For the first time since USA Hockey started publishing their numbers, player membership is down more than 1%, a decline of over 6000 player memberships compared to the 2018-19 season.
Part of this is certainly due to COVID-19 hitting at the end of the season and shutting down recreational and competitive hockey across the US. This could also be part of the broader story of the decline of youth sports participation across the US and finally reaching hockey.
There were some bright spots. Missouri (+2,087), Florida (+1,061), and Washington State (+876) added the most player memberships since last season. Nevada also added 661 players which is up an incredible 26% season over season. On the opposite side, New York (-3,159), Michigan (-1,807), and Pennsylvania (-1,594) saw the biggest reduction in player memberships.
Growth of Female Hockey Continues
Another bright spot is female hockey continues to grow, adding ~1,300 player memberships compared to last year. The 1,300-player increase was not quite the same pace as the previous three years of the addition of 3,000 players per season, but it was still good for a 1.6% increase. Any increase in sports should be considered significant these days.
Washington State
As noted above, Washington State added 876 player memberships, which is up 8.7% compared to 2018-19 and is the second biggest increase this state has seen since the numbers have been reported.
Much of this growth came from 20+ age group. As more ice comes online in Snoqualmie and Northgate, not to mention of the arrival of the NHL team, we should expect the youth numbers to increase significantly.
If you would like to drill into any state dashboard, you can do so here:
Things are a little lighter on this week’s episode of Sound of Hockey. This week, the guys welcome John Goodwin, one of NHL Seattle’s first Pro Scouts. It’s a great conversation, as John (Goodwin, not Barr) exudes passion for the game. You will definitely appreciate hearing from him.
Also this week, John (Barr, not Goodwin) gives an update on what we can expect when the NHL returns to play, and Andy makes a strong play for stuffed animals in the stands.
Segments this week include Weekly One-Timers and Tweets of the Week.
If there’s one position at which we should be able to predict NHL Seattle’s direction heading into the franchise’s 2021 Expansion Draft, it would be netminder. After all, Vegas’s impending acquisition of Marc-Andre Fleury, then 32 years old, in the lead-up to the Golden Knights’ inaugural season was perhaps the worst-kept secret in all of hockey.
Fleury was coming off a 2016-2017 season in which his Penguins had won the Stanley Cup, but he had lost his job to a man ten years his junior, and one who was making $5 million less per year in Matt Murray. Fleury’s illustrious career in Pittsburgh was quite obviously over, and there simply was no other outcome that could have transpired that offseason, other than him joining the NHL’s 31st team.
Marc-Andre Fleury’s career in Pittsburgh was obviously over prior to his selection by Vegas in the 2017 Expansion Draft. Photo credit Gene J. Puskar, AP.
Alas, at this point in time, things aren’t quite as crystal clear as to who will don the first beautiful set of custom-designed Bauer, CCM, or perhaps even Brian’s goalie gear in Seattle’s TBD colors, and lead the NHL’s 32nd team onto the New Arena at Seattle Center’s ice for puck drop in fall of 2021. In fact, with a year left to go before Seattle’s Expansion Draft, the only thing that makes the goaltender position any more predictable than, say, third-pairing left defense is the fact that the pool of options is simply smaller for backstops.
We can certainly whittle things down a bit by examining the contract situations of teams and goalies across the league. But even then, there’s just a lot of uncertainty, due to a number of outstanding scenarios that will alter the goaltending landscape a bit when the 2019-2020 season officially concludes. Nonetheless, let’s do some digging, and see if we can uncover who will be the first goalie for NHL Seattle.
For your perusal, here are all of the goaltending contract statuses, broken down by division (click each to expand):
OBVIOUS TARGETS
For the sake of whittling, it’s easiest to focus on which teams will likely have a logjam in net when 2021 rolls around.
Perhaps the best example of such a logjam is the New York Rangers. The Rangers are especially interesting, because when the 2019-2020 season concludes, they will have three NHL-quality goalies in Henrik Lundqvist, Igor Shesterkin, and Alexander Georgiev. Georgiev will be a restricted free agent after this season, and Shesterkin will become an RFA after next season. Lundqvist is currently 38 years old, so he obviously doesn’t fit the mold for landing in Seattle, but his contract runs through next season as well. The challenge for New York is how do they keep three NHL goalies through next season? Well, they don’t, so something will have to give there, and even if Lundqvist comes off the roster somehow, either via trade (he has a no movement clause) or retirement, that still leaves Shesterkin and Georgiev. New York cannot protect both, and both are good.Correction: Reader Jason Katinas accurately pointed out that Igor Shesterkin is actually exempt from the Expansion Draft, because like Elvis Merzlikins in Columbus, Shesterkin has only been a North American pro for one year. So, maybe New York isn’t quite as interesting of a scenario as I initially thought.
