Owners – Two of Northern Ireland’s most famous sons: actor James (Jimmy) Nesbitt (probably best known internationally for his part as one of the dwarves in the Hobbit trilogy); and model/actor/’GLAMOUR sexiest man of 2017′ Jamie Dornan of “Fifty Shades” fame.
Farm Club: Belfast City Bruins
GM: Chris Patton (only GM in team’s history)
Coach: Alain Vigneault (replaced Darryl Sutter)
Last season: 2nd overall; (In playoffs: defeated St. Petersburg, then London and lost to Copenhagen)
Ins and Outs (Season 10 to Season 11)
Out: Mikko Lehtonen (trade), Jakub Krejcik (trade), Tim Gleason (free agent)
In: Mitch Marner (trade), Layne Viveiros (trade), Shane Pinto (draft), Kaedan Korczak (draft)
In Place (Key players signed past Season 11)
Gabriel Landeskog, LW; Nathan MacKinnon, C; Oliver Ekman-Larsson, D; Matt Duchene, C ; Jonathan Quick, G
Three Questions
1. What does ownership think of the Giants? Team co-owners Jimmy Nesbitt and Jamie Dornan don’t see eye-to-eye on General Manager Chris Patton’s handling of the club. Nesbitt loves what Patton has done in creating a team that has won 4 Cups (two more than any other) and last year set the league’s team goal scoring record. For Dornan, however, the money is the thing and Patton’s spending philosophy led to a payroll that was $13 million over the league salary cap when Season 10 began. In fact, the Giants somehow played two games about $7 million over the cap and the season had to be suspended while Patton fixed the lineup. Star goalie Jonathan Quick played the whole season with the Belfast City Bruins, the Giants’ farm team, and was paid about $9 million to do so. That made Dornan turn 50 shades of red. This season, Belfast was in a similar position as free agency ended, the Giants were $11.5 million above the spending limit that Nesbitt and Dornan agreed upon and they were about $9 million over the league salary cap. Something has got to give. Expect a trade or two to come soon.
2. What are the Giants’ strengths? Belfast is strong just about everywhere and they have been for nearly a decade. Goal scoring is their greatest strength, though, and what team wouldn’t want to be awesome at that? With the high-powered offense Patton built, it’s not surprising that the Giants set a league record last season with a 4.26 goals per game average. What was a surprise was that talented Belfast exited the playoffs without hardware. Copenhagen conquered them in the Northern Conference finals. Back this season to terrorize opponents are Matt Duchene (116 points last season), Ondrej Palat (101), Gabriel Landeskog (92), Nathan MacKinnon (88), defenseman Alex Pietrangelo (63) and almost all of the Season 10 version of the team.
3. Are there any weaknesses at all? Not many. It seems unfair to say the team’s fourth line is a weakness because they only played an average of 3 minutes per game last year, but when Brett Howden, Luca Vincec and Brock McGinn are on the ice, that’s your fleeting chance to hit the Giants. And it’s unfair to classify goalie Nico Hovinen as a weak link because all he did last regular season was have the 4th-best save percentage in the league (91.2). But the Tridents lit him up for 22 goals in 5 games in the playoffs and that was costly. Jonathan Quick has four Playoff MVP trophies in his possession and he could only watch from the sidelines last season. It’s mean to hold Hovinen – or any goalie – to Quick’s standards, but that pressure will be there as long as Quick is able to play but not between the pipes for the Giants.
History
Season Place PTS PP % PK % SPG SAPG GPG GAPG PIM
Season 10 1 124 18.7 86.0 32.62 25.80 4.26 2.54 8.89
Season 9 2 (Cup) 114 25.6 84.6 33.34 27.28 4.02 2.74 8.46
Season 8 6 105 19.7 82.4 34.59 27.65 3.52 2.50 10.16
Season 7 2 (Cup) 120 17.1 86.0 34.89 25.95 3.74 2.22 12.29
Season 6 4 111 20.9 84.7 31.76 28.84 3.72 2.77 11.22
Season 5 1 (Cup) 129 20.7 86.4 32.55 27.71 3.79 2.54 11.99
Season 4 3 (Cup) 108 16.7 85.1 32.99 28.99 3.60 2.74 12.63
Season 3 19 76 20.2 82.9 30.17 31.26 3.20 3.41 11.18
Season 2 20 72 15.6 79.1 29.17 33.04 3.20 3.61 12.57
Season 1 21 61 10.1 77.9 23.85 37.40 2.33 3.67 10.29
Top Draft picks
Season 1: Cory Schneider, G, current age 35. Games played: 403; Save Pct. 90.5
Season 2: Tony Martensson, C, age 35. GP 500, Pts 333, +7
Season 3: Nathan MacKinnon, RW, age 26. GP 571, Pts 524, +182
Season 4: Ondrej Palat, LW, age 29. GP 566, Pts 538, +240
Season 5: Vladislav Kamenev, W, age 23.
