Down Goes Brown

NHL weekend rankings: A record-setting week in Florida, and a look back one year

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 15:07:02 +0000

One of the most annoying things you can say to sportswriter is “it’s too early”.

You see it in every comment section, social media reply thread, and reader email. We hear it from friends, family, and random guys in sports bars. It’s the caveat that hangs over everything. “It’s too early,” everyone shrieks, “and you can’t draw any conclusions yet”.

It’s annoying. But not because it isn’t true.

No, it’s annoying because we know it’s true. Everyone does. But that doesn’t change the fact that it you want to talk about hockey in October, it’s going to be too early. Sure, maybe we’d all be smarter if we checked out and then circled back in February. But some of like hockey, and want to talk about it. Also, some of us need to eat.

But yes, it’s too early. And while we’d love to hand-wave that fact away, it’s actually important to remember. So today, let’s look back at what the standings were telling us at this time last season, and consider it a reminder of what “too early” can really look like.

As of last night, the NHL has played 136 games. Last season, Game number 136 was playing on October 25. Here’s what the standings looked like that day.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

One-minute minors in OT? Soccer-style penalty shots? NHL Rules Court returns

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 13:25:31 +0000

All rise, Rules Court is back in session.

It’s been a while. The last time we did this was during the Olympics, when we looked at the differences between international hockey and the NHL. The last time we opened the court up to your proposals was almost a full year ago. It’s time to see what cases you’d like to bring.

As always, you send us your ideas for new or adjusted NHL rules, and our panel of three esteemed judges – Shayna Goldman, Sean McIndoe and Sean Gentille – will give them a yes or no. Convince at least two of us, and your rule is sent to the league office and immediately made official. (Note: That last part does not happen.)

This time around, you want to talk shot clocks, goalie fights and mouth pieces. Let’s see how many of you could make your case.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

How many long contracts are too many? Revisiting the Red Arrow Index

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 13:35:17 +0000

A few years ago, I had what I thought was a neat idea: The red arrow Index, a simple measurement of how many long-term contract commitments each team had. The name came from Cap Friendly, then the most widely used contract tracker, and the way it would use a red arrow to denote any contract that was too long to fit on one screen. The idea was to see what we could learn, and what patterns (if any) we could find, and then revisit the idea annually to track how team approaches changed.

Then I forgot about it. Look, I’m not sure what to tell you, my kids showed me how to use Tik Tok a few years ago and I haven’t had an attention span since that day.

That four-year gap is going to cause a few issues, not least of which is that Cap Friendly doesn’t exist anymore. There are several strong alternatives, including Puckpedia, which I’ll be using today. Puckpedia doesn’t use a red arrow for too-long-to-fit contracts, because they hate fun and whimsy. But the general concept – player signed to deal with six years or more left to run, including this year – remains in place. So let’s see how much things have changed over the years.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

NHL weekend rankings: Jets hope, Rangers disaster, plus five early storylines I'm not buying yet

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 14:23:17 +0000

We’re two weeks into the season, and it’s too early to know anything. But it’s not too early to know what you don’t know. Or at least, what you’re pretty sure you know. That you don’t know.

You know?

Cool, glad we’re all on the same page. Here are five early-season storylines that I’m not buying. Or at least, not yet.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

The Dionne Trophy: a fake award for best season by a player about to switch teams

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 13:17:08 +0000

Our fake trophy case needs some new additions. The last time we came up with a new award to retroactively hand out, we were waiting on the puck to drop on a Western Conference final we all knew the Avalanche would easily win, and the Sabres had just pumped eight goals past a Canadiens team that was on its heels heading into game seven. Oops.

That fake award was the Maruk Trophy, given to each year’s playoff MVP among teams that were eliminated in round one. It joined previous pretend honors like the Jimmy Carson Trophy (for best sophomore season), the Ray Bourque Trophy (for best final season) and the Teemu Selanne Trophy (for best combined season and Olympics). None of these actually exist, but they should, and they will once I'm elected commissioner.

