Big difference this time around

Mark Spector, Sportsnet.ca, December 9, 2011


EDMONTON — As the National Hockey League governors reformatted their alignment and playoff system in California earlier this week, there were pockets across the Canadian prairies and the U.S. Northwest where hockey people were saying, "Didn’t we already go down this road?"

In fact, they have. The Western Hockey League long ago switched from a conference-based, one-through-eight playoff system to a divisional format where the postseason began with a traditional bus-ride rivalry. Exactly what the NHL has done.

That was back in the 2000-01 season. The difference was, years later the WHL went back.

"I remember the discussion being very similar to what the National Hockey League has gone through. We went to four divisions from an east-west conference (format) for the 2000-01 seasons," said WHL commissioner Ron Robison. "For six seasons, in the first round teams played within their divisions."

The Western League only stayed inside its division for one round. The NHL has divided into four conferences and plans to play the first two rounds within them, so they may declare four conference champs each season.

But what eventually spelled the demise of that format in junior hockey was the lack of parity. Any money made by lesser ravel in Round 1, anything gained by forging better rivalries with the team up the highway, was overshadowed by the fact teams with fewer points were making the playoffs in one division than a better team in another one.

"The big reason (for was original switch) was the concern over first-round playoff matchups and low attendance," began Maple Leafs amateur scout Roy Stasiuk, the general manager of the Lethbridge Hurricanes from 2005 to 2009. "Rivalries were going to help interest among fans. Rather than Moose Jaw playing Kootenay, they could end up playing Regina, Saskatoon or Prince Albert."

But something went wrong.

In Stasiuk’s first year as GM, the Hurricanes made the playoffs in the Central Division with 63 points. The next season Lethbridge had 71 points and missed, despite having more points than the third- and fourth-place teams in the Eastern Division. Prince Albert and Swift Current had fewer points in their weaker division, but they were in and Lethbridge was out.

"That's what went wrong," Stasiuk said. "Your performance in the regular season didn't bear out, because of the division setup."

"You didn’t travel as much, and it built better rivalries within the division," Robison said. But, he admits, the owners couldn’t get over the fact that the best eight teams weren’t making the playoffs.

Smaller, mostly five-team divisions in the WHL meant you only had to better than one team to make playoffs. And that’s where the difference begins between the two leagues.

In the NHL, seven- and eight-team conferences ensure there will be no playoff berth assured for one team just because the one below it in the standings is a disaster. And that can happen in junior hockey, when a team sells out one year to make the Memorial Cup and falls quite a distance the next.

"There is more parity in the NHL because of the salary cap," Stasiuk said.

And if nothing else, playing two rounds within the conference should improve the level of postseason play simply due to putting less wear and tear on the players. Plus, during the regular season there is a lot more to be gained by NHL teams (TV start times) than there was in the WHL.

"The NHL put competitiveness aside for the moment, and said, 'Let’s do what’s best for the industry,' " said Robison, who was surprised to see the NHL stick with the format through two rounds, not just one.

"I don't think there is (a perfect system)," he admits.

We like the new NHL system. But the minute somebody gets "Lethbridged," you know the howling is going to begin.

THE HARDY BOYS THE FINAL CHAPTER. . .
IN WHICH WE PLUMB THE MYSTERY BEHIND THE WILDLY SUCCESSFUL KIDS' NOVELS. AND BRING A GHOST TO LIFE

Gene Weingarten, Washington Post Staff Writer, August 9, 1998


I recently rediscovered my youth. It made me sneeze.

It lay unremembered at the top of a tall bookcase: 15 vintage Hardy Boys novels by Franklin W. Dixon. In getting them down I took a faceful of dust and beetle carapaces.

I carried the books to my favorite rocking chair, beside my favorite lamp, and reverently broke them open to revisit the literature that had inspired in me a lifelong love of language. The pages were as thick as a shirt collar and ochered with age. They smelled the way old books smell, faintly perfumed, quaintly mysterious, like the lining of Great-Grandma's alligator handbag out in the steamer trunk. I began to read.

Pretty soon a new smell entered the room.

The Hardy Boys stank.

When a group of literati last month published a list of the hundred greatest English-language novels of the 20th century, lionizing "Ulysses" and "The Great Gatsby" and "The Sun Also Rises," I was privately disappointed they had not included "The Missing Chums." I remembered "The Missing Chums" as the pinnacle of human achievement, a meticulously crafted work of American fiction in which Frank and Joe Hardy, the sons of famed sleuth Fenton Hardy, braved choppy seas and grizzled thugs to rescue their kidnapped friends. I had first read it in a backyard hammock strung between sycamore trees during the summer of my 12th year.

Now, through my bifocals, I again confronted "The Missing Chums." Here is how it begins:

"You certainly ought to have a dandy trip."

"I'll say we will, Frank! We sure wish you could come along!"

Frank Hardy grinned ruefully and shook his head. . . .

"Just think of it!" said Chet Morton, the other speaker. "A whole week motorboating along the coast. We're the lucky boys, eh Biff?"

"You bet we're lucky!"

"It won't be the same without the Hardy Boys," returned Chet.

Dispiritedly, I leafed through other volumes. They all read the same. The dialogue is as wooden as an Eberhard Faber, the characters as thin as a sneer, the plots as forced as a laugh at the boss's joke, the style as overwrought as this sentence. Adjectives are flogged to within an inch of their lives: "Frank was electrified with astonishment." Drama is milked dry, until the teat is sore and bleeding: "The Hardy boys were tense with a realization of their peril." Seventeen words seldom suffice when 71 will do:

"Mrs. Hardy viewed their passion for detective work with considerable apprehension, preferring that they plan to go to a university and direct their energies toward entering one of the professions; but the success of the lads had been so marked in the cases on which they had been engaged that she had by now almost resigned herself to seeing them destined for careers as private detectives when they should grow older."

Physical descriptions are so perfunctory that the characters practically disappear. In 15 volumes we learn little more than this about 16-year-old Frank: He is dark-haired. And this about 15-year-old Joe: He is blond.

These may be the worst books ever written.

I felt betrayed. Or, as Franklin W. Dixon might have said: I thought to myself, "Golly," assailed as I was in that moment by a dismayingly uncomfortable feeling that I had been jolted with an unfairness that was profoundly extreme.

Thomas Wolfe warned: You can't go home again.

But shouldn't you be able to saunter past the old neighborhood without throwing up?

The Hardy Boys are still published -- all the old titles and dozens of new ones. They sell by the millions, still troweling gluey prose into the brains of America's preadolescent boys.

It is too late for me, but what of them?

I felt I had to do something.

Writing is an exercise in power. You wield the words, shape events. You are God. You can make anything happen. You are bound by no laws but your own.

And so I decided to find Franklin W. Dixon. And kill him.

Drat. He's already dead.

In one sense, Franklin W. Dixon never existed. Franklin W. Dixon was a "house name," owned by a company called the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which created and published the original Hardy Boys. From 1927 through 1946 each Hardy Boys book was secretly written by a man named Leslie McFarlane.

I found myself, quite literally, chasing a ghost.

I caught up with him on the telephone, in the person of the ghostwriter's daughter, Norah Perez of Youngstown, N.Y. Perez is an accomplished novelist. Her father died in 1977.

Recently, Perez leafed through some old Hardy Boys books. "I was almost shocked," she said with a laugh. "I thought, omigod. They are not great."

So her father was a hack?

"My father," she said, "was a literate, sophisticated, erudite man."

He was?

He loved Dickens, she said. "He was a great Joycean."

He was?

"He corresponded with F. Scott Fitzgerald. He had aspirations to be that kind of writer."

She seemed uncertain where to go with this. Finally:

"He hated the Hardy Boys."

It turns out the story of the Hardy Boys -- call it their Final Chapter -- isn't about the worst writer who ever lived, not by a long shot. It is about a good writer who wrote some bad books, and if you wonder why that happened, as I did, then you are likely not very old and not very wise. Sometimes homely things are done for the best reasons in the world, and thus achieve a beauty of their own.

Leslie McFarlane kept voluminous diaries. His family has them. He wrote in fountain pen, in elegant strokes that squirreled up a little when he was touched by despair or drink. In these diaries, "The Hardy Boys" is seldom mentioned by name, as though he cannot bear to speak it aloud. He calls the books "the juveniles." At the time McFarlane was living in northern Ontario with a wife and infant children, attempting to make a living as a freelance fiction writer.

Nov. 12, 1932: "Not a nickel in the world and nothing in sight. Am simply desperate with anxiety. . . . What's to become of us this winter? I don't know. It looks black."

Jan. 23, 1933: "Worked at the juvenile book. The plot is so ridiculous that I am constantly held up trying to work a little logic into it. Even fairy tales should be logical."

Jan. 26, 1933: "Whacked away at the accursed book."

June 9, 1933: "Tried to get at the juvenile again today but the ghastly job appalls me."

Jan. 26, 1934: "Stratemeyer sent along the advance so I was able to pay part of the grocery bill and get a load of dry wood."

Finally:

"Stratemeyer wants me to do another book. . . . I always said I would never do another of the cursed things but the offer always comes when we need cash. I said I would do it but asked for more than $85, a disgraceful price for 45,000 words."

He got no raise.

He did the book.

And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another.

"Writing is easy," said the author Gene Fowler. "All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."

Writing, particularly fiction writing, is an act of quiet terror. You are alone all at once with your genius and your ineptitude, and your errors are as public as possible. To be a writer of fiction requires extreme self-discipline and extreme self-confidence, and many of the people drawn to writing have neither. It can be a recipe for dismal failure.

