Many obstacles remain in Coyotes deal
Globe and Mail Update, David Shoalts, May 22, 2012
As the Phoenix Coyotes’ remarkable playoff run ended in overtime against the Los Angeles Kings, the house of cards that is their franchise received another Band-Aid from the local politicians.
However, even though the city council of the suburban city of Glendale passed a tentative budget for the 2013 fiscal year Tuesday night that called for a payment of $17-million (all currency U.S.) to tentative (everything in this never-ending tale is tentative) owner Greg Jamison as an “arena-management fee,” the long-awaited sale of the Coyotes is far from complete. Many obstacles remain, including the question of just how Jamison will raise the $170-million purchase price, with the biggest one being the Goldwater Institute.
Phoenix Coyotes goalie Mike Smith (41) makes a stick save on Los Angeles Kings center Colin Fraser (24) in the 1st period during Game 5 of the NHL Western Conference hockey finals in Glendale, Arizona, May 22, 2012. REUTERS/Todd Korol
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Coyotes' fail to stay alive in Game 5
The conservative watchdog group scuttled a previous attempt to sell the team because it raised the possibility of a lawsuit over excessive subsidies from the taxpayers for private enterprise. Such subsidies are in violation of what’s called the gift clause in the Arizona constitution.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman implied last week the deal with Jamison is different than the one with Chicago businessman Matthew Hulsizer that was torpedoed by Goldwater. “So if there is third-party interference,” Bettman said, “it won’t be something that shouldn’t stop us at the beginning. We should be able to proceed and hopefully prevail.”
The difference seems to be that unlike Hulsizer’s deal, Jamison’s purchase does not involve the city backing a bond issue that would produce a $100-million up-front payment to cover most of the sale price. However, Goldwater also objected to the enormous “arena-management fee” called for in the deal, a fee which saw Glendale commit $50-million to the current owner, the NHL, for the last two years.
Carrie Ann Sitren, a Goldwater staff attorney, could not say officially how the institute will respond to the latest sale attempt until it sees a lease in writing. Council discussed the lease agreement in-camera Tuesday and no details came out in the public meeting aside from the payment. But Sitren made it clear even though there is no bond issue in the Jamison deal, the size of the management fee remains clearly in Goldwater’s sights.
She pointed to recent comments from outgoing Glendale Mayor Elaine Scruggs, who is one of three councillors opposed to the $17-million payment to Jamison, that a more reasonable management fee, based on her research, is $11-million.
“The best indicator is look at people who might know what [the fee] includes, like the mayor, and at her comments that 17 million dollars is too much,” Sitren said. “If someone like her says it’s too much that’s a good indicator.”
One of Sitren’s Goldwater colleagues, Byron Schlomach, told Phoenix television station CBS5 that a more realistic management fee would be $8-million to $10-million. Anything more looks like a gift.
Scruggs, the architect of Glendale’s drive to build sports facilities for professional sports teams, said Tuesday when the city borrowed $180-million to build the arena in 2001 the idea was that Glendale would not be stuck with the operating costs. Not when the Coyotes get most of the operating revenue. The recession wiped out the anticipated revenue from sales taxes and development around the arena that was to service the debt on the building.
The mayor also said she believes Jobing.com Arena can be booked for enough dates to offset the city’s debt payments on it even if the Coyotes leave.
The fee is also too much for Glendale councillor Phil Lieberman, the most vocal opponent of large payments to the Coyotes. He said at Tuesday’s public meeting that the city is ready to increase its sales tax and property taxes to the highest in Arizona “to support a hockey team. We cannot afford this.”
Technically, what Glendale council approved Tuesday night was a maximum amount for its 2013 budget. The Coyotes payment is included in the draft budget but the vote to formally approve the budget is not expected until June 12.
The city is already in a tight spot financially. It has to deal with a $35-million gap between its spending and revenue in the 2013 budget, caused in part by the $25-million annual commitments to the NHL in the last two years.
Layoffs of city employees have already been announced and Glendale is also poised to raise its city sales tax to 10.2 per cent, which the local car dealers say will kill them in competition with Phoenix and other auto dealers, as well as jack up property taxes by 31 per cent.
If Jamison and Glendale city manager Ed Beasley settled on the kind of terms they were kicking around earlier, things will get even tighter for the city. One version of the 20-year lease called for the management fees to be front-loaded with Jamison getting $20-million in each of the first four years, which casts doubt on some councillors’ claims the $17-million payment in the draft budget is a “placeholder” and the city may not pay that much.
This kind of proposal also adds weight to those who wonder where Jamison is getting the money to buy the team, since he does not have the personal wealth to do it alone, and how he will cover the annual losses, which have been as much as $40-million. He declined to identify his partners last week when Bettman introduced him as the “tentative” owner.
No details of the purchase agreement between Jamison and the NHL were announced, but it is likely there is an escape clause as it was a feature of all previous deals. Those deals allowed the owner to ask the NHL to move the team after four or five years if the losses hit a certain figure. A four-year escape clause would match well with front-loaded arena-management fees in the first four years.
Those familiar with the cost of operating an NHL team say it takes about $80-million a season for a team with an average payroll to break even. The Coyotes payroll this season was about $55-million, which is 20th, about $5-million less than the middle group of teams.
Since the Coyotes consistently rank at or near the bottom in attendance (tickets were still available for Tuesday’s Game 5 of the Western Conference final on the afternoon of the game), they only bring in a little less than $20-million a year in ticket revenue. Add another $30-million from NHL revenue-sharing and other shared league money, such as television revenue, and the Coyotes are still a long way from breaking even.
That is why Jamison seems to be gambling that if he can get $20-million or even $17-million a year out of Glendale and hope to realize a payoff in season tickets and local sponsorship, not to mention local broadcast money thanks to the Coyotes’ long playoff run, he might get within $10-million or less of breaking even. Compared to the Coyotes’ losses in recent years, a $10-million loss would, in the words of one insider, “be spectacular.”
But it still isn’t self-sustaining, which is why, three years after the Coyotes wound up in bankruptcy court, the longest, most embarrassing ownership saga in NHL history is still running.
Doan goes off on referees - 'Are you freaking kidding me?'
CHRIS STEVENSON, QMI Agency, May 22 2012
GLENDALE, ARIZ. - When it ended, seconds after Dustin Penner’s shot from the slot ended the Phoenix Coyotes season and sent the Los Angeles Kings on to their second Stanley Cup final, all the frustration came out for Coyotes captain Shane Doan.
It was tough, he would say later, to see teammate Michal Rozsival helped off the ice moments before Penner’s winner in overtime, Roszival favouring his left knee after a controversial hit by Kings captain Dustin Brown.
The Coyotes were incensed there was no penalty on the play and when it ended, Doan sprinted across the ice in the direction of referee Brad Watson. He pulled up by the boards, raising his stick and smashing it against the boards.
For Doan, the non-call on the hit - Brown also caught Rozsival with his shoulder, though it did look late on an off-side call - was a tipping point in the battle with his frustration over the officiating in the series.
“I bit my tongue the whole playoffs. I bit my tongue the whole time this series. I look back in the last two games and I still haven’t found where I got my three penalties. I have absolutely no idea where they came from or what they were calling,” said Doan, whose club fell behind 3-0 in the series and couldn't recover despite winning Game 4. “It’s hard because you don’t want to take anything away from L.A. They played unbelieveable and give them all the credit.
“Uncle. Are you freaking kidding me? Uncle. I can’t understand how you miss that. You saw the game. It’s 5-on-3 and they give a penalty to even it up ... the guy crosschecks Marty (Hanzal) twice in the back. He chips it over the boards, it goes over the boards and there’s no call? Marty gets a stick in the face and then the knee? I mean, come on. Like, come on.
“You don’t want to do it because ... I don’t want to take anything away from L.A. They played unbelievable and they beat us. Thank goodness their power play didn’t score on all those power plays they were handed. It could have been really ugly. They beat us. There’s nothing else to say about it.”
Brown said he didn’t go out of his way to make contact with Roszival’s knee.
“I saw him cut in the middle. I changed my path to meet him in the middle. I haven’t seen a replay so I don’t know, but I felt like I made contact (with) my whole left side with his left side. My shoulder hit his shoulder for sure. I hit him from toe to shoulder on my left side, full contact. He’s trying to get out of the way and I’m trying to finish my check,” said Brown, who was a dynamic force for the Kings, especially in the early games of the Western final.
“I don’t think ... my first thought is, I didn’t stick my knee out. He’s trying to get out of the way and I finish my check.’’
The league will review the play, but it will be surprising if there’s supplemental discipline because it wasn’t a blatant knee-on-knee hit, though you can understand the Coyotes’ frustration.
They had forward Raffi Torres suspended for 25 games for his hit on Chicago Blackhawks forward Marian Hossa in the second round.
“If Raffi Torres gets 25 games for a hit for a hit during the play,” said Coyotes goaltender Mike Smith, “then this guy (Brown) should be done forever.”
That is the frustration of the moment talking no doubt, the emotion of having their remarkable season ended.
It was an emotionally-charged ending to a hugely entertaining game.
The Glendale fans chanted “let’s go Coyotes” and gave the team a huge ovation after the post-series handshake.
At one point in the third period as the teams went end-to-end as power plays overlapped, both teams where on their feet on their respective benches watching the play.
You don’t see that often in the NHL.
In a fiercely fought game, the teams swapped the lead a couple of times, the Coyotes owning 1-0 and 2-1 leads, the Kings roaring back for a 3-2 edge before the Coyotes tied it on a goal by defenceman Keith Yandle with less than four minutes to go in the second.
It was great stuff, but for the Coyotes, it was a bitter end.
Brown hit on Rozsival was clean
DAVID SHOALTS, Globe and Mail, May 23, 2012
The emotion on the Phoenix Coyotes side of the Dustin Brown hit on their defenceman Michal Rozsival is understandable.
But that should not obscure the fact the Los Angeles Kings forward made a clean body check on Rozsival, even though it knocked him out of the game at a critical time with a leg injury. It was not a classic knee-on-knee hit, as the Coyotes charged, because although Brown had Rozsival lined up - in the trolley tracks in the hockey vernacular - he never stuck his knee out.
What might have led to some confusion is that Brown had his legs spread somewhat in a wide stance as he came at Rozsival. But he only altered his course slightly as Rozsival moved to the middle, nor did he change his stance to put his knee out farther as he came into contact with the Coyotes defenceman. The contact actually began at the shoulder before their legs collided violently.
There might have been some question about the lateness of the hit but it seemed to be within that half-second NHL referees gave players to make a hit on another player who just moved the puck.
Not that this means much to the Coyotes, of course. Not only did they miss a chance for a power play in overtime against the Kings, the goal that sent the visitors to the Stanley Cup final was scored seconds later.
Hence the raw emotion in the handshake line after the Kings won the Western Conference final. Coyotes captain Shane Doan and goaltender Mike Smith were still furious when the media closed in.
"All season long it seems like [the referees] did everything they could to not get us to this position," Smith said. He brought up the suspension teammate Raffi Torres received for an egregious hit earlier in the playoffs and said, "If Raffi Torres gets 25 games for a hit during the play, then this guy should be done forever."
Doan was equally unwilling to cut the referees any slack.
"I bit my tongue the whole playoffs," he said. "I bit my tongue the whole time this series. I look back in the last two games and I still haven’t found where I got my three penalties. I have absolutely no idea where they came from or what they were calling.
"It’s hard because you don’t want to take anything away from LA. They played unbelievable and give them all the credit. Uncle. Are you freaking kidding me? Uncle. I can’t understand how you miss that.
"Rosie’s knee is blown out. How do you miss that? How do you miss that when it’s after the whistle and it’s a knee? How do you possibly miss that? You know what? As player I get in trouble when I make a mistake. I get in big trouble. I get called out by you guys. I get called out by everybody. I get called out by my coaches. I have to be accountable to my teammates. I don’t know how you miss it. I don’t know how you miss it.
"I’m sure they’ll have a great explanation for it. I know that they try to do their best, I know they always try to do their best. They’re going to make mistakes. It’s just tough when you’re on the short end of it I don’t know how many times."
In his own defence, Brown said his hit began at the shoulder. He said he did change his path but only because Rozsival did as well and he never stuck his knee out.
"Rozsival was cutting to the middle and I cut across and made contact," Brown said. "Obviously they thought it was kneeing. I felt I got him with my shoulder. My left side and his right side all made contact, from toe to shoulder.
"I saw him cut in the middle. I changed my path to meet him in the middle. I haven't seen a replay so I don't know, but I felt like I made contact [with] my whole left side with his left side. My shoulder hit his shoulder for sure. I hit him from toe to shoulder on my left side, full contact. He's trying to get out of the way and I'm trying to finish my check. My first thought is, I didn't stick my knee out. He's trying to get out of the way and I finish my check."
Doan and some other Coyotes were seen berating Brown in the handshake line after the game. Brown declined to relay any details of the conversations.
Coyotes head coach Dave Tippett told reporters to "just write what you saw." But he, too, gave the impression the referees were one of his team's problems.
"If you write what you saw, you’ll see why people get frustrated," he said. "You know, the players, I mean, there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears that go into this. There’s a lot of emotion in the game.
"Ultimately, the last two games, I thought were our best games, but they were too late. LA beat us. That’s what should be remembered, not the refereeing."
New Oilers coach will be in better spot to succeed
By DANIEL FUNG, Sports Network
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Tom Renney was originally brought in to help the Oilers prior to their rebuild. With his departure, the team can bring in a head coach the expectation of developing their young players. (TOM BRAID/QMI Agency file photo)
VANCOUVER - There is no guarantee that whoever the new head coach of the Edmonton Oilers is will enjoy more success than his predecessor, but what's certain is he will be put in a much better position to be successful.
Edmonton, of course, became the latest NHL team to dive into the market for a new head coach after announcing last Thursday that it would not be renewing the contract of head coach Tom Renney after two years on a job that began with a sudden shift in organizational philosophy.
Although Renney was only the head coach for the Oilers for the past two seasons, many will recall he was brought in three years ago for the start of the 2009-10 season as an associate coach to work alongside Pat Quinn. What many won't likely remember, however, was that Quinn was brought in to guide a team that had underachieved and missed the playoffs for two seasons in a row following an appearance in the 2006 Stanley Cup final but was still expected to be a top contender. Renney, somewhere down the line, was earmarked to assume control of a club projected to be consistently in the playoff mix.
One year later, Quinn was unceremoniously removed from the bench and Renney left to pick up the pieces of a team that suddenly found itself in a full-scale rebuild mode.
When Renney, who finished his tenure as Oilers' head coach with a 57-85-22 record, first arrived in Edmonton the Oilers boasted a veteran-laden lineup that included names such as Shawn Horcoff, Ales Hemsky, Dustin Penner, Lubomir Visnovsky, Mike Comrie, Fernando Pisani, Ethan Mouray and Sheldon Souray. Among that list, only Horcoff and Hemsky are still with the team following Renney's departure.
In retrospect, one has to wonder if Renney would have been brought in at all had the Oilers known they would be headed down the rebuilding path three years ago.
Although Renney has had a history of success working with younger players (he guided the Canadian major junior hockey's Kamloops Blazers to consecutive WHL championships and one Memorial Cup title in the early 1990s), his most effective NHL stint to date has been with the New York Rangers, who he led to three straight playoff appearances coming out of the lockout year. The Rangers were a veteran-heavy team that featured the likes of Jaromir Jagr, Chris Drury, Brendan Shanahan, Michael Nylander, Scott Gomez and Martin Straka at various points during Renney's stint there.
