FRASER: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN OFFICIAL IS INJURED?
Kerry Fraser, TSN, Jan 6 2012
Hello Kerry,
Big time Leaf fan so I've hated you since 1993, but I love your column and I'm willing to reconsider!
In the other night's Canucks-Wild game, linesmen Thor Nelson was injured with a cut hand and received some medical attention from the Canucks' bench.
Minutes later, there was a possible offside as Vancouver entered the Minnesota zone. I looked to the linesman for the call but noticed he was behind the play and out of position. I was very surprised! NHL linesmen are always right on the line!
That's when I realized someone was missing. Only three officials remained on the ice. With eight minutes to go and Vancouver up 2-0 the game carried on and I doubt many fans in the building noticed.
The remaining linesman Vaughn Rody was a champ as he skated end to end several times chasing icing calls and nearly had to step into an altercation involving Boom Boom Bieksa and one of the Wild players. Kudos to him for keeping the game rolling!
What is the policy when an official is injured?
Thanks Stripes,
Chris Marshall,
Vancouver, BC
-----
Hey Chris:
Thanks for at least reconsidering. I appreciate the second chance - my family says I can be very lovable.
During the Stanley Cup Playoffs there is always a backup referee in attendance. His responsibility is to watch the game on television in the officials' room, dressed in all his gear minus skates and ready to spring into action in the event of an injury. In series deciding games there is both a referee and linesman backup assigned.
In regular season games, unless an official has a night off in that city and decides to take a busman's holiday by attending the game, when an official is injured and has to leave the ice the crew works one man short. There's no time and a half pay for what Vaughn Rody did; the remaining guys really have to step it up.
I have been involved in several situations such as this throughout my career; both in one referee-two linesman system as well as the two and two. My good friend Thor Nelson had to leave the ice another time; this one in Denver after being struck by a wicked slap shot right in the middle of his back after an end zone faceoff he had just conducted. The impact of the puck fractured the vertebrae in his back. The poor guy was in such horrible pain that I got his room key and checked on him throughout the night. The next day he had to be helped onto the plane get home to his doctor. Thor's line partner filled the void and we assisted him with icing signals and line coverage wherever possible.
If a referee is injured and forced to leave the game the other ref goes back to the old system of chasing the play from goal line to goal line. With the red line now removed odds are that the lead linesman will be on the goal line covering for the referee and awaiting his arrival. When a linesman is injured the remaining linesman must cover both blue lines which is an incredibly difficult task given the speed through the neutral zone and the quick transition game that practically every team employs.
In the one referee-two linesmen system we also had to concern ourselves with an offside pass at the red line. At least Vaughn didn't have worry about that aspect of coverage with the red line being a non factor other than for icing the puck.
I have a funny story for you Chris on a 'serious injury' that never fortunately didn't occur. I was assigned to work a game in old Buffalo Aud with linesmen Ron 'The Bear' Asselstine and Dan McCourt. A fight broke out and as the guys were rolling around on the ice 'The Bear' stood up, grabbed his leg with both hands in a tight grip and showed me a skate slash clean through his outer pant and inner thigh pad.
With a look of shock on his face and bright red colour visible through the tear in his pants he said, "Kerry, I think I cut an artery". I told him to rush off the ice which he promptly did.
I went to Scotty Bowman, behind the Sabres bench and the visiting team coach and told them that Ron appeared to be seriously injured and that we would continue with just two officials. I solicited their players' cooperation and I dropped the puck in the end zone. (In this system the referee would conduct all end zone face offs so the linesman could remain on the blue line.)
With play underway I noticed 'The Bear' standing behind the glass at the door leading to the Sabres dressing room. When play stopped the door opened and Ron Asselstine stepped back onto the ice.
I said, "Bear, what are you doing back so soon if your artery was cut?" Bear, looking somewhat embarrassed bemoaned, "It was just my red underwear that was exposed!" Chief McCourt and I never let him forget it.
Ron Asselstine was one tough guy though. He charged a fan that came onto the ice during a stoppage and was about to do some damage to referee Bill McCreary when 'The Bear' headed him off at the goal line, driving his helmet into the guys back and slamming him into the boards. Bear rag-dolled the B's fan and tossed him off the open door where security dragged the guy away. Google it and you'll see it was the hardest anyone has ever been hit from behind on NHL ice.
Officials are tougher than you might think and work through a lot of injuries. All the guys have worked hurt or sick on many occasions and refuse to leave the ice unless the bone is poking through the skin.
With fifteen seconds remaining in the first period in a game in Atlanta I fractured a cheek bone after being struck by a deflected puck off the goalie stick of Stephane Fiset. I immediately grabbed my face and my finger sunk into the wound and I felt bone.
I was on the goal line near the Zamboni door so as play continued I banged on the glass, they opened the door and I stepped off the ice as the horn sounded and was escorted directly to the Thrashers medical room.
After an X-ray the Thrashers doc told me I had a 'non-displaced' fracture of the cheek bone and that I was done for the night. Eric 'Big Train' Vail stopped by the medical room to say hi as I was being stitched up and supported me in my argument with the doctor that I was going back on the ice.
I finally won the argument by saying to the doctor, "Non-displaced means it's not going anywhere right doc? So if I was a player and had to play what would you do?" The team doctor said, "If our player had to play, we would put a visor on him and send him back out."
That was just the answer I was looking for. I said, "Doc since I don't wear a helmet please have the equipment guy get me one with a visor because I have to go back out."
By the end of the third period my left eye was closed but I was able to complete the game and assist my partner Rob Martell. Marty told me it was my bad eye anyway so nothing changed!
Whenever the officiating crew loses a man through injury the players do cooperate and generally cut the guys some slack. They know it's a tough job at the best of time, let alone when you are down a man.
When an official goes down all of his teammates dig deep and attempt to support one another to maintain coverage. You could almost liken it to a team having to kill a penalty or worse yet more like a five on three. Compounding the difficulty of being down a man for the officials is that they are short handed for the remainder of the game.
Great job, 'Road Kill' - and excellent question Chris.
NBC Sports Update: In addition to my continuing regular duties with TSN I will appear this evening on NBC Sports as an intermission analyst with my friend Pierre McGuire on the NCAA College Hockey Broadcast immediately followed by NHL Overtime from NBC studio in Stamford, CT.
Swedes end 30-year drought at world juniors with win over Russians
Allan Maki, Globe and Mail, Jan. 06, 2012
They had stared at the photograph in their dressing room for most of the tournament. It was a picture taken 31 years ago, one full of Swedish heroes. Hakan Nordin. Patrik Sundstrom. Jan Erixon. All-star goalie Lars Eriksson. All members of the only team to have won a gold medal for Sweden at the world junior hockey championships.
And now there are two.
Sweden’s newest hockey heroes were born Thursday night at the Scotiabank Saddledome. They didn’t just win the gold medal; they defeated the defending champions from Russia 1-0 in overtime to win a gold medal for the ages. It was, the record books showed, the first time the two countries had met in a world junior gold medal game.
The game-winning goal came courtesy of Mika Zibanejad, who stole the puck off the boards and Russian forward Nikita Gusev. In a flash, Zibanejad cut to the net, made his move and slipped the puck past Russian goaltender Andrei Makarov at 10:09 of overtime.
Promising a better celebration than teammate Max Friberg, who had ridden his stick after a four-goal outing earlier in the tournament, Zibanejad tossed his gloves and embraced his on-rushing teammates. Better than his happy bedlam was his prediction.
Before the game and again before overtime, Zibanejad told his teammates he was going to score and end their waiting.
“You have to decide if you want to win this,” said Zibanejad. “And when I said it in the morning it was a joke. But obviously it’s not a joke any more.”
“We were determined we were going to win this tournament and we did,” said winger Max Friberg, who had mentioned the photograph of the 1981 Swedish team days before. “It’s big for hockey in Sweden that we win. It’s been 31 years now so I hope everybody cheered for us in Sweden.”
The game was closer than it should have been thanks, in part, to how Russian head coach Valeri Bragin juggled his goaltenders. First, he pulled starter Andrei Vasilevski at a critical moment in Tuesday’s semi-final against Team Canada. So steady for 40 minutes, Vasilevski surrendered four goals in the third period and was scrubbed in favour of Makarov, who had been sitting on the bench for three games.
Makarov got the starting assignment against Sweden. Thanks to his often spectacular work, the Russians were able to reach overtime despite being badly outshot.
“It was a very hard game,” Bragin said. “A lot of emotions were spent of the Czech and Canada [games prior to the gold medal finale].”
Makarov told reporters after facing 58 shots he wasn’t that tired and had already shrugged off the loss.
“I feel all right. I’m probably playing tomorrow night,” he said of his netminding duties with the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades.
Born to an Iranian father and a Finnish mother, Zibanejad had spent nine games in the NHL this season with the Ottawa Senators before returning to Sweden to polish his game. The overtime winner was his fourth goal of the tournament. He added to his celebration by staying on the ice after medal presentation and carrying a sign that read, “He shoots, he scores.”
“[Zibanejad] came in on the breakaway and I knew he was going to score,” said teammate Jeremy Boyce Rotevall. “He told me this morning he was going to finish this game off.”
Swedish goalie Johan Gustafsson faced just nine shots on net through 26 minutes of playing time. With 32 seconds left in the third period, he made the stop of his night, robbing Gusev off a spin-a-rama pass from the always dangerous Evgeni Kuznetsov.
“I hope they make a stamp of this,” said forward Rickard Rakell, referring to how the Swedish government memorialized Peter Forsberg’s gold medal-winning goal from the 1994 Winter Olympics.
The Swedes had two players named to the tournament all-star team – defenceman Oscar Klefbom and Friberg. Brandon Gormley was the lone Canadian selected and was also named the tournament’s best defenceman.
Kuznetsov, a Washington Capitals’ draft pick, was voted the tournament MVP with Petr Mrazek from the Czech Republic the top goaltender.
Mark Visentin earns his near-Hollywood ending
Roy MacGregor, Globe and Mail, Jan. 05, 2012
Turn it in as a Hollywood script and they’d laugh you out of the studios.
There’s this kid, see, a clean-cut, nicely spoken young Canadian hockey player – loves his dog Sheeba, loves his parents and grandparents – and the hockey gods decide that one year to the very day that he was accused of choking, with a medal once again on the line, this tall, skinny goalie takes a 3-0 lead into the third period of his country’s final game of the world junior hockey championship.
Can’t you just see it? A year ago in Buffalo he has this same lead in the gold-medal game against Russia and is standing, shell-shocked, in net as the greatest meltdown in tournament history takes place around him – five consecutive Russian goals that stab this insecure hockey country straight to its puck-black heart.
The only sure thing this year in Calgary is that there’s no border for his parents and grandparents to have to drive back across to get home, no Canadian border guard waiting to flick through their passports, dip down into the open window of the family car and say: “Oh crap, you’re a Visentin!” as if it were some sort of curse.
One year later, same day, same score with 20 minutes to go, and what happens? There’s your plot and it’s a winner.
In this case, it was: final score 4-0 Canada, with goaltender Mark Visentin granted a standing ovation as the player of the game. Mark Visentin with the shutout to give Canada the bronze medal over Finland. It may not have been for the gold medal and it wasn’t Russia, but it was personal redemption for a young man finally coming through the “toughest” year of his life. At only 19.
Visentin had played a small part in this year’s loss to the Russians, but the game was already 4-1 for the other side when he came in to replace Scott Wedgewood. The final 6-5 loss that ended Canada’s gold-medal dreams could no more be blamed on him than on Wedgewood. It had, rather, been a full-squad failure to come together as a team until it was too late.
Against Finland for the bronze, there was no chance for a team championship but still a chance for individual triumphs. The young goaltender who had been criticized so viciously a year ago made his statement that this time it would be different in the opening period, stopping a clear breakaway by Markus Granlund, one of the most feared players in this tournament.
But Visentin was not alone in seeking personal redemption. The Canadians went up 1-0 on a lovely tip by Tanner Pearson on a perfect pass from Mark Scheifele. Scheifele, the Winnipeg Jets’ top draft pick in 2011, and Pearson, a top prospect for the NHL entry draft in June, are best friends and linemates with the Barrie Colts of the Ontario Hockey League and had been considered pivotal scoring threats coming into the tournament. But it had not happened. The two had, until Thursday, been major disappointments.
But all that was forgotten early. In the second period, following a strong save by Visentin, the puck flew down into the Finnish end, where it wound up on Pearson’s stick behind the Finnish net. Pearson saw his linemate, fed him a perfect pass, and Scheifele ripped a wrist shot high past the blocker of Finnish goaltender Sami Aittokallio to make it 2-0. Quinton Howden finished off the Canadian scoring with two goals.
The sensational story, however, was Visentin. He saved a penalty shot awarded to Teemu Pulkkinen. Then he made The Save, a phenomenal catch in which the puck went off his shoulder, off the crossbar and was headed into the net when, somehow, Visentin swung around backward, catching it blind.
“Nice save,” Aittokallio said.
“Wow!” Canada’s Freddie Hamilton said.
“Flexible!” Pearson added, in awe.
“Amazing!” Canada’s Brendan Gallagher said.
The final word, however, must go to Mark Visentin, the kid who a year ago drove back in the dark to the family home in little Waterdown, Ont., who had bravely taken full responsibility for the third-period meltdown – though it was far from his alone – and had realized that one day everything would be all right again when he saw old Sheeba, the golden retriever he had played street hockey with since the dog was a puppy and he a child, coming across the floor in a flurry of wiggles and wags.
One year later, to the very day, there was instead a standing ovation, a medal proudly around his neck and, instead of everyone talking about him, everyone wanting to talk to him about that save.
“Pretty sweet,” he said.
End of story.
Edmonton, Calgary big world junior winners
TERRY JONES, QMI Agency, Jan 6 2012
CALGARY - As Alberta closed the book on the 2012 world junior, there was one suggestion for the title of the book.
"It was a Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times, the worst of times," said Lyle Best, the Edmonton co-chairman of the first-ever world junior tournament to be shared by two NHL cities, with all 31 games played in NHL arenas.
He kept up the friendly jabbing in the make-each-other-better rivalry he had with Calgary co-chairman Jim Peplinski until the end.
Edmonton got the best of it with four Canada games, all wins complete with scenes similar to the 2006 Stanley Cup finals, he suggested. Calgary fans paid for 21 games in anticipation of having Canada in the gold-medal game, and it was a bit of a bummer that it didn't work out that way.
But as this circus leaves town, there is the realization that both cities were winners -- big winners, no matter how it worked out in the end.
An hour before the gold-medal game featuring Sweden and Russia -- the next two tournament hosts -- IIHF president Rene Fasel, vice-president and tournament chairman Murray Costello and Hockey Canada president and CEO Bob Nicholson suggested it might take a little while for the host province to really realize the extent of what was accomplished in the hosting of the most ballistic world junior ever.
Fasel said the success of this tournament, and the string of successes in Canada leading up to it, has been incredible.
"You can play these games in some places (outside Canada) and shake hands with every person in the crowd," said Fasel.
"Canadian hockey fans are just amazing. I wish we could have Canadian hockey fans all over the world," he added.
It took a while for Calgarians to get dialled into the Canada-Finland afternoon bronze-medal game. But once the gold-medal game was done, the capacity crowd watching Russia-Sweden was able to leave the Saddledome and say "I was there" as the tournament slogan suggested -- even if Canada wasn't there.
"A lot of people saw high-level European hockey live for the first time, and loved it," said Costello.
"The Russia-Czech game was probably the epitome of it. You saw great goaltending here this week and spectacular games played here this week."
And there was no question of the big-picture success dating back to a year ago, when all the tickets were sold in three days.
"This tournament was taken to another level," said Nicholson, who announced a record-shattering attendance of 571,000, with 440,000 going through the turnstiles.
"That was the biggest delight," he said of the latter, which is the most record-shattering number of all.
Never before have such crowds -- which NHL teams like Phoenix, Columbus, Florida and the Islanders would have been happy to have -- watched games with Denmark, Latvia and the like.
