Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Olympic Fallout, Goalless Seasons, and Stat Spoilers

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.)

The third star: The Golden Knights' lonely warm-up. This was pretty good.

All of the Golden Knights recently joined in on the NHL tradition of playing some pregame soccer. — Vegas Golden Knights (@GoldenKnights)March 31, 2017

Also pretty good: Any team that can't play their stupid warm-up soccer game. Seriously, they're the worst. Somebody tell the NHL it makes fans happy so the league will immediately put a stop to it.

The second star: Phil Kessel. He tweeted yesterday, for the first time in months, and used to fire off a dig at Evgeni Malkin.

Pigeoncouldn't even get a regular stall — Phil Kessel (@PKessel81)April 6, 2017

Speaking of Pittsburgh Penguins getting dressed incorrectly…

The first star: Nick Bonino and the great shirt button debate. I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea what the context is here, nor do I want to. All I know is that the Penguins forward felt the need to survey his fans to find out how to button a shirt.

I guess this should settle it. Do you button your dress shirt from bottom to top like a normal person, or top to bottom.

— Nick Bonino (@NickBonino)April 3, 2017

I mean, what? Who's buttoning their shirt from the bottom up? There's no way this poll wasn't hacked by Russian trouble-makers trying to drive a wedge between hockey fans by convincing them that 30 percent of their brethren don't know how to dress themselves. Nice try, Evgeni, but it won't work. Next time, pick something that doesn't have an obvious right answer.

The issue: The NHL announced this week that they won't be going to the 2018 Olympics.

The outrage: Just about everyone other than the owners seemed to love seeing NHL players in the Olympics. The fans are mad. The players are mad. The league's American TV partner is mad. This league hates us all.

Is it justified: Of course. Look, if you're angry about the NHL once again doing the exact opposite of what its fans seem to want, then hey, maybe you should be used to it. Maybe you should expect it by now. Maybe this is simply yet another log to throw on a growing bonfire of fan frustration. But that doesn't make it any less justified.

So why is the NHL's Olympic experiment dead, at least for now? Let's run through the league's stated objections:

- Shutting down for the Olympics results in a condensed schedule. (But so does the World Cup that we, uh, just brought back a few months ago.)

- Playing an extra five or six games increases injury risk. (But please enjoy the eight-game exhibition season that absolutely nobody outside of the ticket department wants.)

- Taking a break for the Olympics interrupts all the momentum the league has in February. (But we'll still have four- or five-day gaps in between playoff rounds.)

- And, of course, the real reason, the only one that ever matters with these guys: If something doesn't result in a big wad of money flowing directly into their pockets, the NHL and its owners couldn't care less whether you like it.

The league actually had some decent points in its dispute with the IOC, which may be the only sports organization on earth that's even easier to hate than the NHL. The league should have the right to use footage of their own players, for example. They could have spun this in a way that made them seem like they were the good guys, or at least vaguely sympathetic.

But of course, they didn't, because the NHL only knows one way to spin any issue: It's the players fault. And so rather than an explanation of why the IOC was being unreasonable, we got a transparently bad-faith offer back in November that would have seen the NHL agree to go to the Olympics in exchange for the NHLPA extending the current CBA. Actually, "offer" is probably too strong a word; the NHL's pitch was basically "You give us something of value, and in exchange we give you the status quo." Not surprisingly, the players told them to shove it, as well they should have.

And of course, that was the whole point—the league figured it could get the result it wanted (no Olympics) and the scapegoat it needed (the players). As this week's outcry showed, they whiffed badly on that, and they've belatedly shifted to blaming the IOC, but not before releasing a typically tone-deaf statement that made one last effort at pointing a finger at the players. Hey, remember all that rhetoric after each and every lockout about the league and players being partners? Does laughing so hard you stomach hurts count as an upper or lower body injury?

Speaking of lockouts, this week's train wreck all but guarantees the next one, if we weren't headed there already. Please be sure to remember, when it's 2020 and Gary Bettman is solemnly announcing another work stoppage while explaining that the current CBA just doesn't work anymore, that the league tried to extend it this season. They assume you're too dumb to remember that. Don't be.

In the meantime, we'll get a second-rate Olympics featuring players who'll work their tails off but won't be anywhere near as good as the NHL guys. Some fans will enjoy it, others will watch out of habit, and others will skip the tournament entirely.