Writing is also, financially, a crap-shoot. Always has been. Sometimes, good writers starve. Sometimes, dreadful writers succeed. John Grisham's sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon. Edgar Allan Poe nearly starved.

Mostly, you become a writer not because you want to get rich or famous, but because you have to write; because there is something inside that must come out. When a baby is to be born, she is born.

Leslie McFarlane, a 5-foot-4 Irishman with mischievous eyes, grew up in a northern Ontario mining town and never got past high school. He had to write. He knew it from childhood. He served his apprenticeship at a succession of small, gritty daily newspapers. At his first, the Cobalt (Ont.) Nugget, he received his first lesson in journalism from grizzled news editor Dan Cushing:

"Spell the names right. Get the addresses right. Don't use the word very' in a sentence."

Thus schooled, McFarlane was off to be a reporter.

As Cushing might say, the kid had something.

Once, at the Sudbury Star, he covered a fire that consumed the town he grew up in:

"A leering tornado of flame from the southwest roared down through a half mile of underbrush upon the town of Haileybury basking sleepily in the September sunlight on the shore of Lake Temiskaming early Wednesday afternoon, ate its way across the railway tracks and then, fanned by a 60-mile-an-hour gale, ripped its way to the water's edge, scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast."

Later, as an old man, in his memoirs, McFarlane would recall this fire. His prose had matured considerably:

"Paul Cobbold had been the local weatherman. Every morning, for years, I had watched him emerge from a doorway like some quaint figure in a mechanical clock, to read his instruments and jot down the figures in his little notebook. My mother said she had last seen him there in the smoke and wind when the fire was beginning to ravage the town. Paul and his frail little wife were victims of the fire. Next door another Englishman, the gloomy, taciturn Mr. Elphik, whom no one knew very well, was a charred skeleton in the garden of the home he had refused to leave."

But small-town newspapering seldom sees excitement like that. Mostly it sees fender-benders and sewage hearings and the petty maneuverings of beady-eyed local politics. After a time McFarlane was bored. He dreamed of writing fiction. He began noodling at his desk, after deadline. Once he sent off a short story to the magazine Smart Set, edited by the great H.L. Mencken. It was about a young man who one day runs into his long-lost sister. Reunion by coincidence is an ancient device, as old as Shakespeare. But McFarlane added a wicked twist: They meet in a whorehouse.

Unfortunately, McFarlane had never been to a whorehouse. He may well have been a virgin. The most gifted of writers -- the giants of literature -- can bring to their work a maturity of thought and an understanding of human nature that transcends their callowness. T.S. Eliot wrote "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" -- perhaps the greatest exposition ever on the anguish of growing old -- at the age of 26. There are few Eliots, and McFarlane was surely not one of them. Mencken rejected the manuscript. Sent it back with a one-word notation:

"Naive -- HLM."

McFarlane would keep this note for 50 years.

He became desperate to hone his fiction skills, but he had no time. He was newspapering in Canada and then in Springfield, Mass., for 15 hours at a stretch.

One day he answered an ad from the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a fabulously successful enterprise that wrote children's books through a conveyor-belt production process. The New York syndicate made the strangest offer: Would McFarlane like to write books for youths based on plot outlines Stratemeyer would supply? He would be paid by the book, and have no copyright to the material. In fact, he could never reveal his authorship, under penalty of returning his payments. The company shipped him samples of some books about a character named Dave Fearless -- dreadful, thickheaded novels with implausible plots and preposterous narrative.

McFarlane cheerfully agreed. Years later, in his memoirs, he would observe:

"To write a chapter of a book without having to worry about character, action or plot would call for little more than the ability to hit the keys of a typewriter. . . . They were straightforward, cheap paperbacks for a public that would neither read nor relish anything better. . . . And besides, I would be under no obligation to read the stuff. I would merely have to write it."

This was the cockiness of youth; the swagger of a young man with big plans and no horizons. He could quit his newspaper job, devote all his time to fiction.

And so he did.

The first Hardy Boys novel, "The Tower Treasure," was published in 1927. It begins with the boys on motorcycles, riding side by side, speeding along a shore road, having a conversation:

"After the help we gave Dad on that forgery case, I guess he'll begin to think we could be detectives when we grow up."

"Why shouldn't we? Isn't he one of the most famous detectives in the country? And aren't we his sons?"

Just how they could be having this ludicrous discussion over the roar of two motorcycles is never quite explained.

The fact is, McFarlane whipped off this passage in minutes, and it was just dandy with the syndicate.

It was dandy with him, too. The Hardy Boys were to be a brief, inconsequential meal ticket. They would take a few days apiece; he would expend no intellectual energy on them, and he would use the pay to underwrite more serious work. He would launch a family and a writing career, and in time be recognized as a man of letters.

Briefly, things went swell. And then came 1929. A bad time to be a writer without a steady paycheck.

"We had no car. We had no coal. My mother always had food on the table, but sometimes it was spaghetti with tomato juice on it."

This is Brian McFarlane, Leslie McFarlane's son. Brian McFarlane would grow up to be a hockey player, and later, a sports broadcaster and prolific writer of books about hockey. He is a member of the Canadian Hockey Hall of Fame.

In his father's diary there is an entry from the early 1930s. He took baby Brian for a walk, but had to return. Brian's only shoes had fallen apart. Another entry: He had to mail out a manuscript, but he had no money, so he borrowed 10 cents from Brian's piggy bank.

Another entry: "We are hoping for some money in time to go to the dance Friday night. It is humiliating to be so hard up."

McFarlane was writing good fiction, but few places were buying. He had only one steady patron, a syndicate that was paying him peanuts to write according to a formula it supplied.

There were children's books at the time written with eloquence -- Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie," for example -- but the Stratemeyer editors weren't interested in that, certainly not willing to pay enough to achieve it. They wanted simple and dumb.

In the early volumes, McFarlane gamely tried invention. As a foil for the ingenious Hardy Boys, he created two stumblebum local police officers, Chief Collig and Deputy Smuff, who dithered and blundered and misinterpreted clue after clue. It was a technique used by detective writers from Conan Doyle to Christie. But the Stratemeyer Syndicate was not amused. This was fostering a disrespect for authority, it said. McFarlane was ordered, in subsequent volumes, to give the cops a brain.

The message was clear. These were not McFarlane's books. They belonged to men named Edward Stratemeyer, who wanted bilge, and Franklin W. Dixon, who did not exist.

Around this time, McFarlane received a letter from Stratemeyer, reminding him that he might never disclose to anyone his role as ghostwriter of the Hardy Boys. McFarlane was actually relieved. He had been contemplating writing a letter of his own, asking that they never disclose his identity, either.

Nineteen thirty-one. Nineteen thirty-two. Nineteen thirty-three. Norah was born. Now there were three children, and no coal, and precious little food.

The Ghost was chained to his creation.

The best teacher I ever had taught 10th-grade English. He made books breathe and tremble. When he gave us an essay exam, he would write the question on the blackboard, and then sit down at his desk, infuriatingly, and wait. For 10 minutes, he would not distribute any paper. It forced us to think before we wrote.

He disdained Cliffs Notes and Monarch Notes, those crib-sheet synopses you could buy for a few bucks. They were intellectually bankrupt, he said. Tools of inferior minds.

He looked like a tormented artist. He had a hunted air about him. He dressed well, but often in the same suit, and sometimes it wanted a pressing. He was a talented, driven young man earning a small public school paycheck.

As final exams approached, I found myself swamped with no time to read. We were studying "Gulliver's Travels." Guiltily, I bought the Monarch Notes.

They were written by my teacher.

Sometimes, you do what you have to do.

To see Leslie McFarlane's talent, you need only read "The Ghost of the Hardy Boys," his autobiography published by Methuen Press in 1976, shortly before his death. It sold only a few thousand copies.

"The Ghost of the Hardy Boys" is an elegant book, full of charm and pathos and whimsy. The writing is restrained, the characterizations deep and rich, the humor nuanced.

McFarlane reveals that he was a poor student who barely survived high school math. He passed, he writes dryly, only "by a process of elimination, like a tapeworm."

He fell in love with newspapers as a boy when he walked into the offices of the Daily Haileyburian: "Every place of employment has its own odor of sanctity. At the sawmill you sniffed fresh pine boards and the wet bark of trees. . . . The movie theater had its own special fragrance of celluloid and collodion and the blonde cashier's eau de lilac. But the composing room of the Haileyburian was rich with the smell of Ink!"

His favorite editor was a curmudgeon named Beckett. One day, Beckett tried to stamp out a burning wastebasket, and got his foot caught. McFarlane writes:

"Laughing uproariously, Beckett lunged around the office with one leg of his pants on fire, trying to kick himself free. Every kick sent blazing papers in all directions. The society editor screamed and bent over to pick up one of the papers. If you have never seen a blonde society editor kicked in the ass by a flaming wastebasket, you have missed one of the rare experiences of journalism."

And, finally, Leslie McFarlane wrote of the Depression:

"There was so much that was demeaning about the Depression, such wreckage of hopes, plans, careers and human pride . . . if a family became penniless, there was merely relief' in dribs and drabs of food and fuel, grudgingly dispensed by a municipality that couldn't collect its taxes. And there was an old stigma attached to these bounties, the stigma of failure. Proud people would starve before they would let their plight become known."

I envisioned the young Leslie McFarlane, a fine writer, hunched over his typewriter, babies at his feet, desperate for the money to buy the coal to stoke the furnace to survive another day, haunted by fear, humiliated by his failure, guilty over his gall at subjecting the people he loved to the reckless dream he chased, banging out another idiotic novel for a plutocrat who abused him.

