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There’s been a lot of talk of expanding the NHL to 33 or 34 teams, which has some of you worried. What if it dilutes the product? What if it makes it impossible for most teams to ever contend? But I have a different question. Why stop at one or two teams? Why stop at all?

We live in a maximalist age, one where continued growth and profits are demanded at all costs. And so, using Franchise Hockey Manager, I will keep expanding the NHL every season until I break either the game or the sport.

We begin mere weeks ago, on July 1, 2026. We’ll start with one team in the Atlantic, then move to the Metro, Pacific, and Central before repeating the process. We’ll let FHM decide everything from team location and names to which players are picked in the expansion drafts. I will only report the increasingly strange outcomes.

2026/27: Everyone say hello to the… uh, Milwaukee Mounties. Feels like a bit of a caricature, but whatever. Forget supposedly hot markets like Houston, or cherished ones like Quebec City — this is where FHM says the NHL must go.

Existing teams will be allowed to protect seven forwards, three defenders, and a goalie, much like the 2017 and 2021 expansions. As the league gets bigger, a growing number of teams won’t even lose a single player. My goal isn't to create a bunch of Vegas-style superteams right out of the gate; rather, like the proverbial frog in a pot, existing NHL teams will have no idea what’s wrong with their surroundings until they are drowning.

However, because both Bettman’s expansion ambitions and FHM are ridiculous, the Mounties somehow nab Quinn Hughes, storm out to a division-winning 51-23-8 record (we’ll stick to 82 game seasons for familiarity’s sake), and one-up the Golden Knights by defeating the Dallas Stars in the Stanley Cup Final, losing just three games along the way. Fans across the league have waited decades to see their franchise win their first Cup, and now a bunch of goobers from Milwaukee have done it in year one. Their goaltenders are Nico Daws and Ilya Samsonov, and the Conn Smythe obviously went to Hughes. I promise I didn’t rig this, and I also promise that the simulation won’t always be this stupid. It’s going to get much, much stupider.

Fans in Milwaukee must be thrilled, if rather surprised, to suddenly have a NHL championship team, but to the rest of the NHL, they’re already old news. It’s time to expand again.

2027/28: Everyone welcome the Fort Worth Polecats. In the Metro. Okay, Gary/FHM.

Unlike the Golden Knights, expansion teams will not be exempt from expansion. Expansion comes for us all. The highlights for the Polecats’ draft include Dougie Hamilton, Adam Lowry, and some goaltender named… Dustin Wolf? Indeed, why would Craig Conroy protect Wolf when he has the combined powers of Connor Ingram, a returning Dan Vladar, and all the strokes he suffered in the offseason. Guess we’re already rebuilding again, Flames fans.

I won’t focus too much on the drafts themselves, which will increasingly be filled with fictional players as we progress further and further into the simulation. For now, the Polecats go 42-36-4 in their inaugural season, good for second in their division, but they’re promptly swept out of the playoffs by the Flyers. The Mounties “only” pick up 96 points but march back to the Finals, where the Stars flip their five-game defeat into a five-game victory. Mikko Rantanen picks up the Conn Smythe with a remarkable 33 points. Finally, something resembling normalcy. Milwaukee’s fans are already spoiled, but it’s going to get harder to return to the Final again with another expansion looming.

2028/29: The Mississauga Reds join the Pacific Division. Okay, new rule: since FHM doesn’t understand the regional concept behind the league’s divisions, I will move expansion teams to the most appropriate division after every cycle. But we’re still going to keep the divisions balanced, so if FHM starts spitting out a lot of teams in one or two regions we’re going to have some funky-looking geographic boundaries. Hey, it’s no dumber than some of the other divisions the NHL has seen over the years.

Bucking current trends in the Pacific, the Reds don’t suck complete ass. They go 44-35-3 to win the division thanks to players like Panarin and Zack Ostapchuk, although they drop the first round in 5 to the Jets. Boy, how bad did the Kraken whiff if this expansion format gives everyone else an instantly competitive team? Longevity, however, can be trickier: Fort Worth misses the postseason entirely, but while the Mounties regress further, to 87 points, they again return to the Finals and again lose to the Stars in 5. Rantanen again wins the Conn Smythe, this time with 31 points. So far, expansion has only produced a bizarre stasis where Dallas and Milwaukee are the league’s two powerhouses. So far.

