Is the NHL rigged in favor of your team or against it? A 32-team investigation

Admit it: You think the NHL is rigged against your team.

The referees. The head office. The department of player safety. The schedule-maker and the TV guys and the union and the arbitrators and even the marketing department. You know for a fact that at least a few of them, and maybe each and every one of them, are working to hold your team back. I mean, the evidence is clear.

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Or is it? What would an independent, impartial observer think? That’s where I come in. Today, I’m going to go through all 32 teams and try to figure out which ones have a case about everyone being out to get them.

There’s one important ground rule here: The league is either rigged in favor of your team or against it. There’s no middle ground. What, you think we’re going to decide that your team’s success or failure is completely attributed to their own decisions and actions, with nobody to blame but themselves? Nonsense. That’s not how sports works and every fan knows it. Every team is the subject of a grand conspiracy, it’s just a question of whether that’s helping them or hurting them. That’s what we’ll be deciding today.

The league is rigged! But is it rigged for you, or against you? Let’s find out.

Nashville Predators
Other teams whine about how the referees are out to get them. The Predators have video evidence and remain the only team in modern history to have a referee fired for picking on them.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Columbus Blue Jackets
Hey quick question, how long is regulation time in an NHL game? If you said 60 minutes, you’re a fan of one of the other teams. If you said “however long it takes to make sure the Blue Jackets lose”, then you know what coulombs are.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Los Angeles Kings
Who criticizes the NHL’s officiating? Literally everyone. Who gets fined for it, not to mention forced into a groveling public apology? Pretty much only the Kings. I guess they should have done something more sportsmanlike, like sneak into the opponent’s equipment room to measure their sticks.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Montreal Canadiens
Lots of teams have had questionable calls against them. Only one has had the league president suspend its best and most iconic player for an entire postseason and then insist on showing up to thumb his nose at the fans in person.

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Verdict: League rigged against you

Vancouver Canucks
Two words: Cap recapture. Eighteen more words: The NHL made up a dumb rule and then didn’t bother enforcing it on anyone except the Canucks. Gosh, I wonder why. Maybe the league will explain it to us, but do it three hours early just in case anyone from Toronto wants to watch.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Tampa Bay Lightning
Hey, can you count to six? Are you aware that it’s more than five? Apparently, you’re not a referee in a crucial Stanley Cup Final game with a dynasty on the line.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Seattle Kraken
When the league expanded to Vegas in 2017, they gave the Golden Knights a sweetheart setup and a bunch of lopsided trades that basically guaranteed they’d be contenders right away. When you showed up, all the GMs conspired against you, refusing to make the same sort of deals in a case of obvious collusion designed to ensure you’d be a bottom-feeder for years to come. Oh well, at least you got to pay an expansion fee that had gone up by $150 million.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Boston Bruins
A few years ago we learned that the league’s head office was pushing referees to ignore fouls on certain Bruins players, calling Marc Savard a “little fake artist.” When Savard had his career ended on a dirty hit a few years later, the league said it was clean. Huh. Surely a coincidence. Mix in the Bruins being on the receiving end of Yellow Sunday, roughly a million Brad Marchand suspensions, and somebody shutting the lights off whenever they get close to winning a Stanley Cup Final game, and the evidence is clear.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Carolina Hurricanes
Teams aren’t supposed to have fun. They’re not supposed to have a sense of humor. They’re definitely not supposed to sign successful offer sheets. Do all of those things, and you know the league is going to be out to get you. But sure, it’s probably perfectly normal for the NHL to let other teams try to poach your current GM.

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Verdict: League rigged against you

Toronto Maple Leafs
They’re the league’s biggest and most profitable market, so it would make financial sense if the league was rigging things for Toronto. They’re clearly not, though. The Department of Player safety loves suspending Maple Leafs while looking the other way for their opponents. The league’s flat cap hurt the Leafs more than any other team. And when they looked like they were finally going to win a playoff series this year, the refs decided to start waving off Game 7 goals based on interference rules they never call.

