Countdown: Last-minute waiver claims could come in handy

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Remi Elie is an interesting gamble for the Buffalo Sabres. (Trevor Hagan/CP)

Wed, Oct 3, 2018

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Countdown:

The Countdown is a quick look at some of the big stories in hockey in the last week. This time, we look at the Leafs' losses, the Habs' blanc et rouge et bleu Monday, the Canucks ' team bonding plans, and the Flames' weird third line.

9. Fortnite

The Canucks are now officially the first team, that we can publicly confirm, to ban the use of Fortnite — or any video games at all — on the road. Team meals and hangouts will be compulsory. Very cool. Very normal.

I don't play Fortnite but just let the kids game, man. Who cares? If they wanna be the Spider-Man boy or do Elder Scrolls or play FIFA, I say let 'em. They're gonna suck anyway, so maybe at least let them enjoy themselves.

8. Tom Wilson

I'm writing this before the suspension announcement actually comes out but let me just get out in front of it and say: "They didn't give him enough."

Like I said yesterday, this is a guy who has been suspended four times in 54 weeks. It doesn't seem like it should be possible, but the three games he got canned for counts to the NHL as six games because it was the playoffs. The fact that Wilson almost immediately re-offended after those playoffs ended should have been cause to multiply the suspension at least a few times over.

I'm gonna guess he gets 10 or 12 here but I'm also thinking that, this being the NHL, that's me being a little optimistic.

7. Damage control

I love that the Habs, yesterday, named Shea Weber captain. The guy who's gonna miss the first two months of the season, yes. The one who's I think 51 years old, or at least his body more or less is.

How many years of even passably good hockey do you think he has in the tank? Three? Three sounds about right. Maybe that, too, is optimistic on my part. Either way, you figure that he's gonna be Montreal's captain as a third-pair guy making close to $7.9 million against the cap until 2026, well before it's 2026.

And you also figure this is the team saying, "Ah, well, yeah we might have blown it with this trade in terms of talent but this guy ended up being Captain Of The Montreal Canadiens so actually that's us winning the trade. PK wasn't captain was he? No further questions!"

6. The numbers game

It seems that, very quickly, Toronto learned what happened when you have a lot of guys who are good enough to play at the NHL level.

They had to trade Connor Carrick , who's pretty good, for basically nothing, then lost two goalies on waivers. Cost of doing business when you have the money and will to sign a bunch of Quadruple-A guys and can only carry 23 on the main roster.

You kinda have to think they can't even be mad. When you have Garrett Sparks and Calvin Pickard on your AHL team you're basically asking for trouble on the waiver wire when you need to make roster moves.

That's life for the top 10 percent, I guess. Guarantee anyone who is upset about this is also some Ancap Taxation-Is-Theft psycho. I can't feel bad for a team with Matthews-Tavares-Kadri down the middle.

5. Being actually almost too smart, if you think about it

Okay so the other thing with the Habs this week, beyond the captaincy decision, is only this low because I have to think it's tongue in cheek or fake or something. Marc Bergevin, though, has said a slew of absolutely incredible things the last few days.

For one, he said he doesn't need to be surrounded by yes men and likes to be challenged. Well, ask that guy who prepped the "Trading Subban for Weber is insanely dumb" report and, like PK, was with the Predators a few months later if that's true.

But the real big whopper he said was something along the lines of "I know I've been criticized for my trades but it was because I thought everyone would see they were good hockey trades, so in the future I'll explain them better."

And it's like dude please sit with me in a room and I don't even have to record it or anything, and you can explain to me how the Subban trade, or the Sergachev trade, or the Galchenyuk trade, or the Pacioretty trade, all made sense and were not in furtherance of the decline of the organization. I would love to hear him say to me in painful detail why actually he's really a genius and it's the public (and the on-ice results) that don't get it.

That would be a fun afternoon, for me.

4. Putting new signings to good use

So it appears right now that the Flames will open the season with Elias Lindholm as the right wing on the first line and Michael Frolik in the same slot on the second. Meaning new $5.75-million-AAV signing, James Neal , is starting the season next to Dillon Dube and Derek Ryan.

Which, hey, you don't break up the 3M line (and in fact I wrote this summer that they shouldn't do that), and I get why you don't put a second trigger man on the Gaudreau/Monahan line if you figure you want Monahan shooting the puck for you. I get that. But like, why spend $5.75 million on a guy you're gonna put with a dude whose career high is 38 points and a rookie in his DY+3? Does that make sense to you? To have a $10-million third line?

I mean, if so, okay, but there's a reason this team is probably gonna miss the playoffs and it's because that weird management decisions are all too common in Calgary.

3. Better broadcasts

Yesterday, MSG announced that AJ Mleczko will be a talking head on about 20 of its Islanders broadcasts, and that's a good thing. One problem I noticed a lot in the preseason (because NHL Network often just picked up local broadcasts) was that almost all of them was one old white guy talking to another old white guy — who used to Play The Game — or two about everything.

Mleczko was on a few NBC games last year and acquitted herself well enough to get a bigger role. Thank god. Hockey has an old white guy problem and getting Mleczko involved, as someone who can talk credibly about the sport without being like, "Now when I was on the North Stars in 1985," at the beginning of every sentence, that's a good thing.

2. Waiver claims

Two other waiver claims yesterday I thought were good: Buffalo taking Remi Elie from Dallas, and Washington snatching Dmitrij Jaskin out of St. Louis.

Elie just seems like a decent depth bet to get for free, going to a team that could probably use a little extra depth, and Jaskin is an elite defensive skater who really only got squeezed out because everyone thought he should have more offensive upside.

I can see Jaskin in particular really working out; Elie's a gamble as to whether he's a long-term NHL contributor, but there's no question that Jaskin helps most teams in the league situationally.

1. Hockey starts tonight

Did you see this? Did you hear about this?

(Not ranked this week: Shaving.

Joe, I gotta say, I'm disappointed. Not ready to hear excuses at this time.)

Ryan Lambert is a Yahoo! Sports hockey columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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