Columbus Blue Jackets News Clips June 23-24, 2020

Columbus Blue Jackets PAGE 02: Columbus Dispatch: Michael Arace | This week critical in NHL’s plan to restart PAGE 04: Columbus Dispatch: Columbus will not be hub city for NHL return PAGE 06: The Athletic: Columbus, Minnesota will not be hub cities when NHL season resumes PAGE 08: The Athletic: 20 years later, remembering the ‘bizarre’ Blue Jackets and Wild expansion draft PAGE 13: CBC.ca: Sudbury's Nick Foligno hopes charity hockey event will lift peoples' spirits

Cleveland Monsters/Prospects

NHL/Websites PAGE 15: The Athletic: LeBrun: What’s next after NHL narrows focus in hub city selection process PAGE 17: The Athletic: Custance: How NHL teams are managing draft preparation right now PAGE 21: The Athletic: Down Goes Brown: The chaos lover’s rooting guide to the playoffs and lottery PAGE 27: TSN.ca: Making eight cases for the Hockey Hall of Fame PAGE 32: Washington Post: The return of sports anytime soon seems somewhere between unlikely and irresponsible PAGE 35: NY Post: Fauci says second coronavirus wave can’t cancel World Series, sports PAGE 36: USA Today: Opinion: Sports stayed silent as COVID-19's next wave got closer. Now comes the reckoning PAGE 39: The Athletic: Anonymous ‘player’ poll: NHL mascots dish on each other, pants and more PAGE 45: The Athletic: Pronman: Top 31 NHL Draft prospects of the past five years, 2020 edition PAGE 50: The Athletic: By the numbers: The best draft picks of the salary cap era PAGE 55: Sportsnet.ca: How the NHL Draft Lottery has changed over the years PAGE 58: Orlando Sentinel: If you want sports back, wear a mask | Commentary PAGE 60: Pennlive.com: Sports and entertainment venues struggle with COVID-19 reopening guidelines: ’Green does not mean go’

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Columbus Dispatch / Michael Arace | This week critical in NHL’s plan to restart By Michael Arace – June 23, 2020

The NHL and the NHL Players Association this week are skating into the hard areas, as Ken Hitchcock used to say. If the league sticks to its plan to open training camps July 10, it has two major pieces of business to complete this week: finish hammering out a collective bargaining agreement extension, or a Memo of Understanding, with the union; and choose the two "hub" cities for its 24-team playoff tournament, which is thumbnailed to begin July 30. Columbus was among the 10 cities under consideration to be a hub, the league announced July 5. Monday morning, The Dispatch learned the city didn’t make the cut. No hub here. On one hand, it would have been a grand thing to host 12 teams on one side of the draw even without fans in the stands in a made-for-TV event. Jackets and city officials made a good pitch for it. Columbus has two major-league rinks, a host of practice facilities and a footprint that lends to easy management. The league had good experiences here with the draft in 2007 and the All-Star Game in 2015. It knows that Columbus knows how to do this stuff. On the other hand, it’s likely that one or more persons, be they players or support personnel, will be diagnosed with COVID-19 during the tournament. It may be inevitable. Who knows what happens then? Maybe it is better to un-hub than to hub. Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic last week reported that the league had cut the field to six cities. Meanwhile, the Canadian government announced it will make an exception and allow NHL personnel into the country without imposing a 14-day quarantine. Which means , Vancouver and Edmonton are still in play. Las Vegas has been considered a virtual lock for one hub, in part because it has a surfeit of luxury hotel rooms and amenities that are easily bubbled. Yet, according to a league source, there is emerging momentum toward using two Canadian cities as hubs. Confirmed cases of COVID-19, and deaths from the disease, are drastically fewer north of the border. Vancouver and Edmonton, in particular, have relatively few cases especially when compared to , which has some of the highest numbers in the U.S. "It’s too bad Columbus wasn’t picked, because everyone knows they would have made a great job of it," Jackets captain Nick Foligno said. "Really, I don’t think players care where we play so long as it’s safe. I think the league gets that." The league hopes that it and the NHLPA will have all the details for a return-to-play agreement by the end of the week. Foligno is one of the 12 members of the union’s negotiating committee. Their job is not an easy one. They have to hash out safety protocols and other details of life in the hub bubbles. Reportedly, they want to be sure that concerned players have an available opt-out clause. They also have to come to a consensus on a number of CBA-related issues, not the least of which is how to structure future escrow payments. The players are on the hook for 50% of all hockey-related losses which will be north of $1 billion if the season cannot be completed.

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Our old pal Hitchcock, by the way, is eligible for induction to the Hockey Hall of Fame in the "builder" category. The selection committee is meeting via video conference Tuesday and Wednesday. It has plans to announce the class of 2020 Wednesday. Hitch has a shot. Hitchcock won a with the in 1999, after he ruined the game with his obstructive "defense." (Long-running joke here.) He is third all-time in coaching victories behind and Joel Quenneville. His greatest coaching job might’ve been done in Columbus, in 2008-09, when he dragged the Jackets into the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. It’s going to be a fine Hall of Fame class. Among the player candidates are Jarome Iginla, Marian Hossa, Alexander Mogilny, Boris Mikhailov, Daniel Alfredsson, Jeremy Roenick, Rod Brind’Amour, Jennifer Botterill, Maria Rooth, Kim St. Pierre, Karyn Bye-Dietz and Julie Chu. Iginla is the only lock.

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Columbus Dispatch / Columbus will not be hub city for NHL return By Brian Hedger – June 23, 2020

If the NHL is able to finish its 2019-20 season, Columbus will not be hosting any games as one of the league’s two "hub" cities. The Dispatch first learned of the city’s elimination from the field of 10 finalists Monday morning, and the news was later confirmed by both Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen and Linda Logan, the executive director of the Greater Columbus Sports Commission. "(It’s disappointing), but there’s a lot of positives and we got a lot of compliments about our case," said Kekalainen, who was informed of the decision Monday morning. "It’s just that two teams get selected, two cities, and we weren’t among them. It’s great that we made it to the final stage of the selection process and we’ll take the positive with the disappointment and move on." The bid was a collaborative effort that included the Blue Jackets, the sports commission, the city of Columbus, Franklin County and other entities. "We’re disappointed, but we have a new appreciation for all the elements the NHL has had to consider," Logan said. "This wasn’t a traditional process and we certainly learned a lot by going through it. I want to give a big ‘thank you’ to the city, the county and the health department for working so hard to keep Ohio in consideration." The Blue Jackets might not have played in Columbus even if their home city had been picked as a hub. The NHL has said it wants to eliminate home-ice advantage, even with the likelihood fans will be barred from watching games live, so teams whose markets are chosen as hubs may play elsewhere starting out. Regardless, being picked as a hub would have been a nice feather for Columbus to put in its cap. "Columbus as a city has certainly gained in stature," Logan said. "It would have been great (to host), but I understand the complexity of the situation." Hotel space might have been a key factor in Columbus not being selected, particularly after the NHL opted to use two hub cities rather than four to host its 24-team return plan. The issue would’ve been fitting 12 NHL teams into one hotel, which the league would likely prefer in a quarantine situation to contain players, staff and others inside a "bubble" to guard against COVID-19 spread. A report this past weekend by The Athletic’s Pierre Lebrun said the league pared its final field down to six cities, which included Las Vegas, Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto. According to the league's timeline, a decision on which cities will become the NHL's hubs is expected this week. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last week that officials and hotels there were preparing to host NHL games as one of the league’s hubs, while Vancouver and Edmonton are believed to be making headway in their bids to host. Both Canadian cities have relatively low rates of COVID-19 infection and have shown a steady decrease since the first week of May. Last month, NHL commissioner said infection rates would be a significant factor in choosing its hub locations and was the main reason they weren’t announced at the same time the league rolled out its 24-team format.

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According to the Ohio Department of Health, the infection rate, hospitalization rate and rate of reported deaths due to COVID-19 have steadily increased in Ohio since March, when the state was essentially shut down. Franklin County has been hardest hit. As of Sunday, the county had reported 7,794 of the state’s 44,808 total cases, 976 of Ohio’s 7,242 hospitalized patients and 358 of 2,700 deaths statewide. Nevada has shown a sharp recent increase in cases, with nearly 80 percent of that state’s total cases in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Kekalainen said the league did not offer reasons for its decision to eliminate Columbus, which has two NHL-sized arenas within a 10- to 15-minute drive of each other and Value City Arena plus plenty of additional practice locations. "I’ve said it from the start that I think we had a great case," Kekalainen said. "We’ve got a great city, easy logistics, great buildings and facilities and hotels. We had everything. It’s just the league decided to go in a different direction with two different cities."

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The Athletic / Columbus, Minnesota will not be hub cities when NHL season resumes By Aaron Portzline – June 23, 2020

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Blue Jackets were informed early Monday that Columbus will not be a hub city if and when the NHL restarts its season in late July or early August. Columbus had been one of 10 cities under consideration. Minnesota was also informed it is out of the running, multiple sources confirmed to The Athletic’s Michael Russo. No explanation was given, according to Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekäläinen. “They had a lot of positives about our presentation, but they’ve gone in a different direction,” Kekäläinen said. “It’s disappointing, but we were also among the last few cities to be considered. You take the positives along with the disappointment and you move on. The Blue Jackets were hoping the availability of two major-league arenas — Ohio State’s Schottenstein Center is only a 10-minute drive from Nationwide Arena — would help their sales pitch to the league. There also are numerous suburban rinks that could have been used for practices. Blue Jackets president Mike Priest was the organization’s man with the league on the proposal, which would have been a boost to the local economy after a brutal last few months in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that Ohio’s response to the pandemic has been fairly proactive and effective was seen as a strong argument in Columbus’ favor, too. “That’s tough news considering the city has done a terrific job of keeping (COVID-19) cases to a minimum,” said Blue Jackets captain Nick Foligno, “and I thought we had everything the NHL could want in a hub city. “It would have been a great way to promote our community to the hockey world and beyond and show how committed we’ve been together in supporting our front-line workers and doing our part to help during this pandemic. Players are looking forward to getting back for training camp, whenever that resumes, in a place that has done a great job of keeping people safe.” Still, as Kekäläinen said, “There are only two cities that can get the nod.” The NHL had been considering Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Edmonton, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, , Toronto and Vancouver. The plan is to select two hub cities and create a “bubble” for players to safely resume the 2019-20 season. Minnesota was once a strong candidate because of the state-of-the-art and countless practice rink venues in the Twin Cities, but the unrest since the murder of George Floyd by a police officer and the threat of defunding the Minneapolis police department was likely a big influence in the league’s decision. Also, the Mall of America and Minneapolis have great hotels and restaurants, but the capital of St. Paul, where the arena is, really lacks the hotel space needed beyond the St. Paul Hotel, which most teams stay at during the season.

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The top 12 teams in each conference will go to a city to play a best-of-five qualifying round before the could be staged. There was a chance that the Blue Jackets wouldn’t play in Nationwide Arena even if Columbus had been selected as a hub. The NHL mentioned in a conference call with reporters earlier this month that the league was wary of teams being permitted to play at their home rinks, citing an advantage based on the comforts of home. That won’t be an issue now for the Blue Jackets. Las Vegas is seen as a heavy favorite to be one of the host cities, and the league is said to favor having a Canadian market involved, too.

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The Athletic / 20 years later, remembering the ‘bizarre’ Blue Jackets and Wild expansion draft By Aaron Portzline and Michael Russo – June 24, 2020

Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series. Coming Wednesday, a 20-year anniversary look at how the early fates of the Columbus and Minnesota franchises were determined by a coin flip. They traveled thousands of miles around the globe to scout hundreds of players, ran through mock draft after mock draft and made countless phone calls throughout the hockey world to be as prepared as possible. But now, when former Columbus general manager Doug MacLean looks back through the long list of names — the protected, the available — he can only shake his head and smile. It was 20 years ago today — June 23, 2000 — that the Blue Jackets and took their biggest steps toward filling out their rosters when the NHL expansion draft was staged in Calgary. The Wild landed, among others, center Darby Hendrickson and defenseman Filip Kuba, who became franchise fixtures and helped them reach the Western Conference final in just their third season. The Blue Jackets landed, among others, forwards Geoff Sanderson, Tyler Wright and Kevin Dineen, three foundational players who still hold special places in the hearts of longtime Columbus fans. But that expansion draft did not afford the Jackets or Wild a pathway to roster riches like it did the in 2017, or like it will the Seattle (fill in the blank) when they join in 2021. Don’t even get MacLean started. “I look back, honest to God, at some of the names, and I think about the time and the money we spent preparing for that expansion draft … doing all the mock drafts,” MacLean said. “And then I look at the list today, and I don’t know half the names on that list anymore. “It was such a bizarre, bizarre group. What did we select, 23 or 24 guys? You look at half the names on there, and it was unbelievable.” Vegas was set up to succeed immediately, the result of a $500 million entry fee. The Blue Jackets and Wild were set up to take their lumps. The $80 million expansion fee didn’t buy them any favors. Both clubs had been actively signing players and making trades in the spring of 2000, and that continued after the expansion draft. That’s how the Wild landed Manny Fernandez () and forward Wes Walz (free agency); and how the Blue Jackets acquired Espen Knutsen (trade) and David Vyborny (free agency). “We signed some free agents who were actually better than what we got in the expansion draft,” said Tommy Thompson, who was the director of scouting with the Wild back then. “I was happier with (free agent) Walz than just about anybody we were able to get in the draft. As it turns out, Kuba was good. I’d never seen Kuba. I give our pro scouts a ton of credit on that one.” The Blue Jackets and Wild both had just 11 of their 24 expansion draft picks play for them in the NHL. By contrast, Vegas drafted 10 defensemen who played for the Golden Knights. Overall, 19 of Vegas’ 24 picks played on The Strip, and the Knights also landed multiple first-, second- and third-round picks from clubs who feared losing specific players.

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“I went and talked with (then-Vegas GM) George McPhee about expansion before the draft,” then- Minnesota GM Doug Risebrough said. “He asked me to come out there (to Las Vegas) and talk with him. “We were talking about how it was set up for Vegas versus how it was set up for us, and he just kept saying, ‘I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine having two teams do this at the same time. I can’t imagine.’” MacLean was fired as Blue Jackets general manager in 2007 without ever making the Stanley Cup playoffs. He went on to a career in radio and TV broadcasting and recently started writing a book on the art of amateur drafting. It’s expected to be published in the fall of 2021. Risebrough was fired by the Wild in 2009 and is currently a scout with the . But on that Friday in Calgary 20 years ago, two new franchises were clay in their hands, ready to be shaped and sculpted. The Wild and Blue Jackets were in separate boardrooms in the Calgary Westin, a hallway running between them. The room was packed with road-weary pro scouts, but there were coaches, amateur scouts, members of the ownership groups and others involved. The NHL had an office nearby, too, where the league’s central registry department stood ready to approve a player’s selection and switch them to their new teams. An intercom was used to announce the picks in each room. The selections took place away from the public eye in the afternoon, but they were announced later that evening in a nationally televised event from the draft floor inside Calgary’s Saddledome, where the NHL entry draft was to be staged the next day. Here’s what the Wild and Blue Jackets were up against that day: They were the third and fourth franchises to join the league in a three-year span after Nashville (1998) and Atlanta (1999), so the league’s talent base was significantly thinned. With two teams coming into the league at the same time, NHL GMs could try to play Risebrough and MacLean off each other, using a trade with one to stiff the other. “We talked, Doug and I,” Risebrough said. “I don’t think the league would have allowed us to cooperate or coordinate, but we communicated, absolutely. It was still almost impossible.” With two teams picking, it was difficult for the Wild or Blue Jackets to draft players according to any traits (size, speed, skill) or team philosophy (defensively sound, physical or intimidating, etc.). It was impossible to “architect” a team, said McPhee, who did just that when Vegas came into the league alone in 2017. Existing teams were allowed to protect nine forwards, five defensemen and one goalie, or seven forwards, three defensemen and two . Plus, when a team had a goaltender drafted, they were prevented from losing any defensemen, and vice versa. When Vegas joined the league, teams could protect seven forwards, three defensemen and one goaltender, or eight forwards and defensemen combined and one goaltender. At a minimum, that’s 42 more players available to Vegas than were available to Columbus and Minnesota, or about two full rosters of players. The strategy was minimized further by the draft being held position-by-position. The teams drafted the goalies first (three each), then defensemen (eight each), then forwards (13 each), and then they had two wild-card picks.

