NHL weekend rankings: Change finally comes in Detroit, plus I was wrong but it's fine

We’re right in the middle of the holiday season, meaning you’re probably still fighting off a turkey coma and/or dealing with overstimulated kids and/or planning your New Year’s party. What you’re probably not doing is obsessing about the NHL, which makes this the perfect time for my annual admission of all the ways I’ve been wrong so far this year. Pro tip: If you’re going to admit to being dumb, do it when nobody’s paying attention.

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Filling in history's awards gaps with once-a-decade bonus trophies that I made up

We’re almost at the end of 2024, which means we’re almost half through the 2020s. That reminded me of a decades-based idea I’ve had kicking around for a while, and since I don’t have the patience to wait five more years, we’re doing it today.

What if, at the end of every decade, we went back over the last ten years’ of major award winners and gave out one bonus award to someone who’d deserved one but never won?

The idea would be simple enough, and it would annoy the sort of people who performatively complain about participation trophies, and those are both good things. So today, I’m going back to the 1980s to figure out who’d deserve the bonus trophy for four awards: The Hart, Norris, Vezina and Jack Adams. I’m not including the Selke because I feel like defensive play is too subjective, or the Lady Byng because it isn’t a real award, or the Mark Messier because I don’t want to doom anyone. But I think the big four should make for some fun arguments, so let’s do this.

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New York state of maligned: Who has it worse this year, the Sabres or the Rangers?

It hasn’t been a great start to the season in the state of New York. How bad has it been? Bad enough that today’s post is a “Which team in the state has it worst?”, and we’re not even including the ones that’s only won 13 of their 35 games under the new coach who was supposed to turn things around. Sorry, Islanders fans, you get the bronze medal of misery. Stop being such overachievers if you want to be included next time.

Instead, today’s post is Sabres vs. Rangers. The simple question: Whose season has been worse? The slightly less simple but more accurate question: Is it possible that anyone can compete with what’s going on in Buffalo right now?

I’m not sure that it is, but the Rangers are our best contender, at least until Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller becomes the first teammates in NHL history to drop the gloves with each other off an opening faceoff. So we’re going to limit ourselves to these two teams, and try to answer the question using a highly calibrated scientific method of me randomly coming up with an unlucky 13 categories and seeing where it leads us.

Sabres or Rangers, who you got? For your sake, let’s hope it’s neither, but let’s dive in.

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NHL weekend rankings: Vancouver drama, Dallas dropping, and holiday wishes for all

Happy holidays, at least once we get one last night of action out of the way tonight. We’ve got a busy schedule of 13 games on the slate, at which point everyone gets a few days off to relax and unwind, spend time with family, and give thanks that you’re not a Sabres fan.

To mark the occasion, here are my five Christmas wishes for all the NHL fans out there.

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Tax-adjusted salary cap? Single game playoff tie-breakers? NHL Rules Court returns

Welcome back to Rules Court, where things will look a little different this time around.

Without digging into the details, we had to make the difficult decision to fire one of our long-serving judges because he knows what he did. That opens a spot for Shayna Goldman to join holdovers Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoe. Welcome, Shayna, and we hope you realize what you’ve signed up for.

The rest of the gimmick hasn’t changed. You send in your proposals for changes to the NHL rulebook, CBA or whatever else. The three of us consider your argument and cast our vote. Convince at least two of us, and your new rule becomes reality, just as soon as Gary Bettman gets back to us.

We have eight cases on the docket this time. Let’s see how many can make the grade.

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