So yeah, we need some new blood. And that’s going to be the theme of today’s award, as we present the Marcel Dionne Trophy for best season by a player who’s about to switch teams in the offseason. We’re not worried about how the change happens – trades, free agency, and expansion drafts are all in play. To qualify, a player simply has to have been on one team’s roster for their final game of the season in question, and a different one on opening night of the following one. And we’re only worried about what they did in that last year with their old team; if they were great that year but then stunk on their new team, that’s fine.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

Nobody understands the Sabres, and other lessons from the NHL prediction contest

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:32:55 +0000

We’re barely a week into the NHL season, and you’ve already seen my team tiers, my oddly specific predictions, my most intriguing players, and my first batch of power rankings. Oh, and hopefully you’ve signed up for the newsletter.

Are you sick of me yet? You should be. So I’m taking the day off.

Instead, this post is about you, and what you think. Specifically, it’s about the 1,258 of you who entered this year’s prediction contest. That number was the highest in the contest’s seven year history, by the way, so thanks to everyone who spread the word.

It’s obviously way too early to start keeping score. It’s only been a week, and history tells us that most of your entries won’t be completely dead in the water until it’s been two weeks. But one of my favorite things about the contest is that it doubles as an informal survey of what hockey fans are expecting. There are usually some interesting insights to be found in there.

So today, we’re going to dive into those 1,258 entries and see what they tell us about what expectations look like among the smartest hockey fans out there. And also you.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

NHL weekend rankings: We're back, it's too early, and the Oilers are being weird

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:54:57 +0000

Welcome back to the Weekend Rankings. How was your summer? Go anywhere interesting? Do anything fun? Demand any trades? Cool, cool, let’s get back to business.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

The 2026-27 NHL All-Intrigue roster: One name from each team to watch this season

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 13:17:44 +0000

It’s time to build my annual all-intrigue team – the names and stories I’m most interested in following as we head into the new season. Some of them will be obvious picks. Others might feel off the board. But each has a reason for some extra attention over the next (remembers the schedule is longer this year) 14 months or whatever it is now.

As always, we’ll do this roster style – two goalies, six defensemen and 12 forwards, plus a coach and a GM and a handful of honorable mentions. The two ground rules are that we can only use one name per team, and we can’t repeat anyone from last year’s list.

And of course, we build from the net out...

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

Every NHL team wants a strong start, but these are the 10 teams that need one

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:03:11 +0000

We’re five games into the 1,344-game NHL season. Have you torn up you preseason predictions and completely changed your view of a few teams yet?

You should have. After all, that’s your job as a fan, not to mention what makes the first few weeks of a new season so much fun. We watch a team play a handful of games, and then we re-evaluate. And by re-evaluate, I mean we all freak out.

It works that way for every team. But some have even more riding on the first few games this year. The narrative comes for us all, but it spends more time chasing some teams than others. And that’s true no matter how many smart people remind us about small sample sizes.

So let’s mark the start of the new season with a look at 10 teams who have the most riding on a strong start to the season. We’ll cover all the narratives – the ones the team is facing to open the year, the one they’ll hear if they start strong, and the one that will haunt them if they don’t. And we’ll even sneak a peek at their starting schedule, to see if it offers any clues about which side the early-season coin might land on.

In no particular order, here are 10 teams with a lot on the line over the next few weeks.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

It's time to make ridiculous and oddly specific NHL predictions for all 32 teams’ seasons

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 13:17:29 +0000

The prediction game can be a thankless one.

You know the drill. When a writer puts their predictions for the season out into the world, like I did last week, there’s one of two ways any particular pick can go. If they’re wrong, they’re an idiot, and should have to hear about it all year long. But if they’re right, well, big deal – everyone knew it was going to play out that way.

It’s rough. But over the years, I’ve come up with two ways to counter it. The first is the reader contest, which launched last week. That gives you a chance to make your picks, which gives me the chance to make fun of you when you’re wrong. Remember, you don’t get to dunk on my picks if you didn’t enter the contest. (Which you still have time to do before it closes this afternoon.)