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“I watched the Vegas draft, and I’m thinking, ‘Seriously!?’ MacLean said. “First, we had four teams come in over three years, so (teams’ rosters are) picked dry. And the rules weren’t even close to what teams had to expose for Vegas. “Look, it was exciting. It was fun. But it was such a fake draft because half the players you knew were never going to be with you.” Both GMs tried to swing as many trades as possible, so many of the draft picks were determined before the draft even started. If you didn’t understand what Risebrough and MacLean were up against, some of the picks are stupifying. For instance, the immortal Rick Tabaracci, a goaltender, was the No. 1 overall pick to the Blue Jackets, but not because the Jackets thought the 31-year-old was an overlooked Vezina Trophy candidate. MacLean had traded a second-round pick to the Avalanche earlier in the summer for top goaltending prospect , but the deal was contingent on the Blue Jackets taking Tabaracci so the Avs wouldn’t lose young goaltender David Aebischer or any of their defensemen. (They protected goaltender .) The were so afraid of losing goaltender Evgeni Nabokov they made trades with both the Wild and Blue Jackets. The Wild landed a package that included defenseman Andy Sutton, while the Blue Jackets acquired forward Jan Caloun. The Wild acquired goaltender Fernandez and defenseman Brad Lukowich from Dallas on June 12 for a third-round pick and the agreement that they’d lay off certain Stars players. Then, two days after the expansion draft, Lukowich was shipped back to Dallas for a slew of draft picks and prospects. The Jackets traded for defenseman Jean-Luc Grand-Pierre, a prospect and a pick for agreeing to take Sanderson from the Sabres. They also drafted goaltender Dwayne Roloson from the Sabres to allow Buffalo to keep goaltenders Dominik Hasek, Martin Biron, and Mika Noronen. “Doug was more aggressive with trades than I was,” Risebrough said. “I went into it not as worried about the deals and more about the (available) players.” There were some notable names, however, on the list of available players. But like most other things with this expansion draft, it wasn’t quite as it seemed. Forwards Guy Carbonneau (Dallas), Wendel Clark (Toronto), Doug Gilmour (Buffalo), Mark Messier (New York Rangers) and Eddie Olczyk (Chicago), defensemen (Carolina) and goaltender Grant Fuhr (Calgary) could fill a wing at the Hockey Hall of Fame. But while all of those legendary players were available, they were headed toward retirement within the next few years. Defenseman , a former No. 1 overall pick, was made available by Toronto, but he had just suffered a career-threatening eye injury that spring. The one future All-Star who slid through the cracks for both teams was then-25-year-old forward Martin St. Louis, who was up and down from the minors with the the previous two seasons. St. Louis had his contract bought out by the Flames later that summer, signing as a free agent with Tampa Bay. The rest — 1,134 games, 1,033 points, the 2004 Stanley Cup — is history.

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“You bringing it up is the first time I’ve heard that,” Risebrough said. “He was not a high-profile player (back then). We were looking for anybody, but he was a late developer.” One strategy employed by both teams, for two reasons, was drafting players who were set to be free agents (restricted and unrestricted) only a week later. Many of the players were restricted free agents from Europe with no hope of playing in the NHL. But the Blue Jackets and Wild, rather than take a player under contract who didn’t excite them, wanted players with expiring contracts because they wouldn’t come with financial obligations. They also sought out bigger-name players they knew would never sign with lowly expansion teams because they would get draft-pick compensation when that player signed a big-ticket contract elsewhere. The Blue Jackets, for instance, drafted defenseman Mathieu Schneider (New York Rangers) knowing that Schneider wouldn’t sign with them. (He signed with the later that summer.) There were others, too. “I took two or three goalies with no intention of signing them because I (already) had (two),” said MacLean, who’d traded for Denis and knew he could sign Ron Tugnutt as a free agent on July 1. “It was just a bunch of dead picks so we weren’t stuck with the money. “It was a waste of time because you knew from the agents who was going to sign and who wasn’t going to sign.” The NHL was not happy when they saw this trend taking shape. Why? Because existing teams were planning to unload dead-weight players and unwanted contracts on the two newbies. League exec Bill Daly paused the draft and called Risebrough and MacLean into the hallway outside their respective rooms and excoriated them, saying this is not the way the draft was intended to go. One source said the league threatened to cancel the rest of the draft. “We got the word in our draft rooms that the league wanted to meet us in the hallway,” Risebrough said, laughing at the memory. “We both stepped outside and they told us to knock it off. “It was something the league overlooked. It should have been in the rules.” Not all of the free agents were paper moves, however. Defenseman Lyle Odelein, taken by Columbus from Phoenix in the expansion draft, signed a four-year contract in early July and was named the franchise’s first captain. Other highlights from the draft: The Blue Jackets had no intention of signing Roloson, whom they took in the third round of the goalie portion of the expansion draft. He spent the next season in the AHL in the Blues organization but signed in 2001 with the Wild and had several strong seasons in St. Paul in a timeshare with Fernandez. There were myriad trades in the days leading up to the expansion draft, the existing team trading players for something because they feared losing them to the Wild or Jackets for nothing. It further thinned the ranks. The most noteworthy of those trades was Calgary shipping goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere to Anaheim on Jan. 9 because they wanted to protect Fred Brathwaite. Giguere, who went on to an impressive career with the Ducks (Stanley Cup in 2007), would have been the top goaltender on the board.

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The Ducks, meanwhile, traded promising forward Trent Hunter to the to avoid losing him. A curious note: The Wild drafted Artem Anisimov from Philadelphia, but not that Artem Anisimov. This was the defensemen who never quite stuck in the NHL, not the two-way center who played for the Blue Jackets before a trade to Chicago. Yes, there are two Artem Anisimovs. In hindsight, there were players available who went on to have at least a few more good seasons, and, in some cases, pretty good careers. The Wild and Jackets shied away from some, certainly, because they had big-ticket contracts, at least by the standards of the day. Among the notables … Forwards: Stu Barnes (Buffalo), Eric Belanger (Los Angeles), Martin Gelinas (Carolina), Scott Nichol (Buffalo) and Shawn Thornton (Toronto). Defensemen: Philippe Boucher (Dallas), Greg de Vries (Colorado), Stephane Robidas (Montreal) and Jason Woolley (Buffalo). Goaltender: Manny Legace (Detroit). The Blue Jackets finished with 71 points in their inaugural season, at the time one of the best finishes ever for an expansion team. Minnesota was just behind them with 68 points. They were 23rd and 25th in the league, respectively. By the time the Wild reached the Western Conference final in 2003, the only expansion-draft players still making an impact were Kuba, Hendrickson and Jim Dowd. The Blue Jackets quickly fell behind the Wild in the years that followed, but both franchises look back on the first year fondly. “When you’re a manager, you’re trying to get predictability at every spot on the roster, players where you can say you know what kind of game they’re going to play,” Risebrough said. “Your job is to cover uncertainty. When you’re an expansion general manager, uncertainty is all around you. “But there is something about an expansion team. There’s a spirit there. The opportunity they’re getting is special. And even guys I see many years later, maybe even guys for whom it didn’t work out, they have fond memories of it.”

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CBC.ca / Sudbury's Nick Foligno hopes charity hockey event will lift peoples' spirits By Staff – June 24, 2020

Hockey is on the long list of things that have been put on ice because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In Sudbury that includes the annual fundraising game NHL versus Docs — where pro stars face off against physicians — to raise money for the planned northeastern Ontario children's hospital. This year, NHL players will suit up for an online hockey skills competition tonight called NHL versus Sudbury.

Nick Foligno is an all-star forward with the Columbus Blue Jackets, a proud Sudburian and honourary chair of the NEO Kids foundation. And he will be taking part in tonight's fundraiser.

"I think you're going to see a lot of hockey players who probably have a little rust on them, trying to flip a puck around," Foligno told CBC Sudbury Morning North radio show host Markus Schwabe.

The friendly competition challenges participants to see how many times they can flip a puck on a hockey stick in 30 seconds. People will be able to watch NHL contenders like Foligno, his brother Marcus, Tyler Bertuzzi, Seth Jones, Cam Atkinson, Boone Jenner and Zach Werenski. There will be local celebrities as well. Proceeds from the event will go to NEO Kids Foundation.

"Obviously we had to cancel our event this year. But we're continuing to raise awareness for what's still going on in the world there's still kids getting sick," Foligno said.

"There's still those kids that need treatment. And you know, in light of everything, we still need to reach that audience and we have such a great community here that supports so many great things. We felt that it would be a lot of fun to continue that trend and I think tonight will be a lot of fun for everyone to see."

"I think the guys are a little nervous that we might get shown up a little bit, but it will be a lot of fun and we'll have a great time with it," Foligno said.

"And hopefully it will just make people think about something different than what's been going on in the world, and try to raise a lot of money and awareness for a great cause. My doesn't change just because of current events."

Like most people, the advent of COVID-19 has had a huge personal impact on Foligno.

"At first the information was overwhelming. It was like you were scared to walk out of your house," he said.

"So I looked at my wife and I just said, 'you know what? We're gonna make the best of this'. This is time I never really get with my family, especially that time of year, and we made the most of it. I was able to teach my kids how to ride their bikes, and do so many family activities that I'm not really around for. I cherish that. You really feel the pull of wanting to be around your family and close to family at a time like this."

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The NHL is making plans to resume the stalled season with a playoff tournament of sorts this summer. But some players might refuse to play for fear of catching the virus.

"This is a very serious time in the world and I think we're trying to respect what's going on and the people that have been really affected by it. I mean there's been so many lives lost and families torn apart because of this virus," Foligno said.

"No one's putting anyone in harm's way, so if there is a way to play and they're going to do whatever they can to make sure it's safe — and if it's not I'm sure they'll understand and we'll have to cancel — I think, why not try?"

Foligno said bringing some kind of hockey back may inspire others.

"We're getting over this together and we're stronger than this and it would be a great sign if we could start to see sports and especially hockey come back into the fold."

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The Athletic / LeBrun: What’s next after NHL narrows focus in hub city selection process By Pierre LeBrun – June 23, 2020

With the clear caveat that this process has had all kinds of twists and turns, it does sound like the NHL and NHL Players’ Association are inching closer on the hub city front. We may have clarity by the end of the week. As I tweeted over the weekend, the league by the end of last week had narrowed its focus to six of the original 10 NHL markets announced by commissioner Gary Bettman last month. Of those six, my understanding is that Vegas along with the three Canadian bids in Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto figure prominently. Los Angeles also keeps pushing and Chicago is confirmed to be still in the running, sources said Monday. The league sent the NHLPA more detailed information on the hub city bids before the weekend for union staff and players to digest, a source said. While you can understand the concern with the COVID-19 cases spiking in Nevada, a source over the weekend said the NHL bubble plans to be very tight in Phase 4 during the actual tournament and that the league at this point isn’t overly concerned and still has Vegas as a strong option. Now this is just me handicapping things as of Monday, but I feel as of right now, it looks like either Vegas with Vancouver or Vegas with Edmonton, with Toronto just on the outside and still perhaps convincing the league and players before this is all over. Edmonton tweaked its bid presentation last week according to sources, strengthening how tight its bubble would be and highlighting all the advantages of its setup. The three hotels which would house the NHL players and staff in Edmonton would be the JW Marriott, Delta and Sutton Place. From a players’ perspective, there seems to be a clear drop-off after the JW Marriott and that level of quality for the hotels in the Edmonton bid has been earmarked as a concern from some. But I think what the Oilers stressed last week in their tweaked approach is that they can get 32 people from each of 12 NHL organizations in the JW Marriott for the play-in round, which means all the NHL roster players plus coaches and trainers. Other team staff could stay at the Delta or Sutton Place. It’s believed all 12 organizations will have about 50 people each in total (players and staff) in the hub city. And after the play-in round, Edmonton is saying that it can accommodate pretty much everyone with the teams in the JW Marriott. Basically, as one source described it to me Monday, the updated Edmonton bid is akin to selling what should feel like an Olympic village. My TSN colleague Ryan Rishaug tweeted out more details on it Monday. Vancouver also tweaked its bid within the last 10 days, a source confirmed Monday, and has stayed in constant communication with the league. An alluring aspect of Vancouver’s bid is the depth of high-end hotels plus how tight the bubble can be. The main hotel would be the 500-room JW Marriott Parq, which is 400 yards from the rink. It was the main hotel for the NHL Draft last June. One neat detail I’m told is that they would have a 30,000 square-foot outdoor space/deck/patio for the players at the hotel that’s connected to a restaurant. There are other hotels and restaurants that are

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part of the bid but it all sounds rather good. And well, it’s Vancouver in the summer so it’s basically heaven. Remember the players have a say in where this all ends up. Given the COVID-19 cases in Nevada, if this were strictly about creating the safest environment, I don’t know why the league and NHLPA don’t go with Vancouver and Edmonton as the two hosts given the low COVID-19 numbers in those places. Not to mention getting the bang for your Canadian buck. But Vegas is appealing for all kinds of reasons, to players as well, and again what I keep being told is that the proposed Vegas bubble will be airtight, perhaps the tightest of all the bubbles being proposed. Nobody gets in that isn’t supposed to, nobody gets out. So I think the NHL feels pretty good about the proposed Vegas setup. Toronto remains in the mix and according to sources MLSE resubmitted its updated bid on Sunday after also tweaking it earlier last week. Toronto got feedback last week from the NHL/NHLPA on a few things with its bid and responded with an update Sunday. So where that leaves Toronto, it’s hard to tell. One of the major concerns with the Toronto bid is whether the bubble can be tight enough downtown. But on the flip side, Toronto is in the Eastern time zone which presumably would help the TV schedule, and has hosted all kinds of major events including the 2016 ; there’s a lot of know-how there. L.A. hasn’t given up and hasn’t been told it’s out, either, as of Monday. The LA Live complex around is a strong setup in terms of a bubble. But with Vegas seemingly ahead of it, and a desire perhaps to have a Canadian host city, that might squeeze L.A. out. There’s also the tax situation in California which the NHLPA has looked at as far as players getting taxed if they’re in L.A. for a certain amount of time. Chicago remains part of the six remaining bid candidates, a source confirmed Monday. But I think given the chance of a Canadian hub, as one NHL governor suggested to me Monday the best chance for Chicago would be as a backup if Vegas is out. Given how important the tightness of the bubble is, too, I assume that having the hotels downtown so far away from the wouldn’t be ideal. Now there’s also the issue of not having a host team with home ice advantage. There has been talk if the host cities end up East and West to have the Eastern Conference play in the West and the Western Conference play in the East in order to remove any possible competitive advantage for teams like the Golden Knights, Canucks, Oilers or Maple Leafs, for example, if their cities were selected as hubs. But obviously if both hub cities end up in the West, which is a possibility, it will be impossible to not have one of the Knights, Canucks or Oilers at home. I’m told the league isn’t overly concerned by this because there won’t be fans in the stands. It was stressed to me Monday that no matter how it all ends up, these will be “legit neutral site games.”

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The Athletic / Custance: How NHL teams are managing draft preparation right now By Craig Custance – June 23, 2020

Tom Wilson looked down on the sheet that planned his week and there were 29 team interviews on the schedule. Conversations with the most powerful people in hockey that would shape his future. While sitting in his hotel room near the Toronto airport the week of the 2012 NHL Draft Combine, he was being told that he could be selected anywhere from No. 10 overall to No. 50. In his mind, there was a lot riding on this week. Eight years later, the interviews are all a blur. But the feeling of standing outside a hotel door, moments away from knocking and sitting down in a room full of executives and scouts is still very strong. There were Hall of Famers waiting to ask questions. There were psychologists. One team had a video projector with all of Wilson’s mistakes teed up and waiting for his explanations for each one. Just another attempt at seeing how he’d handle the pressure and scrutiny of the NHL. It’s funny what Images remain in what was otherwise a complete whirlwind for Wilson. Like, looking out at all the faces in the room, recognizing Bryan McCabe and thinking about growing up in Toronto watching Tomas Kaberle pass to him a million times. Or crossing paths with his roommate during the interview process and noticing he was dripping in sweat when he lifted his arm. Through a dress shirt. Through a sports coat. “The interview part is one monster,” Wilson said during a phone conversation last week. “The physical part is a different monster.” Recently, a photo of Wilson surfaced on Instagram. It was the mugshot of a teenaged kid about to go through all the physical testing at the combine. He remembers taking that photo and hearing the trainers yelling at the other prospects to go one more minute on the bike. To push through the excruciating pain. “I’m 18. No beard. No smile. No game face,” he said of the photo. “It’s like I’ve seen a ghost. After you take the picture, you go right in the room where you’re hearing the screaming. It’s wild.” He’s laughing now as he tells these stories. You can tell he’s enjoying the nostalgia of it all. The experience of his draft year. The challenge of going through the fire. It all helped him prepare for the next step. And he might have been terrified in the moment, but those conversations with the solidified their belief in him in the weeks leading into the draft, where the team would select Wilson with the 16th-overall pick. “He had such a presence about him,” said Vegas president George McPhee, who was the GM in Washington when Wilson was drafted. “Very sure of himself and very, very hungry. … Five minutes into the interview, you really felt it. This guy could be a game-changer.” The question now is this: Can you get those same vibes over a Zoom call? Can this all be simulated remotely? “I don’t know,” McPhee said. “Don’t know.”

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It’s a weird time right now for NHL teams preparing for the draft. The normal week for the NHL Draft combine has come and gone. According to an NHL source, the league is not currently considering any modified testing or combine in the time between now and the draft. So teams and prospects are experiencing this year in a completely different way. Without a combine and testing, Dan Marr, the director of the NHL’s Central Scouting, has spent a lot of his time making sure teams have as much information as possible on the prospects. While the interviews and the physical testing get the attention, Marr thinks that the medical information is the most important portion of the combine, so Central Scouting has been disseminating those details to all the teams. “We provided for the teams 145 players who have completed their medical history questionnaire,” Marr said. “We’re able to attach any operation reports and doctors notes and do it in a secure way. The NHL clubs’ trainers and doctors, they’re able to go into the health management system and they have 145 of the top kids’ medical history.” There are limitations. The EKG and echocardiogram that helps detect any heart issues with prospects that are part of the combine procedures aren’t part of the medical information Marr is providing to teams. “Right now, that’s not possible,” Marr said. As for the interview process, the NHL and its teams are just like the rest of us. A ton of video conversations. Like, a lot. The amateur scouting director for one team said that during a normal year, his team might interview 50 or 60 kids at the combine. And really, he doesn’t always find that 15-minute window particularly helpful. He said he can usually tell which agencies represent a player based on the answers they’ve been prepped to give. Now, teams have been instructed to arrange video interviews with players through their agents, and this scout said his team has already done 80 to 100 interviews. And there are still months to go. CAA’s Pat Brisson is in the unique position of being an agent helping arrange these interviews and a dad guiding his son through the process. Brendan Brisson is a projected first-round pick, and he’s been regularly kicking his dad out of his home office to talk to teams remotely. “I’ve had many conversations with many teams,” Pat Brisson said. “A few GMs were telling me that usually at the combine, it’s pretty quick. These video conferences, sometimes some of them were 45 minutes. I know Brendan has had some go for two and a half hours. There’s been more time.” Teams conducting these interviews are doing it in a way to try and replicate the combine experience as close as possible. They’re still asking tough questions. In some cases, they’re able to include more people on the call than would be in a hotel room in Buffalo. But replicating the nerves and the intensity of an in-person meeting is impossible. Executives who have sat in on those Zoom calls see prospects completely at ease. Not a lot of guys sweating through sport coats. The tradeoff is more volume. “I think I’ve talked to pretty much every team. Some teams I’ve talked to more than once,” said Brendan Brisson, who had 59 points in 45 games for the USHL’s Chicago Steel. “It’s been a really good process. Being able to get on a call with Steve Yzerman and and – it’s a good experience.

