Should the NHL start a Summer League?

The NHL absolutely dies news-wise in the summer, but one way to rectify that would be to add a Summer League

The NBA has transformed into a 24/7, 365 sport over the past decade. The Finals roll into the draft which rolls into free agency which rolls into Summer League and then, before you know it, training camp is a month and a half away. Summer League has become incredibly fun to watch, as teams fill out their rosters with first- and second-year players; there are highly-touted prospects, second-round picks, and also undrafted players and guys who skipped college altogether. It’s just all around fun, giving fans a chance to see if their favorite team’s prospects stand out, showing who has become better from year one to year two, and providing less-heralded players a chance to show what they got.

Then you have the good ole NHL, which basically shuts down from July 4th to September 1st. Sure, RFAs will go to arbitration and sign deals, and every now and then some big-time trades will occur (looking at you Erik Karlsson). But for the most part, it’s roadkill-level dead. Cody McLeod signing a one-year deal turned Rangers Twitter into some Lord of the Flies shit yesterday; imagine we had a two-to-three week tournament in mid-July featuring our team’s favorite prospects? We’d eat that shit up. A chance for the optimists to get overly excited and for the pessimists to tell everyone to calm down? I’d hate to see that on my timeline.

Does the NHL have some stuff similar to a Summer League? Absolutely. The Traverse City Tournament is always fun to watch, and teams have development camps throughout the summer. There’s also Da Beauty League (which just inked a deal with Adidas, revealing some fire jerseys ) which consists of young players and veterans. Da Beauty League, while mad fun to watch, is actually more of a Rec League; it’s definitely competitive, but guys are going to have some fun and fuck around more than play with a purpose. Here are the rules, per DaBeautyLeague.com:

Quick aside: Two (2) 23-minute halves just sounds horrific to me, an average white male in average-to-below-average shape. I played in a Rec League (I just called it pickup cause as everyone knows, I’m a basketball guy) in college and we played three 25-minute periods with a running clock. After a one (1) period, I felt like I did the Tour de France, a Spartan competition and the Boston Marathon. How did I feel after three of those periods? No, I’m seriously asking, because I blacked out midway through the second every time.

But none of those options fit the mold of the NBA Summer League. Only a handful of teams participate in the Traverse City Tournament; eight last year and in 2016. Da Beauty League, while a great idea and a cool-ass product, isn’t overly competitive.

So let’s get down to semantics, folks. The NBA Summer League features all 30 teams. There are actually four different summer leagues, but the Las Vegas one is where all the teams converge. The games are televised on NBATV, ESPN and ESPN2. There are 82 games total, with each team playing four games. After their four games, the teams are seeded 1–30 for a single-elimination tournament with the first and second seed getting two-round byes. Since the players are so young and adjusting to the NBA style/rules, players are allowed 10 fouls, making it almost impossible to foul out. There are four 10-minute quarters to help the games go faster. And, as a reminder: it’s mainly first- and second-year players participating. Every now and then you’ll get a third-year guy playing, but for the most part, it’s mainly first- and second-year players.

For the NHL Summer League, I’d wait until they add their 32nd team before instituting it (31 is such a terrible number; Seattle needs to hurry their ass up and get here). Like my Rec League from back at Cuse, there’d be three 25-minute periods with a running clock. It would be five-on-five (people suggested four-on-four or three-on-three, which would be cool, but defeats the purpose of seeing how players react in game situations) with regular NHL rules, such as offsides, icings and penalties (If the NHL wanted to test out rule changes, they could use Summer League as their guinea pig). Team’s could dress up to 30 players if they choose.

Two of the bigger differences between the NBA and the NHL (besides being completely different sports, of course) are: 1) The NHL has five more rounds in their draft, so team’s have a shitton of prospects; and 2) Rookie contracts are much, much different. For the NHL Summer League, it’d consist of players on their ELCs or pending RFAs.

