In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- Thoughts and picks for Lightning vs. Stars
- We say farewell to the Islanders
- What went wrong in Vegas
- The Eric Staal trade
- Caps get a coach, Coyotes get a GM, Montgomery gets a second chance
- OUFL Tarantino films, and more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The Predators fire Peter Laviolette and hire... John Hynes?
- Why stars don't want to play in the all-star game, and what the NHL should do about it
- The Blue Jackets are surprising
- The Penguins are surprising
- The Sharks are completely screwed
- We each get $100 in play money to predict the Cup finalists
- Plus Jeopardy, all-star game jerseys, Meghan Markle and lots more...
>> Stream it now:
>> Or, listen on The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes.
>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.
January 3 was an important date for struggling NHL teams. It represented the one-year anniversary of last season’s St. Louis Blues hitting rock bottom, as they spent that date in 2019 in last place overall before beating the defending Cup champs that night and then slowly but surely turning things around. We know how that story ended. And we’ve been reminded of it ever since, as every bad team rushes to reassure its fans that everything is fine, because if the Blues can turn things around then they can too.
GMs mumbling about “remember the Blues” has become a punchline, but there was at least a little truth to it. They really did prove that a disappointing season can be saved. But as of January 3, the time for playing that card has run out. If your team is still struggling, and the turnaround hasn’t started, you’re already behind the St. Louis schedule.
Fans of those teams will have to turn elsewhere for their optimism now. But that’s OK, because NHL history is full of teams that were struggling at the midway mark and still salvaged the season to varying degrees. In fact, it’s happened often enough that we can divide those comeback stories into some distinct categories. So let’s break down the eight types of midseason turnarounds, and figure out which teams are in the best position to pull it off this year.
What happens: Maybe the coach isn’t very good at his job. Maybe he is but his team has tuned him out. Or maybe he’s actually doing everything he reasonably could and he’s not the problem at all. Whatever the case, it’s always easier to can the coach than to overhaul the roster, and just about every struggling team will at least think about making a change.
Who can do it: Pretty much anyone, although some teams are obviously better candidates than others. A coach’s contract might come into play. His resume definitely will. And like it or not, his relationship with the media can help or hurt. If he’s been around for a few years without winning much, is on an expiring deal and already has a few knives out for him, then the risk of a change gets higher with every losing streak.
Who can’t: Anyone who’s already fired their coach during the season, unless they’re the 1995-96 Senators. (It didn’t work for them either.)
Historic example: You could point to last year’s Blues here, as well as other Cup winners like the 2011-12 Kings and 2015-16 Penguins. But all three of those coaching changes actually happened in November and December, meaning teams looking to recapture that magic now are already too late. The good news is that they can still look at the 2008-09 Penguins, who sent Michel Therrien packing in mid-February and still had time to get back on track.
Best current candidate: Well, this was going to be Peter Laviolette and the Predators until Monday night. But since David Poile couldn’t wait a couple days to make me look smart, let’s turn our attention elsewhere. Most of the hot seat candidates from earlier in the year seem safer now, including Paul Maurice, Jon Cooper, Bruce Boudreau and John Tortorella. That doesn’t leave many options, although Montreal’s recent slump might put Claude Julien in play.
What happens: A team struggles, playoff hopes fade, and eventually the GM has seen enough. He pulls the trigger on a major trade or two or maybe more, reshaping the roster and turning the team around.
Who can do it: Any team with a creative GM who isn’t afraid to open himself up to criticism because he knows it’s all part of doing his job.
Who can’t: The other 25 or so NHL teams these days whose GMs would rather make excuses about how trading is too hard.
Historic example: You can probably guess where I’m going with this one. Back in 1991-92, the Maple Leafs were terrible at the midway mark, going 10-25-5 including a recent 12-1 loss. New GM Cliff Fletcher decided to blow the whole thing up, swinging a 10-player deal with the Flames to land Doug Gilmour. The Leafs went a respectable 20-18-2 the rest of the way, then rode that momentum to actual contention for the next few years.
Best current candidate: We couldn’t use the Predators in the last category, so let’s do it here. We’re told David Poile is actively shopping around for a shakeup, and unlike most of his colleagues, he actually has a history of making bold moves when the situation calls for it.
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Hearing about the hot seat is a fact of life for NHL coaches. From pretty much the moment you’re hired, somebody somewhere is already trying to figure out how close you are to getting fired. We already got a head start on this season’s hot-seat watch over the weekend, based on what the oddsmakers were forecasting.
