Duhatschek: The NHL is back, here’s what you missed and what to expect

For anyone working in or around the field of professional hockey, the schedule isn’t much different than that of a student or teacher.

Once the calendar clicks after Labor Day, it’s time to get back to work.

NHL players who have not yet made it to their respective places of employment are doing so now. Informal skating is underway for the veterans while rookie tournaments are on the horizon. The main camps open in less than two weeks. Exhibition season is here before you know it, and in case you forgot, the NHL regular season kicks off in Europe on October 7 with two games in Prague between Nashville and San Jose forming part of the resumption of the NHL Global Series of the NHL.

In many ways, these past seven weeks have felt like the first true NHL offseason in three years.

In 2020, the 24-team bubble playoffs started in August and they were in the last four by the second week of September. In 2021, the 56-game season only got underway in January, with realigned divisions and travel restrictions leading to, among other things, a year-long experiment with an all-Canadian division. The result was the same both times, with the Tampa Bay Lightning winning back-to-back Stanley Cups.

But by the time the 2021 expansion and entry drafts were completed, as well as free agency, half of last summer was over.

This year, to everyone but perhaps Flames general manager Brad Treliving (more on his off-season workload, later), it seemed like the league finally got a chance for a collective deep breath, and then a hearty exhale.

The optimism of September is with us now and it feels real, batteries recharged across the league together.

As we last left you, NHL Assistant Commissioner Bill Daly presented the Stanley Cup to Avalanche Captain Gabriel Landeskog because Commissioner Gary Bettman had tested positive for COVID-19.

Colorado celebrated what seemed like a long overdue Stanley Cup after an epic finale against the Lightning, who hadn’t given up the urge for a threepeat without a fight. That championship streak followed an exciting two-month playoff that contributed to how flat the last NHL regular season was competitively. It was a year in which there was a lack of any real drama from around Christmas onwards.

Early on, the Eastern Conference had neatly split itself into eight haves and eight have-nots, and playoff spots were effectively decided months in advance. It wasn’t much more competitive in the West, with six teams (Winnipeg, Chicago, Arizona, San Jose, Anaheim and Seattle) all falling wide off the pace early on, and five teams (Colorado, Minnesota, St. Louis, Calgary and Edmonton ). ) all book their playoff spots with little difficulty.

In a 32-team league, following the Kraken’s debut last season, that meant only five clubs (Los Angeles, Vegas, Vancouver, Nashville and Dallas) actually fought for three playoff spots during the stretch run.

So here we are, with training camps around the corner, and we have the Coyotes playing in a 5,000-seat arena on the Arizona State University campus.

We have a division champion in Calgary who was wildly remade up front. We’ve suddenly made Ottawa a hot target; Columbus as well.

Reigning regular-season champions Panthers replaced a Jack Adams finalist in Andrew Brunette with veteran coach Paul Maurice and traded the NHL’s second-leading scorer Jonathan Huberdeau after Calgary for the riotous Matthew Tkachuk in hopes of advancing further the playoffs

The competitive imbalance of the regular season made the 2022 trade deadline an early version of Boxing Day, with “For Sale” signs being sent to franchises across the continent.

Almost as soon as the teams arrived in Montreal for the draft, things picked up again.

This, in turn, led to volatile upheaval in a handful of different markets.

It’s fair to say that 2022 was a summer like no other in the NHL.

Well, a summer like no other doesn’t always guarantee an unforgettable season. But you cannot deny the fact that intrigue and curiosity that pour into the camps are run at the highest level.

Oddly enough, two of the most-changed teams also represent two of the NHL’s smallest markets — Ottawa and Calgary, two franchises that generally don’t draw much attention to the larger, national picture.

Calgary and Ottawa made significant changes to their respective cores, which is really the only way to quantitatively shift the narrative. The only difference: the Flames’ movements were set in motion by forces largely beyond their control and could be seen as sideways for the most part. Two key contributors were absent (Johnny Gaudreau, Tkachuk); three key contributors were added (Huberdeau, Nazem Kadri, MacKenzie Weegar).

The changes will have the net effect of shifting leadership and roles within the Flames, but it’s open to debate: are they better, are they worse, or are they just different?

Of course, sometimes being different makes you better – when what you have isn’t working to your satisfaction. In Calgary, a percentage of the fanbase have been disappointed with the Core for some time, even though that Core helped them win a division title last season and the second-best record in the NHL in 2019.

So not exactly a franchise that’s wandering around in the wild for any length of time.

