The Nhl Just Cut Every Coachs Runway In Half

Summary

The NHL just cut every coach's runway in half.

Six practices. Four preseason games. No mandatory fitness testing. Anyone with 100+ NHL games capped at two exhibitions. That's the entire camp under the new CBA — and you've got to install a forecheck, a neutral zone, a breakout, a power play, a penalty kill, and find out what your rookies are, before the games start counting.

And it happened in the one year where almost nobody in this league knows who they are yet.

Here's the part nobody's talking about: this doesn't hurt everybody the same. Carolina stood pat and led the league in offensive zone time five years running — they don't need six practices to remember what they are. Florida gets Barkov and both Tkachuks back healthy. Those teams walk into October with a massive head start.

It's the new coaches it hurts. And it murders prospects.

I'm a Hockey Canada high performance coach. I've built season after season at the AA, Western Canadian Games and junior levels — and the NHL is bigger, faster, harder, and they're doing it with a third of the time I got.

Covered in this video: what the new CBA actually removed and who it costs; Mike Babcock walking into Edmonton with two years left on McDavid and a room that's been through it; Ryan Craig's first NHL job in Vegas after two coaching changes in ten months; why Hellebuyck is getting bad offers for a Hart and Vezina winner and what that says about how GMs value goalies now; why Nikishin's leverage isn't what he thinks it is; how Minnesota asks a room to go all-in on a defenceman who might be a rental; why Montreal signing Chris Kreider isn't a depth move; whether clean hockey beats playoff violence or whether Carolina was the exception; and what four preseason games does to Gavin McKenna in the one market where nobody gets protected.

And the thing at the end of it all — Ken Holland's American Thanksgiving rule. Since the wild card format started in 2013-14, excluding the COVID years, 77% of teams in a playoff spot on American Thanksgiving make the playoffs. Three to five fall out every year, so there's a door. But that's the window.

Roughly twenty games to establish who you are. Same door. Same date. Half the runway.

So when your team starts 3-6 and everybody says it's early — it's not early anymore. It's the shortest October this league has ever run.

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timestamps

00:00 — The League Cut Everyone's Runway In Half

01:51 — What The New CBA Actually Took Away

04:07 — The Coaches With No Time: Babcock, Craig, Laviolette

05:31 — Hellebuyck And Nikishin: Two Trade Requests, No Deal

07:19 — Gauthier And Anaheim's Cap Problem

07:43 — Minnesota Might Be Renting Quinn Hughes

08:22 — Montreal Signed The Man They Booed For 12 Years

08:55 — Clean Hockey vs The Florida Panthers

11:34 — Gavin McKenna Has Four Games To Prove It

13:35 — Waggle Golf

14:21 — The Teams Who Already Know Who They Are

15:55 — The American Thanksgiving Window

16:59 — Outro