Welcome back to The Contrarian, one of the most beloved and popular features that I write. Unless it isn’t.
The concept here is simple. Readers send me statements about the NHL that they believe to be obviously true, bordering on the inarguable. Then I argue against those statements anyway and see if I can convince you to start thinking the unthinkable.
Do I actually believe any of this? Maybe, but that’s not the point. The point is I’m a sportswriter, and if I’m going to have any success in this media world, I need to master the art of making ridiculous contrarian arguments that make just enough sense to be infuriating.
Previous editions of The Contrarian have seen me make the case that Mark Messier was a great Canuck, Ray Bourque’s long-awaited championship was bad and Brett Hull’s skate-in-crease goal was actually fine. Today, we’ve got a new batch of reader statements that can’t be argued. Spoiler alert: All of them will be.
Note: Submissions have been edited for clarity and style.
The picture of flying Bobby Orr is the greatest photograph in sports history. — Prescott A.
On the contrary, Prescott, you knucklehead. Unless you meant to type “most overrated photo in sports history,” in which case we agree.
The Orr photo is nice enough, I guess. It at least captures an interesting moment, as a legendary player goes nearly parallel to the ice surface. That’s neat, sure. But it’s not like “hockey player falls down” is exactly a rare event that needed to be enshrined on film and drooled over for 50-plus years. Especially when you remember the details.
For example, why is Orr flying through the air in the first place? Because he was tripped. By Noel Picard of the Blues, to be specific, who decided to give Orr a little post-goal oopsie-doodle in what was, let’s be honest, a bit of sore loser shenanigans. Again, kind of a weird thing to decide we need to memorialize forever.
You may have noticed the keyword in that last paragraph: post-goal. No, Orr didn’t score the Cup-winning goal while flying through the air. That would have been undeniably cool, and it sure seems to be what the NHL wants us to believe happened. You’ll often see the play referred to as being Orr’s “flying goal,” but it was no such thing. Go ahead and watch for yourself — it’s a basic give-and-go play, even kind of a weak goal. And Orr has both feet firmly on the ice when he scores it.
OK, you might say, maybe the goal itself was overrated, but it was a Cup-winner, and it came in overtime. Surely that has to count for something, right? I guess. Congratulations to the Bruins on sweeping an expansion team. That’s right, a sweep. Orr’s clutch moment came in a series his team was already leading 3-0. Everyone already knew the Bruins would win easily, just like they would when the same two teams met for a rematch two years later and Boston swept again. Orr’s goal didn’t win anything that hadn’t already been all but locked up. All he did was save everyone an extra flight.
In other words, the so-called greatest photo in hockey history is just an image of the aftermath of a weak goal against a bad team to win a lopsided series against a recent expansion team. It was basically the black-and-white version of Uwe Krupp. The circumstances are so boring that we’ve all gone ahead and retconned some fake circumstances around it, just to make the moment seem worthy of a mediocre photo.
Hockey lends itself to some amazing photos, like the other 99 ones here, or any of these, or this all-time beauty. Orr flying through the air isn’t one of them, and never has been.
Digital ad boards are bad. — Chase S.
On the contrary, Chase, you ninny. The NHL’s digital ad boards are a clever use of technology that increase revenue.
Are they perfect? No, and we all agree that the animations sometimes get a little too aggressive; the occasional player-eating glitch is obviously bad. But those problems are infrequent these days, as the league has worked hard to find a better balance than what they launched with. These days, with exceedingly rare exceptions, everything works smoothly, and the only people still complaining are people who just like to complain.
Look, I’m old enough to remember a time when there were no ads on the boards at all, or the ice, or the uniforms. But those days are gone, and you can’t blame the NHL for figuring out a way to squeeze some extra advertising revenue. Yes, it means you won’t get to see ads for some local brake-repair shop you’ve never heard of when you watch your team play a road game. But that extra revenue trickles into a higher salary cap, which means more player movement and (hopefully) less chance of a lockout. If that means I have to see an overly aggressive animation happen at exactly the wrong time and feel confused for a fraction of a second once or twice a season, well, I think we should all be happy with that trade off.