If you are a bad writer, then writing poorly must be no big deal.

But if you are a good writer, writing poorly must be hell. You must die a little with every word.

From the diaries, Saturday, Dec. 27, 1931:

"Did some more work on the juvenile. . . . It is dull stuff. . . . I will make a New Year's resolution never to do another if I can help it."

As he hacked away, year after year, anonymously becoming one of the most widely published writers in history, McFarlane held on to his dignity. He maintained a correspondence with great writers of his day, offering his opinions robustly. Norah Perez has a copy of a handwritten letter written to her father in 1938 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was responding to a letter from McFarlane in which he apparently had savaged "Tender Is the Night." Fitzgerald thanked McFarlane for his honesty:

"One of the ghastly aspects of my gloom was a horrible feeling that I wasn't being read. And I'd rather have a sharp criticism of my pet child Tender Is the Night such as yours was, than the feeling of pouring out endless words to fall upon {few} ears. I rather think I am done as a writer -- maybe not, of course. The fact that I can still write a vivid metaphor or solve a technical problem with some suavity wouldn't be an indicator one way or another."

Fitzgerald was as skillful, and as rewarded, as any writer of his time. He died two years later, deeply doubting his talents.

For five years after the Depression hit, during the worst years of doubt and shame, Leslie McFarlane hit the bottle. Drink is the bane of the writer at war with himself, and it nearly destroyed this one. His wife, Amy, a woman of uncommon strength, threatened to leave him.

This is not a chapter of his life that McFarlane has chosen to chronicle in his memoirs. His son, Brian, reveals it. His father, he says, was endangering his life and his family.

A writer can be the most selfish person on Earth -- demanding silence, expecting adulation, shamelessly mining the privacy of those around him for literary material. McFarlane did all that. He was no hero. But at his center lay something heroically unselfish. It showed up in the Hardy Boys -- not on the pages themselves, but in the simple fact that he was writing them at all. McFarlane was willing to demean himself and, as he saw it, to betray his craft, in order to put food on the table.

And now he faced the loss of his family. The end was in sight, and he knew it.

So McFarlane took the page out of the typewriter, crumpled it up, and wrote a new end. Good writers know when to do that.

He left home for a few weeks and went to a clinic in Hamilton, Ontario. Got himself straight. And never was drunk again.

McFarlane finally unchained himself from the Hardy Boys in 1946; the syndicate didn't care. It found another hungry writer to continue the series. To date, there are more than 100 Hardy Boys mysteries, and they are still going strong. In 1959, many of the old Hardy Boy books were redone, streamlined, modernized, sterilized. McFarlane was never consulted, but he didn't mind. Nor did he feel ripped off by their fantastic success. A deal is a deal, he always said. He agreed to it, so he couldn't complain.

McFarlane found a new niche. Briefly, he was fiction editor of Maclean's magazine. He produced acclaimed documentary films, wrote an excellent hockey novel ("McGonigle Scores!") and TV scripts for "Bonanza" and "The U.S. Steel Hour." He never made a hell of a lot of money, but he made a living, and he did it the way he wanted.

Always, he encouraged his children to write, and Norah Perez credits her father's love and support for her successful career.

"In your writings," he wrote her in a letter in 1973, "don't ever give way to feelings of inadequacy or doubts. . . ."

In another letter: "It occurs to me that Shakespeare must have been the happiest man who ever lived. Imagine being able to set down really marvelous lines every day of one's writing life and being able to say: There now. That, by God, is really good.' "

Shortly before he died in 1977 of complications from diabetes, he spoke with Norah. He had been hallucinating, and when he came out of it he was afraid. Not of death, but of history.

He told her he feared he would be remembered only for the accursed Hardy Boys.

Well, here they are. The accursed Hardy Boys. Volumes 1 through 21. The official Canon.

I read them again, for the first time.

Yes, the writing is pedestrian. Words are misused and overused. Teenagers speak in a language so dated it likely never existed. "What the dickens!?!" says Frank. "That fellow is certainly a queer stick," says Joe. Between Pages 9 and 17 in "Hunting for Hidden Gold" a storm "redoubles" its "fury" four times. Cliches abound. Hearts pound with excitement. People breathe sighs of relief.

I can see McFarlane at the typewriter, numbed stupid by the strictures under which he wrote.

Still, I couldn't help but notice that virtually nowhere in these books does one find the word "very."

And in some odd way, I found myself reluctantly captivated by these idiotic coincidence-driven plots. They do move along nicely. Every chapter ends with a cliffhanger.

McFarlane made you turn the page.

And as you turn, you notice something else. After page upon page of dreary writing, there is an all-too-brief moment in which the writer seems suddenly engaged. You stumble on a passage of unmistakable quality. It often occurs at the appearance of Gertrude, the Hardy Boys' cantankerous maiden aunt. McFarlane liked Gertrude.

Here she is described as "an elderly, crotchety lady of certain temper and uncertain years." That's nice.

And here, from "The Missing Chums," is Gertrude's debut: "Frank rushed to the window in time to see Aunt Gertrude, attired in voluminous garments of a fashion dating back at least a decade, laboriously emerging from the taxicab. She was a large woman with a strident voice, and the Hardy boys could hear her vigorously disputing the amount of the fare. This was a matter of principle with Aunt Gertrude, who always argued with taxi drivers as a matter of course, it being her firm conviction that they were unanimously in a conspiracy to overcharge her and defraud her."

If you are a good writer, you cannot hide it forever, no matter how hard you try. It's like trying to stifle a sneeze.

Gertrude enters the house and learns that Frank and Joe are planning on going out on their boat to search for Biff and Chet, who are missing. She lectures the Hardy boys' mother:

"I suppose they were out on a boat trip, too. I knew it! And now they're lost. That's what happens when you let children go out in boats. They get lost. Or drowned. And now you would let these two youngsters go out in a boat, too. And I suppose in a few days some of their chums would have to go out in a boat to look for them. They'd get lost, too. And then some more little boys would go out to look for them. And they'd get lost. By the end of the summer there wouldn't be a boy left in Bayport. Not that it would be much of a loss."

There, now. That, by God, is really good.

Carlyle's vaction is over + 30 Thoughts

Elliotte Friedman, CBC Sports, December 12, 2011


Randy Carlyle took his vacation. Now he's ready to go back to work.

"For sure," he said Sunday (a day before the Kings job opened) when asked if he was ready to coach again. "Without a doubt. I think I have something to offer."

Yes, he does. The marriage between Carlyle and the Anaheim Ducks came to an abrupt end two weeks ago. But, it's a guarantee that prospective employers will look at the positives of his first six seasons, rather than what went wrong in Year Seven.

Even though Carlyle coached the Ducks to the 2007 Stanley Cup championship, it isn't an uncommon belief that some of his best work came last year. Anaheim charged to fourth in the Western Conference, despite losing its No. 1 goalie to vertigo.

As for critiques that Carlyle can be too tough on players, well, Ken Hitchcock isn't always a favourite for the Wally Cleaver Award. And, look what's happening in St. Louis. If anything, that makes it even more likely that Carlyle's shot could come quickly.

(The fact Carlyle returned my call usually means nothing is imminent. My experience is that when someone is about to take a new job, it's harder to reach them. Of course, now that I've written this, Carlyle will get a job tomorrow.)

In the meantime, he spent some time relaxing in a small California city called Bishop - the "Mule Capital of the World," according to Wikipedia.

"I wanted to make sure I had some time to look back, think about what happened...and why it happened," he said.

So, now that you've had some perspective, what do you think?

"That's something I'm not going to share," Carlyle said. "I'm not going to throw stones. A lot of great things happened in Anaheim and that's what I'm going to remember. It was a great experience."

Won't be long until he'll have a new one.

30 THOUGHTS

1. Possible replacements if John Stevens doesn't keep the job? Keep an eye on Tony Granato. Lots of ties to the LA front office, and ready for another shot. (The Colorado fans are attacking that, but he's got much more experience now. People grow.) Two questions, though: would Pittsburgh allow him to go during the year? And, is Granato, as nice a person as you can find, what Dean Lombardi wants? Lombardi likes Darryl Sutter - a lot. And Sutter sure fits the "hard-ass" image people think Lombardi wants.

2. That also fits Carlyle's profile. He's under contract through 2013-14, so teams will need Anaheim's permission to get him. When the Los Angeles Times reported Terry Murray was in trouble late Sunday night, Helene Elliott and Lisa Dillman wrote the Kings "are not thought to be interested" in Carlyle. President Tim Leiweke loves the headlines (he brought David Beckham to MLS). This would certainly create some. Not sure, though, the Ducks would want that.

3. Lombardi said he decided Sunday and flew to Boston first thing Monday. Wouldn't be surprised if the story forced the issue. One of two things probably happened: Murray asked if it was true, or Lombardi felt he owed it to Murray to make a quicker decision once it got out.

4. Sounds like Lombardi really gave it to the players, blaming them for the firing. "He was very upset," said one. He sounded as disappointed as I've ever heard him on the conference call.

5. The Senators are being understandably tight-lipped about Patrick Wiercioch's injuries (the defenceman was hit in the neck by a puck in an AHL game last Friday). When we do find out more, sounds like we're going to learn that Binghamton trainer Glen Kinney is a real hero in this story. Patrick, we hope you make a full recovery.