And then there’s today’s column: The annual set of oddly specific predictions. These are the picks where I get so ridiculously precise that it flips the script. If I’m wrong, well, of course I was. But if I successfully predict a 30-year-old defensive defenseman’s first career goal in the exact game it happens, then you’re never going to hear the end of it. (I did that, by the way. Did you know that? It happened. It was years ago, sure, but it still happened.)

Or at least, that’s the idea. You’ll probably still dunk on me. Just know that if any of these hit, I will be insufferable about it.

One oddly specific pick per team, in alphabetical order. Here we go…

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

Predicting the 2026-27 NHL season, from Stanley Cup contenders to bottom-feeders

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 13:07:23 +0000

With days left before opening night, I have come up with a brand-new gimmick where I try to predict what will happen during the season.

No? You’re saying that absolutely everyone does this, including people who put a truly impressive amount of work into each and every team preview? Interesting.

But that’s just all the more reason for me to join in. After all, if you’re going to read my thoughts on the season as it happens, you should have some idea of where I started from. Is it possible that I’ll just embarrass myself with dumb predictions? Absolutely. It’s pretty much guaranteed. But that’s part of the fun, and at least it means that a few fan bases will get to dunk on me all year long.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

Enter the 2026-27 NHL prediction contest that’s so easy it’s almost impossible

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:08:00 +0000

One week from now, you’ll have watched meaningful NHL hockey.

The season starts next Tuesday, which means by this time next week we’ll all be mad about something that happened, even madder about something that didn’t happen, and completely revising all of our predictions based on the games we watched and/or highlights we caught and/or just the whole general vibe, dude. I can’t wait.

But first… it’s contest time.

Most of you should know the drill by now. This is somehow Year Seven for the annual prediction contest, a concept that debuted back when we were all going mad from lockdown and gearing up for an extremely weird and shortened season. A look back at that year’s contest reminds us that it was only eight questions long instead of ten and it didn’t have The Dreaded Bonus Question™, but it otherwise looked a lot like today’s version.

If you’re new, the basic idea here is that you’ll be asked to make ten very simple predictions about the coming NHL season. We’re talking easy stuff here, the kind of questions that it feels like you’d really have to try to mess up. You’ll post them in the comments of this very post, hit “submit”, and feel good about your chances. Then the season will happen, and we’ll all be horribly, tragically, comically wrong.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

The "get me out of here" all-stars, a full roster of NHL stars who forced trades

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:41:28 +0000

The big story in the NHL over the first days of camp is a pair of pending trades. The situations involving Connor Hellebuyck and Dylan Larkin are playing out in different ways, with Larkin reporting to camp in Detroit (but not taking the ice due to injury), while Hellebuyck sits at home rather than join his teammates in Winnipeg.

Two different scenarios, but both are part of the same bigger story: Star players who want out. We already saw it play out to some degree with Brady Tkachuk’s exit from Ottawa, and Zach Werenski was about to do the same in Columbus before changing his mind. It’s all led to a lot of talk about the NHL’s new era of player empowerment, where stars aren’t shy about forcing their way out a situation they don’t want to be in.

It’s an important development. But is it really all that new?

From a near-term view, it is. It’s rare that we see a player try this sort of power play these days, let alone multiple stars at once. But zoom out a bit and you realize that in the bigger picture, these sorts of stories aren’t all that rare in NHL history. In fact, they’re pretty common.

How common? Let’s find out by building an all-time roster of stars who forced trades.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

NHL Bizarro-meter 2026: Which Eastern Conference team had the weirdest offseason?

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:28:26 +0000

After a weekend off to cool down, apply some security patches, and reassure it that the whole “Mike Babcock to the Oilers“ thing was not a joke, the Bizarro-meter is back.

Every year, we like to try to figure out which NHL teams had the weirdest offseason. On Friday, we ran through the Western Conference, featuring a record-smashing offer sheet, a blockbuster that wasn’t, and some Pacific Division coaching shenanigans. When the dust settled, the top score in the conference went to the Oilers, with an impressive 9.1 out of 10.

Will anyone in the Eastern Conference beat that mark? Let’s find out…

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

NHL Bizarro-meter 2026: Which Western Conference team had the weirdest offseason?

