The Utah Hockey Club made a big splash at its first draft, acquiring Mikhail Sergachev from the Tampa Bay Lightning.George Walker IV/The Associated Press
Loving the NHL means never having to say you’re sorry – especially if you work in the league.
Pooched the season? Blew it in the playoffs? Got all the wrong guys and no clue how to get rid of them? No problem.
Just keep going the way you’re going. It’ll work out some time, or never. Either way is fine.
This go-along-to-get-along attitude is never more obvious than at the draft. It’s the post-Cup moment when all sins are forgiven and that hard-working, character-first kid you got in the second round is going to change things. (Editor’s note: He will not.)
In other leagues, the draft is an opportunity to switch up your club’s story by taking a swing. In the NBA or NFL, it’s the Glastonbury of big moves.
In the NHL, it’s a grade-school holiday concert. The same numbers, followed by the same bored applause.
Mock drafts had this guy at first? Then he goes first. This guy at second? Then he goes second. This guy at third and – whoa whoa whoa – he went fourth? Someone is breaking allllllll the rules.
Anyone inclined to take risks knows how that will end – with a big hug that slips into a headlock and before you know it you’re being exited the office via the window. The special hockey twist is that after they’ve got you airborne, someone leans out and yells, “Mutually agreed upon,” right before you hit the ground.
Thirty GMs missed the Stanley Cup final this year. One of the two who didn’t – Oilers boss Ken Holland – just got clipped.
How does that happen?
(/deploys jazz hands) The NHL!
The goal of the prototype modern-hockey executive isn’t winning. It’s never being called stupid.
This approach comes into starkest relief when there is a new contestant on the board. Expectations for the debutant Utah Hockey Club were dim, because expectations of all hockey teams are that way. That’s how everyone stays regularly employed.
But armed with urgency and salary-cap wiggle room, Utah has its own agenda. Its headline deal this week was the acquisition of Mikhail Sergachev from the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Sergachev is the sort of player every team needs, but won’t do what’s necessary to acquire. He doesn’t win awards. He will never be on a video-game cover. But come the playoffs, he is a 6-foot-3 pair of elbows in search of skulls to soften. If you google ‘antonyms to a Toronto Maple Leaf,’ Sergachev is your No. 1 hit.
He’s been hurt, the Lightning are trying to find the money to re-sign Steven Stamkos and Utah can spare the cash. It cost it very little in personnel terms.
It’s the sort of deal that, once it’s happened, makes you wonder why your team could not have done it instead. The answer is that it could have, but it was too worried you’d be angry at it about it later. Better to do nothing than risk looking silly.
So far, Utah is following the back-to-front, no-bold-face-names-required strategy that paid off for Vegas at its inception seven years ago. It will be a hard out rather than a high flyer. That’s sort of like the team that just won the Stanley Cup, and not at all like the teams that get all the press.
Another thing that happens during draft week is the resettling of the NHL’s star system via end-of-year awards. Connor McDavid is the unchanged north star talent-wise, but after him the ground is always shifting. Nathan MacKinnon and Quinn Hughes trended slightly up; Adam Fox and David Pastrnak were down a notch.
You go through the awards lists and something else strikes you – a lot of stars, not many winners.
Of the 12 men named to the first and second year-end all-star teams, none of them won a Cup this year.
One (McDavid) made the final.
Two (New York’s Artemi Panarin and Adam Fox) made the conference finals.
That’s the same number of all-stars from the Nashville Predators (Filip Forsberg and Roman Josi) – a team that got into the postseason by clinging to the Western Conference bumper and was swatted off by Vancouver in the first round.
Who didn’t have any big-name brands? The champion Panthers. Aleksander Barkov won the Selke, but that’s like the jazz performance of the NHL Awards. It gets handed out during a commercial break.
There is no way to individually reward what Florida has – chemistry, viciousness and enough mid-tier quality spread throughout the roster that it cannot be stopped by one opposing checking line.
Florida wasn’t built to win awards. It was constructed to win championships. Having both things seems like a great idea, but recent history suggests you have to choose one or the other.
Every team with fans who feel like GM’ing is a plebiscite situation (i.e., the Canadian and Original Six clubs) chooses the star route. That frees teams like Florida, Carolina, Vegas and Dallas to go the other way.
Of the two, which sort of team would you rather have come playoff time? Okay, but would you forgive your team if it tried it and it failed? Probably not. Hence the paralysis at the top.
Utah has made that executive bind clear over the past week. You’d think it would want to become a Toronto Maple Leafs or a New York Rangers – a big local attraction headlined by a couple of guys with brand-name recognition. That’s how you sell tickets.
Instead, given a blank slate, it wants to be a club of low-wattage grinders who may be capable of winning something right away. And then sell tickets.
If Utah goes the Vegas way, and are really good right off the bat, everyone in the NHL will say what they always say – ‘Who could possibly have predicted that would happen?’ And then go on about their business in the accepted, losing fashion.