Down Goes Brown's Grab Bag: Does the NHL Need to Fix the Stanley Cup Schedule?

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter.)

The third star: Roberto Luongo—It's been a while since we've featured a classic Strombone tweet. Here he is working through Monday's TV scheduling dilemma.

It's gonna be tuff for me not 2 watch G7 Warriors/Thunder Monday night but I need to stay true to my true passion in life — Strombone (@strombone1)May 29, 2016

The second star: Tyler Seguin (and his mom)—At this time of year, it's all about the Cup. But if you can't get that, mom's egg sandwiches are good, too.

She just loves when it's summer time— Tyler Seguin (@tseguinofficial)June 1, 2016

The first star: Pittsburgh Steelers safety Ross Ventrone—I have to admit, I'm not completely sure what's happening here. But as best I can tell, this is Ventrone rollerblading while wearing a Phil Kessel jersey to the tune of Shawn Michaels' theme song, so I'm in.

(And yes, there's a sequel.)

This week's debate: If it goes the full seven games, the Stanley Cup Final is scheduled to take 17 days to complete, including four separate three-day breaks. Is that too long?

In favor: It seems kind of long. Playoff hockey just works better when a series can get into a rhythm, and having games every other night has always seemed to be the sweet spot.

Opposed: Maybe in a perfect world, but the NHL always has to work around building availability at playoff time.

In favor: Sure, but doesn't it look bad when a pro sports league's championship is getting bumped by concerts and monster truck rallies? Surely the league and its teams could be a little tougher with these arenas, especially given that in some cases they actually own them.

Opposed: Maybe, but it's still a challenge. And here's another: travel. This year's Cup final features a West Coast team, so we're talking cross-country flights. Those can wear on players, and a little bit of extra time can help make sure everyone's at their best.

In favor: That's a fair point. And maybe you do add in an extra day or two somewhere along the line. But four extra days off? That seems excessive.

Opposed: True. But on the other hand, you also have to consider…

The final verdict: [buzzer]

Opposed: Wait, are we done?

The final verdict: No, not done. Just taking a break. The debate will resume after the next section.

With the Sharks facing the Penguins in what's technically a Stanley Cup rematch (no, really), it seems fitting to choose a player who suited up for both teams. That's a longer list than you might think. So, today, let's honor one of the few players to ever be traded directly between the two teams: defenseman Peter Ahola.

I've wanted to use Ahola for a while now, based on two factors. One, for reasons I've never been fully clear on, he's been suggested by multiple emailers over the years. And two, his legendsofhockey.net page starts off with this undeniably brilliant sentence: "Ranked one of the top water skiers in his homeland of Finland, Ahola led the L.A. Kings in +/- his rookie season with a modest +12 in 1991-92." There's a lot to unpack there.

Ahola was a big Finnish blueliner who came over to North America to play for Boston University, making him one of the first European players to come through the NCAA system. An undrafted free agent, he signed with the Kings in 1991. Somewhat surprisingly, he made the team out of camp and played a regular role as a rookie during that 1991-92 season, racking up 19 points and that admittedly modest +12. I'm going to assume he was pretty good, even though the only video evidence of his time as a King is this clip of him getting pummeled by Gino Odjick.

That would be his only full season in L.A., or anywhere else in the NHL for that matter. Eight games into the 1992-93 season, Ahola was traded to the Penguins for Jeff Chychrun. That was no doubt a bit of a step down for Chychrun, who'd previously been part of trades involving Hall of Famers like Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey. But it kicked off an interesting year for Ahola, one that saw him traded four times in 11 months. In February, he went from the Penguins to the Sharks for future considerations. In June, he was off to the Lightning for Dave Capuano (brother of current Islanders coach Jack). And in October, he was sent to the Flames for that old 90s trade standby, cash.

Ahola never played more than 22 games for any of those new teams, and was out of the NHL entirely early into the 1993-94 season. He'd head back to Europe, where he continued his pro career until retiring in 2003. And, presumably, did lots of water skiing.

This week's debate: If it goes the full seven games, the Stanley Cup Final is scheduled to take 17 days to complete with four three-day breaks. Is that too long?

In favor: Uh… where were we?

Opposed: I'm not sure. Something about travel? That break kind of killed the momentum. I think we were talking about time zones.

