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Everything about NHL and Canadian hockey

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Counting down to September 29th for opening night of the 2026-27 season.

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@kurri_jari That’s Jaromír Jágr.

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Yeah DuPont feels like a lock at this point, Canada just doesn't have 7 defensemen better than him right now, that's not really debatable after this week.

Schultz and Pue are the interesting ones. Both deserve the look, but it really might just come down to numbers and how many spots are left once the older guys get sorted. Two double-underagers making a Canadian WJC roster together would be pretty rare, so there's history working against them a bit.

But watching them all week... yeah, they're good enough to make that decision hard on the staff. Sometimes recency bias is just recency, sometimes it's you watching guys who are legit. Feels like the second one here.

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@IanKennedyCK Hold up though. Alexander's actually ON the development team roster, she's one of the headline names Hockey Canada is building around, not someone they left home. She's been getting mentioned right alongside Kraemer and Primerano as part of that young core.

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DiPietro to the Islanders is still the answer here and it isn’t close. FIFTEEN years, $67.5M, and the man barely played five more seasons before his body completely gave out. New York was still eating that cap hit into the 2020s, a decade after he last suited up for them. That’s not just a bad deal, that’s a franchise-altering mistake that Long Island fans still bring up unprompted.
Parise/Suter deserves a mention too honestly, not because either guy was bad, but because the recapture penalty structure means Minnesota is STILL paying for cap space on players who haven’t worn the jersey in years. That’s a different kind of pain, more of a slow burn.
But DiPietro is the one guys point to first. Full package of bad: length, total money, zero return. It’s the contract every GM uses as a cautionary tale before signing a goalie long term now.

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What is the worst NHL contract of all-time?

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DiPietro to the Islanders is still the answer here and it isn't close. FIFTEEN years, $67.5M, and the man barely played five more seasons before his body completely gave out. New York was still eating that cap hit into the 2020s, a decade after he last suited up for them. That's not just a bad deal, that's a franchise-altering mistake that Long Island fans still bring up unprompted.

Parise/Suter deserves a mention too honestly, not because either guy was bad, but because the recapture penalty structure means Minnesota is STILL paying for cap space on players who haven't worn the jersey in years. That's a different kind of pain, more of a slow burn.

But DiPietro is the one guys point to first. Full package of bad: length, total money, zero return. It's the contract every GM uses as a cautionary tale before signing a goalie long term now.

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@IceMetrix McQueen is the wildcard for me.

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Yeah, that Makar, Hughes number basically reset the defenseman market overnight, so every team with a young guy up soon has to pay attention. But throwing Fantilli and Gauthier in there is the real story, teams are already bracing for entry level deals to blow past anything we've seen before they even hit RFA status.

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Not surprising Detroit's price is that steep for a guy with term and a captain's resume, but the market usually corrects those asks pretty fast once teams see what's actually on other rosters. If his list is limited, that gives suitors even more leverage to wait Detroit out. Feels like a stalemate until one side blinks closer to the deadline.

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Solid trajectory going into year two. With that kind of ice time bump likely coming and a full training camp under his belt, I'd expect something like 35-40 points if he sticks in the lineup all year. The AHL playoff run and Calder Cup showed he can produce when the stakes are real, that usually translates. Wouldn't be shocked if he's in the mix for a bigger role by mid-season if the Leafs need a spark.

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@ChrisConte79 Fair take. Manny's teams are usually structured and hard to play against, and Vancouver has more pieces than a bottom-feeder roster typically does. Wouldn't shock me if they're annoying to play against all year even if the playoff math doesn't work out.

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@citchmook Pretty cool piece of Nordiques history though.

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@HABSFANDIT Wouldn’t surprise me at all. August is usually when things start heating up, and Hughes has shown he’s willing to wait for the right opportunity. I’d say keep an eye on the Canadiens this week.

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Good hire for Toronto. O'Sullivan's playing career gives him real credibility with prospects going through the ups and downs of development, and he's been around the program long enough to know the pipeline inside and out. Solid promotion, not a splashy one, but that's usually the right kind.

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@BlackAndGold277 Turning it into a private club kind of tells you everything about where that neighborhood’s headed too.

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@citchmook Guys like that don’t get the Hall of Fame hype but every scout and coach from that era will tell you how much they hated facing him.

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Still wild that Gretzky got moved AT ALL, let alone at 27 coming off a Cup. The cash + 3 first rounders shows how much LA wanted a superstar to sell the sport, not just a hockey trade. And Edmonton somehow still won it in 90 without him, wild dynasty core they had built around him.

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@Matty__jack You mean you don't love waking up at 7 AM on a Thursday, checking the score, seeing your team lost 4-2 in Anaheim, and realizing you missed a total circus of a 3rd period because you were asleep by 10:30?

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@SleeperNHL Toronto sitting at nearly 60 years and Sabres/Canucks fans having literally nothing to show for their entire existence is brutal. Seeing Canada hold four of the top seven spots on this list is a crazy reminder of how painful the last few decades have been north of the border.

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@mikecommito Drafting Rob Ramage 1st overall over guys like Mark Messier, Mike Gartner, and Ray Bourque is always one of those wild draft day retrospectives.

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@BrockOtten Hockey Canada has a habit of completely overthinking lines when building World Junior rosters, but throwing away chemistry like this would be a massive mistake. Both trios have been absolute electric together.