Renney did an admirable job behind the Oilers bench in his brief time even though the team finished at or near the bottom of the league standings in back- to-back seasons. This season, the Oilers posted a seven-win improvement compared to Renney's first year behind the bench. Edmonton also has seen the likes of youngsters Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall and Devan Dubnyk develop into consistent NHL performers during Renney's stint.
But despite the positives of Renney's stint with the Oilers, it's clear they felt they needed a change in order for them to take the next step into turning the blue-chip prospects they've assembled into a core group of superstars who can lead the Oilers back to the Promise Land. The man to lead that charge could be former Calgary Flames head coach Brent Sutter or current Oklahoma City Barons head coach Todd Nelson, as has been rumored, but it certainly was not going to be Renney.
Whoever the new coach turns out to be, he'll have a clear idea of where the team is headed and what the expectations are moving forward. That's more than Renney ever got.
The Oilers are the fourth Canadian NHL team to make announce a head coaching change this calendar year. The Toronto Maple Leafs fired Ron Wilson in March and replaced him with Randy Carlyle, the Flames parted ways with the aforementioned Sutter back in April, while new Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin demoted interim head coach Randy Cunneyworth back to assistant coach earlier this month.
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Brent Sutter should go to Edmonton and Tom Renney should go to Calgary. Wouldn't that make for an interesting swap!
Failure at worlds serves Canada well for Sochi 2014
Wayne Scanlan, The Canadian Press, May 23, 2012
OTTAWA — The images were painfully familiar: Canadian players hanging their heads following a third straight quarter-final loss at the world hockey championship.
But what’s this? The end result is that Canada is grouped with Norway, Finland and a qualifier-to-be-named later at the 2014 Sochi Olympics?
Who says Canada lost to Slovakia in Helsinki? Looking at the relative strength of the men’s groups for the 2014 Olympic tournament, one might suppose the Canadians won gold at the recent worlds, such is the soft landing in Sochi.
Here are the three groups, and their international ranking:
• Group A: Russia (1), Slovakia (6), United States (7) and a qualifier;
• Group B: Finland (2), Canada (5), Norway (8) and a qualifier;
• Group C: Czech Republic (3), Sweden (4), Switzerland (9) and a qualifier
After the preliminary round, the top two teams from each group, plus the next two best teams, will advance to the quarter-finals.
Russia won the world title on Sunday, defeating those Canadian-slaying Slovaks in the final and retain their No. 1 world ranking. Their reward is to be lumped in with sixth-ranked Slovakia and No. 7 USA.
Hmmm.
Most Canadians would probably opt for the Finns and Norwegians as appetizers as opposed to having to contend with the fierce North American rivalry early in the tournament.
Group C is also as meaty as borsch kievsky, with the Czechs, the Swedes and Switzerland. Sure, the neutral Swiss are ranked ninth in the world but they have a history of giving Canada fits in these tournaments.
All in all, would Canada trade places with any of their rivals in the other groups? Likely not.
Canada entered the just-completed world tournament ranked fifth, the same position it finds itself today.
Until 2004, results from the world championship alone established the world rankings. That year the focus changed, to take a broader perspective. The International Ice Hockey Federation wanted to avoid wild swings in the rankings based on one flukey or uncharacterstic tournament — good or bad —by a particular nation or nations.
The current system reflects not only the current worlds results, but four consecutive world tournaments lumped together, along with the most recent Olympic tournament.
In other words, Canada’s gold-medal victory in Vancouver two years ago continues to prop up this country’s international status, even if the world championship outcomes have been disappointing, to say the absolute least.
From Finland, speaking after the loss to Slovakia, Canadian general manager Kevin Lowe told The Canadian Press that the story is similar for Canada, coming off a setback internationally.
“It probably sets everything up again,” Lowe said. “I think Torino [in 2006] set up Vancouver pretty well and I think these three losses set up Sochi in terms of the fact we’ve got a lot to prove.”
Three straight trips to the worlds without a medal to show for it is rare for Canada. It wasn’t that long ago when hockey scribes were writing home about the Canadian medal streak at this tournament.
From 2003 to 2009, Canadians only missed out on a medal once in seven years, in Riga in 2006. They won gold in 2003, 2004 and 2007, and silver in in 2005, 2008 and 2009.
The previous medal drought was palpable, hitting hard at about the time this nation was licking its wounds from the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Remember? Gretzky on the bench, while Canada used a defenceman in the shootout against the Czech Republic?
In the five world tournaments from 1998 to 2002, Canada was an also-ran, finally turning wringing hands into high-fives with a golden performance at the Olympics of Salt Lake City, 2002.
And that is the point here. World championship tournaments come and go, and hardly anyone cares if Canada slips up while fans are distracted by the Stanley Cup playoffs.
In the Olympic spotlight, though, bowing out in the quarter-finals goes over like a stink bomb in church. It’s an outrage.
Can’t happen.
This was never more true than when Canada played host to the Olympic tournament in Vancouver two years, on that cozy and familiar North American ice.
In Sochi, Canada will not face the home-ice pressures, but neither will it have the smaller ice surface its NHL players use every day.
That is why Steve Yzerman, Canada’s returning executive director, is looking for skaters for Sochi.
Yzerman and his management team have already been scouting in preparation for Sochi, taking dead aim at a gold medal repeat.
Once the NHL and its players agree to a new collective bargaining agreement that includes NHL players in Sochi, Canadian hockey fans will also turn their thoughts to an Olympic tournament that is looming on the horizon — less than two years away.
McSorley tired of hearing about The Curse
Tony Gallagher, Postmedia News, May 22 2012
VANCOUVER — With the Los Angeles Kings pushing for a Stanley Cup and the city getting excited about hockey, it can’t be any surprise the papers are bringing up what they’re calling the ‘McSorley curse’ and how the team is trying to overcome said ‘curse.’
This is a reference to the last time the Kings were in the Cup final in ’93. Having won the first game in Montreal and leading 2-1 late in Game 2, desperate Canadiens coach Jacques Demers asked for a measurement of Marty McSorley’s stick, which was found to be illegal. The penalty was called, the Habs tied the game on that power play, won it in overtime and went on to win the series in five games, the last time the fabled Montreal franchise won a Cup.
Needless to say this is all pretty tiresome to McSorley, who lives in L.A. and, more often than not, people include just a snapshot of what happened, not the whole story.
While he freely admits he was in fact using an illegal stick, he also wants people to know the Canadiens had some help in making the crucial call. It’s now been well documented that Luc Robitaille, a member of the Kings at the time who still works for the team as head of business operations, was contacted a year later by a Montreal policeman who said his conscience was bothering him over the incident. Apparently the cop was told to leave his post for a few minutes between periods while the Habs examined the LA sticks so that they would know who was using an illegal one.
“Gary Leeman told the whole story about how they had our stick rack in their room,” says McSorley, recounting the situation in detail. “They knew who was using an illegal stick before they made the call because they’d measured our sticks. There must have been five of us who had them because it was never called by anybody. In fact, at the time it was illegal to ask for a stick measurement during overtime. They just picked me because I killed all the penalties. I’ve spoken to people who have video of the time the request for the measurement was made and they claim at least six to eight of the Montreal players can be seen handing their sticks back to the trainer at the Montreal bench. A lot of guys used them.
“Was I using an illegal stick. Yes, I was, but it’s not as if I took a torch to it. They came from the factory that way. I used the same stick in the next game and tied Game 4 with what might have been the same stick.
“Am I tired of hearing about it. I guess. I get called by people in the Montreal media every time Montreal does something in the playoffs and I say to them, ‘Call Luc and get the real story, then come back and we’ll talk,’ and none of them have ever called me back. What bothers you is that nobody ever talks about anything else that happened in that series. I mean, we didn’t win a home game. Nobody talks about how Dave Taylor, Gretz (Wayne Gretzky) and I had a three-on-two with eight minutes left and as Wayne passes the puck to me and I’m getting ready to shoot, Taylor gets called for interfering with the goalie.”
Nobody ever mentions Montreal had a player in the crease when the much talked about tying goal was scored either — something strictly enforced in those days — but what bothers McSorley most was the reaction of LA management at the time and how there wasn’t much support from the likes of president Rogie Vachon or general manager Nick Beverley, given how well he and the rest of the team had played getting to the final.
“None of us guys from Edmonton (who came in the Gretzky trade from the Oilers) were ever really accepted for some reason,” says McSorley, who currently works for Sportsnet as one of the most outspoken and frank analysts on television. “Maybe it was because (Kings owner) Bruce (McNall) had made the deal and it wasn’t really accepted by them or something. He was running things through them, but at the end of the season when my contract was up I got an offer from another team and all I ever heard from Beverley was a fax saying that they had matched the offer and traded me to Pittsburgh. No phone call from your own team after you’d been to the Cup final.”
How Professional Athletes Burn Out
Alan Bass, Hockeybuzz.com, May 16, 2012
One of the most shocking stories in professional hockey in the past five years was a top prospect, Stefan Legein, suddenly quitting his promising hockey career at the ripe, old age of 19. There was never a true explanation for this, and he’s since returned to professional hockey, albeit in a very diminished role. Since his return, he’s bounced between the American League and the East Coast League, and being traded from the Columbus Blue Jackets to the Philadelphia Flyers, and ultimately to the Los Angeles Kings, whose system he now fights through.
Arguably the only explanation as to why a professional athlete (and not just Legein – he is simply a convenient example) drops out of his sport suddenly is due to, in psychological terms, burnout. Burnout is a hot topic in the field of sport psychology, and it is defined as “physical, emotional, and social withdrawal from a formerly enjoyable sport activity. It has numerous causes, including overtraining, staleness of activity, or simply fatigue.
Many professional athletes are at risk of overtraining, because of the grinds of a professional schedule, specifically in hockey. Practices often occur every day, including on a game day, games are extremely physical, and even when the offseason comes around, players go through hours of physical training per day, be it in the gym or on the ice, trying to improve for the next season. It is very easy for some of them to train over their maximum capacity, which in turn, can result in burning out.
When an athlete is at the point of burning out, they have a reduced sense of accomplishment, usually stemming from low self-esteem, feelings of failure, and more importantly, depression. Numerous factors can cause these emotions, including stress (actual or perceived), artificially high expectations, lack of motivation, or major changes in life events.
However, one of the biggest causes of this loss of enjoyment, motivation, and passion to continue playing, stems from a lack of success, or a string of what I’ll call, “almost-success” – meaning an extremely successful campaign that ended prematurely, whether due to an injury or an early playoff exit.
If you take a look at Legein’s teams’ statistics from the time he entered the Ontario League until the time he quit in 2009, his teams never made it past the second round of the playoffs. From 2004 to 2008, his Mississauga/Niagra IceDogs won their division once and finished second in their division twice – including two 40-win seasons. However, never once was his team able to make it past the second round of the playoffs, despite Legein averaging over a point per game in his Major Junior playoff totals. In his only AHL season before quitting, his team missed the playoffs entirely.
Look at another example, from a non-player’s perspective. When Bob Clarke resigned from the General Manager position of the Philadelphia Flyers in 2007, he cited “burnout” as the reason. From 1997 to 2007, Clarke’s Flyers teams averaged 100 points in the standings and a .609 wining percentage – one of the best in the NHL. However, after the 1997 season in which they got swept in the final by Detroit, they never advanced past the third round and lost in the first round five times in eight seasons. This string of “almost-success” may have been a leading cause of burnout for him – as it is for many people in any field.
Burnout is still in need of a great deal of psychological research, but what is known is how to avoid this. If an athlete can monitor their stress levels, develop and achieve short-term goals, take time off when needed, and manage their post-competition emotions, they are much more likely to maintain the motivation that initially got them to the level of sport that they are at today.
Gretzky talks horse racing, hockey and about divided loyalties
LOS ANGELES— Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail, May. 23, 2012
So you were probably wondering, where was Wayne Gretzky during all this? After all, the NHL’s Western Conference final could have easily been played for the Wayne Gretzky trophy instead of the Clarence Campbell Bowl. It featured the Los Angeles Kings, the team Gretzky led to the 1993 Stanley Cup final and essentially put on the map, playing against the Phoenix Coyotes, the team he was associated with for close to a decade, first as the team’s managing partner and eventually as its head coach.
What was Gretzky thinking? Who was he cheering for? Did he take any satisfaction from seeing some of the young players that joined the Coyotes organization under his watch - the Martin Hanzals, the Mikkel Boedkers - show some glimmers of their potential?
Instead, Gretzky chose to stay silent, watching from afar, not taking sides, especially as the Coyotes’ ownership saga continues to percolate on, with no definitive end in sight.
But on the morning after the Kings dispatched the Coyotes in five games, Gretzky surfaced to talk about horse racing, about hockey in southern California and about the possibility of witnessing yet another series where his loyalties could be divided.
The Kings will face either the New York Rangers or the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup final beginning next Wednesday, trying to win their first championship in franchise history.
In 1993, Gretzky’s Kings came close, winning the first three rounds, all against Canadian-based teams (the Calgary Flames, the Vancouver Canucks and the Toronto Maple Leafs) before losing to the Montreal Canadiens in a five-game Stanley Cup final. The Kings were up by a game in the series and leading Game 2 at the Montreal Forum, when Canadiens’ coach Jacques Demers called for a stick measurement against L.A. defenceman Marty McSorley that gave Montreal a late power play. With Patrick Roy on the bench for a sixth attacker, the Canadiens tied the game in regulation and won in overtime. The Kings never recovered from that devastating setback; lost the series; and soon after, lost the tentative toehold they’d established for the NHL in southern California during that dramatic playoff run.
Looking back on that time, Gretzky says now: “No disrespect to our team in ’93, but we weren’t the best team. The best team won the Stanley Cup. We weren’t even the best team in the West that year, I didn’t think. But we got a lot out of our great players like Kelly Hrudey, Rob Blake and Luc Robitaille and had guys like Pat Conacher and Tony Granato come up big for us.
“It was a fun ride because everybody believed in each other.”
Gretzky remembers the seventh game of the semi-finals, in which the Kings eliminated the Maple Leafs as one of the seminal moments in his career, but says by the time they got to Montreal, they were “exhausted” by all the travel.
“If we’d won, maybe history would have been changed,” he said. “It was tough to take, but ... every franchise has its lulls, even Edmonton and Calgary did for a while there; and Vancouver has had its share of ups and downs too. But they’ve been able to stabilize the franchise here and this is just great, what’s happening now.”
Gretzky’s SoCal playing adventure ended in February, 1996 when he was traded to the St. Louis Blues for Roman Vopat, Patrice Tardif, Craig Johnson and a first-round draft choice. Coach Barry Melrose had been fired the previous April; and eventually, Gretzky made his way to New York, where general manager Glen Sather was re-assembling all of his ex-Oilers in midtown Manhattan, which is where Gretzky finished out his playing career.
Sather is still running the show in New York and he and Gretzky occasionally cross paths. If the Rangers get to the final opposite the Kings, Gretzky says: “It’s going to be a hard one for me. I think of it this way: ‘I’m in a can’t-lose situation.’ I always root for Glen and Mark (Messier) is associated with the team too. I admire how hard the Kings play. If it gets to be a Rangers-Kings’ final, I’ll be a fan on the sidelines and may the best team win. If L.A. wins, it’ll be great for hockey in this market and for the organization. If New York wins, I’ll be happy for Glen and Mark.
