And it makes sense, this is the captain of an iconic NHL franchise asking to be dealt away from his hometown, and doing so in pretty dramatic fashion with five years remaining on his contract.

I’ve written about it twice at this site here and here, while I was a guest on the Hockey PDOcast on Monday with my good buddy Dimitri Filipovic to chat about it. I’m sure Robert Tiffin and I will also have some discussion about it, amongst other things, this week on Algorithmically Incorrect Hockey (which will be live on YouTube and simulcast here at Shap Shots.)

I’ve also read a ton from some really smart people on the matter and listened to the episodes my friends over at Winged Wheel Podcast have delivered. The Larkin saga has also become the main topic for local Detroit sports talk radio the past few days.

There’s been a ton and there will be more, but there was a couple things I wanted to unpack a bit more today that have been rolling around in my head on this matter.

Let’s start with the reported trade list that Larkin has submitted according to The Detroit Free Press.

According to the Free Press, Larkin’s trade list includes the Minnesota Wild, Florida Panthers, and Vegas Golden Knights.

From my understanding on the matter, those three teams are certainly on his list. I also believe the list is slightly larger than those three teams, there is another team, I know, that’s been told they are on Larkin’s list of considerations and Elliotte Friedman, who broke the initial news, has said something similar this past weekend.

A three-team list has drawn headlines, and led to some vitriol toward Larkin from Red Wings’ fans, which I understand, but I would like some more clarity here on how exclusive or small that list actually is.

Those three teams, notably feature players that Larkin has international experience and happens to be close with from his time at Team USA — Quinn Hughes, Matthew Tkachuk, and Jack Eichel.

Larkin won a gold medal and partied with those players back in February, they took a trip to the White House together, he kind of got a taste of what Tkachuk and Eichel have experience in recent years, after forcing their own moves out of Calgary and Buffalo, and was highly influenced by them.

It gave me reminders of the 2023 NHL All-Star Weekend down in Florida, fittingly when Larkin was still going through his contract extension talk with the Red Wings. During that weekend in February Larkin was inseparable from the Tkachuk brothers, being seen multiple times together at the Elbo Room, a bar that is now one of the NHL’s top unofficial business gathering places.

Whether you like it or not, it’s a player empowerment play by several of the members of Team USA, and there are some general managers better suited to handle this new landscape than others.

I know some people have called Larkin soft for this, and it certainly doesn’t help that he filmed a toiler paper commercial around the Olympics, but I actually push back against that a little bit.

It’s a greedy request, sure, but it’s one of the more brave things Larkin has done in his career. He grew up with Red Wings history and what it means to the Michigan hockey community. He saw what happened with Sergei Fedorov who finally was welcomed home and had his number retired this season after decades of being blacklisted by Red Wings ownership.

The safe, soft play for Larkin was to remain in Detroit. Even if he was frustrated with Yzerman and they didn’t get along, the reality is players and GM don’t have to interact on the day-to-day, they don’t have to like each other, and while snippets of malcontent would come out, ultimately Larkin could have ridden this out for five years as hometown hero, the local kid who lived out the dream of every Michigan youth hockey player to captain his hometown team.

Instead he asked to move on, he asked to go play second fiddle somewhere, essentially admitting in his request that he can’t be and isn’t the focal point of a championship team. He’s a top-six center in the NHL, probably somewhere in the 20 to 30ish range for me if I were ranking them, but he’s not the guy to lead a team to a championship down the middle.

It’s brave to admit that and it’s also brave to throw away the hometown legacy and become a villain.

To be clear, this isn’t to defend Larkin’s decision one way or the other. But I think we are missing the point if we call him soft or anything like that. Red Wings fan can, and maybe they should, call him a villain, but this is more devious than cowardice in my view.

There’s also the reality that Yzerman may not trade him. If you are in Yzerman’s shoes, and I think it’s pretty well known if his name wasn’t “Steve Yzerman” he’d have been fired by now after seven missed postseasons, why would you trade Larkin for a weak return?

It’ll be awkward if Larkin is still on the roster come September, but unless you are able to get an acceptable trade package, why would you just gift a shutdown second-line center, who can score a point per game, to an NHL contender?

It’s also a two-front battle for Yzerman. One to find the best return for his soon-to-be ex-captain, and one with Larkin to whittle him down to make that trade list as large as possible.

From a Red Wings perspective, it’s going to be a redefining trade, a legacy defining one. As someone who is actively working on a book on team history for young readers (elementary school-aged reading level), it’s incredibly frustrating timing since I had just finished up the first draft of the manuscript about a month ago thinking Larkin wouldn’t be going anywhere.

In that mindset, for the Red Wings and Larkin, there’s still a lot to be written and in my book’s case, re-written, over the next couple weeks and months. Maybe the NHL Draft pushes the tempo for this, it’s an ideal time to move assets, or maybe this drags on further into the summer. Either way, it’s something that is going to define this NHL offseason.

It’s been roughly 26 hours since news broke that Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin has requested a trade.

I wrote some quick thoughts yesterday, which you can read here if you haven’t already:

In the past 24 hours, I’ve been able to learn a little bit more having spoken to people around the league including agents, players, and team executives.

For starters, the frosty relationship between Steve Yzerman and Larkin is now public, but wasn’t much of a secret for people in the industry.

For example, there have been times players themselves have directly requested a trade. That wasn’t the case here, where Larkin’s agency, CAA, informed the Red Wings of Larkin’s desire to leave Detroit.

“They don’t speak unless they’ve had to, they haven’t for a while,” one agent said. “That’s kind of become common knowledge about the situation in Detroit. Steve and Larkin co-existed, but they didn’t get along at all, and that’s kind of been known by others for a bit now.”

It should be clear, that as of now, the Red Wings and CAA have been quiet as possible on this. No one has been willing to put their name on public comment, but multiple people in the Red Wings orbit and organization have been willing to confirm that Yzerman is indeed mulling over his options on how to handle this moving forward, and if he’ll even grant the request.

One of the bigger questions I’ve gotten from those within the Red Wings is how this even got out. Yzerman keeps everything very tight and close, almost to an intimidating level with members of the organization, and while CAA has had leaks before, they normally disperse those to media members that CAA represents.

Case in point, there’s never been a real explanation why the Red Wings traded Jake Walman a couple years back. There are some members of the Detroit organization that are still confused about that deal.

“When Steve makes up his mind and no one can change it,” one agent said today in Buffalo. “Once that happens, he’s going to do what he wants. So it’s going to be interested what he decides what he wants to do with this and Larkin.”

No matter what Yzerman decides, the Red Wigs future leadership likely now runs through Moritz Seider, and whether it’s this season or a bit later, I would highly expect him to be the next captain.

And while there have been thousands of posts/articles about the trade and what it might look like, as of now, it’s hard to get a read on any realistic destination or return. Larkin is one of the best centers in recent memory to become available in the trade market, he’s also gotten a very high profile from his international showings for Team USA.

That being said, it’s difficult to see how the Red Wings can “win” any Larkin trade. Detroit was in desperate need of a top-six center already, and now they will be in desperate need of two after a potential trade.

It’s pretty big news that was broken on Thursday by Elliotte Friedman.