"They didn't just show up for the Canadian games. There were 14,000 or 15,000 for every game," said Nicholson, who said he believed the event pumped $90 million into the Alberta economy.
Nicholson said it was too soon to come up with an exact figure in terms of how much money it made.
"It looks like it will be around the $20-million mark."
The previous record was $13.4 million, from Saskatoon two years ago.
"For the first time the IIHF will receive a share to fund programs in developing countries," said Nicholson. "Canada will now touch every part of the world, which is special."
So where do you go to top this?
"The tournament has never been held in Toronto or Montreal," said Nicholson, telegraphing two locations Hockey Canada would like to take the tournament in one of the the four years -- 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 -- that they have already won the hosting rights for.
It is expected it'll be back in Edmonton and Calgary -- in reverse, with the Canada round-robin games in Calgary and the medal-round games in a new downtown arena in Edmonton -- in either 2017 or 2019.
After what the world experienced in the two Alberta NHL cities in 2012, they can't help but come back sooner rather than later.
"It's quite remarkable how Alberta responded," said Costello. "I don't know how it can be better than this."
Finns disappointed with fourth
By STEVE MACFARLANE, QMI Agency, Jan 6 2012
CALGARY - His English might not be considered fluent just yet, but Team Finland captain Mikael Granlund summed up his side's tournament perfectly.
"I'm satisfied how we played but I'm not satisfied," said the 19-year-old Minnesota Wild prospect in the minutes following a 4-0 loss to Team Canada in the bronze-medal game Thursday afternoon.
"We wanted to do something special and win something and we didn't."
The underdog Finns definitely were on the brink of it.
After an opening day loss to Canada in embarrassing fashion -- an 8-1 defeat on Boxing Day in Edmonton -- Finland ripped off wins over the U.S., Denmark, the Czech Republic and Slovakia before getting off to a 2-0 start in the semifinal over the Swedes.
Sweden tied things up in the third period won in a shootout to bump the Finns to the bronze game, but Finland proved it is a contender on the world junior stage despite the fact their string of years without a medal at the tournament was extended to seven.
"The semifinal was so close," Granlund said. "That was a big loss for us."
So was Thursday's clash against Canada -- although not nearly as close as the hosts peppered netminder Sami Aittokallio with 44 shots and shut down a dangerous Finnish offence led by Granlund.
"This is hockey. Everything is so close every time. You need to do everything right and as good as you can," Granlund said. "Today we just weren't good enough."
Aittokallio, who replaced fellow backstop Chris Gibson between the pipes following that first loss to Canada, put it more bluntly.
"I think they wanted it more than us," he offered. "I think Canada wanted this more. They were a lot stronger than us.
"I think that we were a bit tired for this game."
Emotionally, that oh-so-close loss to Sweden might have drained them a bit. Fellow Finn and future Wild teammate Mikko Koivu even called Granlund to offer his support after that contest.
"He just said it's just hockey," Granlund said of the call. "Sometimes something like that happens. You can't go to the final every time. He was just trying to cheer us up.
"Every guy thinks it was a big loss (against Sweden). I think we did all we could in that game and it wasn't enough," said Granlund.
"We tried to do everything for this game to get the bronze medal but we couldn't do that.
"The right team won this game and the bronze medal."
Sweden chokes out Russia for gold: Zibanejad plays hero in overtime victory
WES GILBERTSON, QMI Agency, Jan 6 2012
CALGARY - Mika Zibanejad didn't just guarantee the golden goal.
He called his shot twice.
The Swedish sniper scored the overtime winner in a 1-0 triumph over Russia in Thursday's gold-medal thriller at the world junior hockey championship, keeping a promise he'd made to teammates a few hours before the tournament finale at the Saddledome.
"I knew he was going to score," said Swedish forward Jeremy Boyce Rotevall. "He told me in the morning he was going to finish this game off."
That, apparently, is just the half of it.
"I told him before the overtime, too," Zibanejad said with a grin. "So it was good to get that goal -- You have to decide if you want to win this. In the morning, it was a joke. But now, it's not a joke anymore."
With the victory, the Swedes claim their first gold at the world junior tournament since 1981, a hard-to-believe drought for a country that's won five men's world championships and two Olympic titles during that span.
They fired 57 shots at Russian goaltender Andrei Makarov before Zibanejad finally solved the Saskatoon Blades puck-stopper 10:09 into the overtime session, grabbing a loose puck in front of his team bench and finishing a nifty deke with a backhander on a partial breakaway.
The most surprising part of this game might've been the lack of offensive opportunities -- or even shots on goal -- generated at the other end by the Russians, the same squad that scored six times to spoil Canada's party in the semifinal two nights earlier.
When the Russians fired their first shot at Sweden's Johan Gustafsson, there was only 7:26 remaining before the first intermission. All told, they were outshot 17-3 in the first period.
If you think that's bad, wait till you hear what happened after the break.
At the midway mark of the middle frame, around the same time they scored their fourth goal against Canada in the semifinals, Valeri Bragin's high-flying squad had managed just four total shots on goal.
When the Russians were awarded their first powerplay with 3:27 remaining in the second stanza, the Swedes had a 37-4 edge on the shot-clock.
And when Boyce Rotevall was freed from the sin bin two minutes later? Sweden 39, Russia 4.
In the meantime, a guy nobody expected to see the ice -- backup goalie Makarov, who relieved Andrei Vasilevski after Canada's fifth goal in the semifinal -- was keeping his country in the game.
His long list of saves included several stops on Zibanejad, who fired a game-high seven shots on goal.
The Russians, who were outshot 58-17 as they tried for a second straight gold medal, finally generated some scoring opportunities in the final frame, perhaps responding to 'Let's go Sweden!' chants from the Saddledome crowd.
Russian captain Evgeni Kuznetsov, voted an all-star by the media, tournament MVP by the IIHF directorate and Public Enemy No. 1 by fans, rang one off the post on the powerplay.
Then with 33 ticks left on the clock, Kuznetsov threaded a spin-o-rama pass to speedster Nikita Gusev on the door-step, but Gustafsson stood his ground to send it to overtime.
It was Sweden's fourth extra-time game of the tournament -- including two against Russia -- and they won all four.
This one was, without a doubt, the most important.
"It's big for hockey in Sweden that we win," said forward Max Friberg. "It's been 31 years now. I hope everybody cheered for us in Sweden.
"I hope they party like hell."
The Russians settle for silver, while Team Canada claimed bronze with a 4-0 victory over Finland earlier in the day.
Christmas brings heartbreak to Turgeon
MARC DE FOY, QMI Agency, Jan 6 2012
Pierre Turgeon with his family. (Courtesy Turgeon family)
The death of a child is a parent's worst nightmare.
Like any parents, Pierre and Elisabeth Turgeon would feel a twinge of sympathy whenever they saw news reports about children who had died.
But life went on, and four beautiful children helped Turgeon enjoy retirement following a stellar 19-year NHL career.
Everything changed a little over a year ago when one of his daughters was taken from him.
Just before Christmas, on Dec. 23, 2010, 18-year-old Elizabeth, twin sister of Alexandra, died on a foggy road in New Mexico.
The pickup truck she was driving collided with a semi-trailer at an intersection. She died instantly.
Brittany Kraemer, her best friend and hockey teammate, was critically injured but survived.
It was the first time Elizabeth had been away from the family for the holidays.
The rest of the clan was in Calgary where Turgeon was preparing to celebrate Christmas with his brother, Sylvain.
Elizabeth was a sociable young woman who had many friends and played spirited hockey. Turgeon, in an interview with QMI Agency from his home in suburban Denver, Colo., recalled how his daughter would throw herself into the corners like a bowling ball to dig out the puck.
A member of the U.S. world champion under-16 team, Long Island-born Elizabeth was on the verge of earning a spot on the under-18 squad before she died.
The University of Minnesota had offered her a scholarship. Elizabeth had her whole life ahead of her and she spoke often of the future.
Then in an instant, her life ended.
Now, those tragic news reports of parents who lose their children hit close to home for Pierre and Elisabeth Turgeon.
"We are always sad when we learn about another (death)," the former Montreal Canadiens captain said.
"When it happens, you realize the pain it causes family and friends.
"It changes your life."
The Turgeons and their three remaining children are trying cope with the loss of Elizabeth.
"You learn to appreciate every moment," Turgeon, a 42-year-old native of Rouyn-Noranda, Que., said.
"Very often, we ... tend to think about what will happen in 10 days, in two weeks or in a year. But we must realize that we might not be there when that time comes."
Turgeon's wife decided the family needed a change of location this Christmas, so they went to Cancun, Mexico with son Dominic, 15, and daughters Alexandra, 19, and Valerie, 13. The couple's parents joined them.
It was a welcome diversion for Alexandra, a University of Denver volleyball player who was having difficulty coping with the loss of her twin.
"She found it hard the first three or four months," Turgeon said. "She stopped volleyball for a while, but she didn't stop her studies.
"She got better, but doctors we know said she went through another difficult period in the 10th or 11th month following the loss of her sister."
Turgeon said Elizabeth's memory would never leave them.
"Elizabeth is always with us," he said. "After a year, sometimes I get emotional. When I hear songs that remind me of her, I might start crying. I think it will still be like that in 10 years.
But Turgeon says his faith gives him some solace.
"At some point, we'll see her again."
Time for Flames to start dealing stars
Allan Maki, Globe and Mail, January 6, 2012
Nine to nothing, with heavy emphasis on the nothing.
No goals. No effort. No grit. No spirit. Nothing.
You can say a lot of things about where the Calgary Flames after Thursday night’s 9-0 loss to the Boston Bruins and none of them would be good. Even the players were among their harshest critics Thursday night, with forward Curtis Glencross saying the debacle was like “an NHL team playing against midget players. Brutal.”
But now the question looms larger than ever: what can general manager Jay Feaster do to fix a hockey team that looks void of interest? Fire the coach, Brent Sutter? And then what – promote assistant Craig Hartsburg, a former NHL head man himself? Fat lot of good that will do. Hartsburg would still have the same inconsistent talent base to work with, and really, Scotty Bowman could be in charge of this bunch and still come off looking like Bill LaForge.
The best thing Feaster can do is go to the Flames’ owners and tell them, “Guys, this group of players isn’t going to cut it. We have to trade one of our stars for younger talent or draft picks. We have to sell hope instead of hopelessness.”
That means either Jarome Iginla or Miikka Kiprusoff have to go. Perhaps both, if the deals are good.
The Flames’ owners have been loathe to trade Iginla for fear of public backlash. They love the guy, love the way he generates brand recognition and moves merchandise. That said, they’d allow Feaster to shop Iginla if he came to them and requested a change of scenery. That would enable the owners to say they were doing a long-serving employee a favour by giving him a chance to pursue a Stanley Cup elsewhere – because we all know it’s not going to happen here any time soon.
Even with Iginla’s $7-million salary, there are teams interested in acquiring him for a playoff push. One team official, who attended the world junior tournament in Calgary, was asked if he’d be interested in Iginla and replied yes, given the right deal, extremely interested.
Trading Iginla wouldn’t hurt the Flames much more than they’re hurting now coming off their 9-0 embarrassment in Boston. Trading Kiprusoff would because there’s really no backup ready to replace him, not Leland Irving, at least not yet. A veteran goalie would have to be secured one way or another if Kiprusoff were to leave. But unless Feaster begins dangling Kiprusoff as trade bait, there’s no way of knowing what the Flames could garner as compensation.
Would trading Iginla or Kiprusoff be akin to running up a white flag and saying the season’s over? Undoubtedly. Then again, the season’s next to over already. This was supposed to be a team that learned from last year’s mistakes and was going to avoid a bad start; was going to put itself in the playoff hunt early and stay there for as long as it could, come injuries or slumps. Yet here they are after 42 games, riding a five-game losing streak and sitting 12th overall in the Western Conference. Not much to build on.
For the record: the Flames did make a trade Friday, sending defenceman Brendan Mikkelson to the Tampa Bay Lightning for centre Blair Jones. It was a deal that had been in the works prior to Calgary’s beat down in Boston.
If they’re smart, the Flames will begin making calls and letting it be known among their peers that the time has come; the captain and the goalie are on the table and all offers are encouraged.
To refute that and do nothing … well, we’ve already seen what that’s doing for the Flames.
Capitals, Kings among the big stories so far
ERIC DUHATSCHEK, Globe and Mail, Jan. 06, 2012
Officially, the NHL’s 2011-12 season will reach the midpoint point Monday with Game 615 between the Los Angeles Kings and the Washington Capitals, and it’s an inadvertent, if appropriate bit of scheduling, considering how both teams were involved in the major stories of the first half.
The Kings and Capitals both joined the ranks of teams purging their coaches. Six in all joined the hired-to-be-fired brigade, including Terry Murray in L.A., where he was replaced by Darryl Sutter and Bruce Boudreau, replaced in Washington by Dale Hunter.
Rarely has a year seen so many highly paid, high-end talents sputter off to singularly mediocre starts - Anze Kopitar in L.A., and Alex Ovechkin in Washington were just two players not providing very much bang for their bucks. How can you rationally explain why Eric Staal (Carolina), Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Bobby Ryan (Anaheim), Paul Stastny (Colorado), Joe Thornton (San Jose), Daniel Briere (Philadelphia), Jeff Carter (Columbus), Henrik Zetterberg (Detroit) and many others are all massively underperforming?
Ovechkin’s struggles to match his scoring totals of two years ago and Sidney Crosby’s inability to stay healthy after returning to the Pittsburgh Penguins’ lineup at the end of November also meant that the Sid And Ovie show - the NHL’s favoured story line ever since both entered the league - has been pre-empted again.
It was a season when concussions reached epidemic proportions (in everybody’s minds but the NHL’s powers-that-be) and overshadowed a second, quieter injury epidemic at the other end of the body - so many players on IR with broken feet, ankles and such, because everybody is asked to block shots now - not just Craig Ludwig - and every team plays the same way defensively now, collapsing backward towards the net to create 401-at-rush-hour style congestion in front of the goaltender.
It was a half year that saw Winnipeg return to the NHL after a 15-year absence and reward its fans with a 14-6-1 start a home. In short order, the MTS Centre became one of the most difficult buildings in the league to play in - and everyone gets booed like they’re Evgeny Kuznetsov.
The Edmonton Oilers’ early successes gave way to the sober reality facing many rebuilding-from-scratch teams, and they’ve slipped behind even their provincial rivals, the Calgary Flames in the Western Conference playoff race. Calgary’s playoff hopes were undermined by the world junior road trip, which they finished Thursday by being on the wrong side of a 9-0 shellacking by the Boston Bruins.
The Bruins started October nursing a bad Stanley Cup hangover, but ran the table in November. Their opponent in the final last year, the Vancouver Canucks, took even longer to get started, but they caught fire in December and, at the moment, they may be the NHL’s two best teams with a much anticipated meeting Saturday in Boston. There is a chance they could make it a Stanley Cup final rematch, the first since Detroit and Pittsburgh went head-to-head consecutively in 2008 and 2009. Good news for Canucks fans: Last time out, the Pens turned the tables on the Wings and won when given a second chance.
Concussions continue to waylay players, not just Crosby, and there is a chance that the Philadelphia Flyers’ Chris Pronger - already ruled out for the regular season and playoffs - may never play again.
Among Canadian teams, the Ottawa Senators were the biggest surprise, nestled in the top eight after finishing 13th in the Eastern Conference last season. New coach Paul MacLean will be in the conversation for the NHL’s coach of the year award, but the first-half favourite is Kevin Dineen, who was the Florida Panthers, a team that hasn’t made the playoffs since 2000, atop the Southeast Division.
And if there was such a thing as the NHL’s executive of the year award, it would go to the Panthers’ Dale Tallon, who rebuilt the Panthers on the fly and helped a handful of ex-Blackhawks, Kris Versteeg, Brian Campbell, Tomas Kopecky and Jack Skille, prosper in south Florida. And speaking of the Panthers, who is Jason Garrison again, and why is he leading NHL defenceman in goal scoring, with 11?