“And don’t count out Jersey either. I said before the playoffs began that any team with Marty Brodeur in goal has a chance. And I just think (Devils’ assistant) Larry Robinson is like the English Jean Beliveau, always saying and doing the right thing.”
Gretzky has watched the Kings play a lot this season, mostly on television, although he’s been out at Staples Centre for three or four games and plans to attend Game 3 in person, his first appearance in the playoffs. His knowledge of the team borders on the encyclopedic. He begins a 17-minute conversation with a player-by-player breakdown of what everyone has contributed to the cause, and then shifts into Darryl Sutter’s contributions as a coach and even references the structured system Sutter inherited from his predecessor, Terry Murray. To top it all off, he then talked about Bernie Nicholls’ influence since catching on as an unofficial assistant coach, noting how the light-hearted Nicholls brings “a sense of relaxation to the team” and the knowledge that “it’s not the end of the world if you have a bad game.” It sounds as if Gretzky could immediately step in as an NHL player personnel director if that were his druthers; and that his fascination with the minutiae of hockey is still as great as ever.
Gretzky has been on the road a lot in these playoffs and he at the Kentucky Derby a few weeks back as a guest of Jerry Bruckheimer, the Hollywood film producer and uber hockey fan. Bruckheimer owns an estate in the area that also includes an indoor hockey rink and according to Gretzky, annually invites 14 to 18 guests the Derby festivities. As part of the weekend’s activities, a handful of local teenage players join Bruckheimer’s group for a three-on-three hockey game.
Typically, everybody is a handicapper and Gretzky has his own brief history there. He and former Kings’ owner Bruce McNall were successful thoroughbred owners for a time (they won the Prix de l’arc de Triomphe with Saumarez and in 1990, won both the Arlington Million and the Japan Cup with Golden Pheasant). So Gretzky was there, on Derby weekend, touting a relative long shot named I’ll Have Another. Gretzky liked him for two reasons. One, the owner, J. Paul Reddam, is from Windsor, Ont. and a member at the Sherwood Country Club, where Gretzky plays as well. The other is that I’ll Have Another won the Santa Anita Derby, which historically is an important stepping stone for the Derby, according to Gretzky’s intel.
“So I kept telling people ‘watch out for this horse’ and ‘put $50 on this horse,” said Gretzky. “I know a little about (handicapping), but I’d be stretching it if I said I knew a lot.”
But he knows a lot about hockey and calls the Kings’ 12-2 run through the first three rounds a “great story” and suggests “they’re not a fluke.
“If you were talking to people in September, it’d be no surprise. They’ve put together a team that could compete for the conference title. Unfortunately, when you go through the season, you always have challenges and hiccups along the way. But I believe if you do the homework for three to five years, as Dean (Lombardi, the team’s GM) has done, then you have the ammunition to go out and make the moves you need to make.
“No team starts out in training camp and wins a championship with those same 20 players.”
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Gretzky talks divided loyalty, Sutter's style
Chris Nichols, Sportsnet.ca, May 24, 2012
GRETZKY'S DIVIDED LOYALTIES
So you were probably wondering, The Globe and Mail believes, where was Wayne Gretzky during all this? After all, the NHL’s Western Conference final could have easily been played for the Wayne Gretzky trophy instead of the Clarence Campbell Bowl. It featured the Los Angeles Kings, the team Gretzky led to the 1993 Stanley Cup final and essentially put on the map, playing against the Phoenix Coyotes, the team he was associated with for close to a decade, first as the team’s managing partner and eventually as its head coach.
What was Gretzky thinking? Who was he cheering for? Did he take any satisfaction from seeing some of the young players that joined the Coyotes organization under his watch - the Martin Hanzals, the Mikkel Boedkers - show some glimmers of their potential?
Instead, Gretzky chose to stay silent, watching from afar, not taking sides, especially as the Coyotes’ ownership saga continues to percolate on, with no definitive end in sight.
But on the morning after the Kings dispatched the Coyotes in five games, Gretzky surfaced to talk about a number of subjects; including the possibility of witnessing yet another series where his loyalties could be divided.
The Kings will face either the New York Rangers or the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup final beginning next Wednesday, trying to win their first championship in franchise history.
Glen Sather is still running the show in New York and he and Gretzky occasionally cross paths. If the Rangers get to the final opposite the Kings, Gretzky says: “It’s going to be a hard one for me. I think of it this way: ‘I’m in a can’t-lose situation.’ I always root for Glen and Mark (Messier) is associated with the team too. I admire how hard the Kings play. If it gets to be a Rangers-Kings’ final, I’ll be a fan on the sidelines and may the best team win. If L.A. wins, it’ll be great for hockey in this market and for the organization. If New York wins, I’ll be happy for Glen and Mark.
“And don’t count out Jersey either. I said before the playoffs began that any team with Marty Brodeur in goal has a chance. And I just think (Devils’ assistant) Larry Robinson is like the English Jean Beliveau, always saying and doing the right thing.”
Gretzky has watched the Kings play a lot this season, mostly on television, although he’s been out at Staples Centre for three or four games and plans to attend Game 3 in person, his first appearance in the playoffs. His knowledge of the team borders on the encyclopedic. He begins a 17-minute conversation with a player-by-player breakdown of what everyone has contributed to the cause, and then shifts into Darryl Sutter’s contributions as a coach and even references the structured system Sutter inherited from his predecessor, Terry Murray. To top it all off, he then talked about Bernie Nicholls’ influence since catching on as an unofficial assistant coach, noting how the light-hearted Nicholls brings “a sense of relaxation to the team” and the knowledge that “it’s not the end of the world if you have a bad game.” It sounds as if Gretzky could immediately step in as an NHL player personnel director if that were his druthers; and that his fascination with the minutiae of hockey is still as great as ever.
He calls the Kings’ 12-2 run through the first three rounds a “great story” and suggests “they’re not a fluke.
“If you were talking to people in September, it’d be no surprise. They’ve put together a team that could compete for the conference title. Unfortunately, when you go through the season, you always have challenges and hiccups along the way. But I believe if you do the homework for three to five years, as Dean (Lombardi, the team’s GM) has done, then you have the ammunition to go out and make the moves you need to make.
“No team starts out in training camp and wins a championship with those same 20 players.”
GRETZKY, PART DEUX: ON FUTURE, KINGS
The Los Angeles Times also caught up with The Great One and he happily reaffirmed that although he loves being a fan he's not looking to become affiliated with a team or the NHL.
"Oh, no, not at all. I don't even think about it right now," Wayne Gretzky, who plans to attend the Kings' first home Cup Final game on June 4, said. "My enjoyment is just watching a game right now, truly. I've got a lot of friends in hockey that I talk to and sort of stay in touch with and talk about the game.
"Everything I have in my life is because of hockey, but I just really haven't gone down that road right now. I'm just enjoying what I'm doing. I watch as much hockey as anybody, but I watch in a different way now. I don't critique each individual player or system or style.
"Right now it's not sort of in my cards, I guess. But that's OK. The game has been great to me and has always been good to me in that sense. I just enjoy myself as a fan."
A rather knowledgeable fan, and the only one who owns 60 NHL records.
Based on that knowledge, he praised Kings General Manager Dean Lombardi's vision in building the team through the draft and leveraging surplus assets in trades for Mike Richards, Jeff Carter and Dustin Penner.
"Over the last five years they made some really good, quiet deals on the side as far as stockpiling draft picks and being patient with players," Gretzky said. "And when you're able to draft a guy like Anze Kopitar or Drew Doughty and you're able to trade a couple of really good, young players like Brayden Schenn and Jack Johnson to fill voids that you need on your hockey club."
He also said Coach Darryl Sutter brought the right intensity and strategy to lift the team to a higher level.
"He played hard every game whether it was in October or whether it was in May and I think that's what he instilled in this hockey club," Gretzky said. "I think the previous coach, Terry Murray, did a tremendous job in establishing the team system and I think from my point of view that Darryl tweaked it a little bit and that he's much more aggressive and [emphasizes] much more forechecking and on the puck, a lot like the way he coached in Chicago and Calgary.
"He took nothing away from their team defense, which is as strong as any team in the National Hockey League, and yet they pursue the puck, and create turnovers offensively to give them more time in the offensive zone, which creates less time in the defensive zone."
He also said there should be a way to reward Sutter's performance at the league level.
"I'd never fool with anything, because I have so much respect for the tradition and history of the game, but it's amazing," Gretzky said. "You look at changing the coach of the year award and picking it after the Stanley Cup playoffs and not before the playoffs start, I think he'd win in a landslide."
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GRETZKY SAYS HE'LL BE IN ATTENDANCE AT STANLEY CUP FINAL
TSN.CA staff, May 24 2012
Wayne Gretzky stayed out of the spotlight during the Western Conference Final, but the Great One will certainly be in attendance when his former team, the Los Angeles Kings, make their second-ever appearance in the Stanley Cup Final.
"For sure, I'll be at Game 3 (at the Staples Center)," Gretzky told TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun in an interview for ESPN.com on Wednesday.
Gretzky, 51, played eight seasons with the Kings from 1988 to 1996 and also coached the Phoenix Coyotes from 2005 to 2009.
"The biggest thing of all is that those two teams both earned the right to get there and both had worked so hard,” said Gretzky. "I just really felt it wasn't my place to sort of steal some of the attention away from the players and the organizations that worked so hard to get there. I thought it was just best to stay on the sidelines that series.
"The Kings have been playing unreal. The Coyotes had an unreal year. Wow. I don't know if anybody picked L.A.-Phoenix for the Western final, but they both earned the right to be there, that's for sure."
The Stanley Cup Final may yet feature another Gretzky tie-in if another of his former teams - the New York Rangers - defeat the New Jersey Devils in seven games to challenge for the Cup for the first time since 1994.
"I have nothing but great memories of being in New York, and of course there's Glen (Sather) there and Mark (Messier) part of the team," said Gretzky. "It's a great city, a great place. Obviously the Devils still have a lot to say about things."
During his time with the Kings, Gretzky helped lead the club to a deep postseason run in 1993, ultimately falling shor with a 4-1 series loss in the final to the Montreal Canadiens. Many have called Game 7 of the Kings' Campbell Conference Final against the Toronto Maple Leafs - where he scored a hat trick in a 5-4 win - his greatest postseason game.
But The Great One isn't making comparisons between his 1993 club and the one that starts the final next Wednesday.
"What made that team so special is that we weren't the best team," Gretzky told LeBrun. "It was very similar to this team in the sense that we started every series on the road. We had to win a really tough Game 7 in the semifinals in Toronto. We were a team that really believed in the coach and the system...It just was a team that came together. The reality, though, is that this L.A. team today has more depth than we had. I don't mean this as any disrespect to our team in '93 - because it was a great run - but this team is a legitimate contender that deserves to be where they're at right now. When we lost in '93, the best team won the Stanley Cup (Montreal). Going into the finals this year, whether it's the Devils or the Rangers, I would tell you that L.A. is a good team and they'll be ready to play. They're firing on all cylinders."
Renney: Oilers on road to become champs
DEREK VAN DIEST, QMI AGENCY, May 24 2012
A class act to the end, Tom Renney is leaving the Edmonton Oilers organization with his head held high.
The former Oilers coach addressed the local media for a final time Wednesday, less than a week after the organization announced they would not be renewing his contract.
“My reaction to not coming back was obviously one of real disappointment to say the least,” said Renney. “When you’re in the front end of a building process you don’t like to be the guy that’s leaving before you even get to the middle. The fact of the matter is, that’s where I think they are.”
Renney was brought on three seasons ago as an associate to Pat Quinn. He took over the head coaching reins a year later as the organization decided to clean house and begin a rebuilding phase.
In his two years as head coach during that phase, the Oilers finished 30th and 29th in the league standings.
“I think this is the process to becoming a champion,” Renney said. “It’s just very disappointing not be here to continue to execute that plan and be here to support people in order to make that happen.
“But I’m not here to throw daggers, I’m here to support this organization all the way to the Stanley Cup. If that’s from a distance, having been a former coach, I’m good with that too. As they say, a clear conscience is a soft pillow.”
In his two seasons as head coach, Renney amassed a 57-85-22 record with the Oilers. He was able to win seven more games this season than he did in his first year behind the bench, yet the club fell short of its initial goal of challenging for a playoff spot.
“I’m not going to stand up here and tell you I thought I did a bad job,” Renney said. “We were one or two injuries away from being competitive every night.
“That also is part of this process. I know ownership and management are working hard to shore up that end of the business. I know Oklahoma City has had a terrific year, let’s hope it continues. We have some great, young players, playing amateur hockey that will play for the Oilers that will bring it along even further.”
Unfortunately for Renney, he inherited a club that had hit rock bottom under Quinn and began to sell off what few assets they had to start building through the draft. It’s similar position to those taking over expansion teams.
Those coaches do not last long either.
“I feel a little bit like that,” Renney said. “I felt like I coached with actually tomorrow in mind as opposed to today and that might have hurt me. I really had a vision for the team, and I felt at the expense of my opportunity or existence, I made some decisions that suggest you have to do certain things that will help you down the road. Some could argue whether that’s right, but that was the mandate for me.”
Looking back on his tenure with the Oilers, there are few things Renney would change had he an opportunity to do it again.
He was brought in to see the team through the initial stages of the rebuilding process and guide their young talents.
“I would have liked not to have gotten that puck in the head in Toronto,” Renney smiled. “I would have liked not to have fallen on the grass at the lake last summer and destroyed my knee.
“But in retrospect, I have been everything I am — this is it. If it works for you great, if it doesn’t fine, I’ll be respectful and move out of the way.”
Despite being under contract until the end of June, Renney is free to pursue other coaching opportunities.
He has had initial conversations with NHL clubs currently in the market for a head coach.
“I look forward to coaching again, I look forward to coaching in the playoffs, I look forward to winning a Stanley Cup because I like winning as much as the next guy,” Renney said. “I look forward to the next opportunity to take a team into the playoffs and do some special things in them based on experiences such as this.”
Between the benches under the microscope
BRUCE DOWBIGGIN, Globe and Mail, May. 24, 2012
Ah, the law of unintended (hockey) consequences.
The position of reporter between the NHL benches has largely been a success since it first was introduced in 2006. But the clandestine perch now is becoming a victim of its own success as some critics demand the filters be taken off the hot audio.
Pioneered by Pierre McGuire at NBC and now used by others (including Hockey Night in Canada), the fly-on-the-wall perch can take the temperature of a game from ice level. Nothing speaks to that proximity better than the image of New York Rangers head coach John Tortorella and New Jersey Devils counterpart Peter DeBoer jawing at each other late in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference final, with McGuire (NBC) and Glenn Healy (CBC) caught in between like flies in amber.
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(For the record, the feisty McGuire is the one standing up front in the photographers’ booth while Healy is standing back from the fray.)
Neither coach wanted to elaborate on what was said. Neither would McGuire or Healy.
“Working inside the glass is a privileged position,” McGuire told Usual Suspects via e-mail. “I respect the spirit of co-operation between the coaches, players, and the league. I would never want to compromise that relationship. Over the last seven years, I believe we have been allowed to grow the position due to a trust that has been created.”
McGuire says he has a straightforward policy: “The standard is simple. I will report that a player is hurt, but I will not say what body part is injured. With the coaches verbal jousting, whether it be Pitt and Philly or NYR and NJD, I will say there is a confrontation but not say what they are saying towards one another.”
“I am still a player,” said Healy, who muted his microphone during Wednesday’s confrontation, too. “What’s said there, stays there. That stuff has no bearing on the game. I can promise you there were no complete sentences in there. We don’t need to turn hockey into [celebrity gossip website] TMZ or whatever.”