In favor: Right. Yeah, time zones are bad. But so is playing hockey well into mid-June, which is what the NHL will be doing again this season if the series goes long. Would it kill us to be done early some year?

Opposed: Yeah, that part is unfortunate. Even die-hard hockey fans have a tough time focusing when it's BBQ weather. But still, you want the best series possible, and part of that is making sure the players are as healthy as they can be. Maybe those extra days off help a Sidney Crosby or Joe Thornton be at their best for a Game 7. That's a good thing, right?

In favor: That's actually a good point. Although given how condensed the schedule is the rest of the year, it's a little disingenuous for the league to suddenly act like…

The final verdict: [buzzer]

In favor: Oh for…

Opposed: Come on, we were just getting going!

The final verdict: Sorry. Break time for everyone.

The NHL's controversial new compensation rules forced teams who hired coaches and GMs that were under contract to other teams to surrender draft picks, even if those coaches and GMs had already been fired. The teams could choose when to surrender the picks, but it had to be done within three years, and Wednesday marked the deadline for NHL teams to declare their intentions for this year's picks.

It sounds like a simple decision. You owe a draft pick, you have three years to pay it off, and you need to choose the best time to do it. But there's a fascinating number of factors that go into the choice, not least of which is whether a team believes it will be better or worse down the road (since the better your team does in the standings, the less valuable the draft pick you end up losing). If you think this year is likely to be the best one you'll have over the next few seasons, you should surrender the pick now. If you think you'll get better, you'll wait. That's an easy call for some teams—the Maple Leafs owe two picks, but they finished dead last this year and won the first pick of each round, so it was a slam dunk to keep this year's pick. But other teams have a tougher call.

That's tricky enough, but there's a whole other layer to the choice, because your decision is going to be interpreted by your fans. If you're an NHL GM who decides to give up the pick now, you're basically telling your fan base that you expect to get worse. And you're telling your owner, too, which might cause him to wonder why he still employs you. So there's an incentive to always defer, even if you know there's a good chance you'll get burned.

The pressure to keep kicking the can down the road is obvious, and that's what most teams do. The most famous example came when the Devils had four years to give up a first-round pick as part of the Ilya Kovalchuk case, and chose not to do it in 2012 even though they'd gone to the Cup final and held the 29th pick. That was a completely bizarre decision, one that led to speculation that the Devils had somehow screwed up the paperwork or otherwise misunderstood the rules. (Purely coincidentally, the league later lifted the punishment, leading to all sort of conspiracy theories that the Devils knew all along that the sentence wouldn't stick.)

Maybe I'm too much of a game theory nerd, but this sort of stuff is fun. The overwhelming majority of today's NHL GMs are such timid babies about everything that I'm in favor of anything that forces them out of their comfort zone. And that's where the annoyance comes in, because with the compensation rule since scrapped, we won't get to see these situations come up with any frequency.

Please NHL, find a way to make GMs call their shots more often. I don't care how you do it. The stakes don't even have to be all that high—I'd settle for something involving seventh-round picks, if need be. But let's force GMs to stick their necks out and essentially promise their fans that the team will get better. If only because it will be so much fun to laugh at them when they turn out to be wrong.

This week's debate: If it goes the full seven games, the Stanley Cup Final is scheduled to take 17 days to complete with four three-day breaks. Is that too long?

In favor: What were we even talking about?

Opposed: I have no idea. I think maybe it was the NBA Finals.

In favor: Want to come over for a BBQ?

Opposed: I'll bring the sunscreen.

The final verdict: Long, unnecessary breaks that derail momentum are really fun and the NHL should definitely keep on [to be continued next week]

The San Jose Sharks will host the first Stanley Cup final game in franchise history Saturday night. It will also be the biggest playoff game in franchise history, a record that will stand until Monday's Game 4, and might then be broken by Game 5, and so on for as long as this series lasts. That's the deal with big games; one tends to lead directly to another.

In honor of that, let's look back on another playoff game that was the biggest in team history: the very first one, all the way back in 1994.

• It's April 18, 1994, and the Sharks are in Detroit to face the Red Wings in Game 1 of the Western Conference quarterfinal. This is the intro from the local broadcast of that game, as brought to you by KICU, a.k.a. "Action 36." Will the broadcast feature delightfully tacky early-90s local TV graphics? You know it will!