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You’re talking to guys experienced in hockey. It’s an opportunity for us players to learn and have good exposure.” More volume and often, more voices. “A lot of the calls I’ve had, it’s the GM, assistant GM, head of scouting, a bunch of other scouts and team doctor, mental health, things like that,” said the USNTDP’s Brock Faber, who estimates he’s interviewed with about 20 teams. “Some have three or four guys on there, some have upwards of 10. It depends on the team.” Dr. Aimee Kimball, who was a mental training consultant with the Pittsburgh and now the director of player and team development for the , has regularly led the prospect questioning in the past. The move away from in-person interviews has changed her approach. In the past, there were interactive questions she’d ask – like presenting players with a bunch of characteristics and having them rank them – that are tough to do over Zoom. But now, she has the opportunity to see a kid at home. To ask about the posters on the wall or the trophies in the background. “It’s different. I like feeling the vibe when you’re in the room with them, to see how they react to people,” Kimball said. “But the guys are a little more relaxed. They’re not dressed up. They’re not in polo shirts and suit jackets. In some ways it’s nice, I feel like it’s not such a circus. It’s more conversational.” What’s the end result for this year’s draft class? How different is a prospect’s evaluation without seeing them do pull-ups in person? It means relying much more on the entire body of work, more time breaking down individual film. It’s quite possible that it leads to a more accurate draft selection that isn’t impacted by the recency bias of a draft combine interview or outside noise that doesn’t mean all that much anyway. An example one scout used was Islanders star Mathew Barzal. He remembers scouts being unimpressed with Barzal’s performance during the U18s late in the year and then following it up with draft interviews where he came off as a little too confident. “He’s really talented but he was cocky. That’s what fuels him to be what he is,” explained the scout. By comparison, a player like Pavel Zacha looked great in that tournament and headed into the draft with momentum. “Zacha was elite, with size, strength, skating and looked like a million bucks,” he said. “What a presence. Physically mature. That was the last thing people saw.” In 2015, Zacha went No. 6 overall to the New Jersey Devils. Barzal slipped to No. 16. It looks a lot different knowing what we know now. That confidence Barzal displayed has served him well in the NHL. That late tournament was not the best indicator of what was to come. “I like when teams overreact at the combine because usually, it means they’re making a mistake,” said the scout. We won’t know the impact for years. Maybe it’s a draft that stays closer to draft lists and rankings. Maybe there are fewer errors. Maybe a kid like Tom Wilson slips because he’s not able to make such a positive impact in person. All we know is that like everything else right now, it’s going to be different.

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“Looking back on it, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” Wilson said. “I feel for the kids now.”

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The Athletic / Down Goes Brown: The chaos lover’s rooting guide to the playoffs and lottery By Sean McIndoe – June 23, 2020

We finally know what the NHL will look like when the season resumes, and I have to say, I’m pretty sure my favorite team is set up to dominate. No, not the Maple Leafs. I mean my other favorite team: Team Chaos. I’ve been on the Team Chaos bandwagon for years, and they’ve come through with some pretty special seasons. There was “expansion team rolls over the league and makes the final,” and “terrible team takes ’s dynasty to overtime in Game 7 of the conference final” and “128-point juggernaut gets swept in the first round.” Unlike some other teams I could mention, Team Chaos rarely lets me down. But this year? This year could be something else. The league’s new format seems like it was designed by Team Chaos representatives. We’ve taken an unprecedented 24-team format with a postseason round that may or may not count as the playoffs and combined it with the potential for a double-lottery that could see one of the league’s best teams win the first overall pick despite finishing top ten in the standings. The potential scenarios in play boggle the mind. We don’t even have to get into the real-world situations that could cause legitimate chaos, such as an outbreak of positive tests or players refusing to report. Let’s pretend that everything plays out exactly the way the league wants it to. That could still lead us down some truly bizarre paths. Today, we’re going to explore some of those possibilities. Here are 15 of the weirdest scenarios I could come up with, and how appealing they would be to a diehard Team Chaos fan. Scenario: Carey Price single-handedly wins the Cup One of my favorite movie moments is the diner scene from “Mulholland Drive.” Two characters we don’t know meet for lunch and one of them, clearly disturbed, explains a nightmare he’s been having. In the dream, he walks out of the diner and down the alleyway behind it, at which point a horrifying figure appears and he dies. He wants to confront his fear by seeing what’s really back there — “to get rid of this god-awful feeling.” With his friend trailing him, the man gathers his courage. Then he walks out of the diner and down the alleyway behind it, at which point a horrifying figure appears and he dies. The scene is terrifying because there’s no twist. There’s no misdirection. The movie tells you exactly what’s going to happen and why you should be afraid of it, and then it unfolds precisely as promised. And somehow, that makes it so much scarier than any surprise could have been. The NHL version of the figure behind the diner is Carey Price, who is apparently the scariest goaltender in the world. He’s been mentioned by name in multiple objections to the play-in format. This despite the fact that it’s been years since the numbers suggest he’s been an elite goaltender, or even an especially good one. Forget about the stats or the standings or even what your own eyes tell you. Carey Price is the monster in your nightmare — and he’s going to get you. And that means there’s nothing scarier than having all our fears turn out to be exactly right, as Price takes the ice and immediately Voltrons himself into 1986 Patrick Roy and 1971 Ken Dryden and 1984 Steve Penney and 2010 Jaroslav Halak and 1950s Jacques Plante, then goes five rounds without allowing a single goal while every GM in the league screams “I TOLD YOU SO” into the void.

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Chaos meter: 80/100. This one’s pretty darn good, but there are so many other options that I have to leave some room at the top of the scale. Onwards … Scenario: We get a Cup Final rematch between the Blues and Bruins It’s been months since anyone looked at the standings, so it’s easy enough to forget that the Bruins and Blues had the best records in their conferences. In theory, if everything goes according to expectations, they’d meet again in the final. Will everything go according to expectations? Not according to pretty much everyone; we’re all expecting plenty of upsets, thanks to short series and rusty teams. But maybe we get a curveball and just end up with a rematch of the classic seven-game 2019 Final. Only this time, in October instead of June. It would result in a good matchup, but the timing would feel all wrong. Kind of like a Brad Marchand line change. Chaos meter: 10/100. Would this be kind of cool? Sure. Would it be chaos? Let’s just say we can do a lot better. Scenario: The Presidents’ Trophy champion are the fourth seed in their own conference This is the better Bruins’ scenario if you’re on the Team Chaos bandwagon. Here’s a fun fact about history’s Presidents’ Trophy winners: They’ve always been the top seed, with home ice throughout the playoffs. They had to be; that was the only way it could work. But this year, thanks to the weird decision to let a three-game round robin determine the seeding for each conference’s top four teams, the Bruins could get off to a slow start, lose a few games and end up being the fourth seed in the East. You know, the same East that they’re currently leading by eight points in the regular season. A regular season that we’ve been told is now over, meaning the Bruins officially finished on top. A Presidents’ Trophy winner that doesn’t even have home-ice advantage after the first round of the playoffs. That wouldn’t be possible in a pre-pandemic world. It almost certainly shouldn’t be possible today. But it is, which means it has to happen. Chaos meter: 60/100. This one is so dumb that I want it to happen. Oh hey, speaking of home ice … Scenario: Home ice advantage ends up being huge There’s been a ton of talk about the NHL’s “hub” plan, and which two cities will be chosen to host games. And if you’re like a lot of fans, you’re not completely sure why this is such a big story. Sure, it matters to the league and the markets that are bidding, in the sense that the logistics involved are overwhelming. But as a fan, an empty arena is an empty arena. Does it even matter which city we’re playing in? Maybe not. But what if it turns out that it does? This is uncharted territory, after all, and there’s really no precedent for the NHL playing meaningful hockey in empty buildings. Maybe the slight advantage of knowing the various nooks and crannies of a rink will turn out not to be so slight after all. Or maybe the comfort of being in a familiar space while everyone else is far from home for months at a time will turn out to be a major psychological edge. We don’t even know if the league would allow a team to play in its own city, although most of us seem to assume that they could. What if we start playing, and one of the host teams – let’s be honest, we’re

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all looking at the Golden Knights right now – start breezing through the tournament while we all look at each other and go “uh, whoops?” Can you imagine the level of complaining we’d suddenly hear from fans (and media and players and GMs) who’d barely paid attention to the hub story up until that moment? Chaos meter: 30/100. I think this one might be more realistic than we suspect, but I can’t rank it that high, since “everyone complaining” is closer to the NHL’s default setting. Scenario: The Senators win the lottery multiple times and get both of the top two picks Alexis Lafreniere or Quinton Byfield? Nah. Alexis Lafreniere and Quinton Byfield, let’s go. An NHL team hasn’t held the top two picks in the draft since the Canadiens did it twice in the late-60s. After some wheeling and dealing, the Canucks were able to draft the Sedins at No. 2 and No. 3 in 1999. While in 1997, the Sharks building a Cup contender around picks Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau, but it took nearly a decade to get Thornton. The Senators could do it in one shot, ironically thanks to the Sharks via the Erik Karlsson trade. Chaos meter: 45/100. Would this be the most chaotic Senators-related lottery outcome? Maybe, but hold that thought … Scenario: The Senators lose the lottery multiple times and pick behind four division rivals In this outcome, not only does Ottawa fail to win any of the three lottery draws, but they watch three divisions rivals luck out and pass them. Take your pick of any three of Montreal, Florida, Toronto or Buffalo. Mix in Detroit already being ahead of them, and we could have a situation where the top six slots in the draft are all owned by the Atlantic — and despite being the second-worst team in the entire league, Ottawa is only the fifth team in its own division to get to pick. Chaos meter: 60/100. Would now be a good time to remind Ottawa that it’s kind of their fault we have a draft lottery in the first place? Scenario: The Blackhawks win on some sketchy calls For the first time in NHL history, we’ll have a conference-based playoff with double-digit seeds. We should expect at least a few of them to win because a short play-in round following a four-month layoff will basically be a coin flip. Can a few of those underdogs go deep? Sure. Will they? Probably, yeah. The Hawks aren’t the worst of the play-in teams, but they’re close. They’re also the league’s cash cow, the franchise that gets the spotlight at pretty much every opportunity, no matter how much it annoys other markets. So yeah, Chicago winning the Cup in a year they finished 23rd overall would enrage a big swath of hockey fandom. But the Hawks winning the Cup after having a bunch of controversial calls go their way? Now we’re into full-blown conspiracy land, and that’s always fertile ground for chaos. Side prediction: Win or lose, the Hawks/Oilers series is going to be framed as this generation’s reboot of the old story about Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier learning how to win from the 1983 Islanders. Chaos meter: 75/100. This seems a little too plausible, right? Don’t worry, there’s one man who can stop the Hawks … Scenario: The Blackhawks lose to Robin Lehner Remember the trade deadline? Of course not, nobody does, it was like eight years ago. But the biggest

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deal of the day came when the Hawks sent Lehner to the Golden Knights. The move made sense because Lehner’s on an expiring deal and Chicago certainly wasn’t going to be in the playoffs. Oops! It turns out they are. And after they’ve eliminated the Oilers in the play-in round thanks to getting 47 powerplays in Game 5, they could face Vegas in the first round of the playoffs. And when that happens, there’s a 90 percent chance that Lehner shuts them out in four straight games. Chaos meter: 50/100. The other 10 percent chance involves Lehner getting shelled, then dramatically pulling off his Knights’ jersey to reveal a Hawks logo, mid-90s nWo-style. Since we spent the last two entries subtly eliminating the Oilers … Scenario: The Oilers win the draft lottery Don’t act like you wouldn’t lose your mind. Team Chaos will also accept: Any win by a team that already won recently (Sabres, Devils, Panthers, Leafs), that’s benefiting from an obvious conspiracy to help a big market (Hawks, Canadiens, Rangers, Leafs), that’s too good to deserve a first overall pick (Penguins, Hurricanes, Leafs) or that is the Leafs (Leafs). Chaos meter: 50/100. When you write the list out that way, I like our odds. That said, I’m not sure there’s really that much suspense, since … Scenario: Taylor Hall’s team wins the draft lottery In these unprecedented times, it would be nice to have a piece of our old lives back. Chaos meter: 0/100. Never bet against Mr. Lottery. But since we’re working through lottery scenarios … Scenario: One of the qualifying round team wins a lottery spot This is what needs to happen to trigger the second lottery drawing, one that would be held after the qualifying round and would see all eight eliminated teams have equal odds at whichever pick it was. This would be fun for two reasons. First, it would make fans of the truly bad teams furious. And more importantly, it would lead to all sorts of speculation that some team would throw their qualifying round series to get into the second lottery. This makes no sense and would never happen, but people would still go on about it, especially if a team’s starting goalie was legitimately injured or a coach made a weird lineup decision. Chaos meter: 55/100. Yeah, one of the three lottery slots going to a play-in team would be fun and would make a million heads explode. But you know what’s better than a million exploding heads? Scenario: Three of the qualifying round teams win lottery spots The odds are slim, but it could happen. And the aftermath would be glorious, with furious Red Wing fans, mass feigned confusion over how the second lottery works, TV executives scrambling to put together a show that’s suddenly going to be their most-watched of the season and sixteen fan bases all trying to decide on the ethics or openly rooting against their own team in a play-in round when losing now brings a hefty 37.5 percent chance at a top-three pick. Chaos meter: 90/100. (jack_nicholson_nodding_creepily.gif) Scenario: An all-Canadian rivalry-based final four Hear me out: Oilers and Flames out west, Leafs and Habs out east.

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It could happen, although both matchups will have to wait until at least the second round under the proposed format. Either one would be cool to see — we haven’t had a Battle of Alberta since 1991 and the Leafs and Canadiens haven’t met since 1979. It would be bittersweet to see either matchup play out without fans involved, but when you’ve waited decades, maybe you have to take what you can get. Chaos meter: 0/100 in the United States, where barely anyone would care. In Canada, it would be 99/100, where families would be torn apart. And of course, that final four would have to lead to the inevitable finish … Scenario: The Leafs make the final and win the Stanley Cup As I wrote a few weeks ago: “After waiting your whole life to see the (Leafs) finally win the Cup, of course, it’s going to happen in a messed-up year with a bizarre format and empty arenas. Of course, it’s going to be a win that absolutely nobody else on the planet will count. Of course, you won’t be allowed to fulfill a lifelong dream by going to the game where they win and witnessing the moment in person. Of course, you’re going to have to hear about asterisks for the rest of your life. Of course, there won’t be a parade. The are the only team in pro sports that could win a championship and make it depressing. We all know this is happening.” Picture it. Maple Leafs fans going crazy as they watch their team get closer to ending the drought. Every other fan base constantly mentioning asterisks and reminding Leaf fans that this won’t count. Leaf fans taking that bait and flipping out every time the subject comes up. Other fan bases gleefully twisting the knife at every opportunity. The Leafs finally winning, at which point every other fan base with a Cup immediately floods social media with photos of their parades while asking Toronto fans when their parade will be. Somebody photoshopping “2019-2020” onto that 2004-05 “season not played” Stanley Cup panel and everyone pretending it’s real in a spontaneous act of league-wide gaslighting. Going to a game in Toronto with your buddy who is a Leafs fan years later and squinting up at the rafters pretending you can’t see the banner. “No man, I really don’t see it, are you sure you’re not imagining things?” Chaos meter: 67/100. Just kidding, the Leafs aren’t ever winning another Cup. OK, let’s take this home … Scenario: The Rangers win the Stanley Cup and also the first overall pick Yes, it could happen. It’s a longshot. But the Rangers own a Hurricanes’ first-round pick, thanks to the Brady Skjei trade. The pick isn’t directly lottery-protected, but Carolina has two firsts – their own, plus Toronto’s from the Patrick Marleau deal – and the Rangers will get whichever one is worse. When the Skjei trade went down, the Leafs and Hurricanes were both strong favorites to make the playoffs, so the Rangers were basically dealing for a pick that would most likely be in the mid-teens, and quite possibly deep in the first round. But now the play-in round and double lottery have changed everything, and it’s possible that the Hurricanes could lose in the first round and then win the lottery, landing a top-three pick or even the first overall selection. But wait, wouldn’t that mean the Rangers would just get Toronto’s lower pick instead? Yes … except that pick is top-ten protected, meaning that if the Leafs also lose in the first round and then get lucky in the lottery, they’d get to keep this year’s pick. So this scenario needs both the Leafs and the Hurricanes to lose in the first round and then win the lottery, which is extremely unlikely. But it’s possible, and if it

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happens then the Rangers could make the playoffs – or even win the Cup – and still land the first overall pick in the lottery. Which I seem to remember was the exact scenario the league was preemptively melting down about just a few weeks ago. Of course, the first step in this chain is for the Hurricanes to lose in the play-in. And who are they playing? The Rangers, of course. Carolina was 0-4-0 against New York this season, in case you were wondering. Chaos meter: 100/100. If this scenario plays out, the Rangers absolutely have to do a ping pong ball- themed storm surge at the lottery reveal.