The sophomore jinx appears to have gobbled up Panther-for-a-day Michael Grabner, third in rookie scoring last season. Or is that just the New York Islander effect, a perplexing condition that seems to kill young talent in its tracks (see Kyle Okposo, first 20 games, for further proof).
The Maple Leafs Joffrey Lupul and Phil Kessel, two of Brian Burke’s key acquisitions, have prospered as a duo this year, no matter who happens to play centre on the line. No one is prospering in Montreal, where the Canadiens rank right down with the Flames among the most disappointing contributors to the NHL’s Canadian content.
Prominent goaltenders on the slippery slope include the rhyming pair of Jonas Hiller (Anaheim) and Ryan Miller (Buffalo), two teams of great promise underachieving greatly. No one can explain why Hiller, an all-star last year, has been so bad for so long, unless it is the vertigo that kept him out of the Ducks’ lineup for the last part of last season. The Ducks’ struggles mean that their roster will be scouted fiercely in the second half, as the trade market heats up. Could Getzlaf find a new home? Ales Hemsky? Alexander Semin? Jonathan Bernier? Jarome Iginla? And lesser names - Tim Gleason, Bryan Allen, pick any pending unrestricted free agent on a non-playoff team - could all be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
On the ownership front, Matt Hulsizer did not land the Phoenix Coyotes last spring and now apparently, Hulsizer is not going to get the St. Louis Blues either. There is a new sheriff in the NHL’s front office, Brendan Shanahan, and he is providing great transparency to the NHL discipline system, but making nobody happy either. Colin Campbell looks 10 years younger, Shanahan 10 years older. It really is a thankless job.
And just one final note of caution as we hand out the first-half hardware: A year ago, Crosby was the runaway Hart Trophy choice, and at the 41-game mark, was day-to-day with a concussion. He didn’t play another game. So lots can change in the second half. With that disclaimer, however, here is our first-half choices for the major NHL awards:
Hart (MVP): Jonathan Toews, Chicago. Runners-up: Henrik Lundqvist, New York Rangers, Claude Giroux, Philadelphia. Toews, aka Captain Serious, is challenging for the NHL scoring lead and has the Blackhawks back on track, after winning the Cup in 2010 and then faltering for much of the regular season last year. Giroux, given the opportunity to play as the No. 1 centre following the trades of Jeff Carter and Mike Richards, has flourished. Lundqvist has the Rangers in the running for top spot in the Eastern Conference, on a team that features a no-name defence and not much up front beyond Brad Richards and Marian Gaborik.
Norris (top defenceman): Zdeno Chara, Boston. Runners-up: Nicklas Lidstrom, Detroit, Erik Karlsson, Ottawa. If it were just about scoring, Karlsson would be the runaway winner, but he needs to improve his defensive play to be considered a legitimate contender. Chara continues to suffocate opponents’ top forwards defensively and Lidstrom remains uncommonly effective at the age of 41.
Vezina (top goalie): Lundqvist, Rangers. Runners-up: Jonathan Quick, Los Angeles, Jimmy Howard, Detroit. The two top defensive teams, Boston and St. Louis, have both adopted a goalie rotation of late, which will make it harder for Tim Thomas/Tuukka Rask and/or Brian Elliott/Jaro Halak to get consideration for the award. Lundqvist has been phenomenal, as noted above. Quick, meanwhile, has taken on the Miikka Kiprusoff role for Darryl Sutter in L.A. and kept the offensively challenged Kings in the playoff mix; while all Howard does for Detroit is win.
Jack Adams (coach of the year): Kevin Dineen, Florida. Runners-up: Paul MacLean, Ottawa; Ken Hitchcock, St. Louis. Dineen inherited a completely revamped Florida squad which was millions under the cap until Tallon started shopping in July and quickly molded it into a real team; he has the Panthers in the playoff race for the first time in forever. Ottawa is early in its rebuilding program, but MacLean has gotten the most out of Craig Anderson, Daniel Alfredsson, Jason Spezza, and Karlsson, making the Sens an unlikely playoff contender. Hitchcock took over from Davis Payne in St. Louis and executed a neat-about face in St. Louis, a team that promptly went from the ranks of the also-rans to a spot in the playoff mix. Among the new coaches working in the NHL since early October, only Hitchcock and Sutter in L.A. have had the desired effect - of getting a stalled team started again. And weirdly, neither of them is bilingual either.
Calder (rookie of the year): Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Edmonton. Runners-up: Adam Henrique, New Jersey; Craig Smith, Nashville. Nugent-Hopkins was running away with the award until a shoulder injury knocked him out of the lineup until probably February. That’ll give Henrique, who has made the most of his opportunity to play a top-six role with the Devils, a chance to catch him. Nashville is always looking for more scoring and Smith appears to be the answer to David Poile’s prayers.
AND FINALLY: The Ducks will have a decision to make on Devante Smith-Pelly, who will miss four-to-six weeks because of a broken ankle, suffered while blocking a shot in the world junior tournament. Smith-Pelly said, in a pre-tournament interview, that he was going back to Anaheim. But with the season lost, Anaheim may decide to send him back to junior and save a year on his contract. While Smith-Pelly was away in Calgary, the Ducks landed Rod Pelley, a defensive centre from New Jersey. Now if they can only coax Craig Smith out of Nashville, or Zach Smith out of Ottawa, they will be able to ice one of the great tongue-twisting lines of all time - Smith, Pelley and Smith-Pelley. I’m sure Brian Hayward is in GM Bob Murray’s ear every day, trying to make it happen.
World Junior hockey tourney 'over the top' success, says even co-chair
Renato Gandia ,Calgary Sun, January 05, 2012
With the exception of a berth in the coveted gold medal game at the World Juniors, there’s no other way to describe the tourney than “over the top,” says the event’s co-chair
Former Flame Jim Peplinski, who helped lead the successful drive to bring the tournament to Alberta along with Edmonton’s Lyle Best, said the 2012 IIHF World Junior Championship has been a resounding success from many angles.
“It’s been over the top in terms of volunteer participation and experience,” he said.
“It’s been over the top in terms of individual players and team experience.
“It’s been over the top in terms of tickets sold and fans who actually attended the games.”
The 10-day tournament co-hosted by Edmonton and Calgary was a culmination of a four-year plan that attracted fans, family and media from across Canada and nine other countries.
The round-robin games were held in Rexall Place finishing off with the playoff showdowns at Calgary’s Saddledome.
Peplinski said the legacy of the tournament is “a clear demonstration of the power of sport.”
“The requirements for commitment, discipline, integrity, transparency, work ethic — all of the characteristics that are important to be a success in life — have been displayed in this tournament,” he said.
“We’ve had the chance to have hundreds of thousands of people across our province see this in the purest form.
“Getting up when you fall down, working as a team, learning how to win and learning how to lose, we’ve seen that in each and every game that these young men have competed in.”
If the lasting memory of the tournament is the incomparable sportsmanship or the athletic prowess of the players, then the legacy of this event has found a way to make a difference in people’s lives, Peplinski said.
Peplinski said the economic spinoff of the event is important for the entire province, but what he’s most proud of is the spirit of volunteers, about 450 in Edmonton and 600 in Calgary.
With the successful staging of this year’s tournament, Peplinski said there’s no doubt he’d like to see it come back to Alberta.
“I’d like to see more events come back to Calgary and Alberta, the facilities and volunteers we have are simply stellar.”
Be proud of our world juniors bronze
By STEVE MACFARLANE, QMI Agency, Jan 7 2012
As the autopsy of the 2012 world junior hockey championship takes place over the coming days, weeks and months, Canadians can choose to look at the results in one of two ways.
Either with concern over the fact their country hasn’t won a gold medal in three years — or with pride over the way the kids thrown together as a team for a matter of weeks managed to overcome one crushing semifinal loss and claim the bronze medal Thursday in Calgary.
If you share that second view, you’re also likely one of those who can accept the fact Canada is no longer alone at the top of the world when it comes to the playing a game we indisputably cherish more than any other nation.
That’s not to say Canada’s program is weakening and that setting their sights on a gold medal every year is unrealistic. Two silvers and a bronze over the last three holiday seasons is a bigger haul than any of the gold winners have achieved over the same stretch — the U.S. (2010 champs) were blanked this year, Russia (2011 gold) failed to medal two years ago and new champ Sweden missed the podium a year ago.
Depending on the crop of kids eligible from winter to winter, any one of the mainstream hockey countries — Canada, Russia, Sweden, U.S. or Finland — could come out on top of a tournament like this.
It’s healthy for Canada to aim for gold every year.
It’s outrageous to expect or demand it any more.
“The tournament is very competitive,” Canadian head coach Don Hay said during his final news conference Thursday afternoon. “There are very good teams here.”
Fans saw the two best clash for gold later that night.
Sweden earned that right with a shootout win over Finland. Russia did it for beating Canada by a single goal in the other semifinal.
And after Sweden came away with an exciting overtime victory over Russia to snap a 31-year gold drought at the tournament, nobody watching in the crowd or on TV could sanely argue it was a disappointing or anti-climactic finish.
Of course, it would’ve been better for the hosts to be involved in that pivotal game. But to suggest the world juniors stop being relevant when the Canadians are eliminated from gold contention is ignorant and egomaniacal — an attitude our country has adopted too often over the years when it comes to hockey.
How is it this one sport turns one of the most polite and passive nations in the world into such unbearable beasts come Boxing Day?
Teaching kids to aim high in whatever they do — whether it’s hockey or hotel management — is an important life lesson.
But there are plenty of positives to take away from a tournament like this — even when their ultimate goal hasn’t been attained. Every player walks away better for the experience, more capable of handing adversity at other levels of hockey, or maybe in other walks of life.
“It’s been one of the best experiences of my lifetime,” said Canadian blueliner Dougie Hamilton of the OHL’s Niagara IceDogs, a Boston Bruins first-round pick last year.
“Obviously, it wasn’t the result we wanted, but I think moving on in my career with the pressure and the circumstances that we went through … I think is something you’ve got to learn from.”
Brett Connolly, who quickly re-joined the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning after the tournament, believes the event will make those able to take part again next year even stronger.
“We’ll move on as players, and the guys that are fortunate enough to come back and play in the tournament next year — the younger guys — I think it’ll be a good experience for them moving forward, to be leaders on next year’s team,” Connolly said.
“We’re all proud of our bronze medal.”
The rest of the country should be proud of them for that.
Iggy pops goal No. 500
RANDY SPORTAK, QMI Agency, Jan 7 2012
Jarome Iginla is now a member of the prestigious 500-goal club.
The Calgary Flames captain and face of the franchise netted the milestone goal midway through the third period of Saturday night’s against the Minnesota Wild to become just the 42nd player in NHL history to hit that mark.
As a pure goal, it’s not going to go down in history as the prettiest, but that won’t matter to Iginla or anyone else who’s cheered on the Flames face of the franchise.
With the Flames leading 1-0 thanks to Lance Bouma’s first NHL tally, Iginla went down the right wing and simply fired a shot toward the net.
The puck ricocheted off the skates of both Wild defenceman Marek Zidlicky and forward Mikko Koivu before going past netminder Niklas Backstrom.
The Flames bench, when everyone finally realized it was indeed Iginla’s tally, cleared in celebration, and the standing ovation began with the chants of “Iggy! Iggy! Iggy!.”
Iginla, who started his career in 1996-97, is only the 15th player to score all those goals with the same organization, joining an incredibly exclusive club which includes Jean Beliveau, Mike Bossy, Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, Guy Lafleur, Mario Lemieux, Stan Makita, Mike Modano, Gilbert Perreault, Maurice Richard, Joe Sakic, Brian Trottier and Steve Yzerman.
Teammates past and present will be celebrating Iginla’s achievement.
“Forty-one, all time. And guys (chasing) aren’t even close,” said Craig Conroy, Iginla’s close friend and long-time linemate. “It’s a very elite club. It’s like 3,000 hits in baseball. When Derek Jeter did it, I was watching that game and it was awesome.
“For some reason, we haven’t made that big of a deal about it.
“He’s a good friend and one of the best teammates I’ve ever had. There’s no more deserving person,” said Andrew Ference, who now plays for the Boston Bruins.
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody in the league that doesn’t have the utmost respect for him and the way he plays the game and carries himself. Guys don’t just say that lightly around the league, even guys that have never played with him.
“To have that kind of praise from people you compete with on a night-in, night-out basis speaks volumes. He’s earned it. Despite all the goals and all that, the way he plays the game is the right way.”
Iginla, 34, scored the goal in his 1,149th game, which is tied for 123rd most in NHL history.
Of his goals, 253 have come on home ice, a testament to how much of an impact he’s been as a player on the road as well as at the Saddledome.
Iginla’s chase for 500 may have taken longer than expected — being just one of 10 players in NHL history to have scored 30 goals in 10 consecutive seasons — but based on the reaction by the Saddledome crowd, the wait was worth it.
“I told him before the (seven-game road) trip to save it because I wouldn’t see him until this game, but I was kidding,” Conroy said. “I know he’s wanted to get it as quick as he can.
“Now he can go for 600.”
For Conroy, it’s the second time he’s been witness to a player hitting the prestigious mark. He was a teammate of Brett Hull in St. Louis when the Golden Brett hit the mark.
This one was more special since Conroy set up 85 of Iginla’s tallies.
“With Brett, I was on the team and was there, but I didn’t help contribute. With Jarome, I was out there,” Conroy said. “It’s special.”
Daniel Tkaczuk: Growth and memories of Canadian world junior hockey
Daniel Tkaczuk< The Hockey News, 2012-01-07
Like many Canadians, as a youngster I rushed to my TV set during the holidays to watch our team in the World Junior Hockey Championship. Luckily, my dream was realized in ’98 and ’99 when I was chosen to represent my country. This year, being part of the Hockey Canada Alumni group that traveled to Calgary to mark the 30th anniversary of the Program of Excellence made me think of where it all began, the truly significant history of Hockey Canada and how the tournament has evolved.
Some key moments over the past 30 years:
1982 Inception, Discipline & Success
The obstacles that Murray Costello, past president of Hockey Canada, and company had to climb were tremendous. They had a shoestring budget and had to convince the major junior teams to release their best players, forcing them to play through the busiest part of the schedule without their most talented skaters.
The tournament was just not as big in the early-80’s.
Lo and behold, a rag-tag group that included Mike Moller, Marc Habscheid, Gary Nyland and Garth Butcher came away with the gold in Rochester, Minnesota by playing a hard-nosed, team-orientated, disciplined game that would brand the Canadian game for decades to come.
The 1995 Dream Team
Due to the ’94 NHL lockout, Canada had the fortune of icing their most talented team in Red Deer. High picks Alexandre Daigle, Ed Jovanovski and Wade Redden were complemented with Jason Allison, Marty Murray and Darcy Tucker to give Canada the gold. This was instrumental, as the team was highly entertaining and became a big-ticket draw. This was evident when they played their final games before sold-out crowds at the Calgary Saddledome. The business juggernaut, backed by the team’s success, was now well under way. Upcoming events in Winnipeg, Halifax and Ottawa would now have legitimate resources to build upon.
The Change in Format
Between 1996 and 1997 the IIHF finally came to its senses and reformatted the tournament. The previous format consisted of only a balanced round-robin schedule where the team with the best overall record after the seven games would be declared the champion. This resulted in a lot of scoreboard watching and what-if scenarios. Some notable examples include the Turku, Finland event in 1990 when news of Canada’s golden opportunity came from a phone call during a match versus Czechoslovakia and the playing of some meaningless games in 1995 after the team had already clinched the gold.
Media
It’s hard not to think of the TSN broadcast team alongside the tournament over the years. Paul Romanuk, Bob McKenzie and Gord Miller, Pierre McGuire and now Ray Ferraro have been tournament staples and are the Foster Hewitt-like audio support that run alongside the memories. Increased media presence and updates throughout the year builds up the anticipation for great moments on the ice.
Timeless Moments from the ice
The intense winner-take-all format has provided fans, players, coaches and media with great entertainment and memories. It’s the reason we always look forward to the tournament.
