Mailbag: rink coffee, U18s, and Stars-Avs thoughts

You had questions, I did my best to answer.

Good morning and happy Friday.

As noted in the chat, I’m more coffee than person right now. I’ve already covered parts of 13 hockey games this week and when I wasn’t covering those games at the Under-18 World Championships, I was spending time watching more hockey on TV.

But it’s also the best time of year and I love it.

So, I figured it was a perfect time to drop a mailbag on a Friday.

Let’s get into it.

Coffee in Allen vs. Coffee in Frisco comparison (From Robert Tiffin)

Well, because of me (or at least that’s what I’m going with) we have coffee in both locations — amongst the daily media contingent for this tournament, I obviously know more people working the rink so I know who to ask that can actually get things done.

The coffee itself is rink coffee, no better no worse. And I love rink coffee in it’s simplicity, it’s hot and slightly warms your soul despite not being something you’d probably want to spend money on at a fancy coffee shop.

I will have to give the slight edge to the Allen coffee right now, simply because they have provided coffee sleeves and we don’t have to waste a second cup sometimes when it is particularly piping hot.

Not particularly playoff related, but curious nonetheless. Nils Lundkvist has been in some pictures recently. When a player gets a season ending injury to they stay around the team for the months it takes to get better? Or go home and heal? (From DN-TX)

It depends on some varying factors.

How bad is the injury? Where is the treatment being done? Is the player under contract for next season? Does the player have a family?

In Lundkvist’s case, for example, he was going through his recovering in Frisco and healing around the team. That’s a choice that best fit his situation.

For others, often with trickier/less-common injuries, it’s easier on the recovering player to not be around the team and feel the pressure to return.

Again it’s not a defined line, it really depends on all the circumstances.

Since you're in town working for EP, I'll pitch a somewhat relevant question to the test at hand. Hockey has become so silly with the amount of money parents are paying for their kids to play in the most elite programs. Do you think USA Hockey is doing their part to uncover every stone and find the most talented kids that may not be in the most financial advantageous situations? (From Ronnie Hughes)

No.

Youth sports, sadly, are more about business than uncovering every stone and developing all potential talent. I believe this applies to all youth sports, but can only speak from a level of expertise on hockey.

Hockey is very expensive, it’s a pay-to-play sport, and you have to be in a certain economic demographic for it to be even feasible. It’s also a sport where it’s hard to start later in life because of the skating, so there aren’t examples in hockey of finding the late-blooming 16-year-old who only started playing the game then.

This puts the “stone turning” requirement younger and younger, kid under 10-years-old, where that if someone is going to ever be a “top talent” they’ll need to have close to a decade of skating experience.

USA Hockey isn’t equipped to handle this and I don’t know if it wants to be. When it comes to “Try hockey for free” programs, consider how it’s a nice free one-off, but as soon as a kid shows extended interest, the cost immediately skyrockets.

I wish I could answer this another way, because I love this sport and my kids are starting to play it, but it’s run in a way where the barrier to entry only seems to get higher, not lower, as youth sports become more and more of a business.

Would love your takeaways from the first few days of IIHF. What do you look for/watch? Do you pick a few individuals or just hone on specifics as the game progresses? (From A. Chepey)

It’s been a fun first few days, even if Thursday’s game were rough to watch with some huge blowouts — I left the USA-Switzerland game at the end of the second period yesterday when it was 9-0.

For me and my work at Elite Prospects, I’m here as more of a feature writer/networker/cross-over scout. We have been watching and building out database on this draft class for more than a year now, and this tournament is about fine-tuning and finding late information on 2007-born players for our draft guide.

There are no real surprises at this tournament for us when it comes to the 2026 draft, but there are players that can move up or down our board, and NHL teams are doing the same thing.

For example, we had a lengthy chat last night about one player on Team USA about whether they should really be in the 25 to 30 range on our draft board or the 30 to 40 range.

I’m also watching goalies closely, because I’m responsible for that part of the draft guide more than anyone else, and when it comes to individual players we are looking for “translatable skills.”

Is a player successful at this age because of their size or skill or because of their hockey sense? Can those skills grow or are they kind of tapped as growth areas? It’s an inexact but fascinating science that I’ve learned a ton more about working with EP the past two years.

what players at u18 have impressed you the most that were not high on the prospects radars going in. (From Daniel Griffith)

As noted before, not a ton of surprises/new viewings, but I do start to keep an eye on 16-year-old players in this tournament for the 2026 NHL Draft.

Jonah Neuenschwander, a 16-year-old from Switzerland, made an impression on me even though his team has been cratered and outscored 20-3 in two games so far.

From a goalie perspective, I’ve found more flaws than I want to early in my tournament viewing, but I’m also not going to publicly roast those individuals because these are teenagers.

I'm not trying to mention the unmentionable, but the Stars have kept Cale Makar rather quiet and unnoticeable most the series. Is there anything in particular the Stars are doing to limit his impact? (From Timothy Schmidt)

It’s been a weird series for Cale Makar so far.

He has 10 shots on goal in three games on 30 shot attempts. In Game 1 he had 10 attempts and just one shot through. In Game 3 he had 11 attempts and just three got through.

To me this is the crux of Colorado’s “problem” right now being down 2-1 in the series. Makar has been himself in other facets of the game, creating space on the rush and manipulating space for others, but for whatever reason he’s been missing the net and shooting into bodies more than he typically does.

Makar was more of himself in Game 2, he had six shots on nine attempts, and I think Colorado’s question for Game 4 is how do they bring back some of that normalcy with their top defender.

Because I don’t think it’s what the Stars are doing, I think the Stars are willing to accept that Makar is going to play his game and so far he simply hasn’t had the aim-finder working as a shooter.

Last playoffs, Heiskanen outcomes and outplayed Makar in their series. The Stars journey this yr is one Hell of a gauntlet. I looked up who the last team was to make it to 3 consecutive Conference Finals. It goes all the way back to the 80s Islanders Dynasty. Now? IMO, even more physically and mentally challenging with more competition. Will be in teresting to see if FL makes it and the Stars. The Oil are getting hammered so far.... (From Steve Crump)

The Tampa Bay Lightning reached three straight conference finals on their three-straight trips to the Stanley Cup Final between 2020, 2021, and 2022.

But I understand your point about the grind of the NHL playoffs and what it does to a team. Players have less time to recover, the body enters the next season slightly less than 100 percent, and then that start to show it’s impact later in the season.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve been so impressed with Florida in their series against the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Panthers have had some lung seasons the past two years, and that group — even with the Barkov injury last night — seems to be handling it better than most.