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: 6th overall; (In playoffs: lost to Minsk)
Ins and Outs (Season 11 to Season 12)
Out: Justin Faulk (free agent), Tobias Rieder (free agent), Josh Archibald (free agent), Garnet Hathaway (free agent), Justin Braun (free agent), Tim Kennedy (free agent), Todd Graham (free agent), Korbinian Holzer (free agent),
In: Ryan Callahan (free agent), Andrej Meszaros (free agent), Scott Sabourin (free agent), Zac Dalpe (free agent), Eric Tangradi (free agent), Victor Bartley (free agent), Steven Kampfer (free agent),
In Place (Key players signed past Season 12)
Gabriel Landeskog, LW; Nathan MacKinnon, C; Oliver Ekman-Larsson, D; Matt Duchene, C; Mitch Marner, RW
Three Questions
1. How will Belfast brass react to their unexpectedly quick ouster last season? Just as they should. General Manager Chris Patton had to be stunned by his team’s first round loss to Minsk, but he doesn’t seem to be pressing any panic buttons. The team remains almost the same as the one that was on the ice when Kjetil Martinsen scored the death goal for the Hussars in the Giants’ last game. Just a few starters have left including defenseman Justin Faulk and third-line winger Tobias Rieder. But that’s it as the start of a new season approaches. Financially, the squad looks healthy. They are a little under the owner’s budget and $4.6 million under the salary cap. Belfast is the most successful franchise in the league for a reason and it seems that Patton and Coach Alain Vigneault felt just a couple of adjustments were needed to start pursuit of their fifth Cup.
2. Should opponents be afraid of the Giants’ offense? Yes. Listen to these names: Duchene, Landeskog, Pastrnak, MacKinnon (you’re starting to get light-headed, aren’t you?), Marner, Huberdeau (feeling faint), Palat … (Deep breath) now to the defense … (what?) … Pietrangelo, Ekman-Larsson. You get the picture. Be afraid because there are waves of teal and red talent coming to your shore. But keep the faith because they are missing a big piece of the puzzle this year that they had in place last season. Justin Faulk had more ice time than any other Giant last season. He also had more assists (33) than any other defenseman, but he is in the other conference now, making $7.7 million playing in Bratislava. It will be up to Jaccob Slavin and Jakob Chychrun to generate some of the offense Faulk would have provided this season. Last season, Belfast finished 6th in shots per game and 3rd in goals per game.
3. What do they need to work on most? It’s a little hard to believe that the Belfast Giants – the team that has won 5 Cups and has finished the last 8 regular seasons in the top 6 – could have a blemish … but they had one last season. Only three teams were worse at penalty killing than Belfast was. Part of all penalty killing success or trouble is goaltending and we would say part of that is coaching, but look at Alain Vigneault’s sick attributes. So let’s look at the personnel that will be called on to kill penalties this season. The best defensemen Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Alex Pietrangelo should be on the first unit and right now, Pietrangelo is slated to remain on during the shift change for the second unit. He is also penciled in for top PP minutes. Maybe he should be allowed to get some water at some point. Up front, Belfast will be asking Matt Duchene and Gabriel Landeskog to skate on both number one special teams as well as the top forward line. Ondrej Palat and Nathan MacKinnon will come on as the second pair of penalty-killing forwards. Three of those four nimble, speedy forwards have defense attributes of 100 and Pietrangelo is a 98. We see no deficiencies there other than perhaps players getting too much work. Nico Hovinen saw his save percentage and goals against average both go a little south last year, but he’s only 28 so he should have plenty of life in his legs and glove hand. If Hovinen can correct whatever caused him to go backwards a bit last season, the Giants’ biggest problem should start to vanish.
History
Season Place PTS PP % PK % SPG SAPG GPG GAPG PIM
Season 1 21 61 10.1 77.9 23.85 37.40 2.33 3.67 10.29
Season 2 20 72 15.6 79.1 29.17 33.04 3.20 3.61 12.57
Season 3 19 76 20.2 82.9 30.17 31.26 3.20 3.41 11.18
Season 4 3 (Cup) 108 16.7 85.1 32.99 28.99 3.60 2.74 12.63
Season 5 1 (Cup) 129 20.7 86.4 32.55 27.71 3.79 2.54 11.99
Season 6 4 111 20.9 84.7 31.76 28.84 3.72 2.77 11.22
Season 7 2 (Cup) 120 17.1 86.0 34.89 25.95 3.74 2.22 12.29
Season 8 6 105 19.7 82.4 34.59 27.65 3.52 2.50 10.16
Season 9 2 (Cup) 114 25.6 84.6 33.34 27.28 4.02 2.74 8.46
Season 10 1 124 18.7 86.0 32.62 25.80 4.26 2.54 8.89
Season 11 6 101 21.6 79.5 32.18 27.78 3.74 3.17 9.83
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.
Season 12: Ryan O’Rourke, D, age 18.
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 (Philippe Myers) to Madrid for Erik Karlsson and Gabriel Landeskog
Season 10
Traded Erik Karlsson, Claude Giroux, 2023 Round 3 pick (Albin Eriksson) and 2024 Round 3 pick to Paris 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
Season 11
Season 12
