Weekend rankings: Meier, Kane, Trotz, and a look ahead at what should be a wild deadline week

Welcome to deadline week. Let’s get caught up, before something else happens and this is all out-of-date.

The Devils won the Timo Meier sweepstakes, ending weeks of speculation by closing the deal yesterday (and then making us all wait for hours to find out what it actually was, but who’s counting). That’s a huge deal, not just as far as what it does to the Eastern race, but also in terms of which other players now get circled back on. The consensus is that the Devils did well for themselves, although it's hard to say given that the full deal includes roughly eight players that nobody had heard of until last night.

Others trades over the weekend included Nino Niederreiter to Winnipeg, Barbashev to Vegas and Evgeni Dadonov to Dallas. That made for an interesting swing, with the veterans heading to the Western Conference after it was the East that had been landing the big names for the past few weeks. We also learned of a major change in Nashville, where David Poile will be stepping down as GM at the end of the season, to be replaced by Barry Trotz.

Then there’s the big news of a trade that hasn’t officially happened yet, but is apparently a done deal: Patrick Kane to the Rangers, who appear to be the only team he’s willing to move to. If so, the Hawks will have to take what they can get, which likely won’t be much. We’re told that the Rangers may need to wait for later in the week before they can work the deal under the cap, which led to some weekend lineup oddities. But according to all the insiders, this is happening.

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Puck Soup: Place your bets

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.

The eight types of midseason turnarounds (and which one your team might pull off)

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.

The coach firing turnaround

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.

The big roster shakeup turnaround

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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Grab Bag: Why Paul Fenton was fired, the uniform number controversy and a 1979 helping of Puck Soup

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Paul Fenton was fired after just one year and my spies found out why
- Thoughts on players taking famous numbers
- The comedy stars return
- An obscure player who was once traded straight-up for Fenton
- And a YouTube look back at a very weird piece of 1979 hockey comedy

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The Chiarelli Cup: Which GM can make the best starting roster from players they’ve traded away?

Last​ week we tried​ to​ figure​ out​ the​ identity​ of NHL​ history’s most entertaining​ trader by assembling​ starting​ lineups based on​​ players a single GM had traded for. Once we rigged the rules to keep Sam Pollock from rolling over the competition, it turned out to be a tight race.

But plenty of you had the same request: Now do it for players a GM had traded away. Or, as we took to calling it in the comment section, The Chiarelli Cup. OK, the customer is always right. You get your wish. Let’s do this.

A few notes before we get to the teams. First, we’re working with slightly different rules than last week. We’ll keep the Sam Pollock rule – the player himself has to be in the trade, not the draft pick used to select him. But last time, we were only giving GMs credit for what a player did on their team. Today, we’re giving credit for everything a player did in their career after the trade. So in theory, today’s rosters should be slightly better than last week’s.

It’s also worth pointing out that the easiest way to make the cut on a list like this is to have lots of trades to work from. Somebody who was only a GM for a few seasons just isn’t going to have the body of work to compete with somebody who was around for three decades (well, with one exception that we’ll get to). So this doesn’t actually end up being a list of history’s worst GMs like you might think. Guys who are widely considered to have been poor traders, like John Ferguson Jr., Réjean Houle or Mel Bridgman don’t show up here. They didn’t keep the job long enough and didn’t have enough talent to work with when they did.

And here’s one final note: There shouldn’t actually be any suspense here, since the answer is actually kind of obvious. Or at least, it should be. But maybe it isn’t, because of all the names I saw thrown around last week, almost nobody mentioned the actual frontrunner. So let’s see if you can figure it out before we get to the end of the list.

But we’ll begin at the beginning, with the man this exercise was named after.

Team Peter Chiarelli

Goalie: Tim Thomas

Defensemen: Johnny Boychuk, Justin Schultz

Forwards: Taylor Hall, Tyler Seguin, Phil Kessel

It’s a solid group. That forward line is a killer and we could follow it up with a second unit that includes Jordan Eberle and Blake Wheeler. There’s depth all up and down the roster, to be honest, and the Pollock rule means we’re not even giving credit for the Mathew Barzal pick here. But the starting blueliners are just OK and the goaltending isn’t great – Thomas should barely even count, since he was traded to the Islanders, never played and then left as a free agent before playing one more decent NHL season.

