I have a very specific memory of the first time I ever paid any attention to the Buffalo Sabres’ Tage Thompson who, this past week, threatened to join Joe Malone, Darryl Sittler and others in the NHL record book, for most goals in a single game.
It was back in the 2017-18 NHL season when Thompson was with the St. Louis Blues organization. The Blues drafted Thompson 26th in the 2016 NHL Draft and he turned pro after his second season at the University of Connecticut. Thompson played 26 games that spring for the Blues’ AHL affiliate which was then based in Chicago — 16 regular-season, 10 more in the playoffs — and he produced a modest five points in that first cameo. I can’t stress that point enough. Five points in 26 games in minor pro. It didn’t happen overnight.
The next season, Thompson was playing for the San Antonio Rampage when he got called up to join the Blues in Calgary for an afternoon practice and ahead of a game against the Flames in his father Brent’s hometown. I had a question for Blues’ general manager Doug Armstrong and sat with him for a few minutes, in the stands at the Saddledome, for a chat. But once the Blues started to file onto the ice, Armstrong excused himself and said he wanted to watch Thompson closely, just to see where his game was at.
So, I moved a few rows away and plunked myself beside Darren Pang, the Blues’ color commentator. But I was curious enough to watch Thompson myself, and of course, the first thing that caught your eye was his size. At six-foot-six, he towered over everyone. The NHL may have been evolving at the moment Thompson arrived in a trend that permitted smaller, skilled players to get opportunities that weren’t there a generation ago. But the appeal of a six-foot-six forward with an enormous wingspan and some reasonable scoring touch was never going to go out of style.
You may know the rest of the story. On July 1, 2018, the Sabres traded Ryan O’Reilly to the Blues in exchange for Thompson, Patrick Berglund, Vladimir Sobotka, plus first- and second-round picks. On the day of the trade, Armstrong acknowledged that the Sabres never wavered in their demands for Thompson and the picks — and the rest of the deal was done to make the salary-cap numbers work.
In the short term, the deal weighed heavily in St. Louis’s favor, simply because O’Reilly was a sensation with the Blues and ultimately was chosen playoff MVP when they won the Stanley Cup in 2019. Thompson, meanwhile, spent parts of his first two seasons in the Sabres’ organization playing for their AHL affiliate in Rochester.
“It’s a unique combination of reach, skill, speed and size that you just don’t see very often.” Breaking down Tage Thompson’s 5-goal performance in Sabres’ dominant win over the Blue Jackets via @TheAthletic https://t.co/0IYzFXC6JQ — Matthew Fairburn (@MatthewFairburn) December 8, 2022
It wasn’t until last year, when Thompson exploded onto the scene — a 38-goal, 68-point season, after which he earned a seven-year, $50 million contract extension from the Sabres. That new deal, by the way, doesn’t kick in until the 2023-24 season. Right now, Thompson is still on the books for a $1.4 million cap hit. If you’re looking to list the best bargains in the NHL right now, you don’t have to look much further than Thompson. He has taken yet another step forward this season, with 40 points in 26 games, including 21 goals.
On Tuesday, Thompson scored four goals in the first period against Columbus in a nationally televised game in the United States on TNT and finished with five on the night. Pang was reporting between the benches for the game and received a text from Wayne Gretzky after Thompson scored his second goal. Gretzky, who also works some games for TNT, wasn’t on the panel that night, but was watching the game from his home.
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“After Tage scored his second Gretz texted to say, ‘wow, he could score six tonight.’ He ends up scoring five. I wish he’d scored six, so Gretz could be right again,” Pang said.
Gretzky wasn’t the only person cheering for the record to be broken, or matched.
Just before the third period, Pang reported that the Sabres’ Kyle Okposo leaned in for a short conversation.
“I said to Kyle, ‘you guys know what the record is, right?’ And Kyle said, ‘yes, it’s seven goals.’ Then he goes, ‘we want him to get to it. You only have one chance.’ I relayed that on the air, and I thought it was really great of the Sabres to be aware of that. Because in this funny league, you score as many goals as you can — and you rarely get a chance to set an all-time record,” Pang said.