The whole “playoff on Thanksgiving” thing is a myth, and at least one team that was out of the playoffs yesterday will end up making it. — Nate M.
On the contrary, Nate, you ignoramus. While the conventional Thanksgiving wisdom — that teams that are outside a playoff spot on the U.S. holiday won’t be able to claw their way back into the race — isn’t some sort of infallible rule, it will be this year.
That’s for two reasons. First, U.S. Thanksgiving is late this year, meaning we’re a few games further into the season and there’s less runway ahead for teams that need to battle back. But more importantly, the current 16 teams on the outside are the right ones. None of them deserve to make it.
Connor McDavid and the Oilers are currently out of a playoff spot. (Steven Bisig / Imagn Images)
Let’s run down the list. The Sharks, Habs and Hawks are all rebuilding, and barely even trying to stay in the race. The Flyers are only slightly better. The Ducks and Blue Jackets have been nice stories so far, but they’d be happy just to play meaningful games in the new year, and that’s their likely ceiling. The Penguins and Predators are disasters. The Senators are trying to dig out from the same November fade they have every year, and the Red Wings have been stuck in neutral since Steve Yzerman took over in 1972. The Kraken used up all their flukey playoff luck two years ago. The Blues just fired their coach after 22 games, which tells you how well their season is going. And Utah has already remembered that they’re the no-name Coyotes.
Who does that leave us with? Three teams: The Islanders, Sabres and Oilers.
Am I completely sure the Islanders won’t make it? No, because this is what they do — fade into the background, watch as everyone counts them out and then sneak into one of the last spots at the end of the season. But between injuries and the apparent lack of a new coach bounce in Patrick Roy’s first full season, I don’t think they have the juice. They’re done.
The Sabres are in the best shape of any of these teams and actually already hold a spot based on points percentage, meaning they’re only on the “outside” because the schedule-maker has given the Bruins more games. They’re also the Sabres, so who are we kidding? They’re done, too.
And the Oilers … um … (remembers the concept of this column )… they’re bad, you see. The goaltending is sinking them, and that’s certainly not something you can fix with only cap space and three months to work with. Their depth forwards aren’t scoring, and those sorts of slumps never last less than a full season. Connor McDavid has been merely great and not otherworldly, because he’s already peaked as a player and is now in decline. Add it all up and there’s just no way the Oilers are clawing back from the massive (checks notes) one-point deficit they’ve built up. They’re done.
It’s over. We might as well start the playoffs today because we already know the 16 teams making it. You read it here first.
Despite what other fan bases say, the Toronto Maple Leafs do not in fact get too much media coverage. — Steve T.
On the contrary, Steve, you goofball.
And don’t think I don’t get what you’re doing here. You know I’m a Leafs fan, and so you think it’s going to somehow be painful for me to have to argue that the Leafs get too much attention. But here’s the twist: I don’t have to play-act the contrarian role here at all, because I agree. Of course they do! I wholeheartedly concede that the team gets way more coverage than it deserves. Everyone who complains about this is not wrong.
We all know the ugly details by now. No championships since 1967, no trips to the Final in the same timespan, just one playoff round won in the cap era, only one division win since 2000 and that one was fake … that is not the resume of a team that should be front and center in everything the league does. I don’t know how often the Maple Leafs deserve to be headlining Hockey Night in Canada during the season, but I’m pretty sure the number isn’t “roughly 95 percent.” If you’re a fan of another team and you think the Leafs are overexposed, congratulations, you’re right.
But of course, it’s 2024, and nobody can just be right about anything and leave it at that. No, instead we get those other fan bases moving onto the next stage of modern discontent, which is performative confusion. Why does this team get so much media coverage? Some of you can’t quite figure it out.
And that’s where you lose me. Look, the Leafs have a massive fan base, probably the largest in the league. That’s it. That’s the whole story. That huge audience hasn’t been earned; it’s an accident of history and geography. But it’s real, and if you can’t figure out why that audience translates to more coverage than your comparatively tiny fan base gets, then I’m not sure I can help you.
