Grab Bag: World Cup pros and cons, when a streak isn’t a streak and Rick Bowness bites his tongue

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The pros and cons of holding another World Cup of Hockey
- A debate about losing streaks
- An obscure player who did not qualify for this week's Team Brother roster
- The three comedy stars
- And a YouTube clip of Rick Bowness trying very hard not to say what he really wants to say

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Grab Bag: Halloween edition

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- A special Halloween edition of the three stars of comedy
- On Hampus Lindholm and his terrible new contract
- A new entry for the hockey dictionary
- Uber, but for obscure hockey players
- And a 1986 attempt by Hockey Night in Canada to get into the comedy game, featuring a familiar face.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

The return of the Whiteout

You have to be careful about trusting hockey fans. We’re generally an honest and principled bunch — call it the Canadian influence — but we’ve been conditioned to lie pathologically about certain subjects. My favorite player never dives. (Yes he does, all the time.) Our gimmicky anthem singer is endearing. (No, he’s really not.) Montreal Canadiens ceremonies are always the best. (Only most of them.)

And there’s no bigger hockey lie at this time of year than this one: “the loudest building in the NHL.” That’s because, come playoff time, virtually every building in the league gets that designation from someone, somewhere. It’s become an annual tradition around the hockey world, this daily anointing of some random town as the loudest building in the league, simply because the fans finally bothered to show up and make some noise for a change. There’s nothing quite like sitting in a press box watching tweets scroll by about how noisy it is while thinking, Wait, did I show up at the wrong building? Because it’s not that loud in here.

And so I went into last night’s heavily anticipated Ducks-Jets game in Winnipeg, the first NHL playoff game played in the city in 19 years, fully prepared for noise. I was expecting noise, even hoping for it. But I also came in carrying along a good dose of prove-it-to-me cynicism. And I held on to that cynicism right up until the moment it melted out of my ears and trickled down onto my shoulders, along with what used to be my eustachian tubes and an undetermined number of brain cells. That moment came midway through pregame warm-ups.

Good lord, Jets fans. Maybe ease it up just a bit. Some of us might want to go home and hear our children’s laughter again someday.

This was the sound of one town unleashing almost two decades of pent-up … I’m not even sure what the right word would be. What’s it called when relief and happiness and civic pride become indistinguishable from primal rage? Whatever it is, it was that. A whole lot of that.

And with the noise came the return of one of hockey’s greatest sights: the whiteout. The real one, not the Phoenix version or one of the various other rip-offs out there. We can argue over whether the Jets invented it,¹ but there’s no doubt they’ve perfected it. In the years since the last playoff game in Winnipeg, the concept has been borrowed and repackaged by dozens of teams in various sports, almost always supplemented by free T-shirts left on seats by corporate sponsors, all the better to awkwardly pull over a suit jacket. Not in Winnipeg. They don’t do freebies here. They bring their own white shirts. And pants. And hats, and shoes, and wigs, and face paint, and you name it. I’m pretty sure I saw one guy in a hazmat suit. Leading up to the game, Jets fans’ biggest concern was about whether the team’s white jerseys were white enough.²

And so, 19 years after the original Jets fled to Phoenix, four years after the lowly Atlanta Thrashers moved north to be reborn as Jets 2.0, and two games after the Jets and Ducks kicked off their first-round series, the playoffs had come back to Winnipeg.

Oh, right, the Anaheim Ducks. That’s where this whole feel-good story is going to get a little rough around the edges. The Ducks finished the season with the West’s best record for the second consecutive year.³ With a surprisingly weak Pacific Division fading below them, they feel very much like a Cup-or-bust team, certainly not the kind that would accept losing to a mere wild-card crossover like the Jets.

And through the first two games, the Ducks looked the part. Both times, the Jets held a lead in the third period. Both times, the Ducks roared back to win in regulation. Anaheim came into Monday without having even played its best game but was still just a win away from all but ending the series. It was also the West’s best road team, so if anyone could come into Winnipeg and steal one, it should be the Ducks.

But still, that crowd. Players and coaches had talked about its impact earlier in the day. Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau predicted the fans would be “rabid,” adding, “we hope it’s not too intimidating.” He seemed to be only half-joking. Jets coach Paul Maurice talked about Winnipeg fans coming up to him in the streets to say thank you, and how he felt like a teacher who’d finally helped struggling kids turn their grades around. Winnipeg captain Andrew Ladd said everyone would be excited to see the crowd’s reaction — “It’s going to give us some energy,” he said, before adding, “we’ll see if we use it the right way.”

In the first, there was plenty of energy available to be used. The crowd cheered icings and offsides like most crowds cheer big hits. They cheered big hits like most crowds cheer goals. And they cheered goals, well, they cheered goals like Jets fans cheer goals. Sorry, that’s where the comparison breaks down.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Thoughts on the Jets/Sabres blockbuster

We have a trade to announce.

NHL fans don’t get to hear those words very often, but they did this morning, and they were probably followed by several other words, such as “Seriously?” “What the hell?” and “Wait, there’s even more?” In a league where simple player-for-player trades are becoming a rarity, the Jets and Sabres pulled off a monster seven-player deal that shakes up the core of both teams.

