JR Ewing

Nah, he just ran out of money and couldn't afford to pay the players what they were worth. He's an a$$hole, but wasn't a bad owner.

John Spano is in prison right now. Harold Ballard qualifies, as I see it. While owner of the Maple Leafs, he was convicted and sentenced to 3-years for dozens of charges of tax evasion and fraud. He was using Maple Leaf Garden as his own personal piggy bank. This is all aside from his dogged determination to not pay a cent more than the minimum he could with his cash cow, driving away every quality player and coach from the organization. He was famous for doing things like turning up the heat as high as possible to make people buy more beer and pop. Eddie Livingstone became the Toronto Blue Shirts owner in 1915, and by the end of the 1917 season, the other National Hockey Association owners were so tired of his antics and difficult nature that they voted to dissolve the league and then immediately voted to form the National Hockey League. This new league would have all of the same teams and players, but without the Blue Shirts or Livingstone. He lived up to his nature by constantly suing the NHL for years, and attempted to form competing leagues before finally walking away.

The funny thing is that Meruelo isn't even the worst owner in the league's history.

At this point, I would take almost anything to reduce/eliminate the profound Toronto-centric nature of hockey coverage across the Dominion (not that such a thing would be assured by this move)...

https://www.thefourthperiod.com/pagnotta/amazon-joining-canadian-broadcast-game-next-season#google_vignette TORONTO, ON — The NHL is growing, that much is clear. Technically, we’re now at 33 franchises; one of them just happens to be inactive. But beyond the product on the ice, the broadcast game is also evolving north of the border. Multiple sources have confirmed that Amazon has retained the Canadian broadcast rights from Rogers to air Monday Night Hockey on their platform during the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons, the remaining two years of Rogers’ current 12-year agreement. Financial terms are not known, though Rogers’ deal with the NHL was for $5.2 billion. Amazon has long expressed interest in expanding its NHL footprint and sources have confirmed they already started planning how their broadcasts will shape up next season, though talent has not yet been considered. They have first dipped their toe in League waters with its AWS/NHL partnership as the League’s Official Cloud Infrastructure Provider. Amazon also produced “All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs.” Bell, which previously owned the national NHL rights in Canada before Rogers swooped in, had dipped their toe in the waters and had conversations about retaining partial rights, again. Bell owns TSN and RDS. There is a possibility they re-engage in a year’s time when the full Canadian rights deal nears its expiration. The idea is for Rogers and Amazon to piggyback off ESPN and TNT’s formats, and splitting/sharing the national broadcast rights will be the goal for 2026-27 and beyond. Though some logistical items with the NHL are still being finalized, Amazon has already commissioned a documentary-style behind-the-scenes show featuring a dozen “main cast” NHLers, believed to include William Nylander, Leon Draisaitl, Quinn Hughes and David Pastrnak. There will be additional NHL player appearances throughout the series beyond the primary individuals, however, with Jeremy Swayman entering the Pastaverse in some form. The production company that created “F1: Drive to Survive” is putting this program together – and that, by itself, is very exciting. Amazon’s strategy is complimenting its live game broadcasts with supplementary content, such as this new BTS documentary, and I suspect they will look to build off that with more. Come for the game, stay for the content. It is unclear how fans will react to another sport moving part of its national broadcasts to a streaming network, but we will hear more about Amazon’s new venture into the Canadian NHL broadcast rights in the near future.

Notes in point-form... -Just one game, but Kopitar seemed just a hair slow at times. Might age be catching up with him? Keeping up with 97 and 29 in their prime is a tough gig at 36. -In general, seemed like LA was not playing their game. Some end of game yelling from Doughty… -Don’t recall too many games where Danault gets carved up like that. He's so good defensively. -Fully expect a much different Kings club tonight.

So, Klim Kostin still maintains a home in Edmonton and was at the game on Monday night, wearing his Oilers jersey in the stands. I can't think of another time that an active player of another NHL team attended the game of his former team wearing that former team's jersey.

Canucks got PDO'd last night. High Danger Chances were 14-7 for Vancouver, but lose 4-1. Happens.

Try being a Maple Leaf. The fans and team quite literally drove Frank Mahovlich to be hospitalised from a nervous breakdown. There are other major league sports in Toronto, but none that a large number really care about, so the Leaves get all of the attention, good and bad.

Agreed. For me, the Ducks would surely want too much to make the trade worth it. If he were to come at a relative giveaway price, it would be interesting but, either way, Tortorella would likely have him benched within weeks.

I certainly can't predict the future either, but I'll say that with regard to offense (and that's the only reason to have Zegras around) players peak much sooner than a lot of people think: https://hockeyviz.com/txt/age22 Not every player develops at the same rate and at the same ages, but Zegras is the point of his career when we can begin to expect less and less growth, scoring-wise. We'll have to see how it goes with him.

Connor McDavid was on for the fewest scoring chances against of any Oiler last night all while driving enough offense to get 5 points. You're right; nobody was complaining about him last night.

60 points was terrific during the Dead Puck Era, but today, it's puts you something like 100th in scoring. Not elite.

Yup. It's not necessary for every forward to play Selke-level defense, but they do need to show some sort of attention to it.

That's a shame. Always hate to see guys get hurt.