While the attention of many Canadian sports fans will be squarely focused on Yankee Stadium and the Toronto Blue Jays this week, the National Hockey League slides into view when its 109th season begins Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Although Canadian clubs won\u2019t take the ice until Wednesday \u2013 when the Toronto Maple Leafs \u2018welcome\u2019 the Montreal Canadiens to Scotiabank Arena, and the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames renew hostilities \u2013 it\u2019s a season with more storylines than usual, as an Olympic tournament, a potential championship three-peat and Canada\u2019s ongoing quest to end its three-decade-plus Stanley Cup drought are all on the horizon.<\/p>\n
Famed for his leadership \u2013 in both NHL and international arenas \u2013 the former Chicago Blackhawks captain returns to the league after two years out tending to his health. Now 37, the Winnipeg-born centre signed with his hometown club on an incentive-laden contract to get the reigning Presidents\u2019 Trophy winners over the postseason hump. For a team that lost a little explosive offence when Nicolaj Ehlers signed with Carolina, there is hope that Toews can chip in up front as well as in the dressing room.<\/p>\n
Assuming Toews\u2019s health can hold up \u2013 he\u2019s already day-to-day entering the season \u2013 the three-time Stanley Cup champion will combine with 97-point scorer Kyle Connor, and Hart and Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender Connor Hellebuyck to drive the NHL\u2019s oldest \u2013 average age of 30.17 years \u2013 and most experienced \u2013 13,000-plus regular-season games \u2013 roster deeper into the playoffs. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s always tough to get over a breakup, and the departure of the fifth-highest scorer in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs was exactly that, with the winger engineering a sign-and-trade that saw him land in Las Vegas for the next eight years. While head coach Craig Berube is happy that he doesn\u2019t have to hear the words \u2018Core Four\u2019 any more, the theme for this year\u2019s Leafs team is addition by subtraction. <\/p>\n
No one can doubt Marner\u2019s regular-season impact, from his special-teams play to his club-leading 102 points, but a trio of newcomers \u2013 Nicolas Roy, Dakota Joshua and Matias Maccelli \u2013 cost a combined US$9.675-million under the cap, which is US$1.2-million less than Marner\u2019s salary last year. That added depth will help Berube to further instill his north-south philosophy in his second year at the helm. <\/p>\n
The Leafs will also need a bounceback year from captain Auston Matthews, who managed a \u2018paltry\u2019 \u2013 by his standards \u2013 33 goals due to injury last year, while William Nylander \u2013 who led the team with 45 goals \u2013 will need to maintain his level of offensive wizardry.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back Stanley Cup final losses would scar any player, but as the heart and soul of the Oilers, Connor McDavid seemed to take the defeats harder than most. The Edmonton captain is fully aware of his place in the sport\u2019s history, and knows that he needs at least one ring \u2013 preferably more \u2013 to assume his place on hockey\u2019s Mount Rushmore. McDavid will also be cognizant that no team since the Original Six era has made it back to a third straight final after losing the first two. <\/p>\n
Connor McDavid puts the Edmonton Oilers on notice \u2013 be good or else<\/a><\/p>\n But after inadvertently playing on the anxieties of the Oilers faithful all summer long, the 28-year-old decided that Edmonton is indeed the best place to continue to chase that elusive championship \u2013 for the next three seasons anyway \u2013 by signing a two-year extension<\/a> on Monday. That he did so for US$1.5-million less annually than teammate Leon Draisaitl \u2013 and US$4.5-million less than Minnesota\u2019s Kirill Kaprizoff \u2013 shows that winning is truly the only thing that matters to him.