• We get some brief Sharks highlights right off the bat, which are notable because the first one features a guy falling down and the next feature has Pat Falloon. Did I mention that expectations were not high for the 1993-94 Sharks? They were not high.

• We get an ad for a shuttle flight to Los Angeles. May want to skip that one in 20 years, Sharks fans.

• We open with footage of a rally from "last April" in which the Sharks are welcomed to San Jose. That may be confusing, since the team was actually born in 1991, but they played their first two seasons at the Cow Palace near San Francisco. I know, I know, you hear "Cow Palace" and assume it was a wonderful facility, but it really wasn't that nice.

• By the way, the first-ever regular-season Sharks game was covered in this section last year. It features bad sweaters, Doug Wilson reading a newspaper, and the Sharks having to build their own equipment. Don't act like you had anything better on your reading list for your next bathroom break.

• We get a look at the press conference announcing the hiring of Kevin Constantine as coach, a move that helped transform the team from NHL laughingstock to playoff contender. One of my all-time favorite lines was the description of Constantine's face as looking like "a fist with hair on it." Is that a compliment? In hockey, I'm pretty sure it's a compliment.

• We all agree that this announcer sounds disturbingly like Bob Costas, right?

• Next up is my favorite part of this entire clip, which may or may not be the entire reason I chose it: Shots of all of the players the Sharks added heading into the season. Here's a fun game: Go back to the start of this section at 1:17, and then pretend that you're watching actual footage of the exact moment that each one of these players are being told that they're been acquired by the San Jose Sharks.

• It's fun, right? Who's your favorite. Mine is Gaetan Duchesne.

• Next up is the main reason the Sharks are in the playoffs: goaltender Arturs Irbe, or, as he's referred to in this video, "The Wall," which seems odd for a guy whose save percentage that year was .899 until you remember that was good enough for him to finish fifth in Vezina voting. But sure, let's not make the nets bigger, it would mess with the record books.

• Yeah, I have no idea what's going on starting at 2:25, either. Is this what hockey looks like to fans in California? If so, I may need a recount on three of the last nine Cups.

• "Fly Southwest Airlines, it's just plane smart." There's no way that was a real slogan. Fake Bob Costas made that up to see if we were paying attention.

• We get a live look at Joe Louis Arena, one that uses that classic angle we mentioned a few weeks back where the fans could block the view of the ice just by standing up. Luckily, it's not an obstructed view when the fans are slumped over in disbelief, which will come in handy for Game 7 of this series.

• I just want to point out that when the Sharks vs. Red Wings graphic comes up, the "San Jose Sharks" font has little shark bites on the top and bottom. That is attention to detail. The NHL logo being cut in half, not so much.

• We throw to longtime Sharks broadcaster (and future Blades of Steel play-by-play guy) Randy Hahn, who explains how unlikely this playoff appearance is before being joined by Pete Stemkowski. We get Pete's keys to the game, which answers the age-old question "Does a possessive noun still need an apostrophe if you're using a picture of a guy's face instead of his name?" Apparently it does. Keep that in mind for when they introduce a Pete Stemkowski emoji, you kids out there.

• Wait a second… "I think puck control's going to be a key in this one"? Was Pete Stemkowski an early Corsi guy? WATCH THE GAMES, NERD!

• We're almost done, but because this is 1994 and it's been five minutes, we're mandated by federal law to hear a few bars of 2 Unlimited's "Get Ready For This." I'm not complaining, either, because it's a legitimately great song. If you ever push me on this I'll claim that I said that ironically, but I'll be lying. It wasn't "Ice Ice Baby" good, but it was good. The early 90s was a fantastic era for music.

• We end with some words of wisdom form local MLB managers, including Dusty Baker wishing the team good luck and Tony La Russa telling everyone to just pump themselves full of steroids.

• Dusty wouldn't be the only Baker to make an appearance in this series. After the Sharks stunned the Wings with a Game 1 victory, they'd go on to force a seventh game, one that was tied deep into the third period when Jamie Baker (probably no relation) scored one of the worst series-winners in NHL history.

• The '94 Sharks would go on to come within a crossbar of continuing their miracle run by beating the Maple Leafs in the second round. Until this year, it was the last known instance of Sharks fans enjoying the NHL playoffs.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com.