Hello readers, welcome to the latest issue of O For 4. Thank you if you are a repeat reader. Last week was very hoops-heavy, but this week center stage goes to the skaters. I will finish up with some thoughts on the NBA Draft for any of you who do not follow the NHL. As always, make sure to leave your comments on any of the four topics at the bottom.
1. The Florida Panthers are NHL Champs: What a series that was!
The NHL season came to a thrilling conclusion on Monday night with the two most exciting words in professional sports: Game 7. And let’s be honest, this year’s Stanley Cup Finals was a roller-coaster ride to begin with. So getting a winner-takes-all seventh game just had to happen. The hockey gods could not have had it any other way for this one.
This series had everything. Games highlighted by great goaltending. Games highlighted by offensive explosions. There was one player’s pursuit of NHL records, ones held by The Great One, Wayne Gretzky. There were veterans chasing that elusive Stanley Cup in the twilights of their respective careers. And there was a captain, Aleksander Barkov, becoming the first player from Finland to captain a Stanley Cup champion.
Oh, and also that storyline about the Florida Panthers potentially becoming just the fifth team in NHL history, and second in Stanley Cup Finals history, to squander a 3-0 series lead. Now, I will be honest. I was hoping for it, for both selfish and unselfish reasons. The selfish reason was I wanted the 1942 Detroit Red Wings to finally lose the distinction of being the only team to lose after leading the Finals 3-0, but, as they say here in the Motor City, “Detroit can’t have nice things,” so that distinction will stick.
The other reason I was hoping for it was that it would have been the better story to write about. This was supposed to be Connor McDavid’s coronation, his chance to do the one thing he has not done yet in his hockey career, and to etch his name amongst the greatest to ever lace them up.
Instead, with their strong defensive effort and the resumption of the otherworldly goaltending of Sergei Bobrovsky, the Florida Panthers pulled off the game 7 win behind a pair of absolutely beautiful goals to earn themselves an entry on the positive side of the history books.
It would be easy to say that Edmonton will be back competing for the Cup for years to come. That is what happens when you have the firepower that they have, not to mention the player who has led the league in points in five of the past eight seasons. I have a feeling of inevitableness when it comes to the prospect of them winning it all sometime soon.
But I also feel that Florida could remain in the conversation for the foreseeable future, too. It is not like they came from out of nowhere to win it all this year. Two years ago, they won the President’s Trophy before getting bounced in the second round. A year ago, they made some changes to the roster and barely made it into the playoffs as the eighth seed, but then knocked out that year’s Presidents Trophy winner in the first round on their way to the Finals. So they clearly have a roster designed for the battle that is the NHL Playoffs.
The Panthers also have one of the best to do it standing behind their bench. Head Coach Paul Maurice leads all active coaches in games won, not to mention being fourth all-time. After 26 seasons, he has seen it all and can have his teams prepared for anything.
And finally, they quite possibly have the best last line of defense that the NHL has to offer at the moment. Sergei Bobrovsky had some legendary performances in these playoffs. Lacking the type of big-name scorers that their Finals opponent had, Bobrovsky’s regular highlight reel saves is the single biggest reason they are your champs.
In the end, this is going to go down, rightfully, as one of the best Stanley Cup Finals in NHL history. While the team I was cheering for did not prevail, I am happy to have stayed up past my bedtime for all seven games to enjoy every minute of it. Hockey fans everywhere would be a lucky bunch to have a repeat of this matchup again next year. I imagine the encore would be even better. With Vegas and Florida as the last two champions, the NHL is showing it can survive and succeed in non-traditional markets. The future of this league is looking very good right now. And it should, as the product of its playoff tournament is so much better than its counterparts in basketball and baseball. The single-elimination aspect of the NFL Playoffs makes that an impossible comparison and just a matter of preference. It is deserving of its motto as “The hardest trophy to win in professional sports”. I give these Finals a 9/10. My only complaint was…