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TSN.ca / Making eight cases for the Hockey Hall of Fame By Steve Dryden – June 23, 2020

If only every Hockey Hall of Fame decision were as straightforward as the one the selection committee faces Wednesday on first-year eligible Jarome Iginla. A 600-goal scorer. Three-time first all-star. Two-time Rocket Richard winner. Two-time 50-goal scorer. Two-time Hart runner-up. Two-time Olympic hero. Ted Lindsay winner. Art Ross winner. World Junior superstar. Quintessential power forward. Ten-year captain. Textbook Hall of Famer. Apply the rubber stamp. Some believe that every Hall of Fame debate should be that easy. That if you have to prove someone is a Hall of Famer, then he or she isn’t a Hall of Famer. If that were so, the Hall of Fame building at the corner of Front and Yonge streets in Toronto would be a lot less crowded. It would also be missing a lot of great players worthy of hockey immortality. The Hall of Fame will elect a maximum of four male players, two female players and two builders (or one builder and one referee / linesman) on Wednesday. Here are the cases for eight former NHL players. DANIEL ALFREDSSON (Fourth year of eligibility) Daniel Alfredsson was the face of the ’ franchise and its uncontested flag-bearer almost from the moment he earned NHL Rookie of the Year honours in 1995-96. The 14-year Senators’ captain collected 444 goals (63rd all-time) and 1,157 points (54th), plus 100 points in 124 postseason games – among them a sensational 20-game run to the Stanley Cup final in 2006-07. Alfredsson was a two-way force from the beginning to the end of his career – he was a plus player 16 of 18 seasons – but his peak performance years give the best perspective. Using 750 games as a minimum over 13 seasons from 1996-97 through 2009-10, Alfredsson ranked fourth in points per game (1.01) behind only Jaromir Jagr, Joe Sakic and Joe Thornton. He was ahead of Teemu Selanne, Mats Sundin and Paul Kariya. They are all in the Hockey Hall of Fame or, in the case of Jagr, headed there. Alfredsson is already in the IIHF Hall of Fame, so we know the calibre of his international CV – highlighted by five appearances in the and gold in 2006. Hall of Fame stat: Alfredsson jumps from 54th all-time in actual regular season points (1,157) to 33rd (1,261, 1.01 points per game) in era-adjusted points as calculated by hockeyreference.com. Thirty of the 32 players ahead of Alfredsson are in the Hall of Fame or definitively headed there. The exceptions are Pierre Turgeon (1,315, 1.01) and the still active Patrick Marleau (1,312, 0.76). Six of the seven players who fill out the top 40 behind Alfredsson are in the Hall or headed there. TOM BARRASSO (15th year of eligibility)

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Tom Barrasso made a big splash when he entered the NHL pool and the ripple effect was felt for years to come. The No. 5 overall draft pick in 1983 was the first goalie to go straight from high school hockey to the NHL. He won the Vezina and Calder Trophies and earned a berth on the first all-star team as an 18- year-old (turning 19 on the second last day of the regular season). Barrasso won the Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh in 1991 and then again in 1992 when he fashioned a record-tying 11-game winning streak as the Penguins eliminated the New York Rangers, Boston and Chicago. Two other goalies have won 11 straight playoff games: Hall of Famers Eddie Belfour and Patrick Roy. Barrasso was the first American goalie to win 300 games and sits 19th (369) on the all-time list. Barrasso’s impact was felt inside and outside the crease. Barrasso never scored a goal but is one of the best puckhandling goalies ever – witness an all-time goalie record 48 assists. He is third all-time in goalie penalty minutes (437) behind Ron Hextall and Battlin’ Billy Smith. Hall of Fame stats: Barrasso was a one-time Vezina winner and three-time runner-up. Only four goalies have won or been a Vezina runner-up at least four times since the award has been voted on since 1981- 82: Dominik Hasek (6 wins, 0 runners-up), Roy (3 and 2) and Marty Brodeur (4 and 3) are in the HHOF. Barrasso (1 and 3) is not. Barrasso was a one-time first all-star and two-time second all-star. Only five goalies have at least three combined first and second all-star berths since 1979-80. Brodeur (3-4-7), Hasek (6-0-6), Roy (4-2-6) and Belfour (2-1-3) are in the HHOF. Barrasso (1-2-3) is not. THEOREN FLEURY (12th year of eligibility) Theoren Fleury’s playing career and life after have featured a string of triumphs, most notably over sexual abuse and addiction. But his wins on the ice are also something to behold. Starting in the late 1980s, Fleury earned a berth on the World Junior Championship all-star team, tied for the Western Hockey League scoring title with eventual Hall of Famer Sakic, made the NHL second all-star team, finished among the top five in voting at right wing three more times, scored 50 goals and earned 100 points twice. Fleury’s brand of hockey left nothing to the imagination: he scored 455 goals (58th all- time) and earned 1,840 penalty minutes. Only four players with at least 450 goals had more penalty minutes: Pat Verbeek, Brendan Shanahan, Keith Tkachuk and Mark Messier. Sitting behind Fleury on this list is (1,685). Fleury kicked off his pro career by winning the International Hockey League’s Turner Cup in 1988 – contributing 16 points in eight games – and the Stanley Cup with Calgary in 1989. He represented Canada eight times, winning gold at the World Juniors, Canada Cup and Olympics. The final victory of his career would be induction to the Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame stat: Only 15 players in NHL history have averaged at least one point per game in both the regular season (min. 1,000 games) and playoffs (min. 75 games). Fourteen are in the HHOF: Wayne Gretzky, Phil Esposito, Guy Lafleur, Sakic, Dale Hawerchuk, Bernie Federko, Denis Savard, Jari Kurri, Gil Perreault, Bobby Hull, Paul Coffey, Jean Beliveau, Howe and Messier. SERGEI GONCHAR (Third year of eligibility) Stanley Cup-winning Sergei Gonchar belongs squarely in the Hall of Fame conversation no matter how you calculate career performance. Measured against his direct defenceman peers over the precise length of his career, only Nicklas Lidstrom accumulated more regular-season points (985 to 811). Measured against his all-time peers, Gonchar ranks 16th. The two players directly in front of him – No. 14 Gary Suter (844) and No. 15 Doug Wilson (827) – are the only ones not already in the Hall. (Red Kelly

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is also listed ahead of Gonchar, but he split his career between defence and forward.) The hard- shooting, two-time 20-goal scorer ranked in the top 10 in defenceman goals and/or points 12 different seasons – including 2001-02 when he led the league with 26 goals. (Gonchar finished first or second in defenceman goals five straight seasons.) As a point of comparison, 2019 inductee Sergei Zubov ranked in the top 10 a total of 10 different seasons. Gonchar reached the Cup final three times and played a pivotal role in the Penguins’ 2009 victory, including timely power-play contributions. That should not come as a surprise. More than half of Gonchar’s career regular season points came with the man advantage. He ranks 10th all-time among defencemen in power-play points (427). Hall of Fame stat: The two-time second all-star’s regular season production is even more significant when viewed through the prism of era-adjusted points. His 811 points translate to 896, ninth all-time among defencemen, according to hockeyreference.com. Gonchar is the only one among the top 16 defencemen in era- adjusted points not in the Hall. MARIAN HOSSA (First year of eligibility) For all Marian Hossa’s accomplishments during the regular season, they can be overshadowed by his playoff and international records. He is the only player to appear in three consecutive Stanley Cup finals for three different teams (Pittsburgh, Detroit and Chicago), he won three Cups (with Chicago), played in more playoff games (205) than anyone else during the span of his career (1999-2017) and compiled the third most postseason points (149) during that time, behind only Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Hossa was a four-time Slovakian Player of the Year and holds his country’s Olympic record for goals (14), assists (14) and points (28). As for the regular season, Hossa’s 525 goals rank 35th all-time and translate to 594 era-adjusted goals, propelling him to 22nd all-time. Twenty of 21 players ahead of him – Marleau being the exception – are in the Hall of Fame or definitively headed there. Seven of the eight players behind him are also in the Hall; Tkachuk is the exception. Hall of Fame stats: Hossa is one of only six players in NHL history to combine a minimum 15 regular seasons of at least 20 goals and eight postseasons of a minimum 10 points. The other five are in the Hall of Fame or headed there: Gretzky, Messier, Jagr, Brett Hull and Steve Yzerman. The plus-minus statistic has fallen into disregard as a metric for all-around play, but two-way force Hossa is in elite company nonetheless: Hossa was a plus player 17 of his 18 seasons (representing 94 per cent of his career), ranking him with Hall of Famers Larry Robinson (100 per cent), , Nicklas Lidstrom and Al MacInnis (all at 95 per cent) among the top five in percentage of plus seasons since 1967-68. KEVIN LOWE (20th year of eligibility) If Pro Football Hall of Famer Al Davis made his living in pucks rather than pigskins, Kevin Lowe would have been his kind of player. The man who famously said, “Just win, baby,” would have appreciated Lowe’s record of success. The 18-year NHLer won six Stanley Cups, one Canada Cup and a legion of admirers for the way he played the game – with heart, soul and uncommon fierceness. That he has not been elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame speaks to the difficulty of measuring the contributions of non- offensive defencemen in the pre- era. While Edmonton superstar Paul Coffey was setting all- time records in the offensive zone, Lowe was keeping things tidy in the defensive zone. Not that Lowe – an 86-point scorer in his final junior season and six-time 30-point scorer in the NHL – didn’t have some offensive instincts, but he was a defence-first blueliner. That was his critical contribution to five Cups

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with the Oilers and one with the New York Rangers. Not since two-time Norris Trophy-winning Rod Langway in 2002 has a defenceman with fewer than Lowe’s 432 career points been named to the Hall of Fame. Langway, Washington’s Secretary of Defence, collected 329 points and won one Cup (with Montreal) over his 15-season career. The Hall of Fame selection committee made something of a statement last year by electing all-time great defensive forward Guy Carbonneau. He was, arguably, the first such choice since Bob Gainey in 1992. That could bode well for Lowe. Hall of Fame stat: Lowe is tied with Ray Bourque for sixth all-time among defencemen in playoff games (214). Nine of the top 10 are in the Hall of Fame: Chris Chelios, Lidstrom, Stevens, Robinson, Larry Murphy, Bourque, Scott Niedermayer, Coffey and Denis Potvin. All nine accrued significantly more personal honours than Lowe during their careers. Only one of them – Robinson – won as many Cups. The other three defencemen to win exactly six Cups – Doug Harvey, Tom Johnson and Guy Lapointe – are all in the Hall. ALEXANDER MOGILNY (12th year of eligibility) NHL.com senior writer Dan Rosen made a classic Hall of Fame argument for Alexander Mogilny, comparing the trailblazing Russian defector with 2017 Hall of Famer Kariya. Rosen pointed out that Mogilny had more NHL goals (473 to 402) and points (1,032 to 989) than Kariya in almost exactly the same number of games (990 to 989). He also noted that while Mogilny won a Stanley Cup during his 16- year NHL career with Buffalo, Vancouver, New Jersey and Toronto, Kariya didn’t during his 15-year career. And Rosen’s piece de resistance? Mogilny and Kariya each won gold at the World Junior Championship, World Championship and Olympics. We repeat all this because we couldn’t imagine making a better case for Mogilny. The only substantive difference between Mogilny and Kariya are in subjective measures: Mogilny was a two-time second all-star at right wing and one-time Lady Byng winner; Kariya was a five-time all-star at left wing and two-time Byng winner. Hall of Fame stat: Seven of the 29 members of the Triple Gold Club – winners of World Championship and Olympic gold, plus the Stanley Cup – have scored 1,000 points in the NHL. Five of them are in the Hall of Fame or headed there: Sakic, Shanahan, Jagr, Lidstrom and Sidney Crosby. The exceptions are Mogilny and still active Eric Staal. If you add in the World Junior Championship, Mogilny is a member of the unofficial Quadruple Gold Club. He is one of the all-time greatest World Junior players, collecting 19 goals and 35 points in 20 games. KEITH TKACHUK (Eighth year of eligibility) Tkachuk never won a Stanley Cup or compiled noteworthy playoff numbers (28 goals and 56 points in 89 games), but his regular-season production – in particular his goal-scoring - and menacing physical presence speak to someone who left a mark not just on opponents, but on the game. Tkachuk is one of three players in history, along with Shanahan and Verbeek, to score 500-plus goals and earn 2,000-plus penalty minutes. He had nine 30-goal seasons and 11 seasons of at least 100 penalty minutes. Tkachuk led the NHL in goals (52) in 1996-97 and finished in the top 10 four other times. Tkachuk made two second all-star teams during his career and finished in the top five in left wing voting six more times. His combined eight finishes in the top five at his position rank ahead of every other eligible Hall of Fame candidate – including three-time first all-star and 2020 automatic selection Iginla (seven top five finishes).

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Hall of Fame stats: Tkachuk’s 538 goals rank No. 33 on the all-time goal list. Thirty-one of the 32 players ahead of him are in the HHOF or definitively headed there. The one exception is No. 25 Marleau. Nos. 34-36 Frank Mahovlich, Hossa and Bryan Trottier are in the Hall or, in the case of first-year eligible Hossa, given a good shot at making the Hall. Tkachuk’s production stands the test of time: his career 538 goals translate to 584 era-adjusted goals according to hockeyreference.com. That ranks Tkachuk No. 25 all-time. Twenty-three of the 24 players ahead of him are in the Hall of Fame or definitively headed there. Marleau is the exception again. The remaining five members of the top 30 adjusted goal-scorers are also all in the Hall of Fame.

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Washington Post / The return of sports anytime soon seems somewhere between unlikely and irresponsible By Barry Svrluga – June 23, 2020

Here come the Stanley Cup playoffs and a bizarre Disney World tournament that will decide an NBA champion and a summer of golf that will end with an unprecedented fall Masters, and surely Major League Baseball will come to its senses and find a way to stage a season, and then: football. My goodness, football. For a few weeks, I have to admit, I thought it was possible — if not all of it, a righteous portion. But let’s not just tap the brakes on the full-throated return of sports in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic. We might just have to slam them to the floor. Keep in mind: This virus spreads easily, and this virus kills — at least 118,000 Americans since the end of February. Does it need to kill a professional or college athlete — or coach or staff member — to have officials reel back these plans? Let’s hope not. But over the course of the past week, here is what we learned: Two baseball teams closed their spring training facilities in Florida after players and staff either tested positive for the coronavirus or showed symptoms of covid-19, the disease it causes, amid the pandemic that shut down sports more than three months ago. The NHL’s reported that three players, in addition to some staff members, tested positive, and the team shuttered its rink. Nick Watney presented the PGA Tour with its first positive test after just five competitive rounds had been completed since golf’s return. On Sunday, highly ranked tennis player Grigor Dimitrov announced he had tested positive after playing exhibitions in Serbia and Croatia. And football. Oh, dear, football. In the NFL, members of several teams — including Dallas Cowboys star running back Ezekiel Elliott — have tested positive. And that’s just what’s publicly known. And last year’s College Football Playoff title game participants, Clemson and LSU, reportedly have combined for more than 50 positive tests — and full-on practice hasn’t even begun. This is the environment in which sports are going to return? That now seems somewhere between unlikely and irresponsible. Let’s look at this a couple of ways. Start with policies. The pro leagues other than baseball — which can’t get its owners and players to agree on which way the sun rises, let alone health and safety protocols — are either planning to implement or have already implemented policies aimed at creating a safe bubble in which their players and staffs can perform their jobs without being exposed to the virus. Yet the NHL, which allowed players to return only in small groups June 8, announced Friday that 11 of 200 players have tested positive. What next? The rest just skate forward toward the opening of training camps, scheduled for July 10? Or baseball. Put aside the tired negotiations for MLB to even conduct a season, bickering about economics before health concerns had been allayed. The Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies were among the teams to reopen their spring training sites. The Phillies had five players and three staff members test positive. A Blue Jays player showed symptoms.

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By Saturday, all major league facilities in Florida and Arizona had been shut down. That can’t be anything close to surprising to anyone following the data. (That science has somehow become a controversial piece of all of this is further evidence that we are a broken nation, but for the purposes of this column, I will just put my mask back on and stick to sports.) There’s a geographical element to this, and Florida and Arizona are central to it. According to data compiled by The Washington Post, on May 1, the date Arizona officials relaxed stay-at-home restrictions and began reopening, the state had 314 new coronavirus cases. On Saturday, that number was 3,109. The graph charting the state’s seven-day average — a key metric that is supposed to guide experts and, in turn, government officials about regulations — looks like a steady climb up a steep hill. It has never been higher. Florida is hardly different. On May 4, when the state began reopening, there were 819 new cases reported. By Saturday, that number was 4,049. A flattened curve? It’s as if officials and residents are aggressively trying to make it spike — and succeeding. And this is the state in which the NBA is trying to stage the rest of its regular season and all of its playoffs, in a bubble outside Orlando. Yes, several states — New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania among them — are doing an excellent job steadily lowering their numbers, but even states that aggressively deployed lockdowns on the early side are struggling. Take California. Its seven-day average is at an all-time high, more than 3,500 new cases a day recently. And it is home to four major league baseball teams, three NFL teams, four NBA teams, three NHL teams and four Power Five football programs. Can bubbles — with what would honestly need to be daily testing of everyone involved — actually be built? Given the positive tests from what have amounted to bubbles already, that seems dubious. Now, to football. Football, which has a professional league that is still forging forward with the idea of staging a season on time and in full. Football, which has a college governing system that is far-flung and discordant, which makes overseeing health and safety protocols nearly impossible, as my colleague Will Hobson pointed out in a story published online Friday. From both the inside and the outside, football looks crazy. Contact is both encouraged and required, and if you have seen football players heaving at the end of a game — bottom-of-the-lungs breaths, expelling all those droplets out again just to stand upright — you can’t help but think about what they’re doing to one another over the course of a play or a drive or a practice or a game. “I mean, we’re going to social distance, but we play football?” Los Angeles Rams Coach Sean McVay asked during a media appearance this past week. “This is really hard for me to understand all this. I don’t get it. I really don’t.” That’s the view from the inside. The outside might be even more dire. “Unless players are essentially in a bubble, insulated from the community, and they are tested nearly every day, it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease specialist, told CNN. “If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.” Until mass segments of the nation’s population — including some state and federal officials and, oh, yes, the president — started ignoring the scientists who should be behind any policy, that kind of statement might have stopped sports before they started. Yet after Fauci’s comment, President Trump tweeted: “Tony Fauci has nothing to do with NFL Football. They are planning a very safe and controlled opening.”

