It's Getting Drafty in Nashville

Enjoy some heartwarming moments while waiting on deals that might not happen.

Scott Perunovich & Andy Strickland by Sierradawg is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The NHL festivities in Nashville that began earlier this week with the league’s annual awards show — more on that below — continue tonight with the draft. As we’ve known for sometime, Conor Bedard of the WHL’s Regina Pats will be selected first overall by the Chicago Blackhawks. After that, this year’s draft is reportedly the deepest in years and in addition to Bedard, boasts a number of NHL-ready talents.

Plenty of my friends are draft geeks, but I am not. In stark contrast to the NFL Draft, the vast majority of players selected in the NHL Draft, even in the first round, will need several years of seasoning in the minor leagues before they earn a spot on an NHL roster. Some of the players drafted will never see NHL ice at all.

So if you’re searching for deep insight into the talents available this year, I’d suggest you look elsewhere. Despite this, I always watch at least a portion of the first round. While the NHL Awards are awkward and stilted, the scenes at the NHL Draft are heartwarming and genuine. Players are normally accompanied by their families and the night of the draft is a culmination of years of effort and sacrifice. If you’ve played even a little bit of youth hockey, you understand how the entire family is impacted if there’s just one hockey player in the house. At this level, parents very often have to let their sons move thousands of miles from home as teenagers in order to pursue their dreams. It isn’t easy and there are no guarantees. They’ve earned the right to celebrate.

Which brings us to the other reason to watch: trades. When the entire hockey world comes together, it’s inevitable that teams make deals as they begin constructing their rosters for the upcoming season. There was no more dramatic draft day trade action than in Boston in 1999, when Brian Burke, then general manager of the Vancouver Canucks, maneuvered his way into drafting twin brothers Henrik and Daniel Sedin.

Will we see such drama like that tonight? Probably not, but the possibility always exists. After a disappointing season in Washington, Capitals General Manager Brian MacLellan needs to revamp the roster for new head coach Spencer Carbery. The Capitals are long overdue for a rebuild — some inside the team believed the time to pull the trigger on that process was the year before they won the Stanley Cup in 2018 — but can’t afford to do it with Alex Ovechkin just 72 goals behind Wayne Gretzky in the race to become the greatest goal scorer in NHL history.

In order for MacLellan to put a team on the ice that’s appreciably better than the one that finished out of the playoffs this past season, there are a few players that observers believed needed to be moved. The first was forward Anthony Mantha, who has seriously underperformed since he was acquired from the Detroit Red Wings in April 2021 in exchange for Jakub Vrána, Richard Pánik, a first-round pick in 2021 and second-round pick in 2022. Unsurprisingly, there is apparently no interest in him.

The other is enigmatic center Evgeny Kuznetsov. Make no mistake, if Kuznetsov isn’t playing well Washington will struggle, and last season was an object lesson in that observation. Word at the end of last season was that Kuznetsov, who led the Stanley Cup Playoffs in scoring when the Caps won the championship in 2018, wanted out, and it seems that MacLellan has been trying to accommodate him. But once again, reports indicate that there isn’t any interest worth pursuing.

With those two salaries remaining on the books, MacLellan doesn’t have a lot of flexibility to add talent to the team. The only other possibility would be for center Nicklas Backstrom, who returned last season from having his his hip resurfaced, to go on long term IR. MacLellan has been pretty direct in saying Backstrom needs to make some decisions about whether he wants to continue to play. The problem again is salary. While Backstrom might well be able to continue to play in a reduced role, it’s hard to justify financially when he’s being paid like a first line center. What’s worse, at least in terms of putting next season’s roster together, is that Backstrom will likely want the chance to prove he can still play. Unfortunately, if he ultimately decides to opt for that route after training camp, the cap relief it would provide would come too late to help the team in time for next season.

All of that aside, MacLellan still has a high draft pick in his pocket at #8. The hockey press is reporting that the Caps have targeted Russian winger Matvei Michkov. But as Isiah Thomas once told SportsNet’s Elliotte Friedman, at draft time “everybody lies.” With that in mind, it’s impossible not to note MacLellan’s position that winger Tom Wilson will finish his career with the Caps despite rumors he might be moved.

