Down Goes Brown's Grab Bag: Fake World Cup Trades, and Is Team North America Good for the Tournament?

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

Today is the last day for World Cup teams to finalize rosters, which in this case just means swapping in late injury replacements. But what if it meant more? What if teams could actually use today to pull off last-minute trades?

Ridiculous, you say. The World Cup is an international tournament, and it would be stupid to allow trades for something like that. Maybe. But it would also be crazy fun.

So be it resolved that today we're making some fake World Cup trades, and if you don't like it then you can go sulk in the corner. Over to the tradebreakers…

Canada trades the rights to Kris Letang to Russia for Nikita Kucherov: Canada's blueline is weird; it features guys like Jake Muzzin and Jay Bouwmeester but not Letang or P.K. Subban, mainly because Mike Babcock loves righty/lefty balance more than anything. I refuse to let Canada trade Subban, so instead it moves Letang to a team that needs blueline help. Kucherov may not even make Team Canada this year, but by next time he'll be an intriguing candidate, and Canada always seems to be short on true wingers.

Finland trades Pekka Rinne to Europe for Tomas Tatar: Team Europe's goaltending is awful, and they may not win a game because of it. So they lock down a veteran starter, one Finland can afford to move because it already has Tuukka Rask. Tatar isn't a superstar, but he'd easily slot into Finland's top nine and maybe higher.

The Czech Republic trades Jakub Voracek to Sweden for Filip Forsberg: A classic win-now move. Sweden's forwards are getting old, but the blueline and goaltending mean the team's still good enough to win it all. But the window is closing, so Sweden swaps a good young player for a veteran star with higher short-term upside.

North America trades Auston Matthews to Finland for Patrik Laine: Honestly, I just didn't want Team North America to be left out. Besides, Matthews is used to playing for a European team even though he isn't supposed to be.

Sweden trades Anton Stralman to Team USA for the rights to Phil Kessel: Look, it's become apparent that Team USA wants to be the grittiest ball of gritty-grit that ever did grit, and that means they'll never have room for Kessel. So they trade him to Sweden, which desperately needs a scorer and can part with Stralman because its blueline is stacked. Is Kessel's hand healed enough to actually play? In this fictional universe where World Cup trades happen, yes it is.

There you go. Five blockbuster trades, covering all eight World Cup teams. I think they're all fair and work for both teams, and will say so when you rush over to Twitter to yell at me about them.

Tune in next week when I'll process all the fake World Cup waiver claims and hold a fake World Cup draft lottery.

As expected, World Cup-related injuries are starting to trickle in, and fans are already grumbling. Injuries are inevitable in international hockey, as we covered last Friday. This week, let's look back at a player who lost a big chunk of a season to one—longtime defenseman Mario Marois.

Marois was a fourth-round pick by the Rangers in 1977 and debuted in New York that season. He spent three years there, made a brief stop in Vancouver, and then headed to the team most fans probably associate him with, the Quebec Nordiques. He'd also have stops in Winnipeg and St. Louis, eventually retiring in 1992 after a 14-year career.

Marois was a solid and often feisty player but wasn't a star, and he never played for Canada at a major tournament. But in 1982, the Nordiques welcomed the Soviet all-stars for an exhibition game. Marois got tangled up with a Soviet player and broke his leg, leading to some bad blood. He'd miss the rest of the season, but returned to have a career year in 1983-84, finishing with a +51 rating and earning a handful of Norris votes. Here's a trivia question you can win bar bets with: Marois finished his career with 955 games played, making him the longest-serving Mario in NHL history, ahead of Lemieux, Tremblay and even Gosselin.

These days he works in scouting, when he's not attending meetings of the Hockey Players With Double Names Club alongside Pete Peeters and Fedor Fedorov.

This week's debate: The under-23 Team North America has been a controversial addition to this year's World Cup. Is it a good idea?

In favor: Team North America is going to be all sorts of fun.

Opposed: Team North America is a ridiculous marketing gimmick.

In favor: They make the tournament more unpredictable.

Opposed: They strip the tournament of any integrity as an actual international competition.

In favor: They're going to be competitive, with a legitimate shot at beating anyone they end up facing.

Opposed: Given their lack of experience, it's possible that they won't win a single game.