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And so here we charge, into a very frightening unknown. So many Americans are clearly hoping the worst of the virus is over, and the return of sports would help not only signal that but reinforce it. But the science and the data don’t tell us that’s the case — not at the moment and certainly not into the fall and winter. If players and staff are testing positive for a virus that has killed tens of thousands of Americans even before sports really begin again, it’s worth asking: When do the positive cases — and the concern for athletes and staff — outweigh the benefit of playing games?

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NY Post / Fauci says second coronavirus wave can’t cancel World Series, sports By Bruce Golding – June 23, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday that the World Series shouldn’t necessarily be canceled due to the coronavirus crisis — and claimed his recent remarks on the subject had been misconstrued. During an appearance Monday on ESPN New York radio, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases warned that if there’s a second wave of the disease in the fall, “the risk of penetrating through the shield that you’re trying put around us…becomes greater.” “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play in October. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a World Series,” Fauci said. “I never said that. That is for the league and the players to decide, not for me.” “The only thing I can tell you is that the risk, if you have a second wave in the fall and winter, is greater than you would have if you have a low level [of disease] in the summer,” he added. Fauci also called the national pastime and its annual championship “such a charged issue” that “things sometimes get taken out of context.” Last week, Fauci sparked controversy with an interview during which he discussed the planned Major League Baseball season. “If the question is time, I would try to keep it in the core summer months and end it not with the way we play the World Series, until the end of October when it’s cold,” Fauci told the Los Angeles Times. “I would avoid that.” During his ESPN appearance, Fauci said that each sport posed different risks to players and that “obviously, the sport that has the most contact, which is football, is something you have to pay attention to.” Last week, Fauci predicted that professional football “may not happen this year” due to the coronavirus pandemic. “Unless players are essentially in a bubble — insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day — it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Fauci told CNN. In response, Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, said the league was “developing a comprehensive and rapid-result testing program and rigorous protocols that call for a shared responsibility from everyone inside our football ecosystem. “We will make adjustments as necessary to meet the public health environment as we prepare to play the 2020 season as scheduled with increased protocols and safety measures for all players, personnel and attendees,” Sills added. “We will be flexible and adaptable in this environment to adjust to the virus as needed.” President Trump also tweeted Friday “Tony Fauci has nothing to do with NFL Football.” “They are planning a very safe and controlled opening. However, if they don’t stand for our National Anthem and our Great American Flag, I won’t be watching!!!” Trump added.

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USA Today / Opinion: Sports stayed silent as COVID-19's next wave got closer. Now comes the reckoning By Gabe Lacques – June 23, 2020

As virtually every major North American sports league warily readies for a heavily-regulated start or re- start to a 2020 season that may never happen amid a global pandemic, you’ll hear plenty of critiques regarding easily-punctured holes in the NBA bubble. Of the highly unregulated and wildly inconsistent testing protocols across college football. And of the narrative that Major League Baseball and its players de-prioritized health and safety protocols as they bickered over a few hundred million dollars. These critiques are all legitimate, but they assign blame to parties making good-faith efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. And they ignore the other culprits whose missteps will sideline some, perhaps all, major sports this year. At the top of that list is an almost thorough failure at every level of government. You probably know the numbers by now: The U.S. leads the world in COVID-19 cases (2.3 million) and deaths (more than 120,000), both more than double the second hardest-hit country, Brazil. Our response has been worse than any country in the world, particularly embarrassing given our significant means and our ability to distance ourselves, relative to other, denser countries. Believe what you want – it’s a free country, as they say! – but know that we alone are responsible for our current plight. And that so-called "second first wave" of COVID-19 we’re fighting couldn’t be worse in its timing or its locations as sports tiptoes toward a return. As baseball is played in South Korea and Japan, soccer in Europe and pretty much anything you want in New Zealand, 26 of our states are experiencing an uptick in COVID-19 cases. In Florida – home to two MLB teams, three NFL teams, seven major college football teams and hoped- for “bubbles” for the NBA and Major League Soccer – the 100,000-case mark was passed by Monday morning. More importantly, the state experienced a peak in cases over a seven-day period, averaging more than 3,000 last week – more than triple the 757 it recorded three weeks ago. In Texas, the seven-day average has nearly tripled to 3,500, and in the same week 13 University of Texas football players tested positive for COVID-19, the state and Travis County’s hospitals hit 75% capacity. It’s worse in Arizona, where hospitals are at 82% capacity and ICU beds 84% full. Daily positive tests have quadrupled in three weeks, prompting some of its biggest cities to mandate wearing face masks in public. All three states also report positivity rates reaching double-digits, meaning the increased case count can’t be explained by increased testing. Are all these troubling spikes the direct result of stay-at-home orders expiring more than a month ago in states that were late to close and early to open? We’ll have a better answer to that question in the months and years to come. But first, consider the words and actions regarding sports that those states adopted.

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Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced on May 12 that MLB, the NBA, NHL, NFL and MLS were welcome to return, without fans, on May 16. “We have had discussions with leaders of some of these leagues, and they all know they are welcome to operate, play and perform in the state of Arizona." A day later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis laid out an even wider welcome mat, essentially opening his state to any league or franchise that faced re-opening hurdles in its home jurisdiction. "If you have a team in an area where they just won’t let them operate,” DeSantis said, “we’ll find a place for you here in the state of Florida.” In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said May 18 that sports could return by May 31, but on June 3 outdid his fellow governors, issuing an executive order that allowed pro and collegiate sports venues to welcome fans at 50% capacity. That means some 45,000 people at a Dallas Cowboys home game, a scenario that infectious-disease experts don’t exactly embrace. And there was the April 4 conference call held between President Donald Trump and almost every major sports commissioner, during which the president expressed confidence the NFL would have a normal start in September. A week later, he was more strident: “We have to get our sports back. I'm tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old.” More than two months later, after statements of hope and reopenings to much fanfare, it’s clear this was all so much wish-casting. It’s one thing for political figures to want to shape reality to their liking, particularly a president in an election year and aspirational governors hoping to ride his coattails. That’s how Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, at first front and center, are suddenly MIA and consistent messages and reliable information are more challenging to find. But here’s the thing: Every major sports league has its own experts; MLB even retained a noted infectious disease expert, Ali Khan, to guide its path toward a season. Beyond that, we are in an era where everyone from athletes to executives are “smarter” than ever, be it a pitcher who spends his winter learning to better “tunnel” his pitches to front-office executives who can pull out an actuary table and tell you exactly how below-average a free agent slugger will be by the time he turns 35. As the invitations to come and sport in this state or the other rolled out and stay-at-home restrictions loosened, we all saw this coming. And given the mid-summer goal several leagues set for a return, the timing was going to be terrible. Sure, it’s a little hard to tell the president of the United States, “All due respect, sir, we are also excited to return, but we’d also feel the chances are better if you slow your roll a little bit.” It would have taken less courage to very publicly inform politicians in so many states, “You know, keeping things shut down and putting on the mask now may allow us to put on our uniforms this summer.” But it’s almost always in the best interest of leagues and franchises to, if you will, “shut up and dribble.” Publicly-funded stadiums are a crucial part of their well-being. MLB’s rare anti-trust exemption has been its lifeblood. Better to stay quiet than imperil sweetheart deals.

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So they watched and waited as Images of packed nightclubs in Scottsdale and happy diners in Tampa filled our screens – until many restaurants had to close again. And now every spring training facility is shuttered, thanks in part to a COVID-19 breakout at the Phillies’ Florida camp in Clearwater. The Orlando Pride announced Monday they are withdrawing from the NWSL Challenge Cup after several players and staff tested positive. South Carolina, which waited until April 6 to issue a stay-at-home order and then lifted it May 1, posted a double: Twenty-eight Clemson athletes have tested positive, while across the state in Hilton Head, the first PGA Tour pro contracted the virus. “No offense to Hilton Head,” golfer Justin Thomas said, “but they’re seeming to not take it very seriously. It’s an absolute zoo around here. There’s people everywhere. The beaches are absolutely packed.” To be fair, COVID-19 is relentless. California shut down early, reopened late and did right by almost every infectious disease expert. And still, on Monday it reported a single-day high in hospitalizations, though its case curve is far less perilous than Arizona’s and Florida’s, which resemble the first half of a nasty Clayton Kershaw curveball. The mixed messages from the federal, state and local levels – “Close down! Open up! Wear a mask! Spend money!” – don’t help a confused public that doesn’t have time for full-time epidemiology. Sports could have helped lend that clarity and appeal to reason, logic and, above all, statistics. Instead, it largely stayed quiet as our leaders ultimately failed us. And now they all may be sidelined.

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The Athletic / Anonymous ‘player’ poll: NHL mascots dish on each other, pants and more By Mark Lazerus – June 24, 2020

There’s an art to conducting the anonymous player polls that we do at The Athletic every year. It’s a delicate dance, but one that yields delightful and insightful results. You need to sidle up to a player away from his teammates, away from the other writers, and away from the prying eyes and ears of the media- relations department so that the player is comfortable dishing on his teammates and opponents. It’s just not in a hockey player’s nature to call another player overrated, or talk smack about a referee — at least, not in the press. And to shake down each player individually for top-secret information in the cozy confines of a locker room, well, it can be like herding cats. But it’s still easier than herding cats, dogs, birds, , a fish, a whale, a prince of darkness, a , a gila monster, a dragon, a , a pig, a couple of bugs and whatever the hell Victor E. Green, Youppi! and are. Especially considering none of them can talk. Without further ado, I present the most serious and important piece of journalism ever to grace this prestigious website: The 2020 anonymous NHL mascot poll. More than half of the league’s 29 mascots participated. And it turns out, when granted anonymity, hockey mascots talk about as much smack as hockey players do. They just like hugging more. Best mascot (other than yourself) Comments: I’ve never met Yourself, but I’d like to think I’m near the top. Slapshot. Some of his on-ice antics are the best. Gnash. He’s been around since prehistoric times and his seniority shows! Gnash for his looks and personality. He’s a pretty smooth cat. I really like Froot Loops, so I’m going to have to say Toucan Sam. Oh, you’re asking about NHL mascots? Gotcha. I think Tommy Hawk is a great mascot overall. He can dance, he is funny, and that feathery fowl has three rings. Tommy gets booed every city we go to, and to me that just is a sign of respect. Best dancer Comments: Gnash can boot scoot. Gnash. Did I say Gnash? Yes, Gnash. Oh my goodness, his moves. And when he does this thing with his arms/hands like a swinging pendulum… wow. It’s mesmerizing. Louie. He’s not your average dancing . Stanley C. Panther can do a mean worm. Would need to have a dance battle between Stormy and Gnash to find out. Worst dancer Comments: Bailey. That West Coast cat has four left paws. Bailey. His only dance move is sleeping. Bailey. His go-to move is literally laying down.

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Sparky. (It’s a) cringe-worthy performance he puts on. Hopefully he’ll find his rhythm someday. SJ Sharkie. In his defense, he has shark fins. I think that is a handicap to being a good dancer; I don’t know, I’m not a fish. Just a warning to everyone, do not misspell his name. You don’t want to know why. Not going to point paws here, but there are a few of us that definitely avoid the dances at all costs. Best athlete Comments: Carlton, despite being shaped like a giant snowball. Carlton is quite the gymnast. Carlton. Don’t let his size fool you. Carlton. For a bear his height, to pull off a backflip is very impressive. Tommy Hawk. He may not be able to fly, but that bird does have some moves. Tommy Hawk. Could be a pro wrestler. Ask the fan that attacked him in the viral video. NJ Devil. He loves showing off his six-pack. Biggest klutz Comments: Thunderbug. Super-twitchy with all that electricity in his body. Thunderbug. He’s big and he’s drawn to lights. Gritty. Dude falls on ice during his debut into the NHL. Victor E. Green always seems to be falling down. Sparky the Dragon. He has a hockey stick for a tail and the longest snout you have ever seen. Seriously, he’s like a bull in a china shop. If he doesn’t take you out with his hockey-stick rear end, his muzzle will clock you silly. I’ve never seen him breathe fire, but I assume he can since he’s a dragon. That’s like a rule to being a dragon, right? Fin. It’s like he’s a whale or something. Best hockey player Comments: Howler. That desert dog is pretty smooth. Bailey had some slick goals at the All-Star game. Blades carries the East and never comes off the ice for a change. Blades. Did you see his breakaway dangle at All-Star weekend? Blades scored a few goals this year at All-Star, but maybe he could be a candidate for the cherry-picker nomination, as well. Honorable mention to Howler. His skillset on the ice has gotten dramatically better the last few seasons. Clearly puts the time in to work on his game. Dirtiest hockey player Comments: Fin. He has some fishy techniques.

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Sharkie. He’s a big bully Sharkie. When you don’t have skill, you have to resort to dirty play. Toss-up between Fin and SJ Sharkie. You can’t trust those water creatures. Stinger. He knows why. Hunter. The name speaks for itself. Biggest cherry-picker Comments: Fin. He beaches himself in the other team’s zone. Fin. He’s currently somewhere waiting at the blue line. Fin. Guaranteed 99 percent of the other mascots say the same. Fin. I don’t think he has ever skated in the defensive zone. I often wonder how the West stays onside when he is out for a shift. It’s truly a wonder. Stinger. Always seems to be waiting back for his “opportunity.” Blades or Howler… but definitely Blades. NJ. And he still can’t score. Who would win a mascot battle royal? Comments: Tommy Hawk, obviously. Gritty. He’s big, plays dirty and he’s from Philly. Mick E. Moose. He’s the mascot enforcer. NJ Devil. You see the muscles on him when he takes his jersey off? Can’t we all just get along? But if I had to say, I wouldn’t want to be in a fight with Sharkie. He’s a shark! We are lovers, not fighters. Everyone would hug. Wouldn’t happen, Sharkie and Bailey would get into a cat fight, the rest of us would watch for a while and eventually go find something better to do. They would eventually text us to see where we went. Most underrated Comments: Louie! His smile will light up any room, his goofy antics will make anyone happy, and he is a defending Stanley Cup champion. He can dance, he can play the saxophone, and seems to always be in a great mood, no matter what. I love that big blue bear. Bernie from the Avalanche. Even though he’s a dumb dog, his videos are great. Bernie’s just good at what he does. Stinger. For an oversized bug, he’s pretty athletic and a decent dancer. He’d probably get more notoriety if he wasn’t from Columbus. The gator angel: Sparky. Spartacat. His lip-sync game is incredible.

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Nordy sneaks in under the radar, but that mullet is golden. Most overrated Comments: LOL. Gritty, obviously. Gritty. Guaranteed 100 percent of the other mascots say the same. Gritty. Love the kid, but he gets worshipped for stuff that we all do (popcorn dumps, cakes/pies to the face, etc.). Gritty. He does deserve some of the attention, (but) he’s definitely the league’s favorite son. In all honesty, he does an awesome job performing for the Flyers faithful and his online content is funny, too. I respect the big guy’s work but I also think there are other mascots left in the dark who are just as skillful and funny. I’m happy Gritty is part of our NHL mascot group. I just believe others deserve similar accolades that are thrown too loosely to the orange googly-eyed dude. Best on social media Comments: Gnash. That’s one funny and quick-witted cat. You should hear what he isn’t allowed to post. That’s a tough one, I think it changes from time to time, right now I think Bailey is putting out some amazing videos. Bailey. There’s no way I could be as consistent at posting as he is. Gritty: He delivers in that department. Gritty. I hate to even say his name because his ego will blow up bigger than it already is. He does have some great content, though. Some guys don’t even have accounts. Isn’t it 2020? If you’re making me pick one, though, I’d have to go with Bailey. I always know when there is a police chase in L.A. thanks to that sassy . Most obnoxious on the group’s Facebook page Comments: Sharkie. So many memes that are not funny. Must be a West Coast thing. (Sharkie’s) not obnoxious, he just loves a good meme. It’s probably a 29-way tie, but I’ll go with SJ Sharkie. Sharkie: Mr. One-upper! What happens in the group stays in the group. We can’t tell you ALL the fun secrets everyone wants to know. There’s a Facebook page? If you were forced to switch teams, which mascot would you want to be? Comments: Bailey. He’s utilized a lot in his organization and with the team. Gnash has a good gig, Nashville is also a pretty fun town and when you get away from the downtown area I could see it being a nice place to dig holes. I’d get homesick though.