It always feels a little bit awkward to dig into those kinds of discussions. Sure, hiring and firing is a part of the game, but you’re still dealing with people’s livelihoods. Speculating over who might be next to lose their job isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time.
So today, let’s stay positive by coming at the question from the other side: Who are the five NHL coaches who come into the season with the coldest seat? In other words, who are the five guys who are the least likely to get fired this year?
It’s a tougher task than you might think, especially since we’re going to tack on one important caveat that none of the people who are already complaining in the comment section will bother to read: Anyone who was hired in the 2017 off-season doesn’t count. After all, that would be too easy. Aside from the occasional Barry Melrose or John Maclean situation, virtually nobody gets fired during their very first season with a team. So the seven guys who were hired over the summer are off the board.
That still leaves 24 coaches with at least a little bit of tenure. Surely we can find five of them that are stone-cold locks to keep their jobs until next season, right? I think we can. And if not, at least it should be fun for all of you to send me the link to this post in a few months when one of these guys gets a pink slip. Either way, here we go.
Why he’s completely safe: Babcock is one of the most respected coaches in the league, and he worked a near-miracle by taking the Maple Leafs from a dead-last laughingstock into a playoff team in one season. This year, he’s got the team playing well enough to look like an early contender for the Atlantic Division title.
But as impressive as all that may be, it’s not why Babcock is one of the easiest cold-seat picks. That has more to do with his contract, which makes him the highest-paid coach in hockey and runs until just after the Sun explodes. Granted, the Maple Leafs have all the money, and Babcock wouldn’t be the first Leafs coach to walk the plank with time left on his deal. But Brendan Shanahan didn’t sign Babcock to this sort of deal because he was thinking of firing him three years in. Even if the Leafs wobble off the playoff path, Babcock’s not going anywhere, at least not any time soon.
Well, unless…: I mean, this is a Lou Lamoriello team, so we can’t completely rule out a day when Babcock shows up at practice with sideburns and gets fired just on principle. But other than that, or some sort of major off-ice scandal, Babcock is as safe as they come, even in a market where weird stuff seems to happen to coaches.
With the Stanley Cup Final winding down, a late storyline is developing: Nobody can agree on who should win the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP.
Normally by this time, we’d be down to one or two clear favourites. But not this year. There’s a growing movement behind Jake Guentzel. Others are backing Evgeni Malkin or Sidney Crosby. Elliotte Friedman suggested splitting the award between Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury, but the league shot that idea down. And that’s just if the Penguins win. If it’s Nashville, we all thought Pekka Rinne was a lock, but a shaky performance in the first two games may have reopened the race. P.K. Subban? Roman Josi? Filip Forsberg? Your guess is as good as mine. It’s a mess.
Well, as I always say, when things are bad, find a way to make them worse. So while everyone’s trying to figure out who should be playoff MVP, let’s make things even more complicated with a question: What if we had to give out playoffs-only versions of all the major NHL awards?
Break out the tuxedos and D-list celebrities, because it’s time to hand out some hockey trophies.
Let’s start with a tricky one. Like the Conn Smythe, preference for our playoff awards will always go to someone whose team is in the final. But that’s not easy with Pittsburgh and Nashville. The Penguins barely have any defencemen – between losing Kris Letang and various other injuries along the way, their duct-tape-and-hope blue line has been a great part of their post-season story. Various guys have stepped up at different points, and Justin Schultz has a decent point total, but there’s nobody on the roster who’s been dominant.
Meanwhile, the Predators are at the other end of the spectrum – they have too many top blueliners, to the point that we spend more time arguing over who is or isn’t their true top guy. Subban, Josi, Ryan Ellis and maybe even Mattias Ekholm would all get votes in this category, which means they’d be in danger of cancelling each other out.
It’s a dilemma. Luckily for us, there’s an easy way out. While we said we’d prefer to give out our awards to teams in the final, we don’t have to — the other rounds should count for something, too. And in this case, that leads us to an obvious choice. Erik Karlsson was the best defenceman of the post-season, and it wasn’t all that close.
We’ll have to wait and see whether he takes home this year’s Norris, but he’s an easy call for the Orr. We’ll give the other two finalist spots to Ellis and Subban, if only so we can get another round of people complaining about Josi being overlooked.
Let’s face it: If this were a real award it would come down to the last two coaches standing just about every year, with the other finalist spot reserved for a conference-final team. This year, that would give us Peter Laviolette, Mike Sullivan, and one of Randy Carlyle or Guy Boucher.