In favor: If they make the playoffs and the matchups work out, it will be fascinating to see Connor McDavid face off against Canada.

Opposed: It's ridiculous that McDavid isn't on Team Canada in the first place, where he should be.

In favor: It's going to be great PR for the league if their youngest stars can beat a favorite or two.

Opposed: It's going to be a PR nightmare for the league if their youngest stars go out there and get embarrassed.

In favor: The NHL deserves credit for thinking outside the box.

Opposed: The NHL deserves credit for already hinting that this will be a one-time thing.

The final verdict: Hey, can I just interrupt for a second to point out that you two aren't actually arguing?

In favor: What? Sure we are.

The final verdict: No you're not. You're just taking turns making true statements. Pretty much everything you've said, on either side of the debate, is indisputably correct.

Opposed: So who's right?

The final verdict: Here's the thing—you both are. Team North America is a unique, creative and exciting idea that could work out beautifully. It's also a silly gimmick that could end up being a disaster. All of those things can be true.

In favor: OK, fine. But who wins the debate?

The final verdict: Maybe we don't need the debate at all. Maybe instead of spending the next two weeks arguing over whether Team North America is the greatest thing ever or an unforgivable sacrilege, we can just agree that the whole thing is a creative, if flawed, idea, and it will be interesting to watch it play out. No winner, no loser, and no need to keep going on and on about it.

Opposed: That seems reasonable and yet oddly unsatisfying given the format.

The final verdict: Fine, you lose.

In favor: [celebrates a little too much like an annoying, overexcited 20-year-old]

The final verdict: You also lose.

This week was the anniversary of Team USA's win at the 1996 World Cup. It still stands as the only American win in a best-on-best tournament, and at the time it was a big deal. The US mowed through the preliminary round, beat Russia in the semifinal, then took the final two games of a best-of-three final with favored Canada. The last game was a stunner, with Team USA wiping out a 2-1 deficit midway through the third, then scoring three goals in the final minutes to turn a tight game into a laugher. Back then, the win felt like it was ushering a new world order for international hockey, with the Americans finally joining Canada and Russia at the big kids' table. With Olympic participation right around the corner, the NHL was dreaming of the hype that would follow a Team USA gold medal or two.

But it never worked out that way. Instead, the American program settled in as a quasi-contender, one capable of winning a medal and even throwing an occasional scare into Canada, but a longshot to ever actually win it all. That best-on-best Olympic gold never came, and with the league reconsidering its participation, now it seems like it never will.

All of which has led to the 1996 team settling in as a footnote—a one-off blip, maybe even a bit of fluke. But that's where the annoyance comes in, because it's revisionist history. When you look back at that American roster, it really is remarkable how much talent was packed onto that team.

The blueline featured three future Hall of Famers in Chris Chelios, Brian Leetch and Phil Housley, and the forwards had three more in Brett Hull, Mike Modano and Pat LaFontaine. But what really stands out, especially in contrast to today's American rosters, is the depth. There are legitimate stars everywhere, from Keith Tkachuk to John Leclair to Mike Richter. Jeremy Roenick would have been there, too, if not for a contract dispute. Heck, they had the reigning Vezina winner on the roster and didn't even use him. (Probably the right call.)

Sure, there were some iffy picks, but every international team has those, including Canada. The fact remains that the 1996 American roster was one of the best we've ever seen, from any country at any tournament.

Two years later, the US sent essentially the same team to the Nagano Games and it was a disaster. Today, the country still produces elite players, but the depth just isn't there, and it leaves Team USA as a middling underdog, with a puncher's chance at winning it all but not much more than that.

That's not where we thought we were heading 20 years ago. But be it resolved that that's no reason to forget that the 1996 Team USA entry really was a phenomenal roster, one that absolutely deserved to win against the world's very best. If you're a younger fan or new to the sport, it's a team worth going back and re-watching. And it's definitely one worth respecting.

NHL 17 came out this week, the latest version in the long-running line of hockey games from EA Sports. While it's pretty much the only game in town these days, there was a time when the hockey video-game market was crowded with titles. Some of those went on to become beloved classics in their own right, while others faded into obscurity.

