Sutter's old grudge remains
ERIC FRANCIS, QMI Agency, Jan 15 2012
CALGARY - To say Darryl Sutter wasted little time reminding the Calgary media how miserable life in and around the Flames organization could be at times when he ran the joint would be wrong.
In fact, the recently-hired L.A. Kings coach seemed to delay his much-dreaded meeting with the media Saturday as long as possible by scheduling a 35–minute sit-down with his players after the morning skate.
After that, he skipped past the awaiting horde to casually visit with acquaintances before facing questions from inquisitors he despised long before they helped run him out of town.
Then again, after going more than a year since his ouster without speaking publicly or to his younger brother Brent, what’s another three quarters of an hour?
So, Darryl, any emotions upon your return to a city and arena you spent eight years in?
“Good to see my family,” said a curt Sutter, whose wife and youngest son stayed behind when he joined the Kings five weeks ago.
Your thoughts on coming back?
“Lot more good than bad,” he said. “Nice to come see all the nice people working in the building that you spent early mornings and late days with.”
Darryl, you didn’t speak after being asked to resign last Christmas …
“Didn’t know you had to … There you go,” he interrupted.
Any reason why?
“For what reason? I spoke to lots of people privately. I don’t have to do it in a public forum.”
And so it went. The contempt he held for anyone who ever questioned anything he ever did here clearly remains.
No one gasped when he was asked if he had any regrets or if he would change anything he did here.
“Nope,” he replied. “I came here in a tough situation in every area on and off the ice and (became) one of the most successful organizations on and off the ice for a long time, so that’s pretty good.”
Indeed, he deserves credit for turning the franchise around. He made being a Flames fan cool again, gave the team an identity and a winning record.
And he did it by himself.
His autonomous approach also led to his and the club’s downfall when trades and signings went sideways.
Things became so dysfunctional, he and head coach Brent essentially stopped talking.
Did the experience change his relationship with Brent?
“No,” said Darryl, clearly unwilling to share.
“Our family is not for public opinion. You think about how close we’ve been all our lives and to be all over as we’ve been is pretty unique. We probably have a lot closer relationship because of the size of our family than anybody standing here.”
Asked further about Brent, he interrupted.
“Everybody is entitled to their opinion. There’s just not necessarily much fact in it anymore,” he said.
He did raise eyebrows by admitting he wasn’t surprised when asked to resign last December. He said he had several opportunities last year to work with NHL teams but wanted the right fit. L.A. seems to be it.
Too stubborn to admit his first game back had any additional meaning, he did concede that his approach has changed somewhat.
“Every team, you have a different approach just because of personnel,” said Sutter, who had just one regulation loss in his first 10 outings in L.A.
“This group here has six or seven kids that are bordering on being elite players, so you kind of have to help them get there.”
So far, he has helped.
No one expected the cantankerous coach to change his stripes along with his address.
But surely he could have at least tried to play nice.
I know he hates questions, but would that have been too much to ask?
Johnson: Sutter as surly and abrasive as he ever was:
Familiar cut-with-a-knife tension surrounds Calgary media gathering
George Johnson, Calgary Herald January 15, 2012
The question tossed into the semicircle of humanity ringing the man they’d all come to see seemed a fairly innocuous groundbreaker; certainly hadn’t been intended as a live grenade launched into a foxhole.
“Darryl,’’ the query began, “you didn’t speak when you left in December of last ye . . .”
“Didn’t,’’ snapped Darryl Sutter, cutting in right between vowels, “know you had to.’’
No. He’s right there. You don’t.
That’s an individual call.
No law says.
Sutter finally did speak Friday, 13 months after his assisted “resignation” from the Flames, on the morning of his coaching return to Calgary, although the wait for him to make an appearance became so extended that everyone assembled simply assumed he’d blown it off.
Eventually, he emerged from the catacombs, which does count for something. Nothing, predictably, remotely forthcoming followed. Characteristically, the defiant defence shields were up, immediately, on red alert. And, as always, that undeniable undercurrent of adversarial tension lay thick on proceedings (During his time here, one wag remarked: “When Darryl’s on the charter, even the stewies get tense”).
The nine-minute availability session punctuated by silences that seemed to drone on as long as the Lord of the Rings extended editions run back-to-back-to-back, was, as ever, conducted strictly on one man’s terms.
Sutter is happy, by the way, to be back in the coaching dodge, which was always his true calling anyway. He said he’d entertained offers to return to the game before his old pal Dean Lombardi beckoned him south a few weeks ago, although whether those were actually in the on-ice end were left open to imagination.
“My biggest problem is staying out of the way in practice. You get back down there, you forget how good they are. Pretty fast. That’s what I told them after the first game: ‘You guys are all better’n I was.’
“I don’t think I have a different approach. I just think every team you have a different approach, because of personnel. This group here, they have six or seven kids that are bordering on being elite players. You’ve got to kind of help them get there.
“You have to try and emulate the best teams and the top three teams in the league are clearly Boston, New York and Vancouver. They come to play every night and their star players show up every night.
“If you get that, have those types of players, it’s gonna work.”
Given the blessing of hindsight, he remains convinced everything worked wonderfully well while he was in charge of the Flames.
“No,’’ was the instantaneous reply, when asked, in retrospect, if he’d change anything. Anything at all. He had the out, the chance to admit he too makes mistakes, and took a pass.
“I came here in a tough situation in every area, on and off the ice. And it (became) one of the most successful on-off ice teams in the NHL for a long time. So that’s pretty good.”
Actually, when Sutter arrived, the Flames were indeed languishing in 14th place in the West. When he exited, eight years later, they were again 14th.
“A lot more good than bad,’’ he said of the memories his competitive return to the Scotiabank Saddledome stirred. “Nice to come and see lots of people that work in the building, that I spent early mornings and late days with.
“For a guy from Alberta, to be in a Canadian city, especially in a market like Edmonton or Calgary, is a privilege. Anybody that gets that opportunity should relish it.
“It’s an awesome city. Great ownership. Great fans. What more could you want? Hockey’s just a wee little piece of it. To see the way the building’s been again, it gives me shivers. That’s what it’s all about. I’ve been lucky. Every city I’ve been in when you think about it. L.A., Chicago, San Jose and Calgary. Pretty fortunate that way.’’
The Sutter vs. Sutter sideshow, and the obvious rift that developed here during their tumultuous year and a half together, dominated the pre-game buildup. Darryl Sutter, ever the contrarian, insisted Saturday that there’d never been any strain between the brothers.
“You think about how close we’ve been our whole lives and be all over it the way we’ve been, it’s pretty unique. We probably have a lot closer relationship, because of the size of our family — guaranteed — than anyone standing here.’’
There were undoubtedly a few folks with blissful home lives actually standing there who might’ve taken umbrage at such a blanket remark, but there’s no use arguing with the man.
“You know what? They’re very, very similar coaches,’’ said L.A.’s Colin Fraser, uniquely qualified to know, having also played for Brent Sutter at Red Deer.
“It’s funny. Darryl, the first week he was there, just reminded me of junior, of how Brent coached, the tendencies, what they talk about. There’s really not much difference. They’re both crazy-intense guys. They run very similar practices even, they have the same type of style. It’s old memories.”
And the speculation that two brothers — both admittedly intense cusses — went virtually an entire calendar year without speaking?
“I don’t know anything about who’s talking to who,’’ Fraser replied, shrugging. “They grew up together, they probably beat each other up their whole lives, so who knows?”
Bottom line, Darryl Sutter is paid to win hockey games, not seduce the media. And in that, however off-putting abrasive he can undoubtedly be, he has succeeded so far in SoCal.
“It’s certainly not about me,’’ protested a public figure who has always squirmed in the spotlight’s gaze. “That’s the last thing anybody should be thinking about.’’
True enough, but comfortable or not with the fact, he was what people in this town were talking about the past few days.
The first time is always the worst time. But the novelty is now gone. The curiosity, evaporated. The intense scrutiny, at an end. With Saturday over, Darryl Sutter, and the Flames, can exhale and move on. Which is fine by both parties.
What did Mike Cammalleri say?
Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail, January 16, 2012
Michael Cammalleri’s debut for Calgary was one of those good news-bad news kind of nights. Good news: He scored a goal, on the power play, in the second period of Saturday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings, which is something that doesn’t happen much for Calgary at the Scotiabank Saddledome where the PP was grinding along at an ugly 11 per cent. The bad news: Cammalleri was just okay defensively, and at times, looked as if it might take a few days to absorb coach Brent Sutter’s system.
But mostly, Cammalleri was happy to get last week behind him - a week in which comments he made to a couple of reporters in Montreal about the Canadiens’ struggles turned him into a cause celebre and may or may not have expedited his get-him-on-the-next-rail-out-of-town exit.
Cammalleri played in Calgary for a full season (2008-09) and while he was usually good at truth telling, he rarely used words as charged as “losers” which is what he reportedly said and is different than talking about “losing.” To label someone a loser is strong stuff. To say that the team had a losing mentality just qualifies as hockey speak, nothing to get worked up about.
In an interview in which he was asked to clarify what was actually said, Cammalleri replied that to the best of his recollection, he talked about “losing” but did not utter the word “losers.”
“I’m not blaming anybody,” began Cammalleri. “It really doesn’t matter now. I’ve definitely moved on from it. But all I can say about it, and what I don’t like about it, is how things came out in the media.
“You guys have interviewed me for a long time. I don’t think I ever said anything, no matter how mad I was, along those lines (calling the Habs ‘losers’). It was a practice day, it wasn’t a game day. I wasn’t that emotional.
“I thought I was making more of a theoretical hockey point - about how a team feels when they’re tight and losing and you go into a game with that mentality and it’s hard to break. A winning team goes into it with a different mentality. I thought I was stating the obvious - we were sitting in 12th place; we had a losing record. So I didn’t think I was breaking any ground by making these comments.
“It was more an assessment of the psyche of a team. And I know I said ‘we’ so I was including myself in there.”
That sounds like pretty common hockey verbiage; that winning teams play with a confidence that doesn’t get shaken too easily.
“If they make a mistake, they’re not worried about it,” continued Cammalleri, “because they make a lot of good plays that end up winning them the game. When you’re losing, you feel like if you make one mistake, you’re going to lose the hockey game. That’s a hard thing to break out of.”
And losing teams, they always seem to be half a step behind because of tentativeness - too slow in on the fore check to make a difference; and then caught in some no man’s land on the back check. The difference between the NHL and other levels of hockey is that teams are usually adept at exploiting the small defensive openings that develop in a game.
“Like I said, I didn’t think this was ground-breaking stuff. It just happened.”
However it happened, Cammalleri is now a member of the Flames who head out on the road to San Jose, Los Angeles and Edmonton before returning for one final pre all-star break home game again the Sharks next Tuesday. Calgary’s loss to L.A. Saturday night snapped an eight-game home win streak.
The key to the playoff push that was behind the Cammalleri acquisition in the first place will be for the Flames to win more regularly on the road, where they are just 8-14-3 this season, the primary reason that they entered action Monday night tied with the Phoenix Coyotes for 11th place in the Western Conference, four points back of the eighth-place Minnesota Wild.
It’s just past the midpoint of the NHL season - the Boston Bruins were the last team to get to Game 41 on Saturday, but it looks as if five teams look safe in the Western Conference playoff race (Chicago, Vancouver, San Jose, St. Louis and Detroit) and three teams have fallen so far off the pace that they are effectively done (Edmonton, Anaheim, Columbus).
It leaves seven teams competing for three spots and on paper, none except maybe L.A. is appreciably better than the Flames. Nowadays, the teams that make playoffs seem to be able to rattle off one long winning streak somewhere along the line to build a cushion in the standings.
With 36 games to go, that is Mission No. 1 in Calgary, and if Cammalleri - with one goal in one game - can help that along, then, last week’s Montreal tempest may turn out to be a good thing for the Cowtowners.
Campbell: Yzerman must fix Lightning's goaltending woes
Ken Campbell, The Hockey News, 2012-01-16
Karma’s a bugger sometimes, isn’t it? Take the Tampa Bay Lightning, for example. Ever since the Philadelphia Flyers exposed and mocked them for playing their insidious trap, the Lightning have posted a 10-18-2 record and tumbled to the basement of the Eastern Conference.
Since then, 1-3-1 hasn’t only been the Lightning’s defensive scheme, it’s more like the win-loss record they post every five games.
On the one hand, you want to say, “Serves them right for playing that kind of hockey with all that offensive talent.” And hey, any team that employs that style of hockey and fails doing it isn’t about to get a lot of sympathy from this corner. After all, which team would you rather watch purely from an entertainment standpoint – the Washington Capitals from a few years back or last year’s Lightning?
But then you look at the Lightning’s defense corps and goaltending and you wonder why they don’t employ a 5-0-0 defensive scheme sometimes. And while it’s easy to point fingers at coach Guy Boucher for the Lightning’s problems, many of the team’s woes have to be pinned on GM Steve Yzerman.
My guess is that Yzerman, who learned at the foot of Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland and assistant GM Jim Nill, took the goaltending blueprint from Detroit and applied it to Tampa Bay. Not since the days when they had the three-headed monster of Dominik Hasek, Curtis Joseph and Manny Legace in 2003-04 have the Red Wings devoted a lot of financial resources to goaltending. But that’s clearly all right when you have Nicklas Lidstrom on defense and a bunch of forwards who always have the puck. It doesn’t work so well when your guys give up 30 shots a game.
Take Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Penguins for example. The Lightning went down 2-0 on home ice on two very stoppable goals that got past Mathieu Garon. That put the Lightning, who have been outscored 54-30 in the first period, into comeback mode once again. Those two goals ended up being the margin of victory for the Penguins in a 6-3 win, a game in which Evgeni Malkin capped a hat trick with an empty-net goal.
Things have been similarly ugly for the Lightning all season. They’ve given up the most goals in the NHL this season and only the Columbus Blue Jackets have a greater disparity between goals for and goals against than the minus-35 sported by the Lightning. Garon and Dwayne Roloson are both near the bottom of the league in save percentage and goals-against average and the Lightning are the only team in the NHL where both the No. 1 man and backup have save percentages under .900. Bad goaltending has also contributed to a penalty kill that ranks 26th in the NHL (Although it doesn’t explain why a team that can throw Steven Stamkos, Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St-Louis over the boards for a power play is 26th in that department, too.)
The problem here is that Roloson is 42 years old. And while Yzerman and many others were seduced by the way Roloson played last year, there is one enduring truth when it comes to all hockey players. And that is, they lose it at some point in their careers and the older they are, the more precipitous and dramatic the decline. The key to managing players like that is being able to predict when that decline will happen.
That Yzerman read the tea leaves wrong isn’t really the problem. The way Roloson played last season, he deserved another year, though $3.5 million is a lot of guaranteed money for a guy who was born in the 1960s. But in acquiring Garon to back Roloson up, the Lightning GM simply did not get a good enough insurance package. And so far Yzerman has resisted the urge to recall prospect Dustin Tokarski from the farm team to see if he has what it takes to address the Lightning’s long-term goaltending issues.
