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We’ve made it to the end of Slow News Summer.

Well, almost. There are still a few weeks until the NHL is well and truly back. But my schedule for that period is mostly filled, with projections to make, long-shot award swings to miss, oddly specific predictions to miss even worse and a trusty bizarro-meter to fire up. It’s going to get busy around these parts.

But not quite yet. For one more week, we’re still firmly in the annual dead zone where nothing is happening, and no idea is too dumb. We started almost two months ago with a post about syllables, so the bar for nonsense has been set pretty high.

How do you beat something as pointless as arguing over how many syllables are in Cale Makar’s name? By asking the readers, of course. So last week, that’s what I did.

I’ve got one more week of Slow News Summer to fill, so: Give me your craziest idea that could actually work as a good post.

Roster-building, research, whatever… hit me with something that’s so weird it would have never occurred to me.

— Sean McIndoe (@downgoesbrown.bsky.social) August 21, 2026 at 4:20 PM

And boy, did you ever come up with some ideas. Some really clever, original ideas. Were they good ideas? Not necessarily, but that’s never stopped me before.

So today, we’ll do this lightning-round style, with five of your best ideas for a Slow News Summer post. I’ll take the first swing at each, then turn it over to you in the comments. It’s late August; you don’t have any work to do anyway.

What team can ice the best forward line whose players’ last names start with letters spelling out their team abbreviation?

For instance, Edmonton (EDM) could be Eberle-Draisaitl-McDavid. Dallas (DAL) could be Duchene-Arnott-Lehtinen.

Bonus points if you can repeat with the defensive pair + goalie.

— Tyler Mair (@mairican.bsky.social) August 21, 2026 at 5:49 PM

This one had me excited for roughly 15 minutes, before somebody jumped into the conversation and unceremoniously dropped what was pretty obviously the correct answer. More on that in a minute.

For me, the place to start here was pretty clearly with the Montreal Canadiens, who even give us the added advantage of having two plausible abbreviations, MON or MTL. But neither gives us access to Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau, Doug Harvey or any of the great goaltenders. The best I was able to come up with for the Habs was something like Howie Meeker/Pierre Turgeon/Guy Lafleur up front with Andrei Markov/J.C. Tremblay/Bunny Laroque on the back end. That’s not bad, but doesn’t feel unbeatable.

The other teams that typically dominate our six-man roster games are also in trouble. The Pittsburgh Penguins can’t use any of their mega-stars. Same with the Detroit Red Wings, Colorado Avalanche and New York Islanders. The Edmonton Oilers get a little feisty until you realize Greg de Vries is going to claim a blue-line spot. The Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers get tripped up by the Is, the Buffalo Sabres by the Us and the Calgary Flames by the Ys.

The Toronto Maple Leafs would have to use Igor Ozhiganov on a Team TOR defense, unless we try to get cute and go with a TML abbreviation instead. Then we can ice a John Tavares/Auston Matthews/Gary Leeman forward line backed by an Ian Turnbull/Gus Mortson/Harry Lumley combo. That’s good, but not good enough, and besides nobody uses TML.

That did seem to point to a strategy of avoiding vowels. I didn’t get very far with TBL or CBJ. But the dam finally broke on the St. Louis Blues, where their history of briefly having star players near the peak of their powers paid off with Team STL combos of Brendan Shanahan/Keith Tkachuk/Chuck Lefley and Scott Stevens/Jean-Guy Talbot/Mike Liut (with the option to swap in longer-serving names like Brian Sutter or Alex Steen if you prefer loyalty). There are a couple of obvious weak spots, but only a couple, which made the Blues the best option I could come up with on my own.

They’re just not good enough to come close to the obvious winner. Have you figured it out yet? You probably should have. Click here for the spoiler.

Best 11 man team – 1 goalie, 6 forwards, 4 D – from each franchise with one player from every bucket of games played…1-99, 100-109, 200-209, etc, with the last bucket being greater than 1000. (Not sure every team can fill all the buckets).

— maimster.bsky.social (@maimster.bsky.social) August 21, 2026 at 6:39 PM

I like it. Let’s assume you’re getting credit in terms of “best” for the player’s entire career, not just what they did for that particular team.

My immediate thought was back to the Blues, since they could use Martin Brodeur or Wayne Gretzky in the 0-99 category and build from there. (There’s a reason they’re the team that always dominates the $200 game.) But they’ve never had a player get to 1,000 games with them, so they’re out.

That actually makes the Blues an outlier; every other team that debuted before 1990 has at least one 1,000-game player. We do lose a few later teams, like the Florida Panthers and Columbus Blue Jackets. Other teams run into trouble elsewhere; the Ottawa Senators have three 1,000-plus players, but none in the 900s, while the Flyers don’t have anyone in the 800s.