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Emphasis on the word forced, because I truly never want to leave (but) the Canadiens because Youppi! Is a two-sport legend in hockey and baseball and I love poutine! Wild Wing. I could go to Disneyland every day. Why would I want to be anybody but me? Best non-hockey mascot Comments: Burnie. That dude is crazy. Benny the Bull. Absolute legend. I always enjoy seeing what Benny the Bull is up to. He makes me chuckle at all the things he gets into. I look to Benny the Bull for inspiration when I’m drawing a blank. If all 29 mascots were stranded in the middle of the forest, who would emerge as the leader? Comments: I think Nordy would. He is “a Wild,” whatever that is. Bailey. Hate to even say it because he’s another one with an inflated head, but hey, when you’re “king of the jungle,” I’m sure he’d be just as comfortable in a forest. It would just be one constant disagreement/argument. My guess is mascots would resort to their divisions and try to survive in smaller groups. This would likely lead to divisional battles and survival would go to the fittest. Sparky. Can make fires and eat basically anything. Sadly no one, we would all butt heads and run in opposite directions. It’s hard to organize this group. Sharkie, but not because anybody wanted him to. Leader? Your guess is as good as mine. I think Stormy would keep us alive though. Let’s just say, we aren’t making it out of that forest. Does Al The Octopus count as a mascot? Comments: Hell, no. Nope. Shouldn’t even exist. He hangs from a ceiling. Get rid of him. Chandeliers aren’t mascots. Never met the guy. If he is a mascot, he’s the only introverted mascot, for sure. Does Al make hospital visits? Walk in community parades? Visit schools? It’s a no from me. Is he at the All-Star Game? I think that answers your question. Kind of? Maybe? But not really? Living as a fictional character since 1952 doesn’t help its credibility in the mascot room at All-Star weekend. Bring Al the Octopus to life and then we can maybe have this discussion. Come on, Detroit! Is a hot dog a sandwich?

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Will the Rangers ever have a mascot? Comments: Nah, no chance. What would you make it? A big apple? A park ranger? Probably not. NYC isn’t big on mascots. Look at all the teams that don’t have one. Get it together, New York! Probably not, but they should. It should be a horse named Big Apples. It should be a two-person suit and the front and back guy are constantly fighting in a strong New York accent. “I’m walking here!” “Why do I always have to be in back, it stinks back here!” I hope so. We mascots are a great way for a team to have an ambassador that can have an amazing interaction with anyone, anywhere we go. Whether they are a hockey fan or not one yet, a mascot can form a lasting hockey memory with them. Do the Rangers hate fun? Comments: Yes. Have you been to Madison Square Garden? Fun, fur, clean air — all of the above. Yes, and their younger fans and community are missing out. A mascot can bring them in early and visit schools for those that might never experience an opportunity to go to a Rangers game. Their loss! You wouldn’t think since it’s New York, the city that doesn’t sleep. But when it comes to having a mascot, I guess they do hate fun. Party poopers. The Rangers hate most things, and fun is definitely one of them. They love losing, though! That’s a good question. I have no way of knowing because I only talk with other mascots and they don’t have one. They clearly aren’t paying attention to the 29 other teams that do have one. Hello, McFly? Nah, Every team has its own traditions. What’s fun for one city may not make sense for others. Should all mascots be required to wear pants? Comments: Yes, that’s so gross. Have some manners. Absolutely not! Winnie the Pooh, most of the Looney Toons, Donald Duck, Yogi Bear — I think I’ve said enough. Definitely not. If you require a mascot to do something, they will most likely do the opposite. I don’t want to see that. Who am I to judge? Maybe they can’t afford them or maybe they like the extra attention. But I’m not a member of the no-pants party. Maybe institute a casual Friday where pants are optional. Otherwise, yes. Pants are overrated. The last time I checked, America is a free country. That being said, put some pants on! Do bears in the forest wear pants? Do dogs at home wear pants? Do you wear pants? I hope you answered yes to at least one of those questions. Pants or no pants, just do what makes you happy.

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The Athletic / Pronman: Top 31 NHL Draft prospects of the past five years, 2020 edition By Corey Pronman – June 24, 2020

Each year, I rank the very best NHL Draft prospects of the last five years, using the perspective of when these players were draft-eligible and ignoring what has transpired since then. It is fun to see where players stack up over the years, but also gives readers perspective on the value of the top prospects in the 2020 draft class. What’s important to emphasize is these are my evaluations at the time of the draft – not now. So jumping to conclusions like “Both Nico Hischier and Nolan Patrick are better than Elias Pettersson” or “how in the world do you think Jesse Puljujarvi is better than Andrei Svechnikov” are incorrect, unless discussing them in past tense. Obviously there will be egg on my face in several instances, particularly in 2017 when I wasn’t super high on Cale Makar or Pettersson heading into the draft, or in 2019 with Kirby Dach, as my rankings of nearly every one of these draft classes became substantially different as we got new information on these players. While I try my absolute best to view these prospects through the perspective of how I viewed them as draft prospects, it is obviously hard to battle hindsight. I made some small tweaks to the rankings based on how I’ve changed how I evaluate defensemen, but it doesn’t affect the rankings significantly. In terms of tiers, I view Patrik Laine through Jack Hughes as the first tier, and Quinton Byfield through Svechnikov as a minor tier difference before the last group. Breakdown by draft: 2016: Six players 2017: Six players 2018: Six players 2019: Seven players 2020: Six players Patrik Laine, 2016 draft (second overall, Winnipeg): Laine was one of the most dominant non-Connor McDavid/Sidney Crosby U18 players I ever saw. He was a top player at the , world juniors and world championship level. He showed a tremendous combination of skill, hockey sense, finishing ability and physicality, even if he wasn’t the quickest. In 2019-20, he bounced back into a top player, although he still pales behind the player I ranked No. 2 in that draft. Auston Matthews, 2016 draft (first overall, Toronto): Matthews’ path in his draft season, as a late birthdate who went to , is still a route some wonder if others will copy. It seems to have worked for him, as Matthews is a dominant force and one of the very best players in the league. He’s extremely skilled, and he has a special shot. He’s not a perfectly well-rounded player or an elite burner, but he would have cleared 50 goals in a full season. Rasmus Dahlin, 2018 draft (first overall, Buffalo): Dahlin was one of the best modern era defense prospects to enter the draft. He looked like a future star in his draft season and in his first NHL season. His second season was a little rockier; but even in a season where he wasn’t amazing, he still had 40 points in 59 games as a 19-year-old. The offense with Dahlin has never been in question. His skill level and offensive IQ are amazing. Learning how to defend at the NHL pace has been an adjustment. He’s still

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so young, and he has been one of the best teenage defensemen in the league’s history. He could pop in the next few years and become a force. Alexis Lafreniere, 2020 draft: Lafreniere is the projected No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming draft after another amazing season where he went back to back as the CHL player of the year. Lafreniere has elite skill and hockey sense. And while the speed of the league may test him initially, he will be able to handle the physicality of the level. He has the makings of a future star in the league. Jack Hughes, 2019 draft (first overall, New Jersey): Hughes looked like a monster coming out of the USNTDP with tremendous speed, skill and creativity, showing the ability to become a top offensive driver in the league. He didn’t blow down doors right away, but I still think he can with time. You could see there was a physical adjustment for him, but I liked how he often created plays even though he just didn’t finish. Will he become an NHL star? I could see why you would decrease the probability from a year ago, and I would as well, but I see way too much talent and wouldn’t deviate too much from my initial projection. Quinton Byfield, 2020 draft: Byfield tore up the OHL as a young 17-year-old with a 48-goal and 124- point full season pace. He projects near the top of this list because of how many attributes he brings to the table. He’s 6-foot-4, a great skater, has elite hands, and can make and finish plays at a high level. He looks like a player who could be entrenched as a No. 1 center in a team’s lineup for many years. Kaapo Kakko, 2019 draft (second overall, N.Y. Rangers): Kakko looked like a stud coming out of Finland last season because of the great skill and power in his game, which led to a lot of success versus men. He had his struggles in the NHL as a rookie, particularly with the speed of the level. Kakko is extremely skilled and intelligent, so I think he will find a way to adjust and become a very important player for his team, but gaining a step will be important for him to reach that top echelon of NHL production. Jesse Puljujarvi, 2016 draft (fourth overall, Edmonton): This one isn’t aging well. I thought Puljujarvi was going to be a monster coming out of his draft. I saw a great athlete with a combination of size and speed to go along with a high skill level and the ability to score at the higher levels. Puljujarvi played all season in Liiga and remained a divisive topic among NHL scouts. I – stubbornly – still think he can become a useful, if not a good, NHL player. But his sense and play off the puck were bigger issues than I thought they would be. Andrei Svechnikov, 2018 draft (second overall, Carolina): Svechnikov has passed test after test from his time in junior to his current standing in the game. Now in his second NHL season, he has emerged as one of the top young players in the league and delivered on his promise as the second-overall pick. He’s a big forward with a high skill level who can play a finesse or power game at the NHL pace. If the hockey thing doesn’t work out for some reason, he could have a future as a lacrosse player, as well. Quinn Hughes, 2018 draft (seventh overall, Vancouver): Hughes was No. 5 on my draft board but, as mentioned above, I’ve had to adjust how I approach defensemen, especially small defensemen, and Hughes is a part of the reason for that. So under my new philosophy, he would have been the No. 3 prospect on my board. I loved him in his draft year, but I should have been a bit higher, which has played out in the progression of his career thus far. He looks like a long-time star in the league because of his elite skating and offensive creativity. He’s small and may never be an elite defender, but he has held his own in that regard. Filip Zadina, 2018 draft (sixth overall, Detroit): Zadina had a strong second professional season in North America after a so-so rookie campaign. He showed more flashes of the great skill and sense I saw when he was in junior. Scouts still express concerns about the speed and physicality of his game – concerns I

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probably didn’t take as seriously when he was a draft-eligible in 2018 and my No. 3 prospect. I still like Zadina a lot and think he’s going to score a lot in the NHL, but I think it’s arguable that I overrated him. Bowen Byram, 2019 draft (fourth overall, Colorado): Byram was very impressive in his draft season, especially in the second half and into the playoffs where he was the Giants’ best player as they came within inches of a title. His elite skating stands out consistently, and he’s a dynamic offensive player. Some scouts still think he’s a projected top NHL player; some think he wasn’t as impressive this past season, which I think is fair. For now, I would say his trajectory is mostly on track from 12 months ago when he was a top-five pick. Alex Turcotte, 2019 draft (fifth overall, Los Angeles): Turcotte had a good but not amazing season after his draft year, turning pro following his freshman season at Wisconsin. I was very high on Turcotte going into his draft. I saw a very quick, skilled and competitive center with a rich statistical and international track record. Some scouts were more skeptical of him as a top-five pick – where I slotted him and where he went – due to a lack of elite offensive skill, which in 2019-20 showed to be more reasonable. I still like Turcotte a lot, but I don’t think he would go top five in a redraft. Some scouts are still on the bandwagon and hold on to hope he can regain that form, but most aren’t. Jesperi Kotkaniemi, 2018 draft (third overall, Montreal): Kotkaniemi was a top-five prospect on my final 2018 list. I liked his skill and offensive hockey sense a lot. I thought he could be a driver in the NHL, even with so-so skating. I liked his trajectory and how he ended his season, even without a rich statistical history. He had a great first NHL season and a rocky second one, and he ended up being sent to the AHL where he averaged a point per game. With his size, skill and vision, Kotkaniemi could still be a very good player and help a top-six, maybe even a top line. But given he lacks dangerous NHL quickness, he may not live up to that third-overall billing. Clayton Keller, 2016 draft (seventh overall, Arizona): I was very high on Keller coming out of the USNTDP after two great years with the program. He looked like he could drive offense in the NHL due to his speed, skill and great hockey sense. The trajectory the two years following his draft looked on that path, but he’s stagnated a bit since. I still love the talent, it’s in part why he got a large extension from the . But I may have underrated the physical obstacles he was going to face in the NHL. Nico Hischier, 2017 draft (first overall, New Jersey): Hischier was my No. 1 ranked prospect in 2017, but not someone I was super high on, as I was pessimistic on the class as a whole. That evaluation may have been different if I had Cale Makar, Elias Pettersson and Miro Heiskanen rated higher, as they should have been. I did see Hischier as a very skilled and smart player, and a good enough skater to become a very good NHL player, but not a star. He’s lived up to my expectations but hasn’t exceeded them. He’s an important player for New Jersey but hasn’t taken that next step. Cole Caufield, 2019 draft (15th overall, Montreal): I was a big fan of Caufield coming out of the USNTDP as he set all kinds of offensive records, displayed a ton of skill, had a special shot, and looked like a true top prospect even with his lack of size and truly elite speed. In his first season at Wisconsin, he was one of the best freshmen in college and a top player in his conference. The physicality of the higher level pushed him, and he wasn’t as dominant as he was in junior. I wouldn’t have him top-five in a redraft, but he wouldn’t be far behind. Tim Stutzle, 2020 draft: Stutzle is my No. 3 prospect for the 2020 draft after a great season in the DEL. He is a very quick and skilled player who showed he could skate and create at the pro pace. He has top- line potential and could be in the league as soon as next season – if eligible to sign in the NHL. Pierre-Luc Dubois, 2016 draft (third overall, Columbus): Dubois was a controversial pick at No. 3 in 2016, in part because he was picked over Puljujarvi and didn’t have a toolkit that jumped off the page.

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Dubois is very smart and competitive, and has become a reliable top NHL center. He’s proved some of his detractors wrong by becoming a very good NHL player, but some scouts still don’t see the upside and skill of a true upper-echelon player. Nolan Patrick, 2017 draft (second overall, Philadelphia): Patrick’s analysis hasn’t changed since the last time I wrote this since he missed the entire season because of a migraine disorder. The former second- overall pick has had some bumps since entering the league because of his health and his inconsistent performance, but there is no denying the skill and hockey sense. His hockey future is still to be determined. Gabriel Vilardi, 2017 draft (11th overall, Los Angeles): When he was a draft-eligible, I thought Vilardi was a highly skilled and intelligent forward with size and power who wasn’t the quickest but had so many other plus tools he’d overcome his skating. What happened after was a sequence of injuries that’s made it hard to predict what his future will be. When Vilardi finally came back midseason, he looked promising, making plays and looking like a very good young player – but arguably not an elite one. Lucas Raymond, 2020 draft: Raymond’s season wasn’t typical of someone who gets this high a slot over the five-year span as a prospect. He didn’t light it up in ’s top pro league, but he remains a top name because of his incredible skill and hockey sense, and what scouts know he can do when he gains strength. His underage profile is right up there with some of the very best in this group. Oliver Wahlstrom, 2018 draft (11th overall, N.Y. Islanders): Wahlstrom was one of the most productive and best goal scorers in USNTDP history, and someone I thought could be a top goal scorer in the NHL after scoring 48 in his draft season. In the two seasons since, Wahlstrom has scored 22 goals between college and the AHL. He looked more promising this past season than the previous one. I think he’s very skilled and smart, and does have a high-end shot even if he’s not scoring as much. I didn’t appreciate how much his skating and physicality could hold him back at higher levels, which led to me debatably overrating him in his draft year, even if I do still think he could become a top-six NHL forward. Matthew Tkachuk, 2016 draft (sixth overall, Calgary): Tkachuk is a star in the league. He’s got great skill and hockey sense, and he’s a pain to play against. He lives in the tough areas of the ice and shows no fear of playing a hard style of game, which also means making a lot of friends on opposing teams. I didn’t have him rated as a future star in his draft year, just a very good player, because of his average skating. But he’s shown that his other attributes are just so good that it hasn’t held him back. Cody Glass, 2017 draft (sixth overall, Vegas): Glass was a top player in junior at the time of his draft, showing tremendous playmaking ability and NHL level skill. He was great at that level for years and I rated him highly, but I always had a nagging concern about how he will he would do when the games got quicker and harder. The NHL was an adjustment for those reasons, even if I do think he looked promising at times when healthy. I still like the player a lot, but he will need to play quicker to live up to where I slotted him as a 17-year-old. Trevor Zegras, 2019 draft (ninth overall, Anaheim): Zegras was my No. 1 ranked prospect at the midseason mark, and while he wasn’t the clear No. 1, I haven’t seen much evidence to move me off that position. He’s an exceptionally creative playmaker who has the potential to be one of the top passers in the league. Zegras does need to get quicker and work on his game off the puck, but I still see a top prospect on track to become a great NHL player. Nick Suzuki, 2017 draft (13th overall, Vegas): Suzuki was a top player in junior year after year, including in his draft season when he dazzled with his skill, vision and finishing ability. Concerns on Suzuki have revolved around his size and skating, especially the latter. He showed as a rookie NHLer he could play in

48 a top-six and look the part, even without blazing speed, due to his smarts and his willingness to work to win battles. He looks on track and I remain high on him. Dylan Cozens, 2019 draft (seventh overall, Buffalo): Cozens had another great year in the WHL, as one of the top players in the league and a key player for Canada’s gold-winning team at the world juniors. His stock has held steady. He’s not a truly elite prospect, but he’s right in that next group as someone who could become a first-line forward in the NHL because of his great speed, power, scoring ability and playmaking ability. Cole Perfetti, 2020 draft: Perfetti had a terrific draft season, with a 41-goal and 124-point full season pace. When you get to this point of this type of list, the players are still very talented, as Perfetti has a lot of skill and elite vision, but he is also 5-foot-11 and has average skating ability, which is why some NHL scouts think expectations need to be a bit reserved. I’m a big fan but he’ll be an interesting litmus test for exactly how far skill and IQ can carry a player. Alexander Holtz, 2020 draft: Holtz had one of the best U18 seasons by a SHL player, being a useful scorer and playing regular minutes. He has a ton of skill and an elite shot. He isn’t ranked higher because he could use an extra step, but there is no denying he has all the other tools to become a very successful NHL player. Miro Heiskanen, 2017 draft (third overall, Dallas): I liked Heiskanen a lot in his draft season, but I should have been a lot higher in hindsight. It’s been part of my evolution on how to evaluate defensemen, learning to appreciate players like him who are super smart and very mobile but don’t have a lot of flash in their game. Since his draft, he’s ascended into one of the best young players in the league and a player who logs heavy minutes in all situations.