The two reporters are backed up by the people in the production truck.
“We are guests at the dinner table,” TSN vice-president and executive producer of live events Paul Graham said. “We are granted permission to access between the benches by the NHL and the teams, so we go in there knowing we have to respect certain situations we are privy to based on our location. We leave it to our analysts to judge what pertinent information goes to air.
“As you know, the majority of heated conversations between players and coaches contains too much profanity.”
Rogers Sportsnet producer Larry Isaac has been doing NHL games for three decades, and while his network does not employ a between-the-benches reporter, he sees both sides of the argument.
“The announcers, who usually are ex-players or ex-coaches, who now are privy to these conversations, have to weigh whether it’s journalistically prudent to repeat ‘word for word’ the heated conversations, or any other teammate-to-teammate conversation, or time-out strategy discussion,” he said.
“Because they feel, and sometimes justifiably, that if they do this, it will hamper getting some inside information from their key player/coach contacts when TV announcers get their 1-on-1 private meetings with coaches on the game-day mornings.”
If this sounds a little “inside baseball,” then you’re not alone.
Should reporters owe their loyalty to the audience, not their ex-colleagues?
The DeBoer-Tortorella spat was a top story after the game and featured on the HNIC highlights and promos. Does the public deserve to know more?
Healy believes he’s a fair arbiter of what gets on. “Almost all of it is putdowns and insults and swearing that has no impact on the game whatsoever,” he said. “They’re not missing anything important.”
Perhaps not. But the DeBoer-Tortorella confrontation, while profane, had news value. Conveying that in some fashion surely should not break the covenant between reporter and league.
Maybe the solution in the future is to allow a special all-access audio version of games as a premium package for viewers. Pay extra, hear Peter DeBoer tell John Tortorella that he’s vertically challenged.
WOMEN’S WORLD
The collective hockey culture is having a cow over HNIC doing an alternative commentary for the Stanley Cup final, with a blog titled “While the men Watch” (sample: Making love like Lundqvist). The two women behind the project, Julie Mancuso and Lena Sutherland, made the rounds this week to promote the concept.
Creating new audiences is not a bad thing for the stodgy hockey crowd, but it seems Mancuso and Sutherland will have to be very clever to make this work. But Usual Suspects was once trapped in a locker by the Hanson Brothers on live TV, so we’ll wait to judge this concept when it debuts next Wednesday.
Recruitment, retention, ’rithmetic: Player numbers Hockey Canada’s main concern
ALLAN MAKI, Globe and Mail, May. 24 2012
The theme for Hockey Canada’s 93rd annual general meeting is R and R, only it has nothing to do with rest and relaxation and everything to do with recruitment and retention – how to get kids into hockey and how to keep them there.
As hundreds of hockey delegates from across the country gather in Halifax this weekend, Hockey Canada will review its 2011-2012 season with an eye toward making the game more appealing. While exact numbers will be discussed in meetings, it has been estimated that overall registration dropped by 8,000 last year. That count, said Hockey Canada chief operating officer Scott Smith, doesn’t include adult recreational hockey, which experienced an increase.
“What we’re asking ourselves is: How can we provide a more positive experience in the game?” Smith said. “We’re trying to raise more attention to attract and retain players.”
One of the potential ways to do so is through a loyalty card program that has been in the planning for more than a year. The card, which will be presented to some 600,000 people this September, can be used for discounts with Hockey Canada partners, and also includes a fundraising component. The concept is that parents can use the loyalty card to offset costs for hockey equipment and other needs.
Many are hoping this expands interest.
“The challenge is getting new ethnic [minority] players into the game,” said Phillip McKee, executive director of the Ontario Hockey Federation, which oversees 220,000 children and 50,000 volunteers and coaches. “We need to attract other ethnicities because they’re playing other sports – soccer, basketball, cricket. As a sports body, we’ve done a great job creating opportunities for kids to play. We need to learn from the experts how to attract kids to the game.”
The other issue confronting the game is player safety. Last year, Hockey Canada implemented a rule making any contact with a player’s head illegal. McKee described the rule as a positive, one that needs additional time to develop and take hold.
“Generally, we saw a year of transition [to the new rule and on-ice penalties],” he said. “There was growth and learning both for the teams and officials. There might have been a little bit of hesitation to call a four minute [penalty] or a game because of the suspension behind it, but we’re saying, ‘You have to call it.’ ”
The Canadian Junior Hockey League will make a pitch to Hockey Canada asking for a two-year extension on the pilot study it began in 2010. Using stronger supplementary discipline to curtail violence, five associations across Canada saw the number of fights decrease 35 to 40 per cent, down to an average of 0.60 fights per game.
As part of the extension, the CJHL is looking to tighten things up even further in areas involving blows to the head, dangerous hits, accumulated majors and fighting. For example: In 2010-2011, when a player had his seventh fight of the season, he automatically received a one-game suspension; when he had his eighth fight, he drew a two-game suspension and so on. The CJHL wants to see a one-game suspension take place after a fifth fight.
“What we’re taking out of the game are the gratuitous fights – the staged fights, goalie fights, guys coming over the boards,” said CJHL chairman Kirk Lamb. “This is about violence in hockey and one part of that is fighting. We’d like to continue that discussion with a two-year [project] extension to examine the data.”
Lamb outlined the CJHL’s pilot project to an interested outside party three months ago. USA Hockey dissected the information as part of its efforts to reduce fighting and violence at its junior levels.
Worst Stanley Cup in 20 years?
Kirk Penton, QMI Agency, May 24 2012
Congratulations, everybody! We have the worst Stanley Cup final in more than 20 years!
That’s only technically speaking, of course, as New Jersey and Los Angeles should be solid entertainment.
But when the Devils beat the New York Rangers 3-2 in overtime on Friday night to set up a date with the Kings, it meant the ninth and 13th overall teams from the regular season will battle it out for the right to hoist Lord Stanley’s mug.
New Jersey was ninth overall and the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference, while the Kings were 13th overall and eighth in the Western Conference. Their regular-season placings total 22. The only higher sum was in 1991, when the No. 7 Pittsburgh Penguins beat the No. 16 Minnesota North Stars.
In fact, not since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1980 has the better seed among the finalists been as low as No. 9 overall.
Parity has never been more prevalent. Two years ago it was No. 3 Chicago vs. No. 18 Philadelphia. In other words, once the Devils and Kings are done battling, your favourite team will have a chance to be there next year at this time.
ICE CHIPS
You knew if Henrik Lundqvist was going to be beaten in overtime, it wasn’t going to be a pretty goal. And you were right … But, hey, Adam Henrique will take it. Ah, to be 22 again and scoring overtime goals that send your team to the Stanley Cup … If you were wondering what that booing was midway through the first period, it was the Prudential Center crowd giving it to Donald Trump when he was shown on the video scoreboard. Hey, why doesn’t The Donald buy the Devils? He could use The Apprentice to pick his coach … CBC interviewed Trump between the second and third. It was a good chat, and Elliotte Friedman even asked him if he wanted to buy the Devils. He didn’t say no … The poor Rangers defence is going to take a beating this summer for its performance in this series. Michael Del Zotto’s game went south, and his affliction appeared to have spread to his teammates on Friday. They were having trouble simply passing the puck early on, and then Marc Staal pinched at the wrong time, leading to Carter’s opening goal.
AROUND THE GLASS
This is awesome: When the last Devil left the ice after the pre-game warmup, they turned the lights off at the Prudential Center. There were at least five Rangers still on the ice. That’s hilarious … In case you missed the stat on the CBC broadcast, the Devils have outscored opponents 23-9 in the first period this post-season. The way the Devils started the second period on Friday night, they no doubt wished the first period was 40 minutes long and there was no second … It’s too bad, but no one in today’s day and age of boring quotes would ever guarantee a victory like Mark Messier did in Game 6 of the 1994 Eastern Conference final against New Jersey. They don’t make ’em like Mess anymore.
MAKES YOU GO HMMM
I wonder how many media members are feeling bad that John Tortorella isn’t going to the final … If you missed the poor Fox sportscaster in Los Angeles doing the highlights from one of the games between the Kings and Coyotes, Google it. Search for “?Anze Kopidor and Brad Doty?,” and prepare to cringe … Martin Brodeur proves how valuable experience is this time of year … Something tells me the Devils are going to really want to sign Zach Parise before he becomes an unrestricted free agent on July 1.
OVERTIME
How much of a break are members of the Phoenix Coyotes going to get since they freaked out on the referees after the game in which their season ended? If that was the regular season, they would be sitting for quite a while. It’ll be interesting to see if that holds true in this case … The only reason for the bitterness from Shane Doan and Co. was because the winning goal was scored about 12 seconds after Dustin Brown’s nasty hit on Michal Roszival. If the game had continued for another two minutes, the reaction wouldn’t have been so severe … Commercial review: I’m not sure which part of the MiO commercial I like the best. I like it all … First, Pierre McGuire won’t tell us what the coaches are yelling about on the bench. Then, on Friday night he’s leaning over the boards in the third period and the puck hits him, stopping play. Time to send him up to the booth.
Alberta's world junior hockey tournament makes at least $22 million
The Canadian Press, May 25, 2012
CALGARY - The 2012 world junior hockey championship in Alberta was a major money-maker for both hockey and the tourism industry.
Hockey Canada says the tournament made a profit of at least $22 million, which will go into hockey programs and facilities.
The Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance assessed the economic impact of the tournament at $86.2 million when factoring in visitor expenditures and tax revenue generated from it.
Calgary and Edmonton were host cities of the world under-20 men's championship from Dec. 26 to Jan. 5. The tournament drew over 440,000 spectators.
The organizing committees had guaranteed an $18-million profit in their bid for the tournament.
By comparison, the 2010 world junior tournament in Saskatoon and Regina generated a $15-million surplus, according to Hockey Canada records.
Hockey Canada says exact financial figures have yet to be finalized. The governing body of hockey in Canada said in a statement released Friday that it plans to divert $9 million of the expected $22 million into its own programs.
The Canadian Hockey League, who supplies the majority of players to the Canadian team and dozens to other countries, gets a $6-million piece of the pie.
Another $3 million will be set aside for future international tournaments in Canada, which hosts the world junior championship again in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021.
The International Ice Hockey Federation gets $1.5 million and another $450,000 goes to the countries who participated in the tournament. That arrangement with the IIHF is new as of this year and part of the deal Hockey Canada made to host the tournament four times over a seven-year period.
The host committees, minor hockey associations in Calgary and Edmonton, as well as Hockey Alberta will receive more than $950,000 for projects including upgrades to arena dressing rooms and Hockey Alberta's programs and provincial training centre.
Another $165,000 goes to Hockey Canada's dozen member branches.
"In seeing the legacy of this event and the economic impact that it has had on the two host communities, the host province and grassroots hockey in Canada, we will continue to work together with our partners to bring major international events to Canada on a regular basis,” Hockey Canada chief operating officer Scott Smith said in the release.
The Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance estimates the tournament brought over 30,000 visitors to Alberta.
Driven DeBoer, fired by Panthers, delivers Devils back to the land of elite in just one year
The Canadian Press, 2012-05-27
NEWARK, N.J. - Peter DeBoer, in the eyes of many, was a surprise choice as the next coach of the New Jersey Devils. Fresh off the franchise's worst season in recent memory, Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello last summer turned to DeBoer to rescue a team that was low on morale, lower on scoring punch and desperate for a new identity.
But why DeBoer? In three seasons with Florida, he could not push the Panthers into the post-season once.
"You have to go through ups and downs," Lamoriello said on July 19, 2011, after introducing DeBoer. "I think what he went through (in Florida) just made him a better coach. And I felt that in the conversations we had—because of the questions that were asked—the answers that were given were open, down to earth and honest."
Some 10 months later, DeBoer has more than answers. He has results. After leading New Jersey to 102 points in the regular season and placing the Devils back in the playoffs after missing the tournament last year for the first time since 1996, DeBoer calmly quarterbacked the organization's fifth run to the Stanley Cup finals.
And the path taken is what will be a lasting memory not only within this proud organization, but for the fans as well. Win or lose against Los Angeles in the finals, which open with Game 1 here on Wednesday night, DeBoer's first three playoff series victories will be etched in minds for a long time.
"These moments you enjoy," said DeBoer, whose team will have home-ice advantage for the first time this post-season against the Kings. "It doesn't matter whether it's your first year or your fifth year. So, you don't get picky when these opportunities come along. You enjoy every minute of it, as much as you can, because it's awful tough to get here."
No one knows that more than DeBoer. In Round 1, he had to defeat the Panthers, a team that fired him less than a year before. It took seven games, and New Jersey had to rally from 3-2 down to do so, but the Devils did indeed outlast the Panthers.
In the second round, all New Jersey had to do was defeat Philadelphia, a rival who had won the last two series against the Devils and one that was coming off a convincing six-game victory over Pittsburgh in Round 1. New Jersey dropped Game 1, but never looked back. Four games later, the Devils were shaking hands with the rival Flyers, and were off to the conference finals.
And then in Round 3, DeBoer battled Rangers coach John Tortorella across the benches and in the media. New Jersey again lost Game 1, and was shut out twice, but dominated for long stretches of play and capped off a proud series victory over its biggest rival with an overtime win in Game 6 on Friday night.
Three series. Three wins. None of which came with the home-ice edge.
"Honored," DeBoer said simply after that Game 6 win, when asked his feelings after being offered the job by Lamoriello. "I mean, I was out of work last June. And July, I got a call from a Hall of Fame general manager who recognized some of the work I had done in Florida, and gave me a chance to work with a group of guys that have a great blend of veteran presence. They know how to win and they had a lot of great young players coming through.
"So I'm fortunate to be sitting here. It could have been a number of different candidates that he talked to, and I'm thankful that I got the opportunity."
He's made the most of it. The Devils landed the No. 6 seed in the East after scoring 228 goals. He saw three forwards—Ilya Kovalchuk (37), Zach Parise (31) and David Clarkson (30)—reach 30 tallies. He turned centre Adam Henrique, who has two overtime winners this post-season, into a finalist for the Calder Trophy, given to the league's top rookie. And he delicately balanced the veteran goaltending tandem of Martin Brodeur and Johan Hedberg.
Brodeur, 40, a career Devil who is seeking his fourth Stanley Cup title, has played in every playoff game and has been sharp, partly due to the fact that he had rest during the season. Hedberg appeared in 27 regular-season games, in fact. He started 23 of them and won 17.
"You know, this is a resilient group," DeBoer said. "We've just been getting better and better. Just like our season, we talked about a slow build. So, we're trending in the right direction, and I think we're playing our best hockey right now."
Just the way Lamoriello drew it up.
Aggressive changes led Devils out of own personal hell
Bruce Arthur, National Post, May 25, 2012
“I’m as shocked as anybody. When you look at what we brought to the lineup on paper, nobody expected it.” — Martin Brodeur, Jan. 8, 2011.
Oh, it was bad. The captain was lost 12 games into the season; the coach was fired two days before Christmas. On Boxing Day there was a blizzard, and a couple thousand brave souls came to watch another loss, until it was announced the buses would stop running, and many of them left. In all, the 2010-11 New Jersey Devils lost 31 of their first 41 games, one way or another.
A year and a half later, Patrik Elias was sitting at his stall in the Devils’ locker room, surrounded by many of the same teammates. New Jersey would play Game 6 against the New York Rangers in about nine hours, with a chance to advance to the Stanley Cup final. Elias was asked how far the team had come.