I’m currently at the NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo, it’s been the biggest topic of conversation in the hotel bar here, in fact I’ve spoken to multiple agents about it. From the team side, and from Larkin’s camp, no one seems interested in talking at this moment, which is understandable, but the silence also speaks volumes about the realness of Friedman’s report.

Let’s unpack some things, as I’ve seen them over the past couple years in Detroit, and how it may have contributed to Larkin’s potential Detroit departure.

Larkin has been highly frustrated with the Red Wings lack of success, he’s played just five playoff games in his NHL career, he’s put part of that on himself, but he also hasn’t been great about hiding his displeasure with the way Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman has handled things.

In fact, when Yzerman and Larkin agreed to an eight-year extension in 2023, a moment that was supposed to be a celebration, it was overshadowed by the Red Wings trading away Tyler Bertuzzi and Larkin’s extension press conference turned into a nearly tear-filled moment over one of the captain’s best friends being traded away.

When the Red Wings didn’t make moves at the deadline during the 2024-25 season, beyond trading for Petr Mrazek, Larkin publicly opined at exit interviews how the team never got the boost they felt they deserved at the deadline.

This season, when the Red Wings did buy at the trade deadline, they failed to make the playoffs, again. Larkin carries some of the blame, he was emotional about it at the end of the season, but his frustration with the overall state of the franchise also worsened.

I’m not sure what the final breaking point was, but it’s become clear that Larkin has reached his breaking point. His belief in the Yzerplan has shaken, and it probably didn’t help when both Yzerman and Red Wings coach Todd McClellan openly admitted the Red Wings needed to get better players.

In that same press conference there were some lengthy pauses from Yzerman when asked if the Red Wings have enough current players in the fold to get it done.

Going forward, it’s going to be awkward for the Red Wings until a Larkin trade materializes. Larkin was part of the plan, he was the 1C they needed a 2C behind, and now he wants out. Detroit players will now be inundated with questions about this, especially Larkin if he isn’t traded before training camp.

While the potential of Larkin trade is a gift to those in the #hockeycontent machine, it’s going to come with some challenges. Larkin has a no-trade clause, and Yzerman also doesn’t have to trade him, in fact Yzerman could be spiteful and hold him. In order for this trade to happen, Yzerman and Larkin will have to see eye-to-eye, which hasn’t been the case in recent years.

It adds another wrinkle to the ongoing saga, which is only going to evolve now that it’s been blasted into public.

I’m flying to Buffalo this morning for the NHL Scouting Combine, where many of the top prospects for the 2026 NHL Draft will meet with NHL teams and lay some of the groundwork for the draft later this month, also in Buffalo.

(Side note, I would be remiss if I didn’t shout out my colleague at Elite Prospects who did incredible work on the 2026 Draft Guide that is now available.)

This will be my first trip to the combine, it’s actually one of the few things that I haven’t covered before within the NHL Draft cycle, so I’ll have a better “boots on the ground,” piece on that later this weekend.

In the meantime, I had a reader ask me the other day a question that I think is worth diving into.

What are teams looking for when the interview players or take them to dinner at the combine?

Over the next couple days you’ll see on social media that Player X met with Team Y, and that a player met with this many teams. For example, I’ve got a meeting lined up later today with a player, who is projected to go in the top-15 range, that has 24 team meetings scheduled.

In many cases, for teams, these meetings are about fleshing out information about a prospect that’s been initially gleaned through the scouting process. They’ll be questions about a player’s season, why they did or didn’t have success, while they’ll also be inquiries where various teams try to learn more about a player’s personality. There are a handful of teams that really big on that second part, and there have been stories of players dropping in the draft or landing on “do-not-draft,” lists because of how poorly they came off to a certain team in an interview.

There have also been players that have improved their draft stock in the interview process, Ty Dellandrea, for example really wowed the Stars in his interview back in 2018 and when the Stars drafted him they were confident they’d gotten a future captain, “a Mike Fisher type,” with the pick.

Social media postings from reporters about a team meeting with a player is also not an indicator that a team will or won’t draft a player. I think too often it gets misconstrued that a team really likes a player, similar to how hockey media/fans often overreact to scouts being in the building.

One NHL scouting director once explained it to me this way, “it’s an information business. We are building databases of information for this draft, but for the long-term as well. There might be a trade or some other opportunity to acquire a player in the future, the combine is probably the real first-impression to build your notes on a player.”

My first full-time job was at a small-town newspaper in Kerrville, Texas.

I was hired in mid-January 2012 to be the sports reporter on a two-person sports staff at The Kerrville Daily Times, and during my first day on the job, before any orientation, I was told I was going to be promoted to sports editor at the end of my second week since the sports editor had just put in his two-week notice.

I was 22, brand new to Texas, and was now tasked with both learning everything possible from the outgoing sports editor, crash-course style, while also being partially responsible for hiring a sports reporter to work under me in a span of two weeks.

It was a chaotic, “welcome to the business,” moment for me, and I believe that thematically it helped prepare for me a career where, for better or worse, you have to adapt frequently.

We actually hired another Shaun, albeit with a different spelling, for my old role, and his last name also started with an S. It created some pretty confusing moments for people on the phone when they’d call the Daily Times and ask for “Sean/Shaun in sports,” and there would then be series of qualifying follow-up questions about which Sean/Shaun they were trying to reach.

A few months after making that hire, the chaos continued when I arrived to work, the publisher called me into his office and told me, “we are going to cut the sports reporter position,” and that Shaun would be let go when he got into the office later that day.

It was a frustrating and disappointing turn of events, it disenfranchised my desire to stay at the Daily Times and I started quietly looking for my next job, which I eventually found at the Cedar Park-Leander Statesman, a move that unbeknownst to me at the time was the step I needed to get back into the hockey world.

My only regret about leaving Kerrville, and the thing that I struggled with when making my decision, was the fact I never covered a high school football season in that small town. Kerrville was a one-school town, Tivy High School, and it was the biggest show in town. That school famously produced Johnny Manziel and part of me really wanted to stay and live through a small-town high school football season in a beat capacity.

I made the right decision, I actually covered a state championship team instead in Cedar Park, but there was something about small-town Texas and the connection a high school football team that elicits romanticism in my mind.

Getting us back to hockey, and the present day, I got some of that same feeling yesterday in Kelowna.

Now on the ice, the Kelowna Rockets were overmatched hosts in the 2026 Memorial, head coach Derrick Martin said last night that “if goals cost a dollar we only brought 75 cents,” as they finished the tournament without a win.

Off the ice, however, in many ways the Rockets and Kelowna reminded me of what I ultimately missed out on by leaving Kerrville when I did. Between talking to volunteer drivers for the Memorial Cup shuttles, restaurant employees, and others I’ve met in the past few days, you can sense how much the hockey team and the communal gathering a WHL game represents means to this city.

I grabbed lunch yesterday at Wood Fire Bakery, a suggestion from a reader, and the guy taking my order was wearing a Tij Iginla jersey and a Rockets hat while he slung sandwiches. My shuttle driver, yesterday morning, an older gentleman who moved to Kelowna about 15 years ago, told me how for his family, a half-season ticket package to watch the Rockets was family time, how they looked forward to game days not just for the hockey, but what it represented to get everyone together.

