Effective hockey vs. Entertaining hockey; the NHL's recycling plant is in full swing

Let's talk some hockey current events.

1. Entertainment is a subjective thing. What might interest one person might bore another. That is true across all forms of recreation, and especially so in sports.

Sports also brings another layer into the discussion because an effective, winning strategy might not always be the most entertaining style to watch.

What is most entertaining to watch might not always be the most effective.

I’m going to go back a while on this (and it pains me to say how far back this is because I vividly remember it like it was 10 months ago), but I remember covering a Pittsburgh Penguins-Winnipeg Jets game during the 2011-12 season that ended with an 8-5 Penguins win. It was non-stop action complete with end-to-end rushes, defensive breakdowns and something that the NHL didn’t have a lot of in that era — goals. I also remember then-Penguins head coach Dan Bylsma walking into the media room after the game looking and sounding …. disappointed. Even though his team won, and even though fans left happy and thoroughly entertained, he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the way they played. Mostly because he knew that style of hockey probably wasn’t going to be sustainable or get them to where they ultimately wanted to be that season.

The result was good. The process, in his coaching view, probably sucked.

Generally speaking professional coaches are not in their job to keep you entertained.

They are in their job to give their team (and by extension, you, the fan) wins.

There are times where a truly entertaining, fun team can also be effective while winning, but the two things do not always join together.

I am going somewhere with this, and it brings me to the Carolina Hurricanes, who are back in the Eastern Conference Final for the third time in the past seven seasons. During that stretch they have been one of the most successful teams in the league. Their 325 regular seasons wins are second in the NHL. Their 46 playoff wins (as of now) are fifth. They have advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs in six of those seven seasons and regularly make a run deep into the postseason.

They are well-run, well-coached, and play a VERY effective winning style of hockey. It has not yet produced a championship with this core group or this head coach, but they keep knocking on the door (including this season) and are well positioned for long-term success well beyond this season.

They are a relentless defensive team. They typically rank near the top-10 in goals scored. The roster doesn’t really have any sort of a glaring weakness whether it positionally or individually. There is not really anybody you look at it and say, “that guy’s going to cost them.”

They’re good.

Really good.

But there’s an ongoing discussion regarding their team that is bothering Hurricanes fans.

The discussion is simply: Are they a fun team to watch?

There is a very general consensus among non-Hurricanes fans that, no, they kind of aren’t.

And that’s not a knock on the quality of the play.

Or the quality of the team.

Or the atmosphere of their arena or the quality of their crowd (both of which are awesome).

It’s a very fundamentally sound, business-like, well-structured, efficient team. And that’s great for winning. That’s great for fans of the team. If I was a Hurricanes fan, I would fucking love it. So would you.

But I’m not a Hurricanes fan. I’m just a neutral observer that’s watching games for work/fun and because I enjoy hockey, so my viewing perspective isn’t the same as Hurricanes fans. I also don’t think it should be a shock or a surprise that people in a third-party situation don’t view it the same way as a Hurricanes fan would.

There’s basically three things that are consistently entertaining in sports.

• Winning is entertaining. This is exclusively limited to people that cheer for the team. You don’t care how your team wins, why it wins, or how it wins just so it wins. I used to watch the 2008 Steelers win games 11-10 and 13-6 and walk away smiling because they accomplished the goal. They won. You’re not walking away happy from a high-scoring, dramatic loss. Winning is king. The late 1990s and early 2000s New Jersey Devils were a chore to watch. But do you know who doesn’t care? New Jersey Devils fans, because banners hang forever.

• Superstars are entertaining. Watching Connor McDavid skate through the neutral zone at full speed and break a defenders ankles with ease is entertaining. Players putting up video game numbers in short bursts or over a full season is entertaining. Highlight reel plays that bring you out of your seat are entertaining.

• Hatred is entertaining. Whether it be hate-watching a particular team and rooting for Schadenfreude, or getting angry at an opposing team’s pest, or watching two teams just absolutely beat the shit out of each other seeing real anger is entertaining. As deranged as that might sound. There is a reason the NHL cultivates an atmosphere in chaos in the playoffs and seems to doing everything it can to allow those emotions to fester. People tend to like that.

When it comes to the first point, that only applies to smaller, specific sub-sets of fans across the league.

When it comes to the latter two points, the Hurricanes don’t really have individual players that fit into either category.

With all due respect to players like Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov and Jaccob Slavin (players you would absolutely love to have on your team), they are not really SUPERSTARS. At least not on the McDavid, Crosby, MacKinnon, Kucherov level.

Since the start of the 2018-19 season only three different Hurricanes have scored more than 30 goals in a season. Nobody’s scored more than 40. There have only been three instances of a player topping even 80 points in a single season, with nobody going over 89. The highest any player has finished in the scoring race over this stretch was Aho with a 17th place ranking during the shortened 2020-21 season.

It’s a roster full of good, to really good, to a couple of truly outstanding players.

But they don’t have a top-10 (or even top-15) player. It’s okay to say that. They just don’t. That’s not hating. That’s just … reality.

They also don’t have any players that are really easy to hate or that turn games into chaos. There’s no Matthew Tkachuk, or Brad Marchand, or Tom Wilson, or a player that makes them easy to root against. The most offensive thing anybody on this team has ever done to make people mad has been their Storm Surge celebration after games. And even that was more funny than anything else because it pissed off all of the right people.

They’re just a good team, full of good players, that does everything well.

Sometimes structure, defense and efficiency just isn’t all that “exciting.”

And that’s okay.

Because it usually wins.

Which is the only excitement fans (and teams) are usually after.

2. Some NHL teams made some big hirings this week. They did the very classic NHL thing and went into the recycling bin.

Let’s talk about some of them.