I tried to be nice.<\/p>\n
I really did. Last week, I wrote a piece in which I offered thanks to all 32 NHL teams<\/a>. It was pure positivity, nothing but puppies and rainbows. Was it out of character? Maybe, but we\u2019re allowed to try new things. And I was trying something very new: going an entire article without complaining.<\/p>\n And as I should have known would happen, a whole bunch of you responded with: Cool, now flip the script and do the negative version.<\/p>\n Fine. You win. Here\u2019s one reason to say \u201cno thanks\u201d to every team. See if I ever try to be nice again.<\/p>\n Anaheim Ducks<\/p>\n No thanks for that time you set your mascot on fire<\/a>. It probably seemed like a cool idea at the time, but mascots are not for grilling.<\/p>\n Boston Bruins<\/p>\n No thanks for no longer posting behind-the-scenes videos of your trades. You did it once, and it was the single funniest piece of hockey content in a decade<\/a>, and you can\u2019t give us all that kind of taste and then stop. We need Denis Leary narrating every trade the franchise makes, if only so we can see how hard they have to work to keep from laughing whenever they make a deal with the Toronto Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n Buffalo Sabres<\/p>\n No thanks for abandoning your war against drugs. You made at least two videos in the 1980s telling kids not to do drugs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since then? Silence. Have you changed your mind, Buffalo Sabres? Are you pro-kids doing drugs now? If not, there\u2019s only one way to prove it: Get Tage Thompson and Owen Power a lyric sheet and some microphones and get filming.<\/p>\n Calgary Flames<\/p>\n No thanks for having the most messed-up system for retired numbers in the entire league. So, let\u2019s get this straight: Hall of Famers Al MacInnis and Joe Nieuwendyk are both \u201chonored\u201d but not retired, even though nobody wears MacInnis\u2019 No. 2, but lots of players get Nieuwendyk\u2019s No. 25. Meanwhile, Mike Vernon and Miikka Kiprusoff have their numbers retired, even though neither was in the Hall of Fame at the time and Kiprusoff still isn\u2019t (and won\u2019t be). Guys, we\u2019ve been over this<\/a>. Get it figured out, please.<\/p>\n Carolina Hurricanes<\/p>\n No thanks to Rod Brind\u2019Amour for making me feel bad about myself. You go ahead and be \u201cRod the Bod\u201d at 55 years old, I\u2019ll stick with \u201cSean the Guy Who Wrenched His Back Reaching for His Seat Belt.\u201d Nobody said nicknames had to rhyme.<\/p>\n Chicago Blackhawks<\/p>\n No thanks for spelling your own name wrong for 60 years, then subtly fixing it in 1986 and hoping we wouldn\u2019t notice. I\u2019ll be honest, I respect it \u2014 let\u2019s just say I\u2019ve had a few typos in my day, too. But for some reason, Hockey Reference insists on treating the Black Hawks and the Blackhawks like two different teams, and this bothers me way more than it should. And it\u2019s all your fault.<\/p>\n Colorado Avalanche<\/p>\n No thanks for matching the Ryan O\u2019Reilly offer sheet in 2013, depriving us of what would have been the single greatest transaction in NHL history<\/a>.<\/p>\n Columbus Blue Jackets<\/p>\n No thanks for that cannon. Specifically, for that cannon during the 2015 All-Star Game, which featured 29 goals. Ten years later, some of us still have nightmares. Did that stupid cannon cause all of my hair loss over the decade to come? I can\u2019t prove it, but it\u2019s a plausible theory.<\/p>\n The cannon in Columbus claimed another victim last night as Jakub Dobes was NOT ready for it and got startled \ud83d\ude2d\ud83d\udca3 pic.twitter.com\/0NkQblbRYT<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) November 18, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Dallas Stars<\/p>\n No thanks for the time Brett Hull interfered in a WCW wrestling match<\/a>. How would you like it if the NWO showed up and interfered in one of your hockey games, Brett? Exactly. Just because Chuck Norris, Herschel Walker and Jean-Claude Van Damme are all doing it doesn\u2019t mean you should do it, too.