And while he wasn’t bullish on Kelowna winning going into the game with Everett, for him that game was going to be another family moment, and a chance to watch the team “earn one more hockey night in Kelowna,” with a potential victory.

The Rockets lost, the season ended, and while they’ll be two more games this weekend in the Memorial Cup, they won’t feature the hosts. It created an odd, but wonderful scene last night after Everett won, with the hosts taking extra time to do a slow lap around the ice to thank the fans it was a loud ovation. Talking to multiple players from the Rockets, both before and after that game, you got the sense of pride in the city, not just the teammates around them. One of those unspoken connections that help define a city and its team.

Kelowna is much bigger than Kerrville, about 10 times the population, and it’s two different sports, but there’s something pretty damn cool about that connective tissue, where the games matter on the field/ice, but they also represent something more off of it.

This morning I was up around 5 am locally here in Kelowna, I actually slept-in about an hour from my typical 7 am ET wake-up time, and was able to sneak in a two-hour hike this morning, met a family of deer on the way, and took some time to sit on a bench and just look at the city and lake from the top of a small mountain before grabbing breakfast.

It’s one of my favorite parts about traveling for work, especially at this time of year, sneaking in a hike somewhere and getting to disconnect a little bit.

As someone who lives and works in a connection-driven business, it’s hard not to spend a ton of time looking at a screen when you work in media, those moments, I believe make me a better writer and person. It lets me reflect, it lets me get lost at times, and sometimes when my brain goes blank, other creativity starts flowing.

For example, a couple months back, soon after I got the news that All City was letting me go from DLLS, I was taking a walk by myself, not thinking about work or hockey, and had the idea to text Robert Tiffin about finding a way to build something. Two months later, I’m pretty damn proud of Algorithmically Incorrect Hockey and we will be recording Episode 9 tomorrow and have another great guest lined up.

That’s kind of how my brain works, for better or worse. It’s scattered and chaotic most of the time, an odd stream of consciousness outside of writing that I often struggle to communicate others.

But when I take those pauses in life, either within a moment, or sneaking out on a hike to look at a lake, like I did this morning, everything becomes a bit clearer.

Hope that makes sense.

Any ways, I’m in Kelowna for the next week covering the Memorial Cup for Elite Prospects. This is one of my favorite tournaments and the second one I’ve gotten to cover in person after the 2024 Memorial Cup in Saginaw. I love the cultural collision of each of the CHL leagues, the different playing styles and cross-over of champions from three different circuits, in my view it’s the closest thing we have in North American hockey to the Champions League.

Tonight, the QMJHL champions, the Chicoutimi Saguenéens, play the OHL champion Kitchener Rangers.

In the meantime, let’s get to some mailbag questions:

Has there been any impact on the quality of junior hockey since the ncaa ruling that would allow juniors to play division 1 hockey (From Greg)

This is only Year 1 of new world order where CHL players are eligible to play in the NCAA, and while the CHL lost some big names this season — Gavin McKenna and Porter Martone, for example — I believe in the long run the CHL is going to benefit from the new path.

JP Hurlbert, for example, had 97 points this season for the Kamloops Blazers and only played in the WHL because the new ruling wouldn’t hurt his future status at University of Michigan. I think there will be talent flowing both ways, and while the CHL is going to get a little bit younger in my view, I don’t think any talk of the CHL’s demise is realistic.

Thoughts on the playoff format resulting in such an exciting Western Conference Finals? I guess the most exciting first round in sports is worth it. (From Ged)

Ged is obviously using some sarcasm here with the Vegas Golden Knights currently up 3-0 against the Colorado Avalanche.

I don’t like the NHL playoff format because, in my mind, it devalues the regular season. You play 82 games to determine standings and seedings, and in my view, you should have a system in place that reflects that. The Vegas Golden Knights reached the Western Conference Final having played the teams ranked, points-wise, sixth and seventh in the conference.

I don’t blame Vegas for their path, but they were more rewarded by virtue of division than three teams that had double-digit more points than them in the Wild, Stars, and Avalanche.

The Stanley Cup playoffs are all about chaos, beautiful chaos, but I’d like us to go back to 1 through 8 with a re-seed to put more value on the regular season.

How would you evaluate Gulutzan’s first season as coach? How much falls on him and his system as it relates to the lack of offence created in the playoffs? (From Ben)

Glen Gulutzan’s first season really requires a deep look under the hood, and honestly, it’s something I’d like to dive into once I get through the end of the Memorial Cup.

But, in the short-term, I think Gulutzan’s coaching was passable, but not elite. He did a better job connecting with players on a human level, but wasn’t able to carry over some of the Xs and Os that Pete DeBoer was better equipped for.

Let me give you a deeper dive and proper answer later this week or early next with some video.

In case the Stars ponder the unexpected as far as roster changes go, what do you think they could get for Casey DeSmith? Or could Poirer use more seasoning in Cedar Park before trading DeSmith at the TDL? (From Timothy)

I think trading Casey DeSmith would be a horrible decision.

$1 million back-up goalies that put up numbers like he has are hard to find, and I think it’s become clear that Jake Oettinger needs to be pushed by a veteran goalie. I struggle to find any return for DeSmith that would be worth the negative impact of removing him from the equation.

Remi Poirer, it should be noted, has made some nice strides. But I want his play this coming season to force the Stars hand and prove to us he can win the back-up job for the following season.

Do you find it odd Jake did not play in the worlds? He wants to be team USA goalie why not go play? (From Michael)

I don’t blame Jake Oettinger for not going to worlds, if anything I think it was the right decision because his body has been overworked and needed a long summer to recover for next season.

I also don’t think World Championships are, nor should they be, used to identify which players represent a country when it comes time to best-on-best competition. It’s a fun tournament, one I’d like to cover some day, but with the nature of where it fits on the hockey calendar I think it should be reserved for players that missed the Stanley Cup playoffs or younger prospects using it as a springboard.

First a food rec: do yourself a favor Sean and get a sandwich at Woodfire Bakery.

Book dinner at Cedar Creek Winery.

Lastly, any information on Maxim Mayorov and the Stars’ plans for him next season? Will he remain in KHL? (From Chris)

Thank you for the food recommendations, I will check out Woodfire Bakery for lunch on Thursday and report back!

I will also ask about Mayorov, as of right now I don’t have a proper answer for you.

With the official kickoff to grilling season upon us, what’s the best condiment combination for a hotdog? And also in your opinion, what’s a big no-no? (From Ed)

I like mustard and ketchup together on my hotdog, I realize I’m about to get some hate for that.

On the flip side, I think the beauty of hot dogs, and grilling, is that there are no big “no-nos” when it comes to food. As someone who spends a lot of time smoking meat in the offseason, we did a brisket two weekends ago, I think it’s good to have an open mind on this stuff.

One of the cooler things about being a parent, in my view, is getting re-introduced to the world or gaining a new perspective through your kids.

My 5-year-old son, for example, is starting to build and complete Lego sets by himself. There’s some things he needs help with, but in general he can now sit at the table with the instructions and get through the whole thing, like he did after school yesterday.

And as a parent, I’ve really enjoyed just watching and taking in the experience. Putting away any other distractions, and watching this 5-year-old figure something out and watching his face light up when he figures out a particularly frustrating step.

