Not all records are made equal. Some records have been set so high, or so long ago that they will never be touched. How much do you know about some of these unbreakable records? Take our quiz below to find out.
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Toronto Maple Leafs forward Zach Hyman and Colorado Avalanche forward J.T. Compher are teaming up to run the NHLPA Open featuring Fortnite, a charity tournament set to feature 60-plus NHLPA members facing off in the video game, the players' association announced Friday.
The tournament will take place May 18, and it will be streamed over three hours on ESPN's esports Twitch channel. Contestants will compete in trios, with the winners claiming a $200,000 prize to be donated to the charities of their choice.
"Players across the league are passionate Fortnite players. While we cannot compete on the ice right now, it is important to the guys that we give back in a meaningful way," Compher said. "We are excited to showcase our competitive skills online to an ever-growing audience, and I can’t wait to watch our event unfold."
"When J.T. approached me about creating the NHLPA Open featuring Fortnite, I was on board right away because I knew teammates and friends around the league who would be thrilled to be a part of this," Hyman added.
Compher will participate with Avalanche teammates Nathan MacKinnon and Matt Nieto, while Hyman will serve as the color commentator for the event. Other notable players on board include Sebastian Aho, Thomas Chabot, Johnny Gaudreau, William Karlsson, Clayton Keller, Travis Konecny, Mitch Marner, Bryan Rust, and Alex Tuch.
Fortnite, the free-to-play battle royale-style game, generated an estimated $1.8 billion in revenue last year.
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Through 71 games of their 2019-20 schedule, the Edmonton Oilers were on track to erase back-to-back seasons of futility and qualify for the playoffs before everything came to a halt.
Superstar forward Leon Draisaitl says the coronavirus-induced stoppage couldn't have come at a worse time for his club's momentum.
"It’s definitely bad timing, no question," Draisaitl told Sportsnet's Tim & Sid on Thursday. "More so for our team, I think, other than maybe the last game we were in a good run and we were on a really good way to clinch a playoff spot."
"We felt good about it, we felt good about our game, and then it was obviously terrible timing," he added. "But, again, I think we all agree that the health of people and the health of the world is just more important at this moment, so I think that the right decisions were made at that point."
The NHL was shut down on March 12 with Edmonton owning a 37-25-9 record, good enough for second in the Pacific Division at 83 points. The Oilers had earned a 93.3% chance of qualifying for the postseason with 11 games remaining, according to Money Puck.
On top of management and coaching changes, Draisaitl has played a massive role in the Oilers' turnaround this season. The 24-year-old is the front-runner to win the Hart Trophy, and he holds a considerable lead in the Art Ross race too with 110 points.
Edmonton has made the playoffs once during the Draisaitl-Connor McDavid era, a run that ended in Game 7 of the second round in 2016-17 versus the Anaheim Ducks.
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Dave Andrews had it all mapped out five years ago.
After two decades presiding over the American Hockey League, he would smoothly transition into retirement, moving with his wife of 40 years, Marleen, from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia, where he grew up. Andrews even managed to sell the couple's beloved Springfield-area home to an acquaintance, allowing them to avoid real estate agent fees.
"It was a great plan," he said, "except it didn't work."
It was obvious Andrews - whose career has been defined by executed plans - was smiling over the phone as he recounted the events of early 2015. The gigantic headache that was the creation of the AHL's Pacific Division wasn't moving along fast enough, which meant Andrews didn't feel comfortable stepping down from his highly influential post.
So, the couple recalibrated and found a house to rent. Andrews has renewed one-year contracts with the league ever since, contemplating each spring if he's ready to retire, finally.
That time has arrived. June 30 will be his last official day on the job as the AHL's longtime president and CEO.
Mind you, neither transitioning into retirement nor attempting again to move to Digby, Nova Scotia, will be easy during a global pandemic.