Mix it all together, and I have more than enough reason to watch tonight. As for MacLellan, he’s proven to be a creative and resourceful guy. While the odds are stacked against him financially, I’m not counting him out when it comes to devising a sound plan. I’m interested in seeing what he does starting tonight. Stay tuned.

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Selke Trophy by Horge is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

The NHL Awards were held Monday night. It was hard not to chuckle.

Back when I was “paid” to write about the NHL, I would actually watch the show and push my observations out on the old Off Wing Opinion. A quick scan of Twitter on Monday night reminded me what I wasn’t missing.

In all the years I wasted watching the telecast, one of the only interesting things that ever happened was when a fire in a satellite truck knocked the show off the air. While it seems as if that event has been memory-holed by major search engines, trust me when I say that it happened.

As for the awards themselves, I don’t have much of a quibble with any of the winners, but it does give me an excuse to write about my favorite NHL trophy, the Selke Award. Named after former league executive Frank J. Selke, Sr., the award is given annually to “the forward who best excels in the defensive aspects of the game.”

I like the Selke because it awards an under appreciated skill. To win it you have to work very hard and display incredible mental discipline. Every forward wants to score, but not every forward wants to play a total game. When you’re back checking all night against the best offensive players on the other team, the journey has to be the reward. Even better, as the Norris Trophy for the best defenseman is normally bestowed upon a player who racks up the most points from that position, it’s the only award outside of the Vezina Trophy that rewards working to keep the puck out of your own net.

This year’s winner was Patrice Bergeron, who banked the Selke for a record sixth time. It’s hard to argue with the choice. Bergeron’s reputation for disrupting the opposition attack is well established at this point in his career, and he’ll be headed to the Hockey Hall of Fame after he retires and the waiting period expires.

As much as I love the Selke, I think it might be time to retire the name. Its namesake was one of the builders of the game, winning nine championships with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens. But Selke was never an NHL player and since the trophy was first awarded in 1978, a number of other forwards have distinguished themselves as defensive stalwarts.

The two I have in mind played in the same era. Bob Gainey played his entire career with the Canadiens, winning five Stanley Cups, including one with that incredible team that played in 1976-77. At one point, he won the Selke four years in a row. Known on those great Montreal teams as “Monsieur Bob,” he’s one of the absolute gentleman of the game, which is a touch ironic as he never won the Lady Byng.

The other is Bryan Trottier, who won four Stanley Cups with the New York Islanders and another two in the twilight of his career with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Trottier never won the Selke, perhaps because he was such an offensive standout early in his career. But anyone who tangled with “Trots” knew there was more to his game than feeding passes to Mike Bossy. Trottier played a “heavy” game that opponents remembered long after they were over. Here’s how Ken Dryden put it in Scotty: A Hockey Life Like No Other.

When the Islanders played against the Flyers, Arbour would have Trottier go head-to-head with Bobby Clarke. Clarke, with Reggie Leach and Bill Barber, played against every opponent’s best line, or often their shut-down line. He was once asked who he found the hardest player to play against. He loved playing against Esposito, he said. You could just be on him You could disrupt him. Upset him. Clarke said he didn’t find Lemaire that difficult. You could push him. He found Jarvis and Riesbrough hard, but the toughest guy he ever played against, he said, was Trottier. “He was strong, he was tough, he was mean,” he said. “He kind of played like me but he had more force about him.”

More force than Bobby Clarke? But while Trottier is one of the best to ever play the game, he was hardly a gentleman on the ice. Long-time hockey fans know what I mean. If not, type Trottier, Stevens and Bellows into your favorite search engine.

Which brings us back to Bergeron. When you’ve won a trophy six times you just about own it, and I don’t doubt that if Bergeron returns for another season at age 38, he’ll probably win it again. If not, he reportedly is considering retirement, Bergeron has nothing left to prove in the game. Equally classy on and off the ice, it would be fitting to have his name take the place of Selke one day. I’m sure if he were would ever asked, he’d be flattered and politely decline.