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:52:56 +0000

The offseason is over, and at least for a few teams, things got weird. How weird? We’re about to find out.

Yes, it’s time for the annual offseason rankings, in which we blow the dust off our trusty bizarro-meter and feed it each team’s summer headlines. After a few bleeps and bloops and flashing lights and occasional puff of toxic smoke, we’ll get back a rating out of 10 that answers the question: Just how weird did things get?

As always, we start with an important caveat: “Weird” doesn’t mean bad. It doesn’t mean good. It doesn’t necessarily mean busy, or quiet, or anything in between. This isn’t meant to be a traditional evaluation, so much as a look at which teams surprised us. Think of it as a rating of how often a team made us go “What the heck?”, with perhaps some other words occasionally slotted in instead, as ranked on a subjective scale of 1 to 2013 Maple Leafs.

We’re defining the offseason as everything that happened between a team’s last game of the 2025-26 season and today, and everything is on the table: roster moves, hirings and firings, extensions, and anything else that made news. In some cases, the stuff that didn’t happen is even weirder than what did, and that counts too.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

Long-shot NHL award picks: Zach Werenski for Hart? Stuart Skinner for Vezina?

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:48:22 +0000

With the NHL’s 2026-27 season almost upon us, it’s time to make some award picks.

Easy, right? Connor McDavid for the Hart, Cale Makar for the Norris, Porter Martone for the Calder, and all the various other favorites. Maybe a Macklin Celebrini here or a Nikita Kucherov there if you want to be different.

So sure, easy. Too easy. For today at least, we’re skipping the favorites and aiming a little higher. It’s time for our annual attempt to nail some true longshots.

We’ve been trying this for years. Do we get any right? Eh, not necessarily. But we’ve had some impressive near-misses, including last year when Gentille was sniffing around the Celebrini offensive outburst before just about anyone. But when we’re wrong, we’re really wrong. That’s part of the point – to look back a year or more later and realize how random a lot of this can feel.

We’ll be using the odds posted by Bet365 as of early this week. (Note that odds can change over time.) To be clear, the idea here isn’t to encourage you to be on anything – we already have every intermission report on every TV broadcast to handle that. But the oddsmakers are a good measure of where expectations have been set, in a mostly objective way.

For our purposes, we’re looking for odds of at least +2000, which is to say longshots of 20-to-1 or more, with the “we” being Sean Gentille, Sean McIndoe and Dom Luszczyszyn. If we hit one, you’ll ever hear the end of it. If we whiff on everything, at least we’ll know we took the bat off our shoulder.

Let’s find some plausible longshots.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

The final days of Slow News Summer: Tackling readers' craziest ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 19:52:00 +0000

We’ve made it to the end of Slow News Summer.

Well, almost. There are still a few weeks until the NHL is well and truly back. But my schedule for that period is mostly filled, with projections to make, longshot award swings to miss, oddly specific predictions to miss even worse, and a trusty bizarro-meter to fire up. It’s going to get busy around these parts.

But not quite yet. For one more week, we’re still firmly in Slow News Summer, the annual dead zone where nothing is happening and no idea is too dumb. We started almost two months ago with a post about syllables, so the bar for nonsense has been set pretty high.

How do you beat something as pointless as arguing over how many syllables are in Cale Makar’s name? By asking the readers, of course. So last week, that’s what I did.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

Remembering a time your team got smoked by a some kid making his NHL debut

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:02:52 +0000

If there’s one thing every NHL fan agrees on, it’s that anyone who bangs on the glass during play should go to jail. But if there’s a second thing, it’s that our favorite team is always getting lit up by some random rookie playing his first career game.

You know the drill. You settle in to watch a game, only to notice a player on the other team doing the old solo lap initiation. Immediately, you get that sinking feeling. Players making their debuts always seem to have magic powers that turn them into a cross between Bobby Orr and Jacques Plante. But only, it goes without saying, against your team.

Or do they? It turns out that some teams have a stronger claim than others when it comes to this stuff, as I learned by going through all 32 teams and searching for the most productive games anyone had ever had against them in their NHL debut.