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The Athletic / By the numbers: The best draft picks of the salary cap era By Dom Luszczyszyn – June 24, 2020

As the NHL Draft progresses, expectations diminish. With the first overall pick, teams can usually expect a superstar. With a fifth-round pick, well, they’re just hoping that player can make the NHL someday. The expectation for each pick can be measured quantitively and with the benefit of hindsight, it’s possible to showcase which players have most exceeded expectations. To me, those are the best draft picks as they take into account the difficulties of finding such a player at a certain draft slot. For example, John Tavares is probably the best player from the 2009 draft and an above average first overall pick. But Anders Lee, drafted by the Islanders 150 spots later, is arguably the better draft choice because of the difficulty of finding a player of his calibre that deep into the draft. Tavares’ 19.6 wins of total value over his first seven seasons (based on his Game Score Value Added, or GSVA) is double Lee’s 9.6, but the expectation was that Tavares would deliver 17.7 while Lee was only expected to deliver 0.2. The odds were significantly longer for Lee and that he was able to establish himself makes him a more impressive draft choice. You do not have to agree with that ideology. Best pick can mean most value, too. But for the purposes of this article I feel the definition established above is far more interesting. To put everyone on a level playing field, we’re also only looking at a player’s first seven seasons to account for team control. Some players can be viewed as more valuable for what they did after that but this way offers a direct comparison to each draft pick’s value. Without a June draft to keep us occupied, this week feels like a perfect time to look back on past drafts to figure out which players delivered most relative to their draft slot. Broken down into different draft sections, these are the best draft choices of the salary cap era between 2005-2016 (it was still too soon for 2017-2019). For players who played in seasons where GSVA could not be calculated (2005-2007), values were estimated based on point totals from those seasons. For players who have not yet played seven seasons, future GSVA was estimated based on projections and those figures are italicized. Players who have played fewer than three seasons were excluded. Due to a lack of GSVA for goalies, Evolving Hockey’s WAR was used in its place. Top draft picks of the salary cap era Teams expect to land a franchise cornerstone inside the top 10. But based on historic trends only the top pick is really expected to be that, averaging 2.5 wins per season over their first seven seasons. And only the top seven picks can be reasonably expected to provide even one win per season. What that means is that there’s room for error even in the earliest stages of the draft – and room for home run picks as well. In the salary cap era, no top-10 pick has delivered more relative to his draft slot than Jonathan Toews, who would’ve been an amazing No. 1 pick and is an even bigger steal at third overall. From his second season, Toews was an elite force on his way to becoming one of the league’s best players. While his point totals weren’t as dazzling as his peers, he made up for it with his supreme play- driving ability, carrying a 58 percent expected goals rate over his first seven seasons. Toews peaked in 2012-13 where he would’ve been worth six wins over an 82-game season. He won the Selke Trophy that year and should’ve been in contention for the Hart Trophy.

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At the tail end of the top 10 is another third overall pick, Leon Draisaitl. His career started slower and he lacks Toews’ two-way dominance, which explains the discrepancy in value, but Draisaitl was still a stellar pick at No. 3 in 2014. Draisaitl skyrocketed to superstardom after a trying first season and has been an elite force now for four seasons and counting. Like Toews, Draisaitl peaked in his sixth season, winning the Art Ross (and potentially the Hart) with an incredible offensive season. A few spots above Draisaitl is teammate and current best player in the world Connor McDavid, who is just under the former best player in the world, Sidney Crosby. Both players unsurprisingly have the highest value in their first seven seasons of any player in the salary cap era with an identical 28.8 wins. It’s a fun coincidence but you’d have to imagine Crosby would be much higher if not for three seasons cut short by injury, while the same goes for McDavid’s first season. I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes in higher than his final two projected seasons too as the Oilers begin turning into a legitimate contender (and he figures out his defensive game). Both players are without a doubt the two best first overall picks of the salary cap era. That they make it onto a list of best picks is a testament to how valuable they’ve been. They’re not the only first overall picks, though, as 2016 top pick Auston Matthews squeaks in mostly due to my model being very high on his future output. It’s not often an elite goal scorer is also a strong defender. His teammate, Mitch Marner, also makes the list and is perhaps the biggest surprise as he’s behind only Toews. Marner was in a stacked draft class featuring McDavid and Jack Eichel but in a normal year he had top pick upside drawing comparisons to Patrick Kane. He’s showed that so far in his first four seasons including back-to-back 90-point pace campaigns and he’s projected to match Kane’s first seven season output of 21.9 wins. Just above Matthews is Matthew Tkachuk, taken five spots later. While he may be the only player who hasn’t had elite value in a season, he has potential to hit that mark over the next few years. Goalies will come up frequently in each section as they often bring the most value. While it would be crazy to take a goalie with a top-five pick with the knowledge of the position’s volatility, there’s no doubt that Carey Price delivered. (And his MVP season was in Year 8 of his career, so after our seven- year cutoff.) Rounding out the top five are two of the most underappreciated centres of their era, Logan Couture and Nicklas Backstrom. Couture is the lowest pick of the bunch here taken ninth overall and while he wasn’t as productive as the others on this list, he was an excellent play-driver with a 58 percent expected goals rate in his first seven seasons. In that time frame, that ranked fifth in the league. Aside from Crosby and McDavid, Backstrom was the only other player in the top 10 to put up an elite-calibre season in his first year and though his first seven seasons were a bit less consistent than others on the list, his highs were very high. No defenders made the cut among the top 10 picks. Forwards are generally more valuable, the top 10 is where teams generally find the best forwards and teams are a bit hesitant trusting young defencemen. Dougie Hamilton, Zach Werenski, Mikhail Sergachev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Alex Pietrangelo lead the way there. Top 30 picks At the bottom of this article is a list of the best draft picks, period, but suffice to say that those taken in the top 10 aren’t well represented. Toews, the top choice above, is 17th overall; it’s a lot easier to hit a home run on a pick when expectations are lower. That starts now with the best first-round pick of the salary cap era and seventh best pick overall, David Pastrnak. The biggest difference between the best top 10 picks and the rest of the draft is that most of them were immediately good right away. Only two weren’t top-line talents in Year 1 (Marner was right on the

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cusp). For later picks, it takes some time for them to grow into elite talents. Pastrnak made the NHL in his first season post-draft, a rarity for a 25th overall pick, and scored at a 48-point pace. That’s a strong showing in 14 minutes per night with little power play time. Opportunity can make a big difference, though, and in his third season Pastrnak was elevated to the league’s best line and on the top power play. He blossomed in the role and turned into an elite player. He hasn’t looked back, peaking this past year as a legitimate MVP candidate and a Rocket Richard Trophy winner scoring at a 56-goal pace. Vladimir Tarasenko, another elite right winger, had a similar trajectory to Pastrnak in terms of total value but was taken nine spots earlier. Two other Bruins join Pastrnak. Tuukka Rask, originally drafted by Toronto and acquired via trade, has been one of the best goalies of his era and though it took some time for him to wrestle the net away from Tim Thomas he was sensational as a starter when he finally did, posting three elite seasons. More surprising perhaps is the presence of three-year veteran Charlie McAvoy. I’m not sure if I should’ve even included him given his lack of playing experience but he’s been that good in his first three years. McAvoy looked elite from Day 1, immediately stepping in as a strong two-way defender that can shut down top lines with ease. McAvoy has been worth 7.1 wins in his first three seasons, a remarkable rate that ranks as the best of any defender in the salary cap era. If he keeps it up, there’s no doubt he should deserve his spot here. The top 10 ends with two of the best offensive defencemen of the salary cap era, Erik Karlsson and John Carlson. If not for a slow start to his career defensively and an injury-plagued 2012-13, Karlsson would rank much higher as he was excellent from Year 3 onward becoming arguably the league’s best defenceman. It’s still hard to fathom he didn’t win the Norris Trophy in 2015-16, his seventh and best season. Carlson will likely be a Norris finalist this season after scoring an exceptional 75 points in 69 games. Keeping up with the Capitals flavour is their former goaltender Semyon Varlamov, who vaults up this list due to two elite seasons after being traded from Washington, as well as current Capitals forward T.J. Oshie, who was drafted by the Blues. Oshie is the only player who didn’t provide any elite seasons but his consistently strong play coupled with the lessened expectations of a 24th overall pick means he makes the cut. Oshie has been an excellent player at 5-on-5 and that was evident in his first season. Meanwhile, Anze Kopitar and Claude Giroux are two of the best players from the salary cap era. Kopitar came in with higher expectations as the No. 11 pick and though he put up some nice scoring totals in his first two seasons, it wasn’t until his third year where he started to look like a complete player. He ended up becoming one of the game’s strongest two-way centres and has won two Selke Trophies. Giroux doesn’t have any hardware but it only took three full seasons for him to establish himself as an elite presence in the NHL, topped off by a 93-point campaign in 2011-12. Exclude that “first” season where he only played two games and he jumps up to third on the list with an extra 2.6 wins of value. Top 100 picks Over the next 70 draft slots is where you’ll find the three best draft picks of the last decade featuring three players delivering 23-25 wins of value when the expectation was just one or less. All three are in the top 10 for total value in a player’s first seven years in the salary cap era, surrounded mostly by top five picks (there were 12 in the top 20). Two of them are unsurprising and they were both drafted by the same team, the Tampa Bay Lightning: Nikita Kucherov, selected 58th overall and Brayden Point, selected 79th overall. That Tampa Bay was able to find two players of this calibre so late in the draft speaks volumes to their drafting and development; it’s no wonder the Lighting are the class of the league. Both players had respectable rookie seasons but it was as sophomores when they really took off as elite players. Kucherov only

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continued growing from there, improving in every season up until his sixth where he led the league in scoring with 128 points and won the Hart Trophy. It was his third straight season providing over four wins. Point just finished his fourth season but it’s hard not seeing him keeping up his elite pace over the next three seasons. Through his first four seasons, he’s actually ahead of Kucherov in value over the same time frame, hitting the 90-point mark a season before Kucherov did. The other player, somehow ranking ahead of both Kucherov and Point, is a lot more surprising: goaltender Frederik Andersen. As stated earlier, goalies would come up frequently on these lists as they generally provide the most value. That applies here with Andersen, who was excellent in his first three Ducks seasons and added to that in his next three seasons with the Leafs, where according to Evolving Hockey’s WAR, he ranked first in the league providing 16.4 wins. Holding the fort on a very weak defensive team will do that, and though Andersen has been a picture of his consistency in his career, it does feel like WAR may overrate his contributions and that of goalies in general. While three other goalies make the list, the reason Andersen grades out better is because his career started stronger and he was more consistent in his first seven seasons. Holtby was taken a little later than Andersen and didn’t play much in his first two seasons but at his best in Years 5-7 he was one of the league’s top goalies. John Gibson had an excellent three-year peak highlighted by a 6.7-win season that ranks as the best on this list but he was also taken the highest and fell off a cliff in his most recent season. Jonathan Quick rounds out the top goalies and he might rank a lot higher if playoff value was included. The only defenceman on the list is Roman Josi, who should be this year’s Norris Trophy favourite after an incredible season where he was dominant at both ends of the ice. Josi has been adored by my model for much of his career, playing at an elite rate from his third season onward. This doesn’t even include his 2019-20 campaign which has no doubt been his best season. Rounding out the top five is Sebastian Aho, a steal at 35th overall in 2015 which looks to be one of the best draft classes in recent memory. After lighting up Liiga with a point per game in his post-draft season, Aho had a strong rookie showing before blossoming into an elite talent. He’s a player who can score at a point per game in the NHL while also being one of the game’s strongest play-drivers, a key to Carolina’s puck possession identity. Perhaps the weirdest trajectory belongs to , who was taken 44th overall in 2005. The only player drafted in the cap era to have a stronger rookie season than Stastny’s 3.7 wins was the first overall pick that year, Crosby. Stastny put up 78 points and looked even better the following year with 71 points in 66 games. Given those electric first two seasons, one would expect Stastny to be one of the game’s biggest stars, but he was never able to match that output. Lastly, there’s Crosby’s current wingman Jake Guentzel, who was already a big-time playoff performer – a key cog in the Penguins’ 2017 Stanley Cup win – before putting up his first big regular season performance during the 2018-19 season where he scored 40 goals and 76 points. He proved that was no fluke this past season playing at an even better pace before his season was derailed by injury. The rest Outside the top 100, it gets much harder to find elite difference-makers. That’s evident by the expected pick value where every player is under 0.5 wins over seven seasons. Getting an NHL player this late in the draft is a big win as the most likely outcome is a player who doesn’t make the big leagues. Getting an award-calibre player is almost a miracle. Many of the players on the list above aren’t exactly consistent elite talents but they’re still huge steals for where each team drafted them.

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Connor Hellebuyck is at the top of the list and one of the top five draft picks of the decade thanks to the immense values of goalies. He looks likely to win the Vezina Trophy this year and may even get some Hart Trophy love for the way the Jets stayed competitive this year despite a depleted roster. Aside from Hellebuyck, there’s Art Ross winner and Hart Trophy finalist , his Stars teammate John Klingberg, who should’ve been a Norris Trophy finalist in 2017-18, last year’s Selke runner-up Mark Stone and Johnny Gaudreau, who finished fourth in Hart Trophy voting last season. At times, they’ve each been among the league’s very best players, which is exceptionally rare for players taken in the back half of the draft. Brendan Gallagher has never been up for any award consideration but his first seven seasons have been on par with those stars according to GSVA thanks to consistently strong play. He’s not a big point producer but few players have influenced 5-on-5 play as well as he has and he’s one of the game’s best net-front players. Patric Hornqvist and Ondrej Palat aren’t considered elite players either but they both have some very strong seasons on contending teams despite being among the last players taken in their drafts. Now that’s defying the odds. Finally, two of the league’s more “underrated” defencemen, Jaccob Slavin and Jared Spurgeon, make the cut. Both players seem to be getting their due this season after excellent campaigns with some slight Norris ballot buzz. They’re amazing two-way defenders that can drive play against tough competition and great representations of the modern shutdown defenceman.

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Sportsnet.ca / How the NHL Draft Lottery has changed over the years By Rory Boylen – June 24, 2020

The futures of some NHL teams will be determined this Friday night when the first part of the 2020 NHL Draft Lottery takes place. The second part of it, well, may not happen at all. That’s because this year’s version of the lottery has been set up in a unique way to involve 15 teams before eight of them have even had their seasons come to an end. We will know what the top three will look like after Friday’s draw, but we may not know which teams specifically will be picking there. More on that a bit later. Though this year’s change is likely a one-off adjustment in response to the COVID-19 season interruption, the lottery has come in a few different forms since it was first instituted in 1995. Where at first it was much more likely for a last place team to hang on to the No. 1 overall spot, nowadays that team could slide all the way to No. 4. It’s become a much more exciting and made for TV event than it was in the early days. As we look forward to some action through the lottery this Friday night (which you can watch on Sportsnet starting at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. PT) here is a brief look at the history of the NHL Draft Lottery and how it’s changed over the years. 1995 – 2012: The start of the entry draft lottery While NHL drafts have been going on since the 1960s, the yearly draft lottery as we generally know it didn’t begin until the mid-’90s. In 1995 the NHL instituted the lottery for the first time in an attempt to dissuade teams from tanking for the top pick. Prior to this, the draft order was determined by regular season finish, with the first round going in inverse order of the standings. So it was more exciting than before because now there was theatre around the top of the draft, but movement was still limited. Teams couldn’t move up more than four spots in the draft order, so the only teams eligible to “win” the first overall pick were the bottom five. Likewise, no team could move down more than one spot from their regular season finish. And in fact, the Los Angeles Kings won that first lottery with the seventh-best odds, so they only moved up to pick No. 3 where they got Aki Berg. Had the lottery rules granted the winner with the first overall pick automatically, the Kings could have gotten Bryan Berard, while the last-place Senators would have fallen to No. 2 and likely ended up with (who was traded to Ottawa before his rookie season anyway). A few other interesting notes from these years… 1998: The Sharks made the playoffs this season, but held Florida’s first-round pick and won the lottery with it. However, the Sharks made a trade deadline deal with the Lightning which allowed Tampa Bay the option to swap first-round picks. After losing the lottery, the Lightning went through with the swap and picked Vincent Lecavalier first overall anyway. 1999: This, of course, was the Sedin draft year where then-Canucks GM Brian Burke worked some trade magic. The Lightning, holders of the first overall pick after the lottery, traded it to Vancouver, who worked a couple of other deals that ultimately landed them at picks two and three, with Atlanta holding No. 1. The Thrashers took Patrik Stefan, the Canucks took the twins and the rest is history.