“You go through some rebuilding processes with this organization, and I’ve been here long enough to see it,” said Elias, who played his first game for New Jersey in the 1995-96 season. “And this is as good of a team as I’ve seen here in my 15 years here. So, good things coming ahead.”
There was a pause. Elias won Stanley Cups in 2000 and 2003, and lost in the final in 2001 after the Devils led the league in scoring and finished with 100 more goals than their opponents. These New Jersey Devils could be that good?
“Trust me, if you ask me, those two years — 2000 and 2001 — it was unbelievable,” Elias said. “We knew that if we just played good we’d beat anybody, and we had so much fun, we had so much firepower, so much skill, and some great hockey players — it was fun to play with each other. Everyone knew their assignments, we had some offensive guys and some defensive guys, and it meshed together.
“And I think we’re getting there now as a team, too.”
It was high praise, given that the series was not yet decided. These Devils finished sixth in the East, but it was a little deceptive. New Jersey did go on an unholy run in the second half of last season under Jacques Lemaire — during one stretch, New Jersey was 23-3-2 — but Lemaire didn’t want to return again. So Lou Lamoriello hired Pete DeBoer, who had spent three years coaching the Florida Panthers, because he thought DeBoer’s teams were hard to play against. And DeBoer wanted to change the way the Devils played.
“I think there was buy-in right from the beginning,” DeBoer said. “I think it took at least half a year for us to start to play seamlessly with it. I didn’t sense any non-believers in what we were trying to do or how we wanted to play. But it took us a full 40 games to move around the ice seamlessly within our system.”
He wanted a forecheck, an aggressive one. He wanted to hound other teams, to control the puck, to push forward rather than always fall back. As Elias put it, “five guys in, five guys back.”
So how did DeBoer convince the veteran core of this team — Martin Brodeur, Elias, Zach Parise, Dainius Zubrus, even Petr Sykora — to shift away from the defensive focus that New Jersey was known for? How did he prove himself?
“I don’t know about prove yourself,” DeBoer said. “I mean, you walk in and it’s like any job. They want to know how you can help them get to where they want to get to. And you don’t have a long time to grab their attention or their trust to do that. So having a pedigree or having … playing in the league for a lot of years gets you in that door. You know, I didn’t have that. But once you’re in the door, it’s how quickly you can sell them that you can get them to where they want to go.
“I guess you get the job because of a belief system. I think that’s what Lou saw. And I think when you believe in how the game should be played and you have the conviction in that, I think it sells itself. I don’t think there was any premeditated salesmanship. I can tell you if I was a used car salesman, I’d starve to death. So it’s not my salesmanship. I just think it’s the fact that you believe how the game should be played. You have a conviction in that, and I think that the players see that and they bought in.”
“I was excited because it got five guys involved in the play, as opposed to no [defencemen] pinching, and playing almost 3-on-5 all game,” Parise said. “We have a lot of the same players, but I think you have to give a lot of it to Pete for making us believe in what he wants us to do.
“Last year, at the start of the year, we didn’t play as a team at all … This year, it took a while for us all to adjust and be in sync. It didn’t happen right away. Sometimes we did it, sometimes we didn’t. You could when we did it right it worked, but when you’ve been playing the same way for so many years — sometimes a [defenceman] is a little hesitant to jump in, because they’ve been told not to for so long.”
And after a 12-12-1 start, the Devils — who would finish 11th in goals scored, eighth in goals allowed, and fourth in their own division — played at a 115-point pace the rest of the way. They barely outlasted Florida in the first round, crushed Philadelphia in the second, and pushed the top-seeded Rangers to the edge. When they eliminated the Flyers in five, Jaromir Jagr said the Devils were strong, that they didn’t lose a battle along the boards, that, in the end, “they were pretty close to each other.” And somewhere, Pete DeBoer must have smiled.
Kings legend Marcel Dionne dwells on what could have been
George Johnson, Postmedia News, May 28, 2012
The king of Kings, the greatest individual impresario in franchise history to ever don purple-and-gold (or black-and-silver, for that matter; apologies, 99) can’t help but feel a wistful ‘What if?’ as he watches the Los Angeles Kings’ relentless march to a place fate forbade him entry.
“That year we beat Edmonton, the Miracle on Manchester year, I thought ‘This is it,’’’ the man himself is reminiscing from the Niagara Falls offices of Marcel Dionne Inc. “That magic thing that happens to certain teams at certain times happened to us that year.
“I mean, who comes back from 5-0 down to win a playoff game?
“So after we got through that series, I really thought that was gonna be our time. Darryl Evans played the best hockey of his career. Bernie Nicholls. Doug Smith. Mario Lessard was outstanding in net. Larry Murphy was just a kid, 18 years old. Charlie [Simmer]. Dave [Taylor].
“We were big, strong, tough . . . team of destiny, right? We beat the Oilers, walk into Vancouver and I’m saying ‘We’ve got it. We’re on our way.’ We tried hard, the guys played well. But [Richard] Brodeur just killed us.
“Then the next year, they traded everybody.’’
These days, the 60-year-old Hall of Famer is kept on his toes overseeing his 5,000-square foot memorabilia business (where a 20×16-inch collage autographed by all three components of the fabled Triple Crown Line — Dionne, Simmer and Taylor — spilling over the boards in royal purple can be yours for $249.99) and a neighbouring eatery, The BlueLine Cafe.
But he’s certainly caught up in the exploits of his old team, the Kings, piledriving their way to a 12-2 post-season record as they prepare to face the New Jersey Devils in quest of a first Stanley Cup title.
Watching the hype from afar, Marcel Dionne could be forgiven for experiencing the odd sharp, stabbing pang of envy.
For in 11 3/4 seasons using the then-Fabulous Forum as his digs, this man scored an amazing 550 goals, piled up 1,307 points . . . and participated in a grand aggregate of 43 playoff games. Never once pushing as deep as a semi-final.
Dionne says he’s pleased as punch for an old pal, Luc Robitaille, L.A.’s VP of business operations. Others, too, such as longtime Kings announcers Bob Miller and Nick Nickson and a modest but fiercely loyal fan base — the people who will continue to show up in the bleak times, long after the celebrities have packed up the arc lights and had the chauffeur park the limo in the garage.
“The people I’m most happy for are the kids that were five, six years old, and their dad used to take them to the games. And grandpa was there. And they’re still fans today. Maybe still season-ticket holders. The ones that came over from the Forum, where tickets were $12, and they all got kicked out.
“I still have a lot of friends in L.A. Every year I go back with Marty McSorley for a hockey camp. Jimmy Fox has always been a loyal friend. I still play golf with Bruce McNall. By the way, he’s a funny guy. And he knows what’s going on in the league, let me tell you.
“They call me to get down there. I have nothing to do with this. C’mon, I’ve been a done a long time. Wayne [Gretzky] has a lot more at stake, a beautiful statue in the front of the new building; that generation saw him and he played really, really well in those years he was there.
“But yeah, absolutely I’m rooting for them.’’
Even if, like many of us, Dionne isn’t exactly awed by the quality of entertainment on display this spring.
“The style we’re watching? It is boring hockey. Really boring. Out-muscling, out-bumping. The game’s almost all played along the boards. In my day, as soon as I got the puck, I faced the play. Now, you watch [Anze] Kopitar, the way he protects the puck. He puts his back towards the defenceman, the defenceman can’t do anything. He goes to the left. Then he comes back to the right.
“In the meantime, nothing happens.
“Very seldom do you see a forward beat a defenceman one-on-one. Doesn’t happen. And the way Wayne [Gretzky] used to curl and trap guys? Very, very few players do this now. There’s just no room out there. And I think most of the guys are restricted in what they’re allowed to do.
“Sometimes you didn’t watch the game and later that night you see a replay and you say, ‘Oh, what a spectacular play! Must’ve been a great game!’ But that was the only frickin’ play in the whole frickin’ game.’’
Regardless of your take on their aesthetic value, the 2011-2012 Los Angeles Kings have proven to be chillingly efficient this springtime. Oddsmakers have installed them as favourites to slay the Devils.
And if that happens, well . . . no one can snuggle a winner tighter to its cosmetically enhanced bosom than the self-proclaimed City of Angels.
“If L.A. wins,’’ predicts Marcel Dionne, “and the timing is good because the Lakers are out and so are the Clippers, it’s gonna be the biggest show in town. Bigger than Gretzky. You watch.’’
The king of Kings permits himself a small, self-deprecating laugh.
“Hey, it’s kinda nice you win for a change. Losing is no fun. I know. That’s how I felt all those years. Now, everybody’s happy. People who were (bleeps) in the office, now you hug and kiss.
“If the Kings win, I think it’ll be the biggest thing to ever happen in L.A. They have no scandals, no B.S. They’ve had a clean image all through the years. It looks like they have their sanity.
“They’re not the Lakers, they’re not the Clippers, they’re not the Dodgers, they’re not the Angels. But this thing . . . it’s caught everyone off-guard and, believe me, it’s blowing people away.’’
Brophy on Ovechkin: Dubious path ahead
Mike Brophy, Sportsnet.ca, May 25, 2012
Turns out Ilya Kovalchuk isn't the best current NHL Russian-born player to never make it to the Stanley Cup final.
That dubious honour belongs to Alex Ovechkin.
On a day when Ovie spent a delightful afternoon touring Paris with Russian tennis star Maria Kirilenko; back in America Kovy and his date, the New Jersey Devils, were busy eliminating the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference final to earn a berth in the Stanley Cup final.
I'm on Paris watching Maria practice on central court!!!!! twitter.com/ovi8/status/20…
— Alex Ovechkin (@ovi8) May 25, 2012
For the past few years it seemed like just a matter of time before Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals won the Cup. Everything they did seemed to point in that direction. The Caps fast, skilled, very offensive and their leader -- their captain -- was neck-in-neck with Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby in a one-on-one competition for the title of best player in the world.
Not now.
Ovechkin and the Capitals barely made the playoffs this season and then lost out in the second round to the Rangers. Rather than taking a leading role in attempting to get his team to the top of the mountain, Ovechkin was relegated to 'just another player' status. NHL coaches, who are always living on life support and henceforth make strange decisions at times, have their reasons for doing things, but there must be a better way of handling offensive geniuses like Ovechkin -- and Kovalchuk, for that matter -- than we have seen the past couple of years.
Ovechkin has now played eight years in the NHL. He has scored a blistering 339 goals, 340 assists and 679 points. In 51 playoff games in those eight years he has 30 goals and 59 points.
Ovechkin was the NHL's rookie of the year in 2005-06.
He led the league in scoring in 2007-08.
He was the NHL's most valuable player in 2007-08 and 2008-09. He also led the league in goal-scoring in those two seasons.
He was, without question, one of the most exciting players in the history of the league.
Now, when I watch him play, I see a player riddled with conflict. His instincts tell him to go guns-a-blazing the way he has since he first strapped the blades to his feet. His coaches tell him otherwise.
So Ovechkin holds back. That is what he has been commanded to do. Take shorter shifts. Play defence.
On some level, I get it. The Capitals all-out offence approach didn't work. Despite the fact they were Cup favorites the past few years; they cannot even make it to the conference final. So Ovechkin had to buy into the team concept a little bit.
Coach Bruce Boudreau, an offensive player in his day, tried to tighten the belt. It didn't work and he lost his job. Enter Dale Hunter, who tried the same thing, and it didn't work either.
Both coaches elected to cut back on Ovechkin's ice time. Somehow both guys thought that keeping the most offensively talented player on the team off the ice was the key to victory.
That's hockey for you.
The question now is what's next for Ovechkin? Can he get back to being an offensive force in the league? Sure it was cool to see him help Russia win the World Championship, but winning gold at the WC is not why he plays the game. He's playing for the Cup. He plays to score goals.
This season Ovechkin finished 37th in scoring with 38 goals and 65 points in 78 games. That is 20 points fewer than he scored the year before when he played one more game. Those are very pedestrian numbers for a player with such talent.
Boudreau is gone. So is Hunter.
The next Capitals coach's No. 1 priority, whoever he might be, must be to bring Ovechkin back to life. That may mean bucking the trend of defence-first hockey that once again is threatening to suffocate the game. Things go in cycles, so it can be done.
As it stands, Ovechkin is heading in the wrong direction in his career. Many great players have enjoyed personal success without coming close to making it to the Stanley Cup final.
Mike Gartner played 1,432 games and never made it to the final. One of the best pure goal-scorers the game has never seen, Gartner was traded by the Rangers to Toronto in 1994, the year the Rangers snapped a 54-year Cup-less streak. That had to hurt.
Luke Richardson, as solid defenceman in his day, played 1,417 games. No final. For Harry Howell, the Norris Trophy winner in 1966-67, it was 1,411 games. Roman Hmirlik has played 1,379 games and hasn't made it to the fourth round; nor did Teppo Numminen who played 1,372 games.
Ovechkin has a long way to go to catch those guys, but you have to wonder which direction his career will go from here.
Meanwhile, Kovalchuk and the Devils will face the Los Angeles Kings in this year's final. He has played 779 games in the NHL and on Friday scored his seventh goal of the playoffs in the deciding game against the Rangers, then assisted on the overtime winner by linemate Adam Henrique and remains a candidate to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the playoffs.
I suspect Ovechkin is watching this very closely. From Paris. And not liking it.
NHL teams that spend tend to win
James Mirtle, Globe and Mail, May 25, 2012
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/globe-on-hockey/nhl-teams-that-spend-tend-to-win/article2443687/
If you ask me, there are really three different kinds of teams in the NHL under the salary cap and this CBA.
There are those that spend, mainly with an eye on contending for the Stanley Cup.
There are those that don't spend, at least in part in order to get revenue sharing.
And then there are six or seven teams in the middle, usually trying to get to the point where they can join Group No. 1.
The basics behind how the league's CBA works is that teams that spend under what's called the cap midpoint (and that aren't in really big markets) are eligible for revenue sharing. The midpoint is set at $8-million under the cap, meaning this season it's $56.3-million.
Another $8-million below that is the salary floor.
Most of the teams that are successful in the NHL these days are like the ones left in these playoffs: the New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils and Los Angeles Kings.
They're in larger markets, they spend big and don't really concern themselves with the floor or the midpoint. (There are obviously exceptions, which I'll get into later.)
But every team that has won the Stanley Cup since the salary cap came in has been a cap team, going back to when the ceiling was just $39-million and even the Carolina Hurricanes didn't mind spending that high (they were about $3.5-million under).
The past three years, with the cap skyrocketing, it's really only been bigger market teams that have been able to spend.
Breaking teams into those three groups I mentioned above, here's where they fit based on the last three seasons (in order of cap dollars spent):
Big spenders ($171-million or more): Philadelphia, Vancouver, Calgary, Pittsburgh, Washington, New Jersey, Montreal, Boston, San Jose, Detroit, NY Rangers, Buffalo, Toronto and Chicago
Midlevel spenders ($156-million or more): Minnesota, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Ottawa, Edmonton, Columbus and Tampa Bay
Below midpoint (less than $156-million): Florida, Carolina, Dallas, Phoenix, Nashville, St. Louis, Colorado, Winnipeg/Atlanta and NY Islanders
For the most part, the teams in the top group do very well, year after year. The last three seasons, they've averaged 98.2 points a season and a total of 13.5 playoff wins.
Compare that with those in the midlevel or low level group, who have averaged 86.5 points a season and a total of just 4.25 playoff wins.
Do the highest spending teams win?