The Lightning do give up a ton of shots, but you’d be surprised to learn teams such as the Boston Bruins, Ottawa Senators, Florida Panthers and Toronto Maple Leafs surrender more on a per-game basis. The only difference is those teams have goaltending that ranges between spectacular and adequate.
And although Boucher didn’t become a bad coach in less than one season, he doesn’t escape blame here, either. Special teams are generally regarded as the two areas of the game where the coach can have the most influence and the Lightning are bad at both. And Boucher’s insistence on continuing to show faith in Roloson by playing him and hoping he would play out of his woeful ways was a huge tactical error. There is nothing anyone can do to combat age and continuing to throw Roloson to the wolves isn’t going to make things any better.
It’s not as though Lightning’s defensive scheme is giving them a whole lot of success lately, either. And I can’t think guys like Martin St-Louis, whose success as a player has always been based on hustling down loose pucks and creating opportunities for himself, enjoys standing outside the offensive zone blueline. Can’t help but think Stamkos and Lecavalier are not big fans of it, either.
So a season that looked so promising for the Lightning is going down the sinkhole at a breakneck pace. There is rarely any in-between with this team. It’s almost always very good or very, very bad and this season looks like the latter.
And it’s going to stay that way until Yzerman finds a goaltender who can at least give the Lightning a chance to stay in games.
Report: Jackets looking at Ferguson
Sportsnet Staff, January 16, 2012
Could John Ferguson Jr. be the next general manager in Columbus?
The former Toronto Maple Leafs GM is being mentioned as a possible successor for Scott Howson, according to a report from Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun.
Howson, who is still under contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets, is expected to be let go at the end of the season. The Blue Jackets already fired head coach Scott Arniel last week.
Ferguson, who was the Maple Leafs' general manager from 2003-2008, struggled during his tenure in Toronto. His teams did not make a playoff appearance after the lockout in 2005.
Some of his notable moves included signing Jason Blake, Pavel Kubina to long-term contracts and separate trades for goalies Andrew Raycroft and Vesa Toskala. Ferguson gave out several questionable contracts, including no-trade clauses and dealt away top goalie prospect Tuukka Rask in the deal for Raycroft.
Ferugson currently works as a scout in the San Jose Sharks organization.
Hall's tenacity contagious
Terry Jones, QMI Agency, Jan 16 2012
EDMONTON - Watching Taylor Hall playing through the five-game losing streak, Edmonton fans saw a player who stood out from all the others.
He was hungry. Night in and night out, he played a robust, charge-the-barricades game.
But after the 5-0 debacle against the Anaheim Ducks last Friday, you had to wonder how much longer he could keep playing like his hair was on fire without being affected by those around him who were pulling the parachutes.
“Just talk to him,” said head coach Tom Renney.
“You let him know, ‘This is where we are. This is our team dynamic. And you are going to be, ultimately, a huge part of this team being successful.’ And you tell him, ‘What you are going through now is a real good test of parking the frustration, and staying within the team concept.’
“As coaches, you need to know what this kid is capable of and not restrain him.”
With that in mind it was appropriate that it was Hall, at 3:06 of overtime, who scored the winner against the L.A. Kings last night — off a beautiful blindside backhand pass from Shawn Horcoff.
Totally different
The Oilers were a totally different team than they were Friday because instead of having one Taylor Hall they had several guys play the way he’s never stopped playing since Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle and Tom Gilbert went down with injuries.
One of them was Ales Hemsky, who probably played his most passionate game of the season.
“It’s an emotional game. It takes passion to play,” said Renney.
“If you look over the last few weeks, the one player who has answered the bell every night is Taylor Hall.
“If you want to know what passion looks like in a hockey player, watch Hall.
“I’m not sure you can teach it. It might be part of your DNA. But I’m glad he’s got it.”
Winning is also in Hall’s DNA.
He won back-to-back Memorial Cups and was MVP of both championship tournaments in his last two years of junior.
Imagine the transition involved in going from the top to the bottom to start your NHL career.
“It’s definitely much better when you have this feeling of winning. We really wanted to win this one, especially after what happened against Anaheim,” Hall said.
Keeping his competitive drive hasn’t been a problem, he added.
Indeed, Hall thinks he’s done a much better job at that this year than he did at the start of last season.
“I think there were games last year when if I wasn’t scoring, if it just wasn’t going for me, I’d shut it down,” he said.
“In the NHL, you’re not going to have the puck going in all the time. But you can’t shut it down.”
Hall said Renney has been great throughout these challenging times.
“Tom always makes the rink an enjoyable destination. I have yet to drive to the rink dreading it.”
Sunday night was Hall’s 101st NHL game. In his first 100, he had 36 goals and 36 assists.
“I think that’s pretty good,” he said.
It’s not like he’s been surrounded by a Stanley Cup championship lineup like Boston’s Tyler Seguin, who has 28 goals and 60 points to show for his first 113 games with the Bruins.
“I’m certain from last year to this year I’ve improved,” said Hall.
Renney said he looked up and saw Kings’ young defensive star Drew Doughty checking the sophomore winger on virtually every shift.
“I couldn’t help but think ‘Who is going to win this?’
“They’re two great players who are going to be entertaining fans for a long time.”
Animosity
Hall said he and Doughty have already put together a bit of history of competitive animosity.
“We actually laughed. I’m going down the ice and I can hear him jabbing at me,” he said.
Renney said it’s a real study watching Hall become more and more of a total pro.
But there’s still lots of room to coach him, he said.
“During the stretch we’ve been through, I’ve encouraged him to just work on the mental toughness of the game.”
The next lesson, said Renney, might be to work on another area.
“Maybe work on endearing yourself to the officials as opposed to being too antagonistic, because that’s a long career in front of him,” he said.
“So you might want to know their names. You might want to ask them about a call. You know, ‘Did you see it different than me?’ or whatever. And that goes for all our young guys coming into our league.”
Blow Oilers up some more
TERRY JONES, QMI Agency, Jan 16 2012
EDMONTON - Blow it up some more.
The Edmonton Oilers have returned to being the worst team in the NHL since their 8-2-2 start to the season. They’ve dropped to 28th overall, one point out of 29th. Off what we watched Friday, there’s every chance they’ll continue to fail and fall before they get Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle and an injured blue-liner back.
So bring it on. More boom. More kaboom.
Sitting up in the press box watching that embarrassing, humiliating, disgusting display in the 5-0 loss to the 29th place Anaheim Ducks was head scout Stu MacGregor. He’s the one executive in this organization who is getting his job done. MacGregor’s guys aren’t the problem here. It’s not the players he’s picked who are letting the side down. So provide him more picks. Sooner or later his guys will be in the majority with seniority. And that’s when this team starts to win.
Steve Tambellini is going to have to do as good a job at selling players for picks and prospects this year as he did last year when he managed to dump Dustin Penner off on the Los Angeles Kings for a first-round pick that turned into Oscar Klefbom, as well as acquiring Colten Teubert and a second-round pick to come.
Tambellini is going to have to be a sensational seller again primarily because he’s been such a brutal buyer.
Tambellini is the now-very-much-on-the-hot-seat general manager who gave you the now 39-year-old Nikolai Khabibulin for three (going on four) years of wasted goaltender development and tried to give you Dany Heatley, too. Other than a couple of minor successes (Ryan Jones and Corey Potter), he has largely failed at finding veteran pros dating back to Patrick O’Sullivan on his first trade deadline dealing.
The point right now is that he’s 0-for-5 with the guys he brought in to build a bridge to the future for Taylor Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, Eberle and the rest of the developing young talent recently selected in the draft.
When Tambellini acquired Ben Eager (one fight), Eric Belanger (one goal), Cam Barker (one point), Andy Sutton (one half season missed due to suspensions) and Darcy Hordichuk (one half season healthy scratch), they were supposed to build the bridge by making the Oilers a tougher, braver, harder to play against, much better defensive hockey team.
That bridge, which has been crumbling since the start of the season, completely came tumbling down against Anaheim. Not the time for Tambellini’s free agents to be missing in action. How can coach Tom Renney be anything but disappointed in them?
“I think that’s a fair question,” offered Renney.
“I’d like to have more from them.
“In fairness to them, maybe they’d like to have more from their coach. Maybe I’m asking too much. Maybe guys are playing too much. Maybe guys aren’t playing enough. In some cases, maybe they’re not getting done what we hoped they would.
“My hope is that in the games we have left, that all those guys show all of us that they were necessary and that they were good acquisitions. I think they have all that potential.”
Maybe somebody else will think that, too, and offer up a draft pick between now and the trade deadline.
It really showed when it was Sam Gagner stepping up to make a statement on behalf of the team against Anaheim that no one else would step up to make.
“At that point I’m less concerned about winning the hockey game and more concerned about winning respect and making sure we let teams know we’re ready, willing and able to step up any time we need to,” said Renney.
“My guess is that everybody in the lineup has a pretty good guess why they’re here. If you want to endear yourself to your teammates, first and foremost ...
“We’re not just singling out one guy here. We’re talking about our team right now. I thought we had enough in the lineup to expect there to be more than just one guy standing up and making a statement on behalf of his team,” said Renney.
In addition to moving Ales Hemsky and Khabibulin for whatever draft picks they might bring, you can now add any of Tambellini’s failed five from July 1. Starting with Eager. That’s a pile of players to move to add bullets for MacGregor to use in this draft which features remarkable defensive depth.
Tambellini absolutely has to deliver more prime picks for MacGregor to use this draft to stockpile defencemen to develop for the future.
Blow it up some more.
OHL picking itself apart
DAVE POLLARD, QMI Agency, Jan 16 2012
TORONTO - Maybe I'm alone in my disgust, a singular voice of dissention shouting in the junior hockey wilderness.
Nobody else, it would appear, thinks it's inherently wrong that general managers in the Ontario Hockey League have the power to trade draft picks as far into the future as, well, whenever. The silence is deafening.
Here's the deal. In the OHL, there's no cutoff point for dealing draft picks, at least none that I'm aware of. So if you want to trade me your stud defenceman for a middling prospect and a pair of seconds, including one for 10 years from now, there's nothing from stopping me from making that deal.
Seriously.
If a GM is dumb enough to accept a pick that far in the future, he's well within his right. Can't trade his first-round pick, mind you -- that's against the rules in the OHL, although the WHL and QMJHL allow it -- but, hey, a 12th for the 2021 (I hear it's gonna be a monster draft; the crop of five-year-olds is out of this world) is perfectly acceptable.
In the 10 days leading up to the OHL's trade deadline this year, 65 picks changed hands, including 31 for the 2014-18 drafts. Oh, 49 players were traded, too, if you're counting.
It makes absolutely no sense to me that there isn't some sort of cap in place, say three years, for dealing draft picks. Apparently it's been discussed by the competition committee, which recommended the three-year window (which in this case would be 2012, '13 and '14), but it was nixed by the owners.
"We've discussed it, and we've discussed it recently actually," OHL commissioner David Branch said Monday. "The feeling was there was not a concern or a need to put a cap on it. The teams seem to be uncomfortable (with a cap). I'm not necessarily sure I'm comfortable with it but they don't feel it's cause for concern.
"They feel the possibility of trading draft picks diminishes the trading of players. There's no thought of changing it."
There's a good reason it's not going to change any time soon. One noble, theoretically anyway, and another that's in the GMs' best interest.
League brass doesn't exactly like the thought of GMs becoming a bunch of horse traders, dealing players with nary an afterthought as they chase that elusive Memorial Cup title. Branch has made it clear in the past that he isn't big on transactions that involve players, some as young as 16, being uprooted in mid-season.
Let's face it, that's bad for business. In a league that effectively recruits its best players -- the high-end types have other options, like U.S. college -- having a large group of players change teams two or three times during their career isn't something the OHL wants to brag about.
So, the next best thing is to swap draft picks.
A pick is essentially a piece of paper, not a warm body. No harm in paper changing hands as often as you'd like. And, let's face it, you can always get those picks back.
"I prefer to see draft picks moved rather than players," Niagara IceDogs coach/GM Marty Williamson said. "I think it's a good philosophy. If the league puts a limit of five years on it, who knows (how it affect trades)? It's not hurting anybody by trading draft picks. I don't see any damage being done by it."
No visible damage is being done but, trust me, trading draft picks can crush a franchise. Teams are built through the draft (some more than others, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) so the absence of picks means other avenues must be explored. That means trading players, those warm bodies the league doesn't want to talk about being moved.
Here's another example: Let's say a GM mortgages the future (say prospects and picks) for a couple of star players and, lo and behold, goes on to win the Memorial Cup. Said GM then gets an offer to move up to the NHL, which, natch, he accepts.
The OHL team then hires a new GM and, yikes, what's he got left to work with going forward? Zip. Nada. Nuthin'. Start scrambling son, because you've got work to do to get back to respectibility.
But what really stinks about trading picks for a draft that won't happen for five years is that it gives GMs that much time to get them back. All of a sudden, that big deadline deal that sent to six second-round picks out of town starts looking like a "future considerations" trade if they wind up back in the original owner's hands. And the league definitely doesn't want placeholder trades like the Steve Mason-Nazem Kadri deal between Kitchener and London a few years back.
All I can say is this: I don't like it. I think it's absurd that teams can get an impact player now for picks that won't even be used for five years. If that 2015 pick does get used to draft a player, his presence likely won't be felt until 2017 at the earliest.
And that helps a rebuilding team how, exactly?
Press-ing issues for new Edmonton arena:
The proposed downtown arena is exciting, but there are pitfalls to avoid in the design phase
TERRY JONES, QMI Agency, Jan 15 2012
EDMONTON - This is when it starts to get exciting.
All the angst, the screeching and screaming from the against-everything vocal minority and the political dog-and pony-shows are in the rear-view mirror. Or, at least, that will be the case after the next election when the province finally puts up the missing $100 million for the new $450-million 18,400-seat new arena for North Central Alberta with construction projected to start in April next year.
Now the dream starts to develop and the transformation of, not only downtown Edmonton, but the entire Deadmonton image earned in the last couple decades begins to unfold, with expectations of the Oilers moving in with a Stanley Cup contending team in 2015-16.
In many ways, Monday was the official kickoff, with the announcement that the City of Edmonton and Katz Group have entered into an agreement with the Denver-based stadium and arena development company, ICON Venue Group, to oversee the design and construction of the new building.
"We should have the No. 1 team doing it, from what I can gather," said Mayor Stephen Mandell.
ICON works in partnership with arena management company AEG, which would likely take over the facility once it's built. ICON recent credits include the Consol Energy Centre in Pittsburgh, the Prudential Centre in New Jersey, Jobing.com Arena Glendale and the Pepsi Centre in Denver.
The new Pittsburgh arena is the most likely model for the downtown rink and if ICON meets or beats that one, the next 40 years of sports and entertainment experiences in Edmonton will be excellent.
"This is probably the most experienced company in North America for this type of planning," said Mandel.
"We want to have a group of people that are the leading edge people in these areas and my understanding is ICON is, according to the people we've talked to.