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2002: Florida won the lottery and the right to choose first overall, but dealt the pick to Columbus and moved down to No. 3. The Blue Jackets took Rick Nash while the Panthers got the guy they wanted anyway, Jay Bouwmeester, at third overall. As part of this swap, the Panthers also had the option to swap first-rounders with Columbus in 2003, but that didn’t happen because… 2003: The Panthers won the lottery again and moved from fourth overall to first. But, for the second year in a row, they traded the first overall pick, this time to Pittsburgh. The Penguins took Marc-Andre Fleury, while Florida selected Nathan Horton third overall (the pick acquired from Pittsburgh in the swap) — which made sense since Florida had at the time. But can you imagine the same team trading the first overall pick in back-to-back seasons today? 2005: In case you forgot, there was no “worst team” in 2005 because there was no season at all. In this draft lottery teams were given one, two or three “balls” based on team success from the previous three seasons. The Penguins were one of the teams with three balls, thus giving them some of the best odds, and they came away with the best player of a generation. 2013 – 2014: Everyone in the lottery has a shot at No. 1 The first major change made to the lottery turned it into a much better “made for TV” event. Now, rather than being limited in how far a team could move up in the order, the winner of the draft lottery would get the first overall pick and every other team would move down one slot. It was now a much more thrilling event. Technically, a team could miss the playoffs by a single point and not be all that bad, then win the lottery and have a shot at acquiring a franchise-altering player for free. This specific format was short lived, but added another layer of intrigue to the proceedings. In 2013, the Florida Panthers finished last in the league but didn’t end up with the first overall pick (no, they didn’t trade it this time). The second-last place won the lottery to leapfrog Florida — the Avalanche took Nathan MacKinnon first overall and the Panthers “settled” for Aleksander Barkov second overall. In 2014 the second-last place team in the league won the lottery again. This time it was Florida with some good lottery luck, as they moved ahead of the . The Panthers took Aaron Ekblad first overall and the Sabres got Sam Reinhart second (Leon Draisaitl went third to Edmonton). 2015: The odds of winning get a little longer for the worst teams To discourage tanking even more, the NHL changed its lottery odds in 2015 to make it a little harder for the bottom-four teams to win it. Prior to this change, the worst team in the league had a 25 per cent chance to win the lottery and the next three teams were at 18.8 per cent, 14.2 per cent and 10.7 per cent. But in 2015 those chances for the top four teams changed to 20 per cent, 13.5 per cent, 11.5 per cent and 9.5 per cent. At the same time, the odds for every other team in the lottery improved somewhat. For example, the eighth-worst team’s odds improved from 3.6 per cent in prior seasons to six per cent in 2015. The team with the longest odds prior to 2015 had a 0.5 per cent chance of winning, but that doubled to one per cent in 2015. This format for the lottery lasted just one season, but the new odds didn’t really come into play. Edmonton, the third-worst team that season, won the lottery with a smaller chance than it would have a year earlier and came away with Connor McDavid. 2016: The top three picks are up for grabs at the lottery To further dissuade tanking — and, heck, make the event that much more entertaining — the NHL changed its lottery again to put even more on the line. Odds remained the same, but rather than having

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a single draw to determine first overall, multiple draws took place to determine the top three picks in the draft. In this new format the last-place Toronto Maple Leafs held on to the first overall pick with their 20 per cent chances, but there was some interesting movement behind them. The , with just a 7.8 per cent chance, wound up with the second overall pick to take Patrik Laine, while fourth-last Columbus wound up moving into the three position where they took Pierre-Luc Dubois. Had the lottery format not changed this year, picks two and three behind Toronto would have gone to Edmonton and Vancouver. 2017: Expansion Vegas gets into the lottery There were no changes to the lottery format in 2017, but the league’s brand new 31st team was involved before playing a game. The Vegas Golden Knights were given the same draft lottery odds as the third-worst team in Arizona — but they ended up falling as far as they could have, all the way to sixth overall. That’s because this lottery brought all kinds of unpredictability. None of the top three selections went to a team in the top three. New Jersey moved from fourth up to first, Philadelphia went from 12th to the second overall pick (with a 2.4 per cent chance) and Dallas moved from eighth to third (with a 6.4 per cent chance). Nico Hischier, Nolan Patrick and Miro Heiskanen were taken with these picks, followed by Cale Makar to Colorado and Elias Pettersson to Vancouver. 2020: A unique lottery during the pandemic How do you conduct a lottery when, a) a full regular season hasn’t been completed and b) the league returns with a 24-team playoff that includes a number of teams that would have otherwise been in the lottery? The league could have decided to have just a seven-team lottery for those top three picks, but chose to involve 15 teams as always. The difference this year is that the lottery could possibly be done in two phases, the first on June 26 and the potential second after the best-of-five play-in round this summer. When that first lottery happens the seven non-playoff teams will be involved, plus eight “placeholder” teams — so it’s possible we’ll walk out of Friday’s draw not knowing who holds a top-three pick. “The seven clubs that did not resume play and the eight qualifying round clubs that do not advance into the playoffs will enter the draft lottery,” Gary Bettman said. “At the time of the first phase draws we won’t know which eight teams won’t advance from the qualifying round, so we have designated temporary placeholders with the odds that the collective group would have had.” If each of the top three draft slots are won by teams that aren’t returning to play this summer, there will be no second phase of the lottery. However, if even one of the placeholders claims a top three position, then a second lottery will be held after eight teams are eliminated from the play-in round to determine who moves up into those positions. In this second lottery, only the eight teams eliminated in the qualifying round will be involved and each of them will have the same odds to move into the top three (12.5 per cent). If more than one placeholder wins a top three spot in the first lottery, further draws will be made. After both of these lotteries are done, the rest of the first round will be slotted in reverse order of regular season points percentage.

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Orlando Sentinel / If you want sports back, wear a mask | Commentary By Mike Bianchi – June 24, 2020

The message at the top of UCF’s football Twitter page lays it on the line bluntly and accurately: “Want to help us go 1 and 0? Wear a mask.” That goes for everybody; not just UCF fans. It goes for every fan base, booster club and supporter group out there. It goes for Florida and Florida State fans. It goes for Orlando Magic and Orlando City fans. It goes for football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer fans. If you want sports to return then do YOUR part. Please, don’t ruin it for everybody. Social distance as much as you can. Don’t stand shoulder to shoulder with 50 other people at a local bar. And wear a damn mask when you go to Publix. It’s not that big of an inconvenience. If you want sports back, Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi says you have to wear a mask in public. And this doesn’t just go for sports fans; it goes for our sports teams, too; teams like the Orlando Pride, who made national news earlier this week for all the wrong reasons. Sadly, the Pride had to withdraw from the NWSL Challenge Cup because of an easily preventable COVID-19 outbreak among team members. The Pride should be a lesson to so many of the twentysomethings out there who don’t seem to realize that their behavior can profoundly impact friends, family, colleagues and teammates. The Pride’s coronavirus outbreak, sources told the Sentinel, was the result of some younger players going to a bar just a few days before they were to leave for the Challenge Cup out in Utah. Pride star Sydney Leroux, one of the older players on the team, a mother of two and the wife of Orlando City star Dom Dwyer, obviously was perturbed with some of her teammates. “I’m heartbroken,” she wrote on Twitter. “The majority of our team & staff worked our asses off to put us in the best position to play the game we love again. Not just for ourselves but for our families, friends, fans & our city. …” Notice how she wrote, “the majority of the team.” Translation: It only takes one infection to spread throughout an entire roster, neighborhood, city, county, state, country and planet. That’s why they call it a global pandemic. Wear a damn mask. For me, as a lifelong sports fan and a longtime Orlandoan, this is not about politics or partisanship; it’s about sports and the economy. Period. As a longtime Orlandoan, I don’t want another personal lockdown and economic meltdown. I want Disney World up and running and filling our hotels and restaurants again. I want our massive convention center holding massive conventions instead of being an oversized COVID-19 testing site. I don’t want any more small businesses to go belly up. I don’t want any more of my friends losing their jobs, going on forced furloughs or taking pay cuts.

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I get angry and confused when so many of the people who claim they want the economy to open up again are the same people who won’t do the simple things to keep the economy opened up again. Wear a damn mask. As a lifelong sports fan, I don’t want to see college football season canceled and athletic programs across the country essentially go bankrupt. I want to see if the Gators can win the national championship. I want to see if UCF can once again become the bane of Paul Finebaum’s existence. I want to see if new FSU coach Mike Norvell can beat Willie Taggart’s record and last at least two full seasons. And, ohmygawd, I can’t wait to see if Tom Brady and Gronk can lead the Bucs — the Bucs?!!! — to the Super Bowl. And I want to see if the Magic can make a run in the playoffs and if Orlando City can finally make the playoffs. Wear a damn mask. Don’t kid yourself, our city and our state are in the national crosshairs right now because of the recent spike of coronavirus cases. Both the NBA and MLS are scheduled to resume play at Disney’s Wide World of Sports next month and, understandably, there are growing concerns from both leagues about Orlando. ESPN has reported that, “In at least one recent call with high-level team executives, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has acknowledged the spiking [coronavirus] numbers in Florida. Team sources described the general tone of that call, including the questions asked of Silver, as tense.” The Athletic wrote an article earlier this week with the headline, “Anxiety rising in MLS amid Florida COVID-19 spike, positive player tests.” The article quoted one MLS player as saying, “There’s a growing fear amongst players right now. We agreed to this [resumption of play in Orlando] when the cases in Florida were low, and now that they’ve spiked, there’s real concern on a number of levels.” Like it or not, there is this perception out there that we are once again “Flori-duh.” Nationally, we are all being lumped in with the careless patrons who recently crowded into a jam-packed bar near the UCF campus where at least 28 customers and 13 employees then tested positive for the virus. The bar, the Knight’s Pub, had its alcohol license revoked for essentially ignoring coronavirus guidelines. In Boston and New York, people think Orlandoans are all like the yahoo at a local WalMart the other day who, despite a new county executive order requiring masks in public places, is seen on a viral video shoving a WalMart employee who tried to stop him from entering the store without a face covering. Some selfish, arrogant people just don’t get it. They’re not even willing to take the simplest of precautions long enough to go get a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread at WalMart. They’re not even courteous enough to follow the easy, uncomplicated rule of going the right way down the one-way aisle at Winn-Dixie. This column is a call to arms to all of my fellow sports fans out there who desperately want football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer back in our lives. Spread he word. Tell your friends. Scream it from the top of the Amway Center: Wear a damn mask!

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Pennlive.com / Sports and entertainment venues struggle with COVID-19 reopening guidelines: ’Green does not mean go’ By Sean Adams – June 24, 2020

Businesses are allowed to reopen under the state’s green phase of the coronavirus shutdown and recovery plan, but only in limited capacity. And those restrictions, while difficult for many industries to handle, can be outright crippling for those that rely on large crowds. “We had to either cancel, reschedule or postpone thousands of dollars worth of events,” said Sadie Plasterer, vice president of the Carlisle Sports Emporium. “We had everything from proms to weddings to annual corporate employee appreciation events.” Plasterer said that the Emporium closed in mid-March at Governor Tom Wolf’s statewide shutdown orders, the first time the business had shut its doors in its 27 years of operation. The outdoor go-kart and miniature golf attractions were reopened in the yellow phase, she said, but running only a portion of their attractions had its own difficulties. “It’s hard to only operate at a certain capacity,” Plasterer said, explaining that operating only the outdoor portions of the business generally means that the Carlisle Sports Emporium was at risk of operating at a loss. Even with self-serve kiosks for mini-golf players to reduce staffing and interaction with customers, the business had to keep water running, the courses maintained, and still pay for other utilities, insurances and mortgage expenses - all without the added income provided by their indoor attractions like the arcade. “It’s not how our business was ever designed,” Plasterer said. “So sometimes it’s like you should almost keep the doors closed.” Spooky Nook Sports in Manheim is similarly struggling with the loss of large events at their facility. The Lancaster County venue is still operating in the yellow phase, and has been doing so in a limited capacity, such as holding “fitness gatherings” of under 25 people rather than a fully operating fitness center, according to marketing manager Mackenzie Bender. Once in the green phase, Spooky Nook will be able to resume their adult rec and youth sports leagues, as well as fitness clinics, Bender said, provided that they comply with the state’s sports guidelines. “We’re excited to be able to reopen fitness and camps and leagues and things like that, but 70 percent of our revenue throughout the year comes from those large meetings, events and tournaments,” Bender said. “So, 56,000 people through our building in one weekend for a basketball tournament. Or a banquet dinner for 1,100 people in our Olympic Hall space. Currently even in the green, it doesn’t allow a lot of wiggle room for those types of events.” In the early days of the shutdown, Bender said, large events were rescheduled for later in the spring or early summer. Now, she said, they are being pushed well into the fall, which makes a continued domino effect of rescheduling. “Every time they get pushed, our team basically has to redo the entire planning process,” Bender said. “We’ve definitely gotten a lot of calls from people where we’ve had to say, ‘Hey, we’re not able to do that yet, but we’re excited for the chance to do it.' Out strategy right now is booking events as early as they want to have them, knowing that we may have to reschedule or postpone down the road.” Since Cumberland County entered the green phase on June 12, the indoor arcade space, laser tag and go-kart areas at Carlisle Sports Emporium have reopened, as has their Barn at Creek’s Bend rental venue

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where those large events were initially planned. But the green designation was hardly the end of the emporium’s staff’s struggles with the Pennsylvania Department of Health guidelines. A wedding event held there last weekend had over 100 people - reduced from 250 at the event organizer’s own request, Plasterer said - but little guidance was available beyond the general outlines from the state or Center for Disease Control. “We’ll be practicing social distancing as much as possible, but there’s no real guidelines in reference to how many people can you have at a table,” Plasterer said. “None of the rules and regulations were very thought-out when it comes to how many people you can have at a gathering. We’re working with our guests and our customers and our clients. If they feel comfortable having their wedding still, we’re coming forward with that, with essentially half [the maximum number of people] of what the government is mandating.” And while some industries have some options to explore during the shutdowns, such as working from home or expanding outside, that is hardly the case for all businesses. “We can’t pick up 40 hardwood courts and move them out to the parking lot,” Bender said, comparing Spooky Nook’s operations to outdoor dining options explored by restaurants. “That’s just not a feasible reorganization of our business model. We really need that return to normalcy in order for us to really service our community the way we want to. It’s not just us that benefit from those 56,000 people in one weekend. It’s the local hotels, the local gas station. It’s the Dutch Apples, the Sight and Sound, the American Music Theaters of the world that rely on those tourist numbers coming to our area for their businesses to be sustainable as well.” Plasterer said that in the early stages of the shutdown, repeated requests to the state for guidance went unanswered. So the group turned instead to state legislators, county officials or even regional tourism or business bureaus, hoping to find some kind of guidance. Sometimes that guidance was at odds with mandates laid out by Governor Wolf or Department of Health secretary Dr. Rachel Levine - and deliberately so, in the case of some state lawmakers, who have regularly challenged the governor’s authority during the pandemic. Even the subject of masks, which Governor Wolf recently reiterated were mandatory, has been directly challenged by many state lawmakers. “Remember that the Governor cannot make laws,” reads a statement posted by Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania state senator of the 33rd district, which includes part of Cumberland County. The post was made only days after Wolf’s news conference reinforcing the necessity of masks used by both employees and customers at indoor businesses. “There is NO LAW to wear a mask in Pennsylvania. Laws are created by two legislative bodies: the House of Representatives and the Senate, who together form the General Assembly. As a member of the Pennsylvania Senate, no mask bill has crossed my desk. Just because our Governor thinks it into being, doesn’t mean he can snap his fingers and make it a law.” Spooky Nook Sports is preparing to reach the green phase, which is expected to arrive in Lancaster County on June 26. But even when that happens, Bender said that “for the Nook, green does not mean go.” “We’re excited to get pieces of our business opening,” she said. “But with that 250 person cap in a 14- acre building, we’re still kind of limited to what all we can do, even in the green. So the quote-unquote small stuff is great, and we’re excited to have life back in the building and get back to it at some point. But long term, unless we can do the big stuff, it’s just not a sustainable business model for us.”

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The question of the blanket 250-person limitation for a single event was recently put to the test in Carlisle, as the Department of Health pursued a cease and desist order at the Spring Carlisle auto show and flea market. Past shows held by Carlisle Events had brought thousands of visitors to the Carlisle Fairgrounds. The case was settled, with Carlisle Events and the Department of Health reaching a settlement, and the Spring Carlisle event went forward as planned. And as attractions as large as Hersheypark prepare to open in early July, questions on large gatherings at entertainment venues are likely to continue: how do those rules apply to 14-acre indoor sports arenas, or 60,000 square foot arcades? At Spooky Nook, Bender said, the 250 limit appears to apply to each individual court, and the full venue is planned to operate at 50 percent of its maximum capacity - a number that still allows for “nine or ten thousand people, spread throughout the course of the building. So that will be an interesting one, if the clarity comes out around that and we’re interpreting it correctly.” Monitoring a maximum occupancy becomes complicated over several attractions, Plasterer said, leading to a bit of juggling as guests are moved from one to the next. “For our entertainment center, our facility is 60,000 square feet,” she said, noting that the entertainment center’s capacity did not include anyone on the golf course, the laser tag arena or on go- kart tracks. “If we know that our miniature golf is picking up, and we have people on every hole or every other hole, we’ll encourage our guests who are buying our packages to go to the go-carts first, or vice versa, before they head to one or the other attraction.” Plasterer said that she was excited for the green phase, but reaching it was no guarantee of smooth sailing for Carlisle Sports Emporium - or the end of what can often seem to be conflicting guidance from government agencies. As officials learn more about the coronavirus, she said, rules and restrictions seem to shift. “I’m all about the green phase!” she said. “And I’m all about moving forward and – I hate this next phrase – but getting back to the ‘new normal,' whatever the new normal really means. I know that the coronavirus is something that has been unknown to everyone, including the Department of Health. But now, temperature checks, really, they’re saying that’s not really a valid thing [due to transmission from asymptomatic people]. They’re saying it’s non transmissible on surfaces. So all this extra sanitation of surfaces – and we’re still doing it – but all the extra of everything in the cleaning protocols. Out of one side of their mouth, they’re saying it isn’t actually valid, but out of the other side of their mouth, they’re mandating it. So it’s really been a roller coaster in the reopening process.” The question of transmission from asymptomatic carriers of the novel coronavirus was recently in headlines as Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC contradicted a report from the World Health Organization regarding the dangers of transmission. As even the national and global experts debate the dangers of COVID-19, local authorities and businesses are left to discern the best course from the ever-changing updates. And should green phase restrictions continue throughout the duration of the pandemic - something that health officials have estimated may take as long as a year as a vaccine is developed - the impact will continue to strain similar business destinations. “Our goal is we want everyone to feel safe and comfortable as possible as they come in our facility,” Bender said. “As soon as it’s safe to do so and recommended to do so, we’ll start rolling those back. We don’t want to temperature check everyone who comes into our buildings for the next ten years. But we’ll do it as long as it takes for our guests to feel safe coming in.”

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