Over the past two months, Andrews, 71, has been staring down the stiffest test of his working life. On Monday, the AHL canceled the remainder of the 2019-20 season because of COVID-19. The Calder Cup won't be handed out for the first time in the league's 84-year history.
"I've been involved in some pretty difficult challenges over the years," Andrews said. "But I would say this is the most troubling because you just don't know where it's going.
"Strategic thinking is really about being very proactive and very well prepared for what we anticipate as future challenges. I think that has been one of my strengths. That is also why today's situation is so difficult - so many uncertainties."
The decision to cancel the season wasn't Andrews' call. He deferred to government and public health officials, developing a strong feeling in mid-March that the AHL would not finish the season. Andrews and his successor as league president, former Columbus Blue Jackets general manager and outgoing Edmonton Oilers executive Scott Howson, have turned their attention to blue-skying the 2020-21 campaign.
"We have to be very flexible and understand there may be teams who can play before the rest," Andrews said of what may be varying crowd-restriction policies in the AHL's 31 markets. "We need to be flexible enough to allow that to happen in some format. Once everybody can play - or most of everybody can play - we get into our regular season."
Andrews, the architect of a sustainable, profitable AHL, will stay on as chairman of the board for three years and continue to advise Howson through this unprecedented period. Pandemic or not, it didn't make sense for the board to let Andrews go, no strings attached. He was the perfect man for the job and the job was perfect for him.
In fact, the AHL's rise is thanks to Andrews' leadership.
Nobody who knows Andrews personally would describe him as a heavy-handed leader. He's too calculated, too rational, too prudent, too bookish.
But Andrews does possess a unique brand of toughness, the type befitting a mild-mannered professional sports executive with little patience for nonsense.
"He doesn't suffer fools gladly," is how longtime associate Mark Chipman puts it.
Back in 2001, Chipman and five other owners joined the AHL after disbanding from the International Hockey League. It didn't take long for one of the new guys - "He shall remain nameless," Chipman says, the disgust fresh to this day - to find out the hard way who was in charge during the group's first board meeting.
"He said something like, 'Well, this isn't how we did it in the IHL.' Dave, quickly and abruptly, said, 'Well, this isn't the IHL,'" recalled Chipman, executive chairman of True North Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Winnipeg Jets and Manitoba Moose.
"Dave could have been even more forceful, but it was definitely message received," Chipman continued. "So, on Day 1, we knew who was running the league, and I was thankful, frankly, that this guy got tuned because he conducted himself that way all the time. The other five of us kind of smiled at each other. It was good to feel like we were part of something strong."
Andrews' matter-of-fact response was emblematic of the AHL's mindset in the early 2000s. His ambitions as AHL president started to come into focus. The long-term plan - first imagined in 1994 when he took over for Hall of Famer Jack Butterfield - aimed to vault the AHL into its own tier amid North America's bloated minor-league hockey landscape.
First, Andrews limited the number of veteran players eligible to dress for a given game in an effort to reposition the AHL as a development league. Then, with an eye on eventually having a one-to-one affiliation relationship with the NHL, he increased the franchise count through rounds of expansion, including the watershed IHL merger.
All of this upheaval occurred at a time when animosity between the AHL and IHL was boiling over. Some AHL executives would rather have watched the IHL disappear into thin air than welcome its strongest owners into the fold. However, Andrews and Chipman saw an opportunity and slyly concocted an enticing merger agreement.
"When we got it done, the deal we put together was really attractive to our owners," Andrews said. "It was an expansion, so the teams that came in were paying a ($1-million) expansion fee, which provided relief for teams that were going to have to jump into all of this air travel to get to places like Salt Lake City and Winnipeg. We were essentially a bus league, right? This was something that would have been troubling for our teams to deal with. It took some work, but the final deal was really a win-win."
Andrews doesn't play chess, though he arguably knows his way around pro hockey's chessboard better than anyone. The master mediator has been a step or two ahead of his constituents for the bulk of two decades. He says he tries his best to ensure every party involved in an AHL business deal leaves the negotiation table satisfied.