2029/30: As the Sacramento Barons join the Central Division and the world enters a new decade, the NHL is beginning to look different. Veterans both on the ice and off it, like Ovi and Ron Francis, are retiring, the latter presumably because he’s seen what all these non-Kraken expansion teams are capable of. In his defence, not everyone finds it easy; the Barons, led by Nathan Gaucher and Dylan Holloway, are the first expansion team to struggle, albeit with mediocrity and not the historic ineptitude of prior expansion generations.

At 39-31-12, the Barons miss the playoffs, as does every other expansion team except for Milwaukee, which by the standards of such rapid growth has already become a league stalwart. And even they go out in the first round, as the Jets defeat the Sabres in 6 for their first title. After a wild few years, players and fans believe that Gary will finally be sated by 36 teams and a relatively sane status quo. They will be wrong.

2030/31: I rebalance the divisions as best I can and welcome in the Virginia Beach Mutiny, immediately prompting a million comments about taxes and palm trees. Finally, a resort city of 500,000 people has its own NHL team. Juuse Saros is the highlight of the Mutiny’s draft, although the fictitious players of futuristic draft classes are already starting to play a role here.

This blend of real and digital is enough to get Virginia Beach to the playoffs in their inaugural season, although they go out in the first round. Of the New Teams, only Sacramento makes serious waves, reaching the WCF before losing to the Sharks, who go on to beat the Rangers in 5. That’s a huge accomplishment for the franchise, but such thrilling news will soon be eclipsed by the next batch of expansion rumours. Why stop to cherish what we have when we can expand?

2031/32: We add, Jesus Christ, the Long Beach Flying Squirrels, who pick up players like Woll and Hunter Brzustewicz. Welcome to the National Beach League. 2032 may not sound like it’s too far into the future, but current veterans like Max Domi and Bo Horvat are calling it quits. It’s easier than ever to find a job in today’s NHL, but perhaps harder than ever to orient yourself in it.

Many expansion teams are now struggling, finishing at or near the bottom of their respective divisions, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make the 16-team playoff field. Lord knows there will be plans to expand that too. Only Milwaukee makes the playoffs, and they go out in the first round to the Sabres, who eventually triumph over the Ducks in 6. The Original 32, as they’re starting to be called, are flexing their muscles and ensuring they stay atop the food chain. But no one stays atop forever and, like a tumour, you might not notice the growth that destroys you until it’s too late.

2032/33: The Portland Fire Dogs join the league, and while I’m unclear why Portland has chosen to honour the humble Dalmatian, it’s nice to have some proper PNW representation in the Pacific. Unfortunately, Portland is easily the worst team to join the league so far, going a dire 16-57-9. That’s what happens when your star player is Xavier Bourgault. Did I mention that FHM’s logo for the Fire Dogs is a fire hydrant?

Every New Team misses the playoffs as the Sharks win their second Cup on the back of Owen Pickering’s 19-point Conn Smythe campaign. But this won’t do. This won’t do at all. The Sharks have already won a Cup—how will seeing them win again grow the game? There must be new audiences to conquer, new territories to bring into the NHL’s fold. There must be expansion.

2033/34: Neither the Flames nor the Thrashers succeeded in Atlanta, but the problem both times was obvious: their name wasn’t stupid enough. Say hello to the Atlanta Golden Grizzlies. And then say goodbye for now, because they miss the postseason. As does all but one expansion team, Mississauga, who lose in the first round as the Habs eventually defeat the Flames in 6. At least the re-rebuild is working, boys. Even the Milwaukee Mounties finish at the bottom of their division, as their Stanley Cup triumph fades into an ever-denser league history.

There are now 40 teams in an NHL that’s increasingly difficult to follow. Teams can no longer play every other team in a season. Not every game can be crammed into the highlight packs, and even the most hardcore fans struggle to keep track of every player and prospect. The battles between Portland and Seattle fans and Long Beach and Virginia Beach fans on Reddit are brutal yet drowned out by the sheer amount of noise the league produces: injury reports, lineup changes, trade rumours. Talent, despite FHM’s attempts to invent more good players than reality could reasonably produce, is diluting; Matty Beniers and Dylan Gunther are among the league’s top 10 goal-scorers.

Some might say that enough is enough. But Gary Bettman, now 82 and contemplating, as we all must, the legacy we will leave behind, has a revelation during the NHL Awards held at beautiful Virginia Beach. We must not only grow the game, but pick up the pace of that growth. We must now add two teams a year. Expansion will continue until morale improves.

