An Auston Matthews trade, play-in rounds, team chaos rooting guide, and more: DGB mailbag -

Are you ready for NHL opening night, part six or whatever we’re up to now? Me too. But in the meantime, let’s get in a quick mailbag before some teams play their third game and we all start forming conclusions that we’ll cling to all season long.

Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and style.

MLB’s wild-card weekend was fun and the NBA play-in tournament has been a winner. Shouldn’t the NHL follow suit? – Andy B.

Absolutely. The NBA and MLB now both have play-in rounds, and the NFL kind of does too if you count the wild-card weekend. The NHL is the only one of the big four leagues that still has every postseason team start on equal footing.

I’ve made the case for the play-in before, most recently on the podcast with Ian a few weeks back. The NHL should steal the NBA’s format, where the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds play each other in a single game with the winner advancing and the loser facing the winner of a showdown between No. 9 and No. 10. That means the two higher seeds get two chances to win their way in and only miss if they go 0-for-2, while the task is tougher but not impossible for the lower two teams who each need back-to-back wins.

Today, all that really matters is making the playoffs, since home ice barely has an impact in the playoffs anymore and seeding doesn’t matter at all. Sometimes that means we get a “race” like last year’s East, where we knew all eight teams by Christmas and could basically tune out the entire conference until April. Under a play-in format, you’d have more teams in the mix, plus pressure points at eighth (to get the double chance at advancing), sixth (to avoid the play-in altogether), and first and second (to get to play a team that just survived the play-in rather than a rested opponent).

I know that some fans don’t want to “expand” the playoffs, so don’t — we can do like the NBA and just say that the play-in determines who makes the official playoffs, which will still have the same 16 teams it’s had for decades. It will apparently never happen because Gary Bettman is weird about this.

So once again, the NHL will dawdle behind everyone else, and hockey fans will watch all the other sports have more fun than we do while we mumble about tradition.

You are named Commissioner. You negotiate that you can arbitrarily make one trade “for the good of the game.” What do you do? Caveat — it must be balanced. — Rodney P.

You’re trying to bait me into saying something like “send Connor McDavid to a big-market American team,” and it won’t work. Not that a move like that wouldn’t be great for the league’s bottom line. Any reasonable person understands that four ping pong balls in 2015 cost the league hundreds of millions of dollars by sending its most entertaining player to a smaller Canadian market. I just don’t want to go with an obvious answer. And more importantly, I don’t feel like dealing with angry Oilers fans for the rest of the week. Sorry guys, I’ve got my hands full with Kings fans, my Smythe Division dance card is full right now.

Now, onto my real trade. You said I can only make one, but you didn’t say it could only involve two teams, so you know I’m going all NBA on this one. That’s right, it’s a five-way deal, and it plays out like this.

To the Coyotes: Auston Matthews

To the Blackhawks: Arizona’s unprotected first, which I will rig to be No. 1, and the Sabres’ top-10 protected first

To the Sabres: Patrick Kane, Jakob Chychrun and Seth Jones at 33 percent retained

To the Islanders: Owen Power and the Hawks’ unprotected first, which I will rig to be No. 2

To the Maple Leafs: Mathew Barzal at 50 percent retained, Ilya Sorokin and a fourth-round pick because all of these fake trades have to have a fourth-round pick thrown in somewhere.

Let’s unpack this. I’m assuming that the very first thing I have to do as NHL commission is take a mysterious pill that convinces me that the Coyotes must stay in Arizona forever, so we might as well make sure they succeed by giving them the greatest local superstar they’ll ever see. If it doesn’t work with Matthews in Arizona, we can all finally move on. (By the way, remember when the Coyotes didn’t just say that they wouldn’t trade Oliver Ekman-Larsson for the Matthews pick, but acted insulted by the idea and made fun of Canadian media for even asking about it? Those were good times.)