As a kid, player and, now, fan, I can’t help but remember these goals.
My Top 5
2009 - Jordan Eberle – Ottawa
Ryan Ellis kept the puck in at the blueline and put it towards the net where Eberle made a slick move to the back hand to put it in with seconds remaining, tying the game and allowing Canada to win it over the Russians in OT.
2008 - Matt Halischuk – Pardubice, Czech Republic
Halischuk slid the ‘Golden Goal’ under the Swedish netminder in overtime to give Canada the title.
2007 - Jonathan Toews – Leksand, Sweden
Like many tightly played international events, Canada’s semifinal game came down to the shootout. After the initial three shooters, teams can choose any skater as many times as they like, regardless if they had taken a previous shot. This set the stage for Toews to score three consecutive sudden death goals and move Canada on to the gold medal game.
1991 – John Slaney – Saskatoon
The Newfoundlander took advantage of a Russian miscue with about five minutes left in the third period in what would be the deciding game for the gold medal.
1997 – Boyd Devereaux – Geneva, Switzerland
Scored late in the semifinal game versus the Russians to move Canada into the gold medal game. Canada would go on to win their fifth consecutive gold.
Summary
A lot has changed. The program and tournament will continue to grow and evolve as the Americans, Swedes and Russians continue to adapt and pour money into their programs. As a fan, I always look forward to watching these talented kids that play the game with emotional spirit and try to bring a gold medal back to Canada.
Daniel Tkaczuk was Calgary's first round pick in 1997 (sixth overall) and has been playing professionally in North America and Europe for the past 12 seasons. He is currently president of iHockeyTrainer.com, an online hockey school for skill development.
Oh, say can you see? Americans on the rise in NHL
JAMES MIRTLE, Globe and Mail, Jan. 06, 2012
They are the kind of numbers that are sure to make Gary Bettman smile.
Even as several of the NHL’s U.S.-based franchises continue to struggle financially, the reality is that commissioner’s league is becoming more and more American with every passing season.
At least in terms of who’s on the ice.
In a league in which roughly 700 players suit up for a regular shift each year, the number of NHLers from the United States has jumped considerably in the past seven or eight seasons alone.
Last season, for example, 156 American players played in 25 or more games – an historic high for the NHL – which is up from only 101 as recently as the 2002-03 season.
That dramatic increase means the NHL has gone from drawing less than 15 per cent of its players from the United States to nearly 23 per cent.
General managers and players said this week they’ve noticed the trend, and they credit the development to two key shifts for hockey in the United States.
1. More regions in the country are producing talent, with players from Alaska, California, Wisconsin and other locales now making an impact in the NHL
“Years ago, we talked about the three Ms in terms of Massachusetts, Minnesota and Michigan as the only places where there was hockey played,” said Nashville Predators GM David Poile, whose team has 10 American players this season, second only to the Buffalo Sabres (15).
“We’ve now drafted a player like Jonathan Blum from California in the first round. There are players in the NHL or Division I colleges from Florida and Texas. I think the exposure of hockey has increased so much more in the last 10 to 15 years.”
2. The creation of the U.S. national team development program in 1997 has helped top players improve by getting them to play and train together at a young age
“I think that helps a lot,” said Toronto Maple Leafs forward Joey Crabb, one of the first Alaskans in the program back in 1999. “That helps development and in getting players to the NHL. It was a great step for me.”
“You’re playing basically a pro schedule,” teammate Mike Komisarek, a Long Island, N.Y., native, added. “You’re going overseas five or six times a year. You’d never get those opportunities elsewhere.”
“That’s been really a strong point of developing elite players,” Poile said. “It’s probably not a lot different than what we used to hear about the Russian system where they’d bring all the top players from around the country to play on a national team.”
While the number of Canadians in the NHL has decreased only slightly of late – with 52 per cent of players still coming from the country – several European countries have dropped off dramatically.
Between 2005-06 and 2010-11, the number of Russians, Czechs and Slovaks who played 25 games in a season fell by 35 per cent, down to just 74 players.
And all of those spots have essentially been taken by Americans.
The trend has been especially significant on NHL bluelines, as there are now more defencemen from the United States (26 per cent) than all of the European countries combined (25 per cent).
While the U.S. entry stumbled badly to a seventh-place finish at the world juniors this year, USA Hockey executive Jim Johansson said the NHL numbers clearly show their development strategy is paying off over the long haul.
“We’re not judging our program on three games,” he said. “We like the rise that we’ve had in our players, but we like more that the rise has been kind of a small and steady rise.”
Johansson points to the impressive growth among USA Hockey’s youngest players as recent evidence the trend will continue.
Over the past five seasons, the number of children aged 8 and under playing hockey in the United States has risen by more than 15,000, cresting over the 100,000 mark for the first time last season.
“Even as participation is down in so many sports, we’re a sport that seems to find a way to grow,” Johansson said.
And that kind of growth has shown up in a big way in the NHL.
“This feels like a system that’s going to produce players for a lot of years,” Poile said. “It doesn’t feel like we’re in a cycle. It seems like this is going to be normal. I certainly believe that.”
A marketing boon
There are likely even financial benefits to having more U.S.-born players in the NHL.
Poile, for one, feels that the influx of players from more diverse backgrounds only helps the NHL from a promotional perspective, using the Predators’ own homegrown player, Blake Geoffrion, as an example.
“It’s a great marketing tool,” Poile said. “It’s a great tie-in to our youth hockey. Just imagine when Blake is playing and a family comes to a game and a young hockey player sees him.
“That’s going to be huge for us.”
Komisarek agrees with that perspective, saying he has seen how those type of trailblazers encourage young players to take their game to the next level.
“Once they see someone else make it from their neighbourhood or that program, kids start believing a little bit more,” Komisarek said. “They think, ‘If he can make it, why can’t I?’”
The league itself deserves some credit for that growth in new regions, where beyond simply adding NHL teams, it has also built rinks and encouraged youngsters to play.
As part of the goal to increase hockey’s profile in the United States, the NHL works with USA Hockey in order to help boost enrolment, something Johansson said has been to the benefit of both sides.
“It’s a great partnership,” he said. “They want the game to be strong. And for the game to be strong, we need more and more kids playing, we need our facilities to be okay and we need a wide range of programs focused on those areas.
“That helps the game as a whole. And hopefully with that it’s helping the NHL and the game in the U.S.”
Getting To Know: Tom Pyatt
Mark Malinowski, The Hockey News, 2012-01-08
Status: Tampa Bay Lightning right winger.
Ht: 5-foot-11 Wt: 187 pounds
DOB: Feb. 14, 1987 In: Thunder Bay, Ont.
Early Hockey Memory: "Being on the outdoor rink in my backyard. Playing my first organized game when I was five."
Nicknames: "Bomber, Tom The Bomb, Py or Pyzey."
Hockey Inspirations: "My dad (Nelson) growing up, he played in the National Hockey League for a few years in the ‘70s. Pretty neat thing for a kid to have a dad who played in the NHL. I looked up to him growing up and he really taught me a lot."
Last Book Read: "Unbroken."
Current Car: "Chevy Tahoe."
Greatest Sports Moment: "Playing in my first NHL game in Boston (with Montreal in 2009)."
Most Painful Moment: "Struggling in my first year of pro, being sent down to East Coast (League in Charlotte in 2008)."
Favorite Uniforms: "I like the Blackhawks."
Favorite Arena: "MSG."
Closest Hockey Friends: "Mark Staal."
Funniest Players Encountered: "Eric Brewer. Just a funny guy, has that negative humor all the time. So it's pretty good."
Toughest Competitors Encountered: "A team or players? (Both.) Boston Bruins. They have a few guys that are tough to play against."
Most Memorable Goal: "First NHL goal against Washington."
Embarrassing Hockey Memory: "Missing an empty net. In junior. Should have been a goal."
Favorite Sport Outside Hockey: "Soccer."
Strangest Game: "I never had anything really weird. Just there's games where guys get injured and a lot of penalties and there's six guys on the bench."
Funny Hockey Memory: "I can't think of anything too crazy. Maybe just when you're filling the garbage can with water, so when they open the door, as soon as the door opens, there's water everywhere. Nothing too crazy."
Last Vacation: "I went to Punta Cana last summer after the season."
Favorite Player(s) To Watch: "I have to go with Pavel Datsyuk. He's my current favorite player in the NHL. He's fun to watch. Not fun to play against."
Personality Qualities Most Admired: "Positive attitude. Sense of humor."
A Ranger Often Overlooked Makes His Hometown Proud
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/sports/hockey/rangers-girardi-gathers-motivation-from-slights.html?_r=1&ref=hockey&pagewanted=print
By CHRISTOPHER BOTTA
Welland may be easy driving distance from Buffalo and Toronto, but many residents of the southern Ontario town have adopted the Rangers as their home team. Dan Girardi, the Rangers defenseman who leads all N.H.L. players in ice time this season ? but was not considered good enough just a few years ago to be drafted by any of the league?s 30 teams ? was born and raised in Welland.
?To watch Dan play all the big shifts on defense for New York puts the biggest smiles on our faces,? said Mark Forster, Girardi?s coach with the junior-level Welland Cougars when Girardi was in his early teens. ?Danny beat the odds because he never stopped working at getting better. A lot of people here relate to that.?
Like Forster, Dave Hominuk ? Girardi?s partner on defense with the Cougars ? watched the Rangers defeat the Flyers in the Winter Classic last Monday.
?In Welland, a Rangers game used to be just another game,? said Hominuk, who served as Girardi?s mentor with the Cougars when he was 20 and Girardi was 15. ?Now, they are the games everyone wants to watch. We all know how much Danny overcame to reach the big leagues.?
The Winter Classic provided the latest example of the value of Girardi, whose first professional contract was a minor league deal with the Rangers in 2005. While Coach John Tortorella eased Marc Staal, making his season debut after sustaining a concussion, into the lineup by playing him about 13 minutes, Girardi played a team-high 28 minutes. Girardi is averaging 27 minutes 19 seconds per game.
Tortorella has campaigned for Girardi?s inclusion in this year?s All-Star Game and criticized league officials for omitting him from fan balloting. ?It?s because there?s no pedigree there,? Tortorella said of Girardi?s modest reputation. ?The league is so backwards when it comes to that.?
Girardi is accustomed to being slighted. When he was first eligible to be selected in the N.H.L. draft, in 2002, Girardi was ignored by all 30 teams over nine rounds. There were another 583 players selected in the next two drafts, yet team scouting directors did not think he was worthy of one of their picks.
?Scouting is far from a perfect science,? said Jim Devellano, a senior vice president with Detroit who ran drafts that built the Islanders of the 1980s and the Red Wings of the 1990s into Stanley Cup champions. ?Some players are late bloomers. When you?re passed over by 30 teams, you?re really passed over. But what I find is, if the player doesn?t make excuses and never stops trying to get better, eventually he?ll be rewarded ? if he?s any good.?
That is how Girardi came to play for the Rangers.
?I definitely used getting passed up by all the teams in the draft as motivation,? Girardi said.
After winning the Canadian Hockey League?s Memorial Cup at age 21 with the London Knights in 2005 ? beating Sidney Crosby?s team in Rimouski along the way ? the best offer Girardi received was from the Rangers? American Hockey League affiliate in Hartford. By the end of his first year of pro hockey ? including a seven-game stint in the lower-rung ECHL ? he had already filled scouts with regrets about their decision not to use a late-round draft pick on him.
In January 2007, in the middle of his second season in Hartford, Girardi was promoted to the Rangers to replace Darius Kasparaitis, who was injured. Girardi has been a Ranger ever since, for 399 games, but he is having a breakthrough this season. Despite the absence of Staal from the lineup, the Rangers are in first place in the Eastern Conference. Girardi may post unspectacular statistics (3 goals, 12 assists), but Tortorella double-shifts Girardi more than any skater. In five games this season, he logged more than 30 minutes. Girardi has also been durable; over five years, he has missed only two regular-season games because of injury.
?When we lost Marc, we weren?t sure how it was going to go,? Tortorella said. ?Dan has been the settling influence. He continues to do the little things that stabilize our back end.?
In Welland, many are convinced it wasn?t Girardi?s skill that was undervalued by scouts but his obsession with improving. Daniel Paille and Andre Deveaux, his neighbors in Welland and the best men in his wedding, were selected in 2002, Girardi?s first year of draft eligibility. Paille, a third-line forward with the Bruins, was drafted in the first round by the Sabres. Deveaux, now a wing in the Rangers? system, was a sixth-round pick of the Canadiens.
?The scouts just messed up when it came to Dan,? said Forster, who also coached Paille on the Cougars. ?He was a great kid who quietly went about his business. His play and his stats have never been flashy. What the N.H.L. teams didn?t take the time to learn about was his intensity to get better. Before I got to coach him when he was 14, I knew Danny was determined to make it in the N.H.L.?
When Girardi recently moved with his wife and young son into a Manhattan apartment, he found one of his projects from seventh grade at Glendale Elementary School in Welland. ?It was on red construction paper, and we were supposed to declare what we were going to be when we grew up,? Girardi said. ?Mine was all about how I was going to play in the N.H.L.?
Girardi is the only child of Mark and Carol Girardi. His father works for General Motors in nearby St. Catharines, and his mother is a registered nurse at Welland Hospital. Their dedication to their jobs meant they could not travel to Philadelphia to watch the Rangers in the Winter Classic.
?That was too bad,? Girardi said, ?but I guess it says a lot about where I get my work ethic.?
Girardi may be a long shot for the All-Star Game. Henrik Lundqvist and Marian Gaborik are locks, and the Rangers may not be able to get a third player on the Eastern Conference roster. The possible snub would be the latest character-builder for Girardi, who, somewhat appropriately, is not even the most famous Girardi in New York sports. In Welland, he is the everyman hero.
?Playing defense with him when he was 15, did I think he was N.H.L.-caliber?? Hominuk said. ?You couldn?t guarantee it. But everyone in Welland knew how badly Danny wanted it. Nobody here would have bet against him. Nobody is surprised about what he has become.?
Body count becomes an NHL stat, in Cherry’s eye anyway
BRUCE DOWBIGGIN, Globe and Mail, Jan. 08, 2012
Okay, all you kids out there. You think winning hockey’s all about scorin’ more goals than the other guy and all that stuff. But there’s another statistic that matters. Sure. Opponents you injure. Here’s The Coach Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada talking about the “despised” Vancouver Canucks’ 4-3 win over his beloved Boston Bruins.
“Vancouver’s happy. The referees are happy, because they gave them [Vancouver] 11 power-play goals, er, four power-play goals … not 11 power-play goals, but four on them. And the Bruins are just as happy because they put two of their guys out.”
So the injuries to Vancouver defenceman Sami Salo and centre Andrew Ebbett are now an official NHL statistic. Of course, host Ron MacLean jumped in to contradict Cherry. He didn’t? Oh.
Nice network you’re running there, CBC.
Bowl me over
There are popular social phenomena that don’t bear scrutiny. The Iowa Caucuses. The View. Ben Mulroney. Wondering why only leads to a popsicle headache. In sports, the incomprehensible extends to sports played by teenagers. Here in Canada we just witnessed the world junior hockey championship, which is essentially Doogie Howsers in shin pads for the holidays.
The U.S. equivalent is college football bowl games. People in Tuscaloosa who can’t spell university become deranged watching their favourite college on the 54 inch. Sponsors such as Beef ’O’Brady and TaxSlayer and Bell Helicopter can’t throw enough money at not-ready-for-NFL lads in the latest Nike kit.
This curious process culminates Monday as LSU and Alabama meet in New Orleans for the mythical national championship of U.S. college football. We say mythical, because the teams were selected by a poll, not a playoff, and we know that polling is to reality as Tom Cruise is to acting. No matter. TV people are jacked about a couple of teams that played a 9-6 barn burner earlier this season (LSU won). They promise there will be more scoring this time. It could go 13-10 or even 14-13!
The difference between the world juniors just passed in Alberta and the NCAA Mardi Gras in Big Easy is that, while the hockey kids now go into witness protection for another year in junior hockey, college football is a multibillion-dollar TV staple six months of the year and grist for the journalistic mill 24/7. (Plus, you can bet on the National Collegiate Athletic Association.)