Still, we’ve got plenty to work with, even without dipping into the usual Original Six suspects. For example, I came up with this for the Islanders:

0-99: Roberto Luongo, G
100-199: Devon Toews, D
200-299: Pierre Turgeon, F
300-399: Zdeno Chara, D
400-499: Ed Westfall, D
500-599: Pat LaFontaine, F
600-699: John Tavares, F
700-799: Mike Bossy, F
800-899: Clarke Gillies, F
900-999: Anders Lee, F
1,000+: Denis Potvin, D

Not bad. And that’s without using Matthew Schaefer in the 0-99 spot, even though he (very temporarily) qualifies. Islanders fans can feel free to swap him in for Luongo and use Billy Smith in the 600s to get rid of Tavares if they’d prefer.

The Devils might be even better:

0-99: Phil Housley, D
100-199: Jaromír Jágr, F
200-299: Ilya Kovalchuk, F
300-399: Brendan Shanahan, F
400-499: Pat Verbeek, F
500-599: Brian Rafalski, D
600-699: Scott Gomez, F
700-799: Bobby Holík, F
800-899: Scott Niedermayer, D
900-999: Scott Stevens, D
1000+: Martin Brodeur, G

And of course, the Penguins are just playing on easy mode, starting with a Sidney Crosby (1,000+), Mario Lemieux (900s), Jaromír Jágr (800s) trio that makes them pretty much unstoppable.

Still, I’d love to see some other teams. Let me know what you can come up with for your favorite team in the comments.

Best five man team of NHL 94 players that adds up to 200 in overall ratings

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) August 21, 2026

Not a bad idea by Bill here. Kid might have a future in the sportswriting game.

But while the idea itself is strong, we’re going to immediately run into a problem: NHL 94 was the year we started to see ratings inflation creep into the series, meaning getting a full starting lineup under the 200-mark will be near impossible. According to NHL94.com, the lowest-rated player is Greg Smyth, who was stuck with a 29. Everyone else in the league is at least a 32, and only 27 players come in under 40. That means a six-man starting roster is just going to the very worst guys at each position. And even the five-man roster Bill is asking for, which presumably means no goalie, is going to be filled with bums.

Luckily, as longtime readers know, there’s a solution here: NHLPA ’93, which experts agree was better than NHL 94.

That game was ruthless with the ratings, infamously dropping a “1” overall on poor Shawn Chambers. That gives us plenty of space to search for bargains. In return for lowering our ratings pool by switching from 94 to 93, I’ll up the degree of difficulty to a full six-man roster with a goalie. Using the NHLPA 93 archive, we should be able to build something.

Something good? No. Most of the players I was hoping would be bargains turned out to still be out of our price range. For example, Dominik Hašek is still a backup on the Blackhawks back then, but he’s a 61 overall. John LeClair wasn’t on the Flyers yet, but he was still a 60. Pavel Bure was already an 84 as a rookie. And despite being just one year into their careers, Detroit’s Sergei Fedorov and Nicklas Lidström already have superstar ratings, because of East Coast bias.

But we can find some bargains if we dig deep enough. Working from the net out, we’ll give our starter’s job to Guy Hebert. The future Ducks star was the Blues’ third-stringer back then, and was saddled with the worst rating for any goalie in the game at just 15 overall. We can also use the powers of hindsight to land another bargain in Quebec’s Adam Foote, who’d just started what would be a 19-year career and was stuck with a 31. And we’ll pair him with a real head-scratcher: Minnesota’s Craig Ludwig, midway through a 17-year career and just a few years removed from a top-10 Norris finish but somehow just a 28 overall.

That leaves us with 126 points to spend up front, an average of 42 per forward. That’s not enough to be able to afford much — typical 42s include Winnipeg’s Danton Cole and Ottawa’s Mark Freer, who you have definitely heard of — but we’ll make it work. And we’ll do it by starting with a solid glue guy in Quebec’s Jamie Baker, an inspirational checking forward who played for nearly a decade and comes in at just 21 overall. And we’ll add another defensive presence in the Hartford Whalers’ Bobby Holík, who’s still a decade away from getting $45 million from the Rangers but will cost us just 48 points.

That leaves us with 57 points to spend, which gives us just enough space to squeeze in arguably the best bargain in the entire game: Buffalo’s Dave Andreychuk, who already had over 300 goals to his credit at 28 years old and has a pair of 50-goal seasons in his immediate future, but comes in at just a 55 rating.

Forwards: Dave Andreychuk (55), Bobby Holík (48), Jamie Baker (21)
Defensemen: Adam Foote (31), Craig Ludwig (28)
Goalies: Guy Hebert (15)

That comes in at 198 points, leaving us two points to spare for a midseason pickup, as long as it’s a Senators defenseman. Cap management, baby.

Each team’s best lineup (3 forwards, 2 Defensemen, 1 Goalie) where NONE of the players were drafted by that team.

— Canes Fan Central (@CanesFanCentral) August 21, 2026

For this one, we’re going to pivot to the “only get credit for what they did on your team” ruleset. And we’ll start with the first team that came to mind: the Flames.

Obviously you’ve got the legendary Jarome Iginla as your starting point, since he was drafted by Dallas and then traded to Calgary before playing an NHL game. We can put Lanny McDonald and his 60-goal season on the other wing, with Doug Gilmour in between for a very strong forward line.

For the blue line, we’re going to need to figure out what to do with undrafted players like Mark Giordano. They meet the technical standards of the rule, but I’m not sure they fit the spirit of the thing. So unless a player was first signed by another team, undrafted players don’t count. (Sorry, Oilers fans who were banking on Wayne Gretzky.)

That hurts our Flames entry, although we can still find some decent value in Noah Hanifin and some better-than-you-think years from Phil Housley. And we’re all set in goal with Miikka Kiprusoff. So our Flames look like this:

Forwards: Jarome Iginla, Doug Gilmour, Lanny McDonald
Defense: Noah Hanifin, Phil Housley
Goalie: Miikka Kiprusoff

That’s pretty good. Let’s try a few more teams, starting with the Flyers:

Forwards: Eric Lindros, John LeClair, Mark Recchi
Defense: Mark Howe, Éric Desjardins
Goalie: Bernie Parent

We said the Oilers couldn’t use the undrafted Gretzky, but that doesn’t mean the Los Angeles Kings can’t claim him after trading for him.

Forwards: Wayne Gretzky, Marcel Dionne, Jeff Carter, but not Glen Murray (he knows what he did)
Defense: Jake Muzzin, Mattias Norström
Goalie: Rogie Vachon

And what the heck, let’s try a Minnesota Wild entry…

Forwards: Zach Parise, Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Foligno
Defense: Jared Spurgeon, Ryan Suter
Goalie: Devan Dubnyk

That’s a decent start, with plenty of meat left on the bone for the comments. I’ve left the Original Six for you to mine (but don’t be cheap and use guys from before there was a draft at all). I’m assuming there’s a fantastic Blues team to be found, starting with Brett Hull and Chris Pronger. Or you could make a Vegas Golden Knights entry that was just … the Vegas Golden Knights. Let’s see what you can come up with.

This may be too much research or already done, but at least it’s also a dumb idea. Best Hockey Not-a-family. Best 6 man lineup of unrelated guys with the same last name.

— Andy Sherwood (@andysurewould.bsky.social) August 21, 2026 at 6:25 PM

The challenge here won’t be so much finding the best possible team, but finding any teams at all. Let’s start with the two obvious options:

Team Smith

Forwards: Hooley, Bobby, Sid
Defense: Steve, Rick
Goalie: Billy

And then …

Team Jones

Forwards: Keith, David, Ryan
Defense: Seth, Randy
Goalie: Martin

Those teams are … fine. They’re OK. Team Smith has a few Hall of Famers at least. But surely we can do better, right?

Maybe not. My first thought was a Team Hall, where we could start with Glenn in goal and Taylor up front, but we can’t find a second defenseman. Team Hall disappoints us, once again.

From there, it’s a lot of near-misses. We’d have something if we could combine Teams Richard, Richards and Richardson, but that would feel cheap. Team Forsberg starts off with Peter and Filip and has Anton in net, but that’s where the path ends. Same with Team Fleury, which offers Theo and Marc-André but ends after either Haydn or Cale. We can’t find a goalie for Team Lemieux, Team Stevens or Team Savard.

I can at least get six players out of …

Team Anderson

Forwards: Glenn, John, Josh
Defense: Tom, Russ
Goalie: Craig

That one has a Hall of Famer (Glenn) and a Hart Trophy winner (Tom), so it might be our best option so far.

Want more? Well, we’re one letter off …

Team Moore

Forwards: Dickie, Dominic, Trevor
Defense: John, Ian
Goalie: Robbie

Yeah, that’s starting to feel a little desperate. This one’s a bit better …

Team Wilson

Forwards: Tom, Carey, Johnny
Defense: Doug, Behn
Goalie: Dunc

Solid, but again, not exactly an All-Star team. So let’s leave this with your chance to beat me at my own game. Hit me up in the comments with your six-man team of unrelated players who share a surname.