Meanwhile, the Leafs get cap space, a replacement center who’s already signed to what’s now a bargain extension, and the long-term answer in goal that they’ve spent decades looking for. This trade makes them worse and maybe even closes their contender window, but that’s fine because I’m the commissioner of the whole league so I might as well make 31 fan bases happy.

Chicago gets Connor Bedard, meaning the most marketable sure-thing to come along since McDavid ends up in a big American market instead of in some frozen Canadian wasteland where ESPN will never know he exists. The Sabres get a hometown star in Kane and two good defensemen on affordable deals, instantly making one of my very best TV markets relevant for the first time in a decade. And the Islanders get forced into the rebuild they obviously need, meaning they should be ready to contend again in a few years when the Rangers are taking a step back and I need my New York market to stay strong.

Boom. A five-way blockbuster that makes at least some sense for every team and works under the cap, proving that NHL GMs are liars and their job isn’t that hard after all. Really the only downside is that I’ve got Chicago and New York both eating big chunks of retained salary that could eventually limit their ability to contend, but that’s fine because I’m the NHL and I can just arbitrarily make stuff up to fix cap problems for the teams I like.

Would this trade ever happen? No. But could it happen? Also no. Will all five of these fan bases say they would never even consider making this deal? Somehow yes. Is it too early in the morning for me to be drinking this heavily? This press conference is over, let’s move on.

Anyone can ask which teams will be first or last in the NHL, but I want to know: Which teams are going to be the most average this year? And why will it be Winnipeg? — Luke A.

Winnipeg is a solid choice, although it feels like there’s a wide range of plausible outcomes there, ranging from Rick Bowness getting everyone going and the results living up to the talent to a total implosion with guys dropkicking each other in the dressing room.

The oddsmakers seem to think it may be the Blues, and boy I’m sure that fan base is dealing with that just fine. The Stars seems like a possibility, and maybe the Kings. But I’ll go with Nashville, who were almost there last year and will probably be like three points worse this year, just to make sure they stay in their zone of perpetually being too good to rebuild but not good enough to scare anyone.

While we’re at it, doesn’t it seem like there’s a really short list of teams that could be average? There’s the usual six to 10 true contenders, a bunch of teams that are going to be very bad (intentionally or otherwise), a few long-suffering teams like Detroit and Ottawa that would consider average to be a step forward, and then the five teams I just mentioned. In a league that loves its parity, this is shaping up as a year where the middle-of-the-pack won’t be as crowded as usual.

Would you rather see Auston Matthews break Wayne Gretzky’s/Alex Ovechkin’s goal-scoring record, or the Leafs win the Stanley Cup? — Todd G.

First of all, Matthews just got traded to the Coyotes, try to keep up. But sure, let’s put him back on the Leafs as we ponder this one.

But we don’t have to ponder too long, because it’s the Stanley Cup. Easy call here. Didn’t even have to think about it. If you’re a fan of a team that’s never won a Cup in your lifetime, I think that has to trump any other cool thing that they could do.

It does get interesting if you’re a fan of a team that already has a few Cups, though. If you’re a Penguins fan that’s already seen three championships in the cap era, would you pass on one more if it meant you got to see Sidney Crosby do something historic? I think you might. If you’re a Lightning fan and you were offered the chance to see Nikita Kucherov go nuts and set the single-season scoring record this year, I think you take that over another title. Even a one-Cup team might consider it. I’m guessing Caps fans would prefer to see Ovechkin break the goals record, even if it meant waiting a generation for another championship.

But for those of us who’ve never even seen our team win one? Nope, we need that before we get caught up in some individual record.

Since we’re doing Maple Leafs Stanley Cup hypotheticals, let’s try one more…

Imagine you meet a time traveler from the year 2037. You try to ask questions about the future, but they’re limited in how much they can tell you for paradox, quantum gravity, timey-wimey, etc. reasons. But one question they can answer, only with a yes or a no, is this one: Will the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup at least once in the next 15 years?