The creation of the Pacific Division might be Andrews' finest work. It took more than two years of negotiations and lost sleep to relocate five clubs and change the ownership of another. The end product isn't perfect, with the Pacific's seven squads - five in California, plus one each in Colorado and Arizona - playing eight fewer regular-season games a year than the rest of the AHL. Yet, most NHL teams have never been so close to their prospects, a real boon in a salary-cap era of endless call-ups and demotions.
"That could have been a real trainwreck, if those teams had decided to form their own west coast league," said Rick Pych, the former governor of the San Antonio Rampage.
But Andrews was persistent and uninterested in cutting side deals, Pych said.
"At the end of the day, he's always been driven by what's best for the league collectively," he added.
Andrews has encountered a revolving door of obstacles over a 26-year run, including managing more than 230 changes in ownership, affiliation, and location. The modern AHL has at least one franchise in 15 states - 16 as of next season, when the Vegas Golden Knights relocate the Rampage to nearby Henderson, Nevada - and three provinces. Its footprint stretches across the continent, from Laval, Quebec, to San Diego.
"He's had this ability to anticipate, to see above the tree line," Chipman said.
"When those (affiliation) relationships sour - and when they do, they can sour in a hurry - then you've got to be able to move quickly and find a fix," Chipman continued. "He's always been able to do that without the hockey world going, 'Oh my god, what happened here? Why did this relationship end? Why is this team moving here?' He always seems to be ahead of it. You go to a board meeting and the problem would be solved before you even got there."
Compared to the buttoned-up major leagues, minor pro sports affords its commissioners and presidents greater access to players, and vice versa. It's closer to a grassroots organization, and the wall between the players' union and the league is usually thinner. A commissioner or president can choose to ignore or take advantage of this dynamic.
Based on Mike McKenna's experiences, Andrews took advantage. Despite a 34-year age gap, the two would meet for lunch occasionally during McKenna's career as a journeyman goalie and engaged in some friendly competition at a corporate league event.
"He's a mean tennis player," reports McKenna, who for a decade was a member of the executive committee of the Professional Hockey Players' Association (PHPA).
Andrews attended the PHPA's annual meeting each June in Orlando, where he would sit in a room filled with player reps from across the league and field complaints and concerns. He would then take the most reasonable grumbles directly to the AHL's board of governors. This pragmatic approach garnered Andrews respect inside locker rooms.
"Players who had never been to the annual meeting, who had never met Dave, would have a certain opinion of the league," said McKenna, who dressed for AHL teams in 13 different locations. "The moment they showed up to the meeting and heard everything from him firsthand, they suddenly had a very different perception of how the league was run."
Andrews was a minor-league goalie himself, albeit under different circumstances. In the early 1970s - sandwiched between three years of netminding and schooling at Dalhousie University and one year at the University of British Columbia - the 5-foot-7 Andrews took his talents to the Netherlands.
"I had a friend who was playing in Europe," Andrews said. "He said, 'You know, you're not going to play in the NHL,' and I said, 'Yeah, I know that.' 'Well, go to Europe. You'll have a great time and you'll make a little bit of money.' So I went for one year, one year became two, two became three, and three became four."
Upon his return to Canada, Andrews padded his resume with an assortment of roles, including the hockey development coordinator for the province of British Columbia, the head coach for the WHL's Victoria Cougars, and a consultant for Sport Canada. His big break arrived in the late 1980s. Glen Sather, then the general manager of the Edmonton Oilers, wanted Andrews to run the club's AHL team.
"I had a government job, I had three kids, I had tenure. It was easy to just keep doing it, but (Marleen) said, 'You know what, life's an adventure. You should do it.' Back then, the Oilers were the Oilers, right? They were in the middle of the five Cups," Andrews said.
That gig as the Cape Breton Oilers' GM led him to the AHL's top job seven years later.
