Take Town: Season premier, why did it start so early in Seattle?

I'm not a professional schedule-maker. That seems like a really hard job, figuring out how to get 32 individual teams to 82 games played in the space of 180ish days, each with their own needs for travel, arena availability, and more. I know in Major League Baseball, it used to be that a married couple would just sit down together and manually lay out an entire season by hand. Seems crazy but it's true. I guess those people are smarter than me.

But I do know this about making a schedule: It’s a lot harder to figure out how to cram 16 teams into playing on some random Tuesday in February than it is to schedule opening night of the NHL season.

Before opening night, no one’s really doing anything. It’s not hard at all to just say, “This is your starting point,” especially when only six teams are involved.

And if you’re the NHL, trying to build excitement for the new season, what better way to start that blank slate with… Blues/Kraken at 1:30 local time on a workday? Hold on. Even if you think either team has a lot to be excited about this season or that this is anything resembling a marquee match-up (you would be incorrect), what’s the thinking on that start time? Was Climate Pledge Arena booked at 6? Why not start with a 4:30 game at, say, Madison Square Garden? That also wouldn’t make a lot of sense, but it would make more than the negative sense this one made.

But hey, it’s one game, and it’s really only the appetizer for the main event between the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers and the team they beat in the… second round. Look, that was a fun series, there’s bad blood there, the Boston Bruins are a big-name franchise, and maybe you don’t want to start the Edmonton Oilers’ season on an east-coast swing. But should it not be the case that the first night of the season — if you don’t count the games in Europe, which apparently we’re not — is just a rematch of the Cup Final? Just as a matter of policy? The first Oilers/Panthers game this season isn’t until mid-December and they don’t meet in Florida, where that fateful Game 7 took place, until the end of February. Seems silly.

But hey, at least the nightcap was between a new and exciting team in Utah and… the worst team of the last few seasons that even their own fans seem to barely care about these days.

I’m not saying I could do a better job of putting together the whole schedule than the NHL does now. But opening night shouldn’t be this poorly put together.

Let's go:

"The goalie market"

There was a lot of talk before Jeremy Swayman signed his big extension in Boston that he wanted his deal to "reset the goalie market." That's likely because lots of other elite players have bumped up the acceptable salary ranges at their respective positions, but in terms of AAV, goalie contracts have remained weirdly stagnant (with very few exceptions) for the last decade or so. Henrik Lundqvist was the undisputed best goalie alive when he signed for seven years at an average of $8.5 million per in 2013. Linus Ullmark, who won the Vezina two years ago, just signed for an $8.25-million AAV for four years in Ottawa — the same money Swayman will get for the next eight years on his own new deal. Connor Hellebuyck, who has two Vezinas and three other top-four finishes in the last seven years, currently makes $8.5 million against the cap.

Now, though, it seems another New York Rangers goalie is fed up. Igor Shesterkin has reportedly rejected an offer of roughly $88 million over eight season to stay on Broadway. That $11-million AAV would be a cap-era record for a goaltender. EP Rinkside's own Cam Robinson reported that Shesterkin may want a similar AAV on a shorter-term deal for that kind of money, or way more than that on an eight-year agreement. Which would make sense, because Shesterkin will be two months away from his 30th birthday when this contract kicks in, and eight years means this would likely be his final NHL contract. If he instead signs for, say, three or four years instead, he has a chance to make big money one more time before he calls it a career, pulling what would potentially be another eight-digit AAV out of the Rangers (or some other high bidder) when he's almost 33 or 34 and might still have a little more to give. That's betting on yourself, for sure, but it might be Shesterkin doing a real solid for the Goalie Union, too.

The team and its star goalie still have months to work something out and if not, that would probably be the biggest "goalie hitting the open market" situation in the entire cap era. It'll be fascinating to see if the Rangers are willing to potentially nuke their cap structure, or if they would prefer to get into a game of high-stakes chicken.

But hey, maybe it's just the suggestion of a new ceiling to the goalie market that's pushing things in the right direction. Seattle just gave Joey Daccord $25 million. Don't take this the wrong way; he's a good goalie, but he doesn't even have 70 games of NHL experience and wasn't their opening-night starter.

It's a whole new world, maybe. Interesting to think about.

Speaking of new contracts

It's hard to think of a player who has really and truly Earned a big payday more than Carter Verhaeghe, who just signed a new eight-year deal with an AAV of $7 million.

When he went from Tampa Bay to Florida in 2020, I think a lot people saw the upside, but he almost immediately became a 70ish-point player who can score 20-plus. And unlike a lot of other players who really break out at 24, 25, or 26 years old, it doesn't seem like there was much of a "fluke" element to him shooting 16 percent in that first explosion in his production.

Yes, he scored 18 goals on 107 shots (shooting 16.8 percent), but in the three seasons and change since then, he has another 100 goals on 692 shots (14.5 percent). He's just a lethal finisher who shoots selectively enough to ensure he's scoring at a high rate forever.

You just gotta love a guy who didn't even make his NHL debut until he was 24 years old finally cashing big checks. He's not an All-Star. He's not The Reason that Florida won its first Cup. But you need players like him to win, and the Panthers no doubt felt it was a pleasure to lock in this extension with a fun, likable player who was playing in the ECHL less than a decade ago. He is maybe the ultimate complementary forward in the league today. Every single team in the league would kill to have a guy like him on their roster.

Very cool extension.

Now that I think about it

All that stuff I said earlier about why would you schedule Chicago for the Utah opener given the state of the franchise? I get it now.

The headlines about the game mention "chills" and the atmosphere and, perhaps most important, the fact that the — ahem — first game in franchise history was a win.

Without getting the Sabres or Sharks on the schedule, they couldn't have done more to assure  the home opener was a W than putting them out there against a team that gave Pat Maroon, Craig Smith, and Alec Martinez significant power-play minutes last night. The fact that it's an Original Six franchise with the most exciting young player in the world, and a large national fanbase is sort of a bonus that gets thrown in? Wow.

I can't believe I only just realized that. My hat is off to the NHL schedule-makers. You crushed this one.

But if you want to explain that start time and opponent for Seattle, I'm all ears.