The Athletic Hockey Show - Who are the NHL’s dark horses for the 2026-27 season?

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

Ahead of the NHL’s 2026-27 season which begins in less than two weeks, Sean, Frank and Sean present their outside the box, dark horse, long-shot selections to win the Hart, Calder, Vezina, Adams and Norris Trophies.Host: Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoeWith: Frank CorradoExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff DometWatch full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowSubscribe to The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic hockey show. Well, well, well, look who it is. Welcome to the athletic hockey show. This is the Wednesday edition. We are back. It is September 16th, 2026. I am Sean Gentile. I am joined by Frank Carrado and Sean McIndoo.

Boys, I looked into this. I wanted to see how much of the boys are back in town we could play before we got hit with a DMCA takedown. Um, it wasn't, it wasn't enough. So I thought about humming it to myself, whistling it. I don't know, but we're, we're not, we're not going to do that. Uh, this is our first real episode in a long time, fellas, at least with the three of us. Uh, I think it's a good way to start the official league season. The official league schedule or calendar, I guess starts today. How, how are we? How are we doing? Frank Carado, you, you were dressed for golf. I, I, I feel like is, is that, is that fair to? say. I'm not going to lie, today's September 16th, but it's Christmas over here. And I'll tell you why. A few weeks ago, I got a text from a buddy saying, hey, my pal works at Puma and Cobra, and they want to send you some gear, like some hats, some shirts, like everything, get you the whole nine yards. I said, that's the best thing anyone's ever texted me. So I'm in. And then today, everything showed up. So I got the hat. I got the quarter zip. I'm head to toe Puma now. You're only going to see me in Puma. I don't, Puma everything. I am, I am.

Wow. Ricky Fowler's my new favorite golfer. I was just about to say, did you get like the full Ricky Fowler package? Is he still wear Puma? Me and Ricky Fowler, man. Yeah, I, I am smiling ear to ear today. What's going on, boys? It's a good day.

Yeah. That is, that is how easy it is to get your brand on, on this show. Uh, guys, happy new CBA day. Yeah. Yeah. Did you feel different when you woke up this morning? Did you feel like no more eight-year deals and no more bonuses and no more, no more a whole lot of stuff that was good for the players, but they get to wear silly clothes to the ring now. So it all even though.

And happy no fitness testing day to everyone. Yes. What to us three and every NHL player have in common today? We will not be doing fitness testing. Do you have any fitness testing stories? Um, nothing crazy. Just like that, it sucked.

It sucked. It was awful. It did suck. I remember one year, um, Rich Clune, who is like everyone's best friend. Yep. When you play with, with Rich, he's awesome.

We used to do the Bruce protocol in Toronto. And Lou Lamarrella was notorious for doing it in New Jersey as well. And if you don't know what it is, you start on a treadmill with a walk. And every couple minutes, the speed gets faster. and the incline gets steeper. And eventually you just go till you fail out on the test. So it doesn't feel like much at the beginning,

but you get seven or eight minutes into this thing and you start to burn. And, you know, the longest I've ever seen anyone go is maybe like 18, 20 minutes. That's a long time. So Rich was like pushing that. And he was, he was a warrior. And he said, I am going to go until I fall off this treadmill. Like I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to physically stop my legs.

And God bless Rick. Rich, he did that. He went until his leg stopped him and he went down on the treadmill and Lou Lamarillo was right there, like watching this whole thing happen. I've never seen, like, I've never seen Lou just so into it. You know what I mean? Like, I think it was, it was perfect for the whole situation and Rich is such a warrior. That's the one thing that stands out. So Lou Lamarillo is a jackass fan because that's just a jackass sketch. I'm, I'm Rich Clune. Welcome to Jackass. basically. What was the, I have to ask, what was the Phil Kessel fitness testing experience? So I did that one in Pittsburgh. But at the time, like Andy O'Brien's fitness testing was not like, I'll put it to you this way.

Andy O'Brien's fitness testing who ran that whole sports science department, you didn't have to change your summer training to be good at the fitness testing, which is the big caution as to, you know, why they've changed this now, right? Like guys were doing things training-wise to train for bench press and all these things that, you know, whatever, like certain things that didn't matter, the beep test. So, but I'll say this about Phil. If you did like a one, like a one lap explosive thing, like it was a sled push or it was a bike sprint, he would dummy everyone. Like he is a genetic freak. His legs are so strong.

It's just how long could he keep it at that elevated level. Like the first one was always great. It was, you know, the reps afterwards. But it didn't matter because when he was on the ice for that 30, 40 seconds, he was on that first one. And they would get off and change. Sprinter speed, not distance runner speed. NHL's all-time Ironman. That's right.

I love that. I love it. Boys, we're going to start here. Like, not to not to abruptly change here, but we do have a topic for today's show, or at least something we're going to start with. McIndoo, we had a post go up to this end last week. We're talking long shot awards, long shot award winners in the first segment here. I'm going to preface this by saying, like, we're not going to attach odds of this necessarily. That was sort of the hook for our post that went up on the athletic last week.