A few quick ground rules: These are regular season debuts only, not playoffs or (obviously) preseason. And we’re not counting those first few games in 1917 when the league was brand new and everyone was technically debuting. Sorry, fellow olds.

Other than that, any debut by a skater or goalie is fair game. Let’s find out how bad your team has really had it when it comes to these punk kids.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

Who wins an all-time roster battle of NHL stars based on how Stanely Cups they won?

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:17:53 +0000

After a summer spent on failed GM theories, contrarian takes, and blockbuster alternate history, we’re going to keep today’s post nice and simple. It’s an idea that’s been sent in by a few of you over the years, most recently reader Stephen C., and I’ll admit to being surprised we haven’t done it already.

Let’s make some all-time rosters based on how many Cups a player won.

That’s it. Just a nice fastball over the heart of the plate to take a swing at. We’ll go through the best players, check how many Cups they’ve won, and assign them to that team. Then we see which one is best, and then ideally spend the rest of the day arguing about it in the comment section.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

The Contrarian: The Canadiens’ cap situation is bad, and other fake NHL arguments

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:03:00 +0000

Welcome back to The Contrarian, the feature where you state the obvious and then I tell you why you’re wrong.

It’s been over a year since we’ve done this, because ~~I forgot~~ I’ve been waiting for you to come up with some worthy challenges. But with Slow News Summer crawling along, this is as good a time as any for me to do what modern sports media is apparently supposed to do best: Argue loudly and aggressively for positions I may or may not actually believe in.

>> Read the full post for free at The Athletic

Help me become a better contrarian

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 17:43:00 +0000

Hey folks…

It's been a while since we've done an edition of The Contrarian. A reminder: You send in a statement that you think is obvious or inarguable, and I’ll try to come up with the contrarian view.

We've done a few of these, and the ones that work best find that sweet spot of feeling difficult but not impossible. "Mark Messier was a bad signing for the Canucks" and "Ray Bourque's Cup win was good" worked great. Stuff like "Connor McDavid is good at hockey" or "Ice is cold", not so much. Your job is to set me up, not stump me completely, although a little degree of difficulty should keep me sharp.

Send me your sure-thing statement via email at dgbcontrarian@gmail.com.

What was the cap era's best team to not get a single Hart vote? The answer is weird

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:42:05 +0000

I’ll make you a deal: You indulge me in one of those Slow News Summer ideas I’ve had kicking around, and at the end I’ll surprise you with something weird that I found while researching it.

Do we have a deal? Sure we do. Let’s start with the Carolina Hurricanes.

As you may have heard, they won the Stanley Cup this year, the ultimate dream for every long-suffering hockey lifer and/or middle-schooler. And in doing so, they might have established themselves as the best team in the history of the NHL to not have a single Hall-of-Famer. We obviously can’t know that for sure yet, but I ran down the Carolina candidates a few weeks ago and included a reader poll, and the majority of you agreed that the Hurricanes might have a Hall, but don’t have anyone Hall-worthy.

But let’s take it one step further, with something we can quantify today: The Hurricanes also managed to win the Cup with a roster that didn’t receive so much as a single Hart Trophy vote. Surely they must also be the best team in that category too.

In theory, we’re lowering the bar here by more than a bit. Getting into the Hall of Fame is hard – you need to put up a career worthy of the sport’s ultimate honor, and then you also have to sufficiently impress the mysterious committee and meet whatever criteria they’re using that year. A few questionable picks aside, making the Hall of Fame means you were a legend, or at least spent multiple years looking the part.

But getting Hart votes? Like, any at all? That’s not all that hard. In the cap era, there were 129 ballots sent back for the 2006 awards, and that number has increased up to almost 200 in recent years. Winning the Hart is tough, sure. But getting even a single vote just means that one of those 200 or so voters thought you were worthy of a top-five mention. We’re talking about roughly 1,000 spots available on ballots around the league, and you only need to show up on one.

That’s not easy, but it’s not exactly a monumental challenge. After all, the list of players who’ve had cap-era Hart votes includes Pascal Dupuis, Cam Atkinson, Radim Vrbata, William Karlsson and Marek Svatoš. And that’s not even getting to the goalies who caught a stray vote, a list that includes Daniel Vladař, James Reimer and the immortal Andrew Hammond.

