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Better 'Ned' Than Red - Oct. 24 2016 - Vol. 70 Issue 5 - Sheng Peng

BEFORE ALEXANDER MOGILNY, before the Stastnys, there was Vaclav Nedomansky.

Nedomansky was the first Communist-era hockey star to push back against the Iron Curtain by defecting to North America in 1974. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been surprising. ‘Big Ned’ was doing things his way well before he fled Czechoslovakia for the World Hockey Association’s Toronto Toros at 30.

Five years earlier in 1969, Czechoslovakia was set to square off against six-straight World Championship winner USSR in Stockholm. Back home, the Czech masses were simmering because of the Soviet occupation of their country. This was perhaps the most emotionally charged tilt in hockey history. “The Russians knew there was something political about this game,” Nedomansky recalled. “If you ran into them in the arena, they would not look at us or say ‘Hi.’ ”

Emotions boiled over on ice. When Jan Suchy opened the game’s scoring for Czechoslovakia in the second period, a celebrating Big Ned intentionally shoved the Soviet net off its moorings. “It was just emotions. High emotions and happiness.”

It was an explosive statement by the newly anointed hero. He rang up a team-leading nine goals in 10 tournament games. Czechoslovakia topped USSR twice in the event, 2-0 and 4-3, the first time the Soviets had dropped two games to the same opponent in an IIHF event.

About half a million Czech fans took to the streets to celebrate the victories. In some cities, particularly Prague, partying turned to protest of the Soviet occupation. But the oppressors swiftly stamped it all out.

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By the summer of 1974, the Soviets had “normalized” the Czech government. And 30-year-old Nedomansky, considered by many the best player outside the NHL, wanted to go west, which, of course, wasn’t permitted at the time. So he requested a visa for a “family vacation” in Switzerland. For a celebrity like him, that was easy enough. In Bern, he contacted the Toros and the NHL’s Atlanta Flames. The next day, both GMs – Toronto’s A.J. ‘Buck’ Houle and Atlanta’s Cliff Fletcher – flew in to negotiate.

Meanwhile, Communist officials, who had already turned down overtures for Nedomansky’s legal release, grew suspicious. They sent agents after Nedomansky, his wife Vera, and three-year-old son Vashi.

It was too late. Nedomansky had already signed a lucrative fiveyear deal totalling $750,000 with Toronto and was on his way to North America. The Czech hero’s own people countered by erasing him from their history books and threatening arrest. So Nedomansky closed that chapter of his life. “I did not think I would come back anyway,” he said. “I didn’t really care. I was a free man. I could develop not only as a hockey player, but as a person.”

Playing in Canada had its own pressures for the “Phil Esposito of Europe.” Despite 97 goals his first two WHA campaigns, whispers about Big Ned’s lack of aggressiveness and physicality rolled from Toros ownership on down. Nedomansky, a strapping 6-foot-2 center, said, “I played and grew up in a different system. It was developed on skills, playing fast, quickness, creative passing. In North America at that time, half of the players on a team weren’t very good... they were there for fighting.”

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Nedomansky’s most singular skill also made him stand out. “Everybody was using the slapshot. And I would go more with the wrist shot,” he said. After three seasons in the WHA and part of a fourth, Nedomansky was 33 when traded in 1977 to the Detroit Red Wings in a rare WHA-NHL swap. He scored just 11 goals and 28 points in 63 games, but then flourished. He paced the Red Wings with 38 goals and 73 points the next season, then 35 goals and 74 points his third season there.

Nedomansky played in the NHL for another three years – joining St. Louis and the New York Rangers after 364 games with Detroit – but was a shell of his former self. He retired at 39, then pursued a coaching career in Germany.

Time has not dimmed the now 72-year-old Nedomansky’s defiance. “Maybe five years ago, (the Czech Republic) told me the bad stuff was erased and everything was normal. But I didn’t really care. When I jumped the Communist system, I was stripped by the government of my nationality. So I stay with that. I am a Canadian and American citizen.”

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I DID NOT THINK I WOULD COME BACK, BUT I DIDN’T REALLY CARE. I WAS A FREE MAN

- Vaclav Nedomansky

This stubbornness served him well recently when he was diagnosed with lower abdominal cancer. He was given a 50-50 shot of survival. “My son (Vashi), when he saw that, he said let’s (tell your story).” For more than four decades, the IIHF Hall of Famer has shied away from publicity, “I didn’t really like to talk about myself much.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Nedomansky beat the odds. Now healthy, he’s ready to talk. He’s collaborating with Vashi, a successful film editor, on Big Ned, a documentary spanning his trailblazing career. It’s due out in 2017. In addition, he served as a scout for Team Europe’s World Cup entry and after more than two decades scouting for Los Angeles and Nashville, he has joined the Las Vegas NHL team.

Nedomansky doesn’t carry regrets, not even about making his NHL debut so late. “I just tried to observe and make decisions… sometimes, they were good, sometimes, they were not good. But that’s the way I am.”

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Rolling The Dice - Oct. 19 2021 - Vol. 75 Issue 5 - Matt Larkin

You need Mathew Barzal to win this foot race. Not against another player, however. That’s the easy part. He’s blazingly fast, some say enough to challenge Connor McDavid. No one’s catching Barzal on this breakaway. Still, you’re screaming at your TV because you want Barzal to beat…himself.

You’ve placed a prop bet on his max miles per hour for this seemingly meaningless Tuesday game during the dog days of February. And if he blows past a certain number on the virtual speedometer? A nice payday looms for you. The NHL’s new puck-and-player-tracking technology has made it possible to measure such things as skating speed. Its interactive fan options have helped you customize your feed of this particular Islanders-Coyotes contest so you can track all the wagers you’ve made within the game – onscreen as you watch. And as a Canadian, you’re finally allowed to bet on the winner of this game thanks to new laws allowing single-game wagers.

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Only a few years ago, the above scenario would’ve felt like a fantasy. Now, it’s oh-so close to reality. We’re talking months, not years. The NHL committed to sports-betting partnerships a few years ago, and now, thanks to its technology and the passing of some new laws up north, single-game betting and obscure prop betting will continue evolving into mainstream revenue sources for the NHL. It represents the NHL’s commitment to growing the sport by making it far more interactive. “Studies have shown you’re 10 times more likely to engage in an activity if you have some sort of outcome invested in it, whether that’s financial or otherwise,” said Keith Wachtel, the NHL’s chief business officer and executive vice-president of global partnerships. “You see that with fantasy football. People watch NFL RedZone religiously now. A lot of people don’t even watch games anymore. I’m still up at midnight on Monday night watching a kicker hoping he’s going to get a field goal without any regard of whether I have an interest in those teams. And that’s what I think the opportunity is. For our sport, which has been underserved in the betting market, the social aspect of it is going to be really important and grow the fan interest.”

For our sport, which has been underserved in the betting market, the social aspect of it is going to be really important and grow the fan interest– Keith Wachtel

The NHL’s path to becoming a major player in the sports-betting world traces back to 2018. That’s when it announced a partnership with BetMGM, one of the world’s highest-profile sports-betting and gaming companies (full disclosure: BetMGM is a sponsor of The Hockey News). American hockey fans have dipped their toes in the NHL betting waters in the years since and already have access to single-game betting. According to BetMGM sports trader Christian Cipollini, the most popular hockey wagers are single-game moneylines (winner of a game) and pucklines (hockey’s version of a point spread). Picking the correct score of a game is the most popular prop bet (a propositional bet, meaning a wager on a specific occurrence within a game), while predicting a game’s first goal-scorer is the most common player-prop bet. As of September 2021, 27 U.S. states have allowed betting on NHL games or have applied for legal status, and 18 of them have allowed some forms of online NHL betting. “BetMGM has seen strong growth in interest from bettors following our NHL partnership,” Cipollini said. “As we enter new states, the number of bets on the NHL has increased as well.”

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The NHL has also increased its number of partnerships. As of October 2021, it had teamed with six major U.S. sportsbooks: BetMGM, William Hill, Bally’s, Betway, PointsBet and FanDuel, with a seventh soon to be announced. The NHL also has multiple international partnerships overseas. Philosophically, there’s no plan to limit the number of partners as long as each one makes sense for the league in terms of reach and reputation, Wachtel explained.

