The National Hockey League is Crazy; What you Need to Know About the 2013 NHL Season (2)

-rejected by some websites, lost it in my back drafts so may as well publish it here for some love.



Looking to widen your sports knowledge to something outside of the local football league? Perhaps you are looking to butter up those Canadian tourists that wandered into your bar and will tend to tip way too much if someone mentions hockey around them. Whatever your reasons, welcome home.

Last year I started submitting some posts to WhatCulture about the NHL, voted by 3o million Canadians, 54 Swedes, and Danny Taylor of Plymouth, England as being THE #1 hockey league in the world. The NHL stands to begin it's 94th year of play (give or take) next month. And this year is no different as there is much excitement in the maple syrup-flavoured air, hockey-stank excitement. Nobody in Canada has been this excited about the NHL starting up since last season when it finally began after another epic Lock-Out, which will be discussed later.

In what went down as the greatest Stanley Cup Finals ever played since 2012, the Chicago Blackhawks stunned the Boston Bruins with 2 goals in the final 90 seconds in Game 6 to clinch hockey's greatest trophy. It was karmic retaliation of sorts, for the Bruins had earlier made the biggest comeback in history to defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7 of a playoff series earlier which everybody outside of Toronto found hilarious. If none of that made any sense to you, welcome to...

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW OF THE NHL AS A NON-FAN;

All you need to know is this; The NHL is crazy. There is nothing rational about it, either on the ice or off. It was the subject of the greatest sports movie ever made, and has some of the best haircuts ever. It once had two players that dominated the sport like no other athlete has ever dominated a sport yet they played at the same time. Imagine Maradona and Pele playing at the same time, and on occasion even on the same team to defeat the world's worst military superpower and #2 hockey nation (no, not America, the other one).

The Easy Stuff; 

The regular season starts in October, is 82 games long, and lasts for about six months.
Playoffs start in April and go for about three months. There is no 'one game take all' playoffs; this is all about maximizing owner revenue so the teams are forced to play four rounds of best-of-seven's, which in reality is quite brilliant. The first team to win four games over their opponent moves on to the next round and possibly gets a break while waiting for their opponents to inflict maximum pain on each other.



Canadians start talking about hockey about 2 months before the regular season starts. This is called the 'pre-season' and in reality mean nothing unless you are a Toronto fan, then it defines the rest of your season, saving you all sorts of heartbreak later on.

The NHL continues to be one of the most confusing leagues in professional sports, being the only Pro League that has regular strikes and lock outs of their players. Last year was their fourth in 20 years, which basically boiled down to this; despite record-breaking profits by 1/3 of the league's top 'have' teams, the ability to keep the bottom 2/3's teams (the have-nots) afloat hinges on players continuing to take hefty pay cuts so that owners can continue to offer certain players way too much money over extended periods of time which causes another lock out, perpetuating the cycle. To keep the 'have' teams from buying up all the talent (Like Manchester U, the New York Yankees), the league has imposed a 'salary cap ceiling and floor'. Effectively, a team's payroll can only be X amount of money and they have to spend at least X amount of money to avoid a replay of the major motion picture, Major League. It adds another level of excitement for hockey poolsters and accountants everywhere.

The 2013 rendition also includes league re-alignment and the team Buy Out option where a team can effectively 'fire' a player but still have to pay him. He can then go play for another team while still getting paid by his former team. The rest of us peons can only hope that this will catch on in the rest of the employment sector.

For Example; Vincent Lecavalier played for a 'have-not' team called the Tampa Bay Lightning. They fired him after recently signing him to a 14 year contract. Under the buy-out clause they are still going to be paying him over $8 Million for the next 3 years,. $1.7 Million for the following 11 years.
Lecavalier is a decent hockey player and has won a Stanley Cup; he was immediately signed to a $4.5 million/5 year deal by the Philadelphia Flyers (a 'have' team) who apparently have no idea how contracts work, as they used their buy-out to fire their #1 goalie, Ilya Bryzgalov who they just signed for 14 years and $23 million last year. It's like playing Settlers of Cataan with your drunk Uncle Alfie. It's just best to sit back and observe and try not to get spit on.

16 of the 30 teams make the playoffs. Due to hockey mathematics involving shoot-outs and overtime losses, 28 of the teams will still be in contention up until the final 2 days of the regular season. Yet despite this multitude of entrants, only 17 teams of these 30 teams have won the Stanley Cup in it's near 100 year history. Considering all of the Original 6 teams have won it, blow your Canadian friends' minds by naming the eleven other teams to have won it.

Fighting is no longer encouraged in the game, except by the players, the media and the fans that either attend the games or watch it on television. This has been an ongoing discussion since 1989 which is really embarrassing. Although hitting is enthusiastically encouraged, any hit that is too enthusiastic will be considered a suspend-able offense and over-analyzed to death by hockey-starved media and hockey bloggers. Replays of the offending hit will be shown a minimum of 10x per report, until the next big suspension or injury happens.

Gone are the six divisions in two conferences that have truly meant nothing for the last 20 years replaced by four divisions that still truly mean nothing. The new structure still means that both the Western and Eastern Conference will still have 8 teams that qualify for the playoffs but in keeping with it's unusual scoring system, the following method will be used to keep fans confused until the final days of the regular season when they learn if their team has qualified or not for the playoffs.

From NHL.com; 

The top three teams in each division will make up the first 12 teams in the playoffs. The remaining four spots will be filled by the next two highest-placed finishers in each conference -- regardless of division -- based on regular-season points. It will be possible for one division to send five teams to the postseason while the other sends three.

The seeding of the wild-card teams within each divisional playoff will be determined by regular-season points. The division winner with the most points in the conference will be matched against the wild-card team with the fewest points; the division winner with the second-most points in the conference will play the wild-card team with the second-fewest points.

Still here? Maybe your next question is how does a team get these points to qualify for the playoffs?

A team gets 2 points for a straight-up win. If both teams tie, they each get a point. They play a 5 minute overtime session, at which time each team is minus 1 player. If someone scores, the winning team gets 2 points and the losing team gets 1 point. If nobody scores in extra time, the teams go to a shoot out where players take turns trying to score on breakaways (much like a penalty kick). If they score, that goal doesn't count as a goal on their point totals but their team could win, as long as the other team doesn't score. Eventually, everyone gets bored and they all go home and wait for the NHL statisticians to tell us what happened.

As I said you don't need to worry about it. Chances are your team will just make or just miss the playoffs. Pick a team then come back in April.

But on to the Teams, starting with the Western Conference...