ERIC DUHATSCHEK
Globe and Mail Update Published on Monday, Jun. 26, 2006 11:45AM EDT Last updated on Wednesday, Apr. 08, 2009 3:58AM EDT
Hockey Hall selections delayed
Normally, NHL entry draft weekend marks the unofficial end of one hockey season and the July 1 opening of the free agency market signals the beginning of the next, but this year, the timing is a little different and there is one more main event remaining on the calendar — Hall Of Fame selections.
Because the NHL season stretched so long, the HHOF selection committee meetings, originally scheduled for last Wednesday in Toronto, had to be postponed a week. The reason: Four members of the committee had a conflicting commitment (to the NHL board of governors meetings in New York), so to ensure there was a quorum, the Hall postponed its get-together until this coming Wednesday.
The list of eligible players for the HHOF class of 2006 begins with Patrick Roy, whose 551 career regular-season wins is the most in NHL history and almost 100 victories ahead of the current second-place man, Ed Belfour. Roy also won four Stanley Cups and was selected the Conn Smythe trophy winner (as playoff MVP) a record three times.
Two of Roy's contemporaries, Mike Richter and Tom Barrasso, are also eligible for selection this year for the first time. Among forwards who have also met the criteria for selection (players must have been retired for three seasons to get consideration) are Doug Gilmour and Pavel Bure. Statistically, the most prominent defenceman that falls into that category is Phil Housley.
The Hall of Fame selection committee also has the right to consider any candidate that has been passed over in previous years.
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Updated Monday, June 26 at 11:45 a.m.
How did Calgary do it?
How did the Calgary Flames manage to pry Alex Tanguay loose from a divisional rival? According to general manager Darryl Sutter, he and his counterpart, Francois Giguere, have been negotiating the terms of the deal for more than a week; the only thing they needed to settle on were the draft choices involved in the transaction. Calgary gave up its second-rounder in this year's draft and a conditional pick in 2007. Presumably, that pick will change hands only if the Flames can sign Tanguay to a long-term contract extension. Like so many players in the NHL right now, Tanguay is a restricted free agent one year removed from unrestricted free agency, so the risk — from Calgary's perspective — is that he walks away after one year in the organization. In order to address his team's need for scoring, Sutter thought it was a gamble worth taking. Tanguay can play centre, but Sutter projects him as a left winger in the Flames' scheme of things. "He's a very consistent player," said Sutter. "He's played with and behind a lot of top players. For his age, to have accomplished what he has from a team and individual standpoint, it's a good move for us." Of surrendering Jordan Leopold in the deal, Sutter said: "To get a top player, you have to give up something." Sutter has not entered any contract negotiations with the Tanguay camp. "You're not allowed. To be honest, the deal was finalized only five minutes before it was announced." Calgary selected a goaltender, Leland Irving, from the Everett Silvertips of the WHL with its first-round pick. Sutter called Irving the best player available and said he didn't think he'd be available at Calgary's pick, after Los Angeles grabbed Jonathan Bernier with the 11th overall choice and Tampa took Riku Helenius 15th overall. "I've seen him play lots. He's a top young goalie in the world."
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 9:30 p.m.
Raycroft to Toronto for Rask
True to their word, the Maple Leafs went out and traded for a new No. 1 goaltender today, taking advantage of the Boston Bruins' goaltending surplus to acquire Andrew Raycroft, the 2004 Calder Trophy. In exchange, the Leafs gave up Tuukka Rask, the 21st selection in the 2005 entry draft.
It was a perfect marriage for both teams. The Bruins had three goalies under contract and believe they can go forward with Hannu Toivenen as their No. 1, with Tim Thomas in reserve. That left Raycroft expendable. The Leafs, meanwhile, had two quality young goaltenders in the pipeline — Justin Pogge, who starred for Canada at the world junior; and Rask, who starred for Finland. In a perfect world, they would have liked to keep both, but to get a player with NHL experience, who can help them win next year made the deal seem worth the risk. Jeff Gorton, the Bruins' assistant GM, described Rask as a guy the Bruins had targeted and said they had him rated in their top five in 2005, only to have the Leafs grab him one pick before their own in last year's draft. "He's one of, if not the best goalie, not in the league right now," said Gorton, of Rask. "We think we're solidifying our goaltending for a long time. There had to be a move, so this made sense -- for now and for the future."
Gorton said the decision to trade Raycroft was difficult because, "we drafted Andrew and he's a great kid. He won rookie of the year. He's a very good goalie. He'll do well in Toronto. But at the same time, it was an opportunity that we couldn't miss out on." Raycroft's season never got going, after he missed part of training camp in a contract dispute. Eventually, he signed, but missed a big chunk of the season as a result of groin, hamstring and knee injuries. By the time Raycroft was ready to play again, Thomas had come up from the minors and got the team on its only roll of the season. He ended up with exceedingly disappointing numbers: an 8-19 record, a 3.71 goals-against average and a save percentage of only .879 in 30 appearances. Among goalies that appeared in 30 or more games last season, those were the NHL's worst statistics. It was, in short, a season for Raycroft to forget. What went wrong? According to Gorton: "I would say, it was probably a little mistake for him not to play much during the lockout. Then to come back and hold out — whether that's the Bruins' fault or his fault, the blame probably lies somewhere in the middle. It just didn't work out. The year didn't go the way he wanted it to, or we wanted it to. I guess we mirrored each other." Gorton went on to say: "I think the situation (the losing, the injuries) got to Andrew, to be honest. I think the Joe Thornton trade got to him. I think a lot of things got to him. I can't say they wouldn't have gotten to me either. It's just a situation where, to be quite honest, it's a move we had to make."
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 8:56 p.m.
We're about to see Pavol Demitra's Wild side
Finally, another significant trade: The Minnesota Wild traded the 17th overall selection, plus Patrick O'Sullivan, one of their top prospects (he scored 93 points in 78 games for their AHL affiliate in Houston) to the Los Angeles Kings for Pavol Demitra.
From the Wild's perspective, Demitra's acquisition is expected to a) enhance their scoring; and b) create an environment that may make it easier to sign their own top offensive threat, Marian Gaborik, who is giving them all kinds of fits in contract negotiations. On a points-per-game basis, Demitra was L.A.'s most productive player, scoring 62 points in 58 games, but missing a third of the season because of an eye injury, suffered at the Olympics. The Wild picked up the selection from Edmonton in the Dwayne Roloson deal and sent a clear signal about the direction they were heading: After years of building, they're ready to compete in the Northwest Division. L.A., meanwhile, under new GM Dean Lombardi, is trying to stockpile prospects for the future. "It's interesting, the timing of teams," said Wild GM Doug Risebrough. "They're trying to acquire. We've had those four or five years of that, so now it's time to see what you can get, after you've picked up a number of young players and picks." Demitra, according to Risebrough, knows Gaborik from way back. "They've played together in Trencin, they've played together during the work stoppage, they've played together in world championships. They know each other pretty well." Was it hard for Risebrough to give up O'Sullivan? "It really was," he answered. "Patrick has really come on. There was a lot of doubt about his background. He is a quality kid. He really developed this year. I think he's going to be a good player. It's just a difference between getting somebody who can fit now compared to somebody who can fit down the road."
Risebrough called O'Sullivan to tell him about the deal. "I just said, 'this was not a reflection on you, because he's going in the right direction and he's going to be a good player. I think he really felt an affinity to us, because we really took a chance on him, when everybody else was passing him by. I remember him saying to me, 'You'll never be disappointed.' I don't want him to think we're disappointed. We weren't disappointed in him at all." Risebrough said the Wild doctors checked out Demitra's injury history and were confident that he was healthy. Risebrough said he was actually in attendance at the Olympics in February when Demitra got hurt. "It was more of an eye injury than a concussion," said Risebrough, "but there was a symptom of that (concussion) because of where the injury was."
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 8:15 p.m.
Ferguson booed on selection of Czech player Jiri Tlusty
To a resounding chorus of boos (topped only by commissioner Gary Bettman's introduction), the Toronto Maple Leafs became the first Canadian team to make a pick, selecting Jiri Tlusty of the Czech team Kladno 13th overall. It had to be a welcome moment for general manager John Ferguson, who cut his teeth in the scouting end of the business and now runs a team that hasn't chosen a player this high since 1998 — or back in the days of the Mike Smith regime, when they landed Nikolai Antropov 10th overall. In each of the previous two seasons, the Leafs selected a goaltender with their top pick. That would be Tuukku Rask (21st overall in 2005) and Justin Pogge (90th overall in 2004). Tlusty was the No. 3-rated European in the draft, but the influential Hockey News' draft preview had him rated eighth overall, ahead of Bryan Little, Kyle Okposo and Michael Frolik, all of whom were chosen ahead of him. Central Scouting described him as "an excellent fast mobile skater, with soft, good hands … who likes to go directly to the net — a sniper who can score in many ways" and concludes that he will be "a future All-Star player." That's heady praise for someone who scored just 10 points in 44 games for a Kladno team that struggled in the Czech league this season.
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 7:37 p.m.
Kessel thinks Boston will be a fun time
The way Boston looked at it, the fact that Phil Kessel was there at No. 5 for their pick was a bonus, considering that a year ago, you would have had to finish 30th overall in the league to get a crack at him. Last summer, one of the most accomplished scouts in the game answered a question about Kessel this way: If he was available right now (for the 2005 entry draft), 15 teams would pick Sidney Crosby and 15 would pick Phil Kessel. So Kessel obviously had an upside then and really, did he really do so little as a college freshman to warrant slipping down to fifth spot overall. Kessel didn't think so and suggested it will act as motivation for him in the years ahead. "I think you have something to prove now that I got drafted fifth. Hopefully, I'll go out and show that maybe I should have gone higher." Kessel said Boston was a preferred destination since, "a lot of my buddies go to school there, so it should be a fun time out there."
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 7:27 p.m.