When it comes to programming, college football revenue is more than the froth on your caramel macchiato. While junior hockey teams are worth a million or two, the disgraced Penn State football program grossed $54-million (U.S.) last year. Most industry analysts see no brake on TV’s revenue accelerator as sports remain the final vestige of appointment viewing for networks.
Fuelled by the desire for more lucrative televised appointment games, the top tier of U.S. college football – Division I – is currently playing 52-pickup as teams skip from one conference to another in search of better TV revenues. The Big 10 now has 12 teams but the same title. The Pac 10 is now Pac 12. The Big East is losing two teams but gaining three others. The University of Texas now has its own network. These days it’s an Adam Smith, laissez-faire, I-got-mine jumble funded by ESPN, CBS and all those other TV acronyms.
In their quest to get more LSU and Alabama, TV executives are hoping that non-starters such as New Mexico State, Indiana and Tulane will just go away. The trend isn’t limited to NCAA football. Baseball is the pro sports league that’s closest to the NCAA, having figured out that ESPN and Fox only want a half dozen teams on network TV. The NHL (U.S. Division) is headed in the same direction, offering NBC a schedule of a handful of prime markets while shunning the Nashvilles and Carolinas.
Increasingly, pro leagues will be pressured to deliver big markets if they want the big money. Leagues can run their franchise schemes with 30, 40 teams if they want. What ESPN and NBC want is simpler, more efficient. Bad news if you want the Super Bowl in Minnesota or the Stanley Cup in Ottawa.
Who dat’?
ESPN NFL analyst Jon Gruden clearly doesn’t get out much. During the Orange Bowl last Thursday, a picture was shown of First Lady Michelle Obama. Said Gruden, “Hey there’s a picture of our Lisa Salters [an ESPN reporter].” Or maybe he’s a Republican.
Harper, Putin not playing Summit Series hockey galas: PMO
The Canadian Press, Jan 9, 2012
The Prime Minister's Office is denying a published report that Stephen Harper is making plans to play hockey this fall against his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
The Prime Minister's Office says the claim is false.
The Toronto Star cited unnamed sources as saying Harper was making plans to play on a Canadian hockey team in two exhibition games against a Russian team that would include Putin.
"The story is false. The prime minister will not be playing hockey against Mr. Putin."
—PMO spokesman Andrew MacDougall
The two exhibition games would help mark the 40th anniversary of the Canada-U.S.S.R. Summit Series.
The front-page report says the first game was scheduled for Sept. 7 in Moscow as part of a month-long event to mark the eight-game series, which was played at the height of the Cold War.
A source also told the Star a second game featuring Harper and Putin was being planned in Toronto, tentatively for Sept. 28.
But a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office, Andrew MacDougall, said the story is not correct and that Harper will not be playing hockey against Putin.
Canada lost three of the first five games but went on to win the series, which has since become a pivotal moment in Canadian sports history.
Putin, now 59, has only been playing hockey for a year or so while Harper, who is 52, played just three years of organized hockey before the age of 13.
"The story is false," MacDougall said in an email. "The prime minister will not be playing hockey against Mr. Putin."
KHL: Gun-slinging owners, drugs, dodgy air travel all part of the game
Rick Westhead, Toronto Star, January 6, 2012
MOSCOW—The 18-year-old hockey phenom slumped over on the team bench.
If Alexei Cherapanov wasn’t dead, he would be in a matter of moments.
A first-round draft pick of the New York Rangers who was still playing with the Russian club Avangard Omsk, Cherapanov had suffered a fatal heart attack during the final moments of an Oct. 13, 2008, Continental Hockey League (KHL) game in Chekhov, a bedroom community south of Moscow.
Canadian Reid Simpson, a former NHL player who worked as Chekhov’s assistant general manager, sensed something was horribly wrong and scrambled from his team’s box seats down to the ice.
By the time he got there, Cherapanov’s body had already been taken outside and placed on the pavement. Dozens of spectators, smoking cigarettes, walked over and snapped photos on their cellphones of the lifeless teenager’s body.
Fifteen minutes later — a full 45 minutes after his collapse — the paramedics who hovered over Cherapanov’s corpse drove him to a nearby hospital.
Doctors were helpless. The hockey player was clearly dead, but that didn’t register with Nikolai, the Chekhov KHL team’s owner.
Nikolai, whose family name remains a mystery even to his own employees, burst through the emergency-room doors. “How can this happen? Bring him back,” Nikolai yelled at the doctors, according to Simpson.
The doctors understandably panicked.
Nikolai has a reputation for bringing a loaded gun into his team’s dressing room after a bad loss.
Gun-slinging owners, mandatory overnights in remote team bases, sometimes before home games, and even planting illegal drugs on high-priced players whose team owners want to stop paying is all part of life in the wild KHL, a hockey league that, high-profile warts notwithstanding, has quickly established itself as the second-best in the world outside the NHL.
The KHL was started in 2008 with the support of then-Russian President Vladimir Putin. Its aim was to create a strong cross-ocean rival to the NHL, a league that the best European players, particularly the best Russians, would call home.
The KHL has attracted Alexander Radulov, a former Nashville Predators star forward, goalies Ray Emery and Evgeni Nabokov, and veterans such as Jaromir Jagr, Alexei Yashin, Maxim Afinogenov and Alexei Kovalev, players whose skills may be on the decline but who still draw fans.
Spurred by Putin, who sees the KHL as a showcase for national pride, KHL team owners, which include natural gas, mining and construction companies, are throwing millions at journeymen and stars — more money than they could ever see in the NHL.
Simpson made $400,000 tax-free each year over two seasons with Chekhov. The most he ever made in 12 NHL seasons was $500,000.
“You’ve got taxes, team dinners, going out, tips, there’s just a lot more that you blow your money on when you play in the NHL,” he said. “You come to Russia and there’s not as much you do besides play hockey. You make $400,000 in the KHL and it’s like making $700,000 in North America.”
Afinogenov arrived in St. Petersburg last year after playing 651 NHL games with the Buffalo Sabres and Atlanta Thrashers. While he made $15 million in an NHL career that stretched from 2000 to 2010, he never earned more than $3.5 million a year.
His five-year contract with St. Petersburg’s KHL team will pay him more than $20 million (again tax free) over five seasons.
“I remember calling my agent Donny Meehan and telling him I was coming to Russia and he said to me, ‘don’t go, you can still play in the NHL,’” Afinogenov says. “But I’m happy here. It’s good hockey, good money.”
Fat paycheques aside, Simpson and others agree the KHL remains “a pretty crazy place.
“You would have to have spent some time in Russia to understand,” Simpson said, adding that at least five times, he’s seen car crashes where “a person that was dead was left on the road with medical staff or police standing around looking like not much was wrong. That’s Russia.”
Pre-season training camps drag on for at least two months and, in a trend heralding to Soviet times, some KHL coaches demand players wear 50-pound weights over their shoulders during conditioning drills.
Players with Moscow’s legendary Spartak franchise are sequestered in a hotel the night before home games.
“I had no idea before I got here,” says Andre Benoit, a Canadian defenceman with Spartak, which began 1946 and whose alumni include Pavel Bure and Ilya Kovalchuk. “It’s really hard. Every home game I’m stuck the night before in a hotel almost across the street from my family.”
Other KHL clubs demand players stay pre-game nights in basas, remote bases in the middle of nowhere with small beds with thin mattresses, poor heating and worse food. A bad game can mean a second night’s stay.
A handful of teams regularly fall behind in paying their players, and even when they do pay, some clubs insist on paying in cash.
“This is not a place you want to be carrying bags of money around,” says one current KHL player. “And it’s not easy to wire money overseas back to Canada.”
Several North Americans said they keep stacks of currency in paper bags in their freezers. Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan’s Jon Mirasty, who plays for Chekhov, said he had been paid only twice since arriving in Russia in August.
There are problems players face when teams decide they’re no longer needed.
“One guy I know, playing for the KHL team in Kazan, was arrested after the team had (marijuana) planted on him,” says Simpson, who now lives in Chicago. “They took him to jail, wanted to sweat him out, pressure him to agree to go back to Canada without getting paid.”
The same thing happened to John Grahame, a Canadian goalie who played during the 2008-09 season for the KHL team in Omsk, a city in Siberia.
“He was arrested by police for going to a dance club because the team didn’t want to keep paying him,” Simpson said.
Simpson himself was on the verge of accepting a coaching job with the New York Islanders but a former teammate urged him to keep playing in Russia.
“I didn’t do it for the money, I did it for the experience,” Simpson said. “I enjoyed it, but I remember at one point towards the end of my first season with Chekhov going to the rink and they handed me some papers in Russian to sign.”
The team told Simpson the documents were a formality.
“I had them translated and it turned out the paper was an agreement saying the team didn’t have to pay me my last two cheques,” he said. “I didn’t sign it.”
Players have long regarded Russia as an unpredicatably dangerous hinterland. Former Soviet star Alex Mogilny said KGB agents were so relentless following his defection in 1989 that they followed him through the streets of Buffalo. In 1996, the mother of NHL player Oleg Tverdovsky was kidnapped and held for 11 days by five associates of a former coach who was jealous of Tverdovsky’s $4.2-million NHL contract. His mother was freed by police, who intercepted her and her abductors on a Russian train.
A former NHL executive who was trying to attract investors to rekindle Moscow’s famed Red Army hockey team was recently arrested and held by two drunk police officers.
The executive, who asked that he not be identified, said the police wouldn’t release him until a friend showed up at the police station with $2,000.
“They even took my watch,” he said. “It was terrifying.”
Benoit, 27, from St. Albert, Ont., is the typical North American who lands a job in European hockey.
A nimble 5-foot-11 defenceman, he was never drafted by an NHL team and played four seasons in the American Hockey League and two in leagues in Sweden and Finland. Eventually, he appeared during the 2010-11 season in eight games with the Ottawa Senators before signing a one-year contract this summer with Spartak.
He lives in a sixth-floor apartment in downtown Moscow with his wife Kelly and their two daughters, Emma, 3, and Hailey, five months. Downstairs is a Starbucks and across the street is a McDonald’s, but there are few other reminders of home in Benoit’s neighbourhood. Moscow is grey and bleak in December, a depressing stretch of year when it’s middle-of-the-night dark until at least 10:30 a.m.
The Benoits navigate the traffic-choked streets using a hired SUV and driver.
“I worry about them being out on their own here,” Benoit said.
“The toughest part is the language,” says Kelly Benoit, whose father, Rick Walmsley, was a longtime NHL goalie. “We don’t really get out much. There’s a water park north of the city we like to go to when Andre has a day off, but that’s about it.”
Benoit has been in Russia only a few months but he already has plenty of stories to share.
Like many pros, Benoit typically wears out at least three pairs of skates a season.
About a month ago, he called Spartak’s equipment manager and ordered another pair of $1,000 custom Reeboks, size 9 and 1/4.
After a few weeks, Benoit phoned Reebok and learned that the skates were sitting in a warehouse. Spartak had refused to pay for them.
The team’s president had vetoed the purchase. Give Benoit a pair from the September purchase, the equipment manager was told.
“I told them that was ridiculous, and after a bit, they came back to me with this good news,” Benoit said with a laugh. “They said I could go ahead and buy the Reeboks on my own, and they’d give me a pair of their extras that I could sell to make up some of the difference. It just left me shaking my head.”
Yet for all the stories, it’s impossible to ignore the progress Russian hockey has made in four years.
KHL commissioner Alex Medvedev (no relation to Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev) says the league has learned from its club’s miscues.
The 23 KHL rinks are required to have defibrillators, hard cervical collars, aspirators and tracheotomy kits, intended to prevent another death like Cherapanov’s.
Next season, teams will have enforced player salary caps. Clubs will be severely penalized for making off-the-book “black money” payments to players, says Medvedev, who also serves as a high-ranking executive with the government-owned company Gazprom.
“We know we have problems but we are trying to correct them,” Medvedev said. “Are we the NHL? No, but the NHL has been around for 100 years. We’ve been here for four. Where was the NHL after four seasons? We already have a great league and it’s getting better. This is our game, too.”
Russia started its first organized league in 1946 during its post-World War II recovery. Russian coaches were the first to use microphones during practices. They pioneered the idea of pairing a forward line with the same two defenceman throughout a game, so players became more familiar with one another.
After the Soviets lost to the U.S. in the 1980 Winter Olympics, in a game that would become known as the Miracle on Ice, at least one Soviet player left his Olympic silver medal in a garbage can in Lake Placid. In Russia, as in Canada, second place is nothing to celebrate.
Medvedev says the KHL plans to expand to 60 teams by 2015. A Western Europe conference will feature 30 teams in cities such as Prague, Milan, and maybe Berlin. A Swiss club recently signed an agreement to join the KHL by 2014. An Eastern conference may include 30 clubs in places like Seoul and Tokyo.
The KHL television channel generates $15 million a season in broadcast revenue, up from $5 million in its first season. Within five years, Medvedev says the KHL aims to generate half the national TV income that the NHL does — a bold claim considering the NHL generates nearly $300 million per year from its national TV contracts with Canada’s CBC and U.S. broadcaster NBC.
Its games are broadcast in 25 countries such as Finland, Sweden and Germany and, starting this season, players’ names are written on their uniforms in English for non-Russian viewers.
The broadcast quality, however, pales next to the glitzy NHL. Some game telecasts have shown a puck sitting at centre ice between periods. Others simply show the game’s line score of point-getters and penalties.
Critical analysis is not encouraged. Last season, the Russian player agent Alexei Dementiev was working as a colour commentator for a game between Magnitorogsk and Chelyabinsk. He suggested on air that the game was dull and predictable and the KHL fined Dementiev $17,000 for “tainting its image.” The league backed off after Dementiev threatened to sue.
This season, referees have been imported from Scandinavia, and players say officiating has improved. The league has also endorsed the creation of a players union.
The KHL has also started two feeder systems: One is comparable to the American Hockey League and the other to Canada’s major junior leagues. That startup, said Soviet hockey legend Slava Fetisov, is the single best development to come out of the KHL’s creation.
“In the 1990s, agents were basically selling young Russian players to junior teams in North America,” said Fetisov, the KHL’s chairman. “So many would go and burn out after a year and we’d never hear from them again. They’d be out of hockey. It got so bad that for years in Russia, so many good young players left that the country didn’t even hold a national championship for 16 or 17 year olds. Can you imagine?”
On a recent evening in St. Petersburg, 12,000 fans packed the decade-old Ice Palace arena for a game between hometown SKA and Salavat, a team from Ufa in Siberia. Before the game, two dozen cheerleaders and SKA’s mascot, an unnamed brown horse, worked the crowd.
Pop songs like LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It” rocked the palace during breaks in play. Like the NHL, a large screen over centre ice showed couples in the audience and urged them to kiss. A video board wrapped around the arena demanded in Russian that fans cheer, “Win, win, win.”
Vendors sold roasted and buttered cobs of corn for $1. There was a lineup 20 deep for wieners tucked in pastry ($2) and pints of beer ($2). In some ways, it was better than the NHL: the team even offered fans a free coat check.
“To me, it’s just as good as any NHL arena,” said Afinogenov.
Fetisov said KHL hockey, played on large Olympic-sized rinks, is elegant and refined, a style he, fans, and some players prefer to the bruising NHL.
“How many players in the NHL are from Europe this year?” Fetisov asks. “Just 30 per cent now. Soon, (Europeans) will all come to the KHL, and the NHL will be left with the best players from North America only.”
The International Ice Hockey Federation says 22.8 per cent of the NHL’s players in 2010-11 were European, the lowest total in 11 years. In 2003-04, the last season before the lockout, 30 per cent of NHL players were European.
Times weren’t always good for hockey in this west Russian metropolis, a popular tourist destination known as the Venice of the north for its rivers and canal system.
Five years ago, the St. Petersburg arena was half empty for games. The few fans in attendance watched quietly.
