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These Are Not the Picks You Expect |
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Thought I knew everything in once predicting big things for Aki Berg. Now I realize I am just as dumb as 29 GMS for not drafting Patrice Bergeron.
Been making pre-season picks for one publication or another since 1974. Would have better spent the time picking my nose. Should have realized that the game was completely unpredictable when I saw Jack McIlhargey score on a breakaway but, like four teams trying to find something in Pavel Brendl, I persisted, to no avail.
Finally, after what the Golden Knights did a year ago, I surrender, in full realization that none of us has a clue about what is coming. We mean, you’d better know when Tom Wilson is coming, of course, but we’re talking about the future here.
In his first year in New Jersey, Taylor Hall smelled worse than Bayonne. In his second, he was going to win the Hart? Yeah, right. As a result, I can no more tell you what’s in Joe Thornton’s beard than forecast Phil Kessel’s next 20 games.
It’s easy to use the excuse that nobody could have predicted a Stanley Cup final for a first-year team. But after all those cap casualties for Washington a year ago and the emotional drain from post-season failure after failure, I did not even have that team in the playoffs. Plus, for the fourth straight October, I said the Canes were the team to watch. Looking at those empty seats in Raleigh, people there knew a lot more than I did.
So, I’m done. Just like Val Filppula, finished. If you still care what I think, then think better of it. Like everybody but George McPhee, I’m far more of an authority on the past than on the future. So, I got to ponder: Instead of predictions, why not list the most unpredictable things of my tenure?
Problem is, at my age I can’t even predict what I’m going to remember. But here goes. The following things have happened on my watch, listed roughly in order of their improbability. I confidently predict you will have a different list. That much, I foresee.
1) A bunch of college players, not a one of them destined for an eventual NHL first-or-second team end-of-season All Star berth, beat the Soviet National Team at Lake Placid on the way to the gold medal of the 1980 Winter Games. This happened 11 months after the Soviets defeated the NHL All Stars 6-0, and 19 months before the USSR swamped a team of the best Canadian players, 8-1. in the deciding game of a Canada Cup.
2) The Islanders won 19 straight playoff series from 1980-83. Four Cups and one more final. “Who is going to be the hero?” they asked each other before each of 15 overtimes in that stretch, winning 13 of them, suggesting they did it on sheer will rather than leaving it to the coin flip that is overtime. Hockey is a team game, so we will always put collective accomplishments over individual ones. This is the best record in the sport. The 1976-80 Canadiens, the most dominating squads we ever saw, came closest with 13.
3) The Golden Knights had 109 points and went to the Stanley Cup final with a roster made up with, theoretically, the ninth or 12th best player from the rosters of 30 teams. And those clubs did not have to protect players of less than three years NHL experience. Of course, some fools will suggest Vegas has to do it again or come close to prove it wasn’t a fluke. Ridiculous. The Knights did it. How? We just state ‘em, don’t explain ‘em.
4) The 1979-80 Flyers went 35 games without losing (25-10-0) with two journeymen goalies–Pete Peeters and Phil Myre–with three regular defensemen who, between them, would play only 118 NHL games beyond that season. Came from behind in the third period six times, rallied from nine two-goal deficits. Did not win the Cup that year. Saw every one of those games and still can’t comprehend how that team did it.
5) The Oilers bid for a third straight Cup–and what would have been five straight– ended in 1986 when they put the puck in their own net in the third period of a Game Seven. Saw it live and still somebody had to be making it up. That would be the only possible way that team could lose. What were the odds?
6) The 1976-77 Canadiens has 132 points without benefit of an opportunity to break 12 ties. The peak team of that dynasty, the best balanced we ever saw in the NHL for unstoppable offense and impregnable defense. That said, with all the travel, the incentives to knock them off, injuries, deflections and reasons to, well, not just be up for this one in LA, to lose only eight games?
7) Doug Jarvis played 984 straight games–perfect attendance for 10-plus seasons. Was 5-9, 170 pounds in an era of much heavier hitting.
8) Bobby Clarke, the 17th player taken in a draft, played 15 years, won three MVPs as a Type One diabetic and might be the best all around player/leader in the game’s history. People with Type One lose legs, go blind, develop heart problems and at best, suffer daily roller coaster swings of energy. So complete a player–playmaking, forechecking and defending–was Clarke that the 1975-76 season was into January before he was on the ice for an even strength goal against.
