Hi everyone! With the Washington Capitals’ huge game five victory Thursday night, that just about wraps up another great NHL season. And now my favorite part of the NHL season begins. That is unless my beloved Habs are in the final themselves, then that is my favorite part of the season, but that hasn’t happened since I was in grade school, so I take what I can get to find true hockey happiness. My favorite part of the hockey season is (usually) June and early July when players start getting swapped around for fifth-round picks and used jock straps, and we get the endless analysis about how signing David Clarkson to a five-year deal is a franchise-altering decision (indeed it was, just not in the way the Toronto Maple Leafs expected). I can only imagine which third-line schlub is going to win the lottery this time around. My money is on Rick Nash, whose career has been on a severe down slide the last five years or so; therefore, he will be highly sought after, and I don’t mean that sarcastically. Patrick Maroon seems like another guy some team will believe is going to score a solid thirty goals every year for the next five years, and then he’ll get nothing more than half that, and the team that signs him will be left scratching their noggins. Put Paul Stastny on that list too. He had a great playoff for Winnipeg, and like most UFAs who have great playoffs after a bunch of so-so regular seasons, the May offensive outburst is usually an aberration, and he’ll go back to scoring 40-50 points a year. The difference, however, is that starting in 2018 he’ll get way too much money to do it. In a recent issue of The Hockey News, they mention the best and worst signings of every general manager in the league, and I was flabbergasted by how many albatross deals have been signed in the last decade. Since this year’s crop of free agents ain’t all that great, something tells me there are going to be a lot of big birds finding their way to new towns.

I know everything is going to get completely ridiculous and yet, I get suckered into this insanity every year…

As teams are preparing themselves for the 2018-19 season, I wanted to look back at how the Seals were preparing for their very first NHL season. This week, I’ve added a new article on the WHL California Seals’ Rudy Pilous, and the lead-up to the NHL California Seals expansion draft. Like the Vegas Golden Knights some fifty years later, Pilous was looking to draft lots of young players rather than fading veterans, which makes total sense, but there was one older dude he was looking to entice to Oakland, and that would be the legendary Jacques Plante..

In honour of the Stanley Cup final, I’ve also added a brand new induction to the Hockey Hall of Shame! It has been about a year, almost to the day, since the Nashville Predators and Pittsburgh Penguins met in game four of their Stanley Cup final series, and on this night, the Hall of Shame’s doors began creaking open to let something awful get in. If you’re a country music fan, you may want to turn away now. If you’re not a country music fan, you’ll probably want to turn away too. If you’re a fan of national anthems, you will most definitely want to click on the little X in the top right corner of your browser. You’ve been warned!

Until next time, stay gold!