“It was like they were watching the ballet,” says Natalia Chereshneva, a former marketing executive with the St. Petersburg club who now oversees public relations for a Russian hotel chain.
At one point, Chereshneva said she wanted to overhaul the pre-game national anthem. She wanted to drop the aging men whose renditions reminded many of the Soviet Union’s military May Day parades. Let’s have a young woman sing, Chereshneva suggested.
Problem was, Russian superstition holds that women have no place either on the ice or in a locker room, Chereshneva said. For four years she battled for a change.
Finally, team executives relented.
“We had this young woman walk out to centre ice to sing, and she completely wiped out when she got on the ice,” Chereshneva said. “It was a playoff game. We lost and I figured that’s it, it’ll never happen again.”
Fortunately for Chereshneva, the team’s executive ranks were purged and their replacements had no problem with modern, acapella singers.
“You can’t imagine how hard it was to modernize and westernize,” Chereshneva said over the din of the crowd.
Trouble is, for every arena like the one in St. Petersburg, there’s another that’s like the 38-year-old Sokolniki Arena, home to Moscow Spartak.
As Spartak took to the ice on a recent weeknight against Lev, a new KHL entry this season from Slovakia, about half of the aging stadium’s 5,000 seats were filled. Between periods, most fans rushed outside for a cigarette. And why not? There was little room in Sokolniki’s second-floor cafeteria, a wood-panelled den that might comfortably have held 10 people.
Outside the cafeteria, a vendor sold red and white Spartak scarves off a wood table. He hung a team jersey from a coat hanger that was fixed to the wall with thick masking tape.
In the locker room, things were little better.
Benoit, the Canadian defenceman, said toilet paper and shampoo both were hard to find in the change room.
“I guess they want you to buy your own,” he said.
Again, it could be worse.
Several players said there are a few rinks in the KHL circuit where teams still have to bring their own toilet seats.
Medvedev and others with the KHL promise this, too, will improve.
For all of his promises, however, it’s unclear where the money to fuel the KHL’s expansion plans and improvements will come from.
Many KHL teams generate enough money to cover just one-tenth of their annual budgets. The balance is typically paid for by state-owned corporations such as Gazprom.
This exposes the KHL and its teams to a fall in the price of gas, oil and other commodities.
“If oil goes to $200 a barrel and the KHL expands into western Europe, this league will be able to buy any player in the world,” says Anders Hedberg, a former NHL player who now scouts the KHL for the New York Rangers. “But if oil goes down to $30, forget it. Close the doors.”
Sergei Voropov, an executive with the consulting company Deloitte, was involved with planning the launch of the KHL. From the start, the league was structured impractically, he said.
The first season, Voropov said the KHL generated $13.6-million worth of sponsorship revenue, including $6.8 million from the Russian insurance company Sogas, $4.2 million from cell phone firm Megafon and $1.9 million from Toyota.
But the league’s operating costs, including marketing and hockey operations, totalled more than $33 million.
The KHL’s pledge to move the league to a North American business model have yet to materialize.
Canada’s Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, recently offered to refurbish the luxury suites in Red Army’s home arena in Moscow. The stadium owners inexplicably said no.
When the KHL approached the Espo Blues, a pro team in Finland, its owner Jussi Salonoja travelled to St. Petersburg to discuss the league’s $2 million offer for moving to the KHL.
Landing a Finnish team would have been a breakthrough for the KHL. Salonoja arrived in St. Petersburg with an open mind.
But after 30 hours waiting for a KHL official who failed to show for their scheduled meeting, Salonoja went home.
“They make decisions like they would in the old Soviet Union,” Voropov says.
The KHL has a staff of about 70, including 11 full-time lawyers on staff, the same number you would expect in a typical Russian company with 14,000 employees.
“You know how many times Fetisov would come in to the KHL office and hand over a bill to be paid for $7,000 or more for drinks with his friends at a hotel bar?” Voropov says.
During his time with the league, Voropov said he suggested that rickety old rinks like Sokolniki be torn down and tenders be issued for rinks built inside mega-malls with shops, movie theatres, and food courts.
“Ownership is such a mess,” Voropov said. “There’s no political will.”
But for some players, the drawback to Russia isn’t poorly stocked arenas or even two-a-day practices. A bigger worry is the amount of air travel that’s required in a country which last year recorded nine commercial airline crashes, giving it a worse safety record than less-developed nations like Congo and Indonesia.
Russia is an expansive nation with 13 time zones. A flight from Moscow to the KHL team in Khabarovsk, near the Chinese border, can take nine hours.
In September, the KHL team in Yaroslavl was wiped out in a plane crash that was said to be caused by pilot error.
While the league pledged after the tragedy that its teams would only use state-of-the-art planes, those plans have since been quietly dropped. Many KHL clubs still charter Soviet-era planes
“It’s maybe the wildest part of it all,” Simpson said. “Our trainers were the ones who packed the equipment in our plane and it would be sliding around in the back during the flight. Almost as soon as we were airborne, the coaches would light up cigarettes.”
Two weeks after the Yaroslavl plane crash, Benoit remembered stepping aboard a Russian jet for his first road trip with Spartak.
He’d been worried about flying and had asked Spartak officials about their own transport plans. They showed him a photo of the interior of a clean, modern jet.
But the plane Benoit boarded, a Tupalev Tu-154, looked nothing like the picture. Its aging cabin was wood panelled and reeked of cigarette smoke.
“There was nothing new about it,” he said.
Benoit would only learn later that the Russian-built jet was about 30 years old and had been banned from flying in the European Union because of safety worries. Since 1968, there have been at least 39 fatal incidents involving the Tu-154.
As teammate Marcel Hossa gave him a worried look, Benoit tried to reassure himself.
Flying a few weeks after the crash was probably the safest time to fly, he reasoned. “It’s like flying after 9/11,” Benoit said he told himself.
“What are you to do?” he said later. “Get off the plane? If you do that, you’re done and they send you home. For now I’m here and I’m just trying to make the best of it.”
Players fake injuries irk Canadian fans
ERIC FRANCIS, QMI Agency, Jan 9 2012
CALGARY - Rene Fasel didn’t mince his words when asked about the fake injuries that peppered the world junior hockey championship in Calgary and Edmonton.
“It’s the European illness,” said the International Ice Hockey Federation president as amused Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson chimed in with, “I like that question.”
“It’s a culture question,” Fasel continued. “You know football — soccer — is big, and (injuries are a) part of the game.”
Does it embarrass him as much as it bothers Canadian fans who booed most European players for their theatrics?
“What can we do?” Fasel asked.
“The football federation is trying to correct it. We in our sport should also do so.”
Indeed, they should. Different from the type of diving the NHL has cracked down on to draw penalties, many European players writhe on the ice as if seriously injured following harmless contact, a la soccer.
“You’re not used to that,” Fasel said with a smile before taking a playful dig at the North American game. “We’re not used to so much elbowing as you are.”
Now for more notes, quotes and anecdotes from a sports world wondering if players on Canada’s junior team take solace in the fact most will go on to make millions of dollars in the NHL before getting concussed.
AROUND THE HORN
There can be little doubt that after stints in Ufa, Russia and Malmo, Sweden, the next Canadian stop for the world juniors will be in Toronto or Montreal in 2015. What may help Montreal’s bid is the prospect that awarding it to a joint Montreal/Quebec City bid may help spur on the building of an NHL arena in Quebec City … Calgary Stampeders equipment manager George Hopkins after adding his expertise to every team at the Dome during the world juniors: “Now, I can swear in nine languages.” … There have been plenty of times along the road to 500 goals Jarome Iginla was unsure what his future as a scorer held. Few were scarier than the injury he got early in his career that saw the knuckle on his ring finger swell so much for several months he had to order a custom-made wedding ring that snapped into place after fitting over the knuckle … I’ve never cheered for the Montreal Canadiens a day in my life, but given the ridiculous disrespect afforded a good man like Randy Cunneyworth simply because he doesn’t speak French, I’d relish seeing him turn that team around against all odds.
PARTING GIFTS
Steve Tambellini is actively shopping for defencemen (join the club), and there is an outside chance they may just have to eventually shut Ryan Whitney down for the season. His foot woes have limited his play this year, and he is still out of the lineup. The Oilers have won eight of their last 29 games in what is quickly becoming another lost season. When you see the heart and sacrifice exhibited by Taylor Hall and several of the youngsters on the Oilers, it’s clear Ales Hemsky’s time there is coming to an end. Last week, the oft-injured second-line winger flamingo’d on a shot that got through for a goal and later gave up on a race to try erasing icing in the final minute of a win in Chicago. Not popular moves. A UFA this summer, Hemsky and the Oilers are better off with him elsewhere if they can find a suitor … Fasel met with Donald Fehr, Hockey Canada and USA Hockey in Calgary on Thursday with hopes of finding out more about possible NHL participation in the 2014 Olympics. “We’re open,” said Fasel on seeing the world’s best at the Games. Fasel will meet with the NHL in two weeks, but nothing will be determined until a new CBA is agreed upon … Who wouldn’t be in favour of scrapping the NHL’s realignment plans if the alternative has the Boston Bruins playing the Vancouver Canucks 10 times a year? … As laughable as the fans’all-star selections are, what many fail to remember is that such a flawed system actually gets people talking about a game nobody would otherwise discuss. In that vein, it works … Slap Shot translation of Rene Bourque’s apology following the hit that prompted his five-game suspension: He feels shame.
Calgary, Edmonton set attendance record for World Junior events
Kristen Odland, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal January 9, 2012
Calgary and Edmonton set a new attendance record for the IIHF world junior championship.
The two host cities of the 2012 event attracted 571,539 between the Scotiabank Saddledome and Rexall Place over the 11 day tournament, averaging 18,437 fans per game. Including the 31 tournament games in Calgary and Edmonton, world junior action made stops in nine communities during the pre-competition schedule.
The total smashed the previous record of 453, 282 set by Ottawa at the 2009 world juniors, which averaged 14,622 fans per game.
Next year's tournament will be held in Ufa, Russia, while the 2014 world juniors are staged in Malmo, Sweden. World junior action will return to Canada in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021.
On Jan. 5, Sweden defeated Russia 1-0 in overtime for the gold medal while Canada missed the final for the first time in 11 years but managed to walk away with hardware after defeating Finland 4-0 in the bronze medal game.
Penner sidelined by pancakes
QMI Agency, Jan 9 2012
Los Angeles Kings forward Dustin Penner says he was injured while eating a plate of pancakes over the weekend, sidelining him for a game.
"Apparently it's one of those mysterious things, where you can throw it [back] out [from] sneezing," the L.A. Kings Insider reported Penner saying.
"I just leaned over to dip into some delicious pancakes that my wife made. It's just like it [the pain] wraps around you and squeezes. So it was disappointing. Hopefully it's just an isolated incident, and not something that's going to become chronic."
He said his back hurt so bad he needed his wife's help to put on his clothes.
Penner did practise Sunday and said his back was feeling better. The Kings lost the night earlier to the Blue Jackets, 1-0.
The huge, 6-foot-4 forward was traded to the Kings by the Edmonton Oilers during the 2010-11 season.
He has two goals and eight points with the Kings this season in 30 games.
Press Box Musings: One-on-One with Paul Kelly
TJ CAPS, Artic Ice Hockey, Jan 9, 2012
Hey all! On Saturday, the NCAA along with the Universities of North Dakota and Clarkson held the inaugural College Hockey Classic in Winnipeg, MB. Paul Kelly, current Executive Director of NCAA College Hockey and former Director of the NHLPA also attended the event and hosted an informal presentation for hockey players of the Bantam and Midget levels in the greater Winnipeg area. The intent of the presentation was to provide information to any athletes who consider NCAA College Hockey as a viable option for them past their junior hockey careers.
I was fortunate enough to catch up with Mr. Kelly afterwards and he afforded Arctic Ice Hockey the luxury of a one-on-one interview.
This is a one-time feature that delves into topics such as Saturday's College Hockey Classic and the current relationship between College Hockey and the CHL.
If you require any further information regarding NCAA College Hockey, I strongly suggest visiting their site at www.collegehockeyinc.com. You can also follow their twitter feed @_collegehockey.
Hope you enjoy.
Q: What goals did you want to achieve by hosting the College Hockey Classic in Winnipeg and what made you choose Winnipeg as a destination?
KELLY: We obviously want to expose the college game to the Canadian audience, whether it's done by television broadcast or in person.
The decision to come to Winnipeg is based on the fact that Mark Chipman is a graduate of the University of North Dakota and is a college hockey proponent who has been very supportive in hosting this event. Also, Winnipeg has not only been a source of players to the University of North Dakota over the years, but also fans of North Dakota as it is only a short drive away. The University of North Dakota has been looking at holding a game in Winnipeg for a number of years and they were finally able to make the arrangements and find a number of teams who expressed interest to play in this event. We are very excited to be here.
Was there any particular reason for choosing North Dakota and Clarkson as the two teams to participate in this year's event?
The University of North Dakota has been so active in scouting and recruiting players from the greater Winnipeg area that they wanted to come back here. Dozens of players over the years that played for the Fighting Sioux have been from Manitoba so I think it was the administration and the UND coaching staff that really wanted to make sure that if we were going to do this, the first place we would come would be Winnipeg .
Were there any different Canadian markets you were exploring to promote NCAA College Hockey?
We have looked very seriously at playing in Toronto as they have expressed an interest in running a four team tournament there. We have also been contacted by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment and they have asked about the possibility of bidding for the NCAA Championship – The Frozen Four – so yes, there is a lot of interest, certainly in the Toronto area to bring College Hockey in.
Does the NCAA plan to host the College Hockey Classic on an annual basis or was this a one-time event?
We certainly don't want it to be a one time thing I don't know that we will be in a position to do it every year but if this is as successful as we believe it will be, then we will try to host this event at least every couple of years and most likely in different cities across Canada.
What was your main objective in this morning's presentation to the attending athletes and their families?
I would say it's the importance of emphasizing education in general. You can never go wrong with improving or advancing your education and you can still continue to develop as a player and make it to the National Hockey League through the NCAA. If for some reason you fall short or an injury cuts your playing career short then the education the NCAA offers will be so valuable. Our programs do a terrific job of educating young men and we not only turn out great hockey players but we also turn out doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs and scientists; so we want young people to understand the importance of education as part of the whole package.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in putting today's presentation together?
Identifying, reaching out and contacting young players. This is an element of a recruiting battle that goes on. I know that our presence here probably isn't well received by the Western Hockey League because in their view, we're potentially recruiting away players that may be of interest to them. I'm sure that there are some coaches who may discourage players from coming to this event for that reason, so that's always a little bit of a challenge. I wish it weren't the case because I think it's important for people to hear the information. We're not negative when we talk about other leagues but we try to provide the accurate factual information to the families so that they can make an informed decision about what's the proper path for their kid.
Were you pleased with the overall response that you received?
We thought it was great. I don't know the total number but I came here with 100 t-shirts and I think I have about 20 left so I think we had about 70-75 kids, most of whom were bantam and midget ages which is exactly the target audience we are seeking.
Over the past few years, NCAA Hockey has had issues with athletes withdrawing from their university commitments, instead opting to play hockey in the CHL. Has there been any discussion on how you can curb CHL teams from poaching players after they have committed to universities?
We in fact had that very discussion last week in Edmonton during the World Juniors. We annually have a meeting between Hockey Canada , the CHL, USA Hockey and College Hockey where we sit down for several hours to talk about a range of issues and that is always one of the more prominent issues on the table.
Right now it's a one way street; there's no issue with our coaches recruiting their players because their players are already rendered ineligible, so there is no point in it. But we do have the problem of players that have made commitments – particularly written commitments – that continue to get recruited and poached by CHL teams. We did talk about a point after which NCAA committed players can no longer be recruited by CHL teams and our stance is that once a player signs a letter of intent in his senior year of high school to go and attend a certain university that at that point – at least until his first year of college – he should be off limits and not subject to being recruited. We are going to continue this discussion with the CHL and Hockey Canada in the next couple of weeks so that is a ripe topic for discussion.
