You’re making your lists, checking them twice, and I’ve got to say that if you do not have Chris Kreider on Team USA for Four Nations (as most don’t), what in the world are you talking about?
Of course, the only list that counts is the one handed in by Team USA (and Minnesota) GM Billy Guerin, whom I have known for 30 years to be an astute hockey mind. Well, maybe for the past 20 or so.
I’m not going to debate which winger would be excluded by naming Kreider to the squad. It is immaterial to me when speaking about the second-highest American-born goal scorer since 2021-22, the leading American-born power-play-goal scorer in that span and the leading American-born shorthanded-goal scorer over the past three-plus seasons.
Beginning with 2021-22 — during which then Rangers head coach Gerard Gallant unlocked Kreider’s immense production potential by giving him the first penalty-kill assignment of a career that commenced during the 2012 playoffs — Kreider has scored 129 goals, seventh in the NHL and second among Yanks to NHL-leader Auston Matthews’ 169.
Over that span, Kreider has scored 52 power-play goals, third in the NHL, while establishing himself as a net-front auteur. And No. 20’s 10 shorthanded goals is most in the league.
The 33-year-old from Boxford, Mass., has represented his country in six different tournaments, twice in the World Juniors, four times in the World Championships. He is a mentor and an elite goal scorer, and there is no debate about whether he belongs on this team.
I’ll scribble this out for you on a napkin:
KREIDER FOR AMERICA.
It is obviously insane to assign disproportionate weight to a team’s season opener. But sometimes they can be symbolic.
And I just wonder after the Red Wings’ opening, 6-3 defeat to the Penguins in Detroit — 24 hours after Pittsburgh had been used as a speed bag by the Rangers while Detroit was fresh — whether GM Steve Yzerman is going to have Joel Quenneville on speed dial?
Yzerman is, of course, sacrosanct in the Motor City. But so was Willis Reed in New York, and he was fired by the Knicks as head coach. And so was Bart Starr in Green Bay, and he was fired as head coach.
The Red Wings’ sin lays on the doorstep of former GM Ken Holland and ownership that prioritized extending their playoff streak to what became a pro sports record to 25 years rather than taking a step or two back to reload for a championship run.
They talked about 25 years the way the Yankees sometimes talk about 32 straight years of above-.500 baseball.
But the Red Wings now have missed the playoffs eight straight seasons — the past five on the watch of Yzerman, who took command in 2019-20.
Everyone likes Detroit head coach Derek Lalonde. But time waits for no man, even an icon such as Yzerman. It would behoove the Red Wings to get on track early.
If not a playoffs-or-bust Detroit, which projected contender will turn to Quenneville, cleared to return for duty by the NHL in July?
Is anyone going to be surprised if the Sabres are a train wreck with Lindy Ruff behind the bench, the same way the Devils were for three of his four seasons in New Jersey?
Ruff, though, did not hire himself. The dots can be connected through GM Kevyn Adams — with whom libations were happily shared at the great old haunt in Toronto called The Madison — to the Pegula ownership, which has turned the franchise into an example of dysfunction.
It should be impossible to miss the playoffs 13 straight seasons. Well, except for the NFL Jets. It should be against the law to miss the playoffs 13 straight seasons in which the club has two first-overall picks, two second-overall picks and eight other selections in the top 10.
Yet those are the Sabres, who have been unable to construct a tournament team despite having drafted Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power and Dylan Cozens while obtaining Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch and Peyton Krebs for a pair of disaffected veterans in Ryan O’Reilly and Jack Eichel, both of whom won Cups with their new teams after escaping Buffalo.
Dan Bylsma has been behind the bench, Phil Housley has been behind the bench, Ralph Krueger has been behind the bench, Don Granato has been behind the bench, and now there is Ruff.
On top of it all, though, there is the Pegula ownership presiding over this sideways franchise.
I have been writing about how this seems a continuation for the Rangers when I apparently meant that this is a continuation for the Islanders, who simply cannot wait to cough up third-period leads.
In Thursday’s season opener at UBS against minimalist-styled Utah, Patrick Roy’s group first waited 45 seconds before giving up a 3-2 third-period lead at 7:37 then, when the Islanders went up 4-3 at 17:53, they did not have the patience to wait more than 13 seconds to allow the tying goal in an eventual 5-4 OT defeat.
Roy’s Quebec Remparts allowed the fewest goals in the QMJHL in each of the fabled No. 33’s final two years behind their bench. It is not him. It is on the Islanders not to — pardon the expression — run it back.
Five out of the past eight conference finalists and eight of the past 16 over the past four years come from the five non-tax states represented in the NHL.
The advantage owned by six teams — the Panthers, Lightning, Stars, Golden Knights, Predators and Kraken — is substantial and exploited by every agent worth his actuarial degree.
The league has no interest in addressing this imbalance. Folks say it’s complicated. Folks say there is not yet evidence of a trend. The union has other concerns heading into preliminary CBA talks tentatively set to commence after the calendar flips to 2025.
But the owners of the 26 teams that are disadvantaged by this system should insist that the NHL addresses this issue. They are impacted on every contract. By extension, so are the fan bases that pay the freight.
When will they demand justice?
When will they challenge Gary Bettman?
What? You say that the commissioner and Ninth Avenue will deliver a pair of expansion teams within the next four years carrying $1.5 billion entry fees that will be split among the Original 32?
Never mind.
Justice is different for the owners.