We're not going to give free advertising to any of the books. There's no need for that. let's just say that these are outside of the top outside of the top five odds on favorites to win we're just trying to give you some give you some people you know to pick to look smart down the road one of this isn't this isn't gambling advice

we just want you to win arguments with your we just use the odds to establish like what is a long shot we all know the guy who's like man I think this porter martone's gonna take the cal holder like oh really it's really gutsy great good pick Yeah, it's sorry, Lane Hudson doesn't count as a as a long shot award, as a long shot pick for the Norris. Sorry, everybody. But that is where we're going to start. Let's start with the Norris.

Again, we're going to eliminate the obvious ones. No, no Kail, no Quinn, no Werenzky, no Hudson. Frankie, let's start with you. You are the defenseman of the group. Is there someone on the board who you can at least imagine? imagine pushing their way in the conversation that would surprise them, folks. So I did read your article, and I thought there were a couple good options in there. I think it was you, Gentilly.

Did you not say Jake Sanderson was a good option? And I wholeheartedly agree with that. When you combine the offensive upside and the defensive capability, the importance to his team, you know, everything that he kind of, like he does everything at a really high level. And the team should be good, even though Brady. Kachuk is not there anymore. The team should be good. So there's like a team built-in narrative as well. I like that one. Maybe not so much of a long shot based on like his individual performance and capability, but maybe based on the team that he's playing on this year is more at Cider, who I think was a lot of

people's like, you know, a lot of people's pony last year in that race that wasn't going to win it, but you had to give him some props and some recognition. If you look at Detroit right now, they've just named an intern GM. They don't have Simon Edmondson signed who's a really important player there. And there's not really expectations that that team is going to be good or do anything. Like if Moritz-Sider has another monster year with a lot of sort of negatives going on around him, I mean, the argument is compelling and it builds itself. We'll see if it transpires into anything.

But I was kind of thinking like, man, he could really show like just how much of a force he is. this year when there's not much help around him, I guess. Preseason narratives for this stuff are so important, Frank. And I think you kind of hit on that with both those guys. I think it's true for Sanderson. I think it's true for cider. And also just like the kind of seasons that they're coming off of. Like the Jake Sanderson breakout party, that already happened.

That was two years ago. It was it was the it was the face-off tournaments. Like that is when people started treating him as like a serious contender, you know, for this kind of stuff, right? And I think, you know, if you look at it that way, if you look at it, you know, you say these guys, they leveled up a bit, a bit over the last couple years, maybe not to the, maybe not to finalist territory, but they've done enough to push themselves into that kind of discussion, you know, in the preseason.

I think that's really, really important. And that's the main reason that I picked, that I pick Sanderson. Like, he's had a year or two of being in the discussion, right? Like, people think of him in those terms. people around the league certainly think of them in those terms and I think that's important I think it's easier to take like an intermediate step like that you know and that's something that he's done that's something the guy like cider's done rather than just coming out of nowhere and going from you know preseason odds or the 11th or 12th or 13th on the board you know and jumping in in the

discussion so yeah that's that's why that's why I went with sanderson because he is he's on the fringe like if you go by if you go by the sports books and the things he's eighth he's ninth he's 10th and odds. I think that's, I think that's a little long. I think it's very possible that he ends up on a whole bunch of ballots by the time it's all said and done. There's also like just quickly on Sanderson, there's not 10 defensemen better than him in the NHL. So he deserves to be in that conversation. Like he's a top 10 guy. He's just not in the McCarre Hughes Werenstke echelon just quite yet, but his game is also, you know, incredibly well-rounded. McHugh-Dy, do you have one? Yeah, I mean, my pick in the article, I went super long,

on the long odds. And I picked for the second year in a row, by the way, Thomas Harley of the Dallas stars for a couple of reasons. One is two years ago, he finished in the top ten. It was a little bit quiet, but he has, as you know, as you kind of described,

he's broken the seal with some of these voters already. And, you know, the big story in Dallas in the off season was Thomas Harley almost got traded to Columbus for Zach Werenski. So to my, To my mind, if you're good enough to be traded for the Norris winner, you got to at least be in the Norris conversation, or at least that's what I'm telling myself as I roll the dice.

He let me down last year, but I'm doubling down on my previous mistake, which always works out great for me. He had a weird season. He was hurt for a chunk of it, though. Like, is he going to win a Norris? I don't think so. But I can also imagine it being much better than he was last season, because that was weird. It kind of feels like his easiest path to the Norris, and I mean, you never wish injury

anywhere. If Meryl Heiskenen were to get hurt, because, I mean, that would be the knock against Harley, right? A lot of people would say, great player, great player. He'd be the number one defenseman maybe on my team, but he's not number one on his own team. So how can it be number one in the league? And he would have to sort of emerge into that if Heiskenen, for whatever reason, wasn't at that level over the course of the season and Dallas is still as good as we expect. There's a chance.

It's a slim chance. So if Heiskenen has a weird off ice injury, a very, very mysterious element that comes over him, you know where to. He gets hit by a car and there's an Ontario license plate burned into his thigh. In Dallas, though, interesting. Let's move to Calder. McIndoo, we'll start with you.

This one is tough because it seems like, and it's tough every year to find long shot. but bets for the quarter because nobody actually knows any of these guys. And so for the most part. So popular opinion, you know, kind of solidifies around a few. So we'll take more tone off the board. We'll take Gavin McKenna off the board. We'll take Yvars Stenberg off the board.