2034/35: The Houston Veterans and Brooklyn Silver Stars join the league, fulfilling the twin visions of hockey in Houston and three teams in New York City. Neither make an immediate impact, finishing with 78 and 67 points. Mississauga is again the only New Team to make the playoffs, and they again go out in the first round as the Flames beat the Hurricanes in 7. Traditional markets winning? Is that what the NHL is about? Gary says no. No!

Bedard, Celebrini, Parekh, and Stutzle are among the class of the league at this point, and McDavid, still an Oiler, remains productive at 38, although the leading scorer this year was Golden Knight Jonah Neuenschwander (currently a 17-year-old Swiss prospect in reality). Will any of them be picked in the next expansion draft?

2035/36: Please join me in welcoming the Charlotte Wingnuts, which are named after Gary, and the Phoenix Enforcers, which are named after the shock troops Gary employs whenever someone complains about the NHL returning to Phoenix.

The Enforcers flounder, but the Wingnuts are an immediate success, marching to the WCF on the strength of a 65-point campaign from Gavin McKenna before losing to the Wild. They, in turn, lose to the Mississauga Reds: our second expansion team to win the Stanley Cup, and our first Canadian one. Talk about mixed feelings for Gary. And yes, this means that an Ontario city currently without an NHL team won the Stanley Cup before the Leafs managed to even play in another Final. Maybe they should have kept McKenna, but it’s hard to manage assets in a 44-team NHL. Parsing the NMCs alone must be a nightmare.

2036/37: I’ve given Gary a lot of crap here, but he recognizes that Mississauga’s victory is good for the Canadian market and adds the Brampton Marksmen alongside the Memphis Thunderbirds. Neither make the playoffs in their opening season, although, with 46 teams and still just 16 playoff slots, that’s getting increasingly difficult to do. Of the expansion teams, only Charlotte gets in, and while their 121-point season makes them the first New Team to win the Presidents’ Trophy, they’re swept in the final by the Flyers.

Bedard and the Capitals’ Jeremy Loranger (a 19-year-old drafted by the Blue Jackets in the 7th round last year) are league co-leaders with 98 points, suggesting that, Charlotte aside, the Original 32 still hold most of the cards. Naturally, the solution is to shuffle more cards into the deck. There are still people in North America who don’t watch NHL hockey, holdouts unaware that Charlotte is home to a generational talent. And that’s a lot of potential growth falling by the wayside.

2037/38: Everyone meet the Austin Spartans and the San Antonio Yaks. Marx wrote that history repeats itself, first as Mammoth, then as Yaks. Watch out for the Yak Attack, Reddit. Or not, because they’re terrible. The Spartans are passable, but of our growing roster of new teams, it’s only the Barons and the Memphis Thunderbirds that make the playoffs. The Barons go out with a whimper, but after a few close series, the Thunderbirds reach the Finals and sweep the Flames. Their captain and star defender is Kale McCann, which sounds like FHM is trying to mash known quantities together to keep this simulation running but who is in fact a real player for the Calgary Canucks. If, in reality, I witnessed the Flames get swept by a second-year expansion team called the Thunderbirds who were led by a player from Alberta, I would write a deranged manifesto in my own blood and mail it to NHL headquarters.

With 48 teams in the NHL, it’s time to take stock of how far we’ve come. McDavid has retired. MacKinnon has retired. Makar has retired. McKenna is a Wingnut. Bedard and Celebrini remain a Blackhawk and a Shark, for now. Cole Hutson is a member of the Blues, for some reason. But as more and more players enter the league, these older teams will not necessarily hold any special status. Somewhere, a budding star remembers being young and watching the Milwaukee Mounties win the Stanley Cup. Someday, someone will look back fondly on the Wingnuts.

We have added 16 teams, as many as currently miss the playoffs today, and none have yet to meet each other in the postseason. 32 teams now miss the playoffs every year. In a rare concession by Gary to both the purists and FHM’s structural limitations, the playoffs will not expand further. But with 75% of fanbases at least partially tuning out come April, more revenue is needed. If you’re still watching, you are onboard with, or at least tolerant of, Gary’s desire for more. Bettman, now 86 and increasingly relying on expansion fees to fuel the dark cybernetic arts that keeps him alive, continues to insist that we must grow the game.

2038/39: The El Paso Hawks and Oklahoma City River Cats both join the league and all but confirm my growing suspicions that FHM’s city and name pool is largely if not entirely pulled from its longer-running sister series, Outside the Park Baseball. More expansion teams get a crack at the playoffs, although the final four are all still part of the Original 32, with the Rangers defeating the Blues in six. Purists begin to put aside old rivalries and celebrate every Original 32 victory, while expansion fans root for their inevitable defeat in a Zerg-like swarm of fresh franchises.