Over the past three seasons, the top 10 spending teams averaged 100.1 points each regular season and 15.2 total playoff wins
There are exceptions in there, of course.
The Leafs are a big one, as they have averaged less than 80 points a season while spending $173-million on salaries (13th highest). Montreal and Calgary also have been worse than the league average of 92 points while spending at or near the cap every year.
And Edmonton and Columbus have posted two of the worst records in the league despite spending money in the midrange the last three years.
Meanwhile, on the low end, there are two success stories. Both the Predators and Coyotes have averaged 101 points a season while spending less than $150-million (ranking them 25th and 26th in spending).
On balance, however, it's those teams at the top winning, especially in the playoffs.
That's not always simply because they spend more either. Many of the teams on the low end have been poorly managed, have ownership issues and low attendance and will have a tough time moving up the spending chart (depending on how the new CBA functions).
But it's worth pointing out how big of a difference that $16-million gap between the floor and the ceiling seems to make.
(From a purely statistical point of view, there's a pretty strong relationship between what teams have spent and how often they've won. Over the past three seasons, the correlation between cap hit and regular season points has been .486. The correlation between cap hit and playoff wins, meanwhile, has been .536.)
Below is a chart of all 30 teams based on their average point totals and total spending over the past three years. (See URL at top).
To pick out a few outliers: On the far left are the Islanders, who spend little, and at the very bottom are the Oilers, who rarely win. And the very top right are the Canucks, who are making Canadian NHL teams respectable all on their own.
Superstitious Sutter a slave to routine
NEWARK— ERIC DUHATSCHEK, Globe and Mail, May 29 2012
Soon after Darryl Sutter took over the Los Angeles Kings, he moved into former coach Terry Murray’s Manhattan Beach house and began the process of learning L.A.’s complex freeway system.
More than once, he got lost along the way and, sometimes, he shared rides with members of the coaching staff to make the travel easier. Then, during one particularly bad patch of the NHL season, Sutter drove to the Staples Center alone – and the Kings won.
You can guess the rest of the story.
Is Sutter superstitious? Is Viking, Alta., the centre of the hockey universe?
“Yeah, I am,” the head coach answered sheepishly, “but in real dumb ways. Like when I first came here and I didn’t know where the heck I was going. I’d travel with the coaching staff to games and it didn’t work very good. So I figured, I was better off getting lost but going by myself. Now, when guys ask me for rides, I say, ‘No, sorry.’ When you think how stupid that is, when you sit there and see that [fast-moving carpool] lane …”
Bernie Nicholls, a long-time associate of Sutter, who played for him with the Chicago Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks, laughs uproariously as he retells the story about Commuter Darryl.
“It’s funny,” Nicholls said, “but you get that way – and I don’t know who wouldn’t. People, when they do something and it’s successful, you keep doing it.”
In fairness, superstitions are rarely rooted in cold, hard logic and maybe a better description is Sutter is a slave to routine and repetition. It is a linchpin of his coaching philosophy, which is why he gets so animated when talking about travel and game times and days off and recovery: all factors beyond the standards Xs and Os he believes are vital to success.
“When Darryl got here, one of the first things he said was, ‘I’m not a video guy,’ “ Nicholls said as the Kings prepared to open the Stanley Cup final series Wednesday against the New Jersey Devils. “Geez, these guys do more video than when Roger Neilson was coaching. But it’s all teaching.
“You know we had that NHL 36 [TV show]. Darryl wouldn’t let them in the dressing because he hates cameras, but I really wish he would have let them in to see him go, because he’s amazing. I don’t think people realize how smart he really is. … He’s taught these guys so much, and he’s so prepared. He doesn’t let one thing get by him.
“Right now, [the players] feel like they can’t lose – and that’s how you want to be.”
Sutter joined the Kings last December, after the Kings had fallen to 12th place in the Western Conference and general manager Dean Lombardi reluctantly showed Murray the door.
So far in these playoffs, just about everything has fallen into place for the Kings. They are 12-2 and dispatched the West’s three divisional champions –Vancouver Canucks, St. Louis Blues and Phoenix Coyotes – to qualify for only the second Stanley Cup final appearance in franchise history.
According to Kings centre Jarret Stoll, the reality of Darryl Sutter doesn’t accurately match the reputation.
Yes, Sutter can be a hard-and-demanding coach. No, he is not a screamer. The biggest issue for Kings players the first month was understanding Sutter’s instructions because the timbre of his voice is often so low.
“I would just say he’s very honest,” Stoll said. “That’s all. He’s just very honest. But he doesn’t miss anything. So you can’t go out there and think you’re working hard, or think you’re doing the right thing, because if you’re not, or you’re out of position, or you make a bad read, he’ll tell you. But you respect a guy like that because he’s just telling it the way it is.”
One of the things that keeps Sutter connected to the modern generation of players is he has children roughly the same age. His son, Brett, plays in the Carolina Hurricanes organization and got into 15 NHL games this season. Another son, Christopher, graduates from high school in Calgary this spring.
“He almost treats us as his own kids,” Stoll said. “He’ll tap you on the arm and he’ll say, ‘How are you doing today? Everything okay? How’s your family?’ “He cares. He really cares.”
Two of Sutter’s younger brothers, Brent and Duane, have their names on the Stanley Cup with the New York Islanders in the early 1980s. No one in the family has had a chance to do it since.
Sutter doesn’t talk like to talk about winning the Stanley Cup – just another one of those crazy hockey superstitions – but you know that it would mean the world to him to get his name on there as well.
“Trust me, every one of the guys in the room understands that,” Stoll said. “It’s one of my reasons – one of them – to see a guy like that win. It would be pretty special.”
Sutter at a glance
Born: Aug. 19, 1958
Played: 406 career NHL games, recording 161 goals, 118 assists and 288 penalty minutes. Sutter scored 20 goals or more five times in eight NHL seasons, including a career-high 40 in 1980-81. In 51 playoff games, he had 43 points (24 goals). He was the Chicago Blackhawks captain twice in his career, from 1982-85 and 1986-87.
Playoff coaching record: 59-56 (12-2 this season)
TIMELINE
June 7, 2004 – Head coach of the Calgary Flames for a 2-1 loss at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the decisive seventh game of the Stanley Cup final.
July 12, 2006 – Sutter steps down from the dual role as Calgary’s general manager/coach, turning the coaching portfolio over to Jim Playfair. Sutter had a regular-season record of 107-73-30 in roughly 2½ years behind the Calgary bench.
June 23, 2009 – Two weeks after Brent Sutter resigned as coach of the New Jersey Devils (after leading them to a franchise-record 51-win season), Sutter hires his younger brother to coach the Flames, replacing Mike Keenan, who’d previously replaced Playfair.
Dec. 28, 2010 – Sutter resigns as Flames GM and is replaced by Jay Feaster, who was GM in Tampa when the Lightning knocked off Calgary in 2004.
Dec. 20, 2011 – After firing Terry Murray and conducting a brief search, the Kings announced Sutter would become the 24th head coach in the team’s history.
Apr. 12, 2012 – Under Sutter, the Kings go 25-13-11 in 49 regular-season games, finishing third in the Pacific Division and eighth in the Western Conference.
Penalty kill the crucial difference for Stanley Cup champions
DAVID SHOALTS, Globe and Mail, May 29 2012
Special teams, we are always told, are the difference between champions and also-rans in the NHL playoffs.
Well, based on recent evidence, that is half-right, which might spell trouble for the New Jersey Devils when they open the Stanley Cup final Wednesday at home against the Los Angeles Kings. For it is penalty killing that is the crucial difference for Cup champions, not the power play, which gives the edge on paper to the Kings.
In the last four years, only one team, the 2010 Chicago Blackhawks, that won the Stanley Cup cracked the top five in the postseason power-play statistics. However, all four champions except the Boston Bruins last year were in the top five in penalty killing. But the Bruins' 84.4-per-cent success rate in 2011, which was sixth, was better than the Blackhawks in 2010 (83.3) and the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009 (83.3). In 2008, the Detroit Red Wings were fourth in the NHL playoffs with a success rate of 85.7 per cent.
So far in this year's playoffs, the Kings' power play is almost the same as the feeble unit iced by the 2011 Bruins, which was 14th among the 16 teams in the playoffs with an 11.4-per-cent success rate. The Kings are an embarrassing 8.1-per-cent on the power play, which puts them 15th in the post-season ranking.
The Devils' power play is a distant fourth to the Philadelphia Flyers, Florida Panthers and the Penguins, who are all above 30 per cent, but its 18.2 per cent is still more than twice as good as the Kings'. The trouble is, the Kings are vastly superior on the penalty kill, as they sit second with a 91.2-per-cent success rate with the Devils 13th at 74.2-per-cent.
What is even more impressive about the Kings is that their penalty killers are an important part of their offence. They scored five shorthanded goals so far this spring, which is two more goals than they scored playing with a one-man advantage. They scored their other three power-play goals in five-on-three situations.
The Kings may have a mere six power-play goals in the playoffs, but it leaves them at plus-one when you subtract the measly five power-play goals they surrendered. Throw in their five shorthanded goals and it's plus-six on special teams. The Devils, on the other hand, have 12 power-play goals but have given up 16 to opposition power plays, which leaves them at minus-four. They do have one shorthanded goal, so make it minus-three for the Devils on special teams. Still not encouraging.
However, there are some things to note about the Devils. In the last three games against the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference final, they killed off all six Ranger power plays and produced a power-play goal in two of the last three games. The Devils were also No. 1 in the NHL in penalty killing during the regular season with an 89.6-per-cent success rate while the Kings were fourth at 87.
Kings, Devils rewarded for creativity
Chris Stevenson, QMI Agency, May 29 2012
NEWARK, N.J. - The NHL's general managers will be meeting in Manhattan Wednesday and one of the topics will be the state of the game.
The good news on the style front is the two highest-scoring teams left in the playoffs have advanced to the final, which gets underway Wednesday night at the Prudential Center. In a league that often tries to play follow the leader, seeing the New Jersey Devils and the Los Angeles Kings, teams that have played some entertaining up-tempo hockey, being rewarded for their creativity is good for the fans and for the entertainment value of the game.
Maybe other teams will take notice.
The Kings are third in playoff scoring at 2.93 goals a game and the Devils are fourth overall with 2.83 goals a game (after that crazy opening-round series between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers, those two are ranked 1-2 in playoff scoring).
Scoring goals is good.
Who knew?
That the Devils are one of the teams is pretty remarkable, given their reputation. But these aren't your father's Devils under coach Peter DeBoer.
They're, well, kind of exciting to watch.
Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello said he didn't set out to make a change from the old trapping Devils of just a few years ago. It's been an evolution that was a function of the club's player personnel and the vision DeBoer brought with him when he was hired last summer.
"But the fundamental foundation of defence will never change," said Lamoriello during Media Day at the final Tuesday.
"I think if you look at the defence of this team, it's played as well as other teams have. It's that we had the talent and we also had the coach who had the sort of thought process of what he thought he could do with our forwards and yet not sacrifice defence and pushing it and getting them to do certain things. Our centre ice hasn't changed. What we've basically done is extended our game to the offensive end of it, but not with any sacrifice."
He said the presence of players like Ilya Kovalchuk, Zach Parise and Travis Zajac dictated the Devils employ a style that played to their strengths.
"I think their styles sort of really told us, without saying anything, that we should. I think I felt it," said Lamoriello.
He even fired off a bit of a pun when it came to the Devils and their reputation.
"I always take offence to the (Devils) teams that the people thought were defensive, those years they were second and third in scoring," Lamoriello said. "I always look at the differential of goals that win championships. A lot of high-scoring teams can win games. I never worried about that. But we would still have that style if the players here, that's what we needed to win. We're going to do whatever we need to do to win and we're not going to apologize for it."
Kings coach Darryl Sutter emphasised more of an attacking style when he took over the club partway through the season.
"It's something we tried to put in place here, more of an aggressive -- not where you're giving up anything -- but more of a forceful game," said Sutter. "You try and emulate teams that try and do that."
There's no question the players enjoy playing with the puck more than chasing it.
Kings forward Jarret Stoll has watched what's gone on in some other series -- teams playing the "1-4," as he called it -- and said constantly defending takes a lot out of a team.
"You've got to pressure. You give teams time and space -- maybe you're taking away lanes -- but you give teams time and space all the time and they're going to pick you apart," he said. "You play D-zone coverage, it's tough to play the game like that. It's tough hockey to play. It's heavy hockey to play. You want to be playing in the offensive zone. That's the fun part of the game and being creative and trying to get shots and trying to get goals.
"You play D-zone hockey all night and you're going to be tired at the end of the night, at the end of that shift. It's going to wear you out."
The players like to play with the puck, but at this point, at this time of the year, there's no extra points for style.
"If we win four games 1-0," said Devils forward Petr Sykora, "we'll be the happiest people."
Gretzky's great regret
Terry Jones ,Edmonton Sun, May 29 2012
EDMONTON - It’s Wayne Gretzky’s Great Regret.
And he’s going to be there cheering for the Los Angeles Kings to finally get done what he didn’t get done in 1993.
Gretzky says he’ll be going to Game 3 of the Stanley Cup final in Los Angeles. And one suspects he’ll play a significant role in ceremonies for the first Stanley Cup final in L.A. since the only one ever held there before, the one he led the Kings to in 1993.
“Probably the two greatest regrets I have in playing hockey were being swept by the New York Islanders in our first Stanley Cup final in Edmonton and losing that Stanley Cup final in 1993 with the L.A. Kings,” Gretzky said in a telephone interview with your correspondent Tuesday.
Considering the Islanders were a dynasty and that was the Oilers first year in the Stanley Cup final, he suggest that makes 1993 the biggest regret that way.
“Losing that Stanley Cup final in 1993 was devastating. I think about it all the time.
“I see a lot of parallels with Los Angeles in it again this year and when we made it back in 1993.
“One thing I remember is that all our series started on the road. One thing that is definitely different though is that all our games on the road were in Canada. We played Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. We were the only team to go to the Stanley Cup final and play all four of our series against Canadian teams.
“What made the 1993 team special is that we weren’t the best team. It’s very similar to this year’s team. They started every game on the road, too.
“If you asked any hockey expert back in 1993, we weren’t high on anybody’s list to get to the final. And the Kings were eighth this year, although there’s a lot more parity today and if they’d won a couple more games they could have been third by finishing first in their division.
“There’s no question, though, since the playoffs started the L.A. Kings have been the best team to come out of the West. The games have been close but the series haven’t been close. They’re definitely peaking at the right time.”
Gretzky has amazing recall of all the games back in 1993.
“I remember Game 5 in Vancouver Gary Shuchuk of Edmonton scored the winner, he picked one out of the air.”
He didn’t mention Game 6 against Toronto when he scored the winner or Game 7 where he scored three goals and an assist in a 5-4 win.
“We went straight from Toronto to the Montreal for the final and we won Game 1,” remembered Gretzky.
Game 2, of course, is where it happened. Marty McSorley was caught with an illegal stick on a measurement and a Kings lead turned into an overtime loss.
“We knew they’d call somebody’s stick,” said Gretzky.
“And, yes, it turned around the series, no question.
“But do I feel it was Marty’s fault? No. Marty probably played his best hockey in those playoffs that year. But I really believe if we’d taken a 2-0 lead in the series it would have been tough for Montreal to win four of the next five. We lost three of four in overtime, Games 2-3-4.”