Gretzky gets the biggest applause, makes a safe choice in Mueller
The Coyotes' Wayne Gretzky received the biggest ovation of the afternoon, when he went to the podium to select Peter Mueller of the Everett Silvertips with the No. 8 pick, right after the New York Islanders made Kyle Okposo of the USHL's Des Moines team the seventh choice overall. It meant that four of the first eight players selected were U.S.-born. Mueller was rated No. 6 by Central Scouting and was one of three 18-year-olds picked in the top eight that played for the U.S. entry in the world junior championship that finished third last January here in Vancouver. For the Coyotes, who made a wild first-round pick in 2004 when they selected Blake Wheeler, a U.S. high school player rated in the second round, with the fifth overall selection, Mueller was about as safe as it gets. He played his junior hockey for former NHL coach Kevin Constantine and was a point-a-game player (58 in 52) in an injury-filled season. A centreman who checked in at 6-2, 205 pounds, Constantine curiously also used to him to play the point of the power play.
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 7:16 p.m.
Jordan Staal gives Pittsburgh an embarassment of riches
Jordan Staal became the third member of his family to go in the first round of the NHL entry draft after Eric (second in 2003 to Carolina) and Marc (12 overall in 2005 to the New York Rangers). Staal went second overall to the Pittsburgh Penguins. The pick was the subject of much trade speculation, given that the Penguins already have two excellent young centres in the organization (Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin). Assuming they don't turn around and trade the younger Staal to Carolina later, they'll have an embarrassment of riches down the middle. With younger brother Jarrett two years away from his draft season, the Staals have a chance to become this generation's answer to the Sutter brothers. The only difference: The Sutters were ranchers; the Staals are sod farmers.
The Staal family has one rule: As soon as one of the boys signs a professional contract, they can quit the family business. Neither Eric nor Marc work on the farm anymore, but that's how Jordan's spending his summers. He started as six-year-old, riding around on a tractor, and gets a $1 per hour increase every year. "I'm up to $12 right now," he said. Staal will probably return to Peterborough for another year of junior, but he's looking forward to the day when he can quit his summer job. "When we were doing golf courses, we were working 8 until 5 or even later, sometimes even until the sun went down. They were long days." Staal was asked about the speculation that he might be traded to Carolina: "It didn't really matter to me where I ended up. This seems to be a great organization. I'm really proud to be part of it. We've got a really young team. Hopefully, I can make an impact in the next couple of years. I'll be working hard. It should be a blast." Of the chance to perhaps play with Crosby one day, Staal added: "He's a great player. I'm sure I'll be putting up some numbers if I do get a chance to play (with him)."
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 7:04 p.m.
Washington passes up Kessel for Nicklas Backstrom
The fact that the Washington Capitals bypassed Phil Kessel to select Swedish prospect Nicklas Backstrom counted as the first mild surprise of the draft. General manager George McPhee handled it pretty well — he introduced Alexander Ovechkin, the Calder Trophy winner — and let Ovechkin make the call on Backstrom, who played in the Swedish Elitserien for Brynas and helped a team that's almost always on the cusp on being demoted from the first division stay up this season. Backstrom had a little Peter Forsberg and a little Joe Sakic in him — he isn't big or exceptionally fast, but he competes hard and possesses unbelievable hockey sense. Presumably, the Capitals figured that Backstrom would be a better fit with Ovechkin than Kessel would. Kessel is all about individual skills and one-on-one play.
Kessel went one spot later to the Boston Bruins, fifth overall. Although he played centre his freshman year, Kessel will likely play the wing professionally, which will give the Bruins a chance to play him with Patrice Bergeron and Brad Boyes at some point down the road. Kessel is scheduled to return to the University of Minnesota for his sophomore year, but told me the other day that if the team that drafted him wanted him to turn pro right away, he would be amenable to that.
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 6:54 p.m.
Calgary trades Leopold for Alex Tanguay
It wasn't Todd Bertuzzi-for-Roberto Luongo, but the Calgary Flames made some noise of their own early in the draft, when they finally got the scoring help that they needed by acquiring left winger Alex Tanguay from the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for defenceman Jordan Leopold, a second-round pick today and a conditional second-rounder in 2007.
On the surface, it looks like a steal for Calgary. Leopold did play on the Flames' No. shutdown pair alongside Robyn Regehr, but the team has long been concerned about his fragility — and a long concussion history. Moreover, Calgary's defence is as deep as it gets in the NHL. Tanguay, meanwhile, was the Avalanche's leading scorer for much of the season until an injury knocked him out of the line-up for 11 games. Even so, Tanguay finished with 78 points in 71 games, including 29 goals, putting him second on the Avalanche in scoring behind Joe Sakic. Tanguay played mostly on an energy line with Ian Laperriere and Brett McLean, making his scoring totals all the more extraordinary.
The most unusual aspect of the deal is that Calgary and Colorado are divisional rivals. The two teams hadn't made a major trade since the Flames sent Theo Fleury to the Avs as a playoff player rental, landing Regehr in exchange. Tanguay was the 12th player chosen overall in the 1998 draft, Regehr the 17th.
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 6:35 p.m.
Johnson goes No. 1
With the first pick in the draft, the St. Louis Blues were faced with a dilemma: Take the best player overall? Or fill a need on their team? Ultimately, the Blues opted to do the former, selecting defenceman Erik Johnson from the U. S. national under-18 team and the consensus No. 1 player by all the scouting combines. In Eric Brewer and Barrett Jackman, the former NHL rookie of the year, the Blues actually have a pair of quality young defencemen in their system. More than anything else, they needed to improve their offence after scoring only 197 goals last season, fewest in the league. In a perfect world, they would have traded down a spot or two to get an extra pick and still grab one of the five centres that were all projected as potential No. 1s. It didn't happen. In Johnson, they hope they landed the new Chris Pronger, a skilled, tough, gritty defenceman who will play college hockey next year. Blues' general manager Larry Pleau said he had a "responsibility to make sure my ears were open. We feel Johnson is the best player available in our minds. We think he's going to be a good player for a long time in this league. This is something that's important for the franchise in St. Louis. A player like that is going to be part of our organization for a long time. We're not looking short-term. We're looking long-term." After making the playoffs every year since 1978, the Blues sunk to the bottom of the NHL standings last season. Their new ownership, featuring ex-Rangers' president David Checketts, was approved last week by the NHL board of governors. With Checketts' background in pro sports, he understands that the process of turning around a franchise, once it bottoms out, is not the work of a moment.
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 6:23 p.m.
Luongo on the move again?
In a weird, round-about way, the big winner of the Roberto Luongo-Todd Bertuzzi trade may end up being the Tampa Bay Lightning.
How so? If Luongo insists on testing unrestricted free agency by signing only a one-year contract with his new team, the Vancouver Canucks, he could hit the open market on July 1 of next year. Luongo made it clear Saturday on a conference call with reporters that he didn't want to leave Florida. Tampa needs a goalie, but maybe they can settle for a short-term fix for one year and then position themselves to be at the head of the line to bid for Luongo next year, when he becomes unrestricted. That would give Luongo a chance to return to the state of Florida, if not the Panthers themselves. According to sources with knowledge of the negotiations, at least two other teams — including the Ottawa Senators and the Los Angeles Kings — made bids for Luongo before the Panthers traded him to the Canucks in a five-year player deal that got draft weekend off to a rollicking start. Ottawa's offer was said to feature goaltender Ray Emery, defenceman Chris Phillips and forward Martin Havlat. The Kings were reportedly offering forwards Alexander Frolov and Dustin Brown and goaltender Mathieu Garon. The Senators were also said to inquiring after San Jose goaltender Vesa Toskala, offering Havlat in exchange. With arbitration rights and the chance to become unrestricted in a year, it seems unlikely that the Senators will be able to keep Havlat long-term. The Leafs and Sharks continue to banter back and forth about a possible goalie swap, with Evgeni Nabokov featured prominently in the discussion. Tampa, for that matter, made an inquiry to the Canucks for Luongo almost as soon as they landed him. To get him, they might be prepared to trade centre Vincent Lecavalier. If that doesn't pan out, then they may settle for Marc Denis, the Columbus Blue Jackets' No. 1 goalie, who is expendable because of the emergence of Pascal LeClaire. The Blue Jackets tried to move up four places in the entry draft, going from six to two, by offering the Pittsburgh Penguins their No. 1 choice in both this year's and next year's entry draft. The Penguins turned it down.
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 5:59 p.m.
A brief glimpse into the CBA
The NHL and the players' association provided a brief glimpse into the league's financial picture Saturday morning — and for players, it was all good news. For starters, all the monies that were withheld from their pay cheques this season through the escrow withholding provision of the new CBA will be returned to them in October. In addition, players will also receive individual pro-rated bonus payments because league revenues exceeded the pre-season projection of $1.8 billion by about $300,000.
It was all part of a end-of-season look at the business of hockey, in the aftermath of the first year of the post-lockout era.
The new CBA was finally distributed and it came in at a whopping 454 pages, including appendices, exhibits and letter agreements. Next year's salary cap will jump to $44 million from $39.5 and the floor — the minimum that each team is obliged to spend on player salaries — moves to $28 million. It means the maximum salary that a player can earn on an annual basis also jumps, from $7.8 million last year to $8.8 million next year.
Some of the higher-priced free agents coming on the market July 1 are already angling for the maximum.
A dozen teams qualified for revenue-sharing payments, mostly because of market size and limited revenue streams, and at least one — believed to be the Nashville Predators — qualified for the maximum payout of $12.5 million, an extraordinary large payment which demonstrates the comparative financial strength of the league's haves and have nots. It was believed that no Canadian team qualified for revenue sharing this season, because of the strength of the dollar and the success of all six at the box office, but that the Toronto Maple Leafs made the maximum contribution to revenue sharing.
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 3:34 p.m.
Nonis makes his move
On the night that Vancouver Canucks' general manager David Nonis stamped his own imprimatur on the team, his closest competition in the NHL's Northwest Division received a body blow of their own. What a difference a week can make.