6. Sidney Crosby met with reporters on Monday, saying he's not feeling bad, but has some symptoms and wants to be careful. He added the Chris Kunitz collision was not the cause. Glenn Healy wondered about that; with Crosby's great vision, Healy was surprised he didn't see Kunitz.

7. After Glenn said that, a few of us watched Crosby's previous shifts. (You kind of feel bad for the guy, everything he does is so picked apart.) He did a first intermission interview that night with Dan Potash and is cut under his right eye. On his very first shift, he's hit by David Krejci and it looks like his visor bends back into his face. That's probably where it happened.

8. Now, we'll get the questions: why was he playing? Ever since David Perron, I've hated that. Perron gets hit by Joe Thornton, scores on the ensuing power play and is accused of faking. Next thing we know, he misses 97 games. The most frustrating thing about this is it's not an exact science.

9. A few of you asked (via Twitter) why they don't just call it a concussion. One GM has a theory: "That word is so negative right now, teams just want to stay away from it...Behind the scenes, I'm sure these players are getting proper treatment. But every story you hear about concussions is so bad that I think they're worried about the effect it has on players and media." Considering how often we're seeing this now, I think he may be on to something here.

10. So, best to Crosby, and also to Chris Pronger, two guys who have more in common than they'd probably want to admit. Initially, we were concerned with Pronger's eye after Mikhail Grabovsky's stick hit him in October, but it appears as if his forehead took the brunt. He went into the boards hard against Carolina on November 14 (trying to break up a two-on-one) and versus Phoenix on the 17th (Martin Hanzal hit). The cumulative effects are the issue here. Thing that concerns me: Pronger doesn't miss time unless it's serious.

11. In case there is any confusion, Pronger has been on the long-term injury list (retroactively) since November 19 - the last game he played. Depending on how long they think he'll be out, it gives the Flyers an extra $5 million US in cap space.

12. Something new I learned this week: other teams really like dealing with Paul Holmgren. "No B.S.," one GM said. "He asks what you want, he tells you what he wants and if there's a match it gets done quick."

13. Okay let's lighten things up a bit. NHL Man of the Year: Tyler Bozak. Don't know what's going on with him and Kate Upton, but I'm very impressed.

14. Conference call sometime this week between the NHL and NHLPA to discuss re-alignment. Donald Fehr is used to consultation on this issue, because every time MLB went through something like this, there was discussion between the two parties. That's never happened in hockey. Most people seem to think the new plan will get approved. There is some wariness from the league that the NHLPA might want something in return. That would complicate the process, if true.

15. One thing that does look like it's headed for arbitration: the dispute over whether or not the players are entitled to the $25 million the city of Glendale pays to the NHL to run the Phoenix Coyotes. If it's not settled in the next week or two, sounds like someone else is going to have to decide.

16. Vancouver's power play is number one in the NHL at 26 per cent, five percentage points ahead of second-place Toronto. That's significant, because you could see Colorado and Ottawa try the Boston model last week -- punish them into submission. The Canucks' preference is to make you pay on the man advantage. It dried up in the Cup final, which was a major reason Vancouver lost.

17. Kevin Bieksa said he went to referee Kevin Pollock on Saturday night, asking him to watch Chris Neil. The Canucks defenceman claimed Pollock told him "they were good friends and he knows him well and he won't cross the line." Had a good debate with the NHL about this. I wanted Pollock's reaction, but a couple of league officials said no because "what is said on the ice should stay on the ice." So, I went to a few "independents." Most of them agreed with the league.

18. One scout on Tomas Kaberle: "He's playing very carefully right now." Translation: he doesn't want to get hit.

19. Zach Parise was so impressed with Mike Cammalleri's shot that he asked the Canadiens' winger about his blade, which is unique among NHL players. Parise, however, switched back to his old one, because he couldn't control the backhand. Ironic then, that Carey Price stopped that kind of attempt on a penalty shot to save Montreal's win in New Jersey on Saturday.

20. Boy, did the Canadiens need that. They tied Columbus late in regulation on Tuesday, but lost in the shootout. They led Vancouver 3-0 on Thursday, but you could see the Canucks believed they were going to come back and win. Another blown lead might have sent them off the rails.

21. Kirk Muller has a lot of fans. The one question, though, is: What will his system be? "We know he'll get his team to work hard," one GM said. "We know he'll have a good rapport with players. But we're not sure how his teams will play."

22. Karl Alzner said earlier this year that Eric Staal was the unluckiest player in the NHL. "Every time I see him, he's hitting the post or getting stopped by a great save." While that may be true, his low numbers were affecting his play. A few coaches/GMs saw Staal cheating offensively because he so badly wanted to score. That would explain the bad plus/minus.

23. Got to think an AHL stint is coming for Magnus Paajarvi. I can see why the Oilers are waiting on this, because it's hard to send a first-round pick down to Oklahoma City and not have it framed as a major disappointment. But, there comes a point where it's better for him to play there and not risk being a healthy scratch every couple of weeks.

24. One assist in 13 games is only proving how important Ryan Whitney is to Edmonton. The team's probably praying Taylor Hall's shoulder doesn't have the same recovery issues as Whitney's ankle.

25. With the World Juniors in town, Calgary plays 11 of its next 13 on the road. For the Oilers, it's nine of 11. Huge part of the season. Comparisons: Buffalo went 5-4-1 last season (seven of 10 on the road); Ottawa 2-7-1 (nine of 10) during the 2009 World Juniors; Vancouver was 8-5-1 on a mammoth road trip necessitated by the 2010 Winter Olympics.

26. Nice story from After Hours with Scott Oake and Craig Simpson: Jay Feaster's son, Bobby, was named Baseball Alberta Umpire of the Year and intends to pursue that as a career. Good luck.

27. Get the sense Nazem Kadri is being scouted hard. Could be Brian Burke's trade chip.

28. Claude Julien told NESN's Joe Haggerty that the Bruins were working hard to keep Joe Corvo's confidence up. In Ottawa, Bryan Murray basically banned Corvo from watching video because he used to beat himself up so badly.

29. Richard Bachman, who beat the Kings in his first NHL start last Satuday, is drawing several comparisons to Jhonas Enroth. That's not too bad for the Stars.

30. Was somewhat surprised to hear the Maple Leafs' new owners didn't raise the question of compensation should the NHL decide to put another team in the Toronto area. What did happen was the Teachers' Pension Fund asked for another $80 million if that second team arrived in the next few years, but Rogers/Bell rejected that. (That amount was added to the purchase price, instead.)

Coaching continuity keys success in pro sports

PAT HICKEY, The Montreal Gazette, December 2, 2011



It's open season on National Hockey League coaches, and that provided the backdrop as the Canadiens met the Anaheim Ducks Wednesday night.

It was a showdown between two teams desperate for a win, and speculation swirled around both head coaches. Anaheim's Randy Carlyle tried to slough off a suggestion he needed a win to save his job, but he had to be concerned after receiving a vote of confidence from his longtime friend, general manager Bob Murray.

The Ducks emerged 4-1 winners, but that didn't save Carlyle's job. Shortly after the final siren, Murray fired Carlyle.

Murray said it was important to have a new voice in the room, and announced Bruce Boudreau would be taking over. Boudreau was the head coach in Washington until Monday, when Capitals GM George McPhee decided a new voice was needed in the room and he replaced Boudreau with Dale Hunter.

As for the Canadiens' Jacques Martin, we'll never know whether he has received a vote of confidence, because general manager Pierre Gauthier is up there with the Sphinx when it comes to keeping his counsel. What we do know is that Wednesday's loss sparked a new chorus of howls from disgruntled fans who have a coaching change in Montreal at the top of their Christmas wish lists.

Longtime readers will know I'm no fan of coaching changes. I believe if an organization has hired the right person, it should stay the course. That has been the key to success for teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Los Angeles Dodgers and any National Basketball Association team coached by Phil Jackson. Barry Trotz in Nashville and Lindy Ruff in Buffalo provide good examples of that theory in the National Hockey League.

Teams aren't going to win every year. There are down cycles created by injuries, free agency, aging players or, quite often, a lack of talent. But the lamest excuse in sports is to say that a coach has "lost the room" or "a new voice is needed." Comments like these say more about the character of the players than they do about the ability of the coach.

I happen to believe Martin is a pretty good coach. In his first season with the Canadiens, he took the team to the Eastern Conference final. Last season, the Canadiens lost to the Stanley Cupchampion Boston Bruins in seven games, and three losses - including Game 7 - were in overtime. As Boston general manager Peter Chiarelli told me: "Montreal probably gave us our toughest series."

The most common complaint about Martin is that his style is boring. Of course, many of the fans who offer this opinion also believe the Canadiens would be better off with Jacques Lemaire, whose New Jersey teams provided an instant cure for insomnia.

Martin has put together high-scoring teams in Ottawa, and the Canadiens' power play was among the best in the NHL in each of the past two seasons.

The Canadiens are struggling this season, but they are not alone, which is why Montreal is within a short winning streak of a playoff spot.

How much of the Canadiens' woes can be traced to Martin?

I don't know, but here are things you can't blame on the coach:

You can't blame Martin for the Canadiens' lack of size. When Bob Gainey blew this team up in 2009, he had a chance to add some size, but instead opted for Scott Gomez, Michael Cammalleri and Brian Gionta. Gainey took on a bad contract Glen Sather gave to Gomez, and compounded the error by sending defence prospect Ryan McDonagh to the Rangers as a throw-in.

You can't blame Martin for the injuries that have plagued this team, especially the lingering absence of defenceman Andrei Markov.

You can't blame Martin for Gomez's lack of production, or the growing pains experienced by P.K. Subban.