Thompson is just six weeks past his 25th birthday. If there’s ever a poster boy for organizational patience, he might be it. But according to Pang, there’s more to Thompson’s giant leap forward than just waiting idly for a player to develop.
Some of the progress needs to come internally from the player, motivated to keep getting better. Some of it comes externally, from coaching and instruction. Thompson’s surge roughly corresponded to the Sabres’ decision to install Don Granato as coach. Granato coached Thompson on the U.S. National Team Development Program in the 2014-15 season, or the year before Thompson went to UConn.
Referring back to that day we were watching him practice for the first time after Thompson’s NHL call-up, Pang said, “At the time we saw him, I’d seen him at training camp and we were all enamored of this very, very tall but very, very skinny kid — a not ready yet for prime-time body, but his hands were clearly on the high end. His ability to take the puck far out to the right and bring it back in and change the angle was noticeable right away.”
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Added Pang, “The other thing you saw, from between the benches, was how competitive he was. He wouldn’t take s— from the other team. If someone said something to him — especially on line changes in the second period, where you have a little more chaos — he gave it right back. He showed an incredible amount of confidence that way, which impressed me a great deal.
“He wanted to be on the ice all the time. I don’t think he quite understood, back then, the pecking order of who is going out on the power play, when you’re behind in the game. He’d have that look — one leg over the boards, ‘I’m up next right, coach?’ Not really. But I admired that part of him.”
Pang has covered four Sabres games already this season, and a lot of the focus in the broadcasts has been on Thompson’s evolution.
“We did something on a TNT game — measuring how far he can bring the stick out to his right side — and it was like six-and-a-half feet,” Pang said. “He said it could be even more, except that he uses a very short stick for a player of his height. He tells me he’s 6-foot-7 now and Alex Tuch’s stick is way longer than his. But he’s old school and likes the shorter stick so he can bring the puck closer in to his feet.
“I’ve learned a lot about Tage the player, but the other thing is, he’s a man now. He’s matured physically. He’s got a baby at home. He works really hard at getting better.”
The decision, by Granato, to shift Thompson to center from the wing was a big part of his surge, said Pang.
“Tage was locked in to the right wing, until you make a trade for Tuch, and then he goes to the middle — that’s also Donny Granato’s knowledge of the small intricacies of the game. He’s very skills oriented. He’s very teaching-positive,” Pang said. “Stickhandling-wise, Granato is teaching guys not to stickhandle in front of you, but keeping the puck to the side or behind, and using your legs or your ass to protect it, so the puck can’t be swatted away.
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“They all do it – (Rasmus) Dahlin does it, Tuch does it, (Jeff) Skinner does it, Tage does it. They all work on it in practice. So, you can’t tell me you can’t teach these kids anything new. Donny’s a good example. He’s continuing to teach.”
Patience for Shane Wright
The lessons of Tage Thompson are not going to be lost on the Seattle Kraken and not just because the man who made the Thompson trade for Buffalo, former Sabres’ GM Jason Botterill, now works for the NHL’s most recent expansion team. The Kraken has a young prospect that probably isn’t physically mature enough to make a difference in the NHL right now, but has oodles of promise, just so long as people give him time to develop properly.
That’d be Shane Wright, who after a two-week conditioning stint in the AHL, came back to Seattle earlier this week, played a game against Montreal, scored his first NHL goal and then was assigned to Canada’s world juniors team, where he’ll get a chance to play against his peer group.
Once that finishes, it’s early January, half the season’s over, and if Wright appears more NHL-ready than he does at the moment, they can start to feed him into their regular lineup. And if things are going well and they don’t want to disrupt a good thing, well, then they can make a decision that’s hopefully based on what’s in the best interests of the player.
