Running NHL 2023-24 regular season thread

0-9-1 through 10 games.

10 total goals. In 9 games, they have scored either 0 or 1 goal.

What a brutal slog it's going to be to get to April for this team and its fan base.

 

Edmonton and Calgary also off to brutal starts.

It’s getting late, early, for these teams.

 

Florida has now won 10 consecutive games in Detroit. They suffocated a pretty decent Red Wings offense last night and scored on a fluky goal for a 1-0 win.

Also, had no idea the Wings have a kid from Pembroke Pines, the first South Florida-born NHL player. His dad was a professional jai alai player, he went to watch his sister ice skate and wanted to take up hockey in a land where most ice ends up in people's drink glasses.

 

I don't think it was even this bad during the expansion years at the Cow Palace. They started the first year at the Tank 0-8-3 IIRC, a year that ended with the upset of the Red Wings in the playoffs, but that's not going to happen with this team. I expected bad, but not this bad.

 

The Bruins had Mason Lohrei on D last night, the first Louisiana born player in the NHL. His dad was coaching the ECHL team in Baton Rouge at the time. Elite Prospects lists his birthplace as Madison WI.

 

Very cool that there are four North Carolina-born players (although one claims Canadian birthright) who have played in the NHL. All come from former ECHL towns, which is probably more of coincidence than anything: Charlotte (Checkers), Winston-Salem (Thunderbirds) and Raleigh (IceCaps).

Hockey has come a long way since it was rare to find a US-born player in the Original Six.

 

One interesting thing about the increasing US presence in the NHL: even though Minnesota still produces the most pros of any U.S. state, the best Americans are rarely from here these days. If they had a World Cup of hockey tomorrow, Jake Guentzel might be the only Minnesotan on the US team. Minnesota hockey types really don't like it if you bring this up, I have noticed.

 

The Kingfish! Heck, Pierre McGuire even made a stop there.

 

Name the tough guy who scored the first goal in Sharks history ...

 

Jeff Odgers?

 

In looking this up, I found the answer to the question I didn't know I had asked: What if Tim Legler played hockey instead of basketball.

 

Craig Coxe
Notorious minor-league cement-head Kevin Evans also had a cup of coffee with the Sharks the first season. Link Gaetz might have too, but not sure.
Gaetz reminds me of a funny quote from Lou Nanne in Minnesota. To paraphrase: "We got Modano to protect the franchise. We got Gaetz to protect Modano. We should have got lawyers to protect Gaetz."