I’m not sure how many will stay, my guess is three, but who knows?
I’m as surprised as anyone at the number of players from the 2011 draft who have managed to stick with their teams to start the NHL season. Seven of the top eight picks are with their clubs. Ryan Murphy (12th overall) is still with the Carolina Hurricanes and the biggest surprise of all is the Chicago Blackhawks keeping second-rounder Brandon Saad to start the season.
My gut tells me that following the first nine games of the season only Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (Edmonton) Gabriel Landeskog (Colorado) and Adam Larsson (New Jersey) will still be in the NHL.
Have to hand it to Maple Leafs head coach Ron Wilson, the first NHL bench boss to open a Twitter account (@coachrw63) and using it to share his thoughts on what David Steckel brings to his team almost immediately after the trade was made with the Devils.
The questions is: can he resist a Twitter war that many will no doubt try to drag him into? I think he’s too smart to take the bait, but if he isn’t, can you imagine how epic a scrap that would be?
More and more people keep telling me Detroit is going to make Fabian Brunnstrom a legit NHLer, mainly due to the Wings’ system, and I think they’re right. For too long Brunnstrom hasn’t been able to define what type of player he’s going to be but I get the feeling Detroit will do the same thing with Brunnstrom that they did with players such as Dan Cleary; accentuate the positive skill set he has and base a player around it.
That coupled with the Detroit’s work ethic may make Brunnstrom the comeback player of the year in the NHL.
A little nugget I stumbled across while prepping our Sportsnet season preview show, thanks to the help of The Society for International Hockey Research (I’ve been a member of SIHR for years) involves the first recorded fight in NHL history.
We go back to the first year of the NHL, 1917, and game three of the season between the Ottawa and Toronto. Senators forward Cy Denneny fought Arenas defenceman Ken Randall. Both players have interesting back stories; Denneny was the first to use a curved blade on his stick while Randall was one of the nastiest payers in the history of the game, once breaking Sprague Cleghorn’s leg with a check, smacking Hoolie Smith in the mouth with his stick causing extensive dental surgery, and two-handing Buck Boucher across the forehead busting up the Senator defenseman.
Randall was suspended for brawling with fans during a game against the Quebec Bulldogs in which he went into the stands to pummel a fan by the name of Benoit Lelievre, who was part of a group of rowdies who hurled bottles and chairs at the Toronto players. After that game was called, some of those same fans hit the ice to knuckle-up with the Toronto skaters.
Randall was an interesting cat who usually found himself at odds with the league.
Before a game against Ottawa in February of 1918, he was suspended by league president Frank Calder for arguing with officials, but the sentence was dropped to $15 provided Randall surrender $35 in back fines that hadn’t been paid.
Randall forked over $32 in bills to referee Lou Marsh and the remaining $3 in pennies, which the NHL refused to accept. In a huff, Randall bundled up the copper in a bag and dumped it at center ice. Sure enough one of the Senators players swung at it with his stick and broke it open scattering pennies from one end of the rink to the other which they all then promptly picked up and pocketed themselves (imagine that sight).
On a more current trivia note, one of Randall’s brothers was Doug Gilmour’s grandfather.