So yeah, this is going to be a lot tougher than the HHOF list, and clearly the Hurricanes doing it while winning the Cup will be a huge outlier. But let’s give it a try anyway. We’ll start at the dawn of the cap era in 2005 and work our way forward, flagging the best teams I could find that were completely shut out of the Hart love.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

What's the deal with NHL GMs who go from genius to dunce after switching jobs?

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:08:41 +0000

Seven years ago, the Red Wings pulled off the near-impossible: They made a move that absolutely everyone loved.

Their own fans, who were thrilled. Other fan bases, who were grudgingly jealous. The media. The experts. The insiders. The nerds. All 200 hockey men.

Everyone agreed: Hiring Steve Yzerman as GM was a slam dunk.

The news landed one Friday morning, somehow both coming out of nowhere while also feeling like we’d known it all along. Of course the captain was coming home. After an apprenticeship in Tampa Bay that saw him build the Lightning into a powerhouse, Yzerman was returning to Detroit to do the same for the team he’d led to three Cups on the ice. The news received glowing reviews everywhere, with the possible exception of Tampa Bay, where a team already reeling from an historic playoff collapse in their first year without Yzerman worried about what might come next.

After all, this wasn’t just the typical NHL homecoming, where a struggling team trots out a former player to buy some time with a skeptical public. In 2019, Steve Yzerman was considered one of if not the very best GMs in the league. He’d worked magic Tampa, he’d led Team Canada to gold, he’s won GM of the Year. Now he was home, taking over a team ready to make the next step toward contention and beyond.

It was a new hope, because it couldn’t fail. And then it did.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

Which draft year makes the best lineup of players traded for first-round picks?

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:12:50 +0000

Hidden away on my laptop is a list that’s simply labeled “ideas”. It’s where I keep all those potential columns that I haven’t got around to yet, or in some cases haven’t worked up the courage to try. A lot of them are weird. Some are probably just flat-out dumb. In some cases I’m waiting for some sort of news hook; in others I’m just holding off until Slow News Summer hits its peak. A lot of them just aren’t there yet in terms of supporting a whole piece, but might be some day if ~~I get desperate enough~~ circumstances change.

The point is, sometimes it just makes sense to wait on an idea. And yes, I’ll pause here so you can think about the stuff I have published and then wonder what isn't making the cut.

But there’s a downside to this approach: It turns out that if you wait too long on a given idea, the NHL might just decide to make it moot.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

NHL offer sheet rules used to be wild. Here’s how history looks if that never changes

noreply@blogger.com (Down Goes Brown) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:26:48 +0000

There’s a good chance that years from now, we’ll look back at these last few weeks as the dawn of the offer sheet era, with the Barret Hayton shot followed by a massive Leo Carlsson chaser. Things got crazy.

But it could have been crazier. So much crazier. Gather round, kids, grandpa’s got a quick story time.

The concepts of restricted free agents and offers sheets first appears in the NHL in 1988, and for the first few years they looked very different from what we know today. In certain circumstances, the player’s original team had no right to match. And if a team couldn’t or wouldn’t match the offer, there was no pre-made chart of draft pick compensation to refer to.

Instead, the compensation would be players – basically, the two teams would be forced to work out a trade. And if they couldn’t directly agree on what that trade should be, things got even wilder. Both teams would submit a proposal for what they thought a “fair” deal would look like, and an independent arbitrator would have to pick one or the other.

The most infamous example of this process came in 1991, when the Blues signed Brendan Shanahan to an offer sheet, prying him away from a Devils team that had no right to match. The Blues offered a compensation built around two young players, Rod Brind’Amour and Curtis Joseph. Not bad. But the Devils wanted more, and they asked for superstar blueliner Scott Stevens instead. Somewhat shockingly, the arbitrator sided with the Devils, sending a furious Stevens to New Jersey and altering the next decade-plus of NHL history.

That decision directly led to the NHL scrapping the forced-trade system in the 1994 CBA. Today, we’re bringing it back.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic