Hockey's an odd team sport in that it has distinct tiers of players who aren't all on the "field" at the same time.  So fans wear out their butts sliding to the front of the seats when Lines 1 and 2 are on, and slumping back when 3 and 4 are on.  Fewer teams would increase the number of relatively higher-talent players on 3 and 4, so fans could stay in the middle of their seats for them.  Less butt travel time equals a better product and higher US TV ratings.

Sure and if you eliminated all but the six original teams there'd be all-stars at every spot of the lineup. That's not really the point though. Exciting players on the third line has never been the norm in hockey and trying to engineer it to that point is breaking with the past, not keeping with it. 

I don't follow other sports any more but I am all but certain most anyone would be an improvement over Bettman as he is today.  He is superficial, self-satisfied, and staler than a 6-month-old saltine.

I don't think you need to follow other sports. You just need to be aware of how the world is going. The folk inclined to carry water for the billionaires out there are not getting better. This honestly sounds more like personal animus than a substantial criticism.

Sure is. The system rewards teams that have 1 or 2 "superstars", 1 or 2 pretty good players, a bunch of middle of the road players and an excellent goalie.

For what it's worth I don't think this is true so much or, at least, not in terms of team composition. The Lightning have 5 guys who are star players as much as the Leafs have 4 in Stamkos, Kucherov, Point, Hedman and Vasilevsky and the Avalanche have sort of an on-ice 4 that are at least equivalent in Mackinnon, Rantanen, Makar and Landeskog.

I think the lessons the Leafs could learn in looking at successful teams is A) it's probably not a good idea for all four of your "star" players to be forwards B) You need to be getting good deals on your stars and C) You need a system generating solid young talent to replace the middle six guys you lose to the cap. So far, what's really killed the Leafs is the complete snake eyes they've been rolling on C and the fact that B just didn't really play out for them. That they're paying Tavares 11 million and he's really probably only playing like you'd want to be paying 8 million or so for isn't great but not signing Tavares wouldn't have made the guys coming off the Marlies any better.

That and there are about 12 teams too many, so the product is diluted.

Yeah, I also don't agree with this so much. I think the growth of the US and European talent base probably means that there's roughly the same % of good and great players available as there always was. Sure if you eliminated teams there'd be stronger teams but so long as the cap is in place the teams still won't have separation from each other.

True.

Nonetheless, even a fresh corporate guy would be an improvement. 

I 100% do not think that is true. I thought that was true in Baseball with Bud Selig and we got Rob Manfred. I thought that with the NFL with Tagliabue and we got Roger Goodell. The modern brand of dead-souled capitalist lackeys are so much worse than the old school.

I've said it before but to me the biggest issue remains that there's just no reason to ever watch an out of market game. All the teams are basically as good as each other except for the teams that are legitimately bad and the teams that are good, at least record wise, tend to do it with unsustainable goaltending or things like team defense. Even as good as someone like McDavid is A) once you've seen him a few times you get the picture and B) he's still only playing a third of the game.

What made the NHL great was two things. Great teams and rivalries. The cap has killed both of them, the first with parity and the second with roster turnover.

They need a new commissioner.  New thinking.  Talk about a guy way past his expiry date.

Any new guy "they" get will just represent "their" interests. "They" are the problem.

I don't think too many conclusions should be reached about any one year-to-year shift in ratings but I don't think anyone could deny that the League has some real issues right now.

Honestly I do feel like that's kind of how deals generally go down. I think the idea that GM's go back and forth with multiple teams "shopping" deals and saying stuff like "this is what Team A is offering can you beat that" doesn't really happen.

Yeah. Especially trades that aren't just about draft picks. Like I understand why a team being offered a 3rd might shop it around to see if they can get something objectively better like a 2nd but when it involves multiple prospects then shopping it around would involve trying to weigh differing scouts opinions on what could be very different packages and if you've got an offer on the table you already like(and have potentially already scouted) opening it up to other teams in the hopes they might offer prospects you marginally like more seems not all that important.

I suppose to some extent the calculation then becomes: what's the benefit in holding on to see if you possibly get a better return a few weeks from now vs. doing everything you can to maximize your chances in the Bedard sweepstakes.

I guess that's fair - though, I also wonder how much Horvat changes things there now that his shooting percentage has started to regress a little and with the teams ahead of them in the Tankathon being so awful. Waiting probably doesn't change much in regards to the return or their lottery odds, but it would have improved the optics.

But that's the double edged sword. Trading Horvat doesn't just remove him from the lineup it also demoralizes the guys left behind. Well, it would provided there was much in the way of morale left in the Canucks dressing room.

Still, it's a solid adherence to the tanking principle.

Timing plays into it for me. If this deal happened late on deadline day, then at least you could feel as though they explored every possible avenue and found this was the best deal they could get. But, thus far away from the deadline? Feels like they jumped the gun. They didn't have to make this deal for a few weeks, and even if the Islanders weren't willing to wait, I have to imagine another team would have happily put forth a similar offer in deadline day.

I suppose to some extent the calculation then becomes: what's the benefit in holding on to see if you possibly get a better return a few weeks from now vs. doing everything you can to maximize your chances in the Bedard sweepstakes.

The thing is, it doesn't strike me as a bad return for a rental player, even a 27 year old one but it seems like the Canucks could have done a lot better by opening Horvat up to extension talks and making that part of the trade.

I think this sort of goes to what I was saying about the Provorov thing where to me the issue was never really Provorov's views on the subject, I don't think anyone is naive enough to really think that all the teams who had no issues with having a pride night are composed exclusively of guys whose views on respecting non-traditional sexual identities are 100% where we diehard Communist Wokeratis might like them to be, but rather how it put his team and the league in a difficult spot. Putting yourself before the team, we're told, is the ultimate sin in hockey but now the league is in a spot where their efforts towards inclusion(which I'm cynical about but I respect anyone who isn't) are effectively derailed because so long as a single player share's Provorov's stance there's no way for their team to have a positive headline come out of a similar effort.

He's probably the guy whose legacy among hockey fans who didn't see him play is most diminished by the NHL/WHA split. He comes up on lists as 18th all time in the NHL in goals, just ahead of Dino Ciccarelli when it's pretty safe to say that if he hadn't left for the WHA he would be at worst 3rd or 4th. He doesn't seem to come up much when we talk about the top 10 or so players in the game's history but he's probably there to some degree or another.

But it also has to be acknowledged that there's more to his legacy than just an impressive on-ice record. I don't like to make definitive statements as to the kind of person someone was if I didn't know them, that's above my pay grade, but it's undeniable that he did some terrible things and expressed some terrible views. When a person dies, I think it's important to tell their whole story.

That said, I hope the people who knew him are doing ok and that he's at peace.

Also, I've noticed that sometimes when CarltonTheBear does the Gameday Threads the Maple Leafs don't end up winning the game? If the site could change that it would be much appreciated. I'll take my answer off-air.