You can't blame Martin for the fact the Canadiens have the least-experienced defence corps in the NHL

You can't blame Martin for the Canadiens' being up against the cap and for the long-term contracts that could prove problematic in the future.

There are signs that some players have tuned Martin out, but there are two encouraging signs in the NHL statistics. The Canadiens rank third on the penalty-kill and lead the NHL in blocked shots.

Those categories are not about skill. They are a reflection of hard work, determination, a willingness to sacrifice yourself for the team. The key is to bring that commitment to the other facets of the game and combine that commitment with a few more healthy bodies.

Is Darryl Sutter poised to become the Kings' next coach?

Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail, December 13, 2011


Could Darryl Sutter become the next head coach of the Los Angeles Kings? Maybe. On a conference call with reporters Monday night, general manager Dean Lombardi wouldn’t answer any specific questions about Terry Murray’s successor, other than to suggest that he had a very “short list” of candidates.

John Stevens is handling the job on an interim basis, but Sutter’s name was the only one that made any sense, given Lombardi’s history (the two worked together in San Jose for years) and his tendency to hire people from within his inner circle.

Early on, before he landed in Calgary and coached the Flames to the 2004 Stanley Cup final, Sutter earned a unique distinction shared only by Al Arbour up to that point - he was behind the bench for a Sharks’ team that showed improvement in five consecutive years.

When asked specifically about what he wanted to see from a new coach, Lombardi invoked his San Jose experience and compared that rebuilding process to where Los Angeles sits now, a young team that started the year with high - some might argue overly high - expectations and thus far, hasn’t met them, for a variety of reasons.

“I’ve been through this before,” said Lombardi. “I saw it with the (Patrick) Marleaus and the (Brad) Stuarts and the (Evgeni) Nabokovs.”

Lombardi then went on the lay the blame for the Kings’ poor showing of late (four consecutive losses, tied for 11th in the Western Conference standings), on the players in the locker room, old and young. Defenceman Drew Doughty has had a particularly hard time of finding his game after missing training camp because of a contract dispute, but Lombardi was prepared to name other names as well, noting: “The (Jarrett) Stolls, the (Justin) Williamses, the (Dustin) Browns, all these guys have to look at themselves as much as the younger players (do).”

Well, Sutter would certainly make life interesting in Los Angeles. Overall, he has coached 860 NHL games, posting a 409-320-131 record over 12 seasons. For a Kings’ team interested in not only making the playoffs, but making some hay once they get there (apologies for the farming pun), a more pertinent stat may be Sutter’s playoff record - under .500 at 47-54.

Sutter guided the Flames to the 2004 Stanley Cup final where they lost in the seventh game to the Tampa Bay Lightning, and then stepped away from the bench in July of 2006, after Calgary lost in the opening round of the first post-lockout playoff, to the Anaheim Ducks.

Sutter also made it the finals as an associate coach under Mike Keenan in 1992, where the Blackhawks lost to Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Sutter retained his GM portfolio in Calgary until just after Christmas last year, when the Flames replaced him with Jay Feaster. He has been on the outside ever since.

After years of painstaking rebuilding, the Kings imagine themselves as a team poised on the brink of playoff success.

Six consecutive years out of the playoffs produced a bundle of top draft choices, including Brayden Schenn, Doughty, Thomas Hickey, Jonathan Bernier, Lauri Tukonen and Dustin Brown. Schenn was traded this summer to Philadelphia in the blockbuster deal for Mike Richards, the signal in L.A. that the push was on.

Instead, they went backward, which is why Murray is on the outside looking in, and Lombardi is on the prowl for a new man behind the bench. Darryl Sutter? In the win-at-all costs NHL, stranger things have happened.

Chris Chelios inducted into U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame

The Associated Press, Dec. 13, 2011


Chris Chelios had a simple reason why he not only survived 26 seasons in the NHL, but earned a spot in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.

“I've been surrounded by great players my whole career,” Chelios said during the induction ceremony Monday night. “But the most enjoyment I ever had was seeing the enjoyment of my friends and family when I played.

“I hope I entertained you,” Chelios said. “I couldn't skate any more. I had to hang ‘em up.”

Chelios was one of five American hockey notables inducted Monday. He was joined by fellow defenceman Gary Suter, with whom he played at the University of Wisconsin and with the Chicago Blackhawks, forward Keith Tkachuk, Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider and broadcaster Mike Emrick.

Chelios, a three-time Norris Trophy winner who grew up in the Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park, said his greatest moment in the game, aside from winning the Stanley Cup for the first of three times, was taking the ice to play for the gold medal in the 1992 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

“You wanted to win the gold medal, but there was no disappointment (when Canada won),” Chelios said. “It was the best hockey I've ever been involved in.”

Tkachuk, who played for Winnipeg, Phoenix, St. Louis and Atlanta, had a vivid memory of one encounter with Chelios.

“Cheli and I tangled at Chicago Stadium, got me in a headlock and I couldn't breathe,” Tkachuk said, grinning. “I was down to my last breath. He was strong for a little guy.”

Chelios remembered Tkachuk “turning colours. I let him go right at the last second, but I could have made him pass out easy if I wanted to. And he knew it.”

They were loyal teammates on Olympic squads and during the 1996 World Cup of Hockey, in which the U.S. came back from losing the first game to sweep the last two games on Canadian ice. Suter was also on that team, while Snider hosted the first game in the Wells Fargo Center, the Flyers' then-new building, and Emrick called the contests on American television.

“I didn't expect to hear my name associated with a Hall of Fame unless it involved penalty minutes or eating,” Tkachuk told the gathering of about 450. “This means everything to me. I'm only retired for two years, and to go in with this class is amazing.”

Tkachuk scored 538 goals in 19 NHL seasons, but counted the World Cup victory as his top achievement.

“That generated great momentum, not only for me, but for U.S. hockey in general,” Tkachuk said.

Suter's 17-year pro career opened in Calgary, where he was named the NHL's top rookie in 1985-86, and went through Chicago and San Jose. Like Chelios and Tkachuk, he was inspired by the American hockey victory in the 1980 Olympics.

“That was so unexpected, but in 1996 (at the World Cup), we were a good solid team, among the top four in the world,” Suter said. “I think winning that had a similar effect to 1980 on kids, and American hockey has continued to get stronger.”

Snider's stewardship of the Flyers started with the team's inception in 1966. He helped grow a small business into a corporation that became a unit of Comcast, but said he was prouder of his foundation's taking over the hockey rinks in Philadelphia's park system and creating educational programs associated with hockey for disadvantaged youths to flourish.

“We have a 94 per cent graduation rate, compared to 54 per cent for the city,” Snider said. “We used hockey as the hook. It's the only thing I've put my name on. It's my legacy. It will last forever.”

Emrick's dream of being an NHL broadcaster started in the corner of the rink in Fort Wayne, Ind., where he called minor-league games into a tape recorder for practice. Decades later, the voice of 13 Stanley Cup Finals, and the lead announcer for hockey on NBC and Versus, still has boyish enthusiasm.

“I wanted to be a baseball announcer until I went to a game at the Fort Wayne Coliseum,” Emrick said of a 1960 visit. “I get in free, I still get a good seat for the game, and I still like doing that. So until my bosses don't want me doing that, or I'm unhappy with my work, I'll do it.”

The puck remains the same

Roy MacGregor, Globe and Mail, Dec. 13, 2011


It is the game’s one constant.

Everything else in hockey has changed – the rules, the players, the protective equipment, the nets, sticks, skates, boards, glass, standings, ticket prices, even the ice itself – but not the puck.

It remains as defined by Rule 13.1 of the NHL official rulebook: “The puck shall be made of vulcanized rubber, or other approved material, one inch (1”) thick and three inches (3”) in diameter and shall weigh between five and one-half ounces (5 ½ oz.) and six ounces (6 oz.).”

That tiny rubber disc hit the news this past week when it brought an end to the NHL’s current Iron Man streak, stopping the remarkable run of Tampa Bay Lightning forward Martin St. Louis at 499 consecutive games. St. Louis took a puck in the face during practice, the edges of the puck cutting him badly and the impact fracturing nasal and orbital bones.

There still would have been damage, obviously, but Harry McEachern can’t help but wonder if it might have been lessened if only the NHL had elected to go with a puck he helped Dave Hay develop more than half a century ago.

McEachern, now 87 and retired in Hudson, Ohio, was working for Polysar Ltd. in Sarnia when Hay – whose father, Hockey Hall of Famer George, had played for the Detroit Red Wings – came up with a puck made of butyl rubber that was the same size and weight as the puck in the rulebook but had somewhat different characteristics.

The new puck required no freezing, as is still done to NHL pucks in order to keep them from bouncing. Butyl rubber, McEachern says, is an “energy-absorbing material” that doesn’t bounce well. The puck appeared to slide more easily on the ice and, mysteriously, caused very few cuts when flying up into players’ faces.

“If it came in touch with the skin,” McEachern says, “it didn’t break. I can’t explain it.”

Local leagues experimented with the new puck for a couple of seasons in the late 1950s and the Red Wings tried them out in practice and were suitably impressed. But the league never adopted it.

The butyl puck today stands in a long line of pretenders who could not bump the puck first developed by Art Ross, Eddie Shore and others in the 1930s and manufactured by Tyer Rubber of Andover, Md. In March of 1951, the Art Ross Puck – U.S.A. patent 2226156 – was named the official NHL disc. Today, the official puck is manufactured by Soucy Baron of St. Jerome, Que., shipped to InGLasCo in Sherbrooke, stamped with appropriate logos and delivered around the league.