I had a similar experience with my daughter later that night, not with Lego (although she and her brother have plans to build a Lego city this summer), but with sports fandom.

Last night the Montreal Victoire claimed the PWHL’s Walter Cup with a 4-0 victory in Game 4 against the Ottawa Charge. My daughter, who is now 7, intently watched most of the third period, heavily rooting for Montreal because of her favorite player, Abby Roque.

I was watching the game with her, but I was more so watching her. Watching her deal with the excitement and nerves of a championship game, how she couldn’t really sit still and went from sitting a couple feet in front of the TV to back on the couch munching Cheetos way past her bed time because of a hockey game.

When Montreal won, and the players were celebrating, she informed us that for one day our dog, normally named Vezina, would for one day be named after whomever was named the MVP of the Walter Cup Playoffs.

This morning, while getting ready to walk to school in her Abby Roque jersey, she quickly reminded to address the dog as “Marie” throughout today in honor of Marie-Philip Poulin. The dog admittedly is a bit confused, but it was really cool as a parent to watch my daughter fall in love with something, like she has with hockey because of the PWHL.

The PWHL, and I’ve written about this before, is creating vital additional hockey connections. There’s an obvious connection for young girls, but there’s also a winder net, which, for me, has added some excitement about the PWHL having a team in Detroit next season, which I’ll be able to cover a bit in this space.

Fittingly, last night there was a jailbreak goal, scored by Roque, that gave Montreal a 2-0 lead in the third period.

Back in March, when Montreal played in Detroit as part of the PWHL takeover tour, I actually spoke with Victoire coach Kori Cheverie about the rule and how it impacts coaching decisions, which you can read about here:

For a moment, after that goal, I wanted to get a bit analytical about it with my daughter, let’s have a deeper conversation about the risk vs. reward of that play in such a high-stakes game. And while I’m sure she’ll be ready for those deeper play-style discussions someday, she was more interested in the fact it was pretty cool to see Montreal about to win a championship.

It wasn’t the birth of her fandom, that happened at the in-person games we’ve taken her to in Detroit, but there’s something neat about watching that locked in focus, that mix of tension and elation surrounding a game, something we’ve all become accustomed to at some point or the other with a beloved team.

That human feeling, I believe, is the reason that I still work in sports and enjoy covering this game. While the schematics and intricacies of how the game are played fascinate me, deep down I don’t think I would find them nearly as interesting if I didn’t have the deep-driven fanaticism for hockey that developed when I was close to 10-years-old.

In summation, there’s a fan origin story for everyone. Something, no matter the age, where you found the connection or touch point that helped you fall in love with a team or sport, some tipping point that turned it from fascination to fanaticism, and watching that happen for others, in this case my daughter, gives me a good reminder of why this all matters.

I’ve intentionally taken some time to stop and think about the Dallas Stars and Jason Robertson.

As a quick refresher, the Stars top-scoring forward, who had 96 points this season, is a restricted free agent coming off a four-year deal that paid him $7.75 million per season.

He’s the franchise-record holder for points in a season by any player since the franchise moved to Texas, with 109 points a few years back, and this past postseason, where the Stars fell to the Minnesota Wild, Robertson was the Stars most consistent forward.

Robertson also has arbitration rights, which the Stars will want to avoid, and this is the final season he can sign an eight-year deal before the NHL CBA changes.

As my pal Kyle Stich from AFP Analytics put it last week when he joined Robert Tiffin and I on Algorithmically Incorrect Hockey, Robertson is a restricted free agent that the Stars should really treat as a UFA.

Kyle also has Robertson’s contract projection at $12 million per season over eight years, and when making their projections AFP Analytics does their best to find the middle range of the projection.

Read more

By the end of March, after completing his freshman season of college hockey, Martone joined the Philadelphia Flyers checking in at 210 pounds and had dropped his body fat percentage by 3 percent.

Martone then proceeded to help drive the Flyers into the playoffs with 10 points in nine NHL regular season games and then had an additional five in the postseason before Philadelphia was ousted by the overpowering Carolina Hurricanes.

Within the hockey world Martone’s year-over-year growth was one of the best commercials and recruiting pitches in a new world where CHLers are looking to the NCAA to either enhance or extend their careers.

It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that on Tuesday Ethan Belchetz, a 6-foot-5 power forward and presumptive top-10 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, committed to Michigan State and plans to leave the Windsor Spitfires to potentially follow a similar path to Martone.

If you ask Martone, as I did during the season, he gives a ton of credit to Will Morlock, Michigan State’s director of athletic performance for hockey. Morlock, who has worked at Michigan State since 2022, is well renowned within USA Hockey as well, serving as the strength and conditioning coach for multiple Under-20 and senior world championships in the past three years.

“That was a big part of his recruitment process, he wanted to be a great Spartan and part of a great team, but he really asked during the recruitment about how we could help prepare him for the NHL,” Morlock said. “He recognized and I was lucky to work with a staff that allowed me to do that job. The off ice was a huge part of our culture and that was a huge part that (Martone) was looking for, and he really valued … it’s an accessory to the on-ice, but it was still pretty untapped with (Martone). Playing in major junior you don’t get the same opportunity to train, more than any exercise that we did, it was just him leaning in and everything he could and being a sponge when it came to the training part.”

Morlock said Martone’s attention to detail behind the scenes, he called it an intense drive, was the reason they saw such physical maturation in such a short period of time.

“There was intent behind what he was doing,” Morlock said. “You can’t just go into the gym and assume you’ll get better, you’ve really got to do it with great intent. That was what I was most proud of, his training and workouts, they looked different from the start to the end of the season because he matured with it.”

When it comes to hockey training with Martone, and all players, Morlock said it’s important to work backwards from the ice.

“I’m smart enough to know there’s no jumping in the game of hockey. Sprinting on dry land doesn’t always translate to the game,” Morlock said. “So looking at everything through the lens of the gym can be misleading … it was a huge collaborative effort also talking to the staff in Philly, and looking how we could help him add to his body composition to become an NHL body.”

Morlock and Martone worked heavily on adding both strength and power to his game, in both straight line and lateral avenues. Morlock is also a big advocate that strength and power are related, but different. Strength is a measure of, well, how strong you are. Power is more of a measure of efficiency and proper usage of that strength.

The other key, Morlock said, is understanding that while college hockey’s schedule allows for more time to train, there’s also an understanding players won’t be at 100 percent every weekend if you commit to the plan.

“You can’t possibly peak every single Friday, so we try to make our money Monday to Thursday so we are better at the end of the first half of the season than we were at the beginning, and then better at the end of the second half than we were at the start of the second half,” Morlock said. “The goal becomes to grow through all those elements in the gym, so what might have been peaking in the first half of the season becomes a norm at the end of it in many ways.”

Within a weekly schedule, Morlock said Monday is more of a moderate day, while Tuesday is a big ramp-up day. Wednesday and Thursday have some build, but are designed more about enhancing Tuesday’s work.

“I use the phrasing sting, not destroy,” Morlock said. “I think it’s periods of more or less (work) depending on the schedule, but it’s always with the goal of further development and not maintenance. Because if you only try to maintain, that’s all you’ll be.”

Morlock said his first year of working with former CHL players didn’t come with too many surprises, he said from an off-ice perspective it’s similar to someone coming from the USHL, but it did give him some appreciation for where players have come from and what they’ve worked through.