Only last Monday, the Edmonton Oilers were involved in a one-game showdown with the Carolina Hurricanes for the Stanley Cup. Had they won – and victory was well-within their grasp – defenceman Chris Pronger would have been a unanimous choice as playoff MVP. He played 30-plus minutes a night for the team and except for the trouble they had scoring with the two-man advantage, was a dominating presence for his new team.
Six days later, Pronger formally asked – through the agency that represents him – the Oilers trade him to another NHL team. Nominally, the reasons were personal. Those close to Pronger say it was because his wife was unhappy in Edmonton and wanted to head east or south, but not spend the next four years in the Alberta provincial capital, as he is obliged to do under terms of the five-year $31.25 million contract he signed with the team last summer.
The Oilers are under no obligation to meet Pronger's demands, but they also understand that an unhappy player is generally an unproductive player – and all the talk about team harmony and team togetherness that characterized their playoff drive now sounds awfully hollow.
If they do move Pronger – and lose Michael Peca to unrestricted free agency – then all the gains the Oilers made during their breakout 2005-06 season will have been lost. They will pretty much be back to where they were before the lockout, with a decent nucleus of hard-working players that lacked the star power to win when it mattered.
In short, just when it appeared as if the Oilers were moving forward, they were set back on their heels.
Meanwhile, the team they edged for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, the Canucks, took a quantum leap forward Friday night with an intriguing five-player deal with the Florida Panthers that landed them goaltender Roberto Luongo, defenceman Lukas Krajicek and a sixth-round pick. In exchange, the Canucks surrendered troubled winger Todd Bertuzzi, defenceman Bryan Allen and goaltender Alex Auld.
On first blush, it was a clear home run for Nonis, the team's general manager, who had operated in the shadow of his predecessor, Brian Burke, ever since he replaced him at the helm following the 2003-04 season. Nonis essentially kept the team intact last season, thinking they could challenge for the Stanley Cup. When their expectations didn't even come close to being met, Nonis made changes, first by firing coach Marc Crawford and then by running Bertuzzi out of town.
The fact that Nonis was able to move Bertuzzi and his $5.3 million contract represented a major win for the young GM. Bertuzzi-to-anybody represents addition by subtraction. He was a brooding, negative influence in the dressing room, dividing the team with his attitude and personal problems, most – but not all – of which can be traced back to the Steve Moore incident, when he ambushed the Colorado Avalanche player from behind and effectively ended his career by pile-driving him into the ice. Bertuzzi was probably never going to escape the shadow of the Moore controversy so long as he stayed in Vancouver.
Whether he'll be a good fit in Jacques Martin's dressing room in Florida is another issue altogether. Martin has strong veteran leadership in Joe Nieuwendyk, Gary Roberts and Martin Gelinas; a bonafide star in centre Olli Jokinen, and a quality up-and-comer in Nathan Horton. Bertuzzi will need to find a niche there, and if he comes in with the right attitude, maybe he can.
But in the end, the Canucks didn't give up much to get Luongo, considered the best goalie in the NHL never to make the playoffs or actually win a playoff game. Moreover, Krajicek is a high draft choice – 24th overall in 2001, via Peterborough – who is on the cusp on evolving into a top-four defenceman.
Some will argue that the success of the deal will hinge on whether Nonis can sign Luongo to a long-term contract extension. Luongo had been involved in an ongoing contract dispute with the Panthers, who finally said, ‘enough' and decided to make him somebody else's problem. The reality is the Canucks traded a player, Bertuzzi, who will be unrestricted in 2007, for a player, Luongo, who will be unrestricted in 2007, so what's the risk in that?
Chances are neither player will sign an extension any time soon, preferring to see how the 2006-07 season plays out, before making a long-term commitment to their new teams – or testing free agency, as will be their right under the collective bargaining agreement. It remains to be seen how Luongo – who is married to a woman from Florida and was building a mansion in the area – reacts to the deal.
Luongo, and his agent Gilles Lupien, may have overplayed their negotiating hand by turning down contract offer after contract offer from the Panthers, while at the same time, maintaining the public position that he wanted to stay in south Florida. Clearly, the Panthers were tired of his posturing and decided to send a message by trading him about as far away from Sunrise, Fla. as they could, without actually shipping him to Siberia.
Only this much is certain: The Canucks needed to make changes and they did. Now, it'll be up to the new coach, Alain Vigneault, to find a way of making Luongo happy, as well as team captain Markus Naslund (the only player who will mourn Bertuzzi's departure).
On balance though, the Canucks are a much better organization now than they were 24 hours ago. Meanwhile, over in Edmonton, the Oilers' problems appear to just be beginning.
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Updated Saturday, June 24 at 2:22 a.m.
Leafs and Sharks to deal?
So what were Toronto Maple Leafs' general manager John Ferguson and his San Jose Sharks' counterpart Doug Wilson talking about late Friday afternoon when they huddled together over coffee once the NHL GMs' meetings adjourned? Maybe nothing. Typically, Ferguson was deliberately vague about his plans for Saturday's NHL entry draft, saying nothing of consequence other than his negotiations with defenceman Bryan McCabe remain ongoing and that no contract with the soon-to-be-unrestricted free agent has officially been signed yet. But the Sharks will be looking to move a goaltender sooner rather than later and Toronto, which will almost certainly pay Ed Belfour a $1.5 million buyout rather than bring him back for next season, should be in the market for a new No. 1, with only J.S. Aubin and Mikael Tellqvist ready to play at this juncture. The Sharks' Evgeni Nabokov might be a good fit in Toronto and if they were of a mind to deal Vesa Toskala, he could probably find a home with the Leafs as well. The Sharks and Leafs have different needs when it comes to netminders. Toronto has a pair of bluechip prospects (Justin Pogge and Tuukka Rask) on the way; the Sharks have two netminders, both signed to long-term deals, heading into their primes. Might there be a match there?
The Vancouver Canucks' braintrust of GM Dave Nonis and assistant GM Steve Tambellini left the meeting in the company of their Philadelphia Flyers' counterparts, Bobby Clarke and Paul Holmgren, leading to speculation that if the hometown Canucks do deal Todd Bertuzzi in the next day or two, Philadelphia might be his new home. Certainly, Bertuzzi's approach would fit nicely with the Flyers' traditional Broad St. Bullies image, one that has been considerably toned down in recent years. Nonis, when asked about his plans, said simply: "He's in the same spot as anyone else. The media love to focus on one guy on our team, but we have a group of players that as a group underachieved, which means the majority of those players is available"
That was more than either the Florida Panthers' Mike Keenan or the Edmonton Oilers' Kevin Lowe had to stay about Roberto Luongo and Chris Pronger respectively. Keenan flat out refused to confirm that he was shopping Luongo: "I'm not going to discuss Roberto's contract or negotiations." Lowe, meanwhile, sent word out through his public relations staff that he didn't want to field any questions on whether Pronger wants out of Edmonton. Pronger completed his exit interview Wednesday and then immediately went to Florida for a vacation. The speculation is that his wife was unhappy in the Alberta capital and would like to return to the United States next season. Pronger is contractually tied to the Oilers for the next four years at $6.25-million per season.
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Updated Friday, June 23 at 9:11 p.m.
MacTavish's poise cracks
That veneer of civility, that friendly, out-going face that Edmonton Oilers' coach Craig MacTavish has presented, virtually every day, win or lose, in these playoffs, disappeared for a brief moment in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday night's 2-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.
Mindful probably of the fact that the Oilers now face a seriously difficult uphill climb, MacTavish's poise cracked just a little when two questions — one relating to Chris Pronger, the other to Ales Hemsky — were asked post-game. Pronger has been the Oilers' best player by miles in these playoffs, while Hemsky was their leading regular-season scorer and occasionally has shown flashes of offensive ability, so it wasn't surprising that MacTavish came to their defence. It began when someone asked MacTavish about Pronger's level of frustration. Pronger took two minor penalties, neither of which he liked much, and also had a forced turnover that led to the game-winning goal by Mark Recchi.
In playoffs past, discipline was an issue for Pronger, but it hasn't been so far in the Oilers' run of 2006. MacTavish answered by describing the penalties as "borderline" calls, but denied that Pronger was frustrated. If Pronger was guilty of anything, MacTavish argued, it was not getting his point shots through to the net, where they could do some good.
Whether it was Pronger or somebody else on the backend, MacTavish pointed out: "We need the shots getting through to the net." No argument there. The next question related to Hemsky's tendency to overhandle and/or overpass the puck and mess up a scoring chance that way. McTavish bristled on that one: "You know what I get frustrated with? I get frustrated with the question," answered MacTavish. "The guy led the team in scoring. He's a playmaker. He wins a lot of games for us. Every Tom, Dick and Harry is telling him how to play the game. The guy is a good player, a good passer, he makes plays."
Probably, it wasn't a great idea, at that point, for the next questioner to invoke something Don Cherry said on TV awhile back — that Georges Laraque should play more and maybe even play in front of the net on the slumping Oilers' power play, where Ryan Smyth usually sets up. MacTavish scanned the room.
"Anybody else? Anybody else got an idea? I mean, everybody's got an idea." Pause. "No, I didn't think of putting Georges on the power play in the slot. We've tried a number of different things on the power play. We're frustrated on the power play, but we've got to get back to the structure that works so well. In the interim of us trying to find the perfect play, we're getting away from what we did well. We've got to get back to solid fundamentals, where you get Ryan Smyth in front of the net and you work the top and get pucks to the net."
MacTavish knows enough about Stanley Cup history to understand that his team faces long odds. Of the 27 clubs which have led 3-1 in the final since the best-of-seven format was introduced in 1939, 26 went on to win the Stanley Cup. That's the bad news.
However, when MacTavish meets with the team later today, he can also speak firsthand of two times when teams came close to performing miracles — and forced the final to seven games.