Also expected to be lined up is 360 Architecture, the firm which designed the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, American Airlines Arena in Dallas and Safeco Field in Seattle.
While there's excitement in the naming of these firms to begin the design and development work on the new arena, the next year or so of building the blueprints and the footprint for the place should also be coupled with some concern.
You have no idea how many monumental mistakes have been made in the building of these places by so many highly touted firms in the past who, it seems, never take the trouble to let various user groups take a peek at the plans.
Like the new $563-million B.C. Place. They put a spectacular scoreboard in the place. But you can't see it from the second row of seats in the expensive suites.
Vancouver and Montreal, unbelievably, built new arenas with concourses way too tight to handle the traffic. In one spot on the 200 level in Montreal there are a couple of tight bottlenecks, where the concourse narrows down to about 15 feet.
The Saddledome in Calgary has so little space on the event level, the hosting of the world junior was severely compromised. And you know why Edmonton has been a concert capital? The Saddledome roof won't hold modern-day staging requirements. So Edmonton gets Ôem all.
The Metrodome in Minneapolis was a problem-plagued place. The roof collapsed in 2010. Roof collapsed in Hartford's arena, too.
Do you have any idea of how many arenas in North America forgot to build press boxes over the years?
It's in double figures!
Joe Louis in Detroit was one where the architects neglected to include a press box. It was built in the top row of seats where fans stand and block views. The HP Pavillion's press box in San Jose was an afterthought and was wedged in between the rafters. The so-called Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles had to carve a press box into the seats from about Row 10 to Row 20 at centre ice. Reunion Arena in Dallas was another. And about half the rinks in the World Hockey Association. Even Madison Square Garden counted in that category.
The Air Canada Centre in Toronto was originally supposed to be a basketball-only building with no press box planned. One had to be added to the blueprint.
"It's so narrow that you can be guaranteed to be bumped several times during a game by other beer-bellied or big-assed reporters," said Tim Wharnsby of cbc.ca.
A common mistake is a press box elevator that holds only six or eight, which makes for some crazy scenes with coaches and management from both teams and reporters on deadline, especially if there's also suite holders, etc..
In the Bell Centre in Montreal, of all places, they forgot about TV camera locations.
"They had to put them right in the middle of the lower bowl," said Brian Wilde of CTV. "They're in the seating area. They had to take out some of the seats to compensate. It's an odd design. Weird."
Edmonton currently has one of the most functional and well-positioned press boxes, if the most poorly appointed (and the 30th-place media work- and interview-room facilities) in the league. A lot of rinks have been built recently where the broadcast booths so far away from the ice that play-by-play guys can barely see the puck.
"There are a lot of poor vantage points. The Joe is a good vantage point but they forgot the press box. There's no room at all. There are poor vantage points in New Jersey, Dallas ... and don't get me started on Long Island," said TSN's Chris Cuthbert.
"In the Staples Centre press box I feel like I'm on Mars," said Lisa Dillman of the Los Angeles Times.
The biggest mistake is cutting corners and building big, but basically blah, buildings like St. Louis and Boston.
If you aren't attempting to build a state-of-the-art building from the get-go, the regrets will last for decades. When you build a new stadium, you're making a statement about your city. I worry about that with this project.
Decide to not put in hand railings, extra dressing rooms, concourse TVs, escalators, elevators, etc. and easy-to-scrap items like international size ice surface option for the future, and you will regret it.
The City and Katz Group need to commit to the community to have some transparency and user-group input at various stages here.
You don't want to build the place and go "D'oh! Forgot to build the press box! D'oh! Can't see the scoreboard from the suites! D'oh! Roof can't hold concert staging! D'oh! Concourse can't support the crowd flow!"
But in the meantime, go ahead. It's time to start to get excited now.
USA Hockey blocks league change for Wild
Team wants to join British Columbia Hockey League; evaluating appeal
Brent Stecker, Wenatchee World, January 16, 2012
WENATCHEE — USA Hockey has denied a bid by the Wenatchee Wild to leave the North American Hockey League and join the British Columbia Hockey League, Wild president Bill Stewart confirmed Monday.
Stewart and the Wild’s head scout, Rick Ellison, made the pitch to switch leagues during USA Hockey’s winter meeting Saturday in Orlando, Fla., Stewart said. But after considering the request in a closed session, the organization’s executive board declined the move without providing a reason.
“They don’t like a team based in the U.S. playing in a Canadian league, but (in Washington) there’s six teams and five of them play in Canadian hockey leagues,” Stewart said.
The Wild are pursuing the league change for travel reasons, Stewart said. In the NAHL, their closest opponents are the Fresno (Calif.) Monsters and Dawson Creek (British Columbia) Rage, both roughly 920 miles from Wenatchee. In the BCHL, each of the 16 current teams are based in British Columbia, and only the Prince George Spruce Kings, their farthest possible opponent at 635 miles from Wenatchee, are located in the northern half of the province.
“We’d save money, and the longest bus trip is about 12 hours (in the BCHL),” Stewart said. “The last 12 days, the team spent 96 hours on the bus to play five games. That could be (our) entire travel schedule for the BCHL. ... The kids would miss a lot less school.”
Stewart said Wenatchee attempted to join the BCHL before its inaugural season in 2007. The Wild instead joined the NAHL for an agreed-upon three seasons, with the condition that the league and the Wild would work together to bring in “a couple” of travel partners into the NAHL within a six-hour bus ride of Wenatchee, Stewart said.
The 2011-12 season is Wenatchee’s fourth in the NAHL.
“We must have looked at 14 new markets, but with the way the economy is right now there are no new (arenas) being built,” Stewart said.
Stewart said the NAHL “does not endorse” the Wild’s application to the BCHL.
The BCHL and NAHL operate on the same level of play — Junior A hockey.
If the Wild were to appeal USA Hockey’s decision and the move to the BCHL was then accepted, Stewart said he does not know if it the team would start there next season.
“It may be a thing that takes another year to get done,” he said.
Stewart said the Wild’s application to the BCHL is not related to the shaky financial standing of the team’s home arena, Town Toyota Center.
A junior hockey website had speculated that the Wild may move to a city in British Columbia to ensure the switch to the BCHL, but Stewart said the Wild will play in Wenatchee as long as the Town Toyota Center is operating.
“If you can guarantee me a building here, we’ll be here,” Stewart said. “We’re just trying to get the right model that works. We’re trying to find a junior league with a business model that’s better for our organization and for the players in our organization regarding school and travel.”
Future is now, as Jackets' Johansen adjusts to NHL
Corey Masisak, NHL.com Staff Writer, Jan 16 2012
COLUMBUS -- There is enough facial hair just below the bottom lip of Ryan Johansen to qualify as a solid effort growing a soul patch, but certainly not enough to mask his status as the youngest guy in Columbus Blue Jackets' dressing room.
He was 19 years old when his rookie season began, and he's got another six months to go as a teenager. Johansen represents hope in Columbus for a franchise that thought 2011-12 would be the big breakthrough. It hasn't worked out that way, but the broad-shouldered kid from British Columbia has done enough in his first NHL campaign to get people excited about what he should accomplish in the seasons to come.
"You can tell he's a talented player," Blue Jackets forward Antoine Vermette said. "He makes good plays. For a player of that age to show that composure the ways he shows at some points, it is pretty impressive in the League."
Johansen was the fourth pick in the 2010 Entry Draft. If that didn't bestow enough expectations on him, he was named to the all-star team at the 2011 World Junior Championship after collecting 3 goals and 9 points in the tournament.
He made the Columbus roster during training camp, and was among the preseason contenders for the Calder Memorial Trophy given to the League's top rookie. Johansen's freshman season in the NHL has been a mixed bag, but a few nights of brilliance have been sprinkled in and there are flashes of the franchise center he has the potential to become.
"He's 19 years old and he's playing against men," said Columbus interim coach Todd Richards, who was with the team all season as an assistant before replacing Scott Arniel earlier this month. "I think it is what you see a lot of times with young players. There's two games where he's really good and then maybe two games where he's not so good.
"Getting him to play with the urgency every shift is another thing. You find with kids coming out of college and coming out of junior that they tend to pace themselves because they are used to playing 30 minutes a night, and they spend two minutes out on the power play and they go hard when they need to go hard. You can't do that at this level. You watch guys and their shift lengths are 40 seconds, 45 seconds, sometimes less than that. It is because you're going hard all the time, and that's the way the game is now. Ryan's not alone with that -- I've had other young players in other organizations, and you try to teach them those things. Usually you're doing that at the American League level, but he's going through those growing pains on the big stage at this level."
For the season, Johansen has 7 goals and 15 points in 38 games. He's had four multi-point games, including a pair of two-goal contests.
Johansen's role with the Blue Jackets has fluctuated throughout the season. He's spent time on all four lines and with just about every other forward on the roster. He's averaging a little more than 13 minutes of ice time per game, but he's at almost 16 minutes per night since Richards took over -- though that was only three games ago.
"I feel like there have been some games where I played really good, but I wasn't getting rewarded with a goal or an assist," Johansen said. "I've had some games where I haven't been good and haven't competed at the level I need to. Then there's some games where I do good and I'm really helping the team on the first or second line and being a good impact on the ice. The main thing for me is just keeping my consistency and maintaining the same compete level and battle level so I can contribute as much as possible."
Added Richards: "It is all dependent on him. I challenged him a little bit after the Phoenix game [Friday], and I think he responded [Saturday] against San Jose. I thought it was one of his better games. He was more engaged and more committed physically. He's 19 years old, but he's built like a man. You look at his shoulders, and I [begin] to think what he's going to look like when he's 26 or 27. He's real big as a 19-year-old. It is getting that commitment on a consistent basis."
Johansen will represent Columbus at the 2012 Tim Hortons NHL All-Star Game weekend in Ottawa later this month. He's one of the 12 rookies selected to participate in the various skills events on the day before the game.
His mother and a couple of close friends -- one from his hometown in Vancouver and another from much closer to Ottawa in Guelph, Ont., will be joining him for the festivities. Johansen said he'll know a couple guys there -- he's skated during the offseason with Edmonton's Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and adorned the Canadian sweater at the WJC with Philadelphia's Sean Couturier.
There will also be at least a few older players there he's excited to spend some time with.
"You can go through the whole team," Johansen said. "I'll be looking around the room with my eyebrows to the ceiling the whole time. It will be pretty cool to walk in that room and see so many heroes basically from when I was growing up."
His big moment is likely to come in the shootout competition. Other young players in the past have tried to keep it simple to save face in front of the League's luminaries, but Johansen might have other ideas.
"I have been thinking about it a little bit," Johansen said. "They haven't told us what we're doing yet. My brother's been telling me a couple moves that he likes. I think I'll be trying something crazy for the fans. It should be a fun time."
YOUR CALL: SHOULD PLAYERS WEAR HELMETS AT ALL TIMES?
TSN.CA STAFF, Jan 18 2012
A freak accident that took Edmonton Oilers winger Taylor Hall out of Tuesday's game against the Columbus Blue Jackets has become a hot topic of discussion, as many questions are popping up as to whether players should wear helmets every time they step onto the ice.
While Hall wears a helmet with a visor during games, he doesn't wear one during warm-ups. It's habit for some players to not wear a helmet during warm-ups, which is their discretion as established by most NHL teams.
With flying pucks, primarily ones that deflect off the crossbar or post as players skate by, one might wonder why they wouldn't wear one. Players wear helmets in games and in morning skates, so why wouldn't they wear one in pre-game skates?
"Personally, I don't know why you wouldn't wear it," Vancouver Canucks forward Daniel Sedin said. "There's pucks flying and there's 20 guys on your half of the ice that are skating around.
"Then again, guys aren't wearing visors either so I don't think (things will change)."
The New York Rangers have a team rule mandating helmets for warm-ups and would seem to be the only NHL club with such a rule. But for players like Ottawa Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson, skating without a helmet is an opportunity to market themselves and allow fans to see them.
"For the fans, it's a chance for them to see us," said Alfredsson. "I remember guys that didn't wear helmets in games, so we've come a long way."
Senators forward Jason Spezza added that the only chance to be on the ice without a helmet on is in warm-ups.
"As a kid growing up, I always dreamt about skating with my helmet off and having fun in the warm-up," said Spezza. "There's no real rhyme or reason behind [why I do it]."
While the Hall incident was clearly an accident and may not happen again soon, should players be made to wear helmets during warm-up? As always, It's Your! Call.
Kennedy: Stellar goalies position Blues as early playoff dark horse
With a 2.08 GAA and .918 SP, Jaroslav Halak has been among the league leaders this season.
Ryan Kennedy, The Hockey News, 2012-01-18
Don’t look now, but the St. Louis Blues are making things very interesting at the top of the Western Conference. Technically the Notes are fourth, but St. Louis is one point behind Central Division rival Detroit and the Wings have played one more game. The team has gone 6-0-1 in 2012 and along with the genius of early-season replacement Ken Hitchcock behind the bench, it’s not hard to figure out why things are going so right: The Blues boast two of the hottest goaltenders in the league.
Jaroslav Halak was a known quantity when he came to town in a controversial trade with Montreal (are there any other kinds in La Belle Province?) and after figuring out how to bear the burden of great expectations, has become a fortress of late.
Not to be outshined, the once left-for-dead Brian Elliott has posted a 1.68 goals-against average and five shutouts, both good for second in the NHL.
Elliott in particular has been a revelation after unsuccessful stints in Ottawa and Colorado. He signed with the Blues as a free agent over the summer and St. Louis goalie coach Corey Hirsch liked what he saw immediately.
“My first impression was that he’s very focused,” Hirsch said. “He’s got a very good work ethic. His approach – he prepares for a game as well as any goalie I’ve seen. He’s juggling tennis balls, he soaks in a lot of info when watching video…the game for him, as the saying goes, is the easy part.”
The key to turning around Elliott’s game was reeling in his aggressive tendencies. Having the netminder deeper in the net was part of it, as was more structure. That’s something Halak already had down pat.
“Very structured, very consistent,” Hirsch said of the Slovak. “He’s been taught very well.”
Halak is currently experiencing his best run for the Blues since arriving in the summer of 2010. He’s on a 9-0-3 run, cleaving his GAA down to 2.08 in the process. The fact a Hitchcock team is almost always a defensive team certainly helps, but Hirsch maintains you still need a solid last line of defense.
“Give ‘Hitch’ a lot of credit,” he said. “His system is very friendly to goalies. But they’ve bailed us out when we’ve needed them.”
Other than being hot, the real intrigue revolving around the Blues comes in forecasting the playoffs. St. Louis is no fun to play against and with two netminders playing out of their skulls, Hitchcock can give Elliott and Halak plenty of rest in preparation for the post-season.
Boston GM Peter Chiarelli told me last week that his starter, Tim Thomas, functions best when held to approximately 55 starts in a season if the Bruins intend on making a Stanley Cup run. While Halak (or Elliott, for that matter) has way fewer miles on the odometer than the reigning Conn Smythe winner, it’s worth noting that the most regular season appearances by a Stanley Cup-winning goaltender since the lockout is 62, by Pittsburgh’s Marc-Andre Fleury.