Ottawa, on the other hand, was.

But the push this off-season has, frankly, been an impressive job from general manager Pierre Dorion.

First, the trade to bring in Alex DeBrincat, an elite goalscorer young enough to fit into the core of the team without giving up a large chunk of the NHL roster. He then lures a key free agent, Claude Giroux, to Ottawa to further flesh out the core of the team. And adding veteran goaltender Cam Talbot to stabilize the netminding was an under-the-radar piece of good horse-trading – taking advantage of Talbot’s desire not to split with Minnesota’s Marc-Andre Fleury.

The hope is that Josh Norris, Drake Batherson and Tim Stutzle will all make good on their promise because of the seriousness of their dollar and term commitments, as well as Brady Tkachuk and Thomas Chabot. Ottawa still has a long way to go to close the gap between the top and bottom four teams in the Atlantic, but the Senators should be on the way – not just better, but fun to watch, which will hopefully stimulate and bring the fan base them in larger numbers to Kanata.

Perhaps the closest comparison to this offseason was the summer of 2016, when two trades — Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson and PK Subban for Shea Weber — added wow factor to this offseason. Hall eventually won an MVP for his new team, the Devils, in 2018, while Subban also blossomed early in Nashville, earning a nod as a 2018 Norris Trophy finalist. Weber, meanwhile, overcame some crippling physical issues to help Montreal qualify for the 2021 Stanley Cup Finals.

So influence players who made an impact in their new locations. That’s what they want in Ottawa and Calgary, where they’ll use training camp and early season to unravel the mystery of chemistry, because after all, everything on the ice has to shine; and that’s the annoying, confusing part of the equation that nobody can predict exactly.

But they will recall that Hall made a historic turnaround year after year in New Jersey before being traded to Arizona and then joining Buffalo as a prized free agent to prove $8 million for a year. me contract.

Hall’s contract that year was similar to the one John Klingberg signed with the Ducks earlier that summer.

As all other major free agents were getting dollars and tenure, Klingberg lingered on the market, finally settling on a one-year contract for $7 million. That seems to be the approach of new Ducks GM Pat Verbeek, who tried – as best he could – to fill in the gaps in his roster with a series of short-term fixes.

The Ducks closely watched this summer’s biggest hockey game, the rescheduled World Junior Championships in Edmonton, where they pulled off impressive scores from Mason McTavish, who looks like a young Ryan O’Reilly. A nice piece to build.

Two of the three California teams, the Ducks and Sharks, have new leaders in Verbeek and Mike Grier, respectively. But Verbeek has the far easier task of inheriting a team from the previous regime that, alongside McTavish and Olen Zellweger, has two of the most fascinating young talents in play in Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale.

Verbeek also had the luxury of charging with draft picks on deadline day, trading in useful vets like Rickard Rakell, Hampus Lindholm and Josh Manson, who eventually helped the Avs win the Cup. In short, the heavy lifting was already done before Verbeek arrived at the scene; his job now is to take that youthful core to the next level. Grier, on the other hand, has a far greater challenge ahead of him.

More and more teams have embraced this scorched-earth rebuilding philosophy in the past few seasons beyond Anaheim and Ottawa. Arizona tops the list, but Buffalo, Detroit, New Jersey and now both Montreal and Chicago are all following the same essential path, along with Seattle, which has followed the more traditional slow but steady path of expansion.

Question: If 10 teams all reset at about the same time and suffer painful rebuilds, how many will actually make it to the ultimate goal, a Stanley Cup championship? Colorado did, not long after a 48-point regular season. Three of the four Atlantic-Also-Rans — Ottawa, Buffalo and Detroit — gave clear signals this offseason that they were ready to make the move toward seriousness, presumably in hopes that one of last year’s playoff clubs in the rating goes down.

On paper, Boston was theoretically that candidate because the Bruins will start the season with a number of key players, including Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy, who are on the sidelines recovering from off-season surgeries. Their absence along with Matt Grzelcyk means they could start slower than expected, although the return of Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci for another year will ease concerns.

Another word of warning: the same was said about the Penguins a year ago because they would start the season without Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby and other key figures. The reality was different. A handful of secondary players showed up and helped keep the Penguins afloat until the big boys returned. After that, it wasn’t much of a competition.

On paper, the playoff races for the 2022-23 season will be significantly closer and more interesting than they were a year ago. How will all this play out on the ice? We’ll start seeing soon.

(Top photo by Nazem Kadri: Ron Chenoy/USA Today)