Puck Daddy Countdown: Raising draft age, expansion, Yzerman vs. Drouin
(Ed. Note: The column formerly known as the Puck Daddy Power Rankings. Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)
8. Raising the draft age
There’s a story going around that the NHL might raise the draft age to 19.
Pat LaFontaine, working these days for the league in the development realm, says this would be helpful to “improve conditions for player development” but what it would actually be is a good way for teams to reduce the risk of drafting a player who doesn’t work out. An extra year of being not-drafted-yet is an extra year of evaluation so teams end up with fewer busts. Oh and also it gives drafting teams more cost control during a player’s prime scoring years.
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And hell, since the draft is already (arguably) anti-competitive in terms of dictating how much a rookie can make and where he can actually ply his trade, raising the age at which a legal adult can earn money in the sport isn’t the worst thing in the world is it? Hell, why not bump it up to 21?
God forbid NHL teams actually get better at evaluating talent, let’s just reduce a lot of the inherent risk and also hurt players’ earning potential along the way. Sounds great. Let’s do it.
7. Legalized scalping
I love that the Bruins went through their season ticket database and found a bunch of companies re-selling their seats at a huge markup a lot of nights. So long, ticket vampires.
Like yeah, it’s nice to be able to go on one of these sites and find a guy selling his tickets for more or less face value because he can’t make the odd Tuesday night game against a who-cares team. Even if you buy full-season seats but can only make half the games, that’s fine too, right? But when companies are buying season tickets for the express purpose of turning a profit on them, that’s shameful.
It’s great that the Bruins did this (though it boils down to the ultimate question of, “What’s in this for Jeremy Jacobs?”), and let’s hope every other team in the NHL and every other sport does the same thing. And then also that everyone who ever turned a profit re-selling tickets goes to jail.
6. Expansion
I’m really shocked that they’re not gonna put an expansion team in Quebec City. The Canadian dollar is worth like 17 cents or whatever these days so this is a truly shocking turn of events.
Meanwhile, though, Las Vegas hasn’t heard much in the last few months either. What do you think that means for expansion in the next year or two? Only good stuff, I bet.
Probably has nothing to do with the fact that no one from a little town called Seattle (maybe you’ve heard of it!!!) wants to create a team right now. Probably has nothing to do with that at all. If I had to guess I would say the NHL was super-pumped to only get two expansion bids and none from Seattle at all. That is my bet as to why expansion in the next few years seems incredibly unlikely.
5. The definition of “alumni”
Among the alumni announced for the Winnipeg outdoor game are Dale Hawerchuk and Teemu Selanne. Now, these aren’t two of the more famous Atlanta Thrashers in history, in my opinion. Mainly because neither ever played for the Winnipeg Jets in their current form.
Which is weird. Is the NHL hard up for Thrashers alums to call instead? I bet Eric Boulton doesn’t have a lot going on next fall. Hell, by then they might even be able to use Ondrej Pavelec. Not that you’d want to.
Anyway, can’t wait for the St. Louis Winter Classic, when Dale Hawerchuk Teemu Selanne, who played just as many games for the Blues as they did for the current Winnipeg Jets, finally suits up alongside their fellow Blues alumni.
4. Snubs and flubs
I know we’re not supposed to talk about World Cup snubs yet, because they will have about a third of the roster still to add in the next few months. So whatever, that guy you think got snubbed might not have been snubbed after all!
However, how are you gonna name four defenseman from Canada and say, “Oh, hmm, P.K. Subban? Nah not good enough to make that first cut.” That’s pure idiocy. The second-best defenseman alive? Really? Even if you prefer Drew Doughty over him (you shouldn’t), there’s no argument to be made that there are four defenseman in the world, let alone from a single country, who are better than he is. But I’m sure whatever codeword justification came up in the meetings about all this made perfect sense.
As for John Klingberg, well, Niklas Kronwall used to be pretty good, right? No? Okay, well, was there ever a point at which Kronwall was arguably a top-10 or even top-15 defenseman in the league? Because that’s where Klingberg is right now and today. You want experience and physicality, sure. You want defensive wherewithal. And you think 74-year-old Nik Kronwall provides that to such an extent that his value eclipses what Klingberg brings to the roster? Come on.
And finally, Justin Abdelkader made Team USA over Phil Kessel. No need for explanation, though. John Tortorella helped pick the team, so you knew they were gonna screw it up badly. Lots of 2-1 and 3-2 losses comin’ up for the good ol’ US of A.
Let’s just all root for Team North America and be done with it.
3. Ilya Kovalchuk
He’s back, baby! Playin’ in the KHL playoffs’ second round, puttin’ up a single shot on goal in fewer than 16 minutes of ice time. Who wouldn’t want this guy comin’ back to the NHL? He’d be so valuable!
2. Steve Yzerman
So Jonathan Drouin sucked it up and decided to report to the AHL again, which is probably the only reasonable way for this to have played out now that the deadline has come and gone. Some major face-saving (and development-saving?) has to be done by Drouin here but if he says the two sides can save the relationship, then who knows?
This is a classic case of a GM knowing he has a valuable asset and not giving in unless he can maximize value. That’s good management.
But it wasn’t all sunflowers and rainbow kisses for Yzerman this week, because even with Drouin having been suspended for the bulk of the season, it still burns a season of his ELC and pushes him a year closer to unrestricted free agency. Basically, the Bolts could have only written off the deal if he’d been in breach of contract all season, not just most of it.
Tough bounce there, but getting that asset back under control and contributing puts a lot more ammo in Yzerman’s arsenal when (if?) an actual trade happens at the draft.
1. College hockey playoffs
They are happening now, and so far they have been spectacular.
In all, 11 games out of the 26 played in the first round for Hockey East, the ECAC, and Atlantic Hockey were already decided in overtime. Two took multiple overtimes. Further, 21 were one-goal games. Another was a two-goal game including an empty-netter.
And five of the 13 best-of-three series actually required a Game 3. And these were just the teams that didn’t do enough to earn a bye the first week!
(Not ranked this week: Zac Rinaldo.
Hopefully this is the beginning of the end for the ol’ meathead. Now serving a five-game suspension in both the AHL and NHL. That’s gotta be some sort of record.)
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
(All statistics via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)
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