In the decades since McEachern and Hay thought they had reinvented the hockey puck, hockey historian J.W. (Bill) Fitsell says there have been numerous attempts to come up with something new, including a U.S. initiative to replace the black puck with a red one – more patriotic, the argument went, by having a red puck with blue lines and white ice.

The most famous attempt, surely, was Fox TV’s so-called smart puck, during the network’s lame attempt to give NHL hockey a national platform. FoxTrax was hilarious to Canadians, who couldn’t get enough of laughing at the blue streak on their screen that often showed the puck flying about the first two rows of seating.

There have also been attempts to apply reflective materials – the Glowpuck and Firepuck – and even a plan to outfit pucks with internal sensors that could tell, for example, precisely whether a smothered puck had crossed the goal line. In that case, price was obviously prohibitive: Unlike in children’s leagues, fans don’t throw pucks back in the NHL.

McEachern and Hay still believe their long-ago improvement was the best of them all – a puck that slid better, didn’t bounce and, most significantly, didn’t appear to do the same physical damage that today’s errant pucks can cause.

As for practicality, McEachern fondly remembers that when they tried it out with the Red Wings, Gordie Howe had the only question that truly mattered to the players.

“Will it go in the net?”

Hockey Canada unveils team for world junior hockey championship

DONNA SPENCER, The Canadian Press, Dec. 14, 2011


The 22 players tasked with re-claiming the gold medal for Canada at the world junior hockey championships were unveiled Wednesday.

Named to the team were goaltenders Mark Visentin and Scott Wedgewood, with Nathan Beaulieu, Brandon Gormley, Jamie Oleksiak, Dougie Hamilton, Scott Harrington, Ryan Murray and Mark Pysyk all on defence.

Canada's goalies Scott Wedgewood, left, and Tyler Bunz, right, stretch during Canada's annual selection camp in preparation for the upcoming IIHF World Junior Championships in Calgary, Alta., on Sunday, Dec. 11, 2011.
Video
Coach looks for versatility with junior roster

Up front, Freddie Hamilton, Quinton Howden, Jonathan Huberdeau, Tanner Pearson, Mark Scheifele, Devante Smith-Pelly, Mark Stone, Ryan Strome, Michael Bournival, Brett Connolly, Brendan Gallagher, Boone Jenner and Jaden Schwartz will play for Canada.

Thirteen players were released from the team Wednesday morning.

Edmonton and Calgary will host this year's world event. Canada opens the tournament Dec. 26 in Edmonton. After a run of five straight gold, Canada has taken silver the last two years.

Canada will play exhibition games in Calgary, Red Deer, Alta., and Edmonton next week.

Freddie and Dougie Hamilton will be the first brothers to play for the Canadian team since Randy and Mike Moller 30 years ago. Freddie is 19 and Dougie is 18.

The Hamilton brothers play for the Ontario Hockey League's Niagara IceDogs, who are well-represented on the team. In addition to the siblings, Strome and Visentin were the other IceDogs selected.

Canada boasts two NHL forwards in Smith-Pelly of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and Connolly of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Saint John Sea Dogs winger Huberdeau and Howden of the Moose Jaw Warriors also made the team despite questionable health. Huberdeau has yet to skate since breaking a bone in his right foot Nov. 7.

Howden took a hard check from Connolly in the second intra-squad game of camp and has an “upper-body injury.”

Both are expected to be important players for Canada. Huberdeau was the Memorial Cup MVP. Howden is one of four returning players from the team that won silver in Buffalo, N.Y., last January. Connolly, Schwartz and Visentin are the other three.

Hockey Canada can recall a released player in the event of an injury, but it's against policy to keep extra players after the team is named.

The selected players and staff are heading to Banff, Alta., later this week for practices and team building.

The players released were goaltenders Louis Dominigue and Tyler Bunz, defencemen Cody Ceci, Alex Petrovic, Ryan Murphy and Joe Morrow as well as forwards Brett Bulmer, Phil Di Guiseppe, Tyler Toffoli, Christian Thomas, Ty Rattie, Brad Ross and Phillip Danault.

Danault of the Victoria Tigres was the most surprising as he'd scored twice in an exhibition game against university players the previous night.

“I'm cut but I respect their decision,” said Danault, who at 18 will have another chance next year. “If they win the gold medal, I'll respect it more for sure.”

The defence was particularly deep at camp with half of the 14 blue-liners invited first-round draft picks of NHL teams.

Murphy of the Kitchener Rangers was drafted 12th overall by Carolina this year, but the 18-year-old was released by Canada. He's an offensive defenceman and tried to show he could play defence too.

“I kind of look back at it and wish that I was playing like myself,” Murphy said. “Maybe I didn't have to change my game, maybe I just have to be aware of other aspects of my game.”

“It's pretty difficult,” Murphy said. “Getting woken up at 6 a.m. is not the easiest thing and knowing it's you and not your roommate is also not an easy thing. I'll be back next year maybe and hopefully make the team then.”

Murray of the Everett Silvertips isn't draft eligible until next year, but he was named to the Canadian squad.

Petrovic is an Edmonton native and was disappointed to hear his phone ring early in the morning, because it meant he was summoned to meet with the coaches and hear the bad news.

“I was kind of in a deep sleep,” Petrovic said. “I had a little dream of actually waking up and making the team, but I got the call. Obviously, it's a heartbreak.”

Can HBO deliver another compelling season of 24/7?

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN, Globe and Mail, Dec. 14, 2011


It would be hard to exaggerate the impact of HBO’s initial 24/7 documentary series last NHL season on the sport in the United States. The whiff of HBO’s respectability married to the sound track of Bruce Boudreau’s serial profanity raised the profile of the sport south of the border and entertained hockey lifers in Canada, too.

Ratings for the series featuring Pittsburgh and Washington, which culminated in the fateful Sidney Crosby concussed-in-the-rain game, were buoyant by NHL standards. The series won an Emmy for technical excellence. A generation of sports media in the U.S. which disdains hockey took a second look. Some gave it a third look.

Even the cognoscenti in Canada were impressed by the access and insight they gained on players such as Max Talbot or Alex Ovechkin and Penguins coach Dan Bylsma.

So what do you do for an encore when the Rangers/Flyers dressing-room confidential debuts tonight? The 12-minute preview isn’t especially helpful in priming the pump. While the producers do their best to make the Rangers/Flyers rivalry seem like Pacquiao/Mayweather, the quotes from players and coaches sound more like Brady Bunch versus The Waltons on Family Feud.

Rangers coach John Tortorella does allow that he hates having the cameras around, and various players growl that they loath the other guys. But if you want Usual Suspects to reserve the next four Wednesday nights (okay PVR them and watch ‘em later) you have to deliver a little more than boilerplate WWE hype. Perhaps the producers didn’t want to give away the best nuggets so far.

What is notable is that the producers are not emphasizing the skill in the sport. The version of hockey in the slick edits and great cameras work is 90 per cent crash and 10 per cent dash. Most NHL nights this season contain one, maybe two fights in all the games. But the promo makes the uninitiated believe that Rocky V is about to happen 10 times a period. That’s an interesting editorial choice at a time when the league’s stars are being concussed at a furious rate and a stick-tap on the gloves draws a penalty.

There were some quick cuts in the promo of the rain falling last year in Pittsburgh, causing a one-day delay and a generally unplayable surface. Will the risks of playing outdoors be raised in the documentaries? Will Crosby's concussion get air time?

The other factor emerging is the NHL's continued adoption of the NBA/MLB broadcast strategy of “pay for 30 teams and use only eight”. This is a major-market initiative. Canadian teams do not exist for U.S. market considerations. You are not going to see a Columbus/St. Louis Game of the Week, and you’re not going to see 24/7 spend a month chronicling the inner workings of the Minnesota Wild (best in the West so far) and Carolina Hurricanes.

The league is happy enough to have these teams function (in the words of NBA owner Dan Gilbert) as the Washington Generals, but getting HBO or NBC on board? Not going to happen. The league has been lucky to have one of the elite eight U.S. markets in the Stanley Cup Finals since 2004’s Calgary/Tampa tussle, accounting for boffo ratings and media attention. But if the Wild somehow emerge to challenge the Buffalo Sabres in the Final, expect Bob Costas to get laryngitis.

So enjoy tonight. Maybe there will be gems. Maybe there won’t. Just remember the whole thing bothers Tortorella no end, and that’ll be worth the time invested in 24/7.

What Rivalry: Good on Prime Time Sports’ Bob McCown who’s been having fun this week with the Appalachian wedding of Bell and Rogers buying into Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. While co-host Damien Cox pursues a “nothing to see here” insouciance about editorial complications from the rivals merging interests at MLSE, McCown has been making light of the divided loyalties produced by the two companies owning all the Toronto pro sports franchises (except the Argonauts).

Monday McCown mused about how the sluggos in the broadcast trenches are supposed to resume their supposed bitter competition after watching their bosses hug it out last Friday. Tuesday he was asking if his paycheque would now be “Thirty-seven and half cents from Rogers, Thirty-seven and half cents from Bell and twenty five cents from Larry Tanenbaum”. And so on.

Cox, who seems annoyed at the entire line of inquiry, wondered what’s the fuss about when the companies united for the two weeks of the 2010 Olympics? McCown rebutted that was a one-off for two weeks. This is, like, FOREVER. McCown has tribal immunity at Sportsnet, of course. Still it’s refreshing that not everyone is ignoring the elephant in journalism’s closet.

