Robert Mayer-USA TODAY Sports
Three Stars of Comedy
Congratulations to Rask on the first moment in his NHL career when he wasn't the most out-of-control person on the ice.The second star: Mark Scheifele – The NHL waded back into the "how to button a shirt debate" this week, and the results were reasonably fun. But the real punchline comes at the end, when we find out the Scheifele is a freaking psychopath.
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Between this and Patrik Laine's beard I'm genuinely concerned that eight months without sunlight is making all the Jets players insane.The first star: Predators fans – If we have to deal with lengthy, annoying, ineffective video replay reviews, at least we should have some fun with them.
Of course, if the review doesn't end the way you'd like, you'll have to find a different way to express yourself.
Debating the Issues
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Obscure Former Player of the Week
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The NHL Actually Got Something Right
Did you catch it? The NHL didn't just cut-and-paste their standard non-explanation about how the play was reviewed and the officials determined that interference occurred. Instead, they gave us a little bit of detail.It was only a little, and nowhere near enough—we need video explanations of these calls, just like we get for suspensions. But even a few extra words helped steer the conversation, and at least let us know what it was that the league war room saw. And just in case you thought that might be a one-off, it turns out the league has been doing it all week.
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Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown
- It's June 26, 1999, and the draft is coming to you from Boston. Our host, appropriately enough, is Jim Hughson, who's about to join the Canucks broadcast team and will go on to become the voice of Hockey Night in Canada in a few years. He's going to mention these Sedin kids once or twice more over the course of his career, I'm guessing.
- But that's getting ahead of ourselves. As our clip begins, there's still at least a little mystery hanging over the proceedings. Brian Burke and the Canucks have been hard at work trying to put together a series of trades to get both twins, but nothing is official yet. Well, it probably is, but we don't know that because this is before Twitter ruined our ability to ever be surprised by anything.
- Burke has taken plenty of heat over the years, much of it deserved, but man that guy could work a trade. I'm honestly not sure there's been a better GM at pulling off deals since Sam Pollock. Check out the beginning of this clip, where we see some brief footage of Burke swinging the deals on the draft floor. He's just standing there with multiple other NHL GMs and telling them what they're going to do and who they're going to pick. It's half negotiation, half hostage situation, and I love every second of it. Someone please make Burke a GM again somewhere.
- Gary Bettman takes the stage to only light booing because Boston isn't a real hockey town. He drops a "We have three trades to announce" on the crowd, which gets their attention, and then lays out all the deals. He stumbles through the details, but recovers nicely and concludes with a "What that all means" summary. Bottom line: Atlanta moves up to No. 1, the Canucks get the next two picks, and Tampa picks fourth.
- And with that, the Thrashers take the stage to announce the first overall pick. What could go wrong?
- Oh right, they take Patrik Stefan. We don't actually get to see the pick in this clip, presumably because it would violate YouTube's guidelines for obscene content. But it's fair to say Stefan was quite possibly the biggest bust of any first overall pick ever. Some of that was injury-related, but when you go first overall and the only thing anyone remembers about you is this, that's not good.
- A reminder: that Stefan blooper ended up costing the Oilers Patrick Kane. That franchise might literally be cursed.
- How great would it have been if the Thrashers had double-crossed Burke right here and used the first overall pick on a Sedin? What would have happened? I mean, we can all agree that Burke would have immediately rushed the stage and fought everyone in the Atlanta front office until the national guard arrived to pull him off the bodies, but what about after that? This has to be a top-ten "what if?" moment in modern NHL history and I feel like we don't talk about it enough.
- We skip ahead to the Canucks picks. I love the "Team Needs" screen, which informs us that Vancouver needs offense, defense and goaltending. Other than that, they're all set.
- Burke heads to the stage and picks both twins at the same time. He doesn't even pause, he just takes them as one unit. But he says Daniel's name first, which is why he went into the history books as the second overall pick and Henrik was third. You know Burke toyed with just saying "The Sedin twins" just to annoy the pedants.
- This is the only known instance of anyone in Boston applauding the Sedins for anything that didn't end with them looking around for a referee while a Bruin repeatedly uppercut them in the throat.
- You get a bit of a sense of it as the commentators discuss the picks, but back then there really was a sense that only Daniel was going to be a star, while Henrik was a tier below. I'd offer that as a reminder that draft experts don't know anything, but we just saw Patrik Stefan go first overall so I'm guessing the point has been made.
- We get a few words from the Sedins and a few more from Burke, who does his patented "credit the GM I just blatantly ripped off for driving a hard bargain" routine. Brian Burke was the best. Are we sure he can't be the GM of the new Seattle team?
- With that, we skip ahead to all the other good picks in the first round, which is to say our clip ends. Good lord that was a terrible draft. Seriously, the only decent non-Sedin in the entire first round was Martin Havlat. The fourth overall pick was another huge bust, Pavel Brendl. The sixth overall pick was a goalie who never won a game. By the 15th overall pick we'd reached the guys who never made the NHL at all. Three of the draft's top five players in terms of NHL games played were picked in the seventh round. What a mess.
- And that's it. Roughly 19 years and 2,600 regular seasons games later, the Sedins will wrap things up tomorrow. They'll go into the history books ranked fifth and sixth among players who spent their entire career in one city, trailing only Nicklas Lidstrom, Alex Delvecchio, Steve Yzerman and Stan Mikita. Three years from now, they'll join those four guys in the Hall of Fame.
- Patrik Stefan will probably not.