Anybody else does fair game, I would say. So McIndoo, where are you looking here? Yeah, my, in the piece, I went, and I'll admit, this is a little wishful thinking. But the odds are long. I went Tijiganlin, who is a very highly rated prospect, but he may, as with a lot of the guys that you're looking at on that list, he may not even make the team or he may not play a full season, right? I mean, it is very plausible that they may decide that, you know, he needs a year in the HL or whatever it is. So, you know, don't come back to me at the end of the year and go, hey, look, your guy didn't even crack the roster. Because I acknowledge that that's a risk.

But as we've kind of talked about a few times when it comes to awards, you know, it's not all about the narrative, but a little bit helps. And I certainly feel like there's a lot of people in the hockey world that think really highly of Utah and really want to see that team succeed. And if that happened and if a ginnla was part of it, I mean, how do you not write down the name of ginnla on an awards ballot? after, you know, especially if you're an old timer that's been doing this for decades. That might be hard to resist for some. So I could, I mean, I think him winning is a long shot, but for him to get some votes, if he can hang around for a full year, maybe finishes top five finalists, maybe is the ceiling, but I could see it.

I could see a path to that. It's funny. We've got to come up with like a wild prediction tomorrow on TSN. And so I've been kind of batting this one around. and my wild prediction will have something to do with the Calder. And so I guess I'll, I'm going to soft launch it with you guys. And you guys tell me what you think. Okay.

So this is what I'm going with. Roman Cancerob to win the Calder. And I think people, right? And I think people would be looking at that saying, who? Who dat? And I'll tell you who that is. Second round pick of the Chicago Blackhawks in 2023, 44th overall. He's only 5 foot 9.

he's 176 pounds. So why dude would you be picking this dude to win the Calder? And this is my reasoning why. He had 64 points and 63 games in the KHL last year. 36 of those were goals. He led the league in scoring. It's the highest scoring season ever for a 21-year-old in that league. Carrillo Caprisoff, for some context,

he had 51 points in 57 games back in 2018, 2019. It's not as strong of a league as it was. was back then anymore. But Capri Soff came over and he won the Calder the next season. What I'm saying is going by track record, there's a conceivable path for this guy to come over to the NHL and kind of light it up early on. And chances are he's going to be playing with some combination of Connor Bedard and Patrick Kane. He's not going to be playing on the third line. It's not going to be buried on the fourth line. It's going to be playing power play reps. He's going to be playing important minutes. And there's only so much puck to go around. And puck's going to be going

around him, I think anyways, as long as he holds up his end of the bargain. So that's my sort of long shot, Roman Cancerov to win the Calder. They like him in Chicago too. I think that's established fact that he's going to get opportunities. And he should because like, who else, you know, they're a bad team. So you got to figure out what you have in Roman Cancer Rob. And that means playing him with Badaard or it means playing with Patrick Kane, maybe giving him some power play time. I think there's a world where you end up looking very smart because of that one. So well done. I'm using similar logic with James Hagan's in Boston. Pretty good year with Boston college last year. He's top 10 pick. At one point he was talked about as a potential first overall

pick in 2025. Tons of skill, I think there are openings all over the place on that. roster for a player like him. I think it's very conceivable that you see someone like James Hagan's get legit second line minutes, maybe some power play time, maybe sneaks on and gets a few shifts with it with Posternak. That always that always helps. And that's that's that's all I'm looking for, right? You're looking for upside. You're looking for a guy who's is going to get some time with some potential high-end NHL players. And I think I think Hagen's fits that fits that mold. It's also worth saying, you know, that it doesn't speak well of Boston's lineup, that they're going to potentially rely on a first year player to, you know, give them the kind

of upside that they've, that they've lacked over the last couple years. But I think he's at least capable of it. He's got tons of skill. There's still some questions over whether he's going to play center or wing in the short and long term. But I think there's minutes for him to be had in Boston. And I so I think that's really, that's really all you're looking for when you're talking about long shot rookies, I would say. Moving on to the Jack Adams, Sean McIndoo, let's start here with you. Which coach is going to have the most out of nowhere solid goaltending performance? Because we don't know.

That's what that's what this award is. That's exactly what the award is. It really is the award that is, it goes to the coach of the team that everyone underestimated the most, most years. Last year there were so many teams that fit that mold that I think those guys all split the vote. And that allowed John Cooper to finally sort of come up the middle and get his lifetime achievement award. But very typically, this is the team that people either thought was going to be bad or had been bad for years. And then they take the unexpected leap. My pick is a guy, it's not so much that I could see this team making a major leap.

but it's Travis Green of the Ottawa Senators for a couple of reasons. Number one is this is a team that was a lot better than you think last year, and they got way laid by terrible goaltending. You know, they went out and got Linus Allmark, a recent Vesina winner, and for a variety of reasons, he was just no good last year, and they didn't have the depth behind him to make up for that. But you look at all the other numbers, you look under the hood a little bit,

some of those underlying numbers we like to look at. And the senators were a very, very good tip. So if they get even average goaltending, let alone great goaltending, I think they're a better team, even without Brady Kachuk. And that's kind of the other piece of this, because, you know, again, the narrative comes into play.