Are the Blues a Cup dark horse? Offense isn’t a huge strength right now, but it’s not a liability, either. The team sits firmly ensconced in the NHL middle when it comes to goals for. Special teams must improve, particularly the power play, but it’s nothing a deadline trade and some hard work can’t boost.
St. Louis has leadership, youthful vigor and two outta-sight netminders. I wouldn’t want the task of having to take four games out of seven from them come springtime.
Boylen: Nothing wrong with Feaster wanting Flames to make the playoffs
Rory Boylen, The Hockey News, 2012-01-17
“You play to win the game.”
– Former NFL football coach Herm Edwards
When Jay Feaster pulled off the Mike Cammalleri-Rene Bourque trade, it solidified his intent to make a push for the playoffs and ignore the outside calls for an all-out rebuild.
And for that, the Calgary GM deserves kudos.
In the ultra-competitive world of pro sports, I can’t for the life of me understand how a guy can be painted as incompetent when he doesn’t try to lose. Whether, as a fan or follower of the league, you think it’s time for the Flames to sell off all their NHL assets for futures is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is getting positive results from that type of philosophical change is easier said than done – and the option is often overrated.
The mythical return of “picks and prospects” is desired by the general public because of the loose idea that if you trade everything good you have now, the investment is a can’t-miss pay off down the road. But to point at the successes of the Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins as a support for this reasoning is to completely ignore the pains of the Florida Panthers and Columbus Blue Jackets. A rebuild isn’t always a straight line; “picks and prospects” don’t always turn out as expected.
If you go down this route, you’re accepting the fact your team will be below average for a couple of years. Fine. But put yourself in the GM’s shoes for a moment: if Feaster set off on a rebuild today, do you think he’d be there to enjoy the fruits of any potential success on the other end? Heck no. If Feaster were given the mandate by ownership to forget the playoffs and set the franchise up for a push in 2015, he would have started toward the objective as soon as he arrived.
And it’s not as though the Flames are a horrible, unsalvageable, lottery-lock wreck. They’re in the top-half of the league in goals-against average, largely because of netminder Miikka Kiprusoff, who’s having one of the best seasons of his career. Goal scoring is Calgary’s main concern, but it’s not impossible to see them improving in that category with Jarome Iginla bouncing back from a slow start, Curtis Glencross finding chemistry with Olli Jokinen and now with Cammalleri eager to prove himself to Cowtown fans once more and primed for a resurgence.
Oh, and they’re only four points out at the midway mark of the season.
Now, this isn’t to say Calgary is a criminally underrated team, that making up four points in this system is simple or that Cammalleri suddenly makes the Flames a Stanley Cup contender. But he is certainly an improvement on the inconsistent Bourque despite the down season he was having in Montreal.
Related Links
Campbell: Cammalleri, Bourque seek fresh starts
POLL: Should the Flames rebuild?
Last time around, Cammalleri worked well with Iginla and burst through with a career year. You can’t assume the same results will happen this time, but the addition of a scorer like that gives the Flames options. Iginla can play with the surprising combo of Jokinen and Glencross, or coach Brent Sutter can spread it out and reunite the 2008-09 linemates, while letting Jokinen and Glencross continue unchanged.
The bottom line is the controversial deal improved Calgary’s chances immediately and that’s what the GM is there to do. It’s the GM’s job to improve his club and get to the playoffs where his owner can make some money and where the team has the opportunity to overachieve. No one expected the Oilers to make the final in 2005-06 and few thought the Flames would do it in 2003-04. So, when anyone asks me “why would a team with no hope for the Stanley Cup make a trade like this,” I shake my head. If you finish in the top eight of your conference, you have a hope. More simply, when you have a goalie like Kiprusoff, anything can happen.
Calgary has been fading ever since its appearance in the final, but the flame is still flickering. When it’s time for a rebuild, the team’s hand will be forced and it will occur naturally. Those pushing for a rebuild this year were already resigned to the fact the team had to be bad before it got really good again, so delaying it for a few years in lieu of another couple playoff pushes is gravy.
To question or crack at a GM’s ability because he doesn’t fold up shop and raise the white flag is way off base. Feaster knows better than anybody where his team stands, which is why he made the move for an upgrade in the first place. This bold move of integrity deserves to be commended.
After all, no one calling for an all-out rebuild at this juncture has an ounce of the accountability for trading the likes of Kiprusoff and Iginla that Feaster does.
Oilers may put a lid on it
ROBERT TYCHKOWSKI, QMI Agency, Jan 18 2012
Oilers fall without Hall
COLUMBUS - Had Taylor Hall being wearing a helmet during Edmonton’s pregame warmup Tuesday night, he might be minus about 30 stitches on his forehead right now.
He wasn’t, though, and left the ice soaked in blood after a nightmarish accident with Corey Potter’s skate blade.
Needless to say, the Oilers helmet policy is now under review.
“We’re going to talk about it,” said GM Steve Tambellini. “It was a bizarre happening, but it was a reminder that, whether practising, playing the game or in warmups, things can happen.”
The NHL doesn’t insist that players wear helmets in warmup, and many choose not to as it’s the one opportunity to let their hair flow in the breeze and for fans to get a look at them.
“There’s no real rhyme or reason to that, unfortunately,” said head coach Tom Renney. “Even in practice with guys with their chin straps undone, little things like that … you have young people watching this game and they need to see things done properly. This is a hell of a lesson for a lot of people to learn from. Hopefully everyone does.”
Shawn Horcoff doesn’t, and probably still won’t after this.
“I knew that was going to come up,” he said. “That happens once every … I remember taking a puck in the face, Sutton took one. It happens. If he has a helmet on it’s different, but it’s such a freak thing.”
It’s hard to imagine Hall won’t be wearing one next time he plays, possibly Thursday.
“He might be wearing one walking down the street,” said Renney.
WANDERING THE DESERT
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
We’re talking about the Columbus hopes, here.
After a much-publicized off-season push that brought the likes of Jeff Carter and James Wisniewski, the habitually below-average Blue Jackets had visions of a long-overdue playoff spot dancing in their heads.
Eight games into the season, the dream was dead.
“In the summer, after we made those moves and signed some guys, I thought we were going to have a really good team,” said Columbus centre Derick Brassard. “And everything went downhill. We missed Carter for a couple of weeks, we played without Wisniewski for a little while, we were losing … everything went downhill and that’s where we’re at right now.”
They’ve moved into the Oilers’ old place — dead last in the NHL.
“Obviously guys are disappointed here, we had a big summer with free agency and a couple of trades at the draft,” said Derek Dorsett. “There was so much hope. Then we got off to a terrible start, 0-7-1, and for some reason we couldn’t dig ourselves out of it.
“It just kept piling and piling on us.”
The key for Columbus, as it was and still is for the not-much-better Oilers, is to keep the dressing room from becoming a negative place, to somehow find meaning in the last three months of a season that’s already lost.
“It’s been really hard for us, especially mentally,” said Brassard. “Just coming to the rink every day when you’re not winning, it’s hard. Nobody’s in a good mood.
“It’s my fourth year and we’ve had one winning season. It’s been a tough place to come every day but I enjoy myself, I like what I do and hopefully we’re going to finish strong.”
OLD GUN
As he closes in on his 37th birthday, Vinny Prospal is just a point off the Columbus scoring lead, which isn’t just a knock on the younger guys, it’s a credit to his perseverance and dedication.
“For me it’s really easy with him, he works,” said head coach Todd Richards. “You watch him in practice, he works. There’s a passion to play the game, there’s a passion to practise. It doesn’t just come. You can’t just show up in a game and think that if you’ve had success it’s just going to happen.”
EBS IN THE FLOW
Jordan Eberle is with the team and went for a brief skate after the rest of the players had left the ice on Tuesday and is still aiming for a pre-All Star game return.
There is absolutely no need to hurry back from sprained/torn knee ligaments, but if he’s ready, he’s ready.
“I think a lot of it has to do with how well I’m feeling on the ice,” he said. “If there was any doubt in my mind that I couldn’t make it before the All-Star break, I wouldn’t come.”
He says the risk of reinjury is remote.
“It was kind of a weird injury,” said Eberle. “Talking to the trainers, they’ve never seen that ligament torn. It was one of those things where you’d almost have to do the exact same movement to re-injure it. I’ve done it once in 20 years, so hopefully it doesn’t happen again.”
Nicholls sharing scoring secrets with Kings
Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail,, January 18, 2012
The pride of West Guilford, Ont. is Bernie Nicholls, one of only eight NHL players in history to score 70 goals in a single season. Nicholls played for six NHL teams in a 20-year-career, but he defines himself mostly as a Los Angeles King, where he broke in during the early 1980s and had his finest season - 150 points - during Gretzky’s first year in Lalaland.
Nicholls always was good around the net, scoring 1,209 points in 1,127 career games, and so when he saw the Kings struggle to score goals this season, he put in a call to new coach Darryl Sutter and volunteered to help out. Nicholls finished his playing career in San Jose, which is where he and Sutter crossed paths previously.
And so, as the Kings ventured across Western Canada, where they completed a three-game road trip in Vancouver Tuesday with a 3-2 shootout win, Nicholls was unofficially playing the part of assistant coach, trying to help jump-start a Kings’ offence that was 30th in scoring and 30th in even-strength scoring when he arrived.
“I always do a lot of things with the Kings,” said Nicholls, in an interview. “I love being around the players. It’s such a talented group, but I think we’ve averaged two goals a game since forever.
“I just asked if I could help out, maybe help out with the power play and add my two cents, and Darryl said yeah, no problem. They’ve allowed me to come around and it’s been fun. The guys are great to be with. Anything you can add to help out, I wanted to do that.”
Nicholls has been staying in L.A. these past three weeks, but mostly lives in Ontario’s cottage country, just west of Haliburton, where he says: “I do a lot of hunting in the fall. We have our own camp there; and we guide and stuff. I enjoy it back there. I have a house there, I gave it to my mom and dad and so when I’m there, I stay with them. It’s great.”
Sutter took over from Terry Murray, who was fired in December, and essentially inherited Murray’s staff. Nicholls is the only change and for now, it is just a day-to-day thing. The Kings are 8-1-5 in their first 14 games under Sutter after taking five of six points in Western Canada and surrendered two or fewer goals in 12 of those games, heading into Thursday night’s home date with the Calgary Flames, Game 2 of the Sutter vs. Sutter coaching match-up. Defensively, the Kings are fine. Of late, they are occasionally showing offensive flashes. If that continues, maybe Nicholls will get to stick around.
“I think so. I hope so. I’ll be there until they tell me to go home, I guess.”
Habs revival predicated on return to form
Sean Gordon, Globe and Mail, Jan. 17, 2012
It’s a common impulse, when things lurch violently sideways, to try and identify a guilty party.
In the eyes of many Montreal Canadiens fans – and, it appears, some anonymous detractors within the NHL team – part of the problem in this wretched half-season was erstwhile sniper Michael Cammalleri.
But complicated questions seldom have simple answers, and there is more than just one thing wrong with this team.
Any incipient Habs revival will necessarily involve a return to form on the part of key veterans, like Tomas Plekanec, Cammalleri’s former centre, and Scott Gomez – the poster boy for underachievement.
Gomez showed brief flashes of brilliance in a win over the New York Rangers last Sunday, now it’s up to Plekanec to show his wares with beefy winger René Bourque, who was acquired from the Calgary Flames in exchange for Cammalleri, and the similarly large-framed Mike Blunden.
It’s not that Plekanec has been bad, exactly, he just isn’t as consistently good as he’s been in the past.
“Definitely, I want to play better, but everybody has ups and downs and you have to get through it … you just need to stay calm, basically, and don’t listen to outside things. Believe in your job and what you’re doing,” he said Tuesday.
Though Plekanec has nine goals and 31 points in 45 games, the man he is tied with for third in team scoring, David Desharnais, has replaced him as the team’s de facto first-line centre despite playing fewer minutes (although Plekanec’s duties on the Habs second-ranked power-play account for much of the disparity).
Plekanec’s ratio of points per game is off his typical pace, and while some of that is surely due to playing with fellow strugglers Cammalleri (nine goals as a Hab) and the now-injured Brian Gionta (eight goals), they’re not the ones missing on breakaways.
It’s to wonder whether Plekanec’s best offensive moments this season haven’t come with his team short-handed.
Plekanec, who earns $5-million (U.S.) this season and has averaged more ice time than any other forward on the team, is also a team-worst minus-11 – granted, he’s often playing against the opposition’s top line.
One of the finest two-way forwards in the game when at his best, Plekanec is on pace for his lowest goal total in six years, and he’s taken a typical season’s worth of penalty minutes in just 45 games.
Trading for Bourque was sold a way to add some heft to Montreal’s forward lines, it should soon become clear whether it will provide a springboard for Plekanec.
One thing that’s apparent after one game: the Czech playmaker is pleased to have him, and to be surrounded by big men.
“It’s definitely different, but it’s great to play with that kind of guy, you know where he’s going, he’s going every time to the net,” he said. “When you put the puck at the net you know he’s going to be there, it’s pretty easy to play with a guy like that.”
The remark can be interpreted unkindly as a slight against Cammalleri and Gionta, and it may, given the recent hysteria around the team.
None of that will matter if results follow, particularly on the NHL’s worst power-play, which along with a spate of injuries has undermined the Habs season – as has their league-worst record in the shootout.
Here’s a tasty morsel for the glass half-empty crowd: on Jan. 18, 2011, the Buffalo Sabres were in 11th place in the Eastern Conference, 10 points out of a playoff spot.
The Canadiens, eight points out going into Tuesday’s action, have an example to follow – Buffalo finished seventh.
A statistical perusal shows that least one team in each of the last four seasons has gone from .500 or below in the first half to the playoffs with a second-half renaissance.
With three games this week against conference opponents – Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins and Toronto Maple Leafs – the time to prove this team is better than its record indicates is now.
To have a realistic shot at the postseason, the Habs need to win 23 or 24 of their remaining 37 games – one online statistical-modelling site gives them roughly a 15-per-cent chance of pulling it off.
“We can’t hang our heads and think it’s over, you have to keep going, you never know,” defenceman Josh Gorges said.
That doesn’t mean the atmosphere in the room is any lighter.
“It’s tough. Everyday you’re reminded of it, you can’t get away from it, it’s just the reality of where we are,” Gorges said. “But the great thing about hockey it’s not a 40-game season.”
Murray learned trade from Hannan
STEVE MACFARLANE, QMI Agency, Jan 18 2012
SAN JOSE - After college, San Jose Sharks blueliner Douglas Murray was all set to learn everything he could from Scott Hannan, who was one of the premier shutdown defencemen in the NHL before the lockout.
Then, they changed all the rules, taking away one of Hannan’s best moves.
“I know the one thing he had to change — his infamous push the hands with his stick,” Murray said with a laugh Tuesday before playing against his former mentor, who played parts of eight NHL seasons with the Sharks but now toils for the Calgary Flames. “He probably misses that one today. That one was deadly. Nobody could get anywhere.
