The Hockey News Future Watch 2022

IT WASN’T THAT LONG ago, a winter road trip to California was anything but sun and fun for visiting NHL teams. From 2009-10 through 2017-18, the Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks were three of the top five teams in the Western Conference and among the league’s top nine teams overall. They combined for 1,163 wins and just 705 regulation-time losses in that nine-season span. The Kings won two Cups, the Sharks lost in the final one year, and the Ducks topped 100 points five straight seasons. Then the predictable happened. Rosters studded with stars aged out. Coaches got fired. Depleted and neglected development systems couldn’t keep up with the fast-closing windows of the California contenders. Anaheim and Los Angeles missed the playoffs in 2019. The next year,…

WHEN I MOVED TO Los Angeles in 1989 from Montreal, the very first thing I noticed was the way people introduced one another. I’d be at a party, and someone would come up and say, “Hi, I’m Bill, and I am a producer.” He would then introduce his entourage of “John, the actor; Peter, the agent; and Amanda, the attorney.” When they would ask my name, I’d say “Graeme,” which raised the follow-up question: “what do you do, Graeme?” At the time, I was working for a Wall Street firm, so that was it. From that point on, I was Graeme, the Wall Street guy, in many of these circles. I thought, “What happened to just being Graeme?” Over the years, the name has stayed consistent, but the title morphed based…

THE WORDS WEREN’T EVEN out of his inquisitor’s mouth before Mason McTavish offered an emphatic and unambiguous reply. So there is no point in putting the Anaheim Ducks prospect down as undecided. Q: “The World Junior Championship this summer doesn’t exactly come at an opportune time. With that in mind, would you be inclined to…” A: “Yeah, I’m 100 percent playing in that. Well, if they want me and everything goes well, I’m 100 percent in that. That’s one of my dreams, to play in and win a World Junior Championship. It’s the best hockey you’re going to be getting in August. There’s no summer skate that’s going to match that hockey. Hopefully, I get the chance to go and Anaheim allows that, but I’m 100 percent hoping to go there.” When we…

IT’S BEEN AN ODD year for hockey cards. Due to production delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, some cards from the 2020-21 season are still coming out in 2021-22. Such is the case with Upper Deck’s 2020-21 AHL trading cards. The 250-card set showcases young stars as well as “lifers” who have made names for themselves playing in the ‘A.’ Some of the prospects in this set who have since moved up to the NHL include Cole Caufield, Jeremy Swayman and Trevor Zegras. A box of 2020-21 Upper Deck AHL contains a dozen 10-card packs and guarantees six “Star Rookie” cards, an autographed card and a serial-numbered parallel card.…

THE RESCHEDULED 2022 WORLD Junior Championship is set to take place in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alta., in the middle of August after the event had to be cancelled in December due to COVID-19 issues. The new tournament, which will ignore the results from December, could, in theory, consist of the same rosters regardless of whether the players turned 20 before Version 2 of the tournament. So while we could see the top five picks from the 2021 NHL draft – Owen Power (first overall), Mason McTavish (third) and Kent Johnson (fifth) for Canada and Matty Beniers (second) and Luke Hughes (fourth) for the U.S. – it’s unlikely their NHL teams will make them available (see pg. 10). Though fans, scouts and players didn’t get much value from the first attempt…

MANY KIDS AROUND THE world learn to skate at a young age and grow up dreaming of one day playing in the NHL. And in my home country of Canada, since hockey can be said to be the national sport, kids are pretty much born with skates on their feet. We play hockey anywhere we can and watch as many games as we can whenever possible. Eventually, skating on the pond or backyard rink turns into playing organized youth hockey, which is awesome because there’s no pressure. This is the time you develop your abilities, learn about the game and see if it’s something you’re good at. If you are exceptional and want to play competitively, many youngsters move on to junior hockey. For every player who reaches that level, the main…