There will never be another Wayne Gretzky, never be another Mike Bossy, never be another Mario Lemieux and there will never be another Bobby Orr.
But there is always a next generation. There are always Next Ones coming who salivate the imagination — the way there was Eric Lindros, Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid and Jack Hughes, and the way there is Connor Bedard.
Bedard put on a show for victorious Team Canada in the World Juniors and capped it with an on-ice interview following his team’s 3-2 overtime victory over Team Czechia in Halifax that made this 17-year-old (!) poster boy for the sport’s evolving speed and skill also a virtual poster boy for our game’s credo that the logo on the front of the sweater is more important than the name on its back.
“I don’t want to talk about myself right now,” said Bedard, who was named MVP of the tourney after recording nine goals, 14 assists and 23 points to lead the event in each category. “We’re not talking about me.
“We just won the biggest tournament in the world, and man, I love this team, this country.”
Bedard is another of the influx of electrifying young athletes who, one-by-one and year-by-year, are transforming the sport. Coaching matters, of course it does, and so does discipline and so does the ability to get the puck in and get the puck out, but the NHL is a players league and it becomes more of one with each season.
These young whippersnappers are too self-assured and too talented to be shoehorned into left wing locks and traps. They are too rambunctious and cocky to believe that a three-goal lead is too much to overcome.
Outdoor games and shinny have come to the NHL.
There are, realistically, three teams with a shot at finishing last overall that brings with it a 25.5 percent chance of winning the lottery and the chance to draft Bedard. Those are the Blackhawks, as of Friday with 20 points in 37 games; the Blue Jackets, with 24 points in 37 games; and, the Ducks, with 26 points in 39 games.
The question is when these teams will start to thin their already insufficient rosters to put themselves in prime position for the ping-pong ball exercise in which the team with the second-worst record has a 13.5 percent chance at Bedard, and the club with the third-worst mark has an 11.5 percent shot at Regina Pats captain.
When, that is, the organizations will actively tank the way the Penguins did for Mario Lemieux in 1983-84 by calling up a minor league goalie Vincent Tremblay to play against the Devils at the Meadowlands in an early March showdown for last overall (when there was no lottery).
The final was 6-5, New Jersey, the 24-year-old goaltender went 0-4 with a 6.02 GAA and .830 save percentage, and the Penguins finished last overall by three points despite the Devils going 1-11-1 the rest of the way.
That kind of tank.
The Rangers gave up a first, a second and Morgan Barron to rent Andrew Copp for one playoff run, so there is no telling what GM Chris Drury ultimately would have been willing to send to Vancouver in order to acquire J.T. Miller for a two-playoffs run had the Canucks not been so gluttonous before pulling him off the market.
Now, after signing a seven-year extension that will in all likelihood make it impossible for the Canucks to sign pending free agent captain Bo Horvat to an extension, Miller is having a throwback season that recalls his most careless, immature days in New York that got him tossed into the Ryan McDonagh deal with Tampa Bay as a throw-in.
Not a good look for Miller.
Not a good look for Vancouver GM Gentleman Jim Rutherford, another one in an NHL executive suite who would not own up to the necessity of a rebuild.
Yes, looking at you in Nashville, David Poile.
When is the last time that the gap between the league’s best and second-best player was as wide as it the one now separating McDavid from the rest of the league?
Probably the mid-eighties, before Lemieux began to challenge The Great One as the NHL’s headline act.
Not sure there has been a coaching personnel decision that has backfired, at least on a short-term basis, as spectacularly as Florida GM Bill Zito’s move to fire Andrew Brunette and replace him with Paul Maurice following a Presidents’ Trophy winning season and the first playoff series victory since 1996 before ending with a second-round sweep by Tampa Bay.
That, coupled with the decision to transform the makeup of the team by sending Jonathan Huberdeau and his 85 assists and 115 points to the Flames with defenseman Mackenzie Weegar and a lottery protected 2025 first-rounder for Keith Tkachuk.
Tkachuk has come as advertised — that is, as a Tkachuk — but once again Puddy Tats are mired in the nether regions of the East, threatening to become the fifth team in the past 75 years to miss the playoffs a year after finishing with the league’s best record while playing uninterested, disconnected hockey.
Of course, it might not help that Sergei Bobrovsky and partner Spencer Knight rank 31st and 30th, respectively, on MoneyPuck’s previously cited list.
Meanwhile, the party of the other part in Calgary has been stumbling around as well, with a tenuous hold on a wild-card spot after entering the season as a popular Stanley Cup pick.
And Johnny Gaudreau, whose free-agent defection to Columbus kind of jump-started this three-ring circus that prompted the Florida-Calgary deal, well, the winger needs the Jackets to win the lottery in order to escape witness protection.
So Rick Bowness, the Winnipeg head coach, was behind an NHL bench for an unprecedented 2,600th game on Friday (including stints as an assistant) when the Lightning came to town,
This raises the question as to who the best coach is to be fired by the Islanders. Is it, A) Bowness; B) Barry Trotz; C) Peter Laviolette; D) Ted Nolan?
Kevin Hayes being named to the All-Star team is an example of a good thing happening to a good person.
Finally, applying the discount rate on the shot clock in Carolina that ticks off like the national debt clock on Sixth Avenue, figure the ’Canes had about 40 to 45 shots of the 67 with which they were credited in Thursday’s loss to the Predators.