“That was something actually I remember coming up as a young guy here I tried to put in my game. Then, the lockout happened and that was out of the game. I never got a chance to perfect that. He used to put his stick right on the hands of the guy as they were coming down the wing — Lidstrom did the same thing. Not a slash, not a hook — just a push on the hands.”
Hannan, who returned Tuesday from an upper-body injury that kept him out of four games, admits he used to get away with a lot.
“The hooking, the holding … you got away with a lot of little things,” said the 32-year-old d-man. “Especially, you don’t want to say it, but depending on how many minutes you played you kinda got away with a little more.
“There was definitely a big adjustment period (after the lockout). Guys were able to survive by trying to quicken up their footspeed and play more positional.”
Gardens time capsule to be opened:
Conn Smythe's 1931 time capsule was found during renovations of Maple Leaf Gardens.
By LANCE HORNBY, QMI Agency, Jan 18 2012
TORONTO - Just what did Conn Smythe put in a 1931 time capsule unearthed during the renovations of Maple Leaf Gardens?
Valuables? Pucks? A proclamation the Leafs would never win a Cup if the NHL expanded?
Officials from Ryerson University will let the media in on the secret Jan. 26 when contents of the small copper-plated box are revealed. Bricklayers working on renovating the famous Carlton St. hockey palace to house Ryerson's new athletic centre and a Loblaws grocerey store found the box near the entrance in July.
"It was sealed with no writing on the exterior," said Ryerson media relations officer Michael Forbes. "It was common in that era to put a time capsule near the cornerstone of new buildings. The cool thing is to find it almost 80 years to the day the Gardens opened."
Workers also found an NHL rulebook from 1931 and a newspaper. Ryerson and Loblaws took posession of the capsule and opened it in private.
It's believed that it contains items placed there by Smythe, who bought the team in 1927 and built the Gardens in six months against long odds at the height of the Great Depression.
The owners have invited Smythe's family to the press conference and also informed Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which sold the property in the eary 2000s.
"Any hockey fan would be interested in what's inside," said Tom Anselmi, executive vice-president and COO of MLSE. "But they own it."
The Hockey Hall of Fame is also interested in anything of significance that might be in the box.
No hugs at Sutter brothers reunion
Cam Cole, Postmedia News January 17, 2012
VANCOUVER — In a perfect television world, the long-awaited reconciliation of the coaching Sutter brothers at Calgary’s Scotiabank Saddledome last Saturday night would have been one of those warm-and-fuzzies like they’ll be sure to do on the coaching Harbaugh brothers — Baltimore’s John and San Francisco’s Jim — if they meet in the Super Bowl.
Maybe sit them down in a studio together. Maybe Brent could say he was sorry how it worked out in Calgary and Darryl could be all magnanimous and say something like, “It’s just business. Nothing can come between us, Little Bro.”
Fade to the soft lens, and a hug.
How’s that sound?
Harrumph. That’s how it sounds. Maybe not quite that polite.
“I told Elliotte (Friedman), ‘You friggin’ know us better than that,’ ” Darryl Sutter grumped Tuesday, not saying Hockey Night in Canada had that exact scenario in mind, just saying.
“When (Darryl’s firing as GM) happened, everybody made a huge deal of it, because Brent and I were together. So there’s a handful of guys always trying to create that monster.
“But the other day . . . I told Brent, pardon the language, it was none of their friggin’ business. Right? All of a sudden, it was like they were close family friends. Like they were trying to counsel.”
Hugs? They’re Sutters. They are blood brothers except when they are, professionally speaking, enemies, which has been most of their careers. The business scattered the six pro hockey-playing brothers to the NHL’s four winds until Darryl got the general manager’s job in Calgary and commenced rounding them up to the point where Flames president and chief executive officer Ken King referred to the organization — fondly, we think — as a “Sutterite colony.”
What the Sutters do, what they have always done, is bust a gut trying to win. And being out on his ear as GM while Brent, the coach, survived King’s Hobson’s choice in December 2010, wasn’t anyone’s definition of winning.
So Darryl went home, and drew the drapes. Didn’t return calls, even Brent’s.
“You know, I didn’t talk to anybody for a while,” he said.
Anyway, there was plenty of work to bury himself in on the farm in Viking, Alta. So much, in fact, that a year later, when he got the call from his old boss of San Jose days, Dean Lombardi, to come replace Terry Murray as coach of the Los Angeles Kings, it was no small task to find someone to take over the running of the spread.
“The big thing was, we talked last summer, my wife and I and Christopher (his son, who has Down syndrome),” a remarkably relaxed Sutter said Tuesday, after the Kings’ morning skate.
“The only way we were going anywhere is if it worked for him — and it had to be with guys that I knew. I wasn’t in any rush. I wanted it to be the right one.
“And obviously, Dean was one of those guys. The farm part, that was hard. It was right before Christmas, and hard to talk to people and find what you needed. Big farms are run like businesses. It’s accounting and payroll, and all that.”
So his daughter and her family had to take on more work, and a couple of neighbours who work in the oilpatch chipped in. The whole cattle operation, including several hundred cows ready to calve, had to be moved to his son-in-law Troy’s place, at the other end of the farmland.
Hence, the delay between the announcement of Murray’s firing and Sutter’s hiring. Finally, though, Darryl was ready to get back in the saddle.
Not much has changed. Sutter remains as intense and exacting as ever, and the Kings entered Tuesday night’s game against the Vancouver Canucks with just one regulation-time loss in the 13 games since he took over as coach.
“I played for Darryl twice, and he’s still every bit as intense,” said Bernie Nicholls, the old sniper who was with Sutter in San Jose and Chicago, and is back on a sort of handshake deal as a “consultant” to help with the Kings’ scorers, with the team last in the league in offence with just 102 goals — 47 fewer than the Canucks — in their first 46 games.
“The thing Darryl’s done, his idea coming in was to create more offence . . . and not that Darryl was the greatest skill player in the world, but he understands how to do it. Since he’s been here, they’ve probably averaged over 30 shots a game and before, they were like 15-18, just terrible.”
“Best part about being behind the bench is, you forget how good the players are,” Sutter said. “You see it from above, and you’re a genius, but you see it down there and you really respect what they’re doing.”
Someone asked if a guy with a hard-ass reputation could still get the most out of a hockey club in the post-lockout world.
“Players want that more than ever,” he said. “All these young guys now, their whole lives all they’ve had is direction — they want clear direction, that’s all.”
The Kings have more than enough pieces of the puzzle to be serious contenders, they just have had an awful time putting the puck in the net.
“We’ve been everywhere from third place to 12th place in three weeks,” Sutter said. “We played last week against Dallas, that night there was five three-point games, all of consequence.
“That why you’ve got to tighten up with the young players, so that they understand the importance. You lose two or three in a row, have one bad week, and it’s ‘holy shit.’
“And I told the players this today: the four best teams in the league, who are consistently doing it right now are Vancouver, St. Louis, the Rangers and Boston. They just don’t go away.”
The Bruins are plus-70 in goals-for and-against, double that of the Canucks, who have the second-best differential.
Sutter said he has had a recent scouting report on Boston . . . from a bitter coaching rival.
“I talked to Brent the other day, he said, ‘We went in there and lost 9-0, and I don’t think we played that bad,’ ” Darryl said.
“I said, ‘Jeez, don’t tell anybody that.’ ”
Evidently, they’re speaking again.
Don’t cue the cameras.
THN.com Top 10: Comebacks of 2011-12
Adam Proteau, The Hockey News, 2012-01-18
The NHL’s Bill Masterton Trophy is awarded annually to the NHLer “who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey,” but the league does not have a comeback-player-of-the-year award. If they did, who would have the inside track this season? That’s the focus on this week’s THN.com Top 10.
10. Johan Franzen, LW, Red Wings.
The Wings’ power forward went long stretches of time last season without scoring. However, this year, he’s got 18 goals in 46 games and is second only to Ian White on the Wings in plus-minus (plus-24).
9. Jaromir Jagr, Flyers.
The 39-year-old future first-ballot Hockey Hall-of-Famer spent three years in the Kontinental League, but hasn’t missed a beat since returning to the NHL. He’s currently on pace for a 68-point season – a total that would match his jersey number.
8. Kris Versteeg, RW, Panthers.
As he bounced around the league the past couple seasons, Versteeg was in danger of having the dreaded “journeyman” label attached to him before his 25th birthday. But now that he’s leading the Panthers in goals (17) and points (39), it’s safe to say he’ll be remaining with his current franchise for a long time.
7. Josh Harding, G, Wild.
Harding missed all of last season with a knee injury, but he has stormed back to play a vital role in Minnesota’s early-season success, posting a 2.44 goals-against average and .925 save percentage and creating much interest for him on the trade market.
6. Tomas Fleischmann, LW, Panthers.
The blood clot woes he battled last season put serious doubt into Fleischmann’s future, but he’s returned with no issues this year and is tied for second on the Panthers in points (34) while leading the team in plus/minus (plus-12).
5. Mike Smith, G, Coyotes.
Smith’s game fell apart in Tampa Bay last year (.899 save percentage), but he has found new life in the Arizona desert, posting a 17-11-6 record, 2.32 goals-against average and .927 save percentage.
4. Michael Del Zotto, D, Rangers.
Following a banner rookie season, Del Zotto’s game collapsed and he was banished to the American League for a spell. This season, he’s the Rangers’ leading point-producing defenseman (23 points) and their top plus-minus man (plus-22). And he’s still just 21 years old.
3. Sheldon Souray, D, Dallas.
Souray’s contract was buried in the AHL last season, but this year the 35-year-old has shown the hockey world his tank is far from empty, averaging more than 20 minutes a night and registering a plus-9.
2. Joffrey Lupul, LW, Toronto.
A throw-in component/salary dump in the Francois Beauchemin/Jake Gardiner trade who had serious health woes to overcome, Lupul has become the best player in that deal. He’s on pace for 50 assists and 86 points; his previous career highs were 28 assists and 53 points.
1. Brian Elliott, G, St. Louis.
Elliott was chased out of Ottawa last year and didn’t stick with the Avalanche after a 12-game stint, leading many to imagine his NHL opportunities would be limited. But after Jaroslav Halak stumbled out of the gate with the Blues, Elliott rode to the rescue, posting a sterling .937 save percentage and 1.68 GAA.
Not so fast on the pregame lids: MacTavish
TERRY JONES, QMI Agency, Jan 18 2012
EDMONTON - It seemed like just yesterday the debate was whether to make helmets mandatory for games.
Now it’s whether they should be made mandatory for warmup.
With the scary 30-stitch cut to the forehead of Edmonton Oilers’ Taylor Hall in the pregame warmup Tuesday in Columbus, it became the instant storyline in the sport.
“It’s like trying to shut the barn door after the herd has left,” said Craig MacTavish, the last to play without a helmet in the NHL, on the phone while his AHL Chicago Wolves were skating in warmup Wednesday night.
He’s right, of course. These things never get debated until something happens.
It’s the old “ban boxing” deal. Something happens to somebody in the ring, and it’s “ban boxing” the next day. Then it goes away.
The problem with helmets is that they stole so much of a player’s identity away.
There’s an image thing involved.
“The league wants the players to be more identifiable,” said MacTavish of one reason why the NHL has perhaps quietly endorsed bareheaded skaters before games.
Pregame warmup is the last place a player can skate around with that old-time hockey identity. It’s where Ryan Smyth can be Ryan Smyth, tossing pucks to the fans in the stands. And it’s not just about image. There’s a feel involved that players say helps open all their senses and get them pumped to play.
Considering there’s an entire pail of pucks on the ice for players like Hall to step on and that players routinely skate behind the net with a hockey glove held over their face, it’s amazing so many take their lids off for it.
“There’s a danger out there, obviously. But that was a freak accident,” said MacTavish.
“My view has always been that they’re pros, they are all doing it for a living. They ought to decide on it on their own.”
But MacTavish said he’d be wearing a helmet in the games now, for sure.
“It’s a different game now. It’s way quicker. It’s so much faster. When I played, you’d spend 30 seconds of a 45-second shift just lurking. Now you’re going full speed for the full 45. There’s a lot more danger than when I played.”
That said, he suggests making helmets mandatory in warmup ought not to go suddenly to the front burner of a sport that has a concussion crisis which, quite clearly, is due in large part to the weapons that are today’s elbow pads and shoulder pads.
And if Taylor Hall had worn a helmet, one without a visor, he’d still have a 30-stitch cut. It could have been on his neck.
Any player who watches the frightening video of the incident in which Hall went down, collecting Ladislav Smid as he went and then Corey Potter trying to hurdle them both and coming down blade-first deep into his face just above an eye, is probably going to think twice about it now, anyhow.
Actually, it might make an interesting study to find out how many players who didn’t wear helmets during warmup before Hall added what one tweeter suggested might be a signature Harry Potter-like lightening bolt to his forehead, suddenly show up with helmets this week.
And for the Oilers like Smyth, Shawn Horcoff, Ryan Jones, Eric Belanger, Theo Peckham, Ben Eager and Smid who were actually on the ice with Hall in Columbus with bare heads, you’d figure seeing something like that up close would result in them making the decision to never go lidless again.
When it comes to Hall and the Oilers, though, with all the insane injuries that have happened in this past few weeks and last three or four years, absolutely they should be wearing helmets in warmup.
They should also be covering themselves from head to toe in foam peanuts and bubble wrap, taping themselves like mummies, wearing bullet-proof vests and chain mail, installing bumpers and air bags and carrying shields.
Mr. Hockey's toughest fight
Dan Robson, Sportsnet Magazine, January 18, 2012
He walked slowly to the front of a room packed with reporters and sat on the last seat in the first row, facing the podium. He had hoped they wouldn't notice, or, at least, that they wouldn't react. This day, after all, was never supposed to be about him. But in the vaulted sanctuary of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, his presence is something akin to the manifestation of a deity. His white hair was cropped neatly and parted. His face was soft, but dignified. His white dress shirt was crisp, buttoned down over a black and gold tie. The navy blazer fit perfectly. The Hall of Fame logo sat just right. Even veteran sports scribes were in awe. "Gordie Howe," whispered one, sitting in the fourth row. "There's Gordie Howe," nudged another, somewhere in the back. They glowed like giddy schoolboys.
Gordie Howe might have heard their whispers. He hears them everywhere he goes. But he didn't turn and wave like he usually does. He just looked forward, to the stage where the Stanley Cup sat and where, in moments, his son would be introduced as one of the new inductees into hockey's holy Hall.
After a brief media conference, reporters were set loose to scrum the newest legends of the game-Mark Howe, along with Doug Gilmour, Joe Nieuwendyk and Ed Belfour. One reporter moved toward Gordie. Then another, and another-and soon there was a pack. Marty Howe tucked in next to his dad, guiding the conversation. His sister, Cathy, sat behind them, listening closely. Their younger brother Murray stood at the back of the room, while Gordie's best friend Felix Gatt-a lifelong fan who became his confidant-wandered wide-eyed through the Hall.
