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Good morning to everyone except anyone who doesn’t love the Hartford Whalers, because you make George Springer sad. It was a quiet night last night with just two games, but the schedule-maker had a good reason: Tonight is going to be as busy as it can possibly get.
Are you ready?
Happy staggered start day to those who celebrate, which should be all of us. Yes, the NHL is going full firehose mode on us tonight, with all 32 teams in action. It’s already the second time this year that the schedule has been all-hands-on-deck, but this one comes with a twist: The games start at 6:00 pm ET and go all night long, with new games starting every 15 minutes during the early window.
It’s going to be great, especially up here in Canada, where I’m assuming the NHL made sure there weren’t any other major sporting events going on that will draw more attention. So let’s celebrate in the best way we know how. That’s right, it’s time for a random sports draft.
The ‘What to Watch’ draft
Normally, this newsletter features a “What to Watch” section, but tonight the answer is “everything, everywhere, all at once.” But that doesn’t mean that some games aren’t better than others, so I gathered a few friends to draft tonight’s schedule, going from the games we’re most interested in watching to the least.
With help from Julian McKenzie, Rob Rossi and Sean Gentille, here’s how our draft played out.
• Pick 1.1 (JM): Devils at Avalanche, 9 p.m. ET (ESPN+): Two of the league’s best right now go head-to-head in a rematch from Sunday’s overtime thriller. Is this a very early Cup preview?
• Pick 1.2 (SG): Golden Knights at Hurricanes, 6:30 p.m. ET (ESPN+): Pretty sure I got the prime potential Cup preview, in fact. Watching Vegas figure it out in real time has been fun.
• Pick 1.3 (RR): Mammoth at Oilers, 9:30 p.m. ET (ESPN+/SN1): If the Oilers are who we think they should be, they assert dominance over a Western up-and-comer. Unless, that is, the Mammoth are for real.
• Pick 1.4 (SM): Capitals at Stars, 8:30 p.m. ET (ESPN): Another potential Cup preview, this one featuring two teams looking to get right after some recent wobbles. Oh, and maybe the first 900th career goal in NHL history.
• Pick 2.1 (JM): Canadiens at Kraken, 10:30 p.m. ET (ESPN+, TSN2, RDS): The Canadiens are playing a lot hotter than many anticipated, and Ivan Demidov is proving to be must-see TV.
• Pick 2.2 (SG): Jets at Wild, 8 p.m. ET (ESPN+, TSN3): Gimme a nice early-season matchup between two teams (that should be) fighting for the same Western Conference playoff spots down the stretch.
• Pick 2.3 (RR): Kings at Sharks, 11 p.m. ET (ESPN): It takes the next face of the NHL and 2027 Hart and Art Ross winner, Macklin Celebrini, to get this middle-aged man to stay up this late.
• Pick 2.4 (SM): Rangers at Canucks, 10 p.m. ET (ESPN+, SN360): It’s the J.T. Miller revenge game! Or maybe the Elias Pettersson revenge game, we’ll have to see.
• Pick 3.1 (JM): Penguins at Flyers, 6 p.m. ET (ESPN, SN1): The Battle of Pennsylvania featuring the (checks notes) overachieving Penguins??? Shouldn’t they be tanking?
• Pick 3.2 (SG): Ducks at Panthers, 7 p.m. ET (ESPN+): Anaheim is young and fun but hasn’t yet beaten anyone who’s particularly good, and the champs — banged up or not — would certainly qualify.
• Pick 3.3 (RR): Islanders at Bruins, 7:15 p.m. ET (ESPN+): I do regret passing on the Commonwealth Cold War (Penguins vs. Flyers). Watching rookie sensation Matthew Schaefer is hardly punishment, though.
• Pick 3.4 (SM): Flames at Maple Leafs, 6 p.m. ET (ESPN+, TSN4): Yes, the Leafs are mediocre and the Flames are terrible. But that’s the appeal, because if Calgary wins, this is the night it gets ugly in Toronto.
• Pick 4.1 (JM): Senators at Blackhawks, 8:45 p.m. ET (ESPN+, TSN5, RDS2): The Sens are figuring it out, and maybe the 6-7 boys are too? Frank Nazar and Connor Bedard have looked great.
• Pick 4.2 (SG): Red Wings at Blues, 8:15 p.m. ET (ESPN+): Julian snaked me there, but whatever — the Red Wings have been a) interesting and b) stinky on the road, so I’ll take the consolation prize.
• Pick 4.3 (RR): Blue Jackets at Sabres, 6:45 p.m. ET (ESPN+): Get on the Blue Jackets bandwagon now (because somebody has to finish fourth in the Metro).
• Pick 4.4 (SM): Lightning at Predators, 7:45 p.m. ET (ESPN+): I had no choice with the Mr. Irrelevant pick of the draft, but honestly you could do worse than the Lightning looking to build their season-saving win streak against their struggling ex-captain.
Full NHL schedule here. Try streaming games like these for free on Fubo.