Then Again: Of course, McCown followed that by joking that the name of Eric Lamaze’s deceased horse was “Giddyup” during a discussion of Lou Marsh Award balloting. Cox thought the Olympic gold-medal winning horse might be named “Hickory”. Sigh. Hickstead was the name.

Penn State Of Mind: You might think that the Penn State sex scandal is a made-in-America scandal. But Canadian networks are tying the Jerry Sandusky criminal case to events in Canada during the infamous Graham James case. CBC News Network highlighted the testimony of Sheldon Kennedy - one of James’s victims - Tuesday throughout its news day. CTV News Network was on the case as well. Good hustle.

Tebow TV: Hey, have you heard, this Tim Tebow kid in Denver might be worth watching? At least, that’s what we hear from ESPN. Twenty-four hours a flippin’ day. The best part of the Tebow phenomenon is how he makes traditional NFL personnel guys on TV who’ve predicted his demise look simply apoplectic when he does everything wrong and still wins. “He can’t play. He can’t throw,” one of them ranted in August. And you know who you are, Boomer Esiason.

Marvelous Marv: Another reason why we hope Marv Albert never retires. The veteran announcer was doing the Houston/Cincinnati NFL game Sunday when it was noted that the parents of Texans’ QB T.J. Yates had perhaps not received field-level seats for the game from the Bengals’ box office. We especially like Marv’s line about security guards hassling John and Carol Yates for moving down seven rows into the sunlight.

Flames buzzing about Darryl Sutter’s link to L.A.
“(Coaching) is where Darryl’s niche is,” says brother Brent

By SCOTT CRUICKSHANK, Calgary Herald December 14, 2011


Craig Conroy remembers it very clearly.

He remembers sitting in the dressing room — it’s the first intermission of a game against the San Jose Sharks — and watching as Steve Montador gets absolutely roasted by the new boss.

He remembers standing up, interrupting the tirade, blasting the blaster.

He remembers not getting another shift that night.

“I probably should have just shut up, but I didn’t,” Conroy, chuckling, is saying during Tuesday’s morning skate at the Bridgestone Arena. “You know when you get fed up with stuff? Then I’m thinking, I’m not going to play at all. How stupid am I?”

But next game out?

He gets a tonne of ice time.

This is Conroy’s point — that, yes, Darryl Sutter’s whip cracks louder than most, but it never turns into a grudge.

“From that moment on, I knew that anything Darryl did wasn’t personal,” says Conroy, now a member of the Flames’ braintrust. “This is the way he coaches. As soon as players find out that it’s not personal when he’s coming at you . . . it’s just about hockey, winning. He’s a great coach. One of the best I’ve had.”

Rumours of Sutter’s imminent hiring by the Los Angeles Kings had the rink buzzing Tuesday.

Could it be true?

Might the Kings, freshly shed of Terry Murray, hire Sutter?

Makes sense. After all, Los Angeles general manager Dean Lombardi and Sutter go back to their days in San Jose.

And the thoughts of many observers is that Sutter, while not a great general manager (enough said), is, in fact, a very good coach.

With the Flames, Sutter worked the bench for 210 games, going 107-73-30. If his three years in Chicago and six in San Jose are included, his record is 409-320-131.

“To me, (coaching) is where Darryl’s niche is,” said Flames coach Brent Sutter, the younger brother. “I believe it’s something Darryl’s always wanted to continue to do. When he was coaching, he was a good coach.”

Which is why the Flames are perhaps not entirely thrilled by the development.

Sure, they gave the Kings permission to approach Sutter. But what happens if, in the snug Western Conference, the Jolly Rancher gets the Kings rolling?

“I think, if he gets the job, he’s going to do well, just like Ken Hitchcock is doing (in St. Louis),” says Conroy. “You know how Darryl is — he gets a lot out of guys. The team’s going to do well with Darryl . . . they’d have success. It’s too bad they’re in the west.

“If it does happen, there’ll be some intense games between the Flames and Los Angeles.”

All four dates remain — Jan. 14 and March 28 at the Scotiabank Saddledome; Jan. 19 and Feb. 18 at the Staples Center.

“It’s hard to say you wish him the best because I imagine they’ll be fighting us . . . there’s only so many (playoff) spots,” says Jarome Iginla. “He’s a very intense guy, but he’s also a very smart hockey guy. As a coach, he’s demanding — probably runs in the family.

“When it was going bad, everybody — literally, everybody — took the brunt of it at some point. But every day wasn’t a whip. Certainly there are days when he may not love you, or vice versa . . . but I’ve only got good things to say about him as a coach.”

Hired by the Flames on Dec. 28, 2002 — yes, the same date as last season’s dismissal — Sutter coached three seasons: mopping up after Greg Gilbert was canned; taking the team to its first playoff berth in seven years (and to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final) in 2003-04; capturing the Northwest Division in 2005-06, the first post-lockout season.

Conroy says it is Sutter’s in-game touch that makes him such a shrewd bench-boss.

“Darryl had a knack for putting guys out and getting something big to happen,” he says. “Ville Nieminen. Or Chris Clark. It’s easy to put Jarome out, but it’s the other guys. Stephane Yelle. We had success with maybe not the best teams, but he got as much as he could out of every single guy.”

The day he arrived in Calgary, Sutter, after being introduced to the players in the dressing room, politely asked the team’s brass to leave so he could address the players.

“He wanted to be with just his team,” recalls Conroy. “He just kind of laid it out, ‘This is what it’s going to be like, where we’re going to go, how we’re going to do it.’ It was a very short meeting. And away we went. Darryl’s good. He’s quick.

“He can push the right buttons at the right time. You knew what your role was. If you did it? Great. If you didn’t? You heard about it.”

Are we sending our best off ice too?

RYAN PYETTE, QMI Agency, Dec 14 2011


LONDON, ONT. - The teens selected to represent Canada at the coming world junior hockey tournament are endlessly evaluated, poked and prodded and placed under enormous national pressure.

It's time the men above them took some heat too.

Nobody asked Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson, head scout Kevin Prendergast or coach Don Hay to jump through the kinds of hoops the kids do every year to be involved with this team.

But maybe, somebody should.

If the Canadians go a third straight year without winning the tournament that only this country cares about, then Nicholson better have some good answers for the processes under which his team operates.

And please spare us the wrinkle he lobbied for earlier this year, that the NHL draft age should be raised, which would, in effect, virtually guarantee Canada landing a half-dozen or so of its elite pro players for this post-holiday puck circus.

That's like a South African billionaire griping his mine's in trouble because six of his biggest diamonds have gone missing.

There's still more than enough talent in this country, an embarrassment of first-round NHL riches, and the bottom line is the tournament deck is stacked in Canada's favour by being held here every other year.

It all comes down to picking the right players and putting the right men behind the bench.

Other top countries aren't fooling around.

The Russians went right back to Valeri Bragin, who oversaw the stunning gold medal in Buffalo. The United States recycled Dean Blais, whose team beat Canada in overtime in Saskatoon two years ago.

Hay gets the call for Canada. He obviously has a fine track record, winning a gold medal a decade-and-a-half ago and a Memorial Cup five years ago at home in Vancouver.

Best of all under Nicholson's structure, he applied for the job.

But then you have two-time defending Canadian Hockey League coach of the year Gerard Gallant in Saint John saying he didn't apply for the job this year and it's not a big goal for him.

Here's the hottest coach leading the team with the most talent on the planet and he just won the Memorial Cup. Shouldn't Nicholson be practically stalking him to help the national juniors?

You never see Quebec Remparts boss Patrick Roy, who has convinced young and talented top scorer Mikhail Grigorenko to buy into back-checking hard, on the Canadian bench. Or, before he went to the NHL last month, London Knights coach Dale Hunter, the OHL's all-time leader in winning percentage who, at times, humourously outcoached rivals that would go on to eagerly represent Canada internationally.

Nicholson has Prendergast comb North America for the top talent. Shouldn't someone also be scouting the coaches and trying to determine the hot hand in the land?

Especially after how they lost in Buffalo, with a coaching staff that had watched Russia win two playoff games in desperate rallies, yet didn't make a goalie change or even call a timeout until it was too late, while everyone in the rink could feel the tide turning in the third period.

Hockey Canada likes to reward men who give up parts of their busy schedules to help the program in some form. If you spend time in the system and go somewhere with the under-18 team, there's a better-than-average chance you'll one day wind up on the world junior bench.

But the puck-following public doesn't care about any of that.

They want the guy who can harness these gifted horses, get them playing the most successful system and put the right kids on the ice in the biggest moments. No one will question anything if Canada wins gold.

But these are certainly the highest stakes for Hockey Canada in some time. The tournament is right in their own backyard. The next two will be in Russia and Sweden.

And if they don't win now with everything in their favour, that should certainly be the ignition for Hockey Canada to start looking at making some necessary, and overdue, changes.

Flames set to attack Torpedo

By RANDY SPORTAK, QMI Agency, Dec 14 2011



TAMPA - When a system is referred to as the Torpedo, it conjures up images of an attack.

However, that title sure makes the 1-3-1 ‘forechecking’ gameplan often used by the Tampa Bay Lightning a misnomer.

The Calgary Flames will get their chance Thursday to face the host Lightning and their system (5:30 p.m., Sportsnet Flames), which received all kinds of attention a few weeks ago when the Philadelphia Flyers responded by not moving the puck out of their defensive zone to the point play was called because absolutely nothing was happening.