The NHL also has a crucial partnership with a data management company called Sportradar, which tracks and provides instant statistical “fast data” for major sports leagues around the world.

Sportradar helps the NHL process information rapidly enough to make betting possible. It provides the data feed for live-score applications, broadcasts and, of course, sportsbooks, making all the moneylines and props possible.

According to Steve Byrd, head of U.S. sports content and partnerships at Sportradar, the fast data will work in conjunction with player tracking to create a level of in-game fan-engagement never seen before. While traditional bets are still more popular, prop bets like the Barzal skating-speed example are coming. “That is going to happen,” Byrd said. “It’s unlikely to be a huge amount of the turnover of the volume of betting, but it’s critical from a fan engagement and marketing perspective because it’s fun, it’s cool, to be able to think about those things, have an opinion about them, follow them.

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“It does open up – which I know the NHL and other leagues have been excited about as they’ve invested in these tracking technologies – a wider palate of potential bets. So, yes, that’s coming. It’s not mainstream, but it will be of interest.”

The level of interest in prop bets and interactive single-game bets may soon explode. They’re about to go live in Canada, after all.

In late August 2021, Canada passed Bill C-218 allowing Canadians to bet on “single-game events.” The previous law forced people to wager on multiple games at once to prevent match fixing. That’s why parlay (multi-game bet) operations like Pro Line existed. The first major Canadian betting company to join the fray for single-game betting entering 2021-22 is the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, better known as OLG. Wachtel expects its NHL gaming to be fully operational with its single-game betting application, Pro Line+, by the end of 2021.

Partnered with the NHL, OLG will have access to all the league’s official intellectual property, which establishes the lottery company as a trustworthy place to make bets. Gaming company Penn National bought Score Media and Gaming, which owns the hugely popular sports app The Score and gaming app theScore Bet, this year with eyes on diving into the Canadian betting market, too, though Wachtel explains that theScore Bet “does not have a single-game sports wagering application that is live” in Canada yet. Spokespeople for The Score declined to comment for this story. 

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So how impactful will single-game betting be for the NHL’s revenue stream as it works to recover from all the gate revenues lost during the COVID-19 pandemic? Not as large as people might think. “Sports betting is not an opportunity for the league to make a lot of money,” Wachtel said. “It’s not an opportunity for any of the sports properties to make a lot of money. It’s a new category, so it’s incremental, which is always nice. But it’s not nearly as big as some of the traditional categories or what you’re seeing right now in areas like crypto and other categories. The opportunity is really to generate more fan engagement, which will yield more opportunity and revenue streams for the future in a lot of different areas.”

The opportunity is really to generate more fan engagement, which will yield more opportunity and revenue streams for the future in a lot of different areas– Keith Wachtel

Say you’re buying into that fan engagement and you want to try single-game betting. What’s the best way to do so?

For Rocky Atkinson, rated in some metrics as the No. 1 hockey handicapper in the world, simple moneylines, a.k.a. picking winners and losers, are the best area of focus. One rule he follows: bet on underdogs or on favorites as strong as -150. Betting on heavy favorites at -200 or more can earn a bettor lots of easy wins but doesn’t bring in much money and can lose a bettor a lot of money.

Not familiar with the plus-and-minus figures attached to moneylines? Here’s a quick rundown: on a -200 favorite, you have to bet $200 just to win $100. On a +200 underdog, a $100 bet yields $200 plus the original stake when you win. If you prefer wagering on favorites, a smarter option is to bet on how many goals that team might win by, Atkinson says. He also sees some potential for profit in single-player props specifically for bettors who have strong knowledge of individual NHLers. An avid fantasy hockey player, for instance, might flourish making player-prop bets.

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One reason why single-game betting is a boon for hockey, especially in Canada where it’s about to become legal for the first time: it will steer bettors away from those impossible-to-win parlays. “I do not recommend betting on parlays,” Atkinson said. “It’s hard enough to win a straight bet alone, so trying to hit a parlay makes it that much harder. The odds on hitting a multi-team parlay are always enticing, but it’s better to pass on these bets.”

Single-game betting in hockey is generally more difficult than for other major sports, like football, largely because bettors have far less access to accurate injury information about the athletes. The NFL is so forthcoming that it pretty much issues a press release with a detailed anatomical report if a player stubs his toe.

In the NHL? We get “upper-body,” “lower-body,” “undisclosed” or, in the COVID-19 era, “unfit to play.” As Cipollini explains from a sportsbook perspective, hockey players’ toughness throws a wrench into betting because so many NHLers play through injuries that hinder their performances. Think about the litany of surgeries announced every year after a team gets eliminated. It’s treated as a badge of honor for the athletes. In the NFL, we’d know about each of those maladies well in advance.

It’s thus a popular assumption that the NHL’s venture into betting and, more specifically, single-game betting will lead to a re-evaluation of disseminating injury information. Sorry, bettors, but it’s simply not true. “We’re not being pushed by the sportsbooks,” Wachtel said. “More information perhaps is better, but they’re comfortable with the way we have our reporting right now. There’s no plans to change that today. Does that mean it could be changed in the future? Of course, but that’s not going to be based on what the sports-betting operators want. It’s going to be what’s in the best interest of our players. That will be determined by our ownership and our hockey-operations group.”

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So hockey bettors will venture into the single-game world having to play guesswork with injuries. That’s not the only potential threat to swallow up their money, however. Match fixing, or game fixing as it’s more commonly known in North America, has become a hot topic after a series of wild allegations levelled against San Jose Sharks left winger Evander Kane this summer by his estranged wife, Anna Kane.

They included the claim Kane had been betting on his own games. The NHL’s investigation found no evidence he’d been doing so, but the scandal still awakened fans and potential bettors to the idea of dangers like game fixing.

Not that the NHL is worried. Wachtel expresses the utmost confidence in the integrity of the league’s data. That’s largely because the NHL’s partnership with Sportradar includes “integrity services,” which consist of four offerings: (a) bet monitoring, in which Sportradar uses its super-advanced technological network to track betting lines and data and look for anomalies, (b) educating sports leagues and their athletes and stakeholders, (c) assisting leagues in investigations of threats and (d) helping leagues set up rules related to betting.

In the case of catching game-fixers, that first offering, bet monitoring, comes in the most handy. What exactly does Sportradar look for? “Generally, when we’re monitoring for signs that somebody might be trying to fix the game, we’ll also look at whether someone has potentially misused inside information, like insider trading on the stock exchange,” said Andy Cunningham, head of integrity services in North America for Sportradar. “If a line moves before the game, and it’s because of an injury to a key player, we will look into that. If we think it may have moved before the information is in the public domain, we will flag it to our partners, and it’s up to them to look into that, and we can help them do that.”

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It’s hard enough to win a straight bet alone, so trying to hit a parlay makes it that much harder. The odds on hitting a multi-team parlay are always enticing, but it’s better to pass on these bets– Rocky Atkinson

Instances of match fixing grab major media headlines but are extremely rare, he added. “We monitor hundreds of thousands of events and games around the world every year, and it’s a tiny percentage, less than one percent, that ever cause any concerns,” Cunningham said. “In certain team sports you see more issues than others globally. The corruptors and fixers tend to target the bigger betting markets where they can make their money – the economics of the fix. Without picking on soccer, it’s well-documented that soccer, globally, has match-fixing incidents in various jurisdictions around the world. It can involve the team and players being corrupted as well as the match officials and referees. But our analysis and systems are attuned to spot different types of fixes.”

So the NHL can relax knowing its upcoming influx of single-game bettors will feel safe. It also knows it’s in good hands welcoming bettors with its new U.S. broadcast partners: The Walt Disney Company, ESPN and TNT.

The multi-platform streaming capabilities offered by those new partners as well as the Canadian broadcast rightsholders will only enrich the single-game betting experience.

That said, the NHL believes it’s crucial to offer fans customization without cramming the betting experience down their throats. Rather than pump non-stop betting information into broadcasts, the TV partners will likely offer separate channels or streams of games that are optional for bettors to access. “That, to us, is fun and exciting,” Wachtel said.

“What we don’t want to do is have the traditional telecast have 24/7 betting like you’re sitting in a sportsbook in Las Vegas, because not everybody wants that. That’s the same with the use of digital media: provide personalization and choice. If the fan wants to see odds throughout the game that change and the opportunity to actually bet on these things while a broadcast is happening? That’s great. But there are going to be others that don’t want to. We have to find the right balance.”

If you’re among the keeners who are looking for the immersive hockey-betting experience, it’s coming. Puck and player tracking and the changes to Canadian laws on single-event wagers will spike the public’s interest even more. Start squirrelling away your fun money.

As we all await the start of the 2025-26 season and the storylines that will come into focus, I thought this was as good a time as any to go over a long-gestating story that will conclude one way or another by next Spring’s NHL entry draft.

The saga has impacted the Sens organization for the better part of three and a half years, stretched over an ownership change, and cost a GM his job. All because of a trade call that went awry for a player that had an extremely forgettable stint in Ottawa, Evgenii Dadonov.

Despite the length of time that has elapsed since the infraction itself, the story endures because the consequences in the form of league punishment have not yet been fulfilled. Most Sens fans are fairly familiar with the broad strokes of the botched communication but there is still some level of curiosity around the possibility that the league penalty of a lost first-round pick could still be potentially reduced, primarily because owner Michael Andlauer continues to float this to anyone who asks him about it.

Before we explore the possibility of the penalty reduction, we must return to the scene of the crime and more importantly, the timeline of everything that has happened up to now, which would comprise a large part of the justification Andlauer believes is there for the commissioner’s office to reconsider its punishment.

So here's part one, the timeline in question:

Oct 15th, 2020: We start our story a full five years ago when then-Sens GM Pierre Dorion signed UFA Evgenii Dadonov to a three-year/$15 million contract prior to the Covid-delayed 2020-21 season. That contract contained a modified no-trade clause, which required that Dadonov and his agent submit a list of 10 teams he could not be dealt to without his permission by July 1st of each year of his contract term. If a list was not submitted by that deadline, the clause would be considered null and void as per NHL CBA guidelines. 

In an interview given recently, Dorion stated that the 10-team modified no-trade clause was a standard offering in free agent contracts the Sens issued during his tenure, as they would refuse to negotiate terms with greater than 10 teams or full no-trade protection as a matter of organizational policy. In short, this is a clause Dorion and the Senators were extremely familiar with.

Pre-July 1st, 2021: After the 2020-21 NHL season ended, Dadonov’s agent sent his 10-team no-trade list to the Senators by email. We do not know the exact date this was done, but the league later confirmed that the list had been submitted prior to the July 1st deadline and that the Senators had acknowledged receipt of the list back to the agent. What we don’t know is who within the Senators front office was involved in acknowledging receipt of the list. We know that the Anaheim Ducks were one of the teams on this list and the Vegas Golden Knights were not.

July 28th, 2021: After a disappointing season, the Senators decided that Dadonov was not a good fit and were not overly excited about paying him for the remaining two years on his deal. They worked out a trade with the Vegas Golden Knights to receive Nick Holden and a third-round pick in return. 

On the official trade call (which we know Dorion, Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon and a league representative were a part of), the pieces of the trade were confirmed by both parties. This is where Dorion was asked about the modified no-trade clause, which was a part of the player contract. We do not know exactly what was said on the call, only that Dorion indicated that the no-trade clause was no longer in effect, meaning that they had not received a list from the agent by the July 1st deadline. 

As no trade lists (at the time) were not required to be housed anywhere but with the team (reportedly requested by agents for privacy purposes to not upset other teams about being included as undesirable destinations), the protocol was for the trading team to be ultimately responsible for the communication of the list and for sending it along to the new team if necessary. As Vegas was not on the list submitted by the agent, there was no argument from Dadonov and the trade was considered legitimate and finalized. 

It should be noted that if player agents were allowed to participate in these trade calls, this miscommunication would have been identified immediately and the fiasco that followed would never have occurred.

March 21st, 2022 (trade deadline): During a middling year, Vegas was attempting to make a playoff push, and after dealing for an injured Jack Eichel in November, they were looking to make some salary cap moves to accommodate he and others returning to the roster. Dadonov was identified as a contract they needed to move and they finalized a deal with the Anaheim Ducks at the deadline to effectively dump him there.

The trade was then nullified by the league a couple of days later after Dadonov’s agent pointed out that the Ducks were a team that Dadonov needed to provide permission for a deal. This is when the presence of the no-trade list was uncovered, with the league confirming via Dadonov’s agent that the list had indeed been sent to the Senators by the deadline and was therefore in effect. 

Interestingly, Vegas did not really end up needing to free up the cap space they thought they would due to additional long-term injuries occurring. They missed the playoffs that season despite the irony that Dadonov ended up being one of their most productive players after the deadline. Vegas would eventually deal Dadonov to the Montreal Canadiens the following November for Shea Weber’s dead money contract.

June 15, 2022: Senators Assistant GM Peter MacTavish unexpectedly resigned from his role and joined Quartexx Management, a player agency group. MacTavish remains with Quartexx in a senior role to this day. The Senators' front office staff under Dorion was extremely small, and it would stand to reason that if there indeed was internal miscommunication with the no-trade list, MacTavish was likely involved to some degree.

Summer 2022: As a result of the nullified deal, the NHL quietly conducted an internal investigation into the Dadonov affair and eventually determined that neither Vegas nor Ottawa were subject to any further action, and both parties were informed that the league considered the issue closed and they would be making no public comment on it.

December 2022: The result of the league investigation reportedly was not sufficient for McCrimmon, President George McPhee and the Golden Knights, who believed they had suffered reputational damage from the public fallout of the botched trade. So they demanded the NHL reopen the investigation, and the league acquiesced. A number of representatives from both the Sens and Knights front offices were interviewed extensively at this time.

June 13th, 2023: Michael Andlauer is announced by the Senators as the winner of a lengthy bidding process to become their new owner. Andlauer still has to receive official approval from the NHL Board of Governors and complete final due dilligence to determine the final purchase value. Part of the due diligence will be to verify all team assets including player contracts and future draft picks. At some point during this due diligence period, Andlauer later states that team representatives mentioned the ongoing investigation into the Dadonov trade and indicated to him they considered it a “non-issue.”

September 21st, 2023: Andlauer is officially approved as owner by the Board of Governors and the final sale price is announced as just under $1 Billion. Within a week, Andlauer hired Steve Staios as the team’s new President of Hockey Operations with Pierre Dorion remaining in place as GM.

November 1st, 2023: Roughly 10 months after conducting their interviews, the NHL sent Andlauer a 73-page report on their investigation and announced that the Sens would lose a first-round pick in either the 2024, 2025 or 2026 draft (at the team’s own discretion) as a result. Andlauer immediately announced that Dorion had mutually agreed to part ways with the club, though it was clear to all that Dorion had been fired with cause as a direct result of this ruling.

It was also stated that the league actually held off on announcing the results of the investigation due to the fact that they had to inform Andlauer of the punishment for Shane Pinto’s gambling investigation the week prior. The Senators have since deferred on losing the first-round pick the last two drafts, making the upcoming 2026 draft in June the designated option. 

Now that we understand the exhaustive timeline, we can look at what options, if any, Andlauer feels that he has with respect to appealing the ruling and having the penalty reduced.

In Part two this week, I’ll dive into the case Andlauer can make to see if the upcoming first-round pick can be salvaged.

By Tyler Ray
The Hockey News Ottawa

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As the Pittsburgh Penguins head into the 2025-26 season, questions about their aging core continue to make the rounds. Chatter about the future of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Erik Karlsson suggests there could be blockbuster trades inbound, but the reality is far from suggesting anything is imminent. 

GM Kyle Dubas knows the Penguins will need to turn away from the older stars and build the future of the franchise on the back of younger talent. But, with Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Karlsson still on the roster – and all holding leverage in any potential deals – that transition is complicated.

Malkin, 39, is in the final year of his contract, and speculation is that he’s been told this will be the final season he spends with the Penguins. At the same time, he doesn’t want to go anywhere, and his future remains undecided. Dubas confirmed discussions with Malkin will take place around the Olympic break to gauge whether the veteran wants to continue or potentially open himself up to other options. 

Even though he’s arguably got more in the tank, there’s a good chance he decides this will be it and he’ll close the door on his NHL career in a Penguins uniform. 

Malkin’s loyalty to Pittsburgh is commendable. However, for the Penguins to move on, they need him to be willing to go. He has a full no-move clause, meaning a trade is unlikely unless he agrees.

Meanwhile, Karlsson remains a high-profile trade candidate, but options for acquiring teams are dwindling. Carolina, Florida, Ottawa and Vegas were all rumored to have shown varied levels of interest. Nothing materialized. That leaves the Penguins with an $11.5-million defenseman with two years remaining on his deal. Karlsson seems ready to move on, but other teams aren’t sold on whether he’s a wise investment, and the Penguins aren’t keen on retaining millions of dollars to ship him out.  Even if they found a trade partner, the belief is that he won’t fetch as much as he should in any potential deal. 

Sidney Crosby’s long-term future has been a running storyline in the NHL. Everyone knows he wants to stay in Pittsburgh for his entire career, but most insiders believe he deserves another shot to win, and that probably isn’t happening in Pittsburgh before he retires. 

NHL insider Chris Johnston said on the SDPN podcast that conversations about Crosby’s potential trade are natural, suggesting everyone around the NHL and at the highest levels is talking about it. Crosby still has much to offer, even in his older years. Several teams would line up for a shot at acquiring him, and the Penguins would be foolish not to entertain trades. But as of now, he’s given them no indication he’s ready to consider a different location. 

Kris Letang, much like Malkin and Crosby, has no desire to play elsewhere. There was some loose speculation he’d be open to the Montreal Canadiens about a year ago, but most believe that’s only if Crosby and Malkin are gone. 

The Penguins Have No Choice But to Wait

Dubas finds himself in a tough spot. He can get a lot out of his veterans, but probably not enough for the Penguins to be legitimate contenders. He can add to that mix, but what good would that do beyond a short-term push that isn’t sustainable? 

The Penguins are headed for an inevitable rebuild, but Dubas can’t really begin that process until he’s able to shake the contracts for the older stars on the roster that have no desire to leave, despite how this season is going to go down. 

As harsh as it is to say, the hope might be that the start of the Penguins' season is so bad that these core players have a change of heart. 

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The Athletic has recently released its ranking of how near rebuilding teams are to a Stanley Cup win. For the exercise, they branded the teams that missed the playoffs as “rebuilding teams”. Since the Montreal Canadiens made the dance last time around, they were excluded from the ranking, but Corey Pronman mentioned that had they been part of the exercise, he would have ranked them in fourth place.

Which teams are therefore ahead of the Canadiens in the ranking? Pronman lists the San Jose Sharks, the Utah Mammoth, and the Anaheim Ducks as the top three rebuilding teams. What allowed them to clinch such rankings? Let’s have a closer look.

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For the writer, the Sharks deserve the top spot due to their highly desirable group of young players, including Macklin Celebrini, Michael Misa, Will Smith, and Sam Dickinson. While it’s hard to argue with the talent San Jose has up front, they remind me of the Edmonton Oilers.

They’ve been focusing a lot on the forward group and are still a bit thin on the blueline. The fact that Pronman has included Dickinson in that article is quite telling. While the youngster seems destined for a promising future, he has yet to play a single game of professional hockey. As a result, I believe it’s a bit premature to say the Sharks are close to the Cup when their top blueliner hasn’t skated in a professional game.

In net, the Sharks’ top option is Yaroslav Askarov. Although he was a high draft pick by the Nashville Predators at the 2020 draft, taken 11th overall, he has only played 16 NHL games, with a combined 3.01 goals-against average and a save percentage of .899, which is below .900. He has done well in the AHL, but so has Cayden Primeau, and that success hasn’t translated well to the NHL.

In second place, Pronman opts for the Mammoth, citing the fact that they took notable steps as an organization last season and were lucky enough to land the fourth overall pick, which they used to select Caleb Desnoyers. Once again, Pronman focuses on the forward group, mentioning Logan Cooley, Dylan Guenther, and their other high picks of the last decade.

Looking at their defense, though, it is somewhat aging. Granted, acquiring Mikael Sergachev from the Tampa Bay Lightning helped, but aside from him and Sean Durzi, every other blueliner is over 28 years old (Olli Maatta, Nate Schmidt, Ian Cole, and John Marino).