This summer, you stated that you hoped the NCAA would tweak its eligibility rules to allow any player who had played less than 10 games in the CHL their NCAA eligibility. Has there been any discussion on retooling of the current rules?
It's still the status quo. These rules cut across all sports so the NCAA doesn't make exceptions that are unique or exclusive to College Hockey. As much as we would like to see that rule changed allowing those kids that maybe just played a handful of games not to lose their eligibility, currently that's not the case. If you play even a single game you are ineligible.
There is an appeal process however. People should know that if you played 8-10 games in the CHL and you decide that you want to play College Hockey, you probably will be able to regain your eligibility. Athletes would most likely have to sit out their first year and then be allowed to play in their second year so playing in the CHL is not completely fatal, but it does have consequences.
The Winnipeg Jets website had a promotional video for tonight's College Hockey Classic presented by Zach Parise. Have you thought about reaching out to other NCAA alumni such as Dany Heatley or Jonathan Toews to help promote the College Hockey brand in Canada?
Actually, we use those players quite a bit once the NHL season has completed and we are doing educational presentations across North America. We almost always have an NHL player or two along with us. In the past we've had Jonathan Toews, Ryan Miller, Zach Parise, Brian Gionta, Hal Gill and others in a long line of players from Canada, the US and from overseas who have helped to promote the game and they are always happy to oblige us when we have asked.
Unless you have specialty cable packages (NHL Network, Big 10 Network), it's rare for NCAA College Hockey games to be broadcast in Canada. Are there any plans to have Canadian networks televise events like the Frozen Four or "The Big Chill" to garner more exposure to your product?
Yes, we actually had discussions with The Score about picking up College Hockey broadcasts. Now that we've had the shake-up of broadcasters in the US where Comcast has purchased NBC and re-branded the NBC Sports Network, I think that NBC has given its contacts to TSN. NBC is going to become far more involved in broadcasting College Hockey games, so you will see more of that broadcast in the coming years.
Finally, what do you think is the biggest misconception about NCAA College Hockey?
I think it's the misconception that Coach Casey Jones mentioned during this mornings presentation. There are people who believe that either you elect to go to the CHL in hopes of making it to the NHL or you elect to go play College Hockey and then end your career. That's a misnomer and it's not what is happening. I would say that a competent player has just as good of a chance of making it to the National Hockey League coming out of one of the elite NCAA college programs as he does the CHL. The colleges today have superior facilities; good coaching and competition that's at the same level if not a higher level because the NCAA has bigger, strong, faster players. [These programs] are turning out really high caliber players and you are seeing an increasing number of college hockey players that are playing in the NHL. That's a myth that we are trying to debunk.
FRASER: SORTING OUT THE MELEE BETWEEN THE BRUINS AND CANUCKS
KERRY FRASER, TSN.CA, Jan 9 2012
Hi Kerry,
You are probably being bombarded with e-mails in reference to Saturday's game between the Bruins and Canucks. As a hockey fan for the past 40 some odd years, I find myself having a great feel for the game and its rules. But Saturday, there were a couple of incidents that had me somewhat confused.
During the scrum that occurred in the first period, Shawn Thornton was piled on by five or six Vancouver players during his altercation with Burrows. Is there still the rule of a third man in or has that been removed from the NHL rule book?
There was not only a third man in, but also a fourth and fifth and six man in! Should Vancouver have been called for that? Not only were they not called for it but what resulted was Milan Lucic being tossed out of the game for apparently leaving the bench to join into the scrum (which the NHL later rescinded) and the Canucks ended up with a two-man advantage! This had a major turning point in the game. Please clarify to me the third man in rule.
Kerry, if you could clarify this situation or provide your opinion on what happened that would be greatly appreciated.
Hockey Fan Forever,
Steve Cymbaluk from Oromocto, New Brunswick
Steve:
You are absolutely correct that there should have been a game misconduct assessed to one of the third, fourth or fifth Canuck players that entered the altercation already in progress between Alexandre Burrows and Shawn Thorton. My pick as the third man in would have been Maxim Lapierrre as the most obvious and aggressive of the entire Vancouver player contingent.
While I have outlined the "third man in" rule and the definition of an "altercation" in previous columns, it obviously bears repeating because both continue to be misinterpreted and/or incorrectly assessed.
Let's get something straight; while rule 46.16- "third man in" appears under the Fighting Rule, the language is very specific relative to intervening in an ALTERCATION already in progress. Some might still hold onto the old terminology or thought process of the third man to enter a "fight", and if you do, please lose it immediately! That definition was changed after Darryl Sittler squared off to fight with a Philadelphia Flyer in Maple Leaf Gardens during the Stanley Cup playoffs and was blindsided by another Broad Street Bully and knocked to the ice. (Sittler and his opponent had dropped their gloves, squared off and even though they had yet to throw a punch, they were going to be penalized.)
Rule 46.3 (still under Fighting) clearly defines an "altercation" in the simplest language; "An altercation is a situation involving two players with at least one to be penalized."
The third man in penalty was designed to allow for a fair fight between two willing combatants and to stop brawling when an unfair advantage was gained on an outnumbered opponent in an altercation.
Rule 64.16 needs to be consistently applied by the definition in the rule book as to what constitutes an altercation.
On this play, Alexandre Burrows gave either Daniel Paille a little tap with his stick as the players were retiring to their player's bench for a change. Shawn Thornton was the trailer heading to his bench and, while taking exception to Burrows cheap shot, poked his stick forward making contact with Burrows.
Burrows responded with a meat-tenderizing poke of his own on Thornton, which infuriated the Bruins tough guy. Thornton lunged forward with a glove punch to the face of Burrows and pressed forward to continue this roughing situation.
Let's freeze frame at this point and apply our above definition of an altercation; "A situation involving two players with at least one to be penalized."
We know that Burrows and Thornton received slashing minors for their stickwork on each other. Thornton also was assessed a roughing minor for his hefty, stinky glove punch to the face of Burrows. There is no doubt we have an altercation in progress!
Both Manny Malhotra and Kevin Bieksa attempted to grab hold and act as peacemakers but appeared to be pretty much blocked from doing so by the lineman, who was quick to jump into the altercation.
The player that threw gas on the fire by going airborne to jump into the upright pile of players and officials in the scrum was Vancouver Canuck Maxim Lapierre, who was able to inflict some punishment with a flurry of visible punches levied from over the top.
That's why Lapierre is my pick for the third man to enter the altercation (one in progress between Thornton and Burrows). Instead of receiving just the 10-minute misconduct that Lapierre was assessed, I would have given him a double minor for roughing (for number of punches thrown) in addition to a game misconduct under rule 46.16 as the third man in the altercation (as defined in rule 46.3).
Milan Lucic was very aggressive in his involvement and worthy of a double minor as well but would have remained in the game since he did not leave the bench.
I'm good with the double minor penalty to Shawn Thornton for slashing and roughing as well as the slashing penalty to Burrows, whose first love tap on the shin pad of Paille, if detected, was worthy of a misconduct penalty which was ultimately assessed.
The fight between Nathan Horton and Dale Weise stood alone (toe-to-toe) and the major penalties for fighting were appropriately assessed.
To recap Steve, Maxim Lapierre of the Vancouver Canucks would have been ejected from the game in addition to a double minor for roughing. Milan Lucic would have remained in the game and received a double minor for roughing as well. Boston would have played one man short (not two men short) and the B's would have captains choice as to which remaining minor would be served on the penalty clock; one of Shawn Thornton's or Milan Lucic. In either case Claude Julien would have to place a player in the penalty box to serve the minor.
Remembering Ron Caron
David Shoalts, Globe and Mail, January 10, 2012
The Professor passed away Tuesday and you can bet there were lots of smiles around the NHL at the thought of Ron Caron.
And not just because he picked the day of a game between his two most beloved teams, the Montreal Canadiens and St. Louis Blues, to take his leave.
You couldn’t help but smile at the former St. Louis Blues general manager even though seconds after he impressed you with his thoughtful, gentle nature it was just as likely you were convinced the man was possessed. No one could tear up a press box like Caron, who turned into a raging maniac as soon as the puck was dropped for a game featuring his Blues.
Everyone who’s been around the NHL for more than 15 years has a Ron Caron story. They called him The Professor for his hockey intellect and amazing knowledge of baseball, Caron’s second great passion, but it was his temper that forged his legend. And the distinctive sandpaper voice that broadcast his temper meant almost everyone did a Ron Caron impression.
No team set Caron off more than the Toronto Maple Leafs, who always seemed to finish near the bottom of the NHL standing and then knock off the favoured Blues in the playoffs during the late 1980s, Caron’s salad days as the Blues GM.
Caron loved to howl about the rough-housing of Leafs like Wendel Clark and John Kordic against his Blues, who were not quite as rambunctious but not exactly choir boys. Not with the likes of Basil McRae in the lineup.
One night at Maple Leaf Gardens, Caron could be heard shouting that Kordic or some other Leaf miscreant, “should be in jail.” During another contentious game, Bob Stellick, then the Leafs’ public-relations chief, asked Caron to tone it down after a chair was sent flying in the press box. Caron drew himself to his full 5-foot-7 or so and challenged Stellick to a fight.
However, underneath all that noise was a smart, resourceful hockey man. And Caron had to be nimble, given that he was hired by the legendary tightwad Harry Ornest just after he rescued the Blues from being moved to Saskatoon. At the time, Caron was still hurting from being fired as assistant GM by the Canadiens but he didn’t hesitate to take the job even though Ornest had a reputation as a difficult boss.
Here’s a look at Caron I wrote almost 22 years ago:
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Team Caron built shows he's no buffoon
DAVID SHOALTSm 7 April 1990, The Globe and Mail
ST. LOUIS
Of the many words used to describe Ron Caron, one serves better than the rest: mercurial.
The St. Louis Blues' general manager is famous across the National Hockey League for his lively temperament. As a game progresses, so do Caron's emotions. Soon, he is striding up and down the press box, railing against the injustices of the referee or the opposition in his gravelly voice.
Almost everyone has a Caron story, similar to one told by Joe Bowen, the Toronto Maple Leafs' broadcaster. On one occasion this season in St. Louis, Bowen was handling a radio broadcast by himself when he received an unexpected commentator.
Caron, who sits next to the visiting team's radio booth at the St. Louis Arena, was growing increasingly annoyed at the roughhouse tactics of the Leafs. The shouts built to a pitch, until Caron burst into Bowen's booth while he was on the air, screaming, “Take your (censored) team and go home!”
“You know, I always promise myself I won't do that stuff. But I never keep it,” said the 60-year-old Caron, who is a popular, engaging man despite his outbursts.
“I get very emotional as a game goes on. If I have to watch a game in public, like in the press box in Toronto, it's tough. I believe it has something to do with my strong, competitive soul.
“Talk to me after a game and I'm a rational soul.”
Caron's emotions have been in full evidence during the Norris Division semi-final between the Blues and the Leafs. During the first game, he complained loudly about the work of referee Dan Marouelli. He felt Marouelli missed several fouls, particularly by the Leafs' Wendel Clark.
A check by Clark on the Blues' Rich Sutter on what Caron thought should have been an icing call prompted him to complain to officiating supervisor Bryan Lewis. And to a number of reporters the next day.
Caron also says he'll push for a rule change this summer to eliminate body contact on icing calls.
Like many people who freely display their emotions, Caron has been labelled a buffoon. But as the Blues' recent success has revealed, this is a narrow judgement.
In building his current team, Caron made numerous trades, particularly with the Calgary Flames. When he shipped players like Joey Mullen, Doug Gilmour, Rick Wamsley and Rob Ramage to Calgary, Caron was accused of running a Flames' farm club and helping mould their Stanley Cup champion team.
A look at the Blues' roster now shows Caron to be an astute trader. Of the 24 players currently on the team's NHL roster, 16 were acquired through trades, two as free agents and only six through the NHL entry draft.
“You've got to believe in player movement if you don't like what you see,” Caron said.
It's an unorthodox way to build a team, although Caron had little choice when he was hired in the summer of 1983 by former owner Harry Ornest. The club had just been dumped by Ralston Purina Ltd., and the situation was so chaotic the Blues had not taken part in the 1983 entry draft.
During the three years Ornest owned the club, money was tight, until attendance improved, new ownership came along and Caron was able to start building with the draft.
When Caron came to the Blues, he was still demoralized by his firing by the Montreal Canadiens. He spent 26 years with the club, rising to assistant general manager before his firing. It is a day he still remembers: "I was let go the 13th of April, 1983," he said yesterday.
In the early days, Caron was not reluctant to trade his No. 1 draft picks, which goes against the current wisdom. “What's the use of looking to the future if you don't know you're going to survive?” he said.
In his first year, Caron traded his first pick to get Wamsley because he knew Mike Liut needed a solid backup goaltender. “And down the road I knew Liut would be moving because he was expensive.”
Caron's typical trade in those days was one quality player for two or three journeymen. “We went for quantity,” he said.
One such trade was sending Perry Turnbull to Montreal for Doug Wickenheiser, Greg Paslawski and Gilbert Delorme. Turnbull never lived up to his potential, while the three players Caron received provided years of service.
On the current team, recent trades have brought Sutter and defenceman Harold Snepsts from the Vancouver Canucks to provide valuable assistance in the playoffs.
And of course there are the two big trades that landed centre Adam Oates and right winger Brett Hull in the past two seasons. On the basis of those deals alone, Caron has gained much respect.
This season, the Blues spent a good part of February in first place in the Norris Division, before slipping to second with a 37-34-9 record.
Now there are even a few No. 1 draft picks on the team. Rookie-of-the- year candidate Rod Brind'Amour was the team's top pick in 1988.
“I did trade one No. 1 pick this year (to Vancouver in the Sutter and Snepsts trade),” Caron said. “But it was a pick I got from Montreal (he switched No. 1 picks for 1990 in a deal for defenceman Mike Lalor) so it won't be a good pick anyway.”
The ability to change with his circumstances has put Caron and the Blues on the edge of becoming one of the league's top five teams. What won't change is his nature.
“I'm intense, but I'm not tense,” he said. “You can't wind yourself too tightly. I let my emotions out.
“I'm not going to get ulcers. I'm going to give them.”
Sutter has ‘tremendous’ respect for Lamoriello, Devils
John Down, Calgary Herald January 10, 2012
Another game against the New Jersey Devils holds no special meaning for former coach Brent Sutter.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for (GM) Lou (Lamoriello) and that organization,” said the Calgary Flames bench boss, following Monday morning’s practice at the Saddledome.
“I learned a tremendous amount there in two years and Lou was great to work with and for, tremendous support, tremendous hockey man. He was a father-type to you and I have nothing but great things to say about my experience in New Jersey.”
Sutter coached the Devils for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons before taking a year away from the game. He hired on as the Flames head coach in 2009.
With his Devils days just more water under the bridge, Sutter is more concerned on devising a game plan against the team that stands fifth in the Eastern Conference and has a couple of talent-laden forward lines
Seven players have 10 or more goals, including proven snipers Patrik Elias (14), Zach Parise (14) and Ilya Kovalchuk (15). Rookie Adam Henrique also has 15, along with David Clarkson.
They also bring in a couple of tough goalies in Martin Brodeur and Johan Hedberg and the league’s most lethal penalty killers — a leading nine short-handed goals.
Once renowned for their trap system and low-scoring games under former coach Jacques Lemaire, the Devils have shifted to a more offensive style under coach Peter DeBoer.
“They’ve got some top-end guys, like Parise, Kovalchuk, Elias and obviously their goalie, Marty, if the plays,” said Sutter. “They’ve got some quality players you have to be aware of when they’re on the ice, but their system is a little different than what they played the last half of last year.
“Pete is a different coach than Jacques. They’re pressing a little bit more . . . more pressure in their game and they’ve got some good players. They’ve had a pretty good first half, so we have to make sure our game is where it needs to be.”
Precious patience
Rookie centre/winger Paul Byron hasn’t scored since being recalled from the Abbotsford Heaton on Dec. 19 after batting in a couple of goals during his first recall in early November.