“We played them last year when they did it, and to be honest, I didn’t think it as anything revolutionary,” said Flames centre Brendan Morrison, recalling the 4-2 win by the veteran forward and the host club at the Saddledome. “It works for them — they’ve been successful — but it’s not a situation where you step back and scratch your head saying, ‘Oh my God, how do we break this down?’

“We actually fared pretty well against it last year. The key is you’ve got to keep moving.”

The Lightning aren’t the only NHL club to incorporate the 1-3-1 gameplan — which is designed to clog the neutral zone when the other team has possession of the puck — but somehow Tampa Bay’s squad has become synonymous with it.

It’s much like how the New Jersey Devils and the Minnesota Wild were universally panned in years past for utilizing the left-wing lock.

The Flames are going into their clash with the belief they don’t want to spend too much time worrying about what the Lightning plan to do, preferring to concentrate on what they must do to be most effective.

“We’re going to make a few adjustments for their system, as we do on a daily basis preparing for another team, but it’s going to come down to what we do on the ice and how we execute,” said Flames left winger Alex Tanguay. “We’re capable of playing good games, and they’ve been struggling a little bit lately, so for us, we have to make sure we go out there and get some points.”

To say the Lightning are struggling lately is an understatement.

Heading into the latest rematch of the 2004 Stanley Cup final, the Lightning have just one win in eight games, and that was a come-from-behind shootout victory over the New York Rangers in a tilt which became known more the shotgun celebration by Rangers forward Artem Anisimov after a goal.

The Lightning have been outscored 31-16 in their swoon, and — if matters weren’t bad enough — they are currently without star player Martin St. Louis due to injury.

Still, the Lightning boast enough talent with the likes of fellow forward talents Steven Stamkos and Vincent Lecavalier to cobble together wins.

“I know there’s been a lot of talk about (the 1-3-1), but you can’t get caught up in it. You’ve got to play your game. You’ve got to play like you can play,” said Flames head coach Brent Sutter. “There’s been teams that had success against it, too. You’ve seen it enough and know how to adjust and adapt to it. We’ll make those adjustments, making sure we’re doing what we need to against it.”

Sutter and the rest of his coaching staff tuned into the Bolts’ last game — a 5-4 Monday loss to the New Jersey Devils — in which the Devils controlled more than the final score indicated.

“They got pucks in transition quickly and didn’t allow (the Lightning) to get in that (Torpedo) situation. There’s way to defend against it and ways to beat it,” Sutter said.

Coming off a disappointing 2-1 loss Tuesday night to the Nashville Predators, the Flames should have reason to instil their gameplan on the hosts.

Plus they know they blew a chance to pull a little bit closer to being in the Western Conference’s top eight with that loss in Music City, USA.

“We know where we stand. We’ve been battling extremely hard to get back in the thick of things, and here we are,” Tanguay said. “Let’s go out and try to play a solid game in Tampa and (Friday night) in Florida.

“If we go four of out six (of the remaining points available on this road trip), we’ll be close to a playoff spot.”

Colby the clown: Clarke MacArthur says nobody is safe from Armstrong's barbs

Mike Brophy, Sportsnet.ca, December 14, 2011


Every class needs one - a clown, that is.

And so, too, does every hockey team; somebody who can lighten the mood in the dressing room during tough times and who routinely puts a smile on the faces of his teammates.

In the case of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the class clown is none other than Colby Armstrong. The 29-year-old, who is in his seventh NHL season, gets his jokes off quicker than a Phil Kessel snap shot. Over the course of a long and stressful hockey season, that is important to team bonding.

The problem is, since Armstrong signed as an unrestricted free agent with the Maple Leafs two years ago, he has spent a great deal of time injured. And when players are hurt and not playing, they rarely interact with their teammates. Last season, a variety of injuries limited Armstrong to only 50 games and already this year the 6-foot-2, 195-pound right winger has missed 23 games with a high ankle sprain. The injury occurred Oct. 19 in a game against the Winnipeg Jets and didn't return until Dec. 9.

On Wednesday, Armstrong limped off the ice at practice, but he is expected to play against the Sabres Friday night in Buffalo.

In the two games he has played since returning, Armstrong's playing time has been limited to an average of 11 minutes per game; down five minutes from the 16:07 he averaged last season. The Leafs are clearly breaking him in slowly. He has one assist, but it is not the points that make Armstrong such a valuable member of any team he has played on. It's his dogged determination on the ice and his witty charm off it.

"He can keep the dressing room lose," said winger Clarke MacArthur. "He's one of those guys who can knock the edge of jitters some guys have. He goes out and plays his steady game every night. There's a lot to learn from him."

MacArthur said nobody is safe from Armstrong's barbs.

"He works the room pretty good," MacArthur said. "He and Dion (Phaneuf) go at it pretty good sometimes. It's fun. It loosens things up. It can be a stressful environment in the dressing room at times so it's good to have somebody to take the edge off a little. You always miss a guy like that when he's hurt. Not just his carp off the ice, but his intensity and determination on the ice. His on-ice play is what is really missed. He's a steady guy that can always be counted on."

"He's an easy going, loose, fun person who's always chirping the guys," added defenceman Luke Schenn. "He lightens things up around the room, definitely at the best of times, but at the worst of times, too. You can't replace a guy like that in the dressing room. He's such a likeable guy that everybody misses him when he's hurt."

Following Tuesday's 2-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes, Armstrong said he felt pretty good considering the length of time he was out. Still, Armstrong added there really is no substitution for game action when it comes to recovering conditioning and timing.

"You can bag skate, like I was doing, all you want, but until you get in there and start battling defencemen, doing that when you're a little tired with the puck, you don't get the same results," Armstrong said. "I was a little better than I thought I'd be right off the bat; I thought it would take a little while to get where I'm at."

When goalie James Reimer missed six weeks with a concussion, or whatever the Leafs want to call it, he said there was nothing he could do about the situation so he didn't worry about it. Armstrong said he is not quite as patient. He could not relax.

"I'm a head case; I have seven different kinds of doctors," Armstrong joked. "It is so tough sitting out. You are really separated from the team. I really enjoy being around the guys and being in the room, so there's nothing worse than when you are off to the side and not involved. You're on a totally different schedule. I couldn't wait to play again after my first game back. I am being given an opportunity to play with some pretty good players right now so I want to make the most of that."

As happy as Armstrong is to be playing again, his teammates are equally pleased that he back on the scene.

"He played the first few games for us and I don't think you realize how much he brings to the room until he's gone," added defenceman John-Michael Liles. "He's got that veteran presence. He's a vocal guy and now that he's back you realize how much you have missed him. He's quick-witted and he's got some pretty good jokes. He keeps guys smiling, but at the same time brings a lot of energy to the room and when you do that I think it translates into good play on the ice."

Watch: Best shinny rink ever?

Luke Fox, Sportsnet.ca, December 15, 2011


Replay of the Day: Now I know what I want for Christmas. Although the NHL move of Wednesday night belongs to Patrick Kane (see related link), this footage of a low-stakes scrimmage in Windy Arm, Yukon, is the stuff postcards and dreams and goosebumps and life-long hockey addicts are made of.

We’ll have to echo some of the YouTube comments on this one: “Now I understand ‘O Canada’ ”…. “That looks like paradise to me.”… “I want to live there!”

Yep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iwvfYmpYdaM

Pressure nothing new for Don Hay

JAMES CHRISTIE, Globe and Mail, Dec. 15, 2011


Silver is the colour of disappointment in the world championships of junior hockey.

That’s the kind of pressure that sits on the neck of the team’s head coach Don Hay. The national junior squad went to the gold medal game the last two tournaments and came up short – last time yielding five third-period goals to Russia to lose gold.

It’s up to Hay – a four-time Memorial Cup winner, sometime NHL coach in Phoenix and Calgary and head coach of the Vancouver Giants – to call the signals that restore the post-Christmas championship for Canada. To go three junior tournaments without a gold would set off alarm bells in this country.

The task is onerous, but he can handle the demands of the job. Hay is a teacher, a motivator – and he’s won more than 500 junior games. Hay was the national junior coach before, in 1995. That was a year the NHL was in a lockout and all the country’s hockey focus was the juniors and on Hay. He knows the country expects a gold medal out of a team of teenagers. He knows the importance of this tournament in Canada. While the world junior tournament, to be played in Calgary and Edmonton, isn’t a huge seller in most markets in the world, in Canada it’s a crucible.

High expectations aren’t negatives, Hay says. “It means people think you have a chance to win.”

He’s been thinking like a strategist, not a talent evaluator, since he was appointed last May. The last 13 cuts were made from training camp this week as Hay sought out 22 players who would mould together as Canada’s best team . They’re not only goal scorers but those who would play roles and be flexible enough to take unfamiliar positions in the event of injuries. Hay also expects the team to affix the Canadian brand to its game – fast and physical.

The goalie who went in as backup last year, Niagara Falls Ice Dog Mark Visentin, has played his way into a role as Hay’s probable starter. It’s as much character as ability. He showed tremendous maturity in facing questions after last winter’s third-period collapse handed the gold to the Russians.

“I’ve lived the moment. I can’t go back and change it,” Visentin says. He’s not afraid to talk about what happened. It’s part of his history. But he can also point to the fact that the meltdown was an aberration. He was, in fact, the OHL’s best goalie with a 30-9-6 record, a 2,52 goals against average and .917 save percentage.

It’s not just the kids who are expected to perform, but the coach.

“I really feel this is a time for me to step back in,” Hay says. “It’s an honour for me. I’m a better coach now. I’m more experienced. I’ve seen different situations. I realize the importance of the tournament to everyone in Canada.”