Karlsson Deadline?
As the summer winds on, the NHL’s offseason is now a few weeks old, and we’re nearly a fortnight into free agency. Coaches have been fired and hired, drunken Stanley Cup parade speeches have been slurred, GMs cast to the wind, and entire teams have been rebuilt, or at the very least re-tooled.
The Penguins, for instance, swapped out Jason Zucker for Reilly Smith, added Ryan Graves to bolster their defensive depth, and remodeled their bottom six by adding experience, grit, and – at least by last year’s standards – a touch more offense on the third and fourth lines.
That may not be enough for General Manager Kyle Dubas and Head Coach Mike Sullivan, though.
“Mike Sullivan’s system works best when you have a puck-moving capable defenseman who can also transition the puck out of the zone quickly,” The Athletic’s Rob Rossi reminded me on Wednesday’s episode of Fifth Avenue Faceoff.
“With Letang and Karlsson on the ice 80% of the time when healthy, the Penguins are willing to live with that (risk of being exposed on the back end).”
The renovation of the bottom six plays a big part in that, continued Rossi.
“The Penguins felt their top six and their defensemen had to take more chances because they couldn’t rely on their bottom six to do anything. They’ve remade that bottom six, and added depth to it with the idea that, at the very least, they won’t be hemmed in their zone as much, and they’ll be able to play with the puck more.
“Counting on that bottom six to be more responsible, they feel they’ll have in Karlsson, a guy who can be a difference maker because of what he brings offensively, and live with mistakes defensively.”
With that much belief in Karlsson form Penguins management, just how far is Dubas willing to go to acquire the three-time Norris Trophy winner?
And how do Drew O’Connor, Jeff Petry, Mikael Granlund, and Sidney Crosby’s birthday figure in all of this?
It’s all in the latest episode of Fifth Avenue Faceoff.
Eat Your Wheaties
Despite the fact that it quickly turns about as soggy as a baby’s diaper – and some would argue it tastes about as good – Wheaties has a reputation as “The Breakfast of Champions.”
Me, I’ll take little chocolate donuts.
Nonetheless, it’s still cool for many fans to see their favorite athletes on the cover of a box of Wheaties. Heck, I still have an old box down in my game room somewhere with Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr on the front.
Well, rather than going with teammates this time, General Mills has gone, for the first time ever, with brothers on the cover of a Wheaties box: J.J.
& T.J. Watt.
No word on if their brother Derek made it on a box of Great Value Multi-Grain Flakes, or whether he’ll be as M.I.A. as he was in Matt Canada’s offense.
It’s Getting’ Hot in Herre…
… so brush up your resume.”
It’s been a while, and college was a blur, but I don’t think that’s how the Nelly song went.
The idea of “Hot Seat” always amuses me for some reason, especially since the advent of seat warmers in most cars. On a cold day, there’s nothing better than cranking those things up all the way for some good ol’ fashioned hot cross buns.
Just avoid it after taco night.
Anyway, speaking of hot, stinky things, WVU Head Coach Neal Brown is officially near the top of CBS Sports’ college football hot seat rankings.
According to Dennis Dodd, there are just three of the 133 currently employed Division 1 head coaches who are in “Win or be fired” territory: Indiana’s Tom Allen, New Mexico’s Danny Gonzales, and Mr. Electricity, Neal Brown.
In the kind of contract that could only get an Athletic Director fired, former Mountaineer AD Shane Lyons gave Brown such an obscene buyout number it’s unwieldy, if not impossible, to dispatch with him before January 1, 2025 without paying him 100% of the remaining value of his deal.
Anything short of bowl eligibility in a the revamped Big XII may be enough to give big coal the ability to pony up the $12.7 necessary to send Brown packing on January 2, 2024 though, and if it’s any worse than 5-7, they may just bite the bullet, scrape together another $4 million – I heard Bob Huggins has been recycling a lot lately, and we know there’s money in that – and tell him to hit the bricks before all of us even have our Christmas trees up.
Vegas A’s… And Thennnn…??
Wasting no time, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is ready to step on the gas toward expanding now that the situations surrounding the Oakland – soon to be Las Vegas – Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays seem to have found some resolution.
The interesting part of this is that Manfred is said to want realignment figured out before finding new cities. With Nashville, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, Portland, Montreal, and San Antonio among the favorites to land expansion teams.
Wouldn’t Manfred want to accept the best bids, and then decide how to realign?
My hope is when expansion and realignment do happen, we get a complete and total geographic realignment that eliminates the American and National Leagues now that they each play by the same rules. While I know many of us of a certain age long for the re-establishment of the great NL East rivalries of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, my gut tells me that whether expansion realignment means (8) four-team divisions or (4) eight-team divisions, it would end with the Pirates in some sort of ‘Rust Belt’-styled division with Cleveland, Detroit, and Cincinnati. Or maybe – depending on where the expansion teams land – an odd-looking Southeast/Central/Mid-Atlantic amalgamation that includes Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and an expansion Nashville or Charlotte franchise?
Who knows what it will eventually end up looking like, but a 32-team Major League is most likely less than a decade away.