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Vegas team names, jersey ads and Carolina's moves (Puck Daddy Countdown)

NHL
NHL

(Ed. Note: The column formerly known as the Puck Daddy Power Rankings. Ryan Lambert takes a look at some of the biggest issues and stories in the NHL, and counts them down.)

5. Not giving up

Persistence is usually an admirable quality, and if you believe all those Success Memes with a black and white picture of Leonardo DiCaprio in a tux with some bottom-text, “failing is actually winning” or whatever.

However, and this feels like the one-billionth time I’ve said something about it, the persistence with the Las Vegas team name is getting to the point where it’s a little sad, to be honest. The team has now registered the name “Sand Knights,” having previously locked down “Desert Knights,” “Golden Knights,” and “Silver Knights,” and after having struck out on “Black Knights” and just regular old “Knights.” (No one tell Bill Foley what Clarkson’s hockey team is called.)

Like, yeah man, you really want to be the Knights in some capacity, but it’s not going to happen in a satisfactory way. Affixing modifiers in front of the word just makes you look like a Double-A baseball team, and is also very silly. “Nighthawks” was, like, okay I guess, but there’s already a team with ____hawks in the NHL, obviously.

So here’s a list of suggestions culled from around the internet, where folks have taken to suggesting things in a sort of weird empathetic desperation. No one wants a team called the (Modifier) Knights. We’re really just trying to help: ESPN threw Flamingos out there. I love it. Wyshynski likes “Scorpions.” So do I. Barry at Deadspin says “Jackrabbits,” and it’s good. You could also theoretically call them the Wranglers to honor the former minor league team.

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The ideal name, to take a page out of Green Bay’s book, is “Gamblers.” But the NHL is still inexplicably saying, “But if people hear there’s a hockey team in with a gambling name, they will associate our Las Vegas team with gambling.” Yeah, that’s why they’re gonna do that. Mhmm. Sure.

Your old buddy RL suggests “Big Horns,” because the big horn sheep is the state animal of Nevada, and because they look majestic as hell.

4. Canada’s World Cup injury replacements

Throwing Logan Couture into the mix instead of the injured Jamie Benn is a net loss because Jamie Benn is among the two or three best players at his position in the world. Couture is very good and everything, but he’s no Jamie Benn because few people are.

Tough bounce there, but at least you plugged in another good player instead.

As for Jay Bouwmeester replacing Duncan Keith, well, uhh hmm. It was not a very good decision, obviously. But more to the point, it was an extremely confusing one. Like, okay. Sure, Canada is always going to go hard on lefty-righty D selection, even if it’s to their detriment. Which, if you’re leaving P.K. Subban home, it certainly is.

But even if you’re going to be obsessed with lefty-righty pairings, how do you pick Jay Bouwmeester — who at this point isn’t even the third-best defenseman on his own team — over, say, I don’t know, just picking a name at random, out of the whole NHL, Calgary captain Mark Giordano?

Now, to be fair, we don’t know the inner machinations here. Maybe they asked Giordano and he pulled a USA Basketball-at-the-Olympics and said “I’m good.” Let’s suppose it’s because he wants to stay healthy and rested for a season in which the Flames should be improved if all goes well. Maybe he had a look at the roster and said, “They don’t need me.”

But what if, as some have pointed out, this is Mike Babcock dancing with a guy who helped win him gold in Sochi? (I use the term “helped” loosely here.) That’s a worrisome decision-making process, because Bouwmeester shouldn’t have gone to Sochi in the first place, and that was two and a half years ago years ago, when he wasn’t yet almost-33.

The good news is Canada could dress you, the reader, as their No. 6 defenseman and win pretty much any game in a walk. So honestly, we’re just lucky Babcock didn’t name Harambe to make the bros laugh.

3. Jersey ad dislikers

So there’s going to be an SAP logo on the World Cup sweaters. One imagines that it won’t be worth a ton of money to the league, but enough, certainly, to make the deal worth their while in the first place. Worriers worry this is the first step toward Dunkin’ Donuts logos on Bruins jerseys and Canadian Tire ads on Senators sweaters, as they are wont to do.

But asked this week about the prospect, and what the World Cup decision means, Gary Bettman really seemed a little more dug-in than you might have expected.

“Doing jersey advertising for the World Cup is not in the same universe as putting advertising on NHL sweaters,” Bettman told the Canadian Press. “I’ve always said, you’re going to have to drag us kicking and screaming. We won’t be first. Obviously the NBA went first. And it would take a huge incentive for us to even consider it.”

To translate that real quick: “We’re a bit disappointed that we couldn’t drum up more sponsorship dollars for this trial run, so companies will have to pony up a lot more. But when they do, we’ll stop kicking and screaming long enough to sew on the patches and cash the checks.”

And look, why not take on another revenue stream? Any person who would consider, say, a Ducks jersey too sacred to desecrate with a Honda ad really ought to show themselves out.

2. The Hurricanes

A big L and a bigger W for the ‘Canes this week, as they invited Raffi Torres (of all the people in the sport!) to camp on a PTO, but then also extended Ron Francis.

There was some semi-understandable outrage that Torres would get another chance in the NHL when he was last seen trying to hospitalize everyone he’s on the ice against. And that’s a legit concern as he, ahem, fights for a job, because like any brainless punch-thrower he’s going to be looking to “make his mark” in a preseason game near you, probably by continuing to try to hospitalize someone.

Will he make the team? Bet a mortgage or two that he won’t. As I said last week, the concern over PTOs to various players — regardless of their recidivism rates — is always high, and in this case I don’t begrudge the worriers too much because with Torres on the ice, it’s a player-safety issue. But like a lot of guys who fit the veteran minimum-games-played requirement, he’s just a warm body they can throw into an exhibition without worrying that one of their actual players is going to get hurt. (Other teams’ actual players, well, that’s another story.)

PTOs aren’t a big deal, honestly. Normally you’d say “No harm, no foul” to any of them. What Torres brings to the table, though, might change that. So let’s amend it to: “No risk (for Carolina).”

And as for extending Ron Francis, well, he’s quickly proven himself one of the very best GMs in the league. So that’s good to get him extended for as long as possible.

1. Sweden’s World Cup injury replacement

Niklas Kronwall out, and Hampus Lindholm in? Hoo buddy. I would argue that Mattias Ekholm is the worst defender they’re bringing to the tournament, and if he’s your No. 7 defenseman, that’s really good. And then even if he gets hurt or something in the next week, they have John Klingberg to fall back on.

And they all play in front of Henrik Lundqvist. Yeah, Sweden’s gonna be realllllllllly good at this tournament.

(Not ranked this week: August.

Okay, folks, tomorrow is September. That means World Cup training camps start this weekend. And exhibitions start in a damn week. Good riddance, summer. Let’s goooooo.)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here