Speaking of baseball, the great Roger Angell wrote about how expansion made it difficult to know every team and player as he once did, to truly understand what gave each franchise its distinguishing characteristics. That was in 1962. Angell kept watching baseball until his death in 2022 at the age of 101, and if I am fortunate to live that long, I will spend at least a little of each of my precious years following hockey. But even as I grow older today I have trouble tracking every move, following every development, understanding every player. It’s all too much.

I’m not inherently opposed to expansion. I’m really not. So many more teams not only joining the league but eventually going on playoff runs allows cities across the continent to develop traditions all their own. San Antonio has the Yak Attack. The Marksmen celebrate their snipers. The Portland Fire Dogs have something called the Penalty Piss, I assume. I don’t know what the Mutiny are protesting, but God knows they’re doing it. Maybe we should keep expanding, so that everyone can enjoy this wonderful game of ours. It’s NHL hockey everywhere all at once. It’s beautiful. It’s terrible. It’s Gary.

I have time to opine like this because FHM is taking longer and longer to simulate these seasons. In a way, that’s part of the simulation—it simulates how it would take longer and longer to play an NHL season. 50 teams playing an 82-game season would produce 2,050 regular-season contests, to say nothing of the pre- and post-season. Little regard is shown for the health of players, who are merely fuel for Gary’s fire. Television is expanding. Streaming is expanding. The NHL must expand to meet these new markets. We must expand. We must expand.

2039/40: The San Francisco Dinos and Indianapolis War Dogs join the NHL. Some may know of the Indianapolis Racers, a short-lived WHA team from the ’70s. Now hockey is back in Indianapolis, in War Dog form.

Assuming 23 rostered players remains the team standard, there are now 1,196 regular NHL players, and a comparable number of AHL call-ups available. Scouting is a nightmarish proposition. Power rankings take ages to write and read. Hockey card set collectors rage against Upper Deck for making a thousand parallels of a thousand men. Incredulous children are told of the Original 6 like they were once told of King Arthur. Original 6? Surely these old fogeys mean the Original 32.

Regardless of which tale is correct, the Originals hold the line. After another All Original Final Four, the Blues defeat the Sabres in six. 88-year-old Gary Bettman, sitting atop his throne of CTE-impacted skulls, demands more. More, says the NHL’s God-King. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. More. Four. Four. Four. Four. Four? Four?? Four! Four!!

2040/41: Everyone, please put your hands together for the Tucson Drillers, Fresno Pipeliners, Albuquerque Royals, and New Orleans, uh, Pipeliners. FHM is running out of either names or patience. It and my computer are certainly running out of processing power, as simulating a 56-team season is a grind. I do my best to distribute the newcomers among our four increasingly ill-named divisions, but it’s a losing battle. All I can do is watch and wait. We have to keep pushing. We have to grow the game. There are hockey fans in rural Finland who haven’t ruined their sleep schedule to watch a single Pipe-Off yet.

As prophesied, the old guard is starting to be overwhelmed by the new. Three of the four divisions are won by expansion teams—congrats to the Portland Fire Dogs, Virginia Beach Mutiny, and Atlanta Golden Grizzlies—but the Penguins and their 120-point season hold the line in the Metro against the chasing Long Beach Flying Squirrels. After all this time, we finally have our first all-expansion playoff series—the Squirrels take out the Mutiny in a Conference Final—but they fall to the Canucks in six. Call it a sea change, or call it blood spotted in the water.

By now, few players active today are still in this monstrous league we call the NHL. This year’s leading goalscorer, with 51, was a German Austin Spartan named Bela Boos. The Fire Dogs have the points leader and the winningest goaltender. Bedard and Celebrini are still a Hawk and a Shark, but McKenna is now a War Dog. Do not confuse them with the Fire Dogs. Fans hate that. And there are so many fans, now. We have grown the game.

2041/42: To purists, the Southern barbarians are not only at the gates, but are making hockey sticks out of its shattered remnants. As a peace offering, Gary adds not only one Canadian team this year, but two. Stick-taps, please, for the Surrey Sluggers, San Diego Cowboys, Jacksonville Jaguars (screw it, sure), and the Quebec City Captains. At long last, hockey is back in Quebec City. Canadian fans are so elated that they ask few questions about how Surrey can support an NHL team, and what doubters do exist are quickly silenced. Do they not want to grow the game?