It happened once in 1987, during MacTavish's first of four Stanley Cups as a player, when the Philadelphia Flyers rallied from a 3-1 against the Oilers and took it to seven. That year, the Flyers were staying in a downtown Edmonton hotel that made the mistake of putting Oilers Stanley Cup-winning T-shirts on sale in the gift shop on the afternoon of Game 5, where the Flyers could see the merchandise available when they were picking up their morning newspapers. Bad idea. The Oilers eventually did win the championship but it didn't occur until two games later after Edmonton got a scare for the suddenly motivated Flyers.
Seven years later, during MacTavish's last championship as a player, the Vancouver Canucks came back from a 3-1 down to force a seventh game in the 1994 final against the Rangers in New York.
So even if the temptation is to think it's over and that the Oilers have given all they can right now, that is not necessarily the case.
Pronger, for the first time, looked a little gassed, as did a couple of other of Edmonton's big-minute players. But while history suggests an Oiler comeback remains a longshot, MacTavish's first-hand experience will tell him that his team can still stretch it out a couple more times — and if they manage that, then who knows what might happen in a seventh game?
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Updated Tuesday, June 13 at 12:05 p.m.
Aaron Ward — MVT of the 2006 Stanley Cup final
At a time of year when coaxing even the most rudimentary observation out of a National Hockey League player can prove challenging, there are always one or two exceptions. These are unheralded players who suddenly are doing a lot of talking on behalf of their teams, they actually have something to say, and don't mind saying it.
In 2004, the MVT (most valuable talker) award went to the Calgary Flames' Andrew Ference, a bright, articulate, well-read iconoclast, who would spend the off days between Stanley Cup final games answering questions about a wide range of topics — from his political beliefs to his love of Harley motorcycles to what needed to change to keep the Tampa Bay Lightning power play from dominating the series.
Two years later, the part of Andrew Ference is being played by Carolina Hurricanes' defenceman Aaron Ward, part of the team's no-name defence corps that has done a good job of bottling up the Edmonton Oilers' attack.
Ward is a two-time Stanley Cup winner with the Detroit Red Wings of 1997 and 1998, and so has been around long enough to understand how these things work. If he wanted to, Ward could fall back on tried-and-true cliché-ridden answers spilling out of the mouths of his teammates, but no. He was there again, the other day, giving thoughtful responses to any number of questions that came his way.
For example, when it was put to him that the Hurricanes' no-name six-man defence corps was perceived to be the team's Achilles heel going into the series, Ward answered: "Well, in the first two periods of Game 1, we were the Achilles heel. We didn't show ourselves to be worthy of any accolades based on that performance. We were not moving our feet. We were not doing anything to help out our team. We were, in some ways, a liability.
"The best thing about the second game was, we figured out what it was that each guy had to do to their games back at the level it needed to be at. We were able to re-evaluate where we were at that point — and fix it."
Collectively, the Hurricanes' defence possesses a fair bit of experience — from Ward and Glen Wesley to Bret Hedican and Frantisek Kaberle.
"I didn't know we were that old until somebody put our ages in the newspaper. Somebody called us a bunch of kids, but I saw a 37, a 36 and a couple of 33s," said Ward, who is one of the 33-year-olds. "I didn't realize we were getting up there in age.
"But we've all been in different situations. We've all played with players who've either gone to the Hall Of Fame, or guys who are going to be there, or for coaches, who've really rounded us out in terms of the coaching philosophies they presented to us. So we've gathered a group of guys that have different attributes and really filled niches on this team."
In addition to his two Stanley Cup wins, Ward was also on the losing end of the 2002 final with the Hurricanes, one of a handful of players from that team still around four years later. When asked about that unexpected Cinderella run, in which the Hurricanes were probably hoping to win — as opposed to expecting it — Ward said: "That's a good way of putting it. We'd be lying if we said we didn't impress ourselves or surprise ourselves with that performance. We went into Toronto and Toronto was such a powerhouse and it seemed we played such a tight game against them, that we choked them back in 2002. We realized we were lucky in some ways."
Of course, that was just one year in which a Maple Leafs' team that had a chance to go further somehow found a way of stumbling out of the playoffs before they could get to the final.
After that season, the Hurricanes missed the playoffs for two years in a row, a period Ward described as "ugly … two years of destitution that were definitely not fun."
During the lockout, Ward said he was able to rid himself of "all the things that go on with a losing team, the kind of feeling that sinks into your bones sometimes and you can't shake. This year, we have a new face to our team, both with the coaching staff and the style we play. So it really has been enjoyable to play again."
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Updated Friday, June 9 at 2:22 p.m.
Islanders making all the right moves
Just about everyone who was anyone in hockey was shying away from the Islanders' job because of the organization's inherent instability and the fact that former general manager (Mad) Mike Milbury was hovering in the background, on the staff of owner Charles Wang and in a position (maybe) to leave his paw prints all over the hockey operations end of the organization.
The knowledge that Milbury was still around kept more than a few qualified candidates from actively pursuing the Islander general manager's opening.
Although their hockey paths haven't crossed much in the past, Smith and Nolan share a common bond: They were looking for a chance to get back in the door and had come to the stage in their respective careers where they realized it might not happen.
So they will both be motivated by the chance for redemption.
Smith won a Stanley Cup with the 1994 New York Rangers, but gradually fell out of favour, when the team – despite extraordinary financial resources – couldn't make the playoffs, year after year. The fact that the same thing happened to the man who replaced him (Glen Sather) mitigated the circumstances of his failures.
In the pre-lockout NHL, operating a big-market team wasn't as easy as it looked – and if it were, the Toronto Maple Leafs would have celebrated a Stanley Cup or two in the 1990s as well. Smith didn't always solve every problem or shortcoming by throwing money at it – his background is scouting and he actually cut his teeth in the Islanders' organization, before moving on to Detroit and then subsequently to the Rangers.
Scouting has never really been an Islanders' shortcoming. They perennially drafted good young players. The problem always was that Milbury traded them away before they ever reach their primes. Everyone from Todd Bertuzzi and Wade Redden, to Zdeno Chara and Roberto Luongo, to Bryan McCabe and Tim Connolly, to Eric Brewer and J.P. Dumont, were all originally drafted by the Islanders – and went on to have success elsewhere around the league.
If they can continue to put good players into the system, and demonstrate a little more patience with developing their own young talent – rather than trading it away for the likes of Alexei Yashin – they could be pretty again.
And that's where Nolan comes in. He has always been a players' coach. He did a good of building an us-against-the-world mentality on the 1997 Buffalo Sabres, a team that dramatically overachieved and ended up winning three major awards as a result – Nolan for coach of the year, Michael Peca for the Selke and Dominik Hasek for the Hart and Vezina. Nolan can fall back on a quality goaltender in Rick DiPietro, but his success will largely hinge on whether he can get more out of Yashin than his predecessors could. Yashin's contract essentially ties him to the team for the rest of all time, but if Nolan can do with him what Tom Renney did with Jaromir Jagr in New York this season – get him interested again – then the Islanders' days as an NHL laughing stock may finally be coming to a close.
For anyone who remembers the glory days of Potvin, Bossy, Trottier and Smith, that can only be a good thing.
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Updated Thursday, June 8 at 6:25 p.m.
Lightning gain some insurance in net
The Tampa Bay Lightning made two small, but interesting moves this week by signing a pair of European goaltenders, Finland's Frederik Norrena and Sweden's Johan Holmqvist, to one-year contracts.
The Lightning went out of their way not to describe either as the solution to their goaltending problems, but you can be sure, they're crossing their fingers and hoping that one — and maybe both — is exactly that.
Norrena played the last couple of years for Linkoping of the Swedish Elite League and during the lockout, was teammates with Brendan Morrison, Mike Knuble, Kristian Huselius and others. In a year when the Swedish league boasted Jose Theodore, Miikka Kiprusoff, Martin Gerber, Pasi Nurminen and Henrik Lundqvist, Norrena more than held his own against NHL competition. His team finished second in the regular season during the lockout and he gave every indication that he had NHL-calibre skills.
Norrena played this past year in Sweden again, largely because his wife was pregnant and due to give birth, but understanding that at his age, the door to NHL employment would probably close pretty soon, inked a one-year deal with the Lightning, a team that desperately needed to upgrade its goaltending, after an eighth-place conference finish and a first-round loss to the Ottawa Senators.
Later, they added Holmqvist, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound native of Tolfta, Sweden, who started seven games for his native country at the 2006 World Championships last month in Riga, Latvia. Holmqvist, who played for the Swedish club team Brynas last season, posted a 5-2 record with a 2.00 goals-against average and a .909 save percentage en route to winning the gold medal and being named top goaltender at the tournament. The Lightning sent not one, but both of their goalie coaches, Jeff Reese and Corey Schwab, to the world championships, along with their chief scout Jake Goertzen, to watch Holmqvist play. They met with him personally and unanimously recommended that he was worth a try as well.
Among Eastern Conference teams, Tampa actually gave up the fewest shots on goal, but that strong defensive play did not translate into goals-against average (they were seventh in the East defensively and 18th overall). Tampa picked Norrena as a 28-year-old in the seventh round of the 2002 entry draft and depending upon how things play out, he could be one of six Finnish starting goaltenders in the NHL next year. That was Norrena who shut out Canada in the bronze-medal game of the world championships. He also won a silver medal for Finland in the Olympics, earning shutouts in his only two starts, although the Flyers' Anterro Nittymaki was the goalie of record in the medal-round games. Holmqvist, meanwhile, was a free agent, able to sign with anyone.
The Lightning still has Sean Burke under contract for next season, but John Grahame is an unrestricted free agent and not expected to get a contract offer. The twin signings mean that while Tampa may remain in the hunt for an experienced starting No. 1 goaltender, if they come up short — for salary-cap reasons or because they can't get a fit trade-wise — they have a couple of insurance policies in place.