He’s also a big advocate of the two systems working well together, the CHL and the NCAA, and how time spent in the OHL, WHL, or QMHL gives him a better picture of how and what a player needs to work on to add or accentuate their path to pro hockey.

“My job isn’t to change their game on the ice or anything like that, my job is to help them add the tools they need as we work backwards from that,” Morlock said. “I think when you look at it that way, and you get kids that want to work, like (Martone) you can kind of see the results, and it’s been really fun to see him take that to Philly.”

When it came to Detroit and an expansion team in the Professional Women's Hockey League it was always more of a question of when or how rather than if it would happen.

Over the past three seasons, Detroit has become a mainstay on the PWHL’s neutral site circuit, takeover tours, with four games at Little Caesars Arena hosting a combined 53,586 fans, including a then-American record crowd of 14,288 in 2025.

Those games helped lay the groundwork for further takeover tour games, and planted the seed for Detroit to get a full-time team, which officially came to fruition on Wednesday, with the team taking the ice this fall for the 2026-27 PWHL season.

Here’s what we know so far about the team itself:

• They will have black and silver as the primary colors, with red as an accent color, a nod to the Red Wings according to PWHL officials.

  

• A formal name, logo, and further branding are all in the works, and while a timeline wasn’t set, the PWHL Draft being in Detroit on June 16 is probably is a good indicator of when we might see more.

• Like all PWHL teams, they are owned by the league, while Ilitch Sports and Entertainment is going to be major partner.

• The PWHL team will have its own purpose-built locker rooms and space and be a full-time tenant at Little Caesars Arena. While I wasn’t given full plans on the construction, PWHL officials confirmed the team would be getting that space and build out.

• The PWHL is in the process of hiring hockey operations staff for PWHL Detroit, which makes sense to be in place before the draft.

• Speaking of the draft, the PWHL is still keeping plans for the draft under wraps, and this is going to be more of an entry-draft system than a full-blown expansion draft for Detroit and other potential expansion teams.

• The schedule is already condensed at Little Caesars Arena, but PWHL officials said the team will have a mix of both double-headers with the Detroit Red Wings and isolated days as the only event.

• Fans can already place season-ticket deposits for the team.

OK, from a personal perspective, I’m pretty excited about this for multiple reasons.

Firstly, I’ve intentionally bought tickets to each of the PWHL takeover tour games in Detroit over the past three seasons to support the idea of a team in Detroit. It’s been a blast taking my kids to those games, and it’s been one of the best connectors to hockey for my now 7-year-old daughter.

Secondly, as a reporter and storyteller, I’m excited bout being able to cover the league and team. I’m not sure what exactly that will look like on a daily basis in this space, but as someone who said three years ago I’d happily cover a PWHL team in Detroit, I’m going to stick to my word on that, and we’ve already got a small library of PWHL stories here at Shap Shots to build on.

And on that front, here are some other things I learned from Wednesday’s event that are connected, either directly or not, to the new team in Detroit.

• This was the first time we’ve seen Chris Ilitch speak publicly in a long time, and while he made some opening comments in a press conference, he was not made available for interviews.

• With all the talk of Detroit being HockeyTown, shouldn’t there be more actual hockey available in within Detroit city limits? As of today, the only available public rink within city limits is Clark Park, a seasonal outdoor rink. How does that sit with Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield?
  
  ”The Ilitches know that community and access and opportunity is deeply important to me, and so as the league comes here, I’m sure we’ll start talking about more opportunities for inner-city girls and youth have the ability to train and have have access,” Sheffield said. “Those are conversations I’m sure will be forthcoming, because I’m all about opportunity and access. But to have the league here in general, again, that signals the ability for young girls to get interested in hockey and to see themselves in that league. So I think that’s a good first step.”

• There’s a natural conversation that leads to the fact that now, with a PWHL team, Michigan still doesn’t have any Division I women’s college teams, despite being the state with the fourth-most girls players according to USA Hockey.
  
  Brendan Morrison, who coaches the 19-and-under Little Caesars Girls Team and has helped players go through recruiting, told me on Wednesday this new pro team should be a catalyst for some college programs.
  
  ”It is frustrating for the kids and parents, when they play here and they have no local options if they are an elite player,” Morrison said. “There’s a facility question and investment for a school, but I think hopefully this team (in the PWHL) and some success here will force some college decisions.”

• For Ally, the presenting sponsor for the Detroit team, the PWHL has been a financial positive and they view the investment in both the takeover tours and the future full-time team as a positive return on investment. The big thing for Ally, according to Bridget Sponsky, the executive director of brand marketing, has been a push into 50-50 sponsorship between men’s and women’s sports media buys.
  
  Sponsky said Ally’s brand values have gone up 40 percent since making the 50-50 pledge in 2022, and women’s sports fans trust Ally 27 percent more than the general consumer.

OK, that’s what I’ve got for today. We will have more on the PWHL and Detroit in the future at this space (and all the other stuff you’ve grown accustomed to), but now I’ve got to run home to do Episode 6 of Algorithmically Incorrect Hockey with my pal Robert Tiffin, which you can either stream here or on YouTube at 2:30 ET.

The Toronto Maple Leafs introduced John Chayka as their new general manager. At the introductory presser there was a semi-heated and awkward exchange between the Toronto Sun’s Steve Simmons and Maple Leafs president Keith Pelley.

Later that evening, the Barrie Colts won Game 7 of the OHL’s Eastern Conference Final and in their post-game press conference, featuring head coach Dylan Smoskowitz and captain Kashawn Aitcheson, every single question was answered with “no one cares, work harder.”

I have thoughts on both of these pressers, and maybe we’ll get into them a bit more, but first I want to talk about what the press conference was and what it’s become, especially in a time where I think media literacy on the subject is at an all-time low.

Press conferences, at their core, are about information. It’s a space where initial information is presented “hey we hired this person” or “this team won or lost,” and then media members have the opportunity to gather new information through a series of questions.

I’ve covered thousands of press conferences in my career, I’ll be at one tomorrow in Detroit for example, and most tend to follow this formula. Even the highly dramatized ones yesterday, at their core, followed this line of thinking with media members attempting to learn and digest new information, ideally to better share the overall story in writing or video later.

It’s supposed to be an exchange of information, potentially contentious at times, but in theory a proper press conference helps lay the groundwork for a better story.

That hasn’t been completely lost, but in many ways the press conference has become the more important product than the story. A sort of live theater where many of the participants, on both sides, care more about personal gain from often live-streamed event.

Let’s start from the media side, where in today’s “look at me,” culture, many people care more about having their voice heard than listening to the answer of their question.

The Simmons’ question yesterday is an ideal example of this, because while the core of the question wasn’t wrong “why did you hire this guy?” the delivery was steeped in proving that the reporter was just as important as anyone sitting at that table. On top of that, if you were going to go down that line of thinking — which again, at it’s core is completely fair — why wouldn’t you ask Chayka a similar version of the same question when he’s sitting right there?

There are less extreme examples of this in every presser. Reporters or media members doing their best to prove how smart they are in their questions, and sometimes entering these events with pre-scripted questions, with long soliloquies, that hopefully draw compliments on social media later.