<\/p>\n Detroit Red Wings<\/p>\n No thanks to Dylan Larkin for cheating to break Mike Gartner\u2019s fastest skater record at the skills competition. OK, \u201ccheating\u201d might be a bit strong, since he followed the rules at the time, which allowed him to get a head start<\/a>. But we can all agree any honorable man should have declined the record. By the way, that fake record came in 2016 \u2014 how many times have the hockey gods let the Red Wings back into the playoffs since that season? Interesting. There\u2019s still time to do the right thing, Dylan.<\/p>\n Edmonton Oilers<\/p>\n No thanks for the single most terrifying mascot in all of pro sports. Mascots are supposed to send little children into fits of giggles, not a lifetime of therapy. If Connor McDavid leaves, this is why.<\/p>\n Happy Leap Day birthday to #Oilers<\/a> mascot Hunter, the coolest cat in the National League! \ud83d\ude3a\ud83c\udf82 pic.twitter.com\/DVFPLSqvyo<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) February 29, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Florida Panthers<\/p>\n No thanks for ruining 1990s hockey by clutching-and-grabbing all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, then blaming it on the New Jersey Devils. Oh, really, the team with arguably the greatest goalie of all time and two Hall of Fame defensemen playing 30 minutes a night is hard to score on, that\u2019s wacky. Now watch this expansion roster of plugs and third-liners beat the Pittsburgh Penguins by tackling Mario Lemieux and sitting on him for three periods.<\/p>\n Los Angeles Kings<\/p>\n No thanks for throwing a live chicken on the ice in the middle of play. Although it was cool to find out that, apparently, a live farm animal on the ice is not an automatic stoppage.<\/p>\n Nice cape though.<\/p>\n Minnesota Wild<\/p>\n No thanks for retiring No. 1 for your own fans before you\u2019d even played a game. Nope. Absolutely not. Completely unacceptable. Take it down right now, or be doomed to finish 13th in the standings every single year until the sun explodes.<\/p>\n Montreal Canadiens<\/p>\n No thanks for wearing those awful barber-pole uniforms<\/a>. As a franchise that\u2019s drenched in history \u2014 did you know that? You never bring it up \u2014 you\u2019d think it wouldn\u2019t be that hard to stick to the same basic uniform template. But nope, you have to break out quite possibly the worst uniforms ever worn in an NHL game for a while there.<\/p>\n Nashville Predators<\/p>\n No thanks to Chris Mason, who could have saved us from the debacle that is offside review if he\u2019d just stopped Matt Duchene on that breakaway. Couldn\u2019t you have made one save to prevent a decade of misery? He didn\u2019t even deke! Why are you basically inside your net for the whole play? OK, I get that the answer to that last one is \u201cbecause it was clearly offside,\u201d but that\u2019s no excuse. Play to the whistle.<\/p>\n All I\u2019m saying is that Pekka Rinne would have stopped that.<\/p>\n New Jersey Devils<\/p>\n No thanks for the trapezoid. You find one goalie who can handle the puck like a defenseman, employ him for roughly two decades, and the rest of us suddenly have to take a geometry class to understand the rules.<\/p>\n New York Islanders<\/p>\n No thanks for that brief period where you had a car parked in the stands during all your games. We get it, arenas are tough business, and sometimes you have to take what you can get, even if it involves weird layouts and obstructed seats. That\u2019s no reason to park an SUV next to the goalie and confuse every fan who\u2019s just trying to relax and enjoy a game without having road hockey flashbacks.<\/p>\n New York Rangers<\/p>\n No thanks for ruining the outdoor game concept by being the team that just had to get two in a week back in 2014. That was the year the league decided to hold a staggering six outdoor games, effectively running the concept into the ground in a way it\u2019s only barely recovered from. Also, stop being so precious about being the visitor in outdoor games. \u201cOh, the fine print in my lease says I\u2019m not allowed \u2026\u201d Grow up.