In any event, NHL trade talk is not about to heat up until much closer to the entry draft in Vancouver in three weeks time. The most desirable candidate strictly from a playing point of view will undoubtedly be the San Jose Sharks' Evgeni Nabokov, partly because he got his team to the Stanley Cup semi-finals in 2004; partly because he's a Russian like Nikolai Khabibulin who was their goaltender in the Stanley Cup season; and partly because the Sharks would probably rather park Nabokov in the Eastern Conference, where he can't come back and haunt them the way Kiprusoff did. Nabokov commands a hefty salary — he signed a new four-year, $20 million deal in mid-season, so the larger issue for Tampa will be to fit that salary into a payroll that is already top heavy with stars. It is difficult to imagine that they'll be able to sign Pavel Kubina, a 22-minute-per-night defenceman, who is unrestricted; and it may mean that they'll be ready to move Freddie Modin, who has one year remaining on his contract, perhaps even to the Leafs, where he'd be a nice fit with Mats Sundin.
More than anything else though, the Lightning have clearly been monitoring the NHL playoffs this spring and, based on the changing cast of goaltenders suddenly thrust into the spotlight, concluded that net-minding solutions can — and often do - come from unexpected sources.
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Updated Thursday, June 1 at 2:29 p.m.
Gretzky's return hardly a surprise
That Wayne Gretzky would return as the Phoenix Coyotes' coach next season stopped being a mystery more than a month ago.
As soon as Gretzky and his wife Janet jointly reviewed this past season and determined that his coaching commitment would not interfere with his duties as a dad, the second part of the equation — hammering out the financial details of the contract — was going to get done.
No, what was most newsworthy, or at least a little unusual about the deal, was its length. Rarely do even the most established National Hockey League coaches receive the security of a five-year term. The fact that the Coyotes and Gretzky mutually agreed to that term represents an unusually firm commitment on the part of both the sides:
For the Coyotes, because they've now entrusted the development of their young team to a second-year coach; and for Gretzky, who made it plain that this is how he sees his life unfolding in the foreseeable future. After a couple of years of drifting through his post-retirement years, Gretzky sent a clear signal Wednesday that coaching in the NHL is his profession now; that it's something he plans to work at and see how far he can go in his new occupation.
When Gretzky originally took the Coyotes' coaching position last summer, you never quite had that same sense.
At that time, he had to find out if the job really suited him - or if was simply something that he wanted to dabble at for a time, before moving on.
Gretzky retained all his other titles with the team — part-owner, managing partner and alternate governor which presumably meant he had to sign off on the agreement that reportedly makes him the highest-paid coach in the game; and certainly, the one with the most security.
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Updated Wednesday, May 31 at 4:00 p.m.
The Shero saga
It began with a puzzling 38-word statement released by the Boston Bruins Wednesday night. Regarding their ongoing search for a new general manager — which is taking longer to unfold than a day-time soap opera, but had no fewer twists and turns to the plot — the Bruins announced: "We are making a deliberative, thorough search on our terms for the best candidate to lead our organization. We have interviewed several outstanding candidates. We are under no deadline pressure, but hope to have an announcement next week."
For anyone following the fortunes of the Bruins over the past couple of decades, the operative phrase was clearly "on our terms."
Most everyone in the NHL believed that the Bruins had nailed down their next GM days before, and it would be Ray Shero, the long-time assistant to Nashville Predators' general manager David Poile. In an era when a lot of teams have followed flawed, poorly conceived blueprints in terms of their building philosophies, the Predators were an organization that seemed to get it right more often than not. They built slowly through the draft and after a couple of missed calls, have recently down a nice job of plugging in quality young players into their system.
So Shero became something of an attractive commodity around the NHL, with a little bit more leverage than probably even the Bruins thought he had. The fact that the two sides could go so far along the negotiating path without talking about money or areas of responsibility is mind-boggling, but that appears to be what happened.
As a result, Shero opted for his other option and signed an eye-popping five-year contract with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Clearly, the man doing the hiring in Pittsburgh, team president Ken Sawyer, must have been blown away by Shero in the interviews. Now, no matter what happens to the franchise — if it stays in Pittsburgh or if it goes — Shero will be running the show indefinitely.
In some ways, it has the feel of a lifetime appointment, because the Penguins have so much good young talent in the pipeline — and the second choice in the 2006 entry draft still to come — that the future looks bright for a generation or more. Shero goes into a situation in Pittsburgh that looks a lot like the Quebec Nordiques' teams that Pierre Lacroix inherited from Pierre Page in 1994. Page did all the heavy lifting — when he left, the Nordiques had Joe Sakic, Mats Sundin and Peter Forsberg, all just entering their prime years as his centre-ice corps, along with Adam Foote on defence and Owen Nolan up front, before the back injuries and the attitude issues turned him into an ordinary player. In short, the pieces were all in place for Lacroix and the Avalanche; the most important thing he could do was not to mess up a good thing.
Similarly, Shero has two of the best young prospects in the world up front (Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin), along with Marc-Andre Fleury in goal, Ryan Whitney on the blueline plus somebody good coming in this year's draft. That quintet will form a strong nucleus in the years ahead.
It isn't surprising that Shero would opt for that scenario as opposed to Boston, where the Bruins also missed the playoffs this season, but don't have nearly the same depth or quality of young player in the organization to build around.
The job is attractive to Peter Chiarelli, the Ottawa Senators' assistant general manager, largely because a) it is one of only 30 GMs jobs in the league; b) as mismanaged as the Bruins have been of late, they are an Original Six team; and c) he played his college hockey at Harvard, so the possibility of going home again is too great to resist.
Whether Chiarelli will get to run his own ship — or constantly find himself running every move past Charlie Jacobs, the son of the owner; or Harry Sinden, if he doesn't retire — remains to be seen.
Shero wasn't about to dis the Bruins after getting his chance with the Penguins, but after acknowledging that he "interviewed with them" he added: "What I really want to convey is this is the place I really wanted to be."
Then came the kicker, eight words that told you everything you needed to know about how that process unfolded: "It's important to me who you work with.'' Ouch.
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Updated Monday, May 22 at 11:35 a.m.
Anaheim youngster's short history
The Anaheim Mighty Ducks' Joffrey Lupul is from Edmonton and grew up cheering for the Oilers, so on Sunday, I put the question to him: Which Oilers' era does he remember best?
The Wayne Gretzky-Mark Messier era?
The Doug Weight-Bill Guerin era?
"Probably the Todd Marchant era," answered Lupul, to laughs all around.
There may actually be some truth to Lupul's comment. Marchant scored perhaps the biggest goal in recent Oilers history, the overtime winner in Game 7 of the 1997 playoffs against the Dallas Stars, a goal that propelled Edmonton into the second round.
Now, some nine years later, Lupul plays on a line with Marchant and rookie Dustin Penner of Winkler, Man. For Tuesday night's third game against the Oilers, Lupul will return to play in his hometown, with friends and family in the building, some of whose loyalty will be divided. His parents, Lupul says, will be cheering for him, but his brothers might be pulling for the Oilers. Lupul's grandfather, Tom Mayson is part of the Oilers' ownership group.
"Anytime you play the Oilers, it's great," Lupul said. "All my friends and family are watching. It's good to be able to play in front of them. A lot of people are rooting for you. That's nice. More special to me is the fact that we're in the Western Conference final. It doesn't matter to me if we're playing Edmonton or San Jose or whoever it was going to be.
"It's better to be in this situation."
The Ducks didn't want to be down two games going back to Edmonton and needing to jump-start their suddenly slumping offence. Lupul leads the team in post-season goal-scoring with seven (four came in one game against Colorado). Teemu Selanne is next with five. After that, it drops to Jeff Friesen with three and half-a-dozen players, including Andy McDonald, who are stuck at two.
"Every time I've been there, it's been a good experience," Lupul said. "But I'm going to play the same way, whether it's in Edmonton or wherever. It'll be fun to play in front of friends or family, but it's not going to change the way I play the game or prepare for the game.
"I've been in that building plenty of times. I've experienced the playoff atmosphere. Obviously, this will be a little different. It should be fun — just to get out there and hear that crowd. I'm excited."
When Marchant was told of Lupul's comment — the "Todd Marchant" era — he laughed.
"That's awesome. What do you want me to say to that? I can't deny it. He was probably 10 when we were playing. Let's see, that happened nine years ago, so he was maybe 14. I don't know what to say. I was there."
Marchant understands that this is a function of age.
"That happened to me in training camp too (when he was still with the Columbus Blue Jackets). There was a young kid from Edmonton, he was our draft pick and he said it was kind of a highlight for him to be sitting between Geoff Sanderson and myself because he remembers watching us play as a kid.
"That was the first example of, 'Wow, I guess I'm getting a little older.'
"But when you look around our dressing room, we've got a lot of young players and it's great to come to the rink every day because it makes you feel young again. It's great to experience this with them and to be a part of it with them."
On a roll
Oilers coach Craig MacTavish, on why they targeted Dwayne Roloson as their trading-deadline acquisition in goal, rather than some of the other netminders who were available: "We saw a veteran guy, a guy that had been to the conference finals before so he had experience in the playoffs, and you evaluate all those things and hopefully you get the type of goaltender that we obviously have right now, who is as consistent a goalie night in and night out as I've seen."
Why are the Ducks having so much trouble scoring?
According to coach Randy Carlyle, it has to do with Edmonton's system change — which essentially boils down to using only one forechecker as opposed to two, in most situations.
"Historically, they were always a two-man aggressive," said Carlyle. "Now they're much more of a one-four in trying to keep four guys above the puck. At times they've got four guys above the puck and clogging up the neutral ice. I don't know if you'd call it a trap. It's not a traditional trap. But in our chip-and-support game, we've got to find a way to get that puck into more difficult areas for them to recover the puck and thus take it to the net more often."
Carlyle thought that in Sunday's 3-1 loss, the Ducks were "guilty of trying to be too fancy at times. When we had opportunity and people going to the net, we stopped up instead of getting the puck into that critical area and forcing them to play stronger in there."
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Updated Monday, May 22 at 11:35 a.m.
