MVP, Cy Young, or Rookie of the Year every season.

That seems like a small difference, but it’s really not. Post-season awards (or a lack thereof) can change our entire perception of a player’s legacy, so baseball having twice as many as other sports is a big deal. It’s why Alex Rodriquez and Albert Pujols can both claim to be three-time MVPs – voters didn’t have to choose between them in 2005, when they both won. Instead of voters having to choose between Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson at their peak, they could just both win the Cy Young. Same with Bryce Harper and Mike Trout for the Rookie of the Year in 2012.

Baseball has its reasons for handling awards that way. But what if the NHL did the same? How would hockey history look different if the sport gave out awards to the top vote-getter in each conference?

We'll never know for sure, but we can dig into the voting history (via hockey-reference.com) to figure out which players might have more hardware on their shelves in an alternate universe where hockey had decided to follow baseball's lead. For sake of argument, we'll assume that the leading vote-getter from each conference would have won. That's probably not entirely true, since voters would have been looking at their ballots differently, but it gives us a guide.

So how does hockey history look different if we split the awards based on conference? Nothing changes until the Original Six era ends in 1967, of course, but then things start to get weird.

The Calder

For obvious reasons, this is the one award that doesn't produce any multiple-time winners. But we do get to add "Rookie of the Year" to the resumes of a long list of players, including current names like Shayne Gostisbehere, Johnny Gaudreau, Logan Couture and Dion Phaneuf. A few of today's most-respected veterans pick up some extra hardware as well, including Marian Hossa (1999), Jarome Iginla (1997), and the technically still-active Pavel Datsyuk (2002).

Digging a little deeper, a few of today's borderline Hall of Fame cases would get some help, as Mark Recchi (1990) and Paul Kariya (1995) both earn Calders. So do a few players who are already enshrined at the Hall, like Phil Housley (1983) and Steve Yzerman (1984).

Some team histories start to look different, too. In the real world, Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander are all trying to become the first Maple Leaf to win a Calder Trophy since Brit Selby in 1966. But split the award by conference and the Leafs add two more wins – Wendel Clark in 1985 and Mike Palmateer in 1977.

And we even get to honour a current coach and GM, as Darryl Sutter (1981) and Ron Hextall (1987) earn trophies. That news would surely put a smile on their faces, if either of them were capable of that.

But with all due respect to our various new Calder winners, things don't start to get truly strange until we move on to some of the other awards.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Ranking the worst Stanley Cup finals of the last 50 years

We’re a few days removed from Super Bowl 50, which means most of us are already a few days removed from remembering anything that happened during the game. Despite the presence of some of the sport’s biggest names and the usual limitless supply of hype and intrigue, Super Bowl 50 ended up being a dud, a 24-10 snoozer that hinged on which team would make the most game-changing mistakes.

But while hockey fans love to point out all the ways their sport is better than others – Our trophy presentation is better! We shake hands after playoff games! Our players are always selfless and classy, as long as you ignore all the times they’re not! – we can’t really take the high road here. The Stanley Cup final has offered up its share of stinkers over the years.

So since misery loves company, let’s take a moment to commiserate with our football friends with a look back at the five worst Cup finals over the last 50 years.

#5 – 1982: Islanders vs Canucks

The matchup: The Islanders were in the middle of what would turn out to be a four-year Cup dynasty that saw them win 19 consecutive playoff rounds, a mark that still stands as the North American pro sports record. The Canucks were not quite as good, finishing 41 points behind New York during the regular season.

Amazingly, Vancouver had not only been a sub-500 team during the season, but had reached the final by beating three other sub-500 teams. Where were you when we needed you, loser point?

The hope: Maybe everyone is wrong. Maybe the Canucks can shock the world. Maybe they could win… a game? That seemed like the best-case scenario.

The reality: To their credit, the Canucks were at least able to force overtime in Game 1. But Mike Bossy won it in sudden death, and that was pretty much it for the series. The Islanders won in four straight, including winning both games in Vancouver by a combined score of 6-1.

None of the Islanders four Cup wins were exactly classics, with only the first even going six games. You could make a case for the 1981 final between the Isles and North Stars deserving this spot, but at least Minnesota won a game, so 1982 gets the nod.

Redeeming quality: Bossy’s seven goals in four games still stands as one of the better Cup final performances in history.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Grab Bag: Preemptive Stamkos outrage edition

In this week's grab bag:
- The Steven Stamkos decision is going to be insufferable
- An Christmas-themed obscure player trips up a legend
- An unwritten rule for hockey announcers following a fight
- The week's three comedy star
- And the 1984 Flyers would like to read you a Christmas poem

>> Read the full post on ESPN.com

The NHL's Kobes: Ten legends who held on too long

The big sports story of the weekend: Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant announced that this will be his final season. He made the announcement Sunday, then went out and had the chance to tie the game on a dramatic, last-second shot. It did not go well.

That has led to plenty of talk about how Bryant has held on too long. You never want to say a player should have retired before he or she was ready -- after all, their job is to play. And if someone is still willing to pay them to do it, they're under no obligation to go out on our terms. But it's probably fair to see that some players' final years end up being, um, slightly below peak productivity. Yes, let's go with that.

That's true for the NHL, too, of course. Sometimes, a legendary player ends his career with an exclamation point. And sometimes, the end comes as more of an ellipsis, trailing off into an awkward silence, followed by a shrug and a "never mind."

So, in an effort to make Kobe feel better about how things are ending, here are 10 examples of NHL legends whose final seasons didn't quite meet the high standards they'd established over the rest of their careers.

Brett Hull

It's fun to remember him as: Perhaps the greatest pure goal scorer the league has ever seen.

So let's forget the part where: ... he tried to hang on for one more post-lockout year with the Arizona Coyotes.

In his prime, Hull was the answer to the question "What would happen if a guy with the goal-scoring skills and instincts of Alexander Ovechkin played in an era where you could actually score goals?" That answer involved three straight seasons with 70-plus goals and a grand total of 741 career goals.

But none of those goals came with the Coyotes. Hull signed a two-year contract with the team as a free agent in 2004, then saw the first year of the deal wiped out by the lockout. When play resumed in 2005, a 41-year-old Hull didn't exactly look like a great fit for the new, faster NHL, and he lasted just five games before calling it quits.

Hull was all sorts of fun to watch for the better part of two decades. But when your retirement headline includes the words "effective immediately," you've probably held on too long.

Martin Brodeur

It's fun to remember him as: One of the most decorated goaltenders of all time, a three-time champion and the league's ultimate "can't-picture-him-in-any-other-uniform" guy.

So let's forget the part where: ... he tried a seven-game comeback with the St. Louis Blues.

Brodeur spent 21 years with the New Jersey Devils, winning three Cups, earning a trophy case full or hardware and firmly establishing himself as a Devils legend. When he and the franchise parted ways after the 2014 season and he made it through the offseason without signing elsewhere, hockey fans celebrated a terrific career while breathing a sigh of relief that we wouldn't have to see the NHL's "Willie Mays-as-a-Met" moment.

But then came December and a call from the Blues. St. Louis already had Jake Allen, and Brian Elliott was on his way back from a knee injury, but they wanted another experienced goalie because, well, nobody was quite sure, but that's a story for another time.

Brodeur came in, started five games, and played fine. He wasn't good, but he didn't embarrass himself. But when Elliott returned a month later, Brodeur dropped to third on the depth chart and never played again. He retired midseason and took a front-office job in St. Louis.

>> Read the full post on ESPN.com

A look at the top candidates for today's Hockey Hall of Fame announcement

After J.R. said "See you at the 2013 induction!",
Scott held his "Is he serious?" face for 45 minutes.

Today's the day when the Hockey Hall of Fame will introduce us to the Class of 2013.

The Hall's 18-member committee will hold its annual meeting today in Toronto, where they'll be tasked with weighing the pros and cons of the various players, coaches and builders who are eligible for induction. After a series of confidential votes, the committee will announced their selections.

Here's a look at some of the top candidates for induction in the Class of 2013.

Chris Chelios - Is expected to be enshrined alongside Bobby Orr and Doug Harvey and Eddie Shore and other legendary defensemen who grew up idolizing him.

Scott Niedermayer - Is a slam dunk for induction, and will hopefully attend the ceremony if he can take time out of his busy schedule of wandering around Ottawa screaming "I told you so!" at sobbing fans in Daniel Alfredsson jerseys.

Rob Blake - Was a Norris Trophy winner and a Stanley Cup champion and an Olympic gold medalist and a six-time NHL all-star, and also appears briefly in The Love Guru so that's going to have to be a "no".

Brendan Shanahan - Didn't make the cut last year, and can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it is to be a victim of a ridiculous decision from some arbitrary process that nobody even fully understands and isn't even accountable to… um, why is everyone staring at him right now?

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What's gone wrong with the Toronto Maple Leafs?

This is how literally every
Korbinian Holzer shift ends.

The last few weeks haven't exactly been kind to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

At the season's halfway mark, the Leafs were 15-9-0 and seemed like they'd easily end the franchise's postseason drought. But since then they've dropped five straight games, and they now find themselves dangerously close to losing their grip on a Eastern Conference playoff spot.

What's gone wrong? I reached out my sources embedded in the Leafs organization, and they supplied a list of issues that the team and its players are facing right now.

• As a traditional franchise, are still struggling to adapt to modern cutting-edge strategies like carefully monitoring zone entries and focusing on newly developed possession metrics and actually putting their best players in the god damned lineup sometimes.
  
  
• Stupid official scorers refuse to add more goals to our total no matter how many times we send Frazer McLaren over to punch them.
  
  
• Despite our coaching staff spending the entire offseason crafting their strategy by carefully studying the team's media coverage, every time they yell "Getzlaf and Luongo, get out there!" the whole bench just stares back at them like idiots.
  
  
• Heard an unconfirmed report about some Maple Leaf fan somewhere in the world being happy; had to nip that in the bud.

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Things overheard at last night's Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony

"Almost as cool as a Cup ring, am I right?" joked
Joe Sakic right before the uncomfortable silence.

In a welcome break from the never-ending CBA negotiations, last night saw a positive NHL story: the induction of the four newest members of the Hockey Hall of Fame. During an evening of celebration in Toronto, the Hall welcomed Joe Sakic, Mats Sundin, Adam Oates and Pavel Bure to its ranks.

DGB spies were in attendance, and reported back on some of the most common things heard during the evening's festivities.

• Uh oh, Mats Sundin has become confused and disoriented. Pavel Bure stood beside him for a few seconds, and it was the first time he'd ever had a decent winger next to him.
  
  
• Joe Sakic's speech tonight was incredibly gracious without a hint of negativity, which is a nice change from that time they tried inducting him into the international snowblowing hall of fame.
  
  
• Is it just me, or is Adam Oates asking Bure a lot of oddly specific questions about the best way to deal with overly cocky Russian snipers?
  
  
• Did you hear, Brendan Shanahan just suspended the entire Hall of Fame induction committee! No, really, they're all dangling from a frayed rope under the 401 overpass.
  

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