So Chiarelli’s not bad. But we can definitely do better. Let’s try the other name that probably popped into your head as soon as you heard the concept.

Team Mike Milbury

Goalie: Roberto Luongo

Defensemen: Zdeno Chara, Darius Kasparaitis

Forwards: Ziggy Palffy, Olli Jokinen, Todd Bertuzzi

Even without quite as much star power up front, this team beats Chiarelli’s pretty easily. It’s more balanced, with first-ballot Hall of Famers in goal and on the blueline. And it’s deep too, with names like Chris Osgood, Mathieu Schneider, Bryan McCabe, Bryan Berard, Michael Peca and Wendel Clark available.

Maybe even more impressively, it’s not like Milbury builds this roster by swinging high-profile but well-balanced blockbusters like some of his colleagues – he lost pretty much every trade that leads to that starting six. And you could make a strong case that we should waive the Pollock rule for Jason Spezza, since Milbury traded the second-overall pick on draft day and it was well-known at the time who the Senators would be using it on. We won’t do that here – rules are rules – but we all know what’s up.

So with apologies to its namesake, it’s Milbury who stakes out the early leader status for the Chiarelli Cup. But the competition is about to heat up.

Team David Poile

Goalie: Devan Dubnyk

Defensemen: Larry Murphy, Seth Jones

Forwards: Mike Gartner, Dino Ciccarelli, Jason Allison

Yikes. This loaded lineup is basically the anti-Milbury team; Poile did well on several of these trades, but has always been willing to give up something to get something. Still, that’s three Hall of Famers from his Washington days, plus two current all-stars – not to mention Shea Weber, who you could swap in on the blueline if you wanted. The third forward is really the only iffy spot, as Allison edges out a three-way Matt Duchene deal that only kind of counts.

The Dubnyk deal is a little bit of a sneaky addition, since he was barely considered an NHLer at that point and was basically given away to Montreal for nothing in return. Still, it counts, and based on his career resurgence in Minnesota it gives Team Poile a potential goaltending controversy with guys like Byron Dafoe and Tomas Vokoun. And as a side note, the Pollock Rule comes into play yet again, and it keeps a couple of big-name draft picks out of the Team Poile lineup: Joe Sakic and Erik Karlsson.

And just like that, I think we’ve got Milbury beat. With the two early favorites already out of the running, let’s see if we can find someone to challenge Poile.

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What’s the best starting lineup you could make from a single GM’s trade history?

With​ less than a week​ to​ go​ until​ the​ 2019​ trade deadline,​ all eyes are​ on NHL general​ managers.​ Within minutes of​​ Monday’s 3:00 p.m. ET deadline, everyone will be coming up with their lists of winners and losers. Some GMs will be found wanting, while others will be declared the champions of the day.

But we like to think a little bigger around here. So instead of wondering about who’ll be the best NHL GM of the 2019 deadline, let’s aim higher by trying to determine the best big-game hunter in history. Which GM holds the all-time crown when it comes to going and swinging big deals?

A few months ago, I tried to tackle a similar sort of question from a slightly different angle by following a chain of lopsided trades. I thought it was pretty much perfect methodology, but a few readers didn’t seem to agree with where it ended up. OK, fair enough. So let’s try something else.

Today, we’re going to see which NHL GM from the modern era lets us put together the best six-man starting lineup made up entirely of players that they traded for. We’re looking for a goalie, two defensemen and three forwards, all of them acquired by the same GM in various trades.

We can mix and match between teams for those GMs who’ve held multiple jobs. But we’re looking for trades and trades only – drafting, free agency and other kind of transactions won’t help you here. We’re not really looking for the “best” GM here, and we don’t even really care if they won or lost the deal. One way or another, we’re looking to crown the guy who landed the biggest names.

A couple of key ground rules:

– The GM only gets credit for what the player did with the team that acquired them. Trading for a Hall of Famer at the very end of his career doesn’t get your credit for his entire body of work. But you do get credit for whatever they did with the team, even if you weren’t around to see all of it.

– We’re only counting players who were acquired directly, not picks that were eventually used on star players.

That last rule is important for a couple of reasons. First, it prevents GMs from getting credit for players they lucked into thanks to their scouting department nailing some fourth-round pick. But more importantly, we need this rule to make this any sort of a contest instead of a coronation of Sam Pollock. If we’re counting picks, Pollock gets to start his team with names like Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson, Steve Shutt and Bob Gainey, and the whole thing is over before it starts. Sam’s too good, so we need a rule to hold him back.

But it’s a tribute to Pollock that while we’re intentionally stacking the deck against him, he still comes through with a solid roster. Let’s make him our starting point.

(GM trading records are via NHLtradetracker.com.)

Team Sam Pollock

Goalie: Ken Dryden

Defensemen: Don Awrey, Jimmy Roberts

Forwards: Frank Mahovlich, Pete Mahovlich, Dick Duff

Team Pollock can’t use Lafleur, Robinson or the other draft pick heists, but still comes out looking pretty good. They start with a Hall of Famer in Dryden, whose rights Pollock stole from the Bruins in one of his very first trades back in 1964. They also get the Mahovlich brothers, plus six years of Duff’s Hall of Fame career. The defense is weak and that’s even after we’re cheating a bit with Roberts, who played more on the wing than the blueline in Montreal, but we kind of have to – even though he made a ton of trades, most of Pollock’s deals were for picks or cash, not established players.

So all in all, Team Pollock is pretty good. But will it hold up as the best? Let’s usher in a new challenger.

Team Harry Sinden

Goalie: Gilles Gilbert

Defensemen: Brad Park, Mike O’Connell

Forwards: Cam Neely, Rick Middleton, Adam Oates

Sinden’s team is just OK in goal – as you’ll see, that ends up being a bit of a theme for a few of his colleagues too. But the rest of his roster is pretty darn good. And he’s got some depth to draw on, as we’ve left off names like Jean Ratelle. The only real weak point is that second defenseman slot, which would look a lot better if our draft pick rule wasn’t keeping Ray Bourque off the team. But having future Sinden protégé Mike O’Connell on the squad makes a certain kind of sense, so let’s go with that.

Sinden’s Bruins didn’t beat Pollock’s Habs all that much when it mattered back in the 1970s, but I think he has the edge here. But he’ll need to get past some other strong contenders.

Team Bill Torrey

Goalie: Chico Resch

Defensemen: Jean Potvin, Uwe Krupp

Forwards: Butch Goring, Pierre Turgeon, Bob Bourne

As with Sinden, goalie isn’t a strong suit, although it’s not bad; Resch basically wins by default, since Billy Smith was an expansion pick and not a trade. Torrey also suffers a bit on the blueline, partly because he was pretty good at drafting them and didn’t need to trade for them as often as other guys. Jean Potvin might not be the best Potvin brother the Islanders ever had, but he put in a solid 400 games for them, and Krupp was decent too. Torrey’s best position is up front, where he could also lay claim to guys like Ray Ferraro and Stumpy Thomas.

Sinden, Torrey and Pollock represent the classic franchise-defining GMs of the 1970s. There’s one more we need to get to, although this one is sometimes better remembered for the work he did in another market.

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NHL GMs don’t get second chances anymore. That might change how your favorite team is run.

If​ you had to​ guess,​ how​ many​ current​ NHL​ head coaches​ do you think​ have held that​ job​ for at least​​ one other team during their careers?

You might assume the number would be fairly high. After all, the NHL is often accused of being an old boys’ club, where teams prefer the safety of a familiar name to taking a chance on a fresh face.

If so, you’d be right. The vast majority of current coaches – 21 out of 31 – are on at least their second head coaching job. That includes nine coaches who are on their second chance, eight who are on their third, and four who are on their fourth. John Tortorella is actually on his fifth if you count his brief interim stint with the Rangers in 1999-00.

OK, now let’s move up the org chart and try the same question for the front office. How many of today’s 31 GMs are on at least their second chance at the job? If anything, we might think that the old boys’ club effect would be even more pronounced here. GM jobs don’t open up very often and they typically require plenty of experience, so you might expect to see the same old faces being recycled through the league.

But we don’t. In fact, only 10 of the league’s current GMs are on their second full-time job. (It’s 11 if you count Jeff Gorton’s interim stint with Boston, although that only lasted a few months.) Two-thirds of today’s GMs are on their first shot at the job. And only one GM in the entire league, Lou Lamoriello, has done it for more than two teams.

That seems pretty amazing. It didn’t used to be like this – even a decade or so ago, it wasn’t unusual to see guys like Cliff Fletcher, Bobby Clarke, Brian Burke or Bryan Murray show up for third, fourth and even fifth cracks at a GM’s job. But these days, most teams don’t seem interested in hiring a retread. More often than not, a GM’s career is one-and-done.

The two types of second-chance GMs

The trend gets even more pronounced if you look at the 10 GMs who did manage to get a second chance. Almost all of them fall into one of two categories: Stanley Cup winners, or guys who held their first job forever.

The Cup winner category includes names like Ray Shero and Peter Chiarelli, as well as Dale Tallon, who built pretty much the entire Blackhawks’ 2009-2010 roster before being fired after free agency. The Blackhawks made a point of giving him a ring even though he wasn’t employed by the team anymore, so we’ll defer to their judgment and consider him a Cup winner.

Then there’s the guys who didn’t win a Cup, but held their previous job forever. That would include George McPhee (17 years in Washington before going to Vegas); David Poile (15 years in Washington before Nashville); and Don Waddell (12 years in Atlanta before getting the Carolina job this summer).

Two more guys, Lamoriello and Jim Rutherford, fit into both categories, having held previous jobs for well over a decade while winning Cups in the process.

That leaves us with just two current GMs in the entire league who managed to get a second crack at the job despite not either winning a Cup or sticking around forever in their first.

The first is Doug Armstrong. He does have a Cup ring, earned as an assistant in Dallas, but didn’t have much success in five years as GM there. He still managed to work his way back to the big chair in St. Louis in 2010, and he’s held it ever since.

The second is Anaheim GM Bob Murray. You may not even remember his previous time as a GM, because it came back in the 1990s. He had a quick stint as GM in Chicago from 1997 to 1999, then waited nearly 10 years before getting a second shot with Anaheim in 2008.

That’s it. Two guys in the entire league who didn’t succeed in their first crack at being a GM and still got a second chance. One of them had to wait nearly a decade. And neither was hired within the last eight years.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

Who's the best GM of all time? Just follow the bad trade chain.

Who’s​ the best general​ manager​ in​ the​ history​ of​ the NHL?

On​ the surface, that​ seems like the​ sort​ of question that​​ we can’t really answer. You’ll have your opinion and I’ll have mine, and we can have fun debating it back and forth. But ultimately, it’s all a matter of opinion.

Or is it? When it comes to these sorts of questions, I’ve always been a big fan of stripping away emotion and hometown bias and going with a calculated, scientific approach. And there’s an opportunity to do that here, because part of a GM’s job involves occasionally going head-to-head with their colleagues. We can never read too much into a matchup between goalies or coaches or players, because the results will be determined by the rosters around them. But when GMs sit down to hammer out a trade, it’s just them. Just two men, locked in a battle of wits to see who can get the best of the other.

That should give us an opportunity to answer the question of who was the best in an objective way. All we need to do is go back through the trading records and see who got the best of who. After all, you can’t be the best GM ever if some other GM took you to the cleaners in a head-to-head matchup. We just need to work our way down the chain, looking for any trades that were clearly lopsided, and we’ll eventually get to an answer we can all agree on. It’s practically foolproof.

The only question is where to begin. That’s tricky, but I think there’s a logical answer: We start with the reigning GM of the Year. After all, if the league says a guy is the best in the business at this very moment, that seems like as good a place as any to start our search.

As it happens, the current GM of the Year is a legitimate contender for our Best Ever crown. That would be George McPhee, who won the 2018 award after working a near-miracle with the Golden Knights. He has nearly two decades of experience as an NHL GM, and he’s taken two teams to the Stanley Cup final. If you’re looking for someone to call the best, you could do a lot worse than George McPhee.

Except that for all McPhee’s success, he made one of the worst trades in recent history back in 2013, when he sent Filip Forsberg to the Predators for Martin Erat and a minor leaguer. It was a disastrous trade, as Forsberg quickly developed into one of the league’s best young wingers while Erat barely did anything in Washington. The deal has been referred to as a “dumpster fire”. And who was the GM who robbed McPhee blind in that deal? That would be David Poile.