Crawford likely to enhance California rivalry
Thanks to the San Jose Sharks' upset loss to the Edmonton Oilers, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks didn't get a Battle of California in the Western Conference final - which, in some ways, makes up for the fact that they also prevented a playoff Battle of Alberta from happening this year by knocking off the Calgary Flames in the opening round.
But one of the best ways to enhance the rivalry among the NHL's three California-based teams would be if Marc Crawford does land in Los Angeles as the Kings' next coach, which looks as if it's going to happen. Back in his previous NHL life, Anaheim Mighty Ducks' general manager Brian Burke originally hired Crawford to coach the Vancouver Canucks, the first chance he had to make a change behind the bench (and dump Mike Keenan).
Burke was a long-time supporter of Crawford's coaching methods which, for better or worse, mostly fell on deaf ears in Vancouver this season. It doesn't mean Crawford can't coach, it just means he'll need to do it somewhere else, where his message is fresh again.
With Burke running the Ducks and Crawford coaching the Kings, the Anaheim-L.A. rivalry could get spicy in a hurry. Both are emotional and volatile and not averse to speaking their minds in public.
Something needs to happen to capture the imagination of fans in southern California, where hockey remains something of an afterthought these days, partly because the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers are the new flavor of the month and partly because the NHL's television deal with OLN means that the Ducks' games in this round will be shown on a miniscule number of TV screens in the L.A. area.
If the Ducks and Kings can get competitive at the same time (something that hasn't happened since Anaheim joined the league more than a decade ago), it might make hockey meaningful in a market where it has usually just appealed to a small, but hard-core following.
Here's something else to consider re: the coaching merry-go-round. In Kevin Dineen, the Ducks currently employ one of the most attractive young coaches in the game. He is behind the bench of their Portland Pirates affiliate and according to all reports, the former Hartford Whalers' star (and long-time member of Canada's national team) has NHL coaching credentials. He is smart, well-organized, has plenty of positive influences (including Dave King as an amateur and a pro) and is also the son of a former NHL coach in Bill Dineen.
With Randy Carlyle doing such a good job, the Ducks obviously don't have an opening on their NHL staff, but the Canucks — Crawford's former team — do … and are owed a favor by Anaheim.
Remember, the Ducks hired Carlyle away from the Vancouver organization - he was coaching their minor-league affiliate in Manitoba at the time of his hiring - and surrendered a second-round draft choice as compensation. Carlyle probably would have gotten the Canucks job this year after Crawford was fired had he stayed put another season.
If the Canucks don't promote their own minor-league coach Alain Vigneault to the top job, there would be something full-circlish to reaching into the Anaheim organization to pry away Dineen. Obviously, the Ducks couldn't stand in Dineen's way either — not after coaxing the Canucks into letting Carlyle join them. As for the compensation required to do the deal, that shouldn't be difficult to negotiate. After all, a precedent has already been set.
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Updated Friday, May 19 at 12:25 p.m.
Let's try to fix the NHL's playoff schedule
Every day, without fail, it seems as if readers have a solution to what ails the National Hockey League, ranging in scope from lengthy, thoughtful treatises to wry one-line observations. But here's a puzzler that no one seems to have addressed — what to do about the inordinate amount of time that passes between the end of one NHL playoff series and the beginning of the next?
Three of the four teams still alive in the post-season are in the midst of unexpectedly long spring breaks because the fourth series — Edmonton Oilers versus San Jose Sharks — spilled into a sixth game (and could go seven if the Sharks win tonight).
In the meantime, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, who dispatched the Colorado Avalanche in four steps, haven't played since last Thursday, meaning they'll have a minimum of eight days off and perhaps as many as 10 if the Sharks-Oilers' series goes the limit.
Over in the Eastern Conference, the Buffalo Sabres and Carolina Hurricanes are set to start the semi-finals in a Saturday afternoon matinee, after both teams won their respective series in five games.
Is it just a coincidence that Buffalo and Carolina advanced by eliminating Ottawa and New Jersey respectively? Or did the fact that the Senators won their opening round in five games and the Devils advanced in four affect the outcome on their respective series?
You'd have to think rust and inactivity played a significant role in the demise of both teams.
The Sens demolished Tampa in five, but were awfully weak in the opener of the Sabres' series, losing a 7-6 decision, in a game that was uncharacteristically sloppy for a team that challenged for the best defensive record in the NHL right up until the end of the regular season. The Devils, meanwhile, had won 15 in a row (11 regular-season, four in the playoffs), before getting crushed by the Hurricanes 6-0 in their series opener. They never recovered from that poor start and frankly, neither did the Senators.
Now, there are no guarantees that either the Senators or Devils would have advanced if they'd had less time off, but it would be hard to dispute the fact that the time off between series affected their performances in the opener — and sometimes, when you fall behind, it's difficult to get back on track. You lose confidence; your opponent gains it.
Similarly, over in the West, the Mighty Ducks needed seven games to eliminate the Calgary Flames and in theory, should have been tired heading into their second-round meeting with Colorado, which won its series in five over Dallas. Instead, the Ducks just kept rolling, from one series to the next. They won the opener 5-zip and the Avalanche never recovered from that setback, ultimately falling in four consecutive games.
Now, the Ducks face the same challenge that the Devils did in the opening round — how to ensure that they're sharp out of the gate and haven't lost any of the momentum they built up by winning two playoff rounds when they finally get around to facing either the Oilers or the Sharks.
A little bit of time off was probably welcome in Anaheim, after they played 11 games in 23 days, but eight-to-10 days? It might be too much.
Moreover, whatever interest the NHL playoffs may have generated in the first month of the post-season seems lost right now. There hasn't been a game since Sunday night (Edmonton's 6-3 road win over the Sharks) and especially in the cities where their teams have been dispatched already, it is hard to imagine that the disappearance of hockey from their television screens will enhance viewer-ship during the next five weeks. Remember, if the playoffs go the distance this year, somebody — whether it be Scott Niedermayer or Jason Smith or Daniel Briere — could be skating with the Stanley Cup held aloft on June 21. That's still more than a month away.
Accordingly, the issue is clear; the solution less so:
How do you keep teams playing constantly if the format remains a best-of-seven series — to keep them interested and us as well?
One possible answer would be to amend the current playoff system and adopt round-robin play. In a round-robin playoff, every team of the eight that qualify per conference for post-season could play each other twice and then the two top finishers would advance to the conference championship, which would be best-of-seven. That sort of format would permit every team to play a minimum of 14 playoff games (or the equivalent of two series that go the distance), with the last two left standing seguing right into the semi-final round.
Of course, such a system would not provide any advantage to the higher-placed finishers in the 82-game regular season (although in a playoff year when all the top seeds advanced out of one conference and all the bottom seeds out of another, it is hard to know what value to place on home-ice advantage anyway).
No, there really isn't an obvious solution to me over how to deal with the issue, only that the lengthy layoffs seem like a bad idea for everybody involved — the people that want to watch an expedited version of the post-season and the teams that gain little advantage whatsoever for efficiently disposing of a previous opponent.
However, as always, we are open for suggestions …
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca
Updated Wednesday, May 17 at 11:15 a.m.
Maurice is a positive first step
There is much to like about Paul Maurice for those of us toiling with a notepad and pen in hand, not the least of which is his unfailing good humor, which will be put to the test frequently, now that has been officially installed as the 26th coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs' coach.
Of course, if being a good man was all that was required to be a good coach, then the line of candidates for the Leafs' position would have stretched down to the end of Bay St., made a right turn at the Queen Elizabeth Way and continued down to Buffalo.
What makes Maurice the right choice is that he'll bring much-needed structure to a Leafs' team that operated in a time warp last season — and not just because they were old and slow and so weak on defence that when the goaltending wasn't lights-out good, they weren't much good either. There was a laissez-faire quality to the Leafs under Pat Quinn, which just didn't translate well to the new NHL, with its stretch passes and quick counter-attacks - that Toronto either didn't or couldn't figure out. Under Maurice, the preparation will be far more advanced — and the players that need extra minutes to flourish (yes, we mean you Mats Sundin) will get their wish.
Luckily for them, though, they will also get someone with Quinn's compassion and respect for the players. This is not the same as hiring an autocrat in the normal pattern of alternating a good-cop coach with a bad-cop coach.
Maurice has a disarming charm and his performance at his first press conference was masterful. He managed to seem completely forthcoming, with a little self-deprecating humor thrown in. He deftly parried the two questions he wouldn't — or couldn't answer.
The first related to Jeff O'Neill, who played for him in Carolina, and faltered badly on offence in his final season behind the bench (just two goals in 30 games, before Maurice got fired). The second addressed the sort of reinforcement that he needs his boss, John Ferguson Jr., to bring in to supplement a Leafs' team that missed the playoffs in the Eastern Conference.
That is the sort of loaded question that can get a coach off on the wrong foot right away. As for identifying weaknesses on the last edition of the Leafs' team, his observation that you don't see a lot of Saturday night Toronto games on television in Binghampton was a safe answer. They both know that, in order to make the Leafs competitive in the near term, they'll need to find two wingers to play with Mats Sundin, two defencemen to play regularly ahead of Wade Belak and Aki Berg and a goaltender that can stabilize the position the way Curtis Joseph or the early Ed Belfour once did. Maybe J.S. Aubin is the answer, maybe not, but if the NHL playoffs are an accurate barometer, just because someone started the season as a back-up (Cam Ward, Ray Emery, Ilya Bryzgalov, Vesa Toskala), doesn't mean he cannot make the difference between winning and losing.
As for O'Neill, Maurice talked his "talent" and suggested that he would need to probe further to see if O'Neill was seriously pondering his future when he made those comments in the waning days of the season — that it might be time to retire. It's hard to imagine that O'Neill will be a good fit, even if he recovers from off-season surgery. O'Neill's waning footspeed is going to be an issue, especially if the trend towards the NHL as a track meet spills over into next season.
