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

Five one-team stars who went down with the ship

The Sedins made news this week with an article in The Players' Tribune that seemed to all but rule out the possibility of the twins finishing their career anywhere but Vancouver. With the Canucks expected to finish near the bottom of the standings this year, there had been talk the team could make a Ray Bourque-style trade to send its franchise players to a Stanley Cup contender. That door seems closed now.

That means the Sedins will join players like Steve Yzerman, Nicklas Lidstrom and Jean Beliveau in the fairly exclusive club of star players who spent their entire career with the same franchise. Of course, those situations were a little different – those players stuck around to play their final seasons for a contender. The Sedins know that likely won't be the case for them.

It's far less common for a star to go down with the ship, playing out their final seasons with the only team they've ever known even though they realize they don't have a shot at finishing with a Cup or even a playoff run. But it's not unheard of – Shane Doan's recent retirement was one example. Here are five more.

Thomas Steen, Winnipeg Jets

Steen is a reasonably direct comparable to the Sedins – a Swedish forward on a Canadian team who had never won a Cup and clearly wasn't going to if he stayed put. Steen broke in with the Jets in 1981, but by 1994 he was nearing the end of the road with no title in sight.

Of course, the mid-'90s Jets were in even worse shape than today's Canucks. Not only were they a bad team, having finished no higher than fourth in their division since 1990 and failing to win a playoff round since 1987, but they were on the verge of packing up and moving to Arizona. 

So it was no surprise when Steen's name showed up in trade rumors as the 1993-94 deadline approached. The Toronto Maple Leafs were mentioned as a potential destination, and would've made sense – they were a borderline Cup contender that was shopping for veteran help up front. But the deal never happened (the Leafs landed Mike Gartner instead), and Steen returned for one last partial season after the 1994 lockout, during which the Jets finished last in the Central Division for the second straight year.

At the time, that was assumed to be the last season for the Jets in Winnipeg. When a goodbye rally was held after the season, Steen's number was retired to a loud ovation. That made him the first Swedish player to be honored by an NHL team, not to mention a rare case of a player having his number retired when he was still technically active. While the team ended up making a surprise return for one more season in Winnipeg in 1995-96, Steen did not.

So take solace, Canucks fans. Barring a miracle run, the Sedins may be headed towards a Steen-like finish to their careers. But at least you'll still have a team to cheer on after they're gone.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Five teams that ended long playoff droughts with a bang

The Edmonton Oilers are heading back to the playoffs for the first time in over a decade.

OK, sure, they haven't clinched a spot quite yet. But the math will work itself out. Barring some sort of epic late collapse, they're going to be back in the playoffs after a long absence. And they'll have some company. While nobody has an active playoff drought as long as Edmonton's, we're also going to see teams like the Blue Jackets, Bruins and maybe even the Maple Leafs return to the postseason after a few years away.

That's the good news, as far as those teams are concerned. The bad news is that when teams get back to the playoffs after several seasons on the sidelines, they typically make quick exits. That's just the nature of a league where we're constantly told that teams need to learn how to win. That first loss is a necessary step. You show up, you get your behind handed to you, and you regroup for a longer run next year. That's just how it works.

Well, most of the time. But every now and then, a team will skip the whole "just happy to be here" phase and returns to the playoffs with guns blazing. Maybe it's an all-time classic series, or maybe it's a deep playoff run. Maybe it's even both.

That's what Oiler fans will be hoping for. So today, as we get ready for Edmonton's long-awaited return to the post-season, let's look back at five teams that ended an extended playoff absence with a bang.
 

Edmonton Oilers, 1997

If we're going to pump the tires of Oilers fans, we may as well start with one of the most entertaining first-round series ever.

The 1996-97 edition of the Oilers made the playoffs for the first time since 1992, although they didn't exactly kick the door down to get there. They managed 81 points, good for the seventh seed in the West and a first round matchup with the Dallas Stars. The Oilers went in as heavy underdogs – the Stars had finished with 104 points and were on the verge of ascending into the league's elite tier of teams, including a Stanley Cup win in 1999.

But once the series arrived… well, even if you're not an Oiler fan, you probably remember this one. Curtis Joseph stood on his head while posting a pair of shutouts, and the series went to a deciding seventh game in Dallas. That's where Joseph made one of the most famous saves of a generation, diving across to rob Joe Nieuwendyk (and eliciting a classic "OH MY GOODNESS" from Bob Cole). Seconds later, Todd Marchant blew by Grant Ledyard to score the winner and complete the upset.

That's pretty much where the good news ends for the Oilers; they lost in the next round and then were knocked out by the Stars in five of the next six seasons. But you could argue it was all worth it, in exchange for what remains to this day one of the most famous sequences in sudden death history.

Calgary Flames, 2004

Sticking in Alberta, we can't talk about ending a playoff drought with an exclamation point without mentioning the 2003-04 Flames. Calgary hadn't made the playoffs since 1996, and they hadn't won a round since the 1989 final. But after new GM Darryl Sutter remade the roster, they finished with 94 points, good enough for third in the Northwest and a sixth seed in the Western Conference.

That drew a matchup with the Vancouver Canucks. And for the third straight time, that particular pairing produced a Game 7 overtime. This one came after Vancouver tied the deciding game with a dramatic goal in the dying seconds, and ended with Martin Gelinas scoring the winner to send the Flames into the second round.

The run didn't end there, as Gelinas scoring series winners became a bit of a thing. He knocked out the top-seeded Red Wings with another overtime goal, then had the winner against the Sharks in the conference final. Calgary fans would argue that he had the winner in the Cup final too, but the officials had other ideas, and the Flames' miracle run ended one game short of a championship.
 

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Grab bag: The Doug Gilmour trade

In this week's grab bag:
- Three comedy stars, plus one who'll live in your nightmares forever
- Everyone's mad at the NHL for screwing up the new puck-hits-netting review rule. But everyone is wrong.
- An obscure player who was the league's first outdoor hero
- Checking in on Don Cherry, who is under a lot of pressure
- And a YouTube breakdown of a time long ago when NHL GMs actually made real blockbuster trades...

>> Read the full post on Grantland