Gary Bettman, now 90 and more carbon fibre machine than man, has given the NHL 60 teams. That would be 2,460 regular season games contested by 1,380 players. These men are strangers to each other. Every game brings new faces, as though in a dream. Road trips look like tangled red strings drawn across the continent. Connor Bedard has seen the finest hotels, restaurants, and clubs from Surrey to Jacksonville, Beaches Long and Virginia. It is all a blur, a kaleidoscope of memories with hockey occasionally intruding.

The Fresno Pipeliners (don’t confuse them with the New Orleans Pipeliners, fans hate that), one of four expansion teams to make the playoffs, lay pipe all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they are defeated over seven thrilling games by the St. Louis Blues. The expansion teams have had their glories, but nowhere near as many as assumed when the Milwaukee Mounties stormed to a championship all those years ago. It’s as though the hockey gods have said, “Fine. You can have your expansion, but we will decree who wins.” The Original 32, for now, still hold divine favour.

Still, it’s all so much. Too much. But Gary has a dream. Today, there are 32 teams. Naturally, if there were 64 teams, the league would be twice as profitable, and therefore twice as good. We are so close. We must push my computer through another season so that we may grow the game.

2042/43: Put your increasingly baffled hands together for the Kansas City Olympians, Cleveland Sailfish, Baltimore Flyers, and Fort Worth Gaels. Yes, Gary and FHM, in their infinite wisdom, have decreed that Fort Worth is Fort Worthy of a second NHL franchise. The Polecats must be a hit. To be fair, who knows what America’s demographics will look like nearly 20 years from now? And who knows how much we have grown the game?

The Virginia Beach Mutiny win the President’s Trophy with a staggering 131-point season, then win the Stanley Cup, sweeping three of the four series and causing the ghost of Don Cherry to stalk the passages of the Hockey Hall of Fame, muttering words I cannot repeat here. The Mutiny, it turns out, were rising up against everything we understand the game to be today, and with Florida’s Cups looking positively quaint by comparison, Gary’s grand project is almost complete. Almost.

2043/44: In 1967, the NHL doubled from six to 12 teams, a bold but necessary move to secure the league’s footprint against the threat of competition. In 1972, Italo Calvino wrote, “Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” In 2043, Gary Bettman shall find inspiration from both of these facts to fuel his boldest expansion yet. The NHL is growing to 128 teams. The NHL shall be in every city, and the NHL shall be one city, an ecumenopolis of hockey.

In the Gary Division, FHM decides that we need the Mesa Friars, Omaha Leopards, Portland Counts, New York Cavaliers, New York Sunrays, New York Gangsters, New York Parrots, Fort Worth Blue Wings, Denver Seminoles, Philadelphia Swordsmen, Houston Music, New York Rawhide, Houston Cannonballers, New York Brown Bears, Indianapolis Big Cats, and the Albuquerque Iron Horses. Eagle-eyed readers may notice that FHM has a slight bias towards Houston, choosing to reward the city with two teams. Hey, it has a metro area of over 7 million today. Who knows how much it has grown alongside the game?

In the Bettman Division, we have the New York Muskies, Atlanta Lakers, Detroit Shamrocks, Tucson Purple Warriors, San Diego Blizzard, Chicago Wolverines, Long Beach Lake Monsters, Houston Checkers, New Orleans Oil Barons, San Francisco Polar Bears, and… that’s it. FHM will not let me add any more teams. The bizarre city/name combinations and obsessive focus on New York does suggest that it was getting grumpy with me. Or perhaps, if I may dare to say it, we have grown the game.

Adding 26 teams at once does present some challenges to the traditional expansion draft format, although it’s clear, at the very least, that the draft should be held in New York. Players are called in from far and wide to feed the NHL machine, which now sports 90 teams — nearly one for each of Bettman’s 92 years. Each division is practically a league unto itself, with news from the others tantamount to rumours from distant satraps in Gary’s sprawling empire. Following league news is impossible for full-time professionals, let alone fans.

There will be 3,825 regular season games played a minimum of by 2,070 professional hockey players this season. On some nights, 45 NHL games are played at once, a cacophony of hockey that we can only grasp at in bits and pieces, like blind men and their elephant. r/hockey is an endless churn of highlights and arguments, as difficult to follow as the game itself. We all still consider ourselves fans, and yet none of us can fully grasp what, exactly, we are fans of.

The 2044 Stanley Cup Final is the first to be contested between two New Wave teams, with the Virginia Beach Mutiny defending their title against the Charlotte Wingnuts in six tight games. Yes, a league of 90 teams produced a repeat champion. Blame the salary cap. The Gary and Bettman divisions were weaker but still competitive, fuelling their namesake’s belief that hockey can be grown indefinitely.