Questions directed at Mark are almost always a variation of the same: What is it like to follow your father's legacy? "Part of being Gordie Howe's son is you're always in the backdrop," he said. "I think my brothers and myself have always conducted ourselves accordingly, and we've accepted that. But I'm being put out in the forefront now. There are so many people that had so much to do with me receiving this honour. It's not about me, it's about all of us."
That was the point, made again and again. It's about a family, a famous name-forged by a boy from Saskatoon who became the greatest hockey player in history. And by the woman who made sure it happened. On the happiest of days, the Howes talked a lot about who wasn't there. It has been nearly three years since Colleen Howe died. "It would have been really great if she had been here," said Marty. "She was the one behind everything." Mark echoed his brother: "My mother," he said. "I will never, ever lose my mother." And Cathy looked over at her dad, who was throwing mock elbows at the mob of reporters. "He's been devastated," she said. "It's been a long road for him."
It's one that has taken him on a relentless journey across the continent, living in the care of his scattered family while regularly meeting with fans who still adore him. But between the autographs and handshakes, Mr. Hockey, showing the early signs of dementia, knows that the final period is slipping slowly away. And despite the beating he endured on the ice, these are the toughest days, because he faces them without her.
In the Hall of Fame, Gordie stood and answered every question with a quip, a wink and a grin. Then he was asked if this, of all moments, was his proudest. "I would say it's a second of mine," he replied softly, the answer immediate and sure. "The first one was marrying Colleen. That's what started it all."
Colleen Joffa was bowling with a group of friends at the Lucky Strike down the street from the Detroit Olympia on a spring night in 1951. The 18-year-old blonde wore blue jeans that hugged her perfectly. Colleen, who grew up on a farm in Sandusky, Mich., knew little about hockey. So she didn't recognize the group of young men sitting nearby as the city's famed Red Wings, who were regulars. Gordie, 23, was five years into his NHL career. His name was already carved into the Stanley Cup. And yet, despite being a star, it took him weeks to work up the courage to talk to her.
Soon after he did, however, Gordie and Colleen were spending hours on the phone every night. He took her on dates with other Red Wings, including Ted Lindsay and Red Kelly, and their girlfriends. Colleen was surprised by Gordie's charming shyness, rare for someone so famous. He knew "immediately" that he had to marry her. A few weeks after they first met, he went away on a fishing trip. He'd never claimed to be a poet-in fact, he skipped almost all of his high-school classes when Detroit sent him to its junior program in Galt, Ont., as a teenager. But the Red Wing transformed into a bard: "I've found that you can miss someone even though you've known them but for a few days," he wrote in the first of several letters he sent her during that short trip to Florida. "Love and stuff, Gordon."
They married in 1953.
Gordie sits at the kitchen table in his son Murray's home in Sylvania, Ohio, next to a 500-piece puzzle of a bridge that he's working on. A teacup poodle sits in his lap. The tiny grey dog is named Rocket-"After Maurice Richard," says Murray, a 51-year-old radiologist with brown hair and a youthful face. "My dad's last bodycheck on the Rocket was to name a little dog after him." The tag around Rocket's neck is etched with Colleen Howe's name and a phone number to a house filled with memories, now collecting dust in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Gordie pulls the wallet from the back pocket of his light green slacks. He lays out a small stack on the table. Along with two signed hockey cards of Marty and Mark from their days with the WHA's Houston Aeros, there is a black and white photograph of Colleen leaning against a railing in a cream bathing suit with black trim. Her pigtails rest on her bare shoulders, and she smiles warmly, as palm trees arch behind her. "Colleen 1951" is written neatly on the back, above a faded stamp mark that reads "Miami Beach, Florida."
"She was beautiful," Howe says. Rocket sleeps on his lap, nuzzled into his dark green sweater. "If I missed that chance, I would have missed it all."
There's an Upper Deck card titled "Mr. Hockey's Memorable Moments." It has a photo of Gordie in a black bathing suit, with a barrel-chest and a full head of brown hair. His arm is around Colleen-wearing a white bathing suit, with wind-blown curls-standing on the stairs of a pool, on their honeymoon. "Mr. and Mrs. Hockey are recognized as the sport's greatest couple," reads the caption along the side. "Didn't she get lucky?" Gordie says with a laughing huff. The card is signed by Gordie in blue ink. "He's conditioned to sign any photo when he sees it," Murray says. "He likes to have them pre-signed so he can spend more time talking to people."
The last photo is of Gordie and Colleen posing on a leather chair. They are middle-aged. He's wearing a grey, plaid-pattern suit, with a thick black tie and short white hair. Colleen is dressed in a cream blazer and black skirt. Her hair is in a short bob that curls at the edge of her smile, which hadn't changed since 1951.
In the space between the photos in his wallet, Gordie became the greatest hockey player the game had ever known. He led the Red Wings to four Stanley Cups. He won both the Art Ross trophy as the NHL's leading scorer and the Hart trophy as the league's MVP six times. To this day, he holds the record for most NHL games played-1,767 in 26 NHL seasons. When he retired in 1980, he was the league's all-time leading point scorer with 1,850. Meanwhile, Colleen created a legacy of her own. She infamously clashed with the Red Wings' hard-nosed coach and general manager Jack Adams, who viewed his players' wives and girlfriends as distractions. Colleen made every decision off the ice. She trademarked the names "Mr. and Mrs. Hockey" and managed the family's business interests. When Gordie first retired after 25 seasons with the Wings, she orchestrated a contract for her husband and their sons Marty and Mark to play together with the Aeros in the WHA. When Muhammad Ali met the couple, he nicknamed Colleen the 'Boss.'
Edna Gadsby, wife of Gordie's teammate Bill Gadsby and longtime friend of Colleen, says, "When Colleen married him, she realized that in many ways he was taken advantage of. She didn't like that. She wasn't afraid to do something about it. Her only critics were the ones who knew she was doing something good, and because she was a woman and because she was the wife of the star, she was often criticized."
And as Gordie elbowed his way into the record books, Colleen also took care of things at home. "Mom ran the household," Mark says. "There was no question about it."
Cathy was about 16 years old when the family moved to Houston. She remembers bringing a date to an Aeros game. After a brawl on the ice, a fan poured his beer on Mark as he left the game. Colleen, sitting nearby, whacked him over the head with her purse, knocking him out cold. As security dragged him away, Colleen shouted: "Don't you ever throw beer on my son again!" Cathy, now a 52-year-old mother of two, with a grandchild of her own, laughs at the memory: "I don't think I heard from my date again."
Colleen had a difficult relationship with her own mother, who had her with a travelling musician, and was married four times. She was raised mostly by her aunt, who instilled in her a strong desire to fight for justice and a commitment to family, says Murray. Colleen passed that on to her own kids. "Your family is really your legacy, and they should be coveted," Colleen once wrote. "A family legacy is so important, more important than a hockey legacy."
A painting of Colleen, with grey hair, hangs in the hallway of Murray's house, next to the bedroom where Gordie keeps his suitcase. The three books she wrote about the family's life in hockey are piled in the family room, on top of several other books about Gordie's time with the Red Wings. In 2002, when she was diagnosed with Pick's disease, which has effects similar to Alzheimer's, she was given Rocket. The dog was a comfort for her as the disease took its toll on her ability to communicate and recognize family. Colleen carried Rocket everywhere she went. He slept next to her at night. She would spoon-feed him at the kitchen table.
Through those years, Gordie insisted on taking care of his wife. "She was there for me when I needed her. And I'm going to be there for her," he once told Gatt.
A few years after Colleen was diagnosed, the Howe family visited Ottawa for an event. As they walked along the Rideau Canal together, Gordie decided to rent some skates. He held Colleen's hand and they made their way down the long, frozen path together. Other skaters stopped and stared, snapping photos. "They didn't even notice," Cathy remembers of her parent's last skate. "That's just what they were like."
As the effects of Pick's worsened, caregivers were hired to visit the house. Gordie refused to see Colleen put in a long-term care facility. Of the battles he'd waged, this was the worst. He hated leaving home. He didn't want to miss a moment-a smile, a laugh-fleeting as they were. "Even when she got to the point where she couldn't interact, it was just such a big comfort for him just to have her around," says Murray. Gordie was the only person she consistently recognized until the end. "When she heard his voice or saw his face, she would instantly respond," says Murray. Gordie would poke her with his elbow, or sneak behind and tug on her ears. He'd always get the laugh he was looking for.
In February 2009, the family gathered at Gordie and Colleen's place to celebrate her 76th birthday. They sang to her and shared her favourite chocolate cake. She ate an enormous piece, expressing delight with an enthusiastic "Mmmmm." As a doctor, Murray helped care for his mother throughout her illness and he recognized that she was getting ready to let go. "She lived a great life. She lived a full life. And she was done," he says. After the cake, Colleen stopped eating entirely. Two weeks later, the phone rang at Gatt's home. It was Gordie. He usually started their chats with a jovial mock. This call was different. "Colleen just passed away," Gordie said.
Gatt arrived at the Howe home before Colleen's body was taken away. Gordie went into the bedroom and said goodbye to Mrs. Hockey, his pillar for six decades. Then, he and Gatt took a long walk and cried. "It was heartbreaking," Gatt says. "She was a very brilliant woman. As long as she was there, he was happy."
Following her death, Gordie tried to live alone. He lasted a couple of days. But he'd call his kids, breaking down. "It's the loss of the love of your life. I wouldn't call it a depression per se, it's just grieving, pure grieving," says Murray. "If you don't have somebody there to help you through that grieving process, you just fall off the cliff."
Faced with Gordie's anguish, his four children decided to have their dad live with each of them, moving him from house to house for a couple weeks at a time. He'll spend weeks with Marty in Hartford, who acts as his agent and business manager. Marty books his dad for events across North America-charity functions and golf tournaments. In between, Gordie spends time with Mark, who travels as a scout for the Red Wings. In the summers they go deep-sea fishing off the Jersey Shore, spending nights drifting on the ocean, waking to the squeal of a reel spinning with giant fish.
And he travels to Ohio, where Murray arranges his medical checkups-a trip to the dentist to fix his bottom row of false teeth, or to the hospital to get steroid injections in his wrists to bring down the swelling. In part, so that one day he might be able to play golf again. During the winter, Gordie heads to Texas, where Cathy and her family live.
Sitting in the family room, next to the stack of books Colleen wrote, Gordie looks down at Rocket, stroking the dog's curly fur. "Lonely life lately," he says quietly. Murray looks at his dad with a soft frown, and fills a long silence. "It's tough," he says. "You lose your partner of 56 years-that was definitely the biggest check he ever took. But he's fortunate that people love him."
He grips the acoustic guitar cautiously, moving his fingers slowly along the strings like a young boy practising a chord. He fumbles through the notes, trying to remember the course of things. The twanging tune arrives-his giant, mangled hands rolling nimbly over the strings. The song is "Red River Valley"-an old prairie folk song his father taught him. The notes come quickly, tumbling forward. He doesn't sing the words, though he knows them well: "From this valley they say you are going. We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile. For you take with you all of the sunshine that has brightened our pathway awhile."
Gordie sings and hums constantly. In the back of the car, sitting at the kitchen table working on a puzzle, in the living room while fiddling with his grandson's guitar. They are always songs from his youth-notes that carry him back through eight decades, to the humble home he grew up in, with eight brothers and sisters. Those days are still vivid. He remembers frozen days skating across the Saskatoon sloughs. And the year three boys drowned playing on thin ice. He remembers shooting at tin cans on the rink in the schoolyard-when Mel 'Sudden Death' Hill, a local NHL star, stopped to show him how to get more power in his shot.
Murray's basement is lined with iconic photos from his father's career. They are interspersed with pictures of Murray's own four children, playing soccer, tennis, dancing and singing. There are images of Gordie's days playing with Mark and Marty in Houston-in one, Marty leans his head on his father's shoulder on the bench, as the clock ticks down on their first championship with the Aeros in 1974. There's a poster of Gordie in the prime of his youth, lying in a hospital bed with a bandage wrapped around his head and over his right eye. Fan mail is piled on top of him-letters sent after Gordie went head first into the boards in 1950, and doctors were unsure if he'd live, let alone play hockey again. The word "Courage" is written underneath.
Today, because of his ongoing struggle with short-term memory, it's difficult for him to keep track of his own schedule. Gordie doesn't usually know what he will be doing during the day until he wakes up. "It's slowly going away," Gordie says of his memory. Sometimes he wakes up wondering, "Where the hell am I?"
Marty regularly sends out a schedule to the rest of the family letting them know where their dad's next appearances are and what flights he needs to take. "Speaking of which, what are we doing tomorrow?" Gordie asks his son, sitting next to him at the kitchen table. "Um, nothing tomorrow," Murray replies. "Nice and relaxing."
"Ya-ba-daba-do," says Gordie, in a Fred Flintstone voice.
It's remarkable that his short-term memory lasted this long, considering the beating his body took during 32 years as a marked man in the helmet-less era of pro hockey, says Murray. He's still fantastic at math and spends hours each day working through puzzles. "It's incredible," says Murray. "Most people would be dead today if they took the punishment he did."
A light brown Northland hockey stick leans in the corner of the stairway at the edge of the kitchen. It has "G. Howe" stamped at the top of the shaft, with a perfectly straight blade. The replica is one of many donated to charities and fundraisers after hockey's ambidextrous legend scribbles his signature on it. A Gordie Howe signature isn't a rare collector's item. He writes it constantly-something he practised as a boy, asking his sister to decide which version she liked best.
More than almost any other athlete, Gordie cherishes his responsibility to fans. As a star with the Red Wings, he helped supplement his income of about $30,000 a year by travelling on a summer tour to Eaton's department stores across Canada. He'd often arrive in two or three cities a day, chatting and laughing with fans for hours. Every night, Howe returned to his hotel room and signed between 1,000 to 2,000 greeting cards and photos to give to fans the next day.
Once, after a game, Terry Sawchuk refused to sign an autograph for an eager young fan who needed the goalie's signature to complete his collection of the entire Red Wings squad. Sawchuk cursed at the young boy, telling him to go away. Howe, in equally unprintable language, threatened to tear his goalie a new five-hole if he didn't give the boy his autograph. "He was a paying customer," Gordie says.
That boy was Felix Gatt, who now has a basement filled with memorabilia that rivals the Hockey Hall of Fame. He and Gordie became close friends about two decades ago. Gatt, who looks like a small version of Gordie, started attending events for fans with him when Colleen became sick. When Gatt had a stroke a few years ago, he woke up in a hospital bed to find Gordie sitting next to him. He came every day that Gatt was there, with doctors and nurses stopping in to hear the legend's stories. "The whole damn hospital was in my room," Gatt says. "Gordie is a people person."
After Colleen died, the family tried to cut back on their father's appearances, thinking that all the attention might be too much for him to handle. But without the opportunity to joke and laugh with fans, Gordie began to fade. "When he's not active and interacting with fans his mind gets stagnant," Mark says. "He needs to be around people. That's where he thrives."