2. Connor McDavid wins the Conn Smythe Trophy: Wait, what?!
Let’s start with a little history. Prior to this year, there have been five instances in NHL history where a player not on the Stanley Cup winners has won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoffs MVP. Four of those five were goalies and the fifth, Reggie Leach of the 1976 Philadelphia Flyers, set the record for most goals in a single postseason (19, which still stands to this day). These anomalies occurred in 1966, 1968, 1976, 1987, and 2003, so you can see that it has become an even rarer occurrence. In other sports, the NBA has seen it happen only once, with Jerry West claiming the Finals MVP in 1969 when his Lakers fell to the Celtics. That was the first year the NBA gave out the award, which means that they have learned from their initial mistake and never once repeated it. And in the NFL, we go almost as far back for their only such occurrence, to 1971 when Dallas Cowboys linebacker Chuck Howley won in Super Bowl 5 despite his team losing to the Baltimore Colts that day. That game had 11 total turnovers, and Howley recorded two of them in becoming the first defensive player to be tabbed Super Bowl MVP. I am not researching if this has happened in baseball.
So across the three major sports, there have been seven occurrences of a non-championship player winning the MVP of the Finals or Playoffs. Connor McDavid made it eight. My underlying argument with him getting the award (as well as the other seven individuals who have won under losing circumstances) is the obvious one: you can’t be the most valuable player of the playoffs/finals if you did not win the last game. You can be revered for your efforts and your contributions to the box score. You can even get into the record books, as McDavid did in this postseason more than once (most assists in a postseason – 34; most points in a two-game span in the Finals – 8). But you cannot be named MVP.
Watching the trophy ceremony on TV, I was listening to Commissioner Gary Bettman preparing to name the Conn Smythe winner, and when it became obvious that it was going to go to McDavid, the Florida crowd emphatically expressed their collective displeasure. As the Oilers had already left the ice, there was no one to claim the trophy. The TV cameras, instead, focused on who everyone thought should have won, Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky. Having the MVP trophy go to someone on the opposing team felt very anticlimactic and even a bit insulting to the winning team, from a spectator’s perspective.
This goes beyond just the principle of automatically giving the award to a player on the championship-winning team. Sure, Connor had one of the best playoff runs ever, with his total point production trailing only those previously recorded by Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, so he joins the rarest of rare companies. And through three rounds, we deserved to be the betting favorite, especially if you believed that Edmonton would win it all. But let’s look at his performance in the Finals. In the first three games, all Edmonton losses, he had zero goals and three assists. Then there was the aforementioned two-game blitz where he tallied three goals and five assists to help his team get back into the series. But then in game 6, when they tied the series, and game 7, McDavid did not record a single point. So while he ended with 11 points in the Finals, all but one of them were scored in games 3, 4, and 5.
On the other hand, Bobrovsky, who should have won, was more of a factor in a higher number of games. Among the four Panthers victories in the Finals, he had one shutout and two other games where he only allowed one goal. His save percentages in those three games were 1.000, .947, and .958. Those are all elite numbers. Even in the other game they won, where he allowed three goals, his percentage was a respectable .914. Florida only took more shots than Edmonton in two of the seven games.
Yes, in the three games that Florida lost, Bobrovsky did not perform as well, but in four games he was a positive contributor. The number of games where we can say that about McDavid is fewer.
The major sports leagues need to sit down with each other and come to a consensus agreement that they will never give a postseason MVP award to any one other than a player on the championship team.
3. NHL Hall Of Fame: New Inductees Named
The NHL did not waste much time moving on from the Stanley Cup Finals by announcing the newest inductions to the Hall of Fame less than 24 hours after game seven wrapped up. The two biggest names in this year’s class are Pavel Datsyuk and Jeremy Roenick. Datsyuk, the Detroit Red Wings legend who won two Stanley Cups, not to mention a collection of personal awards, was in his first year of eligibility. It would have been at least a small shock had he not been voted in this year.
Roenick, on the other hand, had been eligible since 2012. I was flabbergasted when I saw his name in Tuesday’s news, having assumed he was already in the Hall. And if I am being honest, I am a little upset he has not been enshrined before. Even growing up a Detroit Red Wings fan, Jeremy Roenick and his Chicago Blackhawks became my team of choice to play as on “NHL ‘94” on Sega Genesis. He may have been the best player in that year’s game.
I am not arguing for his enshrinement based on that. There are objective reasons, of course. With 513 career goals, Roenick is 42nd on the NHL all-time list. And his 1,216 points puts him at 47th ever. Twice he went over fifty goals and three times he surpassed 100 points. The nine-time all-star was clearly one of the best players in his era.
I have long said that there are too many players in each sports’ respective Hall of Fame. That is the inevitable result of a subjective, voted-upon selection process that adds several more inductees each year. I would like to see a system where statistical accomplishments can qualify players for the Hall. Obviously goals scored is not the most important stat for all hockey players (goalies and defenseman), but a top-50 goal-scorer needs to be immortalized. So far, there are 299 former NHLers in the Hall. If we look at this mathematically, a team dresses 20 players per game, and generally speaking, 12 of them (60%) are forwards. So if we estimate that 60% of the 299 members of the Hall of Fame are forwards, that gives us 180. How the player who was one of the 50 most productive players in league history is not included in that list is beyond me.
Again, I know stats cannot be the end-all of this discussion, as that is how some deserving players who were not the most productive get in (e.g. Datsyuk is #209 in all-time goals score), but it needs to be a part of the equation. Sometimes it is just an objective fact who deserves enshrinement. This was one the voters got wrong for far too long. I am glad to see they finally got it right.
4. NBA Draft: Who Are These Guys?
This must have been one of the least exciting drafts in the history of drafts. I know I am not the only one who had minimal familiarity with several of the players drafted. Here are some numbers to know: the first two picks, three of the first six, four of the 14 lottery picks, six first-rounders, and another six second-rounders were from foreign countries. On top of that, there were a total of three draftees that played for G League Ignite a year ago, two of whom became lottery picks. I can say comfortably that the average NBA follower does not follow the G League or international basketball. That means that there were a total of 15 players out of the 58 total draft picks (over 25%) that we simply do not know who they are.
While this does make the draft less appealing to the average fan, the important question is what does this do for the NBA game itself. What does it mean that so many new players are coming from non-traditional sources (read: American universities)? Was this a one-off this year (confluence of new NIL rules and the end of the special Covid eligibility rules) or is this going to be the new normal? If it is the new normal, what are the ramifications of that for college basketball?
I’ll point out that this past season was the last for the G League Ignite franchise, so that will not be relevant going forward, but that was not as big a source as the international scene was in this past draft. We know the world is getting better at this game. The last three players who have won the NBA MVP award, combining to win it in each of the last six seasons, are all from overseas. In this year’s voting, three of the top four were born abroad.
Aside from the NBA MVP Award, we can also look at international competitions. Yes, the US is still dominating at the Olympics, but the other major event taking place every four years, The FIBA World Cup, has only seen the US winning it twice in the last six tournaments; Spain has won just as many. The American team has not even medalled at the last two.
So yes, competition for the Americans is getting tougher, meaning talent development is improving overseas.
What if this continues? Do international teams become suitable destinations for the best high school players, much like they are in soccer. For example, US Men’s National Team captain Christian Pulisic moved to Germany when he was 15 to play for Borussia Dortmund. Could basketball players start doing the same if they see European clubs as a better route to the NBA than playing in the NCAAs?
I think this is a potential development that colleges and universities should be concerned with. For all of the recent changes they have made to allow players the ability to earn money for their game, those earnings opportunities will dry up if the best players are not staying stateside for the last stop before the NBA. Entities will not want to spend as much money on college players who will not be making it to the big leagues; they will take their bank accounts and follow the talent.
To be certain, there is a very strong argument for playing internationally as opposed to in college. The chance to play against older players who are already pros is certainly a way to improve one’s game, arguably more than the college game would.
Maybe the new world of NIL keeps players in college longer. Maybe that helps them develop further and become stronger candidates for the NBA. Remember when it was a big deal when a college player came out before playing four years? Maybe that helps the USA reassert itself as where the NBA’s top draft picks come from. Patriotically, I am hoping for it. As a fan of the game, I am hoping for it. I certainly cheer for or against certain players, and thus their NBA team, based on where they played their college ball; that would not apply to players who came from abroad. And just as a stubborn man who prefers it when sports don’t evolve (there are some exceptions), I am hoping for it.
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