The AHL has doubled in size under Andrews' watch. Palm Springs, California, will play host to the league's 32nd franchise, with the team also serving as the 20th AHL affiliate owned by its parent club when it begins play in 2021 as the affiliate for the NHL's expansion team in Seattle. Meanwhile, annual league revenues have jumped from around $25 million in the early 1990s to around $160 million in the late 2010s. Franchises valued at roughly $1 million 10 years ago are worth closer to $10 million.
The AHL promotes collaboration to keep its franchises pulling on the same end of the rope. For example, the league developed an internal analytics program that allows for a business executive from, say, the Grand Rapids Griffins to share best practices on how to retain sponsors with a colleague in another front office, like the Stockton Heat's. This program has been so successful the AHL licenses it out to the Canadian Hockey League.
"The American Hockey League, from where it was when he took over to where it is today, as a business, has progressed enormously," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, Andrews' main point of contact, said. "His legacy will be as an innovator."
On the ice, the AHL has been a natural testing ground. Not every rule and safety change has made its way to NHL games, but there's a long list of graduations, such as the trapezoid, hybrid icing, mandatory visors, the puck-over-glass penalty, both four-on-four and three-on-three overtime, and awarding a point for an overtime or shootout loss.
"Our relationship with them has been so important to us," Andrews said of the NHL. "As long as it didn't jeopardize the competitive integrity of our league, why not?"
Nearly 90% of NHLers pass through the AHL. Managers, coaches, officials, and business-side employees from the minor league reach the NHL at high rates, too. Andrews is particularly proud of the league's all-around professionalism.
"He took the American Hockey League to a place where, honestly, I would have never thought," PHPA executive director Larry Landon, Andrews' bargaining adversary for 26 years, said. "He strategized, he was forward-thinking. He set out to make the AHL the best-run league outside the NHL, and did it."
Andrews has spent a total of 33 years in a high-profile AHL role, or close to half of his life.
"There's no question," he said, "a lot of my identity is tied to this."
There is no doubt Andrews will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
His immense impact on the sport can be best viewed through the three aforementioned landscape-changing milestones: transforming the AHL into the top NHL development league, absorbing the IHL clubs, and creating the Pacific Division. He's a well-respected leader who's always had a plan in motion.
McKenna lauds Andrews' ability to find common ground between owners and players, leading to a decent living for those below the NHL, a luxury some other sports can't claim. Landon salutes his lack of ego and adaptability. Chipman believes Winnipeg wouldn't have Jets 2.0 if not for Andrews' open mind 20 years ago. Pych - who in his career dealt with leaders from a variety of sports leagues, like the G League and WNBA - counts Andrews as the best of the bunch.
The post-pandemic calendar for Andrews and his wife sounds idyllic: Nova Scotia for half of the year, Arizona or Florida for the rest; sailing, racquetball, quality time with the couple's eight grandkids. That's all while keeping one foot in the hockey world as AHL chairman, as well as serving as the chair of both the Hockey Canada Foundation and the Order of Hockey Canada.
Andrews learned five years ago that retiring from a dream job isn't an easy task. So, in a strange way, he's been prepared for an unusual end to his tenure. There will be no last handshakes at AHL headquarters, no send-off party, no farewell tour during the Calder Cup playoffs, no final walk to the exit door.
"I'll be turning a switch off rather than tapering into the exit," Andrews said, smiling over the phone once again. "It's going to be odd."
John Matisz is theScore's national hockey writer
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"If you look good, you play good." - Deion Sanders
theScore is counting down the 100 best uniforms in sports history, with a new post every weekday until May 15.
100-91 | 90-81 | 80-71 | 70-61 | 60-51
50-41 | 40-31 | 30-21 | 20-11 | 10-1
We kick off our top 10 with a uniform that, for many, will be a surprising inclusion. There is a wealth of unique and timeless kits among international soccer teams, but Croatia's distinctive look stands above all others. The red and white checkered pattern has been compared to a chessboard, a tablecloth, and even the Purina pet food logo. However, the motif is actually based on the country's coat of arms, a tremendous source of pride for Croatians.