But once the NHL series arrived, it grabbed the crown and never let go. Most fans got on board around the time of NHL '94, which was legendary, or even NHLPA '93, which was better. But there was an even earlier entry, one that's all but forgotten these days. So this week, let's head back 25 years for a look at the game that started it all: NHL 92.

• Technically this game was just called NHL Hockey; EA didn't start slapping years on the titles until NHLPA '93 came out. But I'm calling it NHL 92 here since that's what it became in hindsight. Don't yell at me, pedants.

• I miss the days when you could make a game about NHL hockey and just decide to call it "NHL Hockey." That was a thing for a long time in the video-game world—if your game was about baseball, you just called it "Baseball" and that was it. I miss that simplicity of just calling games what they are. I would totally buy a first-person shooter called "Shooting" or a racing sim called "Car" or an RPG called "Running around collecting things for no reasons and it's not even fun but you feel compelled to do it because it eventually might make a number change into a slightly larger number."

• So let's cut to the chase here: NHL 92 was groundbreaking and raised the bar for an entire genre. It was also nowhere near as good as the next two versions. Case in point: The theme song. It's solid. Catchy, even. But it's not as good as the themes to NHLPA '93 or NHL '94. Which is fine, because Appetite for Destruction wasn't as good as those two songs.

• Likewise, the title screen doesn't have the animated player intros that would mark the next two games. Those were the best. Imagine making it all the way to the NHL and then finding out that EA stuck you with the "stumble" animation? I would have thrown the Genesis under a zamboni.

• We watch our player futz with the menu options before settling on a Flyers/Penguins matchup. There's a brief moment of suspense when he considers turning line changes off, but eventually he chooses correctly. People who played with line changes off were the worst.

• The action begins, and it doesn't take long for the Penguins to get on the board on a goal by Paul Coffey… er, I mean, by a Pittsburgh defenseman who's wearing #77. (The player license wouldn't come until next year.)

• Now here's an underrated NHL 92 feature that I'd forgotten about: Starting a fight after the whistle. In this case, Coffey's reward for scoring is to get pummeled by Gord Murphy, who picks up an instigator. Everyone heads to the penalty box, where they try to ignore the fact that the referee is eight-feet tall.

• The rest of the first period is back-and-forth action, with the teams taking turns executing the classic NHL 92 breakaway move of just skating into the goalie and falling down. Don't judge us, it was tough times before the unstoppable one-timer was invented.

• Honest question: Does the guy playing here pass the puck? Like, even once? I'm not sure he does.

• The Pens get a late 5-on-3 and Phil Bourque buries one to make it 2-0. Tough period for the Flyers, who head to the dressing room to regroup. Well, except for the guys in the penalty box, who apparently have to stay there during intermission like caged animals. I like this idea and think the real NHL should adopt it.

• Early in the second, we get another trademark from the early years of the series: The long fluttering dump in that causes the goaltender to start randomly cycling through all his animations for no reason whatsoever. Or, as it would come to be known within a few years, The Hasek.

• The Penguins come close to adding another, but Ron Hextall shuts the door long enough for Normand Lacombe to cut the lead to 2-1. The Philly crowd roars, which is to say they make kind of a staticky hissing noise.

• The Flyers kill off one penalty and quickly take another, because even in video games, the Flyers are always dirty cheaters. We head to the second intermission, where we get a look at one of the coolest features that NHL 92 had: Highlights from other games being played. In this case, it's the Capitals tying things up late against the Rangers only to lose an overtime heartbreaker. Wow, this game really is realistic.

• The Flyers get some pressure early in the third and eventually tie it 2-2 with three minutes left. That sets up a dramatic finish, at which point… our clip just ends. Sorry about that. I probably should have watched all the way to the end before I started writing. That's on me.

• According to a comment by the guy who posted the video, he went on to win 3-2. According to me, that guy is a liar. There is zero chance he didn't get lit up by Mario, fall behind 7-2 and then rage quit. You can't tell me otherwise.

• And that wraps things up. I have no idea if NHL 17 will be any good because I'm old now and don't have time to take a college night course just to figure out how every new EA Sports game works. But if it lets you plow into a guy who just scored and start a fight, let me know and I'm in.

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.

For more World Cup of Hockey stories, check out our full coverage here.