💡 Trivia time
(Al Bello / Getty Images)
I found something weird while researching an unrelated topic, and it’s about Petteri Nummelin. Who? That’s a fair question. Nummelin was a defensive defenseman who played for the Blue Jackets in their inaugural season, went back to Europe, and then returned to the post-lockout NHL in his mid-30s to play parts of two seasons for the Wild. In all, he played 139 games in the league, scoring just nine times.
But despite that meager career output, he holds an all-time NHL offensive record. And in fact, it’s not all that close — the gap between him and the guy in second place is about the same as the one between second and 29th.
Which all-time scoring record does he hold?
Answer below.
Coast to coast
🚨 If you haven’t yet, make time for Other Sean’s piece on Capitals legend Alex Ovechkin, his 1,500 games with one franchise and the season it almost all fell apart.
🍷 Apparently, Sergei Bobrovsky is tired of raising Cups and is now into raising glasses. Wine glasses, to be specific, as Julian McKenzie lays out in a fascinating story.
💥 Undersized by NHL standards, 199-pound defenseman Gustav Forsling clocked the hardest shot by any NHL defenseman last season. How does someone his size smash pucks 105.05 mph?
🐧 My weekend rankings include five emerging stories that I’m starting to believe in, and also how the Penguins are ruining everything.
🔥 Jesse Granger digs into Ilya Sorokin’s early struggles and how a coaching change might help.
🎙️ The TAHS Monday crew separated the NHL’s early-season tricks from the treats, determining which starts are for real (treats) and which are not (tricks). Listen here or watch on YouTube.
🐀 The results are in
(Megan Briggs / Getty Images)
Is Brad Marchand a Hall of Famer?
You say that it’s almost too close to call. Almost, but not quite.
Last week, with Marchand returning to Boston for the first time since being dealt to the Panthers at last year’s deadline, we ran down the pros and cons of his Hockey Hall of Fame case. Then we asked you to weigh in, with a survey that asked if he’d have your vote today.
The results: You said yes, by a narrow-ish 55 to 45 margin.
I’ll be honest, I was surprised. I thought his “yes” vote would be higher, just based on the general vibe around him over the last year or so. Certainly, there are plenty of Bruins fans who think the question itself is silly, because he’s an obvious first-ballot pick. Several of them were even kind enough to reach out personally. (Weirdly, almost all of them wanted me to know that Marchand kills penalties, which is apparently something that no other good two-way players have ever done. Is this a talking point in Boston? Was there a memo?)
Anyway, the results bode well for Marchand, given Red Light readers have been scientifically proven to be smarter than everyone else.
Remember, you were asked about your vote right now, and he should still have a few years left to push his case over the finish line. If he can stay healthy — and, in a perfect world, not lick anybody — he looks like a good bet. Just not a sure thing quite yet.
No Dumb Questions
We believe that in hockey, as in life, there are no dumb questions. So if you have something you’ve always wondered about the sport, ask away by emailing us at redlight@theathletic.com.
I’ve heard reference to intentional offside, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it. Why would a player choose to intentionally go offside? Is it treated the same way as normal offside? – Dan G.
Dan’s right – intentional offside is a thing, but it’s relatively rare.
Unlike a lot of the NHL’s weird rules, this one is pretty straightforward. In fact, the official rule – 83.7 if you have your rulebook handy – is just a few lines long. It defines an intentional offside as “one which is made for the purpose of securing a stoppage of play regardless of the reason, whether either team is short-handed.”
In other words, if there’s a delayed offside, an attacking player can’t touch the puck in the offensive zone for the purpose of getting a whistle. Why would they do that? Under the right circumstances, it might make sense — maybe his team is tired and needs a change, for example. Or sometimes, a player might feel like an immediate stoppage and faceoff is better than having to turn and clear the zone, which would mean letting the other team regroup and potentially set up an attack.
Ah, but how do we know if the attacking player was intentionally playing the puck for a stoppage, as opposed to just not realizing there’s a delayed offside in effect? The answer, according to the rulebook, is that it’s up to “the opinion of the linesperson.” That’s it. Yes, despite what you’ve been told by those weirdos who defend the puck-over-glass penalty, it really is possible for people who’ve been officiating hockey for most of their adult lives to form an opinion about whether a play was intentional or not.
Finally, Dan asks if intentional offsides are treated the same as regular ones. The answer here is no — there’s actually a big difference. If a play is ruled to be an intentional offside, the faceoff comes all the way back into the offending team’s defensive zone. That’s a big chunk of ice from the normal faceoff location after an offside (the dot nearest the pass or zone entry that caused the infraction). And it’s apparently punitive enough to dissuade teams from going offside intentionally as a strategic move, which is why you almost never see this call in the modern NHL.
Your trivia answer
It turns out that our friend Petteri Nummelin, whom we had all definitely heard of before today, had a very particular set of skills. Specifically, he was really good at the shootout. So good that he went 8-for-10 over his career, good for an 80 percent shootout success rate. That’s way ahead of Trevor Zegras, who’s a lifetime 14-for-22, good for 63.6 percent. And since the NHL’s cutoff for shootout records is 10 attempts, it means Nummelin sits atop that all-time list.
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