One of the dirty little secrets of the sportswriting dodge is that, over time, there is a tendency not to watch teams practice from start to finish every single day. They're just so repetitive and so similar that often, that time is spent more productively doing other things. About seven or eight years ago, however, I started paying more attention to practices again, after my son started playing hockey (and I started helping out behind the bench). There were drills that you could lift and modify from an NHL practice that worked nicely with first-year novices. One time, just days before he lost his job as the Carolina Hurricanes' coach, Maurice was passing through Calgary and held an afternoon practice at the Stampede Corral that I watched from start to finish. It was impressive because everything the Hurricanes did was done with a purpose. He had watched film on the Flames; identified a handful of their tendencies; and then introduced a few new drills to capitalize on them. He did what only the best coaches do — he explained the how of the drill and then he explained the why of the drill. For all of the up-and-down times with Carolina, the Hurricanes were never a team that lost because they were poorly prepared.
There hasn't been a lot of good news this off-season for beleaguered members of Leaf Nation, but the hiring of Paul Maurice represents a positive first step in what promises to be an interesting summer of change.
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca
Updated Friday, May 12 at 3:45 p.m.
So much for the pro-East, anti-West bias
The first round of the National Hockey League playoffs produced more than its share of surprises, but the finalists in NHL trophy voting — released Thursday — went pretty much according to script.
Remember that voting for five major awards (Hart, Norris, Calder, Selke and Lady Byng) is conducted by members of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association, while the broadcasters vote for coach of the year and the GMs pick the Vezina winner. Voters had a 72-hour window to submit their ballots — from the end of the regular season, until the start of the playoffs. Accordingly, the playoff performances — good or bad — had no bearing on the final results.
This year, there were a record 140 voters, up from 105 two years ago, which represented an increase over the 63 voters that received ballots the year before that. Philosophically, the PHWA philosophy was to incorporate as many qualified voters as possible, but to divide the ballots evenly around the NHL to avoid the long-held, but inaccurate perception of an "Eastern" bias in the voting.
Accordingly, there were 20 votes apportioned to each division and then 20 more to an "at-large" group of voters that represented the most experienced writers in the business.
Indeed, anyone that believed that players from the NHL's biggest markets had an advantage over their smaller-market brethren would have had that contention disputed by the preliminary voting results. There seemed to be a consensus in all the major categories. Few, for example, could argue with the three Hart Trophy (MVP) finalists: The Rangers' Jaromir Jagr, the Sharks' Joe Thornton and the Flames' Miikka Kiprusoff. Thornton and Jagr finished one-two in the NHL scoring race and they helped their respective teams far exceed expectations. In Kiprusoff's case, he led NHL goaltenders in two of the major statistical categories (GAA and shutouts) and helped his team win a divisional title, even though they were the fourth-lowest scoring club in the league.
In fact, the only race of consequence revolved around who would finish third in the Calder Trophy balloting, behind the Capitals' Alexander Ovechkin and the Penguins' Sidney Crosby. Essentially, it came down to a showdown between a small-market defenceman (Calgary's Dion Phaneuf) and a big-market goaltender (New York's Henrik Lundqvist). A strong case could be made for either, but in the end, Phaneuf finished ahead of Lundqvist in the balloting.
So much for the pro-East, anti-West bias that was supposed to hurt all the NHL's little guys.
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca
Updated Thursday, May 4 at 16:18 a.m.
A lot of questions in Dallas
Of all the teams sifting through the ashes of a failed playoff, no one will find the post-mortem more difficult to conduct than the Dallas Stars, who followed up a 53-win regular season with a 1-4 playoff record and became the first Western Conference team eliminated from post-season play.
The Stars, the choice of many to advance to the Stanley Cup final, were the latest second-seeded team to fall to a seventh seed in NHL playoff action. There wasn't a lot to choose from between the Stars and the Colorado Avalanche in their series, other than the fact that Colorado found a way to win three overtime playoff games and Dallas didn't.
Technically, Dallas finished with 10 more victories in the standings than Colorado, but that could be attributed mostly to the Stars' 12-1 record in shootouts (the Avalanche was a more mundane 3-6 in the new era, which eliminated ties from the standings). If you subtract those shootout results, which don't apply to the playoffs, then the teams were roughly on par with one another, talent-wise.
In the end, Colorado's best player, Joe Sakic, was a difference-maker on most nights and the Stars had no one in their line-up that could produce a timely overtime goal.
Accordingly, the decisions for general manager Doug Armstrong will be to weigh the successes of the regular season against the failures of the post-season and see where they stand.
For better or worse, Armstrong tied his own long-term fate to that of goaltender Marty Turco, by signing him to a long-term contract extension in the middle of the season. Turco won 41 regular-season games, third behind the Devils' Martin Brodeur and the Flames' Miikka Kiprusoff in the regular season, and gave every indication that he was ready to step up his play when it mattered most. Instead, Turco had his third consecutive undistinguished post-season again. He had an opportunity to shed his label as a goaltender that couldn't win the big game — and he failed to do so. Armstrong really has little choice relating to his goaltending — Turco will come back and assuming the Stars have the horses to get them to the playoffs in 2007, he'll get the chance to prove once again that he can get the job done.
Up front, the two key decisions will revolve around one forward who is signed, Bill Guerin, and another who isn't, Jason Arnott. Guerin has one year left on that five-year, $45 million contract he signed at the height of NHL salary escalation. For his rolled back $6.7 million deal this season, Guerin contributed exactly 13 goals in an injury-filled, underachieving year. The Stars chose to bring Guerin back last summer because the cost of buying out his contract was so prohibitive. This summer, his buyout number if $4.46 million — with only half of that amount ($2.23 million) counting against their salary cap each season for the next two years — makes him a prime candidate for the unemployment line.
Once upon a time, Guerin could be counted on to score the big-time playoff goals needed to win at this time of season. He was reasonably effective this spring, but $6.7 million is a lot to pay for a reasonably effective player.
Moreover, the Stars will also need to get Jason Arnott's name on a new contract. He is scheduled to become unrestricted on July 1 and after finishing second on the team in scoring with 76 points in 81 games, it is unclear how much he could command on the open market — or if the Stars are willing to give him a contract that would exceed the $3.5 million average that their leading scorer, Mike Modano, will earn over the course of his five-year contract. Rightly or wrongly, there is a perception around the NHL that Arnott performs best in a contract year — and that his play tails off afterwards.
The Stars also have a decision to make relating to Willie Mitchell, a trading-deadline addition that didn't pan out nearly as well as they'd hoped. Mitchell played pretty well for the Stars in the final month after coming over from the Minnesota Wild, but he too had an undistinguished playoff performance.
At the start of the season, there were a lot of question marks relating to the post-lockout Stars, a team that had to pare payroll significantly last summer to operate in the NHL's new $39 million universe. Over the course of the regular season, those questions were answered mostly in a positive vein — Armstrong did a nice job of icing a competitive team; coach Dave Tippett did a nice job of keeping them on a winning track.
Now, following a disappointing first-round exit, it's safe to assume that all those questions are going to be asked all over again.
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca
Updated Monday, May 1 at 10:53 a.m.
A sure sign that the NHL playoffs are upon us
On Friday night, in a between-periods interview on Hockey Night In Canada, host Ron MacLean asked Anaheim Mighty Ducks' general manager Brian Burke about the specifics of goaltender J.S. Giguere's so-called "lower-body" injury that made him a surprise scratch for the first game of the Calgary Flames' series.
Burke told MacLean in no uncertain terms that it was none of his business.
That, incidentally, wasn't just Burke being Burke either; that represents the official NHL position. Ever since they signed the new collective bargaining agreement with the players' association last summer, NHL headquarters in New York ordered teams do a lot of things they didn't necessarily want to do in the interests of selling the game.
But on the issue of full-disclosure of injuries, they are on the same page as the teams, who never want to reveal the full extent of a player's health status. Once upon a time, the league issued a weekly injury update, usually on Fridays. That practice was quietly discontinued.
The league sees no advantage or value to revealing injury data; and believes that there could be potential harm done to players if the nature or seriousness of a players' injury were common knowledge.
According to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, philosophically the league believes: "The injury reporting during the playoffs is no different than it is during the regular season; namely, the teams need to at least generally indicate if there is an injury issue. And we are very comfortable with that standard, because this is a very physical game, and if somebody is playing with an injury, which is a testament to how great our players are and what they endure, particularly during the playoffs, we don't see any reason to increase them as targets with respect to injuries."
So there. Nor are there any plans to adopt the National Football League's approach to reporting injuries which is done, mainly to address the gambling issue; and the NFL's concern that failure to disclose injuries could manipulate betting lines. The message from the NHL is clear: Even if the steady parade of "upper" or "lower" body injuries may sound a bit absurd, it isn't going to change any time in the foreseeable future.
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca
Updated Sunday, April 23 at 12:26 p.m.
Gap shrinks between success and failure
A final thought on the regular season, or what constitutes a successful regular season, just before National Hockey League playoff action gets underway:
Pick any two NHL teams and, for the sake of argument, call them Calgary and Vancouver.
One, Calgary, makes the playoffs and wins its first division title in 11 years. Optimism abounds, even though they scored the fewest goals by far of the 16 playoff teams. They have a proven goaltender in Miikka Kiprusoff, a grumpy demanding coach in Darryl Sutter and a relentless attacking style of play. Hopes are running high that with this old-style approach in place, they can duplicate their 2004 run to the Stanley Cup final.
Things are very, very good in Calgary these days.
The other, Vancouver, misses the playoffs for the first time in six years after winning the division title a year ago. Pessimism abounds. The first-year general manager is being second-guessed, even though he made a defensible decision last summer to give his team a chance to stay together and take a run at the Stanley Cup. The coach, Marc Crawford, may or may not get fired and the star player, Todd Bertuzzi, almost certainly needs to be relocated somewhere far away from the Left Coast in order to resuscitate his career. The sense is that the window on the Canucks' championships aspirations is closing fast and that they may never get to take a run at the Stanley Cup with their current core group.