This is a team who's, you know, let's, for the sake of the narrative, let's say their best player, not only gets traded away, but I mean, he basically quits on them. I mean, he basically says, I don't want to be here anymore. I want to, I want to get out of here. I want to go be the fifth best player on a Stanley Cup contender.

If that, that's great fodder for a, hey, nobody believes in us rally around the flag kind of season. And if they get off to a decent start and they start to believe and buy into this whole thing, I think they have a potential to be a really good team to make the playoffs maybe by some distance. And if so, I think a lot of people who maybe were eager to write them off when Brady Kachuk bailed might sit there and say, well, what's the explanation for why I was so wrong? And usually that ends up being the coach. It's interesting. Like, I think there's, there's a few coaches that are knocking on the door for it. Just they've established like a certain reputation for how their teams play. And like the Ottawa senators play the same game. It's very consistent. There's not a lot of

variance. There's not a lot of highs and lows. And to your point, the, the, the, the, the, the, lows were mainly caused by poor goaltending last year. I think another coach that's really starting to get a reputation here. And we heard Chris Kreider talk about him, but it's Marty St. Louis. And I think, you know, is it really a long shot for Marty St. Louis? Like, he's got a really good team. It's now become a destination that it feels like if you want to win, the window is opening. So you're going to try and make your way over to Montreal, just like Chris Kreider has done. but like that narrative sort of like the the you don't hear a lot of that you don't hear a lot of like players saying i signed with team x because i want to play for this coach i think that says a lot and if they have a

good year and he continues to kind of bolster his reputation there's there probably is going to be a lot of lenience or like leaning to i guess from the voters to say like it's his time it's his time to win this award and he's earned it. So I guess my pick, you know, if you want to call it a long shot or not, I don't think he's the top three or four or even five in odds, it would be Marty St. Louis. Yeah, I was about to crush you for that. I thought you're taking like the coward's way out there and picking someone who was going to be, you know, third on the odds boards for this.

He's not. Like I, so he's like eighth or nine. Yeah, I think, I think that's low. I think it's very, and you know, they made their leap last year. to some extent. I think they, you know, went on a run,

at least a round deeper into the playoffs than most people expect them to go. So I don't know if maybe, you know, he gets dinged because that award was voted on before the playoffs. Like if you vote on Jack Adams, you know,

if you pull the broadcasters and they vote on stuff in, on June 1 instead of the start of the playoffs, I think, I think San Luis gets a bunch of votes, but that's not the way it was. So I think he's starting the season with some upward,

momentum. Yeah. And for the record, that's how they should do it. That's how they should do it. It's the, the heart, the GM, and the MVP,

to my mind should all be after the playoffs. That would mix it up a little bit, but you're right. That's not how they do it. I just want to put Andre Turney out there too. I think there's a world

where Utah, and look, this is a playoff team last year, right? Like, we're not telling tails out of school by saying we think they're going to be okay this season. But I think there's a world where the Logan Coolies of the world and Dylan Gunther and players like that level up in,

and tourney, you know, gets and deserve some of the credit for that. He's, he's certainly below San Luis on some of these boards as well. Next up, boys, the Vesna Trophy, another award that is not voted on by us. I always like saying that because people get, you know, people, People get pissy about all these. And I think in a lot of spots, assume that we're to blame whenever the votes are bad. Vezna's not us. And Jack Adams is not us.

But, yeah, Vesna, Frankie, who's your guy here? Now, maybe you can check this for me, but I was going to say Jetgreaves because it's not Shasturkin. It's not Sorokin. It's not, well, who knows where Connor Hullabuck is going to play. It's not Vasilevsky. It's a guy who plays for club.

who, like, is not the most household name of the goaltenders that are there right now. Like, a lot of people would know Merzleekins, I guess if you're more of a casual fan. But Jet Grieves is a serious goaltender. Like, he's really good. He played 55 games last year. And I think with this one, like, there's some uncertainty in Columbus. Adam Fantili doesn't have a deal yet. We're getting memes from agents about bears.

And, you know, maybe is that something that means Carill Marchenko is going to be playing? for the Bruins. Like, we don't know how things are going to look in Columbus, but I think that guy's a really athletic goaltender. And if that team is not in a position to compete, but they are competitive, and he's got like a 920 save percentage, and he's playing 55, 60 games, there's going to be a case that that guy could be the Vesna winner. And quite honestly, like, goaltending is weird, man.

Like, these guys have up years and down years, and it could just coincide that, like, like this is Greaves's year and the other guys don't have it like there's there's a world where that could happen where do you think he is um where do you think he is on name on nameless sports book that I'm looking at right now like what ranking do you think he is like fifth six that's the highest eighth okay so yeah that's higher than I would have thought jet grieves would have clocked in 90 seconds ago. I sincerely did not think he was going to have the eighth best or the eighth the eighth lowest odds to win.

But he's good. He's been good really consistently since he started playing games for the Blue Jackets. You know what scares me there? Because I was nodding along to everything Frank was saying, but I feel like you could have taken an awful lot of that and take us back one year. And it would have been Dustin Wolf. we would have been talking about. Yeah.