9) Wayne Gretzky won scoring titles by 65, 72, 73, 74 and 75 points. The greatest goal scorer in the game’s history by 93 goals was a pass-first guy. Weighed 185 pounds when fire-breathing dragons roamed the ice.
10) The St. Louis Blues have missed the playoffs only nine times since 1969-70 and have not been back to a final. That’s impossible. Only three conference finals, too. The law of averages has been repealed.
11) Who would ever have thought that Eric Lindros, 6-5, 239 pound mountain of a man and the most anticipated prospect since Mario Lemieux, would never win a Stanley Cup and meet, what – maybe 60 per cent?–of the expectations set for him because his body kept breaking down. The best player of his era suffered the worst luck.
12) An 87-point Islander team knocked off the 119-point, two-time defending champion Penguins of Lemieux, Jagr, Francis. Mullen, Stevens, Murphy, Tocchet and Barrasso. Most astounding upset of the expansion era, we believe. Quit ‘yer blubberin’ Islander fans. That should have been enough of a thrill to last you 25 years.
13) In 2018-19, there is an NHL team in Las Vegas, but not in Quebec City, even with a state-of-the-art arena now in a city that loved the Nordiques madly. Quebeckers are not going to get the next one either. Shame on the NHL.
14) Despite all the condemnation of violence and common sense legislation to make the game safer–starting with the third-man-in rule in 1976–fighting is still in the game in 2018. Not making any value judgment here, just saying, what were the odds?
15) There remain three teams in the metropolitan New York area, but only one in Metro Toronto, population 5.9 million. We understand all the forces in play that have kept things this way. But ultimately, it makes zero sense.
16) Still awaiting the first goal actually seen live entering a net from seats hundreds of yards away. But rain, sleet, wind, ruts, jacked-up ticket prices and the gloom of January and February nights have not removed the novelty of outdoor games, 15 years since the first one. If I don’t get the appeal by now, guess I never will.
17 Nicklas Lidstrom, 53rd overall pick, has seven Norris Trophies, more than anyone other than Bobby Orr.
18) Martin St. Louis, Undrafted five-foot-eight player, was a three-time NHL end-of- season All Star.
19) In the cap era, the Blackhawks have won three Cups in six years, the Kings two in three, and the Penguins two in a row. In 2005 we were certain that too many financial and competitive forces–primarily the cap and volume of teams-would prohibit these kinds of runs, but guess not.
20) Jose Theodore, was the Most Valuable Player in the NHL in 2001-02, a year the Canadiens finished fourth in their division. He was 30-24-10.
21) Domonik Hasek, a tenth-round draft choice – and slinky toy with the seeming untidiest of styles– won two Hart Trophies and was a six-time NHL first All-Star.
22) Scotty Bowman, the game presumed to have passed him by after getting fired as GM in Buffalo, went four years without anyone hiring him to coach until Bob Johnson’s illness brought back the winningest coach in NHL history for a second run. Won four more Stanley Cups on the way to nine. More absurdity: Bowman has only been Coach of the Year twice.
23) The Flyers said goodbye to Clarke, Bill Barber and Darryl Sittler–three Hall of Famers–before the 1984-85 season yet the team with the youngest average age in the NHL team, coached by rookie Mike Keenan, won the President’s Trophy and went to the Stanley Cup finals. Best job behind a bench we ever have seen.
24) Claude Julien was fired by Lou Lamoriello, who went behind the bench with three games to go in the 2006-07 regular season and the Devils leading their division and in second place in the conference. New Jersey lost in the second round. Julien subsequently coached a Stanley Cup winner and a finalist in Boston.
25) Brian Lawton was taken before Pat Lafontaine and Steve Yzerman in the 1983 draft. Our choices for the most unbelievably mistaken pick at the top of a draft eve, unless it was Alexander Daigle ahead of Chris Pronger.
Drop the puck for 2018-19. We can safely predict something out of the blue awaits us, part of the reason why we watch.
Blogger •NHL Hall of Fame writer • 
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