So McPhee clearly can’t be the best GM ever. Instead, it’s Poile. See how this works? Simple and straightforward.

Except that while Poile certainly won his fair share of trades over his 36 years on the job, his record isn’t exactly spotless. Back in 1992, Poile was GM of the Capitals when he traded winger Dino Ciccarelli to the Red Wings in a straight-up deal for Kevin Miller. The 31-year-old Ciccarelli had scored over 100 goals in his three full seasons in Washington; he turned out to have over 160 more left in him, on the way to joining the 600-goal club and making the Hall of Fame. Miller lasted all of 10 games in Washington.

So sorry, David, you can’t be the best GM of all-time when you get robbed like that. Instead, we’ll hand those honors over to the man that fleeced you: Red Wings’ GM Bryan Murray.

Murray’s a solid pick; he was a GM for four different teams over the course of a quarter century. Unfortunately, he also had some shaky deals. Back in 2013, he traded Jakob Silfverberg, Stefan Noesen and a first-round pick to the Ducks in a deal for winger Bobby Ryan. That pick ended up being in the top 10, and the Ducks used it on Nick Ritchie. Meanwhile, Ryan has largely been a bust in Ottawa, and the team is currently trying to unload his massive contract. It was a clear loss for the Senators, and a win for Anaheim GM Bob “No Relation” Murray.

So Bryan can’t be our best-ever GM. But maybe Bob can be.

Unfortunately, the best GM ever wouldn’t have traded one of the top defensemen in the league without getting any impact assets back in return. That’s what Murray did back in 2009, when Paul Holmgren got him to part with Chris Pronger for the low price of Joffrey Lupul, Lucas Sbisa and two late first-round picks. Pronger immediately led the Flyers to within two wins of a championship, making the deal a big win for GM Paul Holmgren.

So Murray isn’t the best GM after all. Paul Holmgren is.

Except that he can’t be, because he once traded James van Riemsdyk to the Maple Leafs in a straight-up deal for Luke Schenn. That was a bad deal on the day it went down, and has been getting worse ever since. Schenn was barely a useful third-pairing guy, while van Riemsdyk had multiple 30-goal seasons in Toronto and just got a ton of money to come back to the Flyers. Chalk up a big win for Leafs GM Brian Burke.

So Holmgren is out. The best GM ever was actually Brian Burke.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

Saturday storylines: Be afraid of the Penguins

We’ve got 11 games on tap tonight, including six of the seven Canadian teams in action. With the races tightening and the trade deadline looming, it’s getting tense out there. So let’s try to keep things calm by starting with two teams that are pretty much already in the playoffs…

HNIC Game of the Night: Maple Leafs at Penguins

It’s officially time to be afraid of the Penguins again.

After two straight Stanley Cups, they were kind enough to give us a bit of a break early in the season. The Pens stumbled out of the gate, including an embarrassing 10-1 loss to the Blackhawks during the season’s first week, and never seemed quite right through the first few months. As late as the first week of January, they’d lost more games than they’d won. They were dipping in and out of a wild-card spot, and GM Jim Rutherford was reportedly ready to make major changes to try to save the season.

But while it didn’t seem like it at the time, a 4-0 win over the Islanders on Jan. 5 now looks like a turning point. They followed that by beating a red-hot Bruins team in overtime, then added wins over the Red Wings and Rangers. They’ve stayed hot ever since — they haven’t lost two straight since the end of December. In all, the Penguins are rolling to the tune of a 13-3-1 record during the stretch, blowing by the wild-card traffic jam and putting them within range of the Capitals for the Metro title.

And they’ve looked scary doing it, scoring five or more goals seven times and winning eight games by three goals or more. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are back to their old selves after slow starts, and Phil Kessel continues to rack up the points.

Maybe most frightening of all, they’re still not at their best. Matt Murray has been much better lately, but has still been inconsistent. If he were to heat up, the Penguins might start to look unbeatable. Then again, Murray tends to do his best work in the playoffs, and that’s where he and his team are headed. At this rate, they’ll be back among the favourites once they get there.