The Chargers' uniforms have been tweaked and redesigned many times over the years, rarely producing an unappealing result. Many fans are often torn between the royal blue helmets and yellow pants of the 1970s, the navy blue base and white lightning bolts of the 1990s, or the navy and powder blue combo sported by the team until last month's redesign that aimed to combine all the eras. But for us, and it's fair to say for most others, the Chargers have never looked better than they did in the mid-1960s. Lightning bolts as stripes might be a little hokey if they weren't so damn cool.
Thanks to three Stanley Cups from 2010 to 2015, the Blackhawks' timeless style - which more or less has been the same since 1955 - regained clout. Chicago lost its place among hockey's top franchises thanks to shoddy ownership before its resurgence last decade. However, the club has always looked great on the ice through it all. The vibrant home red jersey, complemented by matching double stripes at the elbow, waist, and socks, has long been one of the best in hockey. Factor in the beautifully colorful crests on the front and shoulders, and the Blackhawks' everlasting aesthetic is undeniably great.
Joe Montana made the 49ers' persona famous as he dominated the 1980s, and after an experiment with black accent colors - a trap they certainly weren't the only to fall into - for the decade-plus that followed, San Francisco's look is back as it belongs. A simple red jersey is brought to life with gold helmets and pants, consistent striping patterns, and the aura of an unforgettable dynasty that produced some of football's most famous moments. When the Niners rock their reds under the Bay Area sun, they practically glow.
There are no neutral feelings toward Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish have one of the largest and most loyal followings in America, but if you don't fall on the supporters' side, there's a good chance you despise everything about their football program. Love them or hate them, we can all agree Notre Dame looks good. Navy and gold - 24-karat gold, in fact, for the fabled blank helmets - is all Notre Dame needs to deliver the best look in college football.
The Lakers not only won five championships in the 1980s, but they also created the NBA's most recognizable and globally popular uniform. The digs worn by Magic Johnson and Co. are the quintessential Los Angeles design, featuring a famous drop shadow on the purple numbers the club moved away from during the Kobe Bryant era, which coincidentally yielded five titles, as well. But when LeBron James came to town, L.A. brought back its old look, but today's jersey sponsorships and other minor details don't quite match the lore that surrounds the "Showtime" Lakers.
The Tar Heels' "Carolina blue" has always looked amazing, but legendary head coach Dean Smith wanted something new in the 1991-92 season, and designer Alexander Julian introduced the world to the argyle pattern still used and revered in 2020. There have been several gorgeous renditions since, but UNC's original redesign - also accompanied by a bigger, bolder wordmark and more detailed trim than on today's uniforms - gets the nod for the best look the storied university has ever used.
There aren't many elements to these uniforms, but every single one of them - the pinstripes, the interlocked "NY" on the cap and over the heart, and the absence of player names on the back - is iconic. Would these rank so high if the Yankees achieved a similar level of success as the Detroit Tigers (another team with a simple and timeless uniform) and not won 27 World Series titles? It's impossible to say, as you can't separate the memories of all the Bronx Bombers legends who've worn this uniform over the last century from the design itself. Pinstripes have become, and will always be, synonymous with greatness.
The most untouchable uniform in all of hockey. The Canadiens' classic red sweater has been almost exactly the same since the dawn of the NHL in 1917, and its signature touch is the blue stripe around the middle, creating the perfect backdrop for a logo that's also undergone minimal changes for more than a century. Montreal's uniform scheme is so iconic that the club has opted to make use of a third jersey only once, and while the Habs' look has slightly modernized over time, aspects of their historic getups - namely, the white collars and laces - have rightfully lived on. There's simply no team that does tradition like the Canadiens.