Pittsburgh has two great young goalies in the aforementioned Murray and Tristan Jarry, who burst onto the scene this season to essentially do to his counterpart what his counterpart did to Fleury in 2016-2017. Jarry had an impressive .921 save percentage and 2.43 GAA, and sometimes looked unbeatable en route to a 20-12-1 record. It would be a little ironic for Pittsburgh to give up a goalie in the Expansion Draft for the second time in a row, but with both Murray and Jarry becoming RFA’s after next season, one will have to either be traded or exposed. My guess is that Pittsburgh will find a way to avoid Fleury 2.0, but we shall see.
Vancouver and Washington are a little different from the others in this lot. Both have bona fide starters in Jacob Markstrom and Braden Holtby respectively, and solid up-and-coming back-ups in Thatcher Demko and Ilya Samsonov. Holtby’s name almost always comes up as the next goalie to experience Fleury’s Expansion Draft fate, and that makes sense. He’s 30 years old, has Samsonov waiting in the wings, and doesn’t have a contract
Braden Holtby’s name always seems to get linked to Seattle, but his contract status makes his availability unlikely. Photo credit NHL.com.
beyond this season. Markstrom—who played in his first All-Star Game this season —has the exact same scenario playing out in Vancouver, except his re-signing there has generally felt like less of a foregone conclusion than Holtby returning to Washington. Frankly, though, I think Holtby or Markstrom ending up in Seattle is unlikely. It just seems farfetched that any team would sign either of these guys to extensions after this season and not figure out a way to protect the asset. If they do both re-sign with their current teams, then look for Seattle to scoop up either Demko or Samsonov.
Also worth lumping in as a potential goalie target is Arizona. Looking at the contract statuses, it’s obvious that Darcy Kuemper will be protected, but Antti Raanta’s deal is up heading into the 2021 offseason, and young Adin Hill will still be in the mix there. Raanta has had a ton of injury issues in his career, but one could see either him or Hill (or both) being available, should Seattle wish to go in one of those directions.
Meanwhile, Columbus seems like a very obvious candidate to cede a goaltender to Seattle, because after signing both of its 26-year-old backstops to extensions this season, Joonas Korpisalo and Elvis Merzlikins are under contract through 2021-2022. However, there’s a wrinkle. Because Merzlikins just started playing pro hockey in North America
Matiss Kivlenieks played six games with the Columbus Blue Jackets and could be available. Photo credit Dan Hickling.
this season, he’s actually exempt from the Expansion Draft. Thus, the likeliest scenario here is that Korpisalo will be protected, and instead, Latvian youngster Matiss Kivlenieks would be exposed. Kivlenieks is still intriguing, as he was thrust into action with Columbus for six games this season with both Korpisalo and Merzlikins simultaneously on the shelf. Kivlenieks performed admirably, with a 1-1-2 record, and 2.95 GAA.
THE UFA CONUNDRUM
Aside from the teams that have multiple contracts to juggle, there are also several goaltenders scattered about the league who will see their contracts expire in the next year. This adds to the murkiness of the expansion pool, because where these goalies land with their next contracts will certainly impact whether or not they will be ripe for Seattle’s picking.
Some names that stick out are Anton Khudobin and Robin Lehner, both of whom will need contracts after this season, and Tuukka Rask, Petr Mrazek, David Rittich, Philipp Grubauer, and Jordan Binnington, who are all expected to be unrestricted free agents after next season. Obviously some of those guys will re-sign with their current teams prior to the end of their contracts, and being a free agent in 2021 doesn’t make them any more likely to land in Seattle than anywhere else. Still, these are players worth tracking over the course of the next two offseasons. By the way, on Lehner, Vegas is exempt from expansion, so if he goes back to the Golden Knights, he’s off the table.
FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS
There are a couple more angles to consider. There are plenty of goalies out there with whom we aren’t currently super familiar that may be available in the Expansion Draft, and that may be worth a look come the conclusion of the 2020-2021 season. Maybe a stud AHL goalie like a Kaapo Kahkonen out of Minnesota is left exposed, and finally finds his way onto an NHL roster, but in Seattle. There’s also a chance that Seattle manages to snag a goalie or two when teams place players on waivers after their 2021 training camps. Vegas went this route, as Malcolm Subban backed up Fleury for most of that franchise’s first season, and Subban had been claimed off waivers from Boston after camp.
So, with all this in mind, we still can’t really predict with any accuracy who will be Seattle’s first goalie. But once the dust settles on this coming offseason, we should have a very good understanding of which direction the teams with netminding logjams are heading, and at that point, we may be able to whittle this pool down to just a few potential Marc-Andre Fleury’s.
Wait, I wonder if Seattle can get the actual Marc-Andre Fleury…
Earlier this week, a white friend that I grew up with in suburban Minneapolis started an email dialogue with me and a few other white friends with similar upbringings about the events that have transpired in our hometown. I wrote the below response, which I’ve adjusted a bit for context. Although it isn’t exactly what we normally discuss here at NHLtoSeattle.com, I hope that it will encourage you to have similar dialogues with those in your own respective communities.
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Although I’ve been away for the better part of fifteen years now, I still feel like I am a Minnesotan at heart. I still love Minnesota sports, and I still knowingly speak with a slight Minnesota accent. I also still brag about all the great things I remember from growing up in a place where you could spend every winter day skating for free in practically any suburban park, and every summer day floating in one of the state’s beautiful lakes.
Since moving from Minnesota, I’ve lived on both coasts. When I lived in New York, I felt like there was always something to keep you on edge. I was there through Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. I remember riding the subway the morning after news broke that a Brooklynite had been diagnosed with ebola, and feeling fearful for my life when the man next to me coughed. I also remember locking down the hotel I worked in – which was conveniently located across the street from the site of the worst terrorist attack in history – due to a suspicious package found just outside, as the world was on alert following the attack on the Bataclan Theatre in Paris. When my wife and I left New York, I felt a temporary sense of relief to get out of that bubble, but now living here in Seattle, we have the fear of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, none of which even have the courtesy to give you notice of their arrival the way that a simple little northeastern hurricane does.
And yet, looking back on my youth in Minnesota, I don’t recall many days of feeling genuinely fearful, save for the weeks that immediately followed 9/11, and that didn’t even happen anywhere near Minnesota. Even today, I imagine that if something bad happens wherever we happen to be living, we can just go back to good old MN, because nothing truly bad ever happens there.
But what happened to George Floyd was truly bad. What happened in the Twin Cities this past week was truly bad. I now believe that there have been truly bad things happening there and here and frankly everywhere in our country since its inception. I was just blind to it, surrounded almost exclusively by other privileged white kids like myself, who never had to deal with truly bad things.
Seeing my hometown burn from afar, while my family ignored the risks associated with a pandemic to huddle together in fear that looters may make their way out to the suburbs is not something I anticipated seeing in my lifetime. Meanwhile, chaos erupted here in Seattle on Saturday, when protests turned violent, innocent people were hurt, and hundreds of downtown businesses were destroyed, with the closest being about ten minutes on foot from where my wife and I live. Since then, protests have moved even closer, and although they are mostly peaceful, we are within earshot of the flash-bang grenades that SPD has deployed on a number of occasions. Knowing that proceedings remained peaceful on Wednesday is a huge relief and gives me hope that real change is happening in Seattle. It gives me hope that we can be an example for the rest of the nation.
I’ve cried a lot this week. I want it all to stop. I want everyone in the world to look at each other and say, “I respect you, and I’m happy to share this Earth with you,” and I want the constant feelings of uneasiness to go away.
But I think that uneasiness may be exactly the point for people like us. We are so incredibly lucky. There are things in the world that are scary, and those things that we fear are the things that scare everyone living in the same region, regardless of the color of their skin, their gender, or their sexuality. But if you were to change the way we look, then we would also have to layer on the fear that we could be stopped, arrested, beaten, or even suffocated just because we’re physically different and no longer have the same privileges that we all take for granted.
I look back at my youth and my college days, and I’m so disappointed that I participated in activities and used language that would be so hurtful to so many people that I now love. This is what happens when you surround yourself with people like yourself, though. You never understand those who are different than you, until you get to know them, and you truly listen when they let down their guard and try to express to you what it’s like to walk in their shoes.
I believe that the feeling of uneasiness this week has been a very small taste of the way that people of color feel every single day living in our society, and that devastates me. I hate feeling uneasy like this, but I believe in humanity, and I believe that this uneasiness will pass, and that change will finally come for those who so desperately need it.
When that happens, I will be glad to have felt the uneasiness.
Featured image taken by David Joles, photo journalist for the Star Tribune/Associated Press.
Recognizing all that’s happening in the world right now, the guys get a bit emotional on this week’s episode of Sound of Hockey. It’s been quite the week, as you know, and John, Andy, and Darren certainly do not want to avoid the topics at hand. Nonetheless, they hope that you get a bit of a mental break while listening to this episode, as there’s some fun to be had as well.
The guys interviewed Stu Barnes before things really escalated locally in Seattle, and it is a fantastic interview. Stu talks about his long and very successful NHL career, being a pro scout for NHL Seattle, and much more. You will definitely enjoy this interview.
Segments this week include Let’s Get Quizzical and Weekly One-Timers.
Sound of Hockey gets back to its roots this week, with a more straight-forward episode to appease the die-hard SOH listeners. Lots of banter about the NHL’s return to play plans, which gets the idea mill churning a bit for John, Andy, and Darren.
The guys also do a fun exercise in this episode of determining which NHL teams have the most nonsensical names.
Segments this week include Goalie Gear Corner, Weekly One-Timers, and Tweets of the Week.
Much of this growth came from 20+ age group. As more ice comes online in Snoqualmie and Northgate, not to mention of the arrival of the NHL team, we should expect the youth numbers to increase significantly.