Verdict: League rigged against you

This is the first time a player has been suspended for an action against a player on the Toronto Maple Leafs since Andrew Ference in May 2013, ending a streak of 14 suspensions against Toronto without one coming against an opponent. https://t.co/fXi7xujOqj

— Jeff Veillette (@JeffVeillette) March 2, 2021

Vegas Golden Knights
There are two things we know for sure about the third period of a Game 7 in the playoffs. The first is that referees will put the whistle away, and certainly never even think of calling a questionable major on a play that shouldn’t even be a penalty. And second, that rule apparently goes out the window if you’re an expansion team that’s embarrassing everyone by having more success than the league wants you to have.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Philadelphia Flyers
The league has clearly been rigged against the Flyers ever since they redefined hockey (in a marketing-unfriendly way) back in the mid-70s. Five Stanley Cup Finals since 1980, five losses? You do the math. Whether it’s allowing goals that are blatantly offside or counting OT winners that nobody even sees, the league always finds a way to make sure the Flyers can’t get back to the top of the mountain.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Chicago Blackhawks
There was a time when the Hawks were unquestionably the league’s favorite team, the golden child that got every outdoor game and marketing push. But that all changed once the Kyle Beach scandal broke and (rightly) cost a lot of people their jobs, and the franchise its credibility. The stench will stay on the team for a long time, and the NHL would probably prefer that they finished last for years to come. Luckily, their own GM seems to want that too.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Washington Capitals
In 2013, Alexander Ovechkin suggested that “someone” high up the NHL’s chain of command had rigged the Caps’ series against the Rangers. Since then, Ovechkin has been suspended multiple times, not just for questionable hits but also for skipping All-Star Games (three times!) and even once for playing cards in his own hotel room. Hmm, sounds like somebody was getting a little too close to the truth.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Ottawa Senators
So Mats Sundin gets to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but Daniel Alfredsson has to wait five years. Huh. Apparently, Chris Phillips wasn’t the only Big Rig around Ottawa.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Colorado Avalanche
They finally got the Stanley Cup that they’ve deserved for a few years now, but only because a few breaks actually went their way and/or the NHL got tired of throwing every trick in the book at them to keep them from winning. Whether it’s awful lottery luck, key players getting suspended by the commissioner himself, goalies being forced to face shots with no mask, or the dumbest offside review in recent playoff history, it’s been one thing after another for the Avs for years. This season, we finally found out what happens when the luck evens out just a little bit.

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Verdict: League rigged against you

Dallas Stars
No no, go right ahead and score a goal even though our goalie is rolling around on the ice with a serious injury, no need to whistle the play dead like you do literally every other time this ever happens, it’s only a series-deciding goal in the playoffs.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Anaheim Ducks
The Ducks iced a fun team this year, one full of skilled young players who did exciting things. As a result, another team beat them up for being too good, and the league shrugged. Also, the most famous goal in team history happened because their best player ever was allowed to get knocked out by a late and predatory headshot. Oh, but when their Hall-of-Fame defenseman elbows a guy in the head during the Stanley Cup Final, he gets suspended. Guess he should have shot a puck at him after a period instead.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Edmonton Oilers
Sure, they had some lottery luck back in the day. Apparently too much because the league decided to throw the rulebook out the window and let their best players get tackled every year in the playoffs. While you’re at it, feel free to sit on top of their goalie to score a series-altering goal. Just make sure to remember that the CBA doesn’t apply if it’s going to help Edmonton.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Duncan Keith retiring creates recapture cap hit for #Blackhawks:
Year 1 $5,538,462
Year 2 $1,938,456

For #LetsGoOilers, $5,538,462 Cap Hit removed.
Per CBA calcs, should also receive $3,438,462 recapture cap credit, but NHL reportedly not allowing credithttps://t.co/HcKqBlBRvt https://t.co/VxIRtm6uH4

— PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) July 8, 2022

New Jersey Devils
They’re the only team to ever have one of those back-diving contracts rejected by the league, and then they were fined and stripped of draft picks for doing the same thing every other team was doing back then. Sure, they eventually got one of those picks back because even the NHL couldn’t stand by this level of blatant bias. But the franchise’s history proves that everyone from Wayne Gretzky to Don Koharski is out to get them, so it makes sense that Gary Bettman is too. What did they ever do to him? OK, sure, but besides that.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Florida Panthers
You ruin the entire sport by providing the proof-of-concept for atrocious clutch-and-grab garbage hockey one little time and they make sure to never let you win a game in the second round ever again.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Detroit Red Wings
The NHL never forgave the dynasty-era Red Wings for drafting so well in the later rounds and has been making sure they get screwed in every draft lottery of the modern era. But smash a Red Wing’s face into the glass or into the boards and the league is pretty much fine with it.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Winnipeg Jets
The league stole your franchise in 1996 because you couldn’t financially support it, then bent over backwards to keep it in Arizona for years even though they couldn’t support it either. Sure, you got a replacement team in 2011, but you’ll never get those 15 years back.

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Verdict: League rigged against you

Arizona Coyotes
Let’s get this straight, other teams can have headline-grabbing scandals and get away with nothing more than a fine, but the Coyotes bump into a couple of prospects at the combine and suddenly they can’t have draft picks anymore?

Verdict: League rigged against you

Minnesota Wild
The NHL hates Minnesota. Back in 1991, the North Stars went on a miracle run to the final and the league had them losing half the roster in a dispersal draft a week later, and on the way to Dallas a few years after that. They eventually gave you a team back, at which point nothing interesting happened for two decades other than your GM calling a guy a lizard. Now you have no cap space, a GM who feuds with agents, the only truly compelling player in franchise history caught in the middle of a high-stakes international drama, and Russo is whining about Minnesota getting robbed on some sort of interference review. Was all that somehow Norm Green’s doing? We’re not saying it, but we’re also not not saying it.

Verdict: League rigged against you

New York Islanders
There may not be a team that’s had a rougher few decades than the Islanders. Maybe that has something to do with the league’s apparent policy of letting anyone off the street buy this team, whether or not they have any actual money. When the guy who randomly puts the backup goalie in charge of the roster is considered the good owner, you know the league is too busy fawning over their precious Rangers to pay any attention to a team that can win more than one Stanley Cup every eight decades.

Verdict: League rigged against you

New York Rangers
The Rangers went 65 years without having the first overall pick in a draft, and the only way they “won” the top choice was in a fake lottery where the NHL didn’t know it was them. The league lets Tom Wilson do whatever he wants to Rangers players, then fines them when they tweet about it. Meanwhile, anyone from New York breaks Mario Lemieux’s wrist even one measly time and suddenly it’s a federal case.

Verdict: League rigged against you

San Jose Sharks
It’s incredibly unlikely that a team could be as good as the Sharks were for almost two full decades without ever winning a Cup, but somehow it happened, which seems a little suspicious. Meanwhile, they get one little break on a hand pass in a series they didn’t even win, and the league freaks out and changes all the rules because Gary “Never Admit a Mistake” Bettman says his head was going to explode.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Buffalo Sabres
Dude.

Verdict: League rigged against you

St. Louis Blues
Oh you mean the Blues, the team that was allowed to be sold to a dog food company that didn’t like hockey, then had to sit out an entire draft because their owners couldn’t be bothered to send anyone, then almost got moved to some godforsaken hamlet in Canada, then saw the NHL “solve” the problem by technically revoking their franchise? Yeah, the league loves them. But to be fair, if you blindside one of their players on a cheap hit and give them a life-altering injury, you might get suspended for two whole games and then portrayed as a beloved saint for the rest of your career.

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Verdict: League rigged against you

Calgary Flames
Gosh, other than the whole “ignoring the Stanley Cup winning goal that we clearly scored so that the struggling southern market can have a championship they didn’t earn” thing, I guess the league has been pretty impartial.

Verdict: League rigged against you

Pittsburgh Penguins
Enjoy Connor Bedard and another two decades of getting to watch a generational franchise player win Stanley Cups so you don’t tank or fake like you’re moving to Kansas City again, you frauds.

Verdict: League rigged for you

(Top photo: Gene J. Puskar / The Associated Press)

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