And that that's a second year, just wasn't, wasn't there. So I mean, I went with a, I'll just say a much cheaper pick. And I'm glad, I'm glad that when,

when Frankie was rhyming off the obvious picks, he didn't name my guy and I thought he might and, and blow up my spot. But he stopped just short because this guy was in that conversation just a year or two ago. And that's Jake Ottinger. Yeah. Pretty simple stuff here.

The Vezina very often is an award that goes to a goalie with a lot of wins. And I think Jay Gottinger and the Dallas Stars are going to win an awful lot of games. And it really is that simple. If he plays well, and he has, you know, last year was maybe a bit of a step back, but goaltending is weird. I could see him being very close to the top of the league in wins. And when you mix in, you know, Connor Hallibuck being in a new situation, Who knows what that'll be like some of the other guys getting up there in age or being on teams that aren't going to win as much as Dallas.

I was surprised Jake Ottinger was down around, you know, fifth or sixth in the odds. And so I would take him as a admittedly mild long shot to get the Vesna. I'm committing to the bit. I said this in the post. I'm going to say it again. Stu Skinner for Vesna, baby. Let's go. we know the road there for him.

It's that it's that Helibuck doesn't play, gets traded, whatever. Benefits from the overall vibe in Winnipeg, even though that the defense first reputation, I think, is maybe has been unearned at certain points. If Helibuck's gone, he's going to get a ton of starts. He's going to get a ton of starts. And he is a dude who, if nothing else, we know he's streaky. But we also know that he's gone through huge chunks

of regular season games and saved a whole bunch of pucks. So would I bet real American dollars on Stu Skinner to win the Vesna Trophy? I would not. But when I open up Nameless Sportsbook X and see him at plus 12,500

to win the Vesna Trophy, I'm like, yeah, okay. I can if you squint hard enough, you can see it. And I think I'm going to stick with him because I'm a man of principle. and I said this last week and in a post. Let me ask you this. If Stuart Skinner wins a Vesna playing for the Winnipeg Jets,

does that cheapen the Vesda that Connor Hellebuck won there? And does it cheapen how you look at him? Because like that's very decorated regular season goalie playing for that team. If someone else like Stu Skinner jumps in there and all of a sudden is just lighting it up, it's like maybe it was a little bit of the team and how they play and not so much what we thought was the guy between the pipes. Whenever Connor Hallibuck's putting up an 872 in Buffalo or whatever.

Yeah. In concert with that. The other thing that happens is Stan Bowman gets instantly fired if he hasn't been already when that happens. But I love that pick. And yeah, you said 12,000-5-50s. So that's 125 to 1 if people don't speak odds. That's an outrageous long shot. Here's the thing.

We've said we don't vote on the Vezna. Who does vote on the Vezna? the GMs. A hundred percent. Look at what's happening in Winnipeg. Kevin Sheveldeoff, a veteran, a guy who's been around forever, his best player, who he signed to a long-term deal, locked in, thought he could build a round, comes to him and says, I don't want to be here anymore. If he trades that guy away already having someone else in his back pocket and that guy goes on to have a pretty good season, I think there's going to be some GMs looking at a colleague saying he kind of got screwed. I'm going to throw a vote to his guy, make him look smart.

He's going to look like a genius. I'd want my pals, my golfing buddies to do the same for me. And so suddenly, you know, a couple of extra votes go Skinner's way. Maybe that tilts it. I love it. This ends with me putting like four bucks on Stu Skinner to actually get it done. Yeah. And he then wins three games out of the 21 that plays.

Benched by Canadian Thanksgiving. We'd never see him again. Easy come, easy go. All right. this is the big one, heart trophy. I'm looking at the top five here. It's McDavid, and McCannin, Celebrini, Drysidal, Kutrov

in that order. Those are the ones we'll eliminate. I'll give you guys a pretty deep pool there. Frankie, who's your guy? So I was a little surprised that I didn't see this name, at least in what I'm looking at, like, a top eight or nine or even ten.

And I think sometimes people look at this award, and they say, let's not overthink it. Let's just keep it simple. who's the best player on the best team. And there's a chance this year that the best player on the best team could be Nick Suzuki. Montreal Canadians are going to be good or we think they're going to be good. They just came off this playoff run where Nick Suzuki and company were, you know, good, really good up until they ran into that buzzsaw that was the Carolina Hurricanes.

He just had 100 points and won the Selke. First time that's been done since the mid-90s and that was Sergei Federer. I don't think Suzuki has the ceiling to get to 130 and keep up with like, you know, McDavid and company. I also don't think that's like his style of game because he's going to win, you know, Selke's again in his career. But to not like to not like go crazy with it, like just to keep it simple, best player on best team and he was top five in heart voting already this year.

So he's kind of knocking on it and people have that notion in their head. I think Nick Suzuki is a reasonable long shot when you look at. at the players that would be listed ahead of him. He's improved dramatically year over year going back a while now, right? Like, I'm going to be honest. I didn't think we were going to be talking about Nick Suzuki as a 101 point Selkie trophy winner in the same season. I had a lot of respect for his game, and I thought there was, you know, I don't know

how far short of that I would have picked him to fall. But year over a year, man, that guy has out kicked his coverage and he's at a point now. where if he levels up a game, where does that put him? It puts him in the heart discussion. Like it's going to, and it would get him a ton of votes. If he improves this season, the way he's improved in like each the last three, really,

which is already kind of a wild, kind of a wild situation to find yourselves in, I think, I think we're talking about him as a legit candidate, for sure. I, and would I bet real money on it? Absolutely not. But man,

I don't, I don't hate that. I don't think a lot of people had him in the top five going to the last season. No way. He's created a lot of momentum for himself for a guy that's not one of the big, you know, big five names. And playing in Montreal helps. Playing in markets like that is a is a very, very helpful thing to consider. Mackin do.