<\/p>\n However, given the inconsistency in net, and the loss of veteran players \u2013 Evander Kane, Corey Perry and Connor Brown have all moved on \u2013 Edmonton will be hard-pressed to make it back to the Cup final, let alone win it. <\/p>\n Having ended an eight-year playoff drought last spring \u2013 before falling to the Maple Leafs in the first round \u2013 some of the pressure will be off in the nation\u2019s capital. But that brief stint in hockey\u2019s limelight will have served as a consequential appetizer for some of the young talent on this roster. <\/p>\n Having spent years looking up at the likes of the Maple Leafs, Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning in the Atlantic Division standings, captain Brady Tkachuk and leading scorer Tim St\u00fctzle will be confident that the team\u2019s outlook has been altered. Goaltender Linus Ullmark certainly added some poise on the back end, while blueliner Jake Sanderson used last season as his coming-out party, highlighted by his overtime winner against the Leafs in the playoffs. <\/p>\n Much of the talk this off-season has centred on the chatter around the possibility that the three Hughes brothers \u2013 Canucks captain Quinn and New Jersey Devils pair Jack and Luke \u2013 might one day skate together in the NHL. Given that Jack and Luke are both on eight-year deals \u2013 the latter signed his just last week \u2013 and Quinn is an unrestricted free agent in just two years, the prudent money would be on the Canucks star heading east. <\/p>\n While Vancouver can do little to persuade its captain to stay if he has his heart set on a family reunion, it does have two more seasons in which to state its case. A good start would be to avoid the soap opera of last year, when a feud between star centres J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson led to the jettisoning of the former. That chaos all added up to missing the playoffs, and saw head coach Rick Tocchet walk out the door to join the Philadelphia Flyers, with Adam Foote taking over behind the bench. <\/p>\n The Canadiens\u2019 well-advertised rebuild finally bore fruit last year, with the club making the playoffs for the first time in four years. Despite a minus-20 goal differential on the season and sitting second-last in the NHL in early December, Montreal rode a furious finish to get across the line, taking 65 per cent of the points available to them in March and April to become the last team admitted to Lord Stanley\u2019s spring dance. <\/p>\n While that will have eased pressure on head coach Martin St. Louis slightly, it\u2019s also heightened expectations in Montreal, where the dream of adding another championship banner is never far away. The Habs will benefit from the arrival of Noah Dobson on the blueline, while up front, a full season of rookie Ivan Demidov already has the Bell Centre faithful salivating, with hopes high of him giving the team back-to-back Calder Trophy triumphs after Lane Hutson took home the hardware in June. <\/p>\n There\u2019s no doubt that the rise of the 24-year-old goaltender was the biggest success story in Calgary last season. The California native finished runner-up to Hutson for the Calder Trophy, and even received one third-place vote for the Vezina Trophy after winning 29 of 53 starts in his rookie campaign. But it wasn\u2019t enough to get the Flames back into the postseason. Despite finishing with more points than two Eastern Conference playoff teams, Calgary lost out to St. Louis on a tiebreaker.<\/p>\n In the ultracompetitive Western Conference, the Flames will be hard-pressed to get any closer this season. Only five clubs scored fewer goals than them last year \u2013 and the team had the NHL\u2019s second-worst shooting percentage \u2013 so barring an influx of more accurate forwards, Wolf will be relied upon to be even better than he was last year for the team to have any shot.<\/p>\n Around the leagueOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Former members of Canada’s 2018 World Juniors hockey team, from left, Alex Formenton, Cal Foote, Michael McLeod, Dillon Dube and Carter Hart. The players, who were acquitted in the Hockey Canada sexual-assault trial, are all eligible to sign with NHL teams from October 15 .Nicole Osborne\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n Hockey Canada Five<\/p>\n The five players who were acquitted in the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial in July are all eligible to sign with NHL teams<\/a> from Oct. 15 \u2013 with a return to play from Dec. 1. The teams which once employed Carter Hart, Dillon Dube, Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton and Cal Foote have all decided against revisiting those relationships, with some talking about \u201cfresh starts\u201d for their former players. <\/p>\n Olympic ideal<\/p>\n While last year\u2019s season was interrupted by a return to best-on-best hockey in the form of the 4 Nations Face-Off, this campaign will finally end the NHL\u2019s 12-year absence from the Olympics. Next February\u2019s Games in Italy should add a little spice to the season\u2019s early going, with a few dozen players \u2013 maybe more in Canada\u2019s case \u2013 out to prove their worth in the eyes of their national federation. It should also make for something of a compressed schedule, with more than two-thirds of the NHL season taking place between now and Feb. 4, when the league breaks for the Games.<\/p>\n