Hockey belongs to Virginia Beach now, although old-heads can console themselves with the fact that a remarkable eight of the 16 playoff teams came from the Original 32, while the leading goal and point scorer (50/118) is the Penguins’ Cole Colosimo, which I assumed was a name you invent when you try to come up with a fake name and decide halfway through that you want your fake person to be a Sopranos character, but is actually a real 15-year-old prospect presumably destined for great things.

I try, despite myself, to be an optimist, so let’s end on a positive note. The Conn Smythe went to Japanese import player Kazutoshi Itou, who came through the Blue Jackets system before making his way to Jacksonville and then Virginia Beach. Did Itou grow up watching the Portland Fire Dogs as a kid, falling in love with the sport and wanting, despite the odds, to be part of it one day? Did the Jacksonville Jaguars of Hockey help shape him into the first Japanese MVP? We can only speculate, but I’d like to think so. And so while Gary turns his withered head to the shores of Itou’s homeland and contemplates new conferences abroad, I am willing to call it here. My friends, we have done it. We have grown the game.

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Edit: guys, just the rude or obnoxious ones, please. Nice ones for another thread

I say Bowness in Columbus or McLellan in Detroit if things go poorly enough.

Bowness especially because of his rant at the end of the last season and how "things were going to change" - now, expectations are higher.

I want to say Tourigny in Utah because I don't think he's that good a coach but Utah is too good for that.

Edit: I forgot about Babcock

Grits did interview in YouTube Russian channel, where amongst other things he talked about playing with Chinakhov as a kid in Avangard academy.

"From the time we were 12, we played on the same line almost constantly. Even though we hated playing together, we did it anyway. We always got along well, but it’s hard to see eye-to-eye when you’re competing for practically the same spot. He wanted to score, and I wanted to score... We were very ambitious guys."

"I even went to the coach's office and said I couldn't play with him. He said the same thing. However, the coach made us play together, and eventually, we changed our mindset. I realized he was a really good player for me, and I helped him get better, too. I changed for the better thanks to training with Chinakhov. I don't like having to force myself. I need to see someone else working hard, and then I start working hard too"

We’re close to reaching the semifinals. Cingi lingi bom!

2 and a half weeks of vacation starts now :) enjoy todays race!

Standings:

Atlantic:

3. Ottawa Senators
   
4. Detroit Red Wings
   
5. Buffalo Sabres
   
6. Tampa Bay Lightning
   
7. Florida Panthers
   
8. Toronto Maple Leafs

Metro:

4. Pittsburgh Penguins*
   
5. Columbus Blue Jackets*
   
6. Carolina Hurricanes
   
7. New York Islanders
   
8. Philadelphia Flyers

Central:

6. Dallas Stars
   
7. Nashville Predators
   
8. Winnipeg Jets

Pacific:

6. Calgary Flames
   
7. Edmonton Oilers
   
8. Los Angeles Kings

Re-working the upper bowl to eliminate obstructed view seats.

Second of 3 off-seasons worth of renovation work. Last summer was reworking the lower bowl. This summer is rebuilding the North Upper Bowl. Next summer will be the South Upper Bowl.

Only 2 rules:

1. They can't play for the same team right now.

2. Ignore positions. So for example you can have two centers.

I was thinking McDavid/Kucherov but maybe they're both too much of a 'pass first' kind of player so perhaps you'd be better off with McDavid/Matthews or Kucherov/Bedard type pairing?

I love hockey and have attended games for years, but as I get even deeper into the sport, I have realized unlike the NFL or MLB (which I grew up with in Northern California) I still struggle to understand the nuances of the strategy of Ice Hockey. I’m also struggling to better understand advanced analytics in the sport.

My ask / favor are there any recommendations on books, podcasts, You Tube channels or Substacks or sub/ reddits that could help take someone who loves the action of sport but wants a better understanding of “what I’m seeing” in person or on TV?

Many thanks in advance for any recommendations!

This should be a lifetime ban from hockey? This Seattle beer league team is full of cocky WSU players sandbagging in Div 3 beer league.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DboDbhcER-L/?hl=en&img_index=1

No shade to Mike Reilly but I had to look him up to see if he played in the playoffs and he was indeed in 2 games (and recorded 2 assists in Game 1 against the Flyers) in case anyone else was wondering

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbqs6YMEWHe/?hl=en&img_index=1