Sending him back to junior saves a year on the contract. Keeping him in the NHL allows him to learn the facts of NHL life, especially as it relates to pace of play, positioning and strength. Often, when a junior team gets a star player back, they immediately start to overplay them. In junior, some teams will overplay a star player, which forces them to coast on the ice and catch a necessary breather during play, something that doesn’t work in the track meet that is the modern-day NHL, where you can’t play at a measured pace. You need to go full bore all the time.
Moreover, in junior, they’re playing against opponents who — like them — aren’t physically mature. In the NHL, virtually everybody is fully physically developed. Better watch out too if you’re skinny, still growing into your body, and playing in the bottom six in the NHL — because that’s where you’ll run into the edgy energy guys looking to gobble up hits.
The downside is that most junior-age players not named Connor McDavid usually don’t contribute much to winning which, for most teams, is still the priority.
On-the-job training is OK, if you’re a rebuilding team that deep down, knows it isn’t going to make the playoffs — and deeper down, may not even want to make the playoffs because a lower finish in the standings will enhance draft position.
If you’re a team with playoff aspirations, however, the issue gets more complex. You’re essentially sacrificing a roster spot that could be better utilized elsewhere.
The good news for Wright is that there’ll be a voice in the Kraken organization — Botterill — that knows the value of time and patience in development. Tage Thompson is today’s Exhibit A.
Avalanche injury woes
Eight of the skaters who were in Colorado’s opening-night lineup — that win over Chicago ahead of the banner-raising ceremony — were missing when the Avs were shut out by the Bruins 4-0 at home on Wednesday night. That doesn’t include Gabriel Landeskog, who is still recovering from knee surgery or Darren Helm who is recovering from hip surgery. Both were in the lineup when the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup last spring.
So effectively, 10 regulars missing. The 10 that were there two months later were Mikko Rantanen, J.T. Compher, Andrew Cogliano, Alex Newhook, Logan O’Connor and Ben Meyers up front, and Cale Makar, Devon Toews, Erik Johnson and Samuel Girard on defence.
So it’s probably not surprising that they’ve lost three in a row in regulation for the first time all season and slipped to 13-10-1 overall, which is perilously close to the playoff cutoff line in the Western Conference. Short term, the goal is to win just enough to stay in the mix in the middle of the conference pack, so that when they do get healthy — and when the injured players eventually find their stride — they are in a position to surge up the standings.
If you’re searching for a silver lining, it’s that all the key injured contributors — Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, Valeri Nichushkin, Artturi Lehkonen, Josh Manson and Bowen Byram particularly — will all be back in time for the second-half push. After last year’s long playoff run, does the time off ultimately help them rest up for a long playoff run again in 2023? Maybe. As long as you actually make the playoffs, it could end up beneficial in the long run. MacKinnon had 26 assists, tied with Connor McDavid for the league lead when he was injured this week and projected to miss about a month.
Nathan MacKinnon will miss the next four weeks with an upper-body injury. (Bob DeChiaram / USA Today)
An unlikely Hart candidate
The Arizona Coyotes were likely road weary when getting obliterated at the Edmonton Oilers at the conclusion of their record-tying 14-game road trip. The Coyotes finally begin their first extended home stand of the season Friday night against the visiting Boston Bruins, after having played only four home games thus far this season in their new home, Mullett Arena.
In the meantime, the finishing touches were being put on their NHL facilities, including the visiting team’s dressing room. This last stretch was particularly difficult, after a promising start to the trip — a 1-6-3 record in their past 10 games to finish. Overall, they are in a four-way battle at the bottom of the league standings, with Chicago, Anaheim and Columbus. It’s that time of year when you often hear a few unlikely names being promoted for the Hart Trophy, which goes annually to a player deemed “most valuable” to his own team.
Under that strict definition, you might wonder if there is a single player more valuable to his own team than Arizona goaltender Karel Vejmelka? Under the most trying circumstances — a team in an obvious rebuild, with a historically difficult schedule over the first third of the regular season — Vejmelka has carved out a 6-7-3 win/loss record, a .912 save percentage and has two shutouts. It really is a quietly remarkable achievement.
(Top photo of Tage Thompson: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)