It then becomes a bit self-fulfilling, where younger reporters and those trying to break into this field, feel that in order to establish their voice they must win the press conference. That asking questions that come with an eloquent delivery, or potential virality, are the measure of acceptance in this business.

Adding to that slippery slope many of the best questions in my mind, the so-called dumb questions, are the ones that get dunked on in social media by Twitter trolls.

I’m not here to give advice, but in my experience, I’ve been able to tell better stories because I was willing to be ignorant in interviews, and it’s why when I attend a presser I typically wait until the end to ask for the microphone because I prefer to ask follow-up questions about something I didn’t understand from before.

Let’s hop over to the other side of the microphone, to the coaches, executives, and athletes who have the information and are doing their best job to control the narrative one way or the other.

After Barrie Colts won Game 7, they wanted to present an image of a team that didn’t care about anyone else’s thoughts or feelings on the series, hence the string of “no one cares, work harder,” answers.

The streaming partner for the OHL, FloHockey, celebrated the presser on Instagram by calling it aura farming, and there were many others on social media that celebrated the approach as well.

The Barrie Colts got the reaction they wanted, and I would bet seeing others calling it aura farming on social media will only encourage them to take a similar approach in the future, especially when it was the head coach and captain driving the bus on this.

It’s an extreme case, but it’s a prime example of what the press conference has become and how it’s evolved from an information-gathering session to clip farming.

And while we are admittedly talking more about the Barrie Colts today because of that clip, the reality is that fame really muddles the entire story. Barrie was down 3-1 in that series, came back to win in Game 7, and instead of chatting about that aspect of this, the larger narrative is whether they are or aren’t assholes.

The same thing happened with Simmons and his question to Pelley. Because of the phrasing and approach, the larger narrative isn’t about whether Chayka is or isn’t the right hire in Toronto, but rather whether Simmons is a dick or not. His written story in the Sun becomes a minor footnote, which for some reason didn’t include the part of his question about how he polled 20 anonymous hockey people on the hire and only one was in support of hiring Chayka.

I’m not perfect, I’ve asked many overly-worded questions at press conferences. In fact, I’m sure you can go back to the Red Wings press conference from last week and find a question I botched. But I’m also fine with that and I’m fine with not being the smartest person in the room, and maybe that’s our long-lost thesis here. When everyone is trying to prove how smart or how self-important they are in these settings, we simply lose the actual stories worth telling.

The Minnesota Wild won Game 6 against the Dallas Stars 5-2 on Thursday night, ending the series and advancing to the second round against the Colorado Avalanche.

Here is the 20/20.

1. This is why Bill Guerin took the gamble.

Back in December, without any guarantee that Quinn Hughes would sign a long-term extension, the Wild general manager pulled the trigger on a deal for the franchise defenseman.

While other franchises balked at the deal without an extension in place, the Wild were willing to take the risk.

Four months later, the Wild are headed to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 2015, powered by two-goal performance by Hughes in Game 6.

2. On the opposite side the Stars, after three straight trips to the Western Conference Final, are headed home after Round 1.

It’s the harsh reality of the playoff format, these teams never should have met in the first round, but it’s even the harsher reality of Dallas’ inability to generate much of anything at even strength or adjust within the series.

The Wild were ready and adapted, the sat the Stars breakouts and disrupted them, the Stars never adjusted, and the eventual series-clinching goal came on a sequence after the Stars failed to breakout of their own zone.

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This is the 20/20.

1. Maybe Marcus Foligno was right.

If you’ll remember the aftermath of Game 2 of this series, the Wild forward said the Stars couldn’t hang with his team at 5-on-5.

And now the Stars are facing a must-win situation in Game 6 because they haven’t been able to generate nearly enough at even strength.

In Game 5, the Stars only mustered 16 shots at five-on-five, including a horrifically disappointing start to the third period, when they were trailing 2-1, without any shots in the first seven minutes of the final stanza.

2. That lack of even strength offense was so bad, that when Michael McCarron scored to make it 3-1, everyone in the building knew this game was over because there was no way the Stars would drag themselves back into this game at even strength.

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Maybe this is feeding the SEO machine, maybe it’s a public service. Either way, after texting with my pal Stephen Meserve today, I felt compelled to write a bit about Scott White, the Dallas Stars assistant GM, who has interviewed this spring for both the vacant GM position with the Nashville Predators and Toronto Maple Leafs.

I’ve known White since 2012, the first year I started covering the Stars organization, and closely covered his work with the Texas Stars, where as the AHL GM he’s built a minor-league franchise that both wins pretty regularly and develops NHL talent.

In fact, it’s always been one of the oddities for me that White’s name hasn’t come up more often when we’ve seen other GM vacancies. While he doesn’t run the draft, which seems to be a path many assistant GMs take to eventual head roles, he’s built an impressive résumé and been a vital part of the Stars success over the past decade.

In fact, Stars general manager Jim Nill has told me, multiple times, that White could easily be a GM in the NHL at some point in the not-too-distant future.

In simpler terms, White has been largely responsible for helping the Stars build the depth of their franchise. While Nill takes input from others, like most GMs he tends to work alone on the bigger deals — it’s hard to trade for Mikko Rantanen, for example, if you have too many cooks in the kitchen — while trusting White to build the franchise depth at the AHL level and below. White has been part of the group responsible for unearthing a bevy of college free agents, including Justin Hryckowian, who has turned into a pretty nice find in Dallas.

It’s not the most glamorous role and because the AHL is typically ignored by most media members until a player is called up, White’s work doesn’t get much of the attention it probably deserves outside of places like 100 Degree Hockey.

(Side note, and I am biased on this, but the hockey world would be so much better if we had 32 Stephen Meserves covering the 32 AHL franchises.)

The other thing about White, and it probably hurt any outside chatter about him, is the fact he doesn’t play the media game.

Now let me explain what the media game is.

Those who talk and share more with media, especially national media, tend to get more love in that space. It exists in every sport, and often it’s an unspoken agreement between a reporter and a subject. This can and often is symbiotic, one side gets scoops, the other side gets some protection and more favorable coverage when they need it.

The subject doesn’t have to ask for preferential treatment, but it tends to be implied, especially when those individuals might be popping up and looking for career advancement.

To give you a real-life example, I’ve had a coach before ask me to include their name on a list of potential candidates for a job before in a story. I didn’t do it, and it led to some awkwardness the next time I saw them in person.

White hasn’t played that media game. He and I have had a professional relationship, and he’s been very kind to me in person, but he doesn’t give scoops and he doesn’t leak information for favor. He is also fiercely dedicated to his job with the Dallas and Texas Stars, and his business-like approach can come off a bit intimidating at times.

To give you a real-life example, earlier in my career, this was either 2014 or 2015, I criticized Jamie Oleksiak on Twitter for a play late in a game that I thought Oleksiak quit on. White saw the Tweet, he said something to me after the game, a little bit heated after a Texas’ loss, and while I defended myself, I was terrified I’d burned a bridge with the GM of the AHL team I was covering.

The next day, it was a Sunday game in San Antonio, I went up to White on press row to see if I needed to mend any fences and he told me it was “water on the bridge,” and that we both have jobs to do.

