Монреаль Канадиенсын цалингийн цэс болон НХЛ-ийн маргаантай сэдвүүдийн тухай

Welcome back to The Contrarian, the feature where you state the obvious and then I tell you why you’re wrong.

It’s been over a year since we’ve done this, because I forgot I’ve been waiting for you to come up with some worthy challenges. But with Slow News Summer crawling along, this is as good a time as any for me to do what modern sports media is apparently supposed to do best: Argue loudly and aggressively for positions I may or may not actually believe in.

Sound like fun? You would think that.

Note: Submissions have been edited for clarity and style.

The Montreal Canadiens have the best salary cap situation in the NHL. — Kevin S.

On the contrary, Kevin, you cumberworld. I’ll grant you that your premise seems sound. After all, in a league where relatively unproven players like Bowen Byram and Pavel Dorofeyev are making well north of $10 million, the Canadiens have five young cornerstone pieces — Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson, Juraj Slafkovský and Ivan Demidov — all signed to long-term deals that carry a cap hit well under that threshold. That’s a 100-point Selke winner, a 50-goal scorer, a Norris contender and two of the best 22-and-under forwards in the league, all signed through 2030 or beyond, and all making less than Alex Tuch. Come on.

When it comes to having a financial advantage over the next half-decade or so, the Canadiens are close to being a league of their own. Forget local tax rates or cost of living, the Canadiens are going to have huge chunks of extra space to work with for years to come. It’s borderline unfair. And there’s no way to spin it as anything less than a gigantic positive.

Except … well, are we sure?

As we’re often scolded to remember these days, players are people, not simply assets or cells in a spreadsheet. They have feelings, and egos, not to mention friends and family in their ears. And in this case, these real people are going to spend the next several years constantly hearing about how they left tens of millions of dollars on the table by signing comically below-market deals. How are they going to feel about that?

It’s hard to say. Obviously, none of these guys are going to be eating dollar-store ramen any time soon. You could argue that $8-9 million should be more than enough for a young man playing a kid’s game. But then again, so would $7 million. Or $6 million, or $5 million, and none of them signed for that, because ultimately players want to be paid what they’re worth, just like anyone else. And when you constantly show up on every “best contract” list, that’s just a polite way of saying you’re working for a steep discount.

To be clear, if any of Montreal’s young stars have a problem with the contracts they signed, they should be directing their resentment at their agents, not the team. But that’s not always how this works. We all knew the salary cap was going up, and we all knew signing a long-term deal would carry huge risk for a young player. With the possible exception of Suzuki, who you could argue signed what was a fair-market contract and then developed beyond expectations, each of these guys took deals that had observers wondering what they were thinking. Are they ready to hear that refrain over and over again for most of the next decade? They’d better be.

Then there’s the view from the other side. We’ve already seen GMs with a reputation for driving hard bargains face some backlash this summer, most notably Pat Verbeek in Anaheim and Steve Yzerman (formerly) in Detroit. So far, none of that seems to be blowing back on Kent Hughes and company, but you wonder if it will someday. There’s a thin line between being the team with a well-managed cap sheet and being the one that never pays its stars anything close to what they’re worth.

And that’s before you factor in what the team is supposed to do with all this money they’ve saved. Hand it to overpaid depth pieces? That won’t help you win. Spend it on free agents? Sounds like a better plan, but the rare stars who make it to UFA aren’t typically looking to take big discounts. Let’s say the Canadiens sign one of the big names from a potentially star-studded class of 2027 to a market-rate deal. How does that play with the homegrown stars who watch an outsider walk in and stuff their pockets with what should have been their money?

I think there’s a short and obvious answer here: Winning cures just about everything, the Canadiens are very well set up to win, and as long as that happens, then everyone will be happy, or at least pretend to be. But if they don’t win, and soon, then you wonder. At the very least, it feels like the clock is already ticking, with four seasons to win a Stanley Cup or two before the bill comes due and some underpaid stars decide it’s their turn to get the better end of a deal somewhere.

Trading away Ron Francis was the beginning of the end for Hartford hockey. — Tom A.

On the contrary, Tom, you ham-and-egger. The end of Hartford hockey, at least as far as the NHL was concerned, was a matter of simple economics. There’s a reason the city has never had a team in MLB, the NBA or the NFL. It’s the same reason they’ll never get the NHL back, beyond the occasional Hurricanes nostalgia play. It’s just not a big enough market to support a modern-day pro sports team. And I say that as a guy who remembers the Whalers fondly. Brass Bonanza forever.

But with the economics out of the way, let’s attack Tom from another angle: The idea that the Ron Francis trade should rank among the very worst in NHL history.

It’s a common view, to say the least. Google any list of hockey’s worst trades, and Francis will be front and center. It’s often cited as being the single worst deadline deal ever made, and ranks along with Wayne Gretzky, Joe Thornton and Doug Gilmour among any trade, period. But does it belong there?

The trade involved six players, three on each side, with no picks involved. Each team’s package included two defensemen — one star (Ulf Samuelsson and Zarley Zalapski) and one depth guy (Grant Jennings and Jeff Parker). But the key pieces were the two centers: Francis and Pittsburgh’s John Cullen.