Today, the constant Mr. Hockey cycle is designed to keep him healthy and alert. Gordie's on a plane several times a month, criss-crossing the continent. The signings, the fishing trips, the charity events-each allows him to re-live the moments when he was happiest.
He'll sit for an afternoon and laugh about the elbows he threw. Or the time he beat Arnold Palmer at golf. Or when Joe DiMaggio taught him to open up his stance in the batter's box. He'll take off his Stanley Cup ring and slip it on a stranger's finger. "Now you can say you wore one."
And if you have time, he'll show you his war wounds. The scars on his knees, which click with a push. The point of bone that juts from his elbow. The teeth he lost (many less than the teeth he took). His shifted, swollen knuckles and the hand that won't stop twitching. He'll put your hand on the soft spots on his skull, under the white hair, where a surgeon's drill once saved his life from a brain hemorrhage. And he'll tell you about the deeper wounds. About his "lonely life lately" and how "horseshit" it is to lose a wife.
When Gordie is in town, he rarely leaves Murray, or his wife-also named Colleen. When he's not going to the grocery store with Colleen, or helping her with a charity food drive, Gordie makes himself busy around the house. In the fall, he wakes up early and rakes the leaves. Come winter, he grabs a shovel and clears the driveway whenever it snows-pushing with his mangled wrists and aching knees. When he's done, he moves on to the next house. He does the dishes. When the dishes are done, he works on a puzzle.
At night, he hangs out with the family, sitting around the kitchen table playing Loaded Questions, a Howe favourite, or singing along as they lounge around strumming tunes on the guitar. (Gordie Howe, Jr., his 22-year-old grandson, is in a nationally acclaimed barbershop quartet.) And almost every day, Gordie and Murray go for a long walk. In the summer, they trek through a nearby golf course, collecting balls and handing their bounty to golfers, who are often starstruck by the sudden appearance of the Red Wings legend.
On this day in early December, father and son walk through a hilly park. The ground is cold and hard, with pockets of snow. Gordie tucks Rocket in his arms. It's a three-hour hike-a lot for an 83-year-old man-but Mr. Hockey keeps going.
Along the way, they talk about hockey-about how of all the legends he played with, Gordie felt most natural skating next to Mark and Marty. And after walking in silence for a while, they talk about life and death and endings. About God and heaven. About where Colleen is now, and whether he might see her again one day. "Sometimes you have to fall to your knees before you look up," Murray says. "That's the way it's been for him. He's lived a sort of Cinderella life. The challenges in the last couple years have forced him to think about why we're here, and where we're going."
As they stroll along, Murray asks his dad: "If you die before I do, what would you like me to say in your eulogy?" There's a brief pause. "Finally," Gordie replies, "the third period is finally over." Father and son share a laugh. "I hope," says Gordie, "they have a good hockey team in heaven."
Shane Doan, Monty Python & the Phoenix Coyotes
Nicholas J. Cotsonika, Yahoo! Sports, 2012-01-12
The Phoenix Coyotes feel like they're in a Monty Python movie. Remember the "Holy Grail" scene where the guy walks through the old English village, banging a cowbell, telling the living to "bring out your dead"?
"I'm not dead!" a man protests, slumped over the shoulder of another man, about to be thrown on a cart carrying corpses.
"He says he's not dead."
"Yes, he is."
"I'm not!"
"He isn't?"
"Well, he will be soon. He's very ill."
"I'm getting better!"
"No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment."
Shane Doan smiled. The captain of the Coyotes brought it up himself. He even recited a couple of lines in an English accent.
"It's kind of like that," he said.
Look, everyone understands this is serious. Real people are involved and real jobs are at stake here, not just pro athletes and their multi-million-dollar salaries. But gallows humor is helping the Coyotes through a difficult time – the ownership saga, plus crazy travel, key injuries and a slump. They have to laugh. Otherwise they might go crazy.
Many feel this franchise is dead in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale or will be soon. There is no question it is very ill. The NHL bought it out of bankruptcy in 2009 and has been unable to sell it, and all has gone deathly quiet.
The quest for an owner has been like the quest for the elusive Holy Grail, and you wonder if, in the end, it will lead the NHL to a French castle. On Jan. 1, the league gained the legal right to explore relocation. Center Marc-Antoine Pouliot, a native of Quebec City recently recalled from the minors, said his family and friends have joked that he might play at home next season. (The Grail? They've already got one – Quebecor media mogul Pierre Karl Peladeau.)
"They'd love to have any team," he said. "They want it badly."
But the Coyotes still cling to life. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly maintains that although time is running short, the league has no intention of exploring relocation at this time and there is no deadline. There are still two interested ownership groups: one led by Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the NBA's Chicago Bulls and baseball's White Sox, and another led by Greg Jamison, the former Sharks CEO who once rounded up investors in San Jose. The league certainly hasn't run away.
"We are still pursuing a sale in Glendale," Daly said.
Meanwhile, the team plays on.
Somehow.
The players try to look on the bright side. At least they don't have the distractions they had last season, when a sale seemed so close they had dinner with potential buyer Matthew Hulsizer, when a public watchdog group's protests blew up the deal, when there was a report they were headed to Winnipeg right before their first playoff game. At least, forward Ray Whitney said with a smile, "we don't have an owner who's coming in threatening to get rid of everybody."
See? Gallows humor.
But although general manager Don Maloney and coach Dave Tippett have done a remarkable job, they can do only so much. They have a limited budget, limited options and cannot absorb many injuries. They recently lost goaltender Mike Smith for six games. They recently lost two of their top three centermen – Boyd Gordon for seven games, Martin Hanzal for eight games (and counting). They have been like the Black Knight – "It's just a flesh wound" – but the truth is, they don't have the personnel to play the skilled, exciting style that might fill the empty seats in Glendale.
"The games we're playing right now aren't exactly selling the game," Whitney said. "We're hanging around trying to be competitive."
Making matters worse is the schedule. Not only have the Coyotes played back-to-back home games only once since late November, they have crisscrossed the continent. Florida, Carolina, then home for one game. Los Angeles, then home for one game. Colorado, Minnesota, St. Louis, L.A. again, then home for one game. New York, Detroit …
The Coyotes do have a six-game home stand coming up, wrapped around the all-star break, and part of it might be that their home crowds tend to be better the second half of the season. But their odyssey has reinforced the feeling of frustration and homelessness – that these are orphans, wards of the state. To whom would they complain? The NHL?
"Our owners, I think, would tell us just to go to hell, be happy to get a paycheck," Whitney said, smiling. "You feel at times, I think, that we were just fill-ins for games when they needed somebody to play on a night. It's like, 'Well, we'll just send them out there.' I'd like to think there's more thought that goes into it than that, but it doesn't seem to be right now."
The Coyotes have won only two of their past nine games. Doan said that "you start to maybe feel sorry for yourself, but then you start to pull out of it." They have played better lately, earning four out of a possible six points. They took the league-leading Rangers to a shootout Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden before falling, 2-1. Though they are 11th in the West, they are only three points out of a playoff spot.
"That's kind of who we are," Tippett said. "We're hanging around, but it's a challenge right now, for sure."
How much longer they will hang around remains to be seen.
"There's been a lot of people who have put a lot of hard work into this thing to try to keep it going," Tippett said. "We still all believe it will, but we're not the ones that can dictate whether an owner will come or not. We think we can do our part, but ultimately that's out of our hands."
Unfortunately the bring-out-your-dead scene did not have a happy ending. Though the man insisted he was not dead, though he said he was getting better, though he said he felt happy, the living grew tired of waiting. The man was clubbed in the head. He was tossed onto the cart and carried off, dead and gone.
FIRST PERIOD
Doan is in the last year of his contract, and talks have been in limbo because the ownership situation has been in limbo.
"Obviously we were all hoping that we'd have an understanding by now, and we were kind of led to believe that would [happen]," Doan said. "Not by anyone in particular. We just kind of thought that by now we'd have an understanding. But I guess we're still waiting."
Still, Doan is unlikely to go anywhere before the Feb. 27 trade deadline. He has a no-move clause in his contract, and said he hasn't thought about whether he would waive it if the Coyotes fall out of contention. He wants to win, but he wants to do it in Phoenix.
"It's the fact that I feel my job is for us to win here," Doan said.
Doan loves Phoenix, wants the team to stay and wants to stay with it. He has been with the franchise his entire career, moving from Winnipeg in 1996, trying to sell the game ever since. If the team leaves, it would be a personal blow.
"I've put in 15, 16 years," Doan said. "It's one of those things that you build something – you think you're building something – and then they just get rid of it. You put a lot of work in to try to get something to somewhere, and hopefully we can keep it going."
Tippett can't imagine Doan wearing another sweater by choice.
"Everybody knows his contract situation at the end of the year," Tippett said. "But I know if this team stays here, I would be shocked if Shane ever left. Who knows what happens between now and then? I can't predict that."
SECOND PERIOD
Whitney wants to win in Phoenix, too, and he hasn't given up on the season by any means. But he is also in the last year of his contract, and he will turn 40 in May, and his uncertainty goes beyond even the Coyotes' ownership situation.
He has 14 goals and 36 points. He is plus-12. He could help a contender – in Phoenix or elsewhere – and knows he might not have another chance at a Stanley Cup.
"Obviously, at my age, with the uncertainty of a lockout next year, the uncertainty of nothing here, if it doesn't look like we're going to make it, then yeah, absolutely, I would like a chance at it," said Whitney, who has a modified no-trade clause, requiring him to give the Coyotes a list of eight teams upon request. "If there is a lockout, that's probably going to be it for me. I might be able to still come back if it only goes half a year or even one year, maybe. We'll see."
Is Whitney that worried about a lockout? Yes and no. Because the NHL had had two lockouts since 1994 – one that cost the league the 2004-05 season – Whitney said: "I just don't know if there can be another one. I just don't know if it makes sense." But he means that from the owners' perspective, because the salary cap is in place.
"They already have the system in place that they wanted the last time," Whitney said. "What are you going to lock us out for this time?"
Do the players have the stomach for another work stoppage?
"They have the stomach for it," Whitney said. "They really do."
Especially, Whitney said, if the league wants to eliminate guaranteed contracts, wants another salary rollback or wants to reduce the players' share of hockey-related revenues from 57 percent to around 50 percent. The NBA owners locked out their players and got them to accept about that percentage.
"I'm sure if they go percentage-wise like basketball did, they're going to be in for more of a fight than the basketball players were," Whitney said. "I just think our union in general is stronger than that."
THIRD PERIOD
Daly denied second thoughts played into the NHL's decision to postpone its realignment plan, and he said the league may still take legal action against the NHL Players' Association, which did not consent to the plan by a deadline the league imposed last Friday.
"There were and are no second thoughts," Daly wrote in an email. "Fight with union (arbitration) is still possible, if not likely. The only thing we refused to do was to go forward unilaterally and worry about what an arbitrator might tell us later on. We reached that decision for a host of legal and collective-bargaining-related reasons. None had to do with 'uncertainty of Phoenix' or 'lukewarm commitment' to the plan the board adopted by overwhelming majority."
I find no reason to think the league had second thoughts. Some individual teams might have had second thoughts, especially among the Eastern teams that were initially opposed to the idea. But starting with commissioner Gary Bettman, league officials spent countless hours working to pull this together.
So why let the union unravel it? Well, as Daly said, the league still might take the union to arbitration.
How effective would that really be? Both sides would be arguing over language in the current collective bargaining agreement – which gives the union the right to withhold consent within reason – while negotiating a new CBA. No matter what an arbitrator decides, couldn't the union simply make this a CBA issue? Couldn't new language make the old language irrelevant?
"Yes and no," Daly wrote. "They certainly don't have the ability to compel us to make changes. And armed with an arbitration award, I think that becomes extremely unlikely. … I think it's fair to say significant arbitration awards have a way of becoming 'codified' in new collective bargaining agreements over time. In other words, I think result of arbitration will to a great extent impact whatever bargaining we may have over this realignment plan."
BETTMAN ADDRESSES CBA NEGOTIATIONS AND COYOTES' STATUS
TSN.CA STAFF, Jan 19 2012
While it may be just under eight months away, the deadline for a new collective bargaining agreement looms.
And after watching both the NFL and NBA labour disputes last season, the NHL is hoping to learn from those negotiations and get a deal done before their current CBA expires on September 15.
However, the two sides have yet to start negotiating themselves, something NHL commissioner Gary Bettman attributes to NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr's need to gather information from the players about what they want out of the deal.
“Anything we have to say about collective bargaining - the system, the agreement - we'll do it with the players association quietly,” Bettman told reporters at Wednesday night's game between the Anaheim Ducks and the Phoenix Coyotes.
“The fact is, we're having another terrific season; this will be another record-breaking season for us, both in terms of revenues and attendance and I don't see any reasons for anybody to be distracted by collective bargaining, certainly not now.
Bettman also spoke about the current state of the Phoenix Coyotes, who are being run by the league along with the support of the Glendale City Council. Bettman stated that "nothing is imminent" when it comes to Phoenix.
“At some point, if we can't get it resolved for next season, we'll have to consider our alternatives - but that's not new news,” said Bettman.
On a more positive note, Bettman praised the work of new director of player safety Brendan Shanahan.
“This job is everything he expected - and more. But I also think the players are hearing him. I think particularly with the videos, there's greater clarity as to what is expected on the ice and what won't be tolerated,” explained Bettman.
The NHL commissioner also admitted that the job has taken its toll on Shanahan.
"He aged probably five years in the last five months," said Bettman. “This is a hard, hard job that he has. The decisions are hard and nobody's ever happy.”
Bettman keeps his cards close to the vest
Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail, January 19, 2012
ANAHEIM, Calif. - NHL commissioner Gary Bettman - the de facto owner of the Phoenix Coyotes - was in attendance for their Wednesday night game against the Anaheim Ducks, a grim 6-2 loss and spent part of the day briefing the team’s general manager, Don Maloney, on the sale/no sale of the franchise, which continues to operate under NHL control.
Bettman also took time to exchange pleasantries with reporters before the start of the game - and occasionally in the past, in that sort of setting, would stray slightly off message. Not on this night though. No matter what the topic - Phoenix’s future, collective bargaining, outdoor game, supplementary discipline, player safety issues - Bettman kept his cards close to the vest. He really is a fascinating man to banter with - careful, cautious, always wary about where there might be a trap in the line of questioning. This was a masterful performance, in many ways, as he girds up for the first round of negotiations on the next collective bargaining agreement with the players association.
The current CBA expires on Sept. 15, fewer than eight months from now, and the two sides have still not begun the process of negotiating a new contract. According to Bettman, his opposite number with the players’ association, executive director Donald Fehr, suggested he needed until the All-Star break to canvass his membership to get a clearer understanding of their issues.
Well, as it happens, the 2012 All-Star break is coming up in Ottawa in just over a week’s time. Bettman ventured that the league is in a far stronger position than it was six-and-a-half years ago, when the two sides managed to lose the entire 2004-05 season before finally settling on a deal that was supposed to be the salvation for small-market NHL teams.