There’s a lot to figure out with a move of this size. Let’s sort through the big questions.

What happened?

The Jets sent Evander Kane, Zach Bogosian, and a prospect to the Sabres for Tyler Myers, Drew Stafford, two prospects, and a first-round pick.

The big piece here is Kane, a 23-year-old power forward who scored 30 goals three years ago. His production has fallen since then, and he’s earned a reputation as a trouble-maker thanks to various legal problems, social media silliness, and, most recently, a tracksuit that wound up in a shower. That last incident led to him leaving the team and then electing to have season-ending surgery, effectively ending any chances he’d ever play for the Jets again. But he’s still considered a top-tier young talent, and plenty of teams were lining up for a chance to acquire him.

Wait, so the main piece in this trade is out for the season?

Yes. Which is fine, because the team acquiring him has already written the year off. The Sabres are pretty much tanking in order to finish last and earn the right to select either Connor McDavid or Jack Eichel, the two sure-thing franchise players available in this year’s draft. So they’re fine with Kane being out now, given that he’s expected to be healthy in time for opening night next year.

The Jets are in a different situation. They weren’t expected to be good this year, but they’ve played well enough to stay in the playoff hunt and are currently holding down a wild-card spot. Kane wasn’t exactly lighting it up, but his absence was going to hurt, and it made some sense for them to move him now for immediate help instead of waiting for the offseason.

So seeing a Kane trade happen now wasn’t a surprise, and a Myers-for-Kane framework had been rumored for days. But the sheer size of the deal and the inclusion of Bogosian was a shock, moving it beyond a simple “get better right now” move.

Bogosian and Myers are both young defenseman, but who is better?

That depends on who you ask, and the long-term answer will probably decide how we end up feeling about this deal years down the road.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

What went wrong? Excuses from the NHL's losers

It's called Therriening. It's just like Tebowing,
except for the part where you have a prayer.

The first round of the playoffs is finally over, which means we're down to eight teams left standing. Those teams deserve a round of applause, and they'll get it… somewhere else. Because as long-time readers know, the end of the first round also means it's time for our annual tribute to the 22 teams whose seasons ended without even winning a single series.

Yes, the losers. The also-rans. The teams that, if we're being honest, basically wasted everyone's time by even bothering to show up this year.

Luckily, every loser has an excuse, and these 22 teams are no exception. So while everyone else is focused on the eight remaining teams, here's a look back at what went wrong for the rest of the league.

Anaheim Ducks - Over the last few days, every time Bruce Boudreau started a team meeting by shouting "Let's come up with a plan for finishing off those Wings!" we'd all sit there in the dark for an hour before realizing he'd just gone to lunch.

Montreal Canadiens - Should probably have let Carey Price do the triple-low-five in the playoffs against the Senators, since it would have been nice to see his glove hand actually make contact with something every now and then.

New York Islanders - When coaches urged the team to go out and match the Penguins in every area of the game during their first round series, in hindsight they probably should have made a point to exclude "terrible goaltending".

New Jersey Devils - Never got over the loss of that 29th overall first round pick we forfeited last year, we assume, because man it would have been completely ridiculous for us not to.

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Hidden NHL playoff injuries revealed

I'm gonna make someone's upper body
bleed for super fan 99 over here.

Injuries are a touchy subject during the NHL playoffs. After a gruelling regular season and the unmatched intensity of postseason action, it's inevitable that many players will be banged up. But good luck getting that confirmed by anyone associated with an organization.

At most, we may hear the old hockey cliché about a player having an injury to their "upper body" or "lower body" -- and that's only if team acknowledges the injury at all. Even when players are obviously hurt and have missed games, coaches still insist that everyone is day-to-day.

Of course, it's a different story once a team has been eliminated. When their season is over and there's no further reason to protect a player's status, teams will often reveal a long list of injuries and other health problems - many of which fans hadn't even suspected.

This year has been no different, as several star players revealed that they'd been playing hurt during the postseason. Here are some examples of what we've found out about each of the eliminated teams.

Washington Capitals - Nicklas Backstrom had various bumps and bruises from everyone accidentally walking into him all the time, which was to be expected given that he became invisible as soon as the regular season ended.

Philadelphia Flyers - In a strange coincidence, all three of our goalies had badly torn rotator cuffs in their "fishing the puck out of the net" shoulders.

Chicago Blackhawks - Chris Campoli was playing through some sort of problem with whatever part of the eyeball it is that's supposed to tell the difference between white and blue uniforms in overtime.

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A defenceman's guide to handling the pressure

It's not easy to be a young defenceman in today's NHL. With round-the-clock coverage on TV and online, it seems as if even the smallest gaffe is magnified and then broken down endlessly. The pressure is constantly on, and mistakes just aren't tolerated. What's a young defenceman to do?

Luckily, there are dependable veterans like Chris Phillips and friends who are willing to serve as mentors to the next generation.

Find more funny hockey videos at blogesalming.com.