Do you want to hear the answer? – Josh P.

Man. This is like the hockey equivalent of asking if you’d want to know how and when you’ll die. It’s tempting, but some things might be better left as mysteries.

My first thought is yes, I want to know the answer, because if you tell me that the Leafs aren’t winning a Cup in the next 15 years then I can check out on this team. Just do the next decade-plus as a neutral fan. It would be freeing. And it would probably drastically improve my mental health

But then again, as I’ve argued before, there’s more to being a fan than just seeing your team win a championship. There has to be. Hockey fans are pushed to act like anything short of a Cup is a failure, but that way of thinking dooms 97 percent of the league to misery every year. Even if the Leafs don’t win it all, they could still have some big runs, or some fun teams, or at least a few cool moments. Wouldn’t I still want to stick around for that? Or is that stuff only a worthy consolation prize if there’s still hope of something more?

In the end, I don’t think I want to be burdened with that knowledge. Not right now, at least. But if you left me a little “if you want to know” button behind a glass case, I doubt I’d last long before I caved in a pressed it. Probably after they blow Game 6 of this year’s Ottawa series.

What NHL postseason loss would you compare the Jays recent collapse to? — Brad

First of all, thanks to everyone who took the time to send me “It was 8-1” tweets on Saturday. Very cool. I really enjoy our online interactions.

But no, the closest comparison to what happened to the Jays can’t be the 2013 Leafs, because that was a winner-take-all game, and also that Leafs team was bad and didn’t deserve to win. Instead, I think we need a mid-series collapse in the first round featuring a young team with talent that hasn’t won much yet, preferably facing another team that hasn’t won and that they should probably beat.

That’s the Miracle on Manchester, right? The Oilers blow a 5-0 lead to lose to the Kings. I feel like it works better, because it captures that same “OK we’ve got this game won, we’re already thinking ahead to wrapping the series up next time, oh wait this is all going off the rails” vibe.

Am I just saying that because the Oilers went on to win a bunch of championships and so this game didn’t end up being as bad as it could have been, and I’m trying to manifest the same thing for the Jays? Yes, absolutely I am, thanks for noticing.

As a diehard fan of Team Chaos, what should I be rooting for this year? — Ryan H.

Love it. Let’s throw out a few ideas to end the mailbag.

First, you want the race to the bottom to get wild. We know teams are tanking, and there are at least two sure things waiting at the top of the draft. If that number expands to three, look out. We have a commissioner who insults our intelligence by saying that tanking isn’t real, so let’s see what it looks like when teams really go for it. I want a late-season Hawks/Coyotes game where both teams are just blatantly shooting the puck at their own nets. I want goalies being pulled in overtime just to dodge the loser point. Win three in a row and then fire your coach and put your starting goalie on waivers. Let’s have teams intentionally going $1 over the cap and staying there until the league makes them forfeit games. Then when it’s all over, Bedard pulls a Lindros and refuses to join the team that drafts him.

At the top of the standings, I think you want to see teams like the Avalanche, Leafs and Golden Knights all needing goaltending upgrades when they hit the trade deadline. Let’s get some bidding wars going over Jonathan Quick or whichever other rental has a Cup ring. Mix in Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Jakob Chychrun, Matt Dumba, Vladimir Tarasenko and screw it, Ryan O’Reilly too. Also, David Pastrnak declares his intention to test the UFA market.

From there, we get the most unexpected playoffs possible, which is to say one where all the favorites win and it feels like the regular season actually mattered. The Stanley Cup Final comes down to the Oilers and Hurricanes, in a battle of rejected Leafs goalies that makes everyone point and laugh at Toronto. Then Campbell gets hurt in game one just like Dwayne Roloson, the Hurricanes win in seven, and Canada breaks off and forms its own hockey league where they’re actually allowed to win sometimes.

(And then that five-way trade happens.)

(Photo: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)

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