Each team would play three games over the course of a week. There would be off-days between games, since I know hockey is such a physically demanding sport and players need time to recover. The teams would then be ordered from 1–32 for a single-elimination tournament that would look like this:

Seeding would go by points, and since there would be ties in the standings, goal differential would be the main tiebreaker. Goals for would be the next, with goal against following, and if god forbid it goes past that, we’ll get our Harvey Dent on and flip a god damn coin.

The main point of all this is the same as the NBA: to get a look at your team’s younger players against their peers. Right now, Kevin Knox, the Knicks’ number-nine pick this year, has looked like a star compared to everyone else. That’s what you’d want to see from the Rangers’ recent first-round picks like Vitali Kravtsov, Lias Andersson, Filip Chyti, K’Andre Miller and Nils Lundkvist.

NBA Summer League also lets teams look at their returning prospects after a year in the league. A guy entering his second pro season SHOULD look better and more dominant than everyone else; he’s had a full season to adjust to the league and has been on a pro-level training regiment. An example of this for the Rangers would be Pavel Buchnevich . Say the Rangers and Buchnevich decide for him to play in the NHL Summer League. Since he’s a good player—which I believe he is , despite slanderous allegations suggesting otherwise on Twitter—he SHOULD stick out and dominate his compatriots at Summer League. He can also get into his bag a little more and show off some facets of his game that he’s been working. The Rangers don’t have a ton of guys like this, but in addition to Buchnevich, Brady Skjei and Jimmy Vesey are other players of his elk (not in terms of talent; y’all motherfuckers won’t catch me slipping).

There’s also a big opportunity for guys fighting for roster spots or trying to prove they’ve improved since being drafted . Rangers players like this include: Vinni Lettieri, Boo Nieves, Ryan Gropp, John Gilmour, Sean Day, Libor Hajek, Ty Ronning, Tim Gettinger, Brandon Crawley, John Gilmour, Yegor Rykov, Alexandar Georgiev and Tyler Wall. Lettieri (who had a wicked snipe in Da Beauty League the other night) comes to mind specifically here, especially since he had a brief NHL-stint and many, myself included, thought he should’ve gotten more burn toward the end of the season. What better way to prove you should get a spot next year then going out and dominating players of similar standing and even those of higher stature, especially when you have a clean slate with a new coach coming in?

As an annual participant in the Traverse City Tournament, we don’t have to go galaxy-brain when thinking about what the Rangers roster would look like. But for shits and gigs, here’s a mockup of what the Rangers’ Summer League roster might look like:

I threw Buchnevich in there just because I mentioned him earlier, but it’d be unlikely he’d play in something like this since he’s proved himself as an NHL player (there you go again shitting on the Buch-man Fitz). The rest of the guys are all prospects/guys fighting for roster spots next year.

Some fun possibilities can arise here: the NHL Network and NBCSN can air games; AHL, development and assistant coaches can get to know their current/future players better, and work on their craft as well; players can form chemistry with prospective teammates; players can get a feel for the style their coaches want them to play; guys can play in situations they might not get to play in during their AHL/junior/college seasons; and it gives us fans a chance to see these guys play more. I trust prospect people, and I take their words on these guys, but I’d also like to see them play with my own eyes more. It’s tough to catch CHL and OHL and college games during the NHL season. But in July, when there’s literally nothing to watch except baseball? Give me it, and give me it right now kind sir.

When I floated this out on Twitter a few days ago, there were some valid concerns brought up: hockey season are long, so getting guys to agree to play would be tough; there’s injury risk (counterpoint to that: there’s injury risk literally every time you step on the ice); it’s in the middle of the summer when players are training or on vacation. There were also some terrible arguments (yuck) against it, such as it being an idea borrowed from basketball or that stuff like this exists already (on a significantly smaller scale).

I’m biased, but I think an NHL Summer League is fantastic idea. To be frank, I don’t see a downside to it, other than injury risk (but again, you run that risk every time you step on the ice). The NHL is never forward thinking like this, making the probability of it happening like -22.4395%. I’m just glad I got to write this before another Canadien blog steals it from under my nose.