Yep. So I've mentioned this before throwing this stat out there. And Frankie will back me up on this one. The year 2000, Chris Pronger wins the heart trophy. Since then, not only has no defensemen won the heart trophy, no defenseman has even been a finalist. And that is just ridiculous. Considering you talk to anybody in the NHL, any NHL fan, any of that, you say, how do you build a winner? Well, you build from the back end, right?

You need that 30 minute a night stud defenseman. That's the one piece that every cup winner has and blah, blah, blah. And there's a lot of truth to it. And yet when it comes time to vote for the heart trophy, we just don't vote for defensemen. And it doesn't make any sense to me. So I picked Kail McCar, the best defenseman in the league, now the highest paid player in the league, at least for now, as my heart pick. And he's way down the list. And he shouldn't be.

I mean, you know, again, you talk about best player on best team. Colorado was the best team last year in the regular season. And if Kail McCar wasn't their best player, he was 1A. So I could see it being a little bit like you remember last year with the Jack Adams where just suddenly, you know, about a month or two in the season, people started saying it's really weird that John Cooper has never won this award. And that just kind of snowballed into a consensus. I could see and maybe I can be part of getting that snowball rolling, but I could see people going, wait a second, we're really underrating defensemen when it comes to the Hart Trophy. And then, you know, if it comes time to I'm going to put. I'm going to put a defenseman or two on my heart ballot.

Oh, you're going to start with the best guy in the league, assuming he's having a typical Kail McCar's season. So that's my long shot that I don't think should be a long shot, but it is. I'm happy you went there, and I'm happy you said that. Because think about this, that level of defensemen, say, Kail McCar plays 27 minutes a night. He goes out there for every power play. He's the first guy on the ice.

Then he goes out there for every penalty kill. He's the first guy on the ice. then with two minutes or one minute left in the period, he's on the ice. Every important high leverage situation, he's on the ice. Some of the guys who are the forwards who get the love for the heart, they don't do them all. They might do four out of five. They probably do four out of five. They at least do three out of five.

But no one touches that many points of the game the way that type of defensemen does. So we are overlooking it. And I agree, like this would be a great year for it to be Kail McCarr. The team's going to be good. Like, he's obviously, he's in the news a lot because of how much money he makes, and it's all justified. But there's a world where that very much could happen. I think I'm going, Jack Hughes here. Not necessarily because I think he's going to win it, but I'm trying to prove a point.

What's another thing we'd know about the Hart Trophy is that for as much as our player evaluation, methods have improved publicly over the last 10 years or 15 years were big dumb animals and sometimes we look at the point standings and say like yeah okay like yeah maybe maybe there was a lack of substance maybe maybe the team wasn't you know a true cup contender but boy but but boy that's a lot of points and that's who the tiebreaker goes to I think there's a world where that happens with jack hughes this year I I don't know how likely it is, but I think when it's all said and done, if he stays healthy, we could be talking about him as an Art Ross winner.

And if some other stuff falls into place, I think he's going to get some votes. And he is currently pretty low on boards. I think he's in the discussion where it's fair to talk about him as a long shot. I don't know if I love the devil's roster overall, though. I think Sonny Meda's done well to build out that forward group. I think the Metro Division is a mosh pit, and everyone behind Carolina and Washington is kind of a coin flip. But when we're talking in April about all this,

I think there's a world where Jack Hughes gets a whole bunch of support, and I think it hinges on him staying healthy. I think the only thing holding him back is the fact that he's basically going to miss 20 plus games every single season. Yep. Right. Like if he was an 84 game, now we can say 84 games a year. I'm still not used to that, by the way. If he was, if he's in the lineup for 84 games and like it's been like that on a regular basis, then we would be having these conversations about him being in that, being in that ballpark every single season. But it hasn't been the case. But the points per game, if you look at that, like he's in there.

He's just got to play more than 60, 65 games this year. And maybe he doesn't. Maybe, you know, December rolls around. and we're talking about Jack having his annual shoulder issue, and that takes him out of the discussion. That's very, very possible. But if he finds a way to scrape together 76, 78 games, I think he's going to be there. Look at, I mean, he missed time last year to a freak injury, right?

You know, the whole breaking a glass thing, that's, you know, that's not something that has anything to do with injury prone or not. That's just bad luck. So it could have, I think it's a great pick because if he plays, as we say, 84 games. He's a contender. And if he doesn't, you can just shrug and go, well, yeah, my guy got hurt. You know, it wasn't wrong. It's not going to take much outside of him being healthy for this to come to pass.