So does that mean the old deal worked well enough that it won’t require massive changes, only minor tweaks? Bettman wouldn’t go there at all, unwilling to tip his hand about strategy, or demands.
“Anything we have to say about collective bargaining - the system, the agreement - we’ll do it with the players association quietly,” answered Bettman. “The fact is, we’re having another terrific season; this will be another record-breaking season for us, both in terms of revenues and attendance and I don’t see any reasons for anybody to be distracted by collective bargaining, certainly not now.
“Good try though.”
Thanks. So let’s try another one: With the support of Glendale City Council, the league has been running the Coyotes ever since former owner Jerry Moyes took the team into bankruptcy, in an unsuccessful attempt to sell them to RIM’s Jim Balsillie. The NHL desperately wants the team to stay put in Arizona but so far, has been unable to attract an ownership group willing to plough real dollars into the enterprise.
The fact that “nothing is imminent” on Phoenix - Bettman’s words - cannot bode well. The NHL’s losses have been underwritten in the past couple of seasons by Glendale’s taxpayers, but that tap will eventually run dry. Even Bettman was prepared to acknowledge that much: “We haven’t had that discussion, but if I was speculating, that would be my guess. At some point, if we can’t get it resolved for next season, we’ll have to consider our alternatives - but that’s not new news.”
Bettman’s best line concerned Brendan Shanahan, the new director of player safety, who is in charge of supplementary discipline this year, replacing Colin Campbell in that position. Bettman praised the job Shanahan is doing, noting: “This job is everything he expected - and more. But I also think the players are hearing him. I think particularly with the videos, there’s greater clarity as to what is expected on the ice and what won’t be tolerated.,”
When I suggested that Shanahan looks a lot older today than when he took the job during last year’s Stanley Cup finals in Vancouver, Bettman agreed: “He aged probably five years in the last five months.
“This is a hard, hard job that he has. The decisions are hard and nobody’s ever happy.”
Proteau: Combine All-Star Game with Winter Classic
Adam Proteau, The Hockey News, 2012-01-19
There’s a lot to like about the NHL’s massively successful Winter Classic experiment. There’s not as much to like about the NHL’s All-Star Game weekend. But if they were melded together into a single event that takes the best from both concepts, there’d be much more to like.
Let’s be clear – it’s not just the NHL All-Star Game that has become an undeniable anachronism. All pro sports all-star games are relics of a bygone era when there were no satellite TV and Internet options by which to watch your favorite athletes who don’t play in your city. Now (with the possible exception of baseball), they are barely comparable facsimiles of the sports they represent, nuisances to physically and mentally worn-down superstars who don’t put in one-100th of the effort they would in an actual competitive situation, corporate schmoozapaloozas where the most fun that’s had takes place at the local danceterias and hotel bars.
(And don’t get me started on the cockamamie vote-in process that exists only to soothe the delicate feelings of fans in the All-Star Game’s host city. It makes a mockery of a game that could be mocked anyway.)
So it isn’t a surprise to see the Winter Classic already usurp the NHL All-Star Game in popularity just five years after its inception. The WC has become more of a must-watch event than the All-Star Game ever could be, but it has its problems, too.
Biggest among them is the issue of holding a regular season game on ice that, to be kind, has all the consistency of partially dried cement. It’s not ideal to keep players from being injured and just as importantly, with the standings races closer than ever, the points awarded in that game could be the difference between making and missing the playoffs. It would be a serious shame if one team made the playoffs because it got a fortunate bounce or two on a subpar playing surface. And for the most part, we’ve seen the same eastern-based teams (i.e. the Flyers and Penguins) play twice already.
But imagine an All-Star Game played on that outdoor ice, on or near New Year’s Day. In such a scenario, players could have far more fun, knowing there is nothing of consequence at stake. The risk of injury on bad ice would plummet. And fans worldwide would be able to see the best of the league’s talent together in an environment in which they’ll rarely, if ever, be able to see them again.
When I mentioned this idea on Twitter, the first question many asked was what would become of the equally ingenious and entertaining 24/7 HBO series that follows around both Winter Classic teams in the lead-up to and completion of the event. The answer is relatively simple: instead of having high-quality cameras capturing every movement of two teams for a few weeks, HBO could focus its attention on the players named to the All-Star Game, thus helping the NHL promote all its elite talents in all markets.
Alternately, the NHL could ask HBO to train its cameras on a team in the playoff race late in the regular-season and air the final product just before the playoffs begin. Wouldn’t that be more inherently dramatic than watching two teams gear up for a game that might never be played due to weather conditions? I say, yes. No, I say hell, yes.
Another complaint was that, under my suggestion, fans in warm-weather NHL cities wouldn’t get to host an All-Star Game/Winter Classic any longer. The answer to that is simple: too bad, so sad. Warm weather cities get warm weather and cold-weather cities get the WC/ASG. That’s a more-than-fair tradeoff for warm weather cities.
Now, that isn’t to say my suggestion will be adopted in the near or far future. The NHL is fortunate to have stumbled upon another corporate cash cow like the Winter Classic, but it’s unlikely to discard the All-Star Game’s positive effect on hockey-related revenue simply because the WC has added to the league’s bottom line.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. The league could transfer the All-Star Game break to the New Year’s Day stretch and use the traditional late January break to make the schedule less compact and punishing. It could restore each of its crucial regular season games to being contested in a standard rink setting. It could take the best of both events and turn them into one supernova spectacle.
In many ways, the artifice of the All-Star Game set against the artificial backdrop of the Winter Classic would represent perfect synchronicity. It’s certainly an improvement on the current system.
Must-watch double one-timer goal:
Western Michigan sets up a fake one-timer that passes through Dennis Brown's legs and is blasted home by Matt Tennyson.
Luke Fox, Sportsnet.ca, January 19, 2012
Replay of the Day: Any NHL coaches out there looking for creative power-play strategies might want to rip a page from the Western Michigan Broncos’ playbook. On Saturday night they emphasized the special in special teams.
Watch as the Broncos’ queue up Dennis Brown, Shane Berschbach, and Matt Tennyson along the Notre Dame blue line. Berschbach seemingly feeds a pass to Brown, who fakes a one-timer, allowing the puck to slide through his legs. Tennyson then fires it home for the goal. The 10th-ranked Broncos added a second power-play marker and went on to win the contest 3-1.
The play is reminiscent of the volleyball strategy of having the first spiker leap and purposely fan on a set ball, letting the second spiker smash it home.
If you needed another reason why the state of Michigan should host the Winter Classic….
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/2012/01/19/replay_michigan/
Stellicktricity: Parenteau, Joseph show there's no "one path"
Gord Stellick, CBC Sports, January 19, 2012
P.A. Parenteau of the New York Islanders definitely took a long and circuitous path to the National Hockey League.
Drafted in the ninth round (264th overall) by the Anaheim Ducks in 2001, Parenteau told us on Hockey Night in Canada Radio that he never ever attended the draft and was surprised to get a call from an Anaheim executive welcoming him to the team. He then had two strong years with Chicoutimi and Sherbrooke in the Quebec Junior Hockey League where his improved play and vastly improved offensive statistics earned him a first NHL contract not normally given to a ninth-round "project."
Even then it wasn't smooth sailing for Parenteau. He had a long journey through the American Hockey League and a brief stop with the New York Rangers (22 games) and an even shorter one with Chicago (five games) before he signed on as a free agent with the New York Islanders in the summer of 2010. He finally "arrived" in the NHL enjoying his first full NHL season at the age of 27 and regained his scoring touch from junior hockey with 20 goals. Last Monday, now in his second year with the Islanders and a year older at 28, Parenteau recorded his first multi-goal game in the NHL with two goals in a 3-0 win over the Washington Capitals.
Parenteau told us on HNIC Radio that his self-confidence never wavered, something that a young player often loses as his NHL dream eludes him. Parenteau also appreciates the confidence that former Islander coach Scott Gordon (now a Leaf assistant coach) and current coach Jack Capuano have shown in him.
Cujo, too
Hosting the Milton Sports Celebrity Dinner last Tuesday was another reminder about how there are many different routes to the NHL. Coaching my eight-year-old son in hockey I see many kids and parents who invest in all year training to hopefully enhance their chances of making it to the NHL.
Curtis Joseph was one of the celebrities at the Milton Dinner. He recounted the story about how he didn't start to play organized hockey until he was 11 years old. He was adopted and lived in Keswick, Ontario. A relative his age was registered for house league hockey in the Keswick area as a goaltender. When his family suddenly had to move, Joseph's parents thought they should have Joseph play since the registration was already paid for. So that year as a "rookie" 11-year-old, Joseph enjoyed his first season as goaltender for the "Green Team" in the house league in the Keswick area.
Too much exposure, too soon?
I have always believed that it isn't necessarily a good thing to be on the radar and in the public spotlight as a burgeoning hockey phenom at a young age. For every 14-year-old Sidney Crosby, there is a comparable Dan Cleary story. Crosby lived up to the billing and hype while Clear couldn't, but did an excellent job reinventing himself as a more complete journeyman type player to earn a a job and stay with the Detroit Red Wings.
A few years ago that spotlight was on young Sean Couturier as he began his junior hockey career in Quebec with Drummondville. Ask any hockey "expert" at that time who they would project as the first overall pick in the 2011 draft and Couturier was the overwhelming consensus pick.
Often what I see happen is that the player in the spotlight, Couturier in this case, gets so scrutinized that fans and scouts hone in on the negatives and weaknesses while other players emerge from under the radar and become a pleasant surprise. Couturier sat and watched at the 2011 draft as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins went first overall to Edmonton and six other names were called before his. What would have been viewed as a disappointment a few years earlier, turned into a blessing for both Couturier and the team drafting him.
The Philadelphia Flyers had just traded Jeff Carter to the Columbus Bluejackets for Jakub Voracek and the eighth overall pick. They couldn't believe their good fortune that Couturier was available and he got to begin his career with one of the best NHL teams, similar to what Tyler Seguin did a year earlier with Boston. The Flyers have been able to thrive even without Carter and Mike Richards in their lineup and Couturier's accelerated rise as a top six NHL forward has helped the cause.
Hall not first to fall
The Taylor Hall injury in Edmonton's pre-game skate on Tuesday has moved to the forefront the simmering controversy of whether it should be mandatory for players to wear their helmets (and visors if applicable) during the pre-game skate. Hall was cut for 30 stitches and was fortunate it wasn't more catastrophic.
Edmonton head coach Tom Renney later reiterated an edict that all Edmonton players will be expected to wear their helmet during the pre-game skate and that in Hall's case, he kidded that "he should wear his helmet even when he is just walking down the street."
On Dec. 10, 2003, Father Les Costello died of his injuries from a fall a few days earlier. Costello was one of the founding members of the Flying Fathers, a group of priests who barnstormed the country with their style of good calibre hockey and fun to raise money for charities. Costello wasn't wearing his helmet during a pre-game skate and, like Hall, tripped on a puck and his head hit the ice. He always wore his helmet during games.
Not only is Henrik Lundquvist the mid-season pick by most media and fans as the Vezina Trophy winner, his backup, Martin Biron, would likely win the award as top backup if such an award existed. Biron barely misses a beat when he fills in for Lundqvist. Biron did have runs as a starting goaltending early in his career with the Buffalo Sabres and Philadelphia Flyers, but now seems content in his second season backing Lundqvist up with the New York Rangers.
Quite often it is hard to gauge how a backup goaltender will do if they earn the No. 1 position. I have seen so many goaltenders thrive as a backup, then stumble as a starter. I think the two best suited backup goaltenders to excel as starting goaltenders are the two from last year's Stanley Cup Final.
While Tuukka Rask (24 years old) seems committed to stay the course in Boston and take over from 37-year-old Tim Thomas in the next year or two, I don't believe that Vancouver can stay the course with that kind of plan. Roberto Luongo is five years younger than Thomas and has that long term contract. Add the expected and well deserved future salary increases for Cory Schneider (25 years old) and that will dramatically increase their salary cap hit.
I see the Canucks trying to make a deal with Schneider this offseason along the lines of what the Washington Capitals did when they were able to secure high draft picks from the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for Semyon Varlamov.
One good Habs move
The Montreal Canadiens have had no shortage of controversy this season. One of their "quieter" moves has been really good. That is expanding the role of a very well respected and competent NHL executive in adding assistant coaching duties to Larry Carriere while he retains his front office job. Carriere had been a long time executive in the Buffalo organization and did a capable and underrated job as their interim general manager for a brief period in the early 1990's.
A man with great hockey perspective and people skills, I have to admit that Carriere's skating looked a bit on the shaky side as I watched the former NHL defenceman help coach a Montreal morning skate last week. Everything else about him joining the coaching staff behind the bench is anything but shaky!
Gretzky was model student
Former teacher Marilyn Smith of Cambridge with hockey’s Great One, Wayne Gretzky as a teenager.
Walter Gowing, Special to the Cambridge Times, Jan 11 2012
First of a two-part series on Wayne Gretzky’s kindergarten teacher, Cambridge’s Marilyn Smith
With a firm voice and soft sound, kindergarten teacher Marilyn Smith told Wayne Gretzky to pick up his building blocks and put them away. He acted immediately and replied, “Yes, Mrs. Smith.”
He was a model student.
“I taught all five of the Gretzky children while living in Brantford,” said Smith, now a resident of a high rise in Cambridge. Retirement brought Bob and Marilyn Smith to Cambridge after long working careers in Brantford.
“Leaving good neighbours like Phyllis and Walter Gretzky was hard,” said Bob, “but Cambridge was an attractive place to retire.”
The two families were close enough that the Smiths could look out their back door and into the Gretzky’s front door. Although Walter Gretzky worked for Bell Telephone in the daytime, every night during the winter months he was in his backyard flooding the ice for his family’s skating rink.
It was not only Wayne that had the benefit of being in Mrs. Smith’s kindergarten class, but as each of the younger Gretzky children started school they too had a great teacher according to Walter. There was Kim, Keith, Glen and Brent that all followed Wayne through Mrs. Smith’s classroom.
“All but Glen used that ice-pad in the backyard of Gretzky’s home,” said Bob, “as Glen had a bad foot and couldn’t skate.”
“Wayne was a very quiet student and didn’t participate originally in all activities,” recalls Marilyn.
She had to bring him along to be a team player in class. Wayne turned out to be one of the greatest team players on every hockey team he played on.
“Even in kindergarten, Wayne knew the names of most players in the National Hockey League and their statistics,” said the former teacher. “He was a walking encyclopedia on hockey, and he could have been anything he wanted to be, but all he wanted was to be a good hockey player.”
Marilyn could relate to Wayne’s desire to become a big league hockey player. Back in her school days, she was the goalkeeper on the school’s hockey team. “Unfortunately, in those days, there were no opportunities for girls to play hockey,” said Marilyn.
She expressed her delight knowing that today there are more girls and women playing Canada’s game.
At 82 years of age, Marilyn will drop the puck at the official opening ceremony at the Preston International Hockey Tournament on Jan. 20 at the Cambridge Centre’s ice rink.
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Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
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