Burnside: Eastern Conference Hot Seats
By Scott Burnside
Hey all, welcome to the first of what will be regular offerings here at DailyFaceoff.com and I couldn’t be happier to scribbling along with you as well as talking at you from your computer or headphones or wherever you get your podcast fix.
On many levels it feels like we’re all slowly emerging from a great forced hibernation. Maybe that’s why there’s so much anticipation around the National Hockey League for what we hope will be a return to normalcy after almost two years of COVID-19 abnormality. Throw in a new expansion team in Seattle and the return of NHL players to the Olympics in February in Beijing and there is the potential for unparalleled excitement and drama surrounding the game.
With training camps well under way in advance of the Oct. 12 start to the regular season here’s a look at some of those residing on the hottest of hot seats this season.
We’ll start with the Eastern Conference today and go west tomorrow.
Enjoy.
Eastern Conference
Jack Eichel, Center, Buffalo Sabres
We start this hot seat list with a player who isn’t likely to play a single game this season and certainly not with his current team as Jack Eichel and the Buffalo Sabres remain deadlocked over how to treat his injured neck. The treatment issue is the key domino to Eichel being dealt by the team that made him the second overall pick in 2015. What an incalculable mess and it’s the mess that looks to keep on giving through the season. Rookie GM Kevyn Adams could have put this catastrophe behind him and the team this offseason when there were legitimate suitors for the gifted center. But that would have meant allowing Eichel to proceed with disk replacement surgery instead of the fusion surgery team doctors prefer. Adams further muddied trade waters by refusing to accept less in return for Eichel in terms of assets and has to this point been unwilling to eat a portion Eichel’s $50 million contract (he has five years remaining at $10 million per season). Eichel is not blameless in this organizational catastrophe. As much as it may suck for Eichel he is property of the Sabres. He signed a contract that allows the team to chart a desired course for rehabilitation for all injuries. To defy those instructions is to possibly be in breach of contract. Best case outlook? Define best. Maybe something breaks on the trade front by the March 21 trade deadline but hard to imagine what that looks like especially if as expected Eichel is still sidelined. What does appear inevitable is that Eichel is moved before his full no-move/trade clause kicks in next July 13.
Evgeny Kuznetsov, Center, Washington Capitals
Is it possible the Washington Capitals are in the hunt for longest Stanley Cup hangover ever? Maybe you can excuse losing to upstart Carolina in Game 7 in 2019 a year after the team’s seminal Stanley Cup win over Vegas. But the Caps’ sloppy performance in losing to the Islanders and then Boston in the first round the past two playoff years has lots of folks suggesting that Stanley Cup window is closing even as Alex Ovechkin begins his new five-year contract with it’s hefty $9.5 million cap hit. Not worried about Ovechkin, though. He’s money. But the Caps’ path to the Cup in 2018 was paved with sterling strength down the middle to whit, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Hall of Fame worthy Nicklas Backstrom and Lars Eller. But Kuznetsov has gone off the rails since his virtuoso play in the ’18 playoffs both on and off the ice including testing positive for cocaine at the 2019 World Championships. Last season there were repeated in-house transgressions that bled into another up and down statistical season for the gifted pivot. So disenchanted were the Caps they explored moving the 29-year-old in the offseason. Didn’t happen likely because of Kuznetsov’s well-publicized issues and the fact he’s under contract at a $7.8 million cap hit through 2024-25. We’re of the mind this is one of those trades that is best not made. We’ve spent some time with Kuznetsov over the years and whether we’re being Pollyanna or not we’re of the mind that this season marks a bounce-back for the talented Kuznetsov and by extension the Capitals. It better be as the Metropolitan Division looks like it could qualify just three teams for the post-season given the strength of the Atlantic.
Dougie Hamilton, Defense, New Jersey Devils
Two things to think about with the talented Hamilton. First, he’s a point machine and few get the puck to the net as quickly and accurately as Hamilton does. Since 2016-17 Hamilton’s .62 points per game have him tied for 13th among all NHL defensemen. Second, when the 28-year-old signed his whopper seven-year, $63-million deal with the Devils this summer it marked his fourth NHL organization. A potential red flag? Maybe. But if this was only about fit Hamilton would have stayed in Carolina where Hamilton was sheltered by a deep, talented blue line corps. And the Hurricanes would have loved to keep Hamilton but they did not believe that he was the kind of player to whom they could commit that kind of capital. Whether the relative anonymity of Carolina allowed Hamilton to blossom or not is now moot. When you’re one of the top-paid defensemen in the NHL as Hamilton is now and you’re expected to lead an emerging defense corps as Hamilton is now with the Devils, well, that changes the expectation equation dramatically. If Hamilton rises to the occasion and embraces that role the Devils will be in the hunt for a playoff spot. Suffice it to say the jury is still out on whether he is that kind of player.
Brendan Shanahan, President, Toronto Maple Leafs
Sure, you were expecting Mitch Marner in this space. Fair enough. Marner has more delay of game penalties than playoff goals over the past couple of seasons. And yes, Marner’s playoff goal drought is currently at 18. But who’s counting except everyone in Leaf Nation. But pull back from the Marner closeup and what you see is an organization that has acquired all kinds of shiny baubles but has failed to deliver anything approaching return on those investments. So, let’s start at the top of the organizational pyramid with a team without a playoff series win since before the 2004-05 lockout. That’s where you’ll find Hall of Famer Brendan Shanahan. The buck in the center of the hockey universe stops not with young GM Kyle Dubas or young head coach Sheldon Keefe or even Marner, Auston Matthews and William Nylander but with the team’s president and guiding force since 2014 Brendan Shanahan. Few have understood the game in the manner that Shanahan has first as a player and later as an innovator and then executive but in the wake of the Leafs’ colossal choke job against Montreal in the first round can Shanahan survive another one and done season? Or worse, one in which the Leafs fail to qualify for the playoffs which is not out of the question given the strength of the Atlantic Division? Better question is whether he should survive another misstep.