Hockey Rambling

Darnell Nurse landed the big one on Friday, signing an eight-year contract worth $74 million ($9.25 million cap hit), to start in 2022-23. Nurse is now 26, so this contract will expire when he is 35. Like many long-term deals, it may not look pretty at the end. But Nurse is a critical part of [...]

It is the end of the work week so I want to take some time to talk about one of my favourite topics in hockey: defencemen, particularly younger defencemen. The game of hockey, specifically in the NHL, has changed enormously over the last decade. With that change has come an evolution of the blue liners [...]

Sometimes when I need inspiration for these Ramblings, I go through our Frozen Tools to look for players that may be of interest to the readers. Generally, this is through our most-viewed tool which can help us identify who is a popular player at any given moment. However, I also dig into some other of [...]

I'm back from a week "off" after the birth of my first daughter. She's happy, healthy, and completely overwhelming. Lack of sleep and baby brain are a real thing here, and as a result I haven't been able to really get much time for hockey or for my thoughts over the last two weeks; and [...]

We have finally reached the offseason. It took to the long weekend in August, but we finally reached the offseason. Honestly, this past season is just one giant blur. I was looking through some of my old tweets the other day for a specific tweet from this season and remembered the time Ralph Krueger, the [...]

Following a series of Instagram posts from Evander Kane’s wife, the NHL put out a statement that it plans to conduct a full investigation on claims that Kane bet on his own team’s games. Professional sports leagues take team members betting on games very seriously. This reminds me of when Pete Rose was given a [...]

David Krejci was at the top of many remaining UFA lists as of Friday, and was even believed to be working on something with the Bruins. However, he has decided to retire from the NHL, opting to return to his native Czech Republic to resume his career. With many families separated by COVID restrictions over [...]

Two days of free agency have come and gone. Day 2 didn’t feature nearly as much activity as Day 1, though there were two significant players finding new homes. The links for the Fantasy Takes (written by Mike) are listed below. Fantasy Take: Saad Signs in St. Louis – Part of the post-Vladimir Tarasenko plan. [...]

We truly had ourselves a Free Agent Frenzy, didn’t we? Last year didn’t see much player movement while this year it didn’t seem to slow down for about the first six hours. Myself, Dobber, and Ian were around for the day giving out our instant analysis on the signings (and trades!) that went down. They [...]

The Fantasy Guide is out August 14, which is a very fast turnaround (fastest ever). Since I can’t project anything until tomorrow after the free agent craziness starts dying down and rosters begin to take shape. All I could do in advance was study and analyze last season. Pounding at this to make sure it [...]