(But definitely keep descending on every Leafs article, tweet, TikTok or radio segment and devote your whole day to angrily interacting with it, that will really show them.)
Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar will go down as the second-best center/defenseman duo of all time, slightly behind Gretzky/Coffey. — Sean M.
On the contrary, Sean, you dingbat. First, your name is dumb. And second, your question is … well, actually, it’s pretty interesting. Let’s do this.
Right off the bat, you’re missing two of the greatest duos of all time: Phil Esposito with Bobby Orr and Steve Yzerman with Nicklas Lidstrom. The Bruins combo completely rewrote the record book in the 1970s, redefining what offense could mean. And the Detroit pair won three Cups together while playing for two decades for a century-old franchise. I think you could actually argue either of those pairs is ahead of Wayne Gretzky and Paul Coffey.
Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar skate off the ice after Makar scores a power-play goal against the Dallas Stars in last year’s playoffs. (Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
From there, we can look at other legends to see if there’s a partner that fits. Ray Bourque never had an elite center stick around long enough to qualify, with apologies to Adam Oates, and I don’t think Larry Murphy (or post-Oiler Coffey) is good enough to get Mario Lemieux on the list. We don’t really find a combo in the 1970s Habs dynasty, but if we want to go back to the 1950s then Jean Beliveau and Doug Harvey certainly qualify. And speaking of dynasties, we have to include Bryan Trottier and Denis Potvin.
In the end, I think my top five in order would be: Esposito/Orr, Beliveau/Harvey, Gretzky/Coffey, Yzerman/Lidstrom, Trottier/Potvin. Honorable mentions to Mark Messier/Brian Leetch, Patrice Bergeron/Zdeno Chara and Sidney Crosby/Kris Letang, if only for longevity. That’s a tough list to crack for MacKinnon and Makar, as brilliant as they’ve been, so let’s check back in a decade or so.
That was a good question, Sean, thanks for sending it. I’m sorry I called you a dingbat. Still a dumb name, though.
There’s no way the Penguins can come back to make the playoffs, so they should start a total rebuild. — Andy M.
On the contrary, Andy, you flapdoodle.
Your problem is that you’re starting from an unstated but flawed premise, which is that the most important goal of a sports team is to eventually win. If that was true, then sure, the Penguins should blow it all up, including trading any and all of their longtime stars. Bottom out, add some picks and prospects and cross your fingers that the ol’ Penguins lottery luck kicks in once again. If your goal is to have the best record possible five years from now, that’s the only rational way forward.
But that’s not the goal, or at least it shouldn’t be. Not in Pittsburgh. Because in rare cases, there is a goal in the sports world that’s even bigger than winning: Being historically great.
Look, winning a championship is cool, and flags fly forever. But not all champions are created equal, and there’s a higher tier that only a small number of teams will ever reach. And when a team can get there, it lives forever. We’re talking about the Wayne Gretzky Oilers, the Bill Russell Celtics, the Joe DiMaggio Yankees or the Tom Brady Patriots. Those are the teams that ascend to a higher plane. As a fan, you’re lucky to get to root for even one in your lifetime.
And sure, you could argue that Crosby’s Penguins are already there, given the watered-down era they play in. But even if they are, you have to keep going. There’s always another step. One more championship changes the conversation, and so would one more after that.
If you’re lucky enough to get to this level and there’s any chance at all of one more run — even one in a million — you have to take it. You squeeze absolutely every drop out of this stone, and then you squeeze some more just to make sure. Every great dynasty must end, and most end badly, but the point is you never choose to end it. You ride it for as long as you possibly can, because the odds are stacked that you’ll never get the opportunity again.
Father Time is undefeated, and parity comes for us all in the NHL. The rebuild will happen in Pittsburgh because eventually, it will have to. But that isn’t a moment Kyle Dubas or Fenway Sports Group should be trying to summon until there’s no other option. For now, you have Sidney Crosby, a trio of championships and two decades of the best memories your fan base will ever have.
You have an obligation to history here, and that trumps your plans for the future. Squeeze that stone.
(Top photo of the Bobby Orr statue outside TD Garden: Paul Marotta / Getty Images)