You’d figure that the Miracle On Manchester series the Oilers lost to the L.A. Kings would rank right up there on Gretzky’s on-ice regrets lists, but the monumental collapse of the Oilers leading Game 3 5-0 and losing the best of five series — an event which hit its 30th anniversary year this season — doesn’t register that way, he insists.
“Maybe it’s because I ended up on both sides of it,” said the greatest player in the history of hockey who Peter Pocklington sold to Bruce McNall in L.A.
“It’s the most recognized moment in the history of the Kings. But on the other side of it, it’s the series I believe that made the Edmonton Oilers,” he said of the third-year NHL team which amassed 111-points in the standings.
“It was a huge lesson for us. We lost Game 1 10-8, Game 3 6-5 and Game 5 7-4. The games we won were 3-2 and 3-2. There was a lot of lesson in there.”
I told Gretzky about the old Northlands Coliseum seat the Oilers presented me at a luncheon for my Hockey Hall of Fame honour in the fall and how the last line on the wooden seat-back inscription featured the words from my column back then: “Weak-kneed wimps.”
He roared with laughter.
“That was the reality,” he said.
Gretzky says he was part of giving the Kings that one. And he’ll be there cheering for them to win this even bigger one.
“This is the most excitement there’s been for hockey in L.A. since 1993 and it’s time. Obviously I’m pulling for L.A,” he said.
Argos coach takes long road in pursuit of knowledge
TORONTO— RACHEL BRADY, Globe and Mail, May 29, 2012
Toronto Argonauts head coach Scott Milanovich tells a story from 1996, like it happened yesterday.
It was during his rookie season as a backup quarterback with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. There were murmurs in the locker room after the NFL team sunk to 0-5. Surely, change was coming.
But coach Tony Dungy confidently walked in and told his team he believed in his offensive and defensive schemes, and if everyone bought in, the team would improve.
“We bought in and went .500 down the stretch, and the next year, we made the playoffs,” Milanovich said. “He stuck with what he believed in and rode out the tough times, and I learned from that. He turned around a really struggling program.”
Milanovich will open his first training camp as a head coach this week, and he’s armed with experiences gleaned from coaches such as Dungy, Monte Kiffin, Marc Trestman, Jim Barker and all-star quarterback Anthony Calvillo.
He mined knowledge from stops in the NFL Europe, CFL, XFL and NFL. Now, he gets to steer the ship with his own staff (including the defensive co-ordinator who used to give him fits, Chris Jones).
Growing up in Butler, Pa., Milanovich wasn’t big on school work but loved sports. The son of a high-school football coach, he played quarterback. He loved the Pittsburgh Steelers and idolized Jim Kelly, who was from Pittsburgh and led the University of Miami’s pass-happy offence before his Hall of Fame NFL career with the Buffalo Bills.
“I never thought about pursuing anything else but football,” the 39-year-old Milanovich said during a lengthy interview. “It used to make my mom nervous that I had no other career plans.”
Milanovich played at the University of Maryland, and was an NFL backup for four years. The Bucs defensive co-ordinator, Kiffin, would bark at Milanovich to precisely mimic each week’s opposing quarterback, teaching him a diverse array of looks on both sides of the ball. He bunked on the road with Trent Dilfer (who later won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens) and learned from the starter he still calls highly intelligent. Milanovich watched Dungy’s habits and those of assistants who would later become head coaches, too (Lovie Smith, Herm Edwards and Rod Marinelli).
He then backed up Tommy Maddox for the XFL’s Los Angeles Xtreme, where current Argonauts general manager Barker was offensive co-ordinator.
“Jim knew I really wanted to coach and jump-started that for me. He had me draw up plays,” Milanovich said. “Tommy wanted to have the play and execute it, but I was interested in scheming and designing plays. That’s when Jim and I started to develop a bond.”
After dabbling a little in the CFL, Milanovich headed for NFL Europe, coaching quarterbacks and co-ordinating offences with the Rhein Fire and Cologne Centurions.
“The NFL wanted player development out of that – they weren’t concerned really about who won and lost, so it was a great place for young coaches to learn without being too heavily scrutinized,” he said.
Back in Canada with the Montreal Alouettes, he coached Calvillo, who, Milanovich says, taught him so much about the three-down game.
Early on, Milanovich suggested making a major change to the way Calvillo dropped back with the ball. The quarterback agreed, and the two worked on it. A speed-bump came as he tried it out in a preseason game and threw three picks in a loss.
“He could have said ‘I’ve been doing it my way a long time and I’ve been pretty damn successful,’ but he didn’t,” Milanovich said. “A.C. said ‘I’m going to get this’ and he stuck with it. We both continued to learn, no matter how much we already knew.”
Milanovich roomed with Jones briefly during that time on Nuns’ Island near Montreal, and the two coaches would spend many late hours drawing up and scrutinizing one another’s plays. They thought about one of them some day earning a head coaching job and working together again.
Now, here they are in Toronto.
Milanovich speaks frankly of turning down the Toronto job two years ago to remain Montreal’s offensive co-ordinator and knows he made the right call. He says Barker’s work as Toronto head coach/GM the past two seasons makes it a better fit now.
“I got the sense it wasn’t stable back then, but I had a pit in my stomach for weeks about turning down a head coaching job, because you never know if you’ll get another chance,” Milanovich said. “They cultivated my career in Montreal and made me a champion twice [2009, 2010]. I will forever be thankful to them and miss them.
“But there was no hesitation this time. This is the opportunity I have been waiting for.”
After the Cup now, but a year ago, Devils coach DeBoer was unemployed
The Canadian Press, 2012-05-30
NEWARK, N.J. - A year ago, Peter DeBoer was unemployed and wondering about his future.
Now he is coach of the New Jersey Devils and facing the Los Angeles Kings in the Stanley Cup.
"Like most unemployed guys, you're sitting at home wondering where you're going to work next," DeBoer recalled with a laugh in his pre-game news conference before Game 1 Wednesday. "Thinking about your future, talking about selling your house. It seems humorous now, but when you go through something like that it's not.
"I have a rock-solid wife who really I thought kept me in a good place through that time. It wasn't that long ago."
Fired by the Florida Panthers in April 2011, he was hired by the Devils last July.
Veteran backup goalie Johan Hedberg says he was impressed by DeBoer from the get-go.
"I think from Day 1 you could tell he's an intelligent man and I think he learned from whatever happened in Florida that didn't go right and probably took his coaching to the next level just as players have to do," said Hedberg.
"Our whole coaching staff's been phenomenal. I'm very impressed with how they prepare themselves and how they prepare us and how they stay composed at all times. I can't see it being any better than how they are already doing it. They have certainly been a big part of this team having success this year."
It's hard to miss the Devils' heritage.
In their dressing room, there is a ring of honour celebrating award winners and other Devils of note. The door that leads to the training room and the players' inner sanctum opens to a hallway with photos of past Devils teams.
"That's something that I think everybody feels when they come to this organization, because you're surrounded by it, that it's extremely professional," said the 39-year-old Hedberg, who previously played for Pittsburgh, Vancouver, Dallas and Atlanta.
"There is nothing around here that could be any better. There are no excuses for us not to succeed. Everything we need is provided from the great coaches to great facilities to equipment managers to trainers. Everything is there. ... I felt that from Day 1 and it hasn't changed a bit."
The Devils planned no changes to their lineup for Game 1.
Kings coach Darryl Sutter said forward Simon Gagne has recovered from his concussion but offered nothing else. The 32-year-old Gagne, a seven-time 20-goal scorer, has not played since Dec. 26.
"It's what we said two weeks ago. There was zero chance and now there's a chance, right?" Sutter said.
"I'm not answering that question again about Simon. Cleared for contact, cleared for practice, travelling with the team. So there won't be any further update on that one because, quite honestly, the answer is the same and I don't know how to answer it, right?
"You tell the truth or don't say nothing."
Bettman and Fehr both cautious toward upcoming labour talks
NEWARK, N.J.— ERIC DUHATSCHEK, Globe and Mail, May 30 2012
They were separated by roughly 40 feet Wednesday for most of Gary Bettman’s state of the union address, the NHL commissioner at the podium, addressing a room full of reporters, NHL players association director Donald Fehr at the back of the room, listening carefully.
It remains to be seen if the divide between the two men grows greater in the weeks and months ahead.
Bettman confirmed that at long last, the NHL and the players association have exchanged dates to begin the process of negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement. Fehr said not to read too much into that development, however, because it was simply “due course” stuff.
Officially, the CBA expires on Sept. 15 and both Bettman and Fehr circled carefully around the issue of how the process might unfold.
Some believe that the two sides are inevitably on a collision course, seven years after they lost a full season (2004-05) to a lockout.
But Bettman brushed aside that suggestion, on the grounds that the two sides have not had “a substantive discussion” on what they may be looking for in collective bargaining, so to suggest that they are at loggerheads already would be premature.
Fehr, too, adopted a cautious posture.
“I have learned that making predictions in this business is a bit of a foolish enterprise,” said Fehr. “Too many things can happen that can cause you to change course. Sometimes, significant things appear significant right away, and other times, they don’t. In this particular circumstance, I feel even less comfortable than doing it, much less than in baseball, because I don’t have the experience with the people or the direct issues.”
Last month, the NHL gave the obligatory 120-day notice that it would terminate the current CBA. Bettman indicated that seven years was as long as he imagined the accord lasting, even as he announced record revenues of $3.3 billion. Revenues are not to be confused with profit and loss, however, a subject that Bettman was unwilling to broach.
“We love labor peace,” said Bettman. “Labor peace is preferable to the alternative.”
Both the National Football League and the National Basketball Associations endured labor issues this past season, but both were ultimately able to negotiate new contracts without losing a full year.
“All I can say is, with all the talk about other sports, the one that is far and away the most stable is baseball,” said Fehr, who joined the NHLPA, after years in charge of the major league baseball’s player union.
Fehr said he has spent most of the past two years, getting up to speed on the issues that separate the industries of hockey and baseball.
“I find myself always wondering if I actually understand it right, so I want to make sure. That’s why I have a good staff. I’m talking to players all the time. That’s why I’m not the slightest bit bashful about asking questions and seeking assistance from anybody who may be able to assist the players in this regard.
“But if the question is, am I worried about our ability to negotiate the agreement, I’m not.”
Bettman had one other piece of interesting information to disseminate. A year after unveiling the league’s new player safety department on the day of Game 1 in Vancouver, Bettman said that the 2011-12 season saw a “modest decline in concussions.
“It’s the first time in three years that this figure has declined; and this despite even more aggressive diagnoses and even more conservative treatment,” said Bettman, who believes “that player behaviour is beginning to change. We have seen countless examples this season, where players have altered their path to a hit or to a play. The fact is, with over 50,000 hits in a season, we’re in the low double digits of the ones that we need to continue to work to get out of the game.”
Is Dallas Eakins the next AHL-to-NHL coaching success story?
Toronto— James Mirtle, Globe and Mail, May 30, 2012
As the coach of the only Toronto-based pro hockey team in the playoffs in the last three years, it's understandable that Dallas Eakins is getting some attention.
Even more so now that a championship will be on the line for the Toronto Marlies.
And there are still four openings for NHL jobs at the moment, with three of them Canadian based teams: Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Washington.
The Canadiens job is out of the question because of the language issue, and the Flames one appears earmarked for either Bob Hartley or Troy Ward.
Eakins, however, may land an interview (and possibly a job) with the Oilers or Capitals (who drafted him in 1985) once the AHL playoffs are over.
He could also wind up back with the Leafs affiliate again, something those in the organization say he'd be fine with for another year or two.
The Marlies bid for the Calder Cup, meanwhile, kicks off on Friday in a series that will put a significant spotlight on Eakins's abilities. His team is the underdog against the Norfolk Admirals as the result of plenty of injuries, creating quite a challenge for a coaching staff that has done an excellent job through three rounds.
Eakins's players all raved this week about how much of their success is due to those behind the bench.
"He’s a players’ coach, there’s no doubt about it," said Philippe Dupuis, who credits Eakins with turning his season around after a difficult start with the Leafs. "I’ve rarely been on a team where every guy actually likes the coach and wants to win for him. Every team, there’s always like five or six guys that don’t. On this team, everyone likes Dally. Everyone likes the coaching staff."
"I think his biggest thing is he’s honest with the players," assistant coach Derek King added. "He doesn’t BS anything. He tells you how it is. I think his honesty is a big part of him having success. Guys buy into it; guys like playing for him."
Eakins's back story is hard not to like. A career minor-leaguer who only played 120 NHL games (but won AHL and IHL championships), he earned a reputation as a hard worker wherever he went, often impressing his big league teammates when he was called up.
Even when he would be sitting as a healthy scratch for long periods, Eakins was doing bag skates and working harder than anyone, something King said he saw often when they were roommates together briefly with the Leafs.
"And look what he’s done with it," King said. "Hats off to him. I think he’ll have success anywhere he goes."
King, who played 800-plus NHL games and had three 70-point seasons with the New York Islanders, was retired and out of hockey completely when Eakins was hired for the Marlies job and came calling for an assistant.
He jumped at the chance to work with his old friend, who he describes as "a student of the game" going back to his days as a junior player in Peterborough when Eakins had a close relationship with Roger Nielson.
“When the opportunity came, I couldn’t say no," King said. "Especially to Dallas.”
Eakins's strengths as a coach have been evident throughout the Marlies playoff run in their own end, as Toronto has allowed just 23 goals in 13 games. They've also continued to be one of the better shorthanded teams after posting the top penalty kill rate (89%) in the AHL all season.
Like many in the hockey world, King doesn't see the NHL as being all that far away for Eakins.
He joked that he only hopes he gets to go with him.
"I think this is just helping his cause," King said of the Marlies playoff success. "Obviously teams like winning coaches. But win or lose, he’s always done the same job. He hasn’t changed anything. And if he wins a Calder Cup, he’ll be the same guy he was when we were out of the playoffs.
"He’s just a real steady, inspirational guy. I can’t think of really anything bad to say about the guy. There’s no flaws really."
Flames hire Bob Hartley as new head coach
CALGARY— Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail, May 31, 2012
Ultimately, the Calgary Flames’ choice when it came to making a new coaching hire was between the tried-and-true candidate, Bob Hartley, and the rising star, Troy Ward. Both were familiar to Flames’ general manager Jay Feaster, who worked closely with Ward this season, where he did a commendable job guiding the team’s primary minor-league affiliate, the Abbotsford Heat.
But Hartley was an intriguing choice too, someone who’d coached extensively in the NHL for both the Colorado Avalanche, where he won a Stanley Cup, and with the Atlanta Thrashers, where he had a team that was often overmatched in games.
It was never completely clear which way Feaster would lean. Officially, he tried to deflect his interest in Hartley by noting that he was one year into a two-year contract to coach Zurich of the Swiss league. But when Hartley took the job in Switzerland, he negotiated an out-clause for three possible destinations, Calgary and the Montreal Canadiens, along with a third city, Quebec that is hoping to land an NHL team one of these days.
Hartley is known as a hard task master. Left winger Alex Tanguay knows him better than any player on the team, after breaking in with Colorado as a rookie when Hartley was coaching there. Tanguay’s relationship with Hartley reportedly had some up-and-down moments, but there is little doubt that whatever Hartley’s methods may be, they work. Zurich won a championship; Hartley also won in the minors with Hershey in 1997 and then in the NHL with the Avs. Moreover, the notion of hiring a coach with an old-school attitude is de rigueur again in the NHL, in the wake of Darryl Sutter’s success in Los Angeles, and Dale Hunter’s with the Washington Capitals.