In net, they have a trio of NHL-capable goaltenders in Karel Vejmelka, Vitek Vanecek, and Connor Ingram, but is there one that could backstop them to the most fantastic prize of them all? That’s far from a done deal.

In third place in the rankings, Pronman has the Anaheim Ducks and mentions Leo Carlsson, Roger McQueen, Mason McTavish, Cutter Gauthier, and Beckett Sennecke as their top players. Granted, Anaheim’s center line has excellent depth, and they do have at least two very promising defensemen in Jackson Lacombe and Olen Zellweger, while Tristan Luneau is progressing very well (52 points in 59 games with the San Diego Gulls). The biggest question mark for me in Anaheim is in the net.

Lukas Dostal, 25, has 121 games of NHL experience but has yet to make a significant impact. That being said, with the young core maturing, the defense in front of him may improve and make his job significantly more straightforward.

Looking at previous Cup winners, it’s essential to have a well-balanced side to claim the Stanley Cup. The Toronto Maple Leafs underwent a significant rebuild, focusing heavily on firepower. As a result, they’ve become a regular-season powerhouse, but they’ve struggled to find success in the playoffs. Until recently, the same was true for the Oilers, who made it to the Cup final but needed to do some tuning and get reinforcements on the blueline, while they still had a question mark in net.

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Buffalo Sabres GM Kevyn Adams pulled off a few trades in the lead-up to the NHL Draft and on Draft weekend, one of which being the deal with the Pittsburgh Penguins that sent veteran defenseman Connor Clifton and a 2025 second-round pick for the younger and less expensive Conor Timmins. 

The Penguins are among five clubs sending their youngsters to LECOM HarborCenter this week for the 2025 Prospect Challenge, but as the calendar clicks toward the start of NHL training camps, Pittsburgh GM Kyle Dubas may be one of the more active executives in terms of making trades, as the Pens are clearly in a rebuild posture and have numerous veterans entering the last year of their contracts.  

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According to David Pagnotta of the Fourth Period, Penguins veterans Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell are among the players they are willing to move. Dubas does not have any pressure to trade either winger, since they have three years remaining on their contracts, but the return for both may be at its highest with each coming off of career years.

Rakell has a partial eight-team no-trade clause on his contract, but Rust can be moved anywhere, something that might be attractive to the Sabres, since the club trying to end their 14-year playoff drought is not a popular destination. The question is whether Adams is willing to give up the young assets necessary to acquire either Rakell or Rust. That is something that might have to wait until well into the regular season, and if Buffalo is within range of a playoff spot. 

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The Ottawa Senators have said on several occasions that you can never have enough right-shot defensemen in your organization. But this summer, they've acquired a pile of righties. They got Jordan Spence in a draft-day mugging of the Los Angeles Kings. They also re-signed Finnish defensemen Nik Matinpalo and Lassi Thomson, signed former Minnesota Wild defenseman Cameron Crotty, and welcomed former first-rounder Carter Yakemchuk to life as a first-year pro.

So maybe you can have enough right-shot defensemen.

And that may not be great news for 24-year-old Max Guenette, the last RFA defenseman remaining in the organization. According to Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch, "the expectation is that he will be dealt before camp." At the moment, not including Guenette, the Senators have eight right-shot defensemen under contract within their organization.

Nick Jensen's timetable for a return to the lineup will play a large role in the plans for Guenette. If Jensen ends up being out long-term, or just isn’t the same player anymore after hip surgery, there's a chance that could change things.

Guenette, the Belleville Senators’ alternate captain, was a 7th-round pick by Ottawa in 2019. The 6-foot-1, 201-pounder from L'Ancienne-Lorette, Quebec, has appeared in eight NHL games in his career. He was called up last season but didn’t see any game action, and he posted 23 points in 58 AHL games for the B-Sens.

Given that he cleared waivers to be sent down to Belleville last fall, and not much about his stock has changed since then, the Sens wouldn't be counting on much in return if they choose to move him elsewhere.

The best they could hope for is an AHL player of similar impact who simply plays at a different position — one where the Senators aren’t operating at a surplus.

By Steve Warne
This article was first published at The Hockey News-Ottawa

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