The Maple Leafs are headed to the post-season too, although their status as legitimate contenders is still in question. It’s been a weird season for Toronto, who’ve spent much of the year all but locked into the third spot in the Atlantic. The Leafs are trying to make that interesting, taking a run at the Lightning and Bruins in an effort to at least land home-ice advantage in the first round, although that’s still a longshot. But with nine wins in their last ten and two lines filling the net, they’re at least looking more like the team that was briefly considered a Stanley Cup favourite back in October. That stretch has included wins over a couple of legitimate Cup contenders in the Predators and Lightning. Tonight, they get a shot at another one.

It all adds up to a good test for both teams, and a decent measuring stick of where we’re at in an Eastern Conference that suddenly seems wide open. We’ll hold off on any conference final preview hyperbole for now, since the Lightning, Bruins and Capitals will all have something to say about that. But if both of these teams keep rolling the way they have, we make no promises about where the hype machine may be at when they face off again three weeks from now.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Grab bag: We have a trade to announce

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Holy crap the NHL actually had a major trade
- Canada is torn apart by a political controversy involving a Bob Probert fight
- An obscure player from the biggest three-way trade ever
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a classic YouTube clip of the time David Poile turned down the Maple Leafs GM job

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Biscuits podcast: We're back

Good news... after a long offseason that stretched through October, the Vice Sports Biscuits podcast is back. Dave and I will be doing the show weekly through to the end of the season, with new episodes appearing late Tuesday/early Wednesday most weeks.

In this week's episode:
- We break down the Matt Duchene trade
- Were we wrong about Joe Sakic?
- Why Pierre Dorion should get some credit for making this move
- We play "real or fake" with the first month's biggest surprises
- Which two teams would you combine to make each conference's best dream team?
- They kick us out early because somebody else needs the studio, because some things never change

>> Stream it now on Vice Sports

>> Subscribe on iTunes. (Or find us and subscribe on your other favorite podcast platforms.)

Johansen for Jones, and the lost art of the one-for-one trade

On Wednesday, the Blue Jackets traded Ryan Johansen to the Predators for Seth Jones. The move was remarkable in a few different ways. For one, it was a trade – apparently, we still have those – and a blockbuster at that. It was also a good old-fashioned hockey deal, one inspired not by the salary cap or a trade demand or a tanking team's desire to bottom out, but two GMs simply getting together and betting that they could make their teams better by swapping assets.

But there was another unusual element of the move: It was a one-for-one trade. And it turns out that those are fairly rare creatures in the NHL.

I know this, because I thought "Hey, I should write a post about some of the great one-for-one deals in NHL history", and then found out that there weren't anywhere near as many as I remembered. It turns out that lots of trades that you may recall as one-for-one actually had some spare change thrown in on one or both sides. Savard for Chelios? Nope, that one included a draft pick. Nieuwendyk for Iginla? Don't forget Corey Millen. Heatley for Hossa? Greg de Vries. Turgeon for LaFontaine? Yeah, that one actually had like 14 pieces to it. Come to think of it, I may be the only one who thought that was a one-for-one. My bad.

But the point remains: True one-for-one deals don't happen often, which is all the more reason to love Johansen-for-Jones. But there have been a few, and I came up with ten of the most memorable. Please note that this isn't meant to be a definitive list, since due to recent events my research department currently consists of a magic eight ball I made myself by dropping a 20-sided die into an empty whiskey bottle. If I missed your favorite, please know that I did my best to… wait, you already skipped the intro, scanned the list, and went to Twitter to call me an idiot, didn’t you? Cool, cool.

For the rest of you, here are ten of the more interesting one-for-one trades from NHL history.

July 27, 1995 – Hartford trades Chris Pronger to St. Louis for Brendan Shanahan

This is probably the biggest one-for-one trade in NHL history, not to mention the best comparison for Johansen-for-Jones. It's also the one that might keep David Poile awake at night for the next few year, because it's the classic example of why you never want to give up on a young stud defenseman too early, no matter how rich the return.

That's not to say the deal was a bust for the Whalers. Just like the Predators, they got a first-line forward in his prime, and this one went on to become a Hall-of-Famer. But while Shanahan was very good, Pronger developed into an absolute beast, and remains the only defenseman to win the MVP since Bobby Orr. That's probably a little too high to set our targets for Jones, but it's a vivid illustration of the worst case scenario when you move a blueliner before you really know what you have.