<\/p>\n Ottawa Senators<\/p>\n No thanks for breaking the Bizarro-meter. It\u2019s one of my favorite gimmicks every year, but any sense of mystery or suspense has been missing since the Senators earned the first and only perfect score\u00a0in 2018<\/a>. Nobody has come close since. Nobody ever will. Arguing about worst offseasons is like debating the league\u2019s most annoying goal horns: It\u2019s the Senators, then everyone else fighting it out for second place.<\/p>\n Philadelphia Flyers<\/p>\n No thanks for having the most loser points in the cap era<\/a>. Absolutely shameful behaviour, and a valid reason for the hockey gods to hate you<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pittsburgh Penguins<\/p>\n No thanks for allowing this to happen:<\/p>\n You wonder why every second kid today has a peanut allergy? My body would reject peanut butter as well if I\u2019d grown up in a world where Jaromir Jagr might have rubbed it on his groin.<\/p>\n San Jose Sharks<\/p>\n No thanks for that time your mascot got stuck while trying to rappel down from the roof in 1999, delaying the start of the game<\/a> while you piled gym mats under him. Mistakes happen, but it\u2019s been 25 years; you should really figure out a way to get him down by now. He\u2019s starting to smell.<\/p>\n Seattle Kraken<\/p>\n No thanks for being the counter-example to the whole \u201cteams in no-tax states get all the good free agents\u201d argument. Some of us up here in Canada are getting pretty tired of losing all the time, and we need this. We were a few more discount signings away from getting everyone to actually buy in on all this. But no, you had to give all the money to the shambling husk of Chandler Stephenson and ruin the whole thing. Jerks.<\/p>\n St. Louis Blues<\/p>\n No thanks for going overboard on offer sheets in the early \u201990s and basically ruining them for everyone else. Look, we all love offer sheets. But between signing Scott Stevens, then Brendan Shanahan, then Stevens again (in what turned out to be an obvious case of tampering), plus Michel Goulet and Marty McSorley and Petr Nedved and probably me and also you, the Blues pushed the concept to its breaking point. The Stevens debacle is directly to blame for the league\u2019s ditching the player-for-player compensation approach, which was way more fun<\/a>. I admire the effort, but just a little bit of self-control could have gone a long way.<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Lightning<\/p>\n No thanks for starting the trend of NHL teams going with singular names. Sure, I guess it kind of makes sense for a name like Lightning, but you broke the seal and started the trend, and now we have teams named Wild and Kraken.<\/p>\n Toronto Maple Leafs<\/p>\n No thanks for ruining my life.<\/p>\n No thanks for bringing the All-Star Game to the NHL. When it was a one-time benefit for the injured Ace Bailey, sure, it was a good thing. When it inevitably caught on and became an (almost) annual event, it was still fun for a few decades. Now it is not so fun, and nobody can figure out how to fix it, and everyone wants it to go away except for the corporate overlords, who are the only ones who matter.<\/p>\n Utah Mammoth<\/p>\n No thanks for even considering \u201cWasatch\u201d<\/a> as a team name. That\u2019s not even a thing. We get that you were mad because every good name you came up with resulted in somebody immediately suing you<\/a>, but you can\u2019t just slam your face on the keyboard and call whatever the result is a name.<\/p>\n Vancouver Canucks<\/p>\n No thanks for the time you turned Markus Naslund\u2019s number retirement into the single greatest unintentional metaphor in franchise history.<\/p>\n As per number retirement tradition, let’s remember the time the Canucks raised a big frowny face for Markus Naslund. pic.twitter.com\/Xd1oghoyNM<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Down Goes Brown (@DownGoesBrown) January 12, 2015<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Vegas Golden Knights<\/p>\n\n
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