It’s actually tough to argue with that group. Boucher took a Senators team that had been written off as a non-factor to within a goal of the Cup final, and Carlyle got the Ducks a round further than last year while navigating some shaky goaltending along the way. Of the two, Boucher has the better case, so we’ll give him one of our finalist spots. But he can’t win, if only because everyone would complain that his acceptance speech was too boring.
So this one really comes down to Laviolette vs. Sullivan, as it probably should. If we’re going strictly on post-season performance, Sullivan’s case is strong. He made what may stand as the single toughest call of the playoffs when he switched from Fleury to Murray against Ottawa, and it paid off. It’s quite possible that we end up looking back on that decision as the one that earned the Penguins a Stanley Cup.
But on the other hand, Laviolette took the league’s 16th-place team all the way to the final. The real-life Jack Adams voters love an underdog story — the award almost always goes to the coach of a team that’s surpassed expectations. If we treat this award the same way, a Cinderella run like Nashville’s might prove irresistible.
Whoever wins the Cup would get an obvious leg up in the voting for this, but since we don’t know that yet, we’ll have to make a call now. Sullivan probably deserves it just based on the Fleury/Murray flip, but we’ll make Laviolette the pick because of how well he fits the coach-award mould.
In the NHL playoffs, as the old saying goes, you’re never truly in trouble until you lose one at home.
There’s a corollary to that: If you lose two straight at home, you’re probably screwed.
The Ducks were facing that fate last night, after dropping Game 1 against the Predators on Friday night. It looked like Nashville might head home with a 2–0 series lead; the Predators held a two-goal lead after just 10 minutes, and led 3–2 midway through the second. But the Ducks stormed back, helped along by an uncharacteristically shaky outing from Pekka Rinne.
The two teams will now head to Nashville tied at a game apiece, with the series resuming tomorrow night.
The Penguins will be looking to follow the Ducks' lead tonight, as they host the Senators in what feels close to a must-win game. The high-powered Pens couldn't get much going in Saturday's Game 1, trailing 1–0 for most of the night before Evgeni Malkin tied it up late to briefly wake up a largely comatose Pittsburgh crowd. That gave the Penguins an opportunity to steal a win in overtime, but instead it was Bobby Ryan who capped it off for the Senators.
Game 2 goes tonight, and a Senators win would send them back to Ottawa with a shot at a sweep. The Senators head into this one having won five of seven on the road in this year's post-season.
On to the weekend's power rankings...
5. The Ryan Kesler vs. Ryan Johansen rivalry: The NHL playoffs are always better with a little bad blood mixed in, and the Nashville/Anaheim series is providing plenty early on. Much of it has come courtesy Kesler and Johansen, who've spent most of the first two games matched up against each other.
Things boiled over last night, with Johansen ripping on Kesler after the game. The mini-rant came after he appeared to be on the receiving end of a Kesler elbow, among other battles, and at one point included Johansen telling reporters that "I don't know how you can cheer for a player like that."
You can understand Johansen's frustration, but you have to think those sorts of comments are music to Kesler's ears. For the record, he was relatively complimentary of Johansen immediately after the game. But Kesler has been down this playoff road a few times before, and he knows how to get under someone's skin. He's apparently already there with Johansen, and there are still up to five games left to go.
4. Ben Bishop: The Dallas Stars got a jump on the off-season by locking down the first big-name UFA of the summer, signing Bishop to a six-year deal worth $29.5 million after acquiring his rights from the Kings.
The deal represents a pay cut for Bishop, who'll average about a million dollars less per season than he did on his last contract. But the term will more than make up for that; Bishop is 30 years old and coming off an injury-plagued season, and the market hasn't been especially kind to goalies in recent years. The track record for bigger goalies aging well isn't great, so getting a six-year commitment from a team is a clear win for Bishop.
From the Stars' perspective, Bishop is a clear upgrade at a position that's been a problem for years. He didn't come cheap (and they also had to give up a fourth-round pick to acquire his rights), but at some point GM Jim Nill needed to address his goaltending issues. There's an excellent chance that the contract comes back to bite the Stars by the end, but right now Nill has a potential Cup contender in place, and going another season with the status quo wasn't an option. Let's tentatively call this one even from a Dallas perspective, at least until we see how they wriggle out from Kari Lehtonen and/or Antti Niemi's contracts.
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