Take Town: Are we having fun yet?
Another Frozen Frenzy is in the books and yeah the idea of just having seven straight hours of hockey in the middle of the week still rocks. There definitely ought to be a way where this happens several times per season. Maybe not once a month, but also, what if…
I don't mind the show they do on ESPN where it basically becomes NFL Red Zone, but I wish there was a lot less bit-doing, and a lot more just showing me random 2-minute segments of Jackets/Leafs then Rangers/Habs then Bruins/Preds. Just bang bang bang bang bang instead of "let's spend five minutes pretending PK Subban fell down by accident" in the middle of it. I'm all for grabassing on these things as long as I can see the hockey and listen to the grabassing — I tend to watch most games with the audio pretty low or muted anyway — but don't act like here comes Buster Keaton with a tray full of freaking chicken parm hope he doesn't slip on that banana peel!!!!
One thing I also liked was the interviews with various players whose games just ended. I don't know that I need to hear every single one give their advice to all the kiddos out there who want to make it in this sport, but it's a fun idea. Maybe pop that into a little window in the corner of a screen while there's a hockey game taking up most of it.
I give the NHL a beautiful kiss for this perfect idea. But there are logistical and broadcast issues still worth ironing out around that could make the presentation of the perfect idea even better. Like not scheduling it against opening night of the NBA season.
Let's go:
Big year for contract years
No matter what sport we're talking about, it's basically true that most players who are on the verge of needing a new contract tend to step up their games in an attempt to raise the value of their next deal. The most obvious example of this that's gotten a ton of press in the hockey world lately is Igor Shesterkin, whose negotiation has gone public but seemingly not made much progress in the last few weeks. That one's gotten so out of hand that multiple people who aren't on his team have commented on how much money he deserves.
But as if to underscore the point and really drive up his asking price, Shesterkin has started the season in absolute freak mode: .932 save percentage, no regulation losses, and a shutout in five starts. (I would say it doesn't get better than that, but there are currently several goalies sitting north of .940 through the first few weeks of the season.) This is Shesterkin kinda forcing the issue and making sure his AAV starts with a "12."
But he's not the only one: Mikko Rantanen needs a new contract and has opened the season with 11 points in seven games. Only six players in the entire league have more points than that, two of whom are his teammates. Sam Bennett is rumored to be getting a new deal soon, too, so of course he's running at 5-3-—8 in eight games. Nik Ehlers, Neal Pionk, and Shea Theodore are all north of a point a game. Brock Boeser, Reilly Smith, and Mitch Marner? You know they're dead even at 1.0 points per game. Hell, even Lars Eller has 4-2—6 in eight. Alex Lyon is .955 in his first four appearances. Filip Gustavsson is .952 and even scored a goal.
It's all early days, obviously, but you know the contract year push is real when Kevin Lankinen has a .941 save percentage and Anthony Stolarz isn't far behind.
For some reason, with The Cap Going Up™, this feels even more pointed. With Bennett, for example, what's a good number? He's like a 20-goal, 40-point guy who's gonna be 29 in June, but he's really good at his job and he just won a Cup and now he's scoring at a basically unprecedented pace. Florida's regular season is 10 percent over, and he's 16 percent of the way to a career high in points, and 18 percent to a career high in goals. If they're trying to get this contract signed now — and the reports say that they are — what's a fair cap hit? Does it start at $7 million for six, seven, eight years?
Basically all the guys I named already should be looking to get their deals locked up ASAP. "Look how well I'm doing!!!!"
Wearing out his welcome?
Lots of discourse this week about what's wrong with the Bruins, whose underlying numbers are abysmal, who only have two regulation wins in seven games, and (speaking of contract years) whose coach doesn't have a contract locked in beyond this season.
The Bruins are still technically holding onto a playoff spot (eighth in the East, so no great shakes) and are really only buoyed by the fact that the rest of the East either hasn't played a ton of games or kinda stinks. They're one of four East teams that have a .500 record right now, and if we're going by points percentage, they're technically ninth.
It's easy to look at how everything has gone and say Jim Montgomery, who yelled at and lightly shoved Brad Marchand on the shoulder during the OT loss to Utah, might have worked himself into a position where he's the fall guy here. However, Marchand hasn't gotten going at all, and it's really only the fourth line that's scoring consistently at 5-on-5. Is that Montgomery's fault? You can certainly make the argument that he's not helping. And yeah I saw some guys on ESPN during Frozen Frenzy talking about the vibes just being bad, what with the Jeremy Swayman saga and all that. That honestly might be part of it, but because part of a coach's job is to manage the vibes (for lack of a better term), this is an issue.
You can also make the argument that the team's failure to go out and get any sort of replacement for Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci in the past few years is, like, a huge problem. Don Sweeney's solution of just doing it by committee with Pavel Zacha and Charlie Coyle basically worked last season, and he added Elias Lindholm this past summer, but none of those guys are really No. 1 centers. If you're running those three down the middle behind an actual top-line guy, hoo boy, you're in great shape. And honestly the team should be better than this if those are their top three. But it's not like the wing depth is much better.
Moreover, Joonas Korpisalo has been exactly as bad as he was advertising for most of his career, and the team hasn't really developed any forwards on the roster since 26-year-old Trent Frederic, who's not exactly David Pastrnak. (Let's give Matt Poitras a few more games before we say he's not a project.)
Like, if you think the coach who got them to an NHL-record regular season but can't figure out how to beat the Panthers and seems to be "losing the room" is a problem, I really do get it. But I don't know who you go out and get that's definitely better. Pull the trigger on that change now if you want. The underlyings literally can't get worse with this roster. And the talent level at the top of the depth chart probably ensures that a .500 points percentage is the worst they can do over most seven-game stretches.
But at some point don't we have to acknowledge that the GM really let the foundation of all the team's success over the past, I dunno, 15 years take a turn for the worse? I don't know if there's a good answer to fixing this roster's problems at this point, because this is a team that just isn't going to tank. But at the same time, I can definitely see a world where it doesn't get acrimonious with their clear No. 1 goalie, where they don't go get Korpisalo, who's signed for another three years beyond this one, where they actually draft and develop kids who contribute more meaningfully than the vast majority of the roster who were traded for or signed as UFAs when they were already several years into their NHL careers. It's just not a way to build sustainable success in the way, say, Dallas or Florida has.
This starting to feel like a pre-rebuild Kings to anyone else?