And it wasn’t BS. There was some gained respect on both sides since I wasn’t afraid to defend myself, and showed up to approach him the next day. Even if there was some disagreement in how we viewed the game, there was a mutual respect for how we each did our jobs.

That business-like approach, in a role that doesn’t come with draft-day glamour, limited White’s appeal in the GM job market. Like it or not, the GM job has historically required some glitz attached to it, something that teams can sell as a marketing tool and while that’s not the only reason someone gets the job, it can be a tiebreaker or give a leg up in getting on the list.

White, on the flip side, has very much operated like his boss in Dallas, Jim Nill. He’s been heavily focused on his current role, doesn’t go looking for favors, and while he’s media friendly, he’s not someone who throws out information lightly. He can be a bit more intimidating than Nill, personality wise, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing and might even be a strength in a place like Toronto.

Personally speaking, I’m not sure whether he is or isn’t the right person for a GM job in Toronto or Nashville. But I can say, in my opinion, there’s not much more anyone could have done with his post in Dallas and Texas, and that with a bit more self promotion, his name probably would have come up a couple years earlier in these searches.

It’s been a decade and two days since the Detroit Red Wings last playoff game, a 1-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 5 of the first round of the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Seven of those playoff misses have come under Steve Yzerman’s leadership, creating what’s become an annual gathering each April of Detroit media members asking the general manager why and how this happened again.

On Thursday, with Red Wings head coach Todd McClellan sitting nearby taking notes, Yzerman was about as blunt as I’ve seen him during my now four years based in Detroit.

The Red Wings need to get better players, they need to take a deep look at everything, and while Yzerman plans to “see this out,” he didn’t rule anything out when it came to future bold decisions.

This naturally led to questions and discussions about Dylan Larkin, the Red Wings captain and only holdover from the Red Wings last playoff game. When it comes to Larkin, two things stick out in my mind.

1. It’s hard to be a playoff leader if you’ve never really been there.

2. The Red Wings aren’t good enough down the middle of the ice to support him.

Let’s start with first point, because it’s been on my mind since Larkin, in his media session last week, noted that he didn’t really have that experience to pass onto younger players. Larkin’s top two lieutenants, Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider, have also never played an NHL postseason game.

When other teams, many of them in the postseason right now, have hit skids or slumps in the regular season they tend to elevate themselves in response. As McClellan said the league elevates itself in the final quarter of the regular season and the Red Wings didn’t.

This is where good teams lean on their leaders, the sherpas that have been to the playoffs before and understand what it takes to even get to Game 1 of the knockout tournament.

But it’s hard to be a sherpa to the playoff mountain, in Larkin’s case, if you’ve never even really reached basecamp before.

Right or wrong, the Red Wings put themselves in this position over the past five seasons. Yzerman has put such a priority on being a Stanley Cup contender, that past teams weren’t worth investing in at the deadline because even if they had made the playoffs they wouldn’t have been a threat.

I’m not sure how you reverse that, and I’m not sure how easy it is to replicate what the Buffalo Sabres did, especially when you consider the Sabres have consistently gotten 70-plus goals from their top two centers over the past four seasons, including 77 this season between Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch.

Larkin scored 34 goals this season, the next highest scoring center was Emmitt Finnie with 13 goals.

As much as teams love the “two-way” game comments or praise defensive awareness, the reality is you need to have offensive pop down the middle of the ice to actually win games in April and beyond.

Andrew Copp isn’t the answer, neither is JT Compher and as much as I like Marco Kasper’s potential, it certainly doesn’t seem like a safe bet that he could fill that role next season.

So what do you do if you’re Yzerman and the Red Wings? Can you upgrade that position, realistically, for the 2026-27 season?

Not without something bold or unexpected.

For Red Wings ownership, the Ilitch family, there’s frustration but it hasn’t boiled over to the level it has for fans. The Ilitches still trust the Yzerplan will deliver, and you can probably say Yzerman won the press conference with his bosses on Thursday by willing to admit some of his shortcomings.

And, I guess, we sit and wait for the bold move and the proof behind those statements. We wait for any evidence that they’ve actually taken a deeper look under the surface and whether there can be meaningful changes that alter the culture of a team that has become synonymous with March sadness.

The Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild went to overtime for the first time in Game 3, with the Stars taking a 2-1 series lead after Wyatt Johnston scored in double overtime for a 4-3 victory.

Here is the 20/20, if you are reading this in the immediate aftermath, please know I plan to read through and edit again in the morning with fresh eyes.

1. This one feels pretty big in the momentum category.

After opening the series with a dud back in Game 1, and then struggling a bit at 5-on-5 in both Games 2 and 3, the Stars are back in control of the series with a 2-1 lead and a chance to really take control in Game 4.

2. For Minnesota, it’s hard not to look at the pure number of penalties taken in a game where the Stars had eight power plays.

The Wild have also had multiple penalties this series, including the fatal one early Thursday morning, where they’ve heaved the puck over the glass for delay-of-game infractions.

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Unlike most pieces at this site, this aimed toward more of an NBA audience.

Now I don’t really watch the NBA, I do tune in for the NBA Finals each season, but being a hockey writer the head-to-head schedules have made it close to impossible for me to pay much attention.

So, when I saw the multitude of headlines about the Portland Trailblazers and their new owner, Tom Dundon, and the shock about his cost-cutting tactics including not sending their team reporter, photographer, and two-way players on the road for the playoffs, I was kind of surprised, frankly, at the surprise.

Maybe I’m nose blind to it or it’s my naivety, but as someone who’s covered the NHL, this was simply others realizing who and what Dundon is and it tends to mirror what’s happened with the Carolina Hurricanes, a team he’s owned since 2018.

Dundon is blunt, doesn’t care what you think about him, and doesn’t like spending money on things that don’t really impact the product on the ice (or now the court). In Carolina, John Forslund had been the voice of hockey since it moved there from Hartford, once Dundon took over he eventually left for Seattle, despite his family living in Raleigh for while after the move, because the Hurricanes wanted to turn him from a full-time employee into an independent contract with salary based on team attendance.

The Hurricanes also have reportedly paid their off-ice staff less than others and at NHL events I’ve been to, like the NHL Draft, it’s become a running joke that Hurricanes scouts are often — not always — in the most cost-efficient hotel compared to their peers from other teams. The Hurricanes also had an awkward one-year divorce from their AHL affiliate, the Chicago Wolves, largely over cost distributions, a situation that only developed after they had a prior cost-related dispute with their former AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, that is actually in their home state.

From a coaching perspective, multiple sources have told me that coaches in Carolina make anywhere from 10 to 20 percent below market rate, and that was only made public when Rod Brind’Amour’s contract details became slightly more public in his push for a larger deal to remain the head coach and then signed an extension in 2024.

I’ve also spoken to Dundon directly multiple times, he doesn’t hide from the media in my experiences and doesn’t have any qualms with being blunt. He told me directly that if he had his way, he’d put more jersey advertisements on the Hurricanes sweater, almost NASCAR-esque, and that from a revenue-driving perspective he had several ideas that would upset typical NHL status quo.

Now, players are largely protected from this, I’ve spoken to many Hurricanes players over the years and the cost-cutting rarely impacts them. They are paid well, the Hurricanes spend to the salary cap, and Dundon is willing to put the money into the 20 individuals that will wear the jersey that evening. But the surrounding stuff, like broadcasts or team photographers (in the Trailblazers case), can often be down just as well, business-wise, by independent contractors or someone willing to work for less.