In a statement, Feaster called Hartley, "a winner. Bob has won at every level he has coached, from the QMJHL to the AHL to the NHL to Switzerland, and we are confident he is going to continue his winning ways in Calgary,” said Flames General Manager Jay Feaster. “He is a tireless worker, an outstanding motivator, a great bench boss and game strategist; and a teacher at heart. Moreover, he is a great person as well. We look forward to Bob and his wife Micheline joining the Flames family, and to Bob taking our hockey club to the next level.”
What I remember most about Hartley is a time when I was travelling with the Avalanche, soon after they’d acquired Theo Fleury from the Calgary Flames. The trip took the team to Florida, for a game against Pavel Bure, and after falling far behind, they rallied on an exceptional third-period performance from Peter Forsberg. Post-game, Hartley had a lot of nice things to say about Forsberg, and in every reference, he pointedly referred to him as Mr. Forsberg. Mr. Forsberg this. Mr. Forsberg that. It was a means of showing respect; and of distinguishing this virtuoso performance from a lot of other very good ones.
Hartley knows how to handle skilled teams. He knows how to handle high-end players. He should be a good coach for Jarome Iginla.
Hartley thanked the ZSC Lions for agreeing to let him leave the organization after a championship season to pursue the opportunity in Calgary, a city he knows reasonably well after his years in Denver with the Avs.
“It’s great to return to the League in a city, a community and an organization that has such an outstanding reputation and passion for hockey and success. I look forward to assuming my position and starting the preparation process for the 2012-13 season.”
During his five seasons in Colorado, the Avalanche won four division titles and made four appearances in the conference finals. Hartley's third season was ultimately his most successful one as Colorado steam-rolled through the league with a 52–16–10–4 record, a division title along with the President's Trophy and the Stanley Cup. Hartley’s tenure with the Avalanche franchise ended in December of 2002 with a 193–109–48 regular season record and a 49–31 playoff record. His 193 wins are a franchise record. He became the only coach in team history to record 40 or more wins during his first four seasons as head coach.
Hartley was running Atlanta during the 2006-07 season in which they won their first Southeast Division title, setting new franchise records for wins and points with a 43–28–11 record, good enough for 97 points and third seed in the Eastern Conference. The team also clinched its first playoff berth in franchise history. A slow start for the Thrashers in 2007-08 season resulted in Hartley and the club parting ways.
Nick Lidstrom walks away from Red Wings on his own terms
Cam Cole, National Post, May 31, 2012
NEWARK, N.J. — The only better defenceman I saw play the game, Bobby Orr, never got the chance to go out on top. His knees didn’t last long enough, and he limped into retirement after a very unfortunate idea led him to finish his career as a borderline cripple in Chicago.
That’s why Nick Lidstrom’s decision, in his words, to “walk away from the game with pride, rather than having the game walk away from me” wasn’t a sad occasion at all, though there are those in Detroit — general manager Ken Holland and coach Mike Babcock no doubt topping that list — who were plenty crushed to see him make it official Thursday.
Not to mention the Red Wings’ legion of fans who would have wept when the magnificent 42-year-old Swede briefly lost his own famous composure while talking about family and trainers and ushers and “Al, who looks after the ice” at Joe Louis Arena.
Holland has kidded often that the day Lidstrom retired, he’d be going, too, because the GM’s job would immediately get to be about twice as difficult.
He was only half-joking.
Holland will stay, Babcock will stay, but Hockeytown has just taken a punch to the solar plexus — one it knew was inevitable, but hoped wouldn’t arrive for a few more years — and it’s going to take a while to recover its breath, if it ever does, completely.
It may even be the end of what passes for a dynasty in these salary-capped days: 20 seasons with Lidstrom, 20 straight playoff appearances, four Stanley Cups. Without him, do we suddenly find out that the Red Wings are just another pretty good team?
As terrific as scorers Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg are, as promising as Holland’s chances may be of signing Nashville free agent Ryan Suter as a new cornerstone of the defence, the old blueprint will have to go now, because the man who drew all the threads together and led the Wings with impeccable grace and effortless class is gone.
And considering that the last player to be so universally lauded for possessing the same qualities, Jean Beliveau, retired 41 years ago — the year after Lidstrom was born — it might be a long time before we see his kind again.
“Nick is going to go down, in my opinion, as the most valuable player of his era, as one of the greatest Red Wings of all time, as one of the greatest defencemen of all time,” said Holland, who had the same sort of look on his face as Rangers coach John Muckler wore in New York, the day Wayne Gretzky officially pulled the plug.
“Yeah, I had a long conversation with Wayne,” Muckler said that day in 1999. “I don’t think there’s a career waiting for me in sales.”
“Our team and our game are losing a tremendous ambassador today,” Holland said, of the defenceman and captain he described as “no-maintenance.”
He had tried to talk Lidstrom into keeping on keeping on. He was still a 24-minutes-per-game stud at age 41 this past season. But Lidstrom couldn’t stand the knowledge that he was not quite the same player he had been.
“I’m aware that some people feel my skills have only diminished some … and that I can still help the Wings win games. I truly appreciate their support,” he said.
“At some point, time catches up to everyone and diminishes their ability to perform. This year, it’s painfully obvious to me that my strength and energy level are not rebounding enough for me to continue. My drive and motivation are not where they need to be for me to play at this level.
“It’s not that the tank is completely empty. It just doesn’t have enough to carry me through every day. I don’t want to lose that … I don’t want to say status, but that level of play that I’ve reached. I can’t cheat myself.”
Many of those reading the tributes to Lidstrom today will wonder what all the fuss is about. That’s because his skills and decision-making abilities were so subtle, so understated, so inadequately showcased by the bare glimpses TV provided, he rarely seemed to be playing under stress.
His career plus/minus of plus-450 — playing almost every minute against the other teams’ top lines — is so monumental, it needs to be put into perspective. The next highest-ranked active defenceman, Chris Pronger, is plus-183. After that it’s Zdeno Chara at 143 and Sami Salo at 114.
Lidstrom’s face, as he conducted his farewell Thursday, was unmarked, still boyish, not at all that of an old warhorse, perhaps because in many ways, his hockey intelligence allowed him to play above the game, seeing things develop in slow motion, anticipating flawlessly, almost never misreading a play or putting himself in a vulnerable position.
Yet he was a defenceman who played a significant amount of his career retrieving pucks, facing the glass with forecheckers coming at him from behind.
Like Gretzky in his prime, though, he saw the game so well, he was rarely hit. Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t tough. One remembers the 2009 playoff season in which he suffered a bruised testicle so painfully swollen that Holland’s gruesome description of it one evening at Team Canada’s fall 2009 Olympic team camp was enough to make a handful of reporters cringe.
Lidstrom was, however, unfailingly polite and available throughout the ordeal. He even thanked the media Thursday for “being real professional to me. Sometimes you can’t tell everything that’s going on but I’m sure you understand … but I tried to treat you with respect and I felt I got that back from you guys, so I appreciate that.”
That was Lidstrom.
“We call him the Perfect Human,” his fellow Wings defenceman and Swede, Niklas Kronwall, once said.
Edmonton Oilers defenceman Ryan Whitney wrote on Twitter that the game was never meant to be as easy as Lidstrom made it look.
At the GMs’ meeting Wednesday, San Jose’s Doug Wilson called Lidstrom “the standard of how we want people to play the game. Ultimate professional. When we’re teaching young defencemen how to play the game, I don’t think there’s anybody that’s ever been as technically strong as him.
“You don’t replace players like that. You don’t,” Wilson said.
New Jersey Devils’ Henrik Tallinder, at the Prudential Center the day after Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, understood the significance of the day.
“He’s been an icon in Sweden for so long. I mean, two decades is a long time playing in the best league in the world,” he said. “In my eyes, he’s the best Swedish player we’ve had over here. No offence to Forsberg and Sundin. Just with four Stanley Cups, seven Norris Trophies, that says it all, I think.”
His seven Norris Trophies tie him with Doug Harvey, trailing only Orr’s eight.
“Just watching him play,” Tallinder said, in a very Swedish way, “you would describe it once … it’s like a symphony.”
An unfinished symphony, the Red Wings might argue.
But it’s Nick Lidstrom’s music, and he gets to write the ending.
NHL planning mini-summit on state of game
CHRIS STEVENSON, QMI Agency, June 1 2012
NEWARK, N.J. - The NHL will shelve its Research and Development Camp this summer in favour of a mini-summit involving players, managers, coaches and officials.
The topic will be officiating and the state of the game.
"Instead of an R and D camp, that's what we have scheduled," said NHL senior vice-president of hockey operations Colin Campbell after the league's general managers concluded a day of meetings at a Manhattan hotel.
Campbell said the main complaint from the managers was the level of obstruction that has crept into the game, particularly on the forecheck.
A hybrid icing rule, which would see the play blown down if the defenceman won a race back to the hashmarks, was shot down by the managers. They would like to see how it works in the American Hockey League before contemplating putting it in the NHL game.
"The group decided not to implement hybrid icing. From my perspective, it's something that I think makes sense, but I think the group is a lot smarter than I am," said Toronto Maple Leafs president and GM Brian Burke. "We'll see if the American league can try it and see how it looks there.
"I think the sense was the players have been educated and they're very careful now on icings. Touch wood, we haven't had a serious problem with it in a long time. The race is exciting, the fans like it and I think it was more a sense it's not the urgent issue that people think it is."
There was also some talk about carrying penalties over from the end of one game to the beginning of the next, but it had no traction.
"I think that was viewed as kind of radical and it would require a lot more thought," said Burke. "I think it would pretty bizarre to just start the next playoff game shorthanded. I think that needs some study. I do think within a playoff round there are actions that it probably makes sense to have a penalty that carries forward if it happens late in a game, but that requires a great deal more thought, I think."
OTHER ITEMS
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said talks on a new collective bargaining agreement will begin soon and said he doesn't understand some of the dire predictions he's heard.
"I don't understand both the speculation and the degree of negativity that it connotes considering we, meaning the league and the Players' Association, have yet to have a substantive discussion on what we may each be looking for in collective bargaining," he said. "If somebody is suggesting it, it's either because there's something in the water, people still have the NBA and NFL on the brain, or they're just looking for news on a slow day. It is nothing more than speculation at this point. There can't be any substance to it because there haven't been any substantive conversations."
Bettman said things remain on track for the sale of the Phoenix Coyotes by the league to former San Jose Sharks executive Greg Jamison.
"He continues to do the two things he needs to do to secure the future of the Coyotes where they are, in Arizona: one, working to conclude a set of documents with the City of Glendale on the building management situation. And he continues to put his equity together. The City of Glendale, I believe next week, is supposed to vote on the management agreement. Once that's in place, I think Greg will be able to conclude, hopefully, the finalization of his equity raise," he said.
Bettman said he's not yet in a position to guarantee the Coyotes will be in Phoenix next season, but at this point there is no Plan B.
"I can't say anything with 100% certainty. I think the likelihood is, based on everything we know today, the process should conclude successfully, but it's not something I'm in a position to guarantee," he said.
The number of concussions is down this past season for the first time in three years, said Bettman.
Kevin Lowe: Vacant Oilers coaching job not discussed with Brent Sutter
SHAWINIGAN, Que. — The Canadian Press, Bill Beacon, May 22, 2012
One topic that did not come up when Oilers president Kevin Lowe was at the recently completed IIHF World Hockey Championship was whether Brent Sutter would like to be the new coach in Edmonton.
Sutter, who coached Canada at the tournament in Helsinki, is rumoured to be the front-runner to replace Tom Renney, who was fired last week after two years behind the Edmonton bench.
And while Sutter is most closely linked to the arch rival Calgary Flames, where he coached the last three seasons, Lowe sees no reason why he wouldn’t be a candidate for Edmonton.
But it wasn’t raised at the worlds
”Brent’s been a good coach,” Lowe said Tuesday at the Bionest Arena, where his son Keegan is playing for the Edmonton Oil Kings in the MasterCard Memorial Cup. ”We’ve seen him recently.
”He’s Albertan. He knows the Battle of Alberta well.”
But Lowe said he didn’t want to discuss it because ”technically, he’s still under contract with the Flames.
”But more importantly, with the sacredness of the world championships and everything it means, he didn’t need any distractions. He’d just come from the Flames, making the mutual decision that he wasn’t going to continue to work with them, and he had a new coaching staff and team to learn in a short time.”
But, he added ”I don’t see why he wouldn’t want to coach the Oilers.”
Many names have been put forward, including Oilers assistant Ralph Kruger, veteran coach Marc Crawford and Jon Cooper, who was named AHL coach of the year with Norfolk.
Lowe said he had no announcement to make, but said ideally a coach will be named before the NHL draft in June.
”That seems to be the start of the next season,” said Lowe. ”Hopefully that will work out, although I’m not sure if that’s going to be the case.
”We know we have a stable of very good, young NHLers, other than the obvious ones, and we’ve drafted well over a number of years. We just want to find a guy to steer them into that next stage.”
Some felt firing Renney after two seasons of working with that young talent was premature, and questioned why they waited until mid-May instead of giving him the chance to start looking for a new job when the season ended.
”I’m not going to get into the whys of what Tom didn’t do well,” Lowe said. ”The fact that we took as long as we did to me shows we gave it careful consideration and [were] respectful of Tom and the job he did.
”He’s a very good hockey man and he’s going to work in the game again. He can do anything in the game. He can be a manager. He can coach. A number of things led to the decision. And we felt we’re still in a transitional period, so we can make changes at this point and not really affect the team overall.”
That transition includes whoever the Oilers select with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, which they hold for a third straight year after taking gifted forwards Taylor Hall and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins the last two years.
Lowe said the scouting staff will be asked to pick who they feel will be the best player in the long run, rather than taking a player who suits the team’s needs, like a defenceman.
The Canadian team in Helsinki, which lost in the quarter-finals, included Ryan Murray, a draft-eligible defenceman who is expected to go in the top five or perhaps the top three. Lowe likes him.
”I’ve never been around such a young player who came in to play at such a high level and do it with such calmness,” he said. ”He’s everything he’s been billed as.
”His composure, his skating ability. I don’t know what he projects to be down the road. That’s the difficult job when you’re assessing young guys. But no doubt he will play in the NHL and in all likelihood he could play next season based on his skating and strength and understanding of the game. I was really impressed.”
Another standout blue-liner could be one on the Oil Kings, Griffin Reinhart, the son of former NHL defence star Paul Reinhart.
”I tell everyone Griffin is Paul at six foot four,” Lowe said. ”Paul was a heck of a player. Most teams are looking at Griffin as being a 22-to-25 minute a night guy for a lot of years. He’ll be a top pick as well.”
Lowe was also asked if Gerard Gallant, coach of the defending Memorial Cup champion Saint John Sea Dogs, may be a candidate for Edmonton. Lowe said he didn’t know Gallant much as a coach, but said a player like Gallant used to be with the Detroit Red Wings was exactly what the Oilers are looking for. A big, hard-nosed winger who scores a lot of goals.
Lowe said his attention will be split in Shawinigan between helping his scouts assess talent for the draft and cheering on his son. Keegan Lowe asked his father specifically not to draft him last June so he could make his own way in the game. He was taken by the Carolina Hurricanes.
”He’s a better skater than I was,” he said. ”He takes a lot of pride in defending and a perfect game for him is not giving up any goals. If he can add to the offence, it’s a bonus. That was my game. I haven’t told him to do that. I said there’s more money in scoring. But, like I did, he’s figured out what he needs to do to be able to play.”
Dean
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Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
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