The Raiders have made plenty of mistakes on and off the field over their history in Oakland, Los Angeles, Oakland again, and now Las Vegas. But one thing they got exactly right was their uniforms. The black and silver debuted in 1963 - following a three-year stint during which the team used gold instead of silver - and hasn't been touched since. Players put on these uniforms and instantly take on a menacing villain aura, which is exactly the mindset you want when brute force and physical dominance are paramount. Nothing has ever given a team more street cred than when rap group N.W.A. made Raiders gear a staple of their early-90s fashion. Since then, it seems as though half the teams in professional sports have introduced a black alternate jersey. And they were all, to some extent, trying to emulate the Raiders.
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The world of sports is getting another No. 66 with the last name Lemieux.
The NFL's New York Giants revealed their rookie jersey numbers on Thursday, and offensive lineman Shane Lemieux will don No. 66.
You asked...
— New York Giants (@Giants) May 14, 2020
Rookie jersey numbers 👀 pic.twitter.com/l7j4PfjL4B
Whether it was a purposeful nod to Mario or not, it's surreal to see "Lemieux" plastered on a nameplate above No. 66 on a jersey that doesn't belong to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The 23-year-old previously wore No. 68 at the University of Oregon. He formed an unexpected Lemieux-Crosby connection there, playing guard next to tackle Tyrell Crosby. Crosby was drafted by the Detroit Lions, but he ultimately chose No. 65 instead of No. 87.
Lemieux was taken 150th overall by the Giants in the 2020 NFL Draft. If the stars align for him to make his NFL debut in Week 1, the Giants are scheduled to take on the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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The 2010s could have looked much different for the Chicago Blackhawks had the club gone through with a supposed deal that would have sent perennial star defenseman Duncan Keith to the Philadelphia Flyers.
Although he called it a "grapevine thing," former Blackhawks general manager Mike Smith, who drafted Keith with the 54th overall selection in 2002, said his successor, Bob Pulford, came "this close" to trading the then-prospect to the Flyers, according to The Athletic's Mark Lazerus. The deal apparently would've seen Keith and three other players going to Philadelphia in exchange for forwards Jeremy Roenick and Tony Amonte.
The only reason the deal didn't come to fruition, according to Smith, was because of the 2004-05 lockout, as the trade market was frozen for that entire season. Keith starred for the Norfolk Admirals of the American Hockey League during that campaign and went on to make the Blackhawks' roster the following training camp.
Amonte and Roenick were each 34 years old at the time and were nearing the end of their careers. By the time Chicago won the Stanley Cup in 2010 - the team's first of three last decade - both veterans were out of the league.
In addition to those championships, Keith owns a pair of Norris Trophies and also earned the Conn Smythe Trophy for his dominant postseason in 2015. The 6-foot-1 blue-liner ranks second in franchise history in games played (1,138), seventh in assists (509), and 10th in points (610).
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Montreal Canadiens forward Max Domi isn't focused on his next contract at the moment, but he knows that he wants to stay in Montreal.
"All I can really tell you is that I want to be with Montreal. I want to be here," Domi said Thursday, according to NHL.com's Dave Stubbs. "I love playing in Montreal, I love my teammates, I love this team, and I love the city. My hope is to play here for a long time. That's never changed since the time I played my first game here. That's that."
Domi is in his second season with the Canadiens after being acquired from the Arizona Coyotes in 2018. In his first season with the Canadiens, he led the team in scoring with a career-high 28 goals and 72 points.
The 25-year-old is set to be a restricted free agent at the conclusion of the 2019-20 season. However, he says a new contract isn't a priority right now.
"I understand there comes a point where your contract is up, negotiations and all that stuff," Domi said. "As of right now, there's just (so) much other stuff in the world going on that's just so much more important than my contract. ...
"I couldn't care less about an NHL contract right now. I want to make sure we're doing everything we can to stay safe and get ready for whenever things come back to somewhat normal. I'm making sure I'm staying in contact with my family and my family is staying safe. That's what means most to me right now."
Domi recorded 17 goals and 44 points in 71 games before the season was paused March 12.
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