(And no, the fact that Shanahan lasted just one full season in Hartford before demanding a trade probably doesn't help. And the whole franchise relocation thing that followed. Listen, Predators fans, let's just forget I ever mentioned any of this.)

June 23, 2012 – Toronto trades Luke Schenn to Philadelphia for James van Riemsdyk

This may have been the last true one-for-one NHL blockbuster before this week, although it doesn't look anywhere near as big as it once did. In 2012, Schenn was still considered a solid enough young defenseman with upside, and not the borderline depth guy he looks like today. In the years since, this deal looked like an absolute steal for Toronto as van Riemsdyk developed into a solid scorer. He seems to have settled into a 25-30 goal guy, which won't get him on many all-star teams, but isn't bad.

But still – Toronto won a trade! I don't get to write those words very often. I'm in a good mood now, let's see what's next on our list.

June 24, 2006 – Toronto trades Tuukka Rask to Boston for Andrew Raycroft

Dammit.

You know what? No. I'm still not ready to talk about this one. Let's just move on to some other team's terrible trade to make me feel better.

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The NHL GM trade power rankings (part two)

15. Doug Wilson, San Jose Sharks

Current standings: 15-14-1, second place in the Pacific

Estimated cap room: $1 million (assuming Ben Smith is on the LTIR)

Remember when a Patrick Marleau deal felt like a sure thing? That was only a few weeks ago, but the buzz around that move has quieted down significantly. The wide-open Pacific says Wilson should be looking to deal; the cap says he might not be able to. Either way, he tends to do most of his trading in the offseason or at the trade deadline. And history says we shouldn't expect anything over the next few weeks; he hasn't made a deal in December since 2006.

14. Don Sweeney, Boston Bruins

Current standings: 17-9-4, second place in the Atlantic

Estimated cap room: $600,000

You have to hand it to Sweeney -- the rookie GM certainly wasn't shy about pulling the trigger after being promoted in the offseason. He made several big trades, including those involving Dougie Hamilton, Milan Lucic and Martin Jones (twice). Granted, those deals got mixed reviews, but the key point is that Sweeney doesn't seem to have gotten the memo in his orientation package about being timid on the trade front. The only thing keeping him from ranking higher is the Bruins' tight cap and their place in the standings -- not bad enough to rebuild, not quite good enough to go try to load up.

>> Read the full post on ESPN.com (scroll down to get to entries 15 thru 1)

The pros and cons of matching the Shea Weber offer sheet

Shea Weber debuts his "Just realized
the Predators could match" face.

Shea Weber dropped a bombshell on the NHL last week when he signed a 14-year, $110 million offer sheet with the Philadelphia Flyers. The heavily front-loaded contract would see the restricted free agent collect over $50 million in the first four years of the deal, making him the league's highest paid player during that time.

The Predators have the right to match the offer, but the contract seems to have been carefully designed to force Nashville general manager David Poile into an almost impossible decision. Does he let his best player walk away, receiving four first round picks as compensation but potentially devastating both the team's fanbase and its playoff hopes? Or does he match the offer, knowing the burden of the contract's first few years could put the financial health of the franchise at risk?

It's a tough call, and so far there's been no indication which way Poile was leaning. So since he still has a few days to make up his mind, I thought I'd try to help out. After talking to sources and crunching the numbers, here's my list of the Nashville Predators' pros and cons of matching the Flyers' offer sheet for Shea Weber.

PRO: The contract is front-loaded and doesn't call for Weber to be paid very much over the final three seasons, which is great since those will be the only ones actually played thanks to the lockout this contract will cause.

CON: The process of matching the offer may be confusing, since the section of the NHL owner's manual that covers dealing with offer sheets for star players simply reads "Remind the other team that we all got together a few years ago and secretly agreed to never actually use those".

PRO: The Predators have been receiving revenue sharing payments from the league's wealthier clubs for years, and Maple Leaf fans would probably enjoy seeing MLSE's money go towards signing a big name free agent for once.

CON: Weber has expressed a desire to play in Philadelphia and upsetting him could make life difficult around team headquarters, according to the janitor who would be in charge of cleaning all the David Poile face smears off of the windows.

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