Season 6: Jacob Larsson, D, age 22. GP 16, Pts 1, -5
Season 7: Brett Howden, C/LW, age 21. GP 64, Pts 6, 0 plus/minus
Season 8: Cal Foote, D, 21
Season 9: Jack Studnicka, C, age 20.
Season 10: Jonatan Berggren, LW/RW, age 19.
Season 11: Shane Pinto, C, age 19.
Trade History
Season 1 (picks without years listed are from initial draft)
Traded Round 12 pick (used to draft Sami Salo) and Round 24 pick (Douglas Murray) to Bern for Round 10 pick (Devan Dubnyk)
Traded Round 11 pick (Roman Josi) and Round 15 pick (Andrej Sekera) to Minsk for Round 10 pick (Mikael Granlund)
Season 2
Traded 2013 Round 1 pick (Vadim Shipachyov) to Athens for Nazem Kadri and Round 2 pick (lost track of this one; might have been Brendan Pirlini in 2014)
Traded Rick Nash to Stockholm for Mikko Lehtonen and 2014 Round 1 pick (Jonathan Drouin) *Not 100 percent positive about the pick or if there was another part to the trade, but pretty sure.
Season 4
Traded Tony Martensson, Olivier Roland, Ondrej Pavelec and Adam Larsson to Edinburgh for Oliver Ekman-Larsson and James Neal
Traded Filip Forsberg and Cory Schneider to Munich for Jonathan Quick
Season 5
Traded Joe Pavelski, Jonathan Drouin and 2016 Round 1 pick (Ville Vahalahti) to Copenhagen for Alexander Ovechkin
Traded 2016 Round 3 pick (Evgeny Solomonov) to Bratislava for 2017 Round 3 pick (Julius Nattinen)
Traded Devan Dubnyk to Zurich for 2019 Round 3 pick (later traded) (Drake Caggiula)
Traded 2017 Round 1 pick (Lawson Crouse) to Bern for Cam Talbot
Season 6
Traded Mathieu Perreault to Copenhagen for Dennis Rasmussen
Traded Alexander Ovechkin and Cody Hodgson to Dublin for Evander Kane and Nardo Nagtzaam
After Season 6 started
Traded Rob Fabbri and 2019 Round 3 pick (formerly Zurich’s) (Drake Caggiula) to Milan for Mikko Rantanen
Traded Sidney Crosby, Mikko Rantanen, 2018 Round 1 pick (Jake Bean) and 2018 Round 2 pick (Andreas Athanisiou) to Edinburgh for Claude Giroux
Traded Nazem Kadri, Vladislav Kamenev and 2020 Round 1 pick (Niclas Almari) to Geneva for Sergei Mozyakin
Lost Mattias Tedenby (waivers)
Season 7
Traded Matt Moulson to Lisbon for 2020 Round 3 draft pick (later traded to Prague) (Maxim Sushko)
After season started: Traded Andrey Vasilevskiy, Julius Nattinen, 2019 Round 1 pick (Michael Rasmussen), and 2020 Round 3 pick (Lisbon’s) (Maxim Sushko) to Prague for Niko Hovinen
Traded Cam Talbot to Dublin for 2019 Round 2 pick (Cal Foote)
Lost Jesper Fast (waivers)
Season 8
Traded Sergei Mozyakin and Vladimir Tarasenko to St. Petersburg for Jonathan Huberdeau, Tobias Rieder and Jakob Chychrun
Traded Gabriel Bourque to Madrid for Yasin Ehliz
Traded Victor Hedman to Copenhagen for Jaccob Slavin
Traded James Neal, Michael Dal Colle, Robert Thomas, 2021 Round 1 pick (Grigori Denisenko), 2022 Round 1 pick (Arthur Kaliyev) and 2021 Round 2 pick (Alec Regula) to Prague for David Pastrnak
After Season 8 started:
Lost Mikael Granlund (waivers)
Signed Kevin Porter, Nick Lappin and Sergei Plotnikov (free agents)
Season 9
Traded P.K. Subban, Evander Kane, Nardo Nagtzaam, Jacob Larsson, Filip Westerlund and 2023 Round 1 pick to Madrid for Erik Karlsson and Gabriel Landeskog
Season 10
Traded Erik Karlsson, Claude Giroux, 2023 Round 3 pick and 2024 Round 3 pick to Madrid for Alex Pietrangelo and Evgeny Malkin (then bought out)
Traded Mikko Lehtonen, Jakub Krejcik and 2024 Round 1 pick to Moscow for Mitch Marner and Layne Viveiros