That’s one of the worst-kept secrets about the sports industry, it creates millionaires and billionaires, but unless you have keys to the owners suite or are one of the players, it’s not too hard to find someone that can do your job for cheaper, especially if production on the playing surface isn’t going to matter.

Look at the Trailblazers’ recent decisions, while it’s pretty nasty of them not to bring the players on two-way contracts like every other NBA team, it’s also not really going to impact whether they win or lose their series with the Spurs. And while how two-way players were treated will be remembered by some players, the reality is most NHL and NBA deals are typically decided by money and term, not how players were treated at the minor-league/tweener levels.

The other thing that I can’t help but bring up and I think hasn’t been brought up enough in the Dundon/Trailblazers coverage is the fact that the Hurricanes are extremely lucky that Brind’Amour loves the Hurricanes. Brind’Amour worked below his market rate and still works below his market, he’s one of the best coaches in the NHL on a year-over-year basis, has built a culture, and isn’t paid like a Todd McClellan or Pete DeBoer.

When I read stories about the Trailblazers and I read the passing line that Dundon has built a winning organization in Carolina I have to scoff at it, because it’s missing the vital context that Brind’Amour really built that culture and was willing to do so at a pay scale that hasn’t always reflected his true value.

I don’t know the NBA well enough, but are the Trailblazers going to find their version of Rob Brind’Amour? I have a hard time believing that’s even possible.

Most of what I’ve written here is pretty public knowledge in NHL circles. Dundon is different and isn’t shy about it, and what he’s doing in Portland isn’t any different than what he’s done in Raleigh with the Hurricanes.

The NBA, I can only imagine, had to know this about Dundon when he purchased the team. Gary Bettman still has many close ties to the NBA and I would be stunned if NBA executives didn’t at least check in with Bettman and other NHL brass about what type of person they’d be inviting to the owner’s meetings.

Whether you think Dundon is right or wrong isn’t really the point.

The point is that none of this is new. And if the NBA is surprised, it didn’t do enough homework.

Here is the 20/20.

1. Now it’s a series, right?

While we often talk about it not being a series until someone wins on the road, when it comes to a Dallas Stars’ playoff series it’s not really a series until after they’ve lost Game 1 and recovered in Game 2.

2. Jake Oettinger took some heat for Game 1, which I think wasn’t particularly fair to the goalie after the team in front of him laid a massive egg.

But his fault or not, the Stars goalie responded really well in Game 2 with 28 saves on 30 shots.

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We had a 20/20 ready to publish on Sunday morning, but it never went out and I’ve since figured out what happened. Because it doesn’t make much sense to publish a Game 1 piece on the morning of Game 2, it’ll live in exile and we move on.

Anyways, there will be a 20/20 late tonight after Game 2 Stars-Wild, the one benefit of a ridiculous 9:50 ET (8:50 locally!) start for me is that I'll be able to return home from my beer league game, fast forward through intermissions and catch up pretty close to live in the third period.

But before we get to tonight’s game, I want to chat a bit about something that’s been on my mind after watching the opening weekend of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

ESPN’s coverage has been struggling.

I’m usually pretty careful when it comes to media criticism, and that’s intentional because I know the job isn’t as easy as it looks, and there are lots of times some of the decisions and repercussions that fall on behind-the-scenes decision makers that won’t have to answer for it.

But ESPN, now five years into a seven-year deal as the NHL’s A-package rights’ holder (Turner has the B package), has struggled to deliver a product that connects with either established hockey fans or new, equally important, viewers that only jump on during the playoffs.

Even worse, for me, it takes me out of the game.

I think that’s why I’m writing this. While there are other broadcast quips or complaints I’ve had or heard before, those are usually stylistic ones. The ESPN problem, however, isn’t stylistic unless you count being unprepared as an intentional style.

After the first Sabres playoff game in 14 years Tage Thompson was interviewed by Leah Hextall and asked about winning a playoff game with the only NHL franchise he’s ever known. A sweet sentiment, but a false one since Thompson was rather famously a first-round pick of the St. Louis Blues and played NHL games there before being traded to the Sabres.

On the intermission Mark Messier, PK Subban, and Steve Levy joked about how they were unable to say the name of Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. I know Messier and Subban got most of the heat on social media for this, but I was actually more disappointed with Levy, a pretty good play-by-play caller in his own right, for allowing the broadcast to look that disheveled.

Finding the player pronunciations isn’t difficult, in fact on the NHL Media site they have a guide, which I’m just going to embed right here for anyone else to look at.

The league also has the audio guide for all the names as well, and here is link to the audio guide for the Sabres.

We also are talking about the starting goalie for the Sabres, someone you know will come up in the broadcast discussion, this isn’t a fourth-liner that scored a big goal and surprisingly joined the spotlight.

It looks even worse when ESPN frequently gets outperformed by Turner’s broadcast. While there are some elements of the TNT broadcast I don’t particularly love, they’ve done a good job finding a way to connect with both new fans and those that have been dialed into the NHL all season. I think Liam McHugh deserves a ton of credit for this and while there are som bigger personalities on the panel, his work as host really allows TNT to both be fun and professional at the same time.

When a game is on TNT, I’ll still watch it on American television. When a game is on ESPN, I tend to switch over to the Canadian broadcast, or for the first-round, one of the local ones.

The most frustrating part of this is that this is Year 5 of the broadcast rights for ESPN, it hasn’t improved, and actively detracts from my viewership of the game. I’m going to watch either way, but what about the people that won’t?

Happy Playoff season!

As we prepare for Game 1 of the NHL playoffs, particularly the series between the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild, it’s time to get together with my pal Bob Sturm to break it all down.

Here is the schedule:

And with that, let’s get into it.

Bob: Let’s get going with this collision course that has seemed in the cards since about Thanksgiving. The Stars and the Wild and the storylines that were our destiny since the Olympic teams were named, the big Vancouver trade went down, and maybe since Jake Middleton lined up Matt Duchene back in October. We finally made it here, Sean. We can finally play hockey in what should be a two-week adrenaline buffet.

You ready for this and all that it will decide?

Sean: Absolutely Bob.

We’ve had a feeling for months that it would be Stars-Wild in Round 1, courtesy of the Colorado Avalanche’s ridiculous start to the season where they ran away from the pack in the Central Division for a while. So much so that it’s felt like an old-school prize fight to me, two opponents that are tuning up and know that in the end, how they do in the ring on that one day (or series) will determine it all.

These teams know each other so well, from both this season and past playoff battles. As much as I hate that this is Round 1 and neither of these teams should be eliminated after four to seven games, I’m so excited for the hockey perspective of this series.

Bob: Ok, I think the best place to start is the state of the Stars. They have been so good over these years, but I do think that health concerns are becoming tiresome. The team can never get this right in the spring with everyone healthy. I would not say they are injury prone at all, but they are such a different team with everyone assembled – even if it sometimes doesn’t stay assembled for any long period of time, it seems. What do you know about the state of each team’s health and I suppose in particular, that means how is Roope and Miro for Dallas? Are we going to see the full compliment for most of this series, as far as anyone could predict?

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