Like, because McDavid and Drysidal are always going to cannibalize votes. McCar and McKinnon are always going to cannibalize votes. And I think there's a world where the lightning fall off enough where Kucharov takes himself out of the running too. So I feel like I'm talking myself into actually, actually placing this bet. And historically, you right here. A team doesn't have to be. great for a guy to win the heart trophy.

The team has to make the playoffs. They got to be good. But they have to be good enough and better than they were the year before. And New Jersey has not done much in the last three years. If they, it can be a hundred point team, which isn't, you know, which isn't all that great these days. That's probably enough to really get the attention to some of these voters. All right. That's it there.

Again, we're not giving you gambling advice. We really, we really tried it. We do our best to stay away from that there. I just trying to help you look smart, man. That's it, man. This is winning arguments. This is if you find yourself with, say, Thomas Drance in a bar during a set of work meetings in Chicago, as I did last week. And you can keep up with his insane, constant fire hose of takes on everything imaginable.

Man's a crazy person. Grants loves a take. Dude, he is a take guy, capital T, capital G. You know what Drance loves more than anyone? an out of market take. You know what I mean? He wants to dive into someone's market and have a big, bold take, and I love it.

Oh, your answer. I wonder if he's listening to us. Frankie, what do you got going on this week, man? Like, can you... Are you in full-on, full-on preseason mode yet? We're getting there. We got a big show Friday. We're doing our top 50 show.

So we're going to be revealing all our names and chopping that up. And then we got our first panel of the year on Saturday. Leaps. Leif's Habs or Leif's Sends. I can't remember who they play. I think it's Leif's Sends. Anyways, Leapes panel this weekend on Saturday.

On TSN. Is the Puma Gear going to hit the course this week? Puma Gear is going to be out there in about an hour and a half. Let's go. Get the hell out of here, buddy. See you, boys. Talk to you next week, man. See ya.

Folks, the Athletics Hockey Desk is set to release the Hockey 100s, our ranking of the 100 greatest modern NHL players completely agreed upon. Nobody had any issues with any part of the order. Isn't that right, McAnew? That's correct. Yeah. Your name is on the cover, by the way. It's you, Dan Robson, and then a bunch of background singers. It's all the profiles that we did for our big list that came out a couple years ago. It's been updated. It's been altered. It's now in book form. It's going to be available very soon. Can Hitchcock wrote the forward. I wish I could have. I still I still haven't seen that yet.

I think that's going to be a lot of fun because he's one of the all-time characters in the game. So that's one reason to buy it. There's plenty of other ones. Again, the Hockey 100. It's available in stores soon. And it's been updated and amended and whatever. It's written also, again, solely by Sean McAdo and Dan Robson. Just kidding.

It's correct. Yep. Let me take a break. We'll be right back. All right, there goes Frankie. I have a question for you, folks. Are you the kind of sports fan that wants to dig in to the story behind the stats? I assume you are.

Join the Athletic Live on YouTube to cover all the sports stories that you can't stop talking about on game days. Here's how it's going to work. We will watch the biggest matchups alongside the athletics most tapped in reporters. And you, yes, you can become part of the show in the interactive chat. The Athletic Live is presented by Google Gemini. Subscribe now on YouTube. Sean McIndoo. I would like to tell you something that I've learned.

What have we learned, Sean? Under 25 buyout rules. That's something everybody who pays attention to the NHL needs to familiarize themselves with. As we see the Vili Covenins and Luke Evangelistas and whoever else of the world, signed contracts that come with some initial amount of sticker shock. I'm not even going to, we're not going to get into whether these guys are worthy of those deals or not. I tend to think they are, but whatever. remember if you are a fan of a team who just signed a young player to a let's say forward

focused contract that builds in potential in the AV you have a get out of jail free card relatively speaking that you're probably unaware of those are the under 25 buyout rules it's pretty simple if a player is 25 or younger when they're bought out the buyout cost is only one third of the remaining base salary. So you're paying them less if you buy someone out when they're 24 than you are if they're 31. It's stretched out over a bunch of years. The end result, if you look at Billy Cuyvenin and Pittsburgh is the example.

Signed an eight-year deal worth $32 million earlier this off season. That means that if he does not establish himself as an NHL player over the next couple years, Kyle Dubas can cut bait and he would only have to worry about paying Billy Coyv, and it's less than a million dollars basically over the course, over the stretched out length of that contract. This is important. It's one of those things that's going to come up at least in one way or another. And if nothing else, McAthea, we've talked about this in a lot of different forms.

It's part of the stuff we need to consider now because of the way things have changed. We need to alter the way we talk about contract signings. We need to alter the way we think about player valuation because we're in a new world, man. The way things have worked under the cap explosions over the last couple of seasons have changed the math. And stuff like the buyout rules need to be part of that discussion. Yeah. And you know the GMs are factoring that into the risk calculations that they do before they make an offer. And hopefully the players are as well.