Is the five-foot-seven, 155-pounder getting a little antsy?
“Maybe sometimes,” he confessed. “I try not to think about it too much. When you do, you start putting added pressure on yourself and I think I have a job here that doesn’t revolve around scoring goals.
“It’s providing energy, finishing checks, skating hard, making smart decisions and that’s what I’m really focused on. I think the goals will start coming, hopefully the sooner the better.”
What century?
Sutter admitted he never even had a thought about Saturday’s victory over the Minnesota Wild being his 100th as coach of the Flames, what with so much hoopla surrounding the 1,000-game silver stick to Olli Jokinen, Lance Bouma notching his first NHL goal and Jarome Iginla rattling in his 500th goal.
“It never crossed my mind,” smiled Sutter. “I never even thought about it. But I wish there was an extra 50 or 60 (wins) and we would have made the playoffs the last two years and be in a different spot than we are today.
“But it’s the way it is.”
Worlds vets in WHL trades
Dave 'Crash' Cameron, Edmonton Sun, January 10, 2012
EDMONTON - Starting today, every team in the WHL -- but one -- will be fans of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
They'll be cheering for Steve Yzerman's team to make a push for the NHL playoffs: therefore needing whatever they can get out of rookie Brett Connolly.
Because everyone in the Dub can imagine what he can do for the already loaded, league-leading Tri-City Americans.
Tri-City boss Bob Tory made a nothing-to-lose deal with the lowly Prince George Cougars for the rights to the five-goal man for Team Canada. Connolly, WHL and CHL rookie of the year in 2008-09, was loaned out for the world junior tourney by the Lightning, and Tampa has until the NHL's Feb. 27 trade deadline to decide whether to keep the 19-year-old power forward.
The draft picks are conditional on Connolly's return.
Tory said he has spoken to Yzerman.
"We trust that, in the end, Steve will make a decision that is in the best interests of Brett's development and the Lightning's plans."
And the worst nightmare for the rest of the WHL.
But it was the East that did the most on a relatively quiet deadline day.
The surging Regina Pats helped themselves by rescuing the tall Slovak 19-year-old defenceman -- and Edmonton Oilers draft pick -- Martin Marincin from the wilds of Prince George. Essentially it is for first and second-round bantam picks from the Pats, though D Ricard Blidstrand also heads to P.G.
The 19-year-old Swede will probably feel like he's been sent to Lapland.
Moose Jaw and Brandon made most of their noise on Monday.
Crafty Kelly McCrimmon cashed back in some of the haul the Wheat Kings got from Saskatoon last January for Brayden Schenn (namely a first-round pick, plus two solid players) and added another gun -- Kevin Sundher -- to load up alongside Team Canada's Mark Stone and the other run-and-gun Wheaties.
Sundher's shown his stuff by sitting 7th overall in league scoring playing for the struggling Victoria Royals.
Moose Jaw went for experience and leadership as much as skill, adding two 20-year-old captains -- Cam Braes from Lethbridge, and James Henry from Vancouver.
The Edmonton Oil Kings, the team currently being chased in the East, stood down.
Sort of. They had already traded for high-scoring 20-year-old Tyler Maxwell and listed 18-year-old Minnesota d-man Cody Corbett earlier in the season. And on Tuesday, they introduced Henrik Samuelsson who projects as a skill-size mix.
The American-born draft-eligible forward was playing in the Swedish Elite for Modo, coached by his father, former NHL defenceman Ulf Samuelsson.
See www.whl.ca/2012-whl-trade-deadline-tracker for the full list.
Sutter brothers try mending fences
By Eric Francis ,Calgary Sun, January 10, 2012
CALGARY - Those who expected the Sutter boys to hug it out or apologize to one another obviously never saw them play.
But in the quiet confines of their respective homes — far from the cameras and the microphones — Darryl and Brent Sutter did the next closest thing: They finally talked.
After more than a year of silence prompted by anger, frustration and personality clashes that dotted their working relationship as GM and head coach, respectively, while with the Calgary Flames, the two spoke Sunday night.
They didn’t discuss their differences, nor bury the hatchet, nor agree to disagree or dissect old wounds …
They just talked.
And for a pair of proud, stubborn farmers, whose only contact came at their family golf tournament in Red Deer last summer when they exchanged hellos while passing one another, a simple phone call was the first and biggest step towards a healing process some thought might never begin.
“We had a good chit-chat — it was good,” said Brent, whose brother initiated the call.
“We talked about their team, about our team … never once did we talk about anything personally. We talked about the kids. We were all over the map with it. That was the first time I talked to him. It was nice.”
Exactly when they last spoke previously is uncertain, as the two weren’t exactly on speaking terms for a time leading up to Darryl’s ouster as Flames GM Dec. 28, 2010. Retreating to the family homestead in Viking, Alta., Darryl disappeared from the hockey world and has yet to comment publicly on his time in Calgary or his requested resignation from the franchise he helped rebuild.
Hired by the Los Angeles Kings last month as head coach, Darryl has since gone on record admitting he had trouble adjusting to the move from coach to GM, which is the crux of what led to the tension between him and his younger brother, whom he hired in the summer of 2009.
On Saturday, Darryl returns to Calgary with the Kings for the first time since making his way back into the NHL coaching ranks. It likely spurred on his decision to reach out to Brent.
“You have to move on,” said Brent before Tuesday’s game against his former employer, the New Jersey Devils.
“Through good and bad, everything you go through is an experience. I learned a lot in New Jersey, and with Darryl here, I also learned a lot. I think there was a lot made out of some things that were said — and not all of it was true either. Perhaps some was. Darryl and I aren’t ones who are going to talk to the media about it. That’s personal. Certain things go on in an organization that you don’t talk about. And that’s no different in a family. It’s personal.”
With seven brothers growing up in a tiny farmhouse, it’s certainly not the first time two of the lads have had their differences. Nor will it be the last.
But given how close the Sutter clan generally is and how curious it is to see a GM and coach who don’t talk — let alone brothers — their ongoing silence was legitimate news speaking to the dysfunction of the Flames organization before Darryl was let go.
“We’ve now had communication since then, and it has been good,” said Brent, who insists he has no idea what transpired management-wise leading up to Darryl’s departure.
“Any way you want to look at it, we’re still brothers. I care deeply about what happens with him and how he does.”
Pointing out how small the coaching community is, Brent said he wants Darryl to continue turning the Kings around as he has so far. Just not on Saturday night.
“I was happy to see him get back into coaching in the NHL, because I think he’s a good coach. But at the end of the day, I’m the head coach of the Flames and he’s the head coach of the Kings. We’re in the same conference, and we’re going to see each other four times before the end of the year. We both love to win, and we’re both competitive, and we both want to see our organizations do well.”
For those wondering, Saturday’s clash at the Dome will be anything but awkward for the two.
“Competing against one another is not something that’s really that big a deal, because we’ve done it our whole lives,” Brent said.
“We did it as kids, and as we grew up and played, we wanted to beat the crap out of each other when our teams played. I haven’t coached against a brother yet, but it’s no different. It’s got nothing to do with Darryl or I. As a matter of fact, until the media brings it up, I don’t even think about it.”
Or at least until the phone rang, that is
Life between the benches
BRUCE DOWBIGGIN, Globe and Mail, Jan. 11, 2012
It may be the most dangerous place in hockey. No, not in front of the net. We’re talking the tiny space between the team benches. As the madness in Saturday’s Bruins-Canucks revenge match showed, the photo booth/announce position is a lot like Luxembourg wedged between warring France and Germany.
Saturday it was Boston’s Scott Thornton and Vancouver’s Alex Burrows trading spears, slashes and punches between the team benches in what, by current standards, amounts to a line brawl. What the audience didn’t get was the verbal war going on between the benches. Sportsnet and NESN left the space between the benches empty, so posterity has lost the bon mots and ad hominems in Saturday’s tong war between the Stanley Cup finalists of last June.
But the recent 24/7 had a typical, devastating exchange as Flyers’ rookie Tom Sestito, looking to impress, threatens to knock out every player on the Rangers’ bench. A bemused Brad Richards destroys him with a sneering, “One day in the NHL for you... fantasy camp for you.”
“Man the stuff you hear,” says Ray Ferraro, who usually mans the space for TSN. “You hear everything ‘I’ll kill you.’ Life threats. Stuff about wives and girlfriends. Anything but stuff about kids. That’s off-limits. I have to press my cough button because I can’t let it get on air.”
Ferraro’s one of the few (along with CBC’s Glenn Healy and NBC’s Pierre McGuire) regularly assigned to the hot spot. As a former player -- and a yappy one himself -- he’s in a perfect position to hear the sniping and humour that pass amongst rivals. “The area around the bench like a bus stop,” he says. “Guys have to stop and talk. As a former player I find a lot of humour in it. Some of the guys are very funny.”
McGuire revolutionized the position when TSN first talked the NHL into allowing a broadcaster in the area that was meant for a single cameraman. Now you can have as many as three people jammed like sardines into the cramped space. “The league, the players and the coaches have really reached out to try and help make the position work,” McGuire tells Usual Suspects. “The buildings that only have glass on one side of the box are great. Pittsburgh does that a lot.”
Ferraro, too, likes buildings (such as Toronto) without glass partitions where he can converse with the backup goalie and get the full measure of the venom or strategy. “Last year in the playoffs. (Detroit’s) Johann Franzen jumped on the ice and the Red Wings got a too-many-men penalty. He got back to the bench for his next shift and when he got up to go on again I could hear (Detroit coach) Mike Babcock yell, ‘Mule, sit down’. The funny thing is that’s the game in which Franzen scored four goals.”
Sometimes being that close is difficult when you’re criticizing a player. “Last year I was talking to Chris Cuthbert about (Flyer) Jody Shelley in a game against Vancouver. I was being critical of him, and (then-Flyer) Mike Richards was just inches away. He gave me the real burn with his eyes.”
So which teams are the most entertaining? “Rivalry games are the best,” says McGuire. “Vancouver and anyone. The Flyers-Rangers or Flyers-Penguins. Detroit-Chicago. Bruins-Montreal. Atmosphere in the building is huge too.” His favourite buildings? “Pittsburgh, Philly, Washington, Toronto, Vancouver, Madison Square Garden (NYC), Boston, Chicago, Tampa, and Buffalo.”
It can be a dangerous place, too. McGuire’s been clipped by a stick. Ferraro got a stick in the chest. “The scariest time is when you see the guy go to shoot and the puck is wobbling and you know it could go anywhere. That’s when I get out of the way.”
Listening to the byplay has given Ferraro a profitable idea. “NHL X-rated,” he says. “Uncensored audio. Once a week and charge for it. People would love it. Of course, the coaches would hate it.” But then, coaches hate everything.
Divine Comedy: To those who thought they might escape The Church Of Tim Tebow, Sunday’s unlikely win by the devout Denver QB over heavily favoured Pittsburgh was bad news. You’re stuck with Tebow for a while. America loves him. As NBC’s Darren Rovell says, “54.3M people were watching Broncos-Steelers [on CBS] when game ended. That's 2M more viewers than the “Friends” finale had.” That’s the most for any NFL wild-card game since 1987.
Scarier? Tebow’s favourite Bible versus is John 3:16. His passing yardage Sunday was 316 yards for a 31.6 yard average. The TV rating for the brief OT? 31.6. Discuss amongst yourselves.
Run On Sentence: As we’ve said here before, a good question elicits a good answer. Then there’s former New Orleans Saint (now radio personality) Bobby Hebert, who may have set a world’s record with a 48-second question in the postgame presser for losing LSC coach Les Miles.
“Q. Coach, did you ever consider bringing in Jarrett Lee, considering that you weren't taking any chances on the field? Now, I know Alabama's defence is dominant. But, come on, that's ridiculous, five first downs. I mean, so it's almost an approach, I'll tell from you the fans' standpoint, that how can you not maybe push the ball down the field and bring in Jarrett Lee? So what if you get a pick six. It seems like the game plan that ... not pushing the ball down the field, considering it's like a Rueben Randle or Odell Beckham, Jr. I know the pass rush of Alabama, but there's no reason why in five first downs ... you have a great defence, LSU is a great defence, but that's ridiculous.”
MODERATOR: Do you have a question?
Footnote: Hebert’s son T-Bob lost his job as a starting O linesman on LSU earlier this season.
Sir Charles: Saturday Night Live is not what it once was. But occasionally - such as last Saturday’s appearance by host Charles Barkley-- it gets off the floor and reminds us that it used to be f-u-n-n-y. Apparently Americans agreed, as the show garnered a 7.4 rating, just below the 7.8 rating from last January 8, 2011 with Jim Carrey and the Black Keys.
Perhaps the best skit had Barkley interpreting postgame comments. Sure enough, the first quote came from the ol’ rainmaker himself, LA Kings coach Darryl Sutter “I thought we played hard tonight.” Barkleyspeak: “We sucked tonight.” Also fun was Barkley destroying Shaquille O’Neal in a TNT show rip.
THN at the WJC: Sweden subdues Russia for gold
Ryan Kennedy, The Hockey News, 2012-01-06
If Canada needed a blueprint to beat Russia, it came a game too late, as Sweden showed how it’s done in the final game of the World Junior Championship in Calgary.
The Canucks instead settled for bronze, beating a Finnish team that improved vastly after losing to Canada 8-1 in the round robin, but the result was still a 4-0 shutout. And just as the Swedes could teach Canada a lesson, the Canadians took Finland to school by showing Suomi just how to play a gritty game to perfection.
The Finns appeared to be dark horses for gold in the tourney after their upset of Team USA in the round robin and the mixture of skill (Mikael Granlund, Joel Armia) and grit (Miikka Salomaki, Jani Hakanpaa) bode well for them. They looked to have the elements of many great Canadian junior teams, in fact. But you can’t out-Canuck the Canucks and a couple goals from Canada’s Barrie Colts connection of Tanner Pearson and Mark Scheifele put the game largely out of reach. At times, the Finns looked as if they would let their tempers get the best of them as several skirmishes came as near to fights as the medal round would see.
Though the Canadians will have remorse over the slow start and lack of physicality that doomed them against Russia in the semifinal, closing out the tournament with a win was admirable to see from a group accustomed to playing for gold.
“We wanted to go home with something,” said Brandon Gormley, a tournament all-star. “I thought we did a good job of coming out with the emotion that we needed to play with. We had the right battle level.”
The Swedes bested Russia by hemming in tournament MVP Evgeny Kuznetsov, outskating their opponent and pressuring at every juncture.
“It’s difficult to say anything,” Kuznetsov said. “The shots after two periods were something like 37-5. It would have been unfair for us to win.”
The fact Sweden had come back from three goals down to beat Russia at the end of the round robin stage of the tourney laid the foundation for Thursday’s 1-0 OT victory. A very specific strategy was drawn up and executed.
“We tried to forecheck hard and cover the boards with the two other guys,” said 2012 draft prospect Filip Forsberg. “And I think we had a lot of success with that during the game.”
And when necessary, the Swedes got great goaltending from Minnesota Wild prospect Johan Gustafsson, who had been only so-so in the tournament before the final. While his counterpart, Andrei Makarov, was peppered with shots all evening, Gustafsson had to bide his time and stay sharp despite the fact the first flurry of pucks he faced all night came in the third period. And with less than a minute remaining in regulation, he made a huge move to his left to repel a Russian tip-in on his doorstep by Nikita Gusev.
That stop enabled Sweden to take the game to overtime, where Ottawa Senators first-rounder Mika Zibanejad scooped up the puck off Nikita Kucherov at the Russian blueline and popped a backhander past Makarov just before defender Artem Sergeev could arrive at the scene. It earned Sweden just its second world junior gold and the first since 1981. More importantly for the kids involved, it proved a point.
“It means that we can win as well,” said Anaheim prospect and tournament all-star Max Friberg. “It’s not just Russia and Canada and the U.S. Sweden can win this tournament.”
And with Forsberg, Sebastian Collberg and several other marquee names eligible to return next year, a proper defense of the crown is assured when the tourney moves on to Ufa, Russia for 2013.
Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
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