The Hockey News Free Agency Preview 2019

ON-ICE OFFICIALS IN THE NHL have been abused since King Clancy was a prince. In a 1927 game, Boston’s Billy Coutu punched one referee and tackled another. Detroit coach Jack Adams ambushed an official in 1942. Rocket Richard had a riot named after him when he clocked a linesman in 1955. Tom Lysiak infamously tripped an official in 1983, Jeremy Roenick threw a water bottle at one in 2004 and Dennis Wideman floored another in 2016. There are enough examples of zebra bashing to fill a Billy Joel history song. The verbal anti-ref fire has been burning just as long, most notably in the playoffs, when our care level is acute. The past few springs, the haters have been particularly biting, creating a kind of climate change in which the people…

Dear readers, I’ve always loved being on a team, and one of the greatest outcomes of owning The Hockey News is that I joined a team of the greatest sports journalists in the world, bar none. But teams come from all corners of life, and winning on the ice, in the newsroom, at work or in life and death circumstances all have traits in common. Growing up in Montreal during the Canadiens dynasty years, I saw what great teams were made of. Skill, strength, confidence and vision for the path to winning. Dryden, Savard, Richard, Lafleur, Beliveau and many more had the Canadiens’ winning team magic. Other teams learned from this winning formula, like the Oilers with the greatest of all-time, Gretzky, surrounded by Kurri, Anderson, Coffey, Messier and others who had…

Blackhawks. First off-season with cap space in years, GM on hot seat, new coach with new system that not all on current roster are suited for, blueline in shambles, and organizational desire to make one more run with the championship core. Throw in No. 3 pick and a surplus of defensive prospects to use as assets, and it’s going to be a wild ride. – Chad Campbell Vancouver. Because they have enough core pieces now to start moving forward with higher-end UFAs (i.e. Skinner/Myers) and they will trade away (or bury) all of their mediocre middle players, PLUS they will trade Virtanen and/or Demko for a scoring-depth forward (like Kapanen). – @Putsky88 Blue Jackets. Not because they want to but because the likely departures of Panarin and Bobrovsky leave two gaping holes…

KIDS RULE, VETERANS DROOL. Well, not quite, but eight of the NHL’s top 50 scorers in 2018-19 played on entry-level contracts. Among that group, seven were third-year players set to become restricted free agents this summer. Auston Matthews and Jake Guentzel inked their contract extensions in-season, but five of the league’s top young point-getters – Mitch Marner, Brayden Point, Mikko Rantanen, Sebastian Aho and Matthew Tkachuk – are headed toward the off-season as unsigned RFAs. And that quintet barely scratches the surface of the RFA board for 2019, which also includes snipers Patrik Laine and Kyle Connor, defensemen Jacob Trouba and Charlie McAvoy and goalie Jordan Binnington. The incredible RFA class has led some prognosticators to unofficially declare 2019 as The Summer of the Offer Sheet. The qualifying-offer window closes June…

DON’T LET THE BRIGHTLY colored, fuzzy giant fool you into thinking that this monstrosity is Gritty. The Montreal Canadiens’ mascot, Youppi!, is the original orange beast. As the Habs’ official mascot since September 2005, Youppi! is also the first mascot to switch from one major pro sports league to another. This furball was the highlight at Olympic Stadium from 1979 to 2004 for the MLB’s Montreal Expos. Should he be acting like he does as a 40-year-old? To each his own. Like Gritty, however, Youppi! is no stranger to hair-raising moments. On Aug. 23, 1989, he became the first mascot ejected from an MLB game after wreaking havoc on top of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ dugout. Youppi!’s tenure as a mascot with the Habs has featured countless trips to the Montreal…

THEY ARE NOT THE first of their name, but the Maine Mariners have already carved out a great sartorial niche for themselves. The first Mariners played in the IHL and AHL from 1977 to 1992 and had a pretty solid logo, but this new ECHL squad takes things to the next level with their own color scheme and a detailed logo with some fun Easter eggs inside. There is a lighthouse shaded in the ‘M’ and a pine tree as the central prong of the trident, both a nod to the state of Maine. The trident also looks like an ‘E,’ with ‘ME’ being the abbreviation for Maine. Within the trident is also a Dirigo star, “Dirigo” being the state’s Latin motto (“I lead”).…