The Hockey News Rookie Issue 2021

THERE WAS A TWEET thread recently about a young man who said he was fired because his employer and one of its clients discovered he’d worked on Donald Trump’s campaign. The client, it was alleged, threatened to take its business elsewhere if the employee wasn’t severed. The client, the thread said, was the Carolina Hurricanes. Twitter users opined as to whether the company and the Hurricanes did the right thing. In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot in Washington, the majority applauded the move. A handful denounced it as cancel culture. And a few questioned the veracity of the story itself. Notably missing was a response from either the company or the hockey club. It is Journalism 101: confirm or deny? Yet so many juiced tweeters promptly joined the fray. Opinions…

ON JAN. 27, 2018, I took over as owner and publisher of The Hockey News and this Jan. 27 I marked my third anniversary in those roles. That day came and went without any Zoom party or birthday cake due to coronavirus, however it did come with the greatest present possible: this issue. Issue 7112 came out days after I took over control and I had no input into the content of that edition. The editorial team produced it within the business parameters of the former owners. The budget called for 52 pages, the theme was Trade Deadline and the focus was virtually all NHL. Although The Hockey News had traditionally covered stories on players from all backgrounds, this particular edition had one page on a player of color (Evander Kane)…

HEY, PEOPLE CAN CHANGE. So can conditions and circumstances. If you haven’t come to that realization the past little while, you really haven’t been paying attention very closely. And if you need a prime example of how people can come around, look no further than the statements NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has made over the years when it comes to the prospect of placing advertising on NHL sweaters. In 2015, the league struck a seven-year sweater deal with Adidas worth $35 million a season, beating out Under Armour and Bauer two years before its deal with Reebok was to expire. “The fact of the matter is, and I’ve been fairly vocal on this, we are not currently considering putting advertising on NHL jerseys,” said Bettman at the time. “We’ve had no…

GREEN BAY GAMBLERS | 2020-21 IT HAS BEEN MORE than a decade since the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers rocked their ‘Cowboy’ logo, but the throwback version of the jersey that the junior team has worn this season is a winner. The cowboy, complete with playing cards, adorned the team’s sweater for years, but in more recent times he was replaced by a bobcat mascot. In keeping with the gambling theme, the bobcat has an ace up its sleeve (or, more accurately, its hockey glove) and that logo still rests on the shoulders of the throwback jersey. But the cowboy takes center stage on Green Bay’s white, gold and black color scheme – bringing retro and modern together.…

CONNOR HELLEBUYCK claimed his first Vezina Trophy last season, and the Winnipeg Jets goalie even made a run at the Hart, ultimately ending up sixth in the voting for NHL MVP. Andrei Vasilevskiy, meanwhile, claimed his first Stanley Cup last season – a year after winning the Vezina for the first time – as he led the Tampa Bay Lightning to the promised land in the playoff bubble. It might come as a bit of a surprise, then, to see neither Hellebuyck’s Jets nor Vasilevskiy’s Lightning atop the league rankings for NHL goalie platoons. It’s partly due to the razor-thin margin that separates the league’s top tier of netminders, but there’s also the backup factor – the No. 2 goalies in Winnipeg and Tampa Bay are relatively underwhelming, while Montreal’s Carey…

MARGARET CUNNIFF readily admits she never expected to be working in the NHL. “It’s not an area where I thought there would be space for someone like me,” said Cunniff, a doctor of neuroscience, who was hired by the Carolina Hurricanes in 2019. “It’s not something that I had on my radar.” When she enrolled at the University of California at San Francisco, Cunniff figured she would pursue a career in academia and become a professor. During her six-and-a-half years on campus, though, she casually kept tabs on the growth of analytics in the NHL through social media. Among those she followed on Twitter was Hurricanes vice-president of hockey management and strategy, Eric Tulsky. Tulsky joined Carolina in 2015 and laid the foundation for the team’s analytics department. Four years later, he…