Or maybe the NHL still ends up going anyway, and this is all one big bluff. Or maybe the league waits until 2022, when the Games are in China, to suddenly decide they want back in. Who knows. At this point, maybe, who even cares.

The Olympics were great fun, but this is the NHL, the league where fun doesn't matter. Go ahead and be angry. Just don't be surprised.

Red Wings forward Riley Sheahan is closing in on a rare accomplishment: a full season with no goals. He'd be only the tenth forward in history to go goalless while playing 70 games or more. And almost everyone else on the list was an enforcer who wasn't supposed to score, like Rob Ray, Ken Baumgartner, or Dave Brown.

The only non-enforcer forwards in the club are recent NHLer Craig Adams and former Senator Bill Muckalt, who's already an obscure player alumni. So this week, let's look at the list of players Sheahan is desperately trying to join: forwards who have gone an entire season with just one goal.

That's a bigger list, featuring 27 names, although most are still enforcers. There are a few decent players who just got snake-bit for a year, including this week's obscure player: Dave Reid.

Reid was a defensive-minded forward who was picked by the Bruins in the third round of the 1982 draft. He played parts of five seasons in Boston before heading to the Maple Leafs for three years, then returned to the Bruins for another five-year stint. He closed out his career with appearances in Dallas and Colorado.

Reid was never a sniper, but he had two 20-goal seasons in Boston and led the league with eight short-handed goals for the 1990-91 Leafs, tying Dave Keon's franchise record. In all, he cracked double digits seven times, including as a 35-year-old with the 1999-2000 Avalanche.

Unfortunately, any remaining scoring prowess deserted him in 2000-01; that was the year he finished with just a single goal in 73 games. He'd also appear in 18 playoff games that year, going goalless in all of them. He probably didn't care much, though—that was the year that Ray Bourque and the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup.

In all, Reid played 961 games, scored 165 goals, and won two Cup rings (the other coming with Dallas in 1999). In a somewhat odd twist, he switched teams four times but was never traded—all his moves came in free agency. After his playing career, he went into management and later broadcasting.

For what it's worth, the lone 2000-01 goal came in mid-December against Detroit. Fans agree that it was the most memorable thing that ever happened in a Wings–Avalanche game.

Stat spoiler (noun): The weirdly persistent phenomenon in which, on any given list of NHL players who've reached a specific milestone or otherwise historic achievement, there will always be one name that doesn't seem like it belongs and kind of derails the whole thing.

Seriously, once you start noticing it, this happens a lot. I have no idea why, but it does, and we need a name for it.

For example, here's a recent stat that's meant to remind us of how amazing Patrik Laine has been this year.

Via — NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL)February 22, 2017

Holy crap, look at those names. Teemu Selanne had the single greatest rookie season of all time. Alexander Ovechkin might go down in history as the greatest goal-scorer ever. Eric Lindros may have been the most unstoppable physical force in hockey history.

Marek Svatos was … OK?

I mean, Svatos was a decent player. He scored 32 goals as a rookie before getting hurt, and injuries really sidetracked a promising career. But he's not exactly a guy you'd expect to see listed next to a bunch of Hall-of-Famers.

Here's another example, this one sent out by the NHL after Penguins rookie Matt Murray won the 30th game of his career.

Fewest GP to 30 career NHL wins 40 – Frank Brimsek
41 – Bill Durnan
43 – Ross Brooks
44 – Pete Peeters
44 – Matt Murray (via @EliasSports) pic.twitter.com/0BLRNPDChz
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) February 15, 2017

That's pretty good company. Durnan and Brimsek are both Hall-of-Famers, and Peeters was a first-team All-Star and Vezina winner.

But, uh, who the hell is Ross Brooks?

I had to look him up, because I'd never heard of him. As it turns out, he was a backup goalie for the Bruins for three seasons in the 1970s. He got those 30 wins in 43 games. He also got to 37 wins in 54 games. And that was all he got, because his NHL career was over after that.

As you can see, this tends to happen when we're dealing with rookies or early-career milestones, but it holds true for veterans, too. For example, Erik Karlsson recently hit the 60-point mark for the fifth time in his career, which prompted some to seek out a list of the defensemen who'd done that most often. Here's what the top 12 looks like:

The little asterisk next to a player's name means he's in the Hall of Fame. Eleven of our top 12 made it in, most of them on the first ballot. And then there's former obscure player of the week Reed Larson, who did not.

Long live the stat spoiler. If you've ever dreamed of showing up on a list of the all-time greats in your chosen field even though you're honestly not all that great at what you do, the trusty stat spoiler gives you hope that it can be done.

(Trust me, I would know.)

So yeah, no more best-on-best Olympics, but at least we have a few memories to look back on. So for today's clip, let's head back to 1998 for the first-ever Canada–USA matchup of the Olympics' NHL era.

• It's February 16, 1998. Or maybe it's February 17, I'm not sure, because the 1998 Games were in Japan and this game is happening in the middle of the night for North American fans. Did we complain? No, we did not. We just drank a lot of coffee, slept during the day, missed a few exams, and failed out of college. Wait, maybe we should have just complained.

• It's the round robin, and Team USA has already lost once, so they need this win. Canada is looking to go undefeated and secure the top seed, which would no doubt set them up for an easy run to the gold medal.

• Hey look, this game is on ESPN, kind of. I'm pretty sure this is a European feed, because the guy calls it "ice hockey" and isn't immediately dragged away and locked in a dungeon.

• Because it's 1998, our first highlight features interference. This time it's Wayne Gretzky, and it actually gets called. On the replay, we can see that he just casually skates over to Doug Weight, turns his back to the puck, and executes a can opener. I'm pretty sure that was a completely legal play in the NHL back then, but international rules are weird.

• Team USA gets a two-man advantage, and spends it repeatedly spamming Brett Hull slapshots from the slot. That's ordinarily a good plan, but doesn't work here, and Canada kills it off.

• By the way, I'm liking the gravitas of Olympics sports paired with the ESPN late-90s "too cool for capital letters" vibe.

• Our next clip is of Brendan Shanahan taking a slapshot from the blueline, which is a) not very exciting and b) actually from ten minutes earlier in the game. Don't worry, highlights guys, that screwy international clock gets all of us eventually.

• Now we're back to late in the first period, and it's still 0-0. I wonder which legendary superstar will be the first to crack this goose egg. Gretzky? Hull? Yzerman? Sakic? Modano? Plodding checking forward and 26-point-scorer Rob Zamuner? I bet it's that last one.

• Yep, I was right, as Zamuner opens the scoring after a genuinely brilliant pair of passes from Sakic and Gretzky. Zamuner's inclusion on the team was a weird one, coming at the expense of Mark Messier among others, and Canadian fans still aren't really over it. This was his only point of the tournament, by the way.

• We skip ahead to the second, and Team Canada makes it 2-0 on a goal by Keith Primeau, another one of those "Wait, he was on the team?" guys. It was a weird roster, one that also included Shayne Corson up front, had Eric Lindros as captain instead of Gretzky, and Marc Crawford as coach. Bobby Clarke put it together, in case you were wondering. I'm guessing he didn't ask Pat Quinn for any help.

• Team USA goalie Mike Richter seems to be upset over something. Typical whiny American. Let's check out the replay to see what he's crying about.

• Huh. Apparently he's mad about Yzerman just blatantly cross-checking him in the mouth right before the goal went in. Yeah, he might have a case on this one. It's subtle, but I can see where he's coming from.

• "Referee McCreary says no, let's play on." Yeah, this guy is definitely European.

• Next up is another Team Canada goal, this one featuring Theo Fleury doing some nice work to set up a Sakic tap-in. During the reaction shots, we are reminded that Team USA was coached by Ron Wilson, who was a few months away from taking the Capitals to the Cup final against the Red Wings. Tough year for Wilson to be facing teams in red and white that are way better than his.

• And that's it for our clip, which just kind of ends, presumably because Team USA threw this guy's TV out of their hotel room window.

• The two teams exchanged goals in the third, and the game ended as a 4-1 Team Canada win. That led to one of my favorite moments of the 90s, which sadly does not seem to exist online anywhere that I can find: Mike Myers going on David Letterman, telling a story about meeting Nikolai Borschevsky, and then constantly flashing "four" and "one" hand signals at the crowd. I think that one appearance almost makes up for the existence of The Love Guru. I said almost.

• The epilogue: Canada lost in a shootout to the Czechs, Team USA lost their minds back at their hotel, and neither team won a medal. But they'd meet for gold in both 2002 and 2010, and in the semi-final in 2014, with Canada winning all three. If you're an American looking forward to a best-on-best rematch, well, sorry. The NHL's world famous mid-February momentum was just too much to give up to make it happen.

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.