As far as those two go, it’s not hard to see why the deal is viewed so favorably for the Penguins. Cullen had been in the league for nine years, and had been reasonably productive, topping the 90-point mark thrice. Granted, that was in the era where offense was off the charts, but still, 90 points wasn’t bad. Cullen wasn’t a superstar — he had never finished in the top five in postseason All-Star voting among centers, and he’d only seen his name appear on two Hart ballots over his entire career – but he was good. His numbers just didn’t compare to Francis, who was younger and had already racked up an eye-popping 94 points at that fateful 1991 deadline, on his way to a 110-point season that would rank fifth in the entire NHL.

So sure, you can see why Francis-for-Cullen was viewed as a heist for the Penguins. Except for one thing: Everything I wrote in that last paragraph was true, but I swapped the names. Cullen was the younger player on his way to 110 points when the trade happened. And it was Francis who was a decent offensive center.

So why does everyone think it was a terrible trade for the Whalers? Hindsight, obviously. Cullen had one decent season in Hartford before injuries wrecked his career, while Francis went on to peak in his 30s with multiple 100-point seasons in Pittsburgh, feasting on easy matchups against teams that were trying to deal with Mario Lemieux and Jaromír Jágr. Francis also played forever, so by the end of his career he was viewed as a legend while Cullen was largely forgotten.

And look, hindsight is a valid way to judge a trade. Just be clear on what you’re doing. Because at the time, the deal made plenty of sense for the Whalers, even before you factor in that Francis had been stripped of his captaincy earlier in the season.

There’s a big difference between a trade that’s dumb from the moment it’s made and one that just doesn’t work out the way it could have. The Francis blockbuster falls firmly in the latter category.

The puck-over-glass penalty is bad for the game. — Josh C.

On the contrary, Josh, you pumpkin head. The puck-over-glass penalty has been a positive addition to the rulebook.

Oh sure, maybe not for you kids out there. You look at the rule and argue that it makes no sense. The league is trying to disincentivize a play that makes the game duller – shooting the puck out of the offensive zone to relive pressure and deny a scoring chance. But according to you whiners, shooting the puck over the glass isn’t fundamentally different from shooting it down the rink for icing, and it doesn’t make any sense that one is a minor penalty and another is merely a whistle and a defensive-zone faceoff without a change. And shooting the puck over the glass by the bench? That’s treated in a third way altogether, with no penalty at all. It makes no sense, according to you young whippersnappers.

I get it. I was once like you. I used to read pieces like this and think “Wow, what great points this handsome young writer is making.” But I’ve changed.

Specifically, I am now old. And that means that when I’m watching an NHL game, there is roughly a 60 percent chance that I have to pee at any given time. And that means I’m fully in favor of periodically grinding the game to a halt because a player accidentally flipped a puck into the stands.

Oh sure, in the old days that was still a stoppage. Sometimes even a penalty, since intentionally shooting the puck out of play has always been a penalty. But when it was obviously accidental, we all just shrugged, dropped the puck and kept the game going. That was fine if you were young. But if you were old, it was a problem.

Not anymore. These days, every puck that flies out of play inevitably results in all four officials having a lengthy conference to determine whether it went out here (points finger), which is a penalty, or here (moves finger one molecule), which obviously isn’t. That gives me plenty of time to get to the bathroom, stand around for a few minutes trying to remember why I went in there, eventually do my business, and get back to my couch. All without missing anything other than four officials standing around, seven slow-motion replays, and the play-by-play guy talking about how great this rule is because it’s so black-and-white.

These days, we might even get a coach’s challenge. That’s even better, because it means I’ll have time to do my taxes and write letters to my grandchildren, who haven’t been born yet but probably will be by the time the replay review process is over.

The point is that I’m sick of puck-over-glass complaints from you kids. Some of us are old, and that means we love having a made-up rule that makes no sense and solves literally zero problems but does give us plenty of time to do other things besides watching hockey. Great rule, NHL, don’t change a thing.

Dylan Larkin quit on the Red Wings. — Matthew G.

On the contrary, Matthew, you pillock. The only thing Dylan Larkin quit on is denial and delusion. And all he’s guilty of is being realistic.

Specifically, being realistic about whether the Red Wings can win anything as currently constructed. Which they obviously can’t.

I mean, look at the teams around the league that are having success. The Avalanche won the Presidents’ Trophy with Nathan MacKinnon as their top center. The Panthers won back-to-back Cups with Sasha Barkov. The Oilers went to back-to-back finals with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, then the Golden Knights went with Jack Eichel. Even the Hurricanes, a championship team with no good players, are built around a consistent point-per-game center in Sebastian Aho who also finished in the top 10 of Selke voting. If you want to contend in the NHL, it all starts with having an elite center or two.

Now look at the Red Wings. Sure, they have a Norris-caliber defenseman, a 40-goal guy on the wing, and some intriguing young pieces. But their first-line center? That guy stinks! He hasn’t topped 70 points in three years, he’s never had a single Hart or postseason All-Star vote in his life, and he disappears down the stretch every year when they need him most.

You can’t win with a guy like that. And unlike Steve Yzerman, Dylan Larkin is realistic enough to know that. That makes him smarter than many Red Wings fans, who’ve spent years pretending they had an elite guy to build around when they clearly didn’t.

Not Larkin. He took a good hard look at the roster and reached the only logical conclusion: This team’s first-line center is an overrated bum. You can’t win that way, he knows it, and he doesn’t want to be a part of the futility of trying. Instead of calling him names, we should all be giving him credit for his steely-eyed realism.

If you’d like to submit a take for future editions of The Contrarian, you can do so here.