Things are very, very bad in Vancouver these days.
But realistically, what is the difference between the happy, happy Flames and the sad, sad Canucks? This year, it was four wins.
Think about that for a moment: The difference between success and failure was four victories over an 82-game schedule. Calgary won 46 times this season, Vancouver 42. The six-and-a-half month NHL season began in October and ended in mid-April, so the difference between Calgary's ultra-successful season and Vancouver's dismal failing season was one extra victory in the standings about every 90 days.
It's not much, is it? Vancouver (and Los Angeles too) actually missed the playoffs, despite winning one more game than the playoff-bound Edmonton Oilers. Toronto missed the post-season with 41 wins; Montreal made it with 42.
In a 30-team, salary-capped league, the gap between the good and the bad, between the successful and the unsuccessful, is narrower than ever — which, in a way, leads to an observation about the upcoming playoffs as well.
Just about every team that actually made the post-season is capable of winning a round or two. Other than 95-point Edmonton over 124-point Detroit, what would constitute a major upset in this year's playoffs? Not Tampa, the defending champions, over Ottawa surely. Not playoff-hardened Colorado over Dallas either. Nashville won 49 times and almost no one is giving them a chance against the Sharks, who won 44 games. There isn't a single series out there that couldn't go either way, which is the most significant change from the days of the old 21-team NHL, when an upset really was an upset.
Back then, mediocre teams with horrible losing records routinely qualified for post-season play — and sometimes would steal a round or two just for fun.
In 1982, a 63-point Kings team knocked off a 111-point Oilers' team. Now that was an upset — a really bad team found its way briefly and defeated a really good team. In 1991, a 68-point North Stars' team knocked off a 106-point Chicago Blackhawks' team. That too was an unexpected, hard-to-predict upset. In '89, a 74-point Canucks' team took a 117-point Flames' team to overtime in the seventh game before losing. You get the picture.
So for anybody out there in Leafland and Canuckle-ville, the solace today, as they prepare to watch somebody else's team try to win the Stanley Cup, is that there really isn't much to choose from among the middle ranks of NHL teams. Unless you're Los Angeles, which was poised to make major changes even before the season ended, the teams that just fell short of the playoffs will now allow some time pass in order to take the emotion out of the decision-making process. It isn't a sexy response at the end of a disappointing season, and it may not be especially satisfying on the day after the season ends, but usually, it is the right one.
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Wednesday, April 19 at 11:29 p.m.
Kings' accountants should take some blame
The Los Angeles Kings made general manager Dave Taylor the first casualty of the National Hockey League off-season on Tuesday, a move that was eminently understandable, but not necessarily fair.
The case against Taylor started with the fact that in his nine-year watch, the Kings made the playoffs only four times and advanced past the opening round just once. In a market such as Los Angeles, where the Lakers of Shaq and Kobe ruled for years, only two things really matter for a niche sport such as hockey - marquee names and winning. The Kings produced neither — or they didn't until this year when, in a misguided attempt to create a larger public presence, they took Jeremy Roenick off the Philadelphia Flyers' hands so the Flyers could free up the salary cap room to sign Peter Forsberg as a free agent. Roenick scored eight goals for the Kings. Forsberg, when healthy, contributes almost a point-and-a-half to the Flyers' cause.
So that decision backfired, as did Taylor's attempt to solve his ongoing crisis in the crease. After the Roman Cechmanek experiment failed (thank you again Bobby Clarke), the Kings sent Cristobal Huet to the Montreal Canadiens for Mathieu Garon, in the hopes that Garon could emerge from the shadows of Jose Theodore and evolve into a No. 1 goaltender.
Instead, Huet saved Montreal's season when he came off the bench to replace Theodore, while Garon struggled with consistency. Taylor did some good things in the past couple of off-seasons — free-agent acquisitions Craig Conroy and Pavol Demitra were two-thirds of one of the top lines in hockey in the first half, before injuries to them (and to frequent linemate Alexander Frolov) undermined their collective contributions.
Still, Taylor was hamstrung by budgetary issues throughout his tenure that his other big-market general managers rarely dealt with. The Anschutz Group wanted the Kings to operate in a fiscally responsible manner in the pre-salary cap days, so their spending habits mimicked those of much smaller teams. Ultimately, the decision not to pony up for the contract demands of the Rob Blakes and the Mathieu Schneiders set the Kings back significantly. Both went on to make important contributions to winning teams in Colorado and Detroit respectively; their replacements didn't fare nearly as well in Los Angeles.
In short, the failures weren't all Taylor's fault. Some of the blame can be shared by the accounting department.
Still, after years of operating a marginally successful team, Taylor probably understood going into this season that the team needed to show improvement and at the very least, qualify for the playoffs. When it looked as if that wouldn't happen, Taylor made a coaching change last month — John Torchetti in, Andy Murray out — for only the third time in his managerial career. That didn't work either, and in the normal sequence of events, if a desperate, last-gap coaching change doesn't fix the problem, the next neck on the chopping block belongs to the general manager.
The Kings will reportedly introduce Dean Lombardi as their new GM, perhaps as early as this afternoon, and when they do, they'll have won a modest bidding war for his services. The New York Islanders and the Boston Bruins were also interested in hiring Lombardi, who was fired by the San Jose Sharks two years ago and has been working as a Philadelphia Flyers' pro scout in the interim.
Presumably, Lombardi's stock shot up because of the Sharks' recent surge up the NHL standings. As a manager, Lombardi oversaw an organization that was built from the ground up. They had the benefit of a handful of high draft choices (Patrick Marleau, Brad Stuart), but they also built well in the lower ranges of the draft, especially when it came to goaltenders (Miikka Kiprusoff was a Sharks' pick, as were both members of their current rotation, Vesa Toskala and Evgeni Nabokov).
The formula for winning in the new NHL is fairly obvious: Start with good young cheap players, pumping them into your system year after year. If you can do that, then you can use free agency judiciously to fill in the gaps, wherever they may occur.
A lot of NHL teams, looking at a mostly home-grown, surging San Jose team, probably thought the man who put their foundation in place might be able to do the same for them.
As an organization, the Kings have usually looked internally to develop managerial talent — from the Rogie Vachon era to the Nick Beverley years to the Dave Taylor regime (which lasted from 1997-98 until today). That philosophy didn't produce a championship in almost four decades, so this time around, the Kings decided to go outside of the organization to hire someone with new ideas and a fresh approach.
By no stretch of the imagination were the Kings' failures all Taylor's fault, but this is a bottom-line industry and the bottom line in Los Angeles — win and entertain — hasn't been met for awhile. Too long, as it turned out, for Dave Taylor.
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Tuesday, April 18 at 12:48 p.m.
It's time for Bertuzzi to leave Vancouver
Next year began for the Vancouver Canucks on Monday, with the annual exit interviews, the clearing-out-of-the-lockers and the one final attempt to digest the wreckage of a season gone terribly wrong.
There is a lot of unpredictability in professional sport, but the idea that the Canucks would be the first Canadian team eliminated from the playoffs race was pretty inconceivable back in October, when they went into the new season as one of the favorites for the Stanley Cup.
General manager David Nonis made a defensible decision last summer in his first year at the helm: To keep together the nucleus of a team that had recorded back-to-back 100-point seasons. The fact that it backfired on him — and that the key members of that squad couldn't find their previous form — puts him squarely on the hot seat now, trying to decide what to do next, amid the thundering clamor for major change in all elements of the organization. Because Nonis is so new in his position, he has no proven track record in terms of how to respond. However, he does seem to operate conservatively, moving slowly in the manner of a David Poile in Nashville, as opposed to quickly and boldly, in the way his mentor Brian Burke ran the Anaheim Mighty Ducks this year.
Presumably, Nonis understands that he cannot come back with same essential team that underachieved so badly this season. If so, one radical change might be enough to appease the fan base and address the team's internal issues - moving Todd Bertuzzi to an Eastern Conference team. Removing Bertuzzi from the mix would alter the fundamental dressing room dynamic and do both him and the organization a world of good.
Sometimes, a player just needs a fresh start — and really, there is no better example of that than Joe Thornton, who was the whipping boy in Boston for so many years and eventually just got tired of shouldering the burden for all the Bruins' various failures. The move to San Jose lightened his load and brightened his outlook on the game and he was able to translate it into a most extraordinary four-and-a-month finish.
Bertuzzi obviously has more to deal with than Thornton — he is a player with a big contract ($5.3 million), who had an ordinary year and carries all that Steve Moore baggage with him wherever he goes. The challenge in trading Bertuzzi is getting market value for him. What does a 70-point player with a possible upside return in today's salary-cap influenced trading game?
Still, if you're Nonis, you look at it this way: Bertuzzi is only a year removed from unrestricted free agency anyway, so if he doesn't emerge from his funk in 12 months, you can lose him for nothing at that point anyway. Moreover, Nonis has payroll issues this summer, even if the salary cap does jump $7 million, beginning with the fact that his No. 1 defenceman, Ed Jovanovski, is an unrestricted free agent, as is winger Anson Carter, who turned out to be a most successful reclamation project for the organization. In addition, the Sedin twins both had career years and they're restricted free agents, so they need to be signed as well.
If Nonis can get out from under $5.3 million of Bertuzzi's contract and get a quality young player in return, the deal makes sense on a lot of levels — addition by subtraction, changing the team's internal chemistry, putting the focus back on the ice, where it belongs.
In missing the playoffs for the first time since the 1999-00 season, the Canucks lost sight of one never-changing fact — eventually, you do need to go out and win some hockey games, with the season on the line. The Edmonton Oilers, the team that they were trying to reel in, gave them ample opportunity down the stretch, and they couldn't take advantage.
Opportunity knocked again and again. The Canucks couldn't, or wouldn't, answer and then offered up all kinds of explanations for that failing — injuries and bad luck featuring prominently in the discussