2016 NHL Year in Review: The league’s worst moments were the NHL’s own doing

For how much hockey fans love the sport, maybe the thing they love most is how much they love seeing the NHL squirm. It’s a phenomenon I have yet to figure out fully, but hockey fans love to trash their league like no other.

If anything, it makes for a good read and, hey, you’re in luck because our latest year in review piece will deal with many of the NHL’s misfortunes over the last 12 months! It’s most definitely a year to forget for many, and the NHL is most certainly on that list.

From the selection process to the end result, the United States’ World Cup showing was quite a disaster. High-skill forwards like Phil Kessel and Tyler Johnson were passed over for gritty team players, all the while Team Canada skated John Tavares and Steven Stamkos on their second line. In a short tournament that should prioritize best-on-best, Team USA doubled down on their stance to bring a mix of both grit and skill.

Which, of course, led to a quick exit from the tournament. The United States had trouble scoring goals, had difficulty keeping pucks out of the net, and looked generally uninterested in anyone or anything not wearing Canadian red. Head coach John Tortorella made questionable lineup decisions, all the while Dean Lombardi and Team USA management stuck to their guns on their team composition.

Their failure to win any of their three games through the round robin tournament had them sitting dead last in the standings with Finland, resulting in yet another disappointing international competition for Team USA.

Looking back at the John Scott saga, it’s easy to remember only the final images. Brent Burns and Mark Giordano hoisting Scott onto their shoulders. Gary Bettman handing off the check and looking like an ant next to Scott’s towering form. The pandemonium on the ice afterward when Scott was named MVP.

Yet, the only reason we got that ending was because the NHL played the villain in the first place. That Disney-style denouement only happened because the league wasn’t happy that a fourth-line bruiser was going to represent them in a meaningless weekend tournament. After refusing the NHL’s cease and desist, the league sent Scott packing to an AHL team in Newfoundland — a trade we still don’t have an answer for — and tried to shame him by using his own kids against him.

Of course, we know how the story ended. Yet those moments of outright bullying by the NHL remain an embarrassing mark on a league that owes a lot of its popularity to guys like John Scott.

Considering the NHL last expanded almost 17 years ago, it makes sense that they’d be a bit rusty. And yet, no one could have prepared for how badly the NHL blundered its reveal of the Vegas Golden Knights.

A leak of the logo just hours before the announcement was actually the least of the NHL’s worries, as technical difficulties derailed a ceremony that was already cringe-worthy to begin with. Sure, we had a bit of fun with the reveal and some Photoshop, but the night was dominated by the missteps.

Then just a few weeks after the announcement, the trademark on the name and mark was denied and caught the NHL and Vegas flatfooted. The league will likely win its case, but it was just another gaffe to add to a team that has yet to step foot on the ice.

The NHL’s history with the Olympics has always been a bit rocky, and the latest turn in that saga has yet to unfold. We’re rapidly approaching on a year until the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, and the NHL has yet to make a deal to allow player participation.

It’s a complex issue, dealing with the IOC’s trepidation in paying for player insurance and the players’ refusal to expand the collective bargaining agreement in a deal with the NHL owners to play. And there’s also the issue of the league shutting down for two weeks in the middle of February.

All of this ties very closely to the potential of a lockout in 2020, when owners and players will vote to expand the CBA that took them half a season to come up with last time. With the way the winds blow now, we could very likely have no Olympic participation and a lockout coming within the next few years.

You’ll have to think all the way back to late January 2016 for this one, but Dennis Wideman’s hit on a referee rounds out our worst hockey moments of the year. There’s been a lot of bad on-ice shenanigans this year, such as the most recent example with Cody Eakin’s hit on Henrik Lundqvist. Yet the most egregious is without a doubt the still-puzzling tale of Wideman.

Without context, the hit from Wideman on linesman Don Henderson seems malicious as they come. But add in the fact that Wideman took a high hit in the corner just seconds before the incident and this turned the story into a murky, gray abyss real quick.

Wideman was suspended 20 games, which was then brought to 10 after multitudes of hearings. The arbitrator that reduced the suspension then got fired by the NHL because of the ruling. Henderson also has yet to referee a game since the hit.

Out of all of this did come some good, however, as the NHL implemented concussion spotters for the 2016-17 season. Even so, the hit was one of the most brazenly out-of-character things an NHL player has done, and the context makes it all the more complex.