Some thoughts coagulating as we approach the midway point of our hockey break, a.k.a. summer.

Since (we’ll be generous and go back to) 2002, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Edmonton Oilers have combined for six first overall picks, two second overall picks (both Pittsburgh’s), one third overall pick (Edmonton), and eight more selections in the top ten. Yet the Penguins have three Stanley Cup championships in these past twenty-something years while the Oilers have none. A tale of two franchises.

As much as I would love for Pittsburgh to have another first overall pick next season, they will neither be alone in that hunt, nor will they be the strongest contender in the Gavin McKenna sweepstakes. Even if they do trade Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, Erik Karlsson, or whoever else they can, they are not going to be as bad as, say, the San Jose Sharks, the Anaheim Ducks, or the Chicago Blackhawks. The Buffalo Sabres will be desperate for another elite talent to build their hopes around. Boston, Philadelphia, maybe the Islanders again, maybe Nashville, maybe Seattle…there’s a lot of teams who will be secretly wishing to underperform if it means a better chance to get a once-in-a-generation prospect. The race to the bottom will be fierce, and the Penguins may be the best team of this group…which is the opposite of what you would want.

How much longer before the NHL implements some form of Gold drafting? Someone with some pull has to get the owners to realize that they could sell more tickets for the end of season games if their teams were competitive and for a good reason.

The NHL and NHLPA agreed to a new CBA beginning next season. Some of the big items in the CBA include extending the season to 84 games. Frankly I don’t care how many games they play, but I would love it if the season started and ended like three weeks earlier. They shouldn’t be playing the Stanley Cup Final into the third week of June.

One of the guys I follow for franchise prospect pool rankings (a key metric of my Mediocrity Project), Byron Bader, has released his list of rankings in the wake of the 2025 Entry Draft:

It wasn’t that long ago that Pittsburgh was all the way at the bottom of these lists, but it makes sense that their prospect pool has risen as their regular season performance has tumbled, and as a result they now sit in the middle of the pack at #17. Probably a year or two late to be at this point, but what can you do when your prior two general managers were the wheelin’-and-dealin’ Jim Rutherford and the completely hopeless Ron Hextall. The Panthers, like most Stanley Cup winners over the years, are dead last in these rankings, but you also have to wonder about the rest of the teams in that bottom five (see again Jim Rutherford and the Canucks). Meanwhile, the teams at the top of this list make a ton of sense as they have been at the bottom of the League standings on a regular basis for the last several years.

Lots of talk about the Penguins possibly trading Tristan Jarry. It seems antithetical to me to trade a guy who will either continue to perform poorly and make the team’s draft prospects better, or he will perform well and increase his trade value. I think Jarry hangs around until the team finds a reason to move him.

That’s it for my hockey thoughts for now. I have an apropos of nothing (Northern Hemisphere biased, sorry southerners) poll here though, related to my musings on the idea of “midsummer”. “Mid” means “middle”, right? So why would people celebrate “midsummer” on the solstice itself? After all, the summer solstice is the peak of solar radiation, but the hottest days of summer don’t generally occur for some weeks after the solstice, like now. To me, even though the days are slowly getting shorter, when we are right now is midsummer.

Alright everyone, thanks as always for reading and hanging around to see what’s cooking. Hopefully I’ll get around to my Mediocrity Project once the analysts finish their summer prospect pool rankings. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there will be some Penguins-related news to digest. Until then, enjoy your summer!

LGP