And to piggyback off that, what I've learned is we can basically hold a funeral right now. Now, rest in peace to the concept of the second contract in the way that we've come to know it in the history of the cap era. It used to be you came to the league. You had your three-year rookie contract where you were going to be making close to the league minimum. Maybe some bonuses worked in there. Then when you became a free agent or free agency age or got close to it, that's when you could make the big bucks. And in between there was the second contract, which was unless you were Connor McDavid, you were going to get a contract that probably made you underpaid, probably, I mean,

in a lot of cases, made you significantly underpaid because we're talking about the early 20s where especially for forwards, that tends to be their prime years. And yet they didn't get the prime money then. You had to prove it for another few years, kind of earn your, uh, pay your dues, whatever cliche you want to put out there. I don't think that's happening anymore. We're seeing some huge contracts handed out. We're seeing obviously the Leo Carlson offer sheet is huge here because if you're a GM,

you can't screw around with these guys that are offer sheet eligible because it used to be, oh, no, what would happen? Somebody's going to sign my guy to an offer sheet like the Habs did with Sebastian Ajo, where you were basically just doing the hurricanes of favor, getting their guys signed for them. Now when you see these big outrageous offers coming in, you go, wow,

we really might have a choice to make. I don't want to be in that position. Let's get the deals done with these guys. And look, as far as the teams, owners, GMs are concerned, it's still the same 50%

that the players are dividing it up. So this doesn't, this isn't a rising tide lifts all boat situation. The money's going to come from somewhere and it's not going to come from the top guys. And so it might be those, those middle of the lineup guys who are getting to free agency. And normally this is where they'd hit the home run.

And instead, maybe there's not as much money out there. That will sort of sort itself out over the years. But right now, boy, if you've got an elite young player, you're going to get a big bargain on his first two or three years as he burns off that rookie contract. And after that, you're going to pay full freight. There's no more discounts just because a guy happens to be years away from free agency.

I want to know who the first elite player is who signs a three-year extension. It's just like, you know what? Not doing seven, because that's the max, by the way. As of today, the longest contract a player can sign is seven years with his existing team. I want to see you the first guy who's like, I'm making a three-year bet on A, myself, and B, the revenue league-wide. It's going to happen. And that also, to take a time. back. I know we didn't talk about

Cal McCar's contract, but I think that's one of those things that's what could make it age well. And it sounds crazy. But if you look at cap projections, and if you factor in that maybe those are on the conservative side, I don't think we're all that far away from high-end players being capable of making $25, $26 million a year.

And if you want to set yourself up for that, risky as it might be, the easiest thing to do is be like, nope, short term, three years. gives you power over over your team gives you a say on on direction potentially obviously there's risk involved and you know the two things to jump out is number one guys do get hurt and we have seen careers derailed by injury ended by injury or just impacted by injury a lot of people say well you can buy insurance if you suffer a career ending injury i don't think it's the career ending injury that the guys are worried about it's the you know the

the knee injury and suddenly you come back and you're half a step slower. And we've seen that happen to guys. So there is that risk. And then a lot of these guys really don't like this process. You just hear that a lot. They hate it. They, you know, give me the max length so that I don't even have to think about this stuff,

uh, for as many years as possible. And that makes sense too. But yeah, I do wonder when it's going to be three years or even two or one. You know, we, we saw it with McDavid, obviously.

and he's sort of his own set of circumstances, but yeah, will you see that from a guy who's 22 and says, you know what, no, give me a couple years. And then we'll see where we're at and where the cap is at two years from now.

I don't think teams want that to happen. I'm not sure which players are going to want it to happen, but I'm willing to bet the GMs want no part of it. Especially if the way things are, like the way things have gone with Halibuck and Larkin in particular, if that makes GMs as a group more stingy about handing out no movement clauses as part of these as part of these discussions. What's a counterpoint from from players? They're saying, fine, I'm not going to sign long term then.

Like, if you're not, if you're not giving me trade protection, like, like, I'm, then roll the dice. We're going to have to do this again in a few years. And it's going to turn into a more interesting poker game moving forward. I think because of the amount of money that's in the system, because we're seeing it, man. We're seeing it day after day with these contracts, people continue to be shocked by them. People were shocked by Vili Kuyvenin signing for eight years as a fringe NHL player at this point. And people were shocked by the contract that the Luke Evangelis signed. Like, it's going to keep happening because people still have not calibrated for the amount of money that is about to be in this system after years of stagnation.

So we shall see. Sean McAnew, what are you doing the rest of the week? Are you still kind of in vacation mode? Can you like take a little bit of a break here? Are we in like four? full post schedule now. Yeah, we're pretty much there. This week is light. This week I did finish off the Bizarro Meter rankings for which team had the weirdest off season. We had the Western Conference on Friday.

Eastern Conference went up on Monday. And that'll be it for me for the week, but I'm now in full-on season preview mode. To answer a question, I've gotten a few places. The contest is coming back next Wednesday, in fact. So you'll get a. a few extra days of lead time to get your entry in there and a whole bunch of other things, oddly specific predictions and all sorts of other stuff that I typically do this type of year. So it's ramping up.

The good news is I'm in the best shape of my life. The bad news is I lied about that. I'm already sleepy and I want to nap. So you don't want to write this St. Louis Blues preview for me today? Is that I understand? Dude, I already wrote a book. I wrote a book this summer. Give me a break.

Yeah, just you and Robson. The only, the only people who wrote any part of the S-A-100 is like 60-40. Just out October 27th. I think I neglected to mention that. So, you know, buy that in six weeks. Buy that in six weeks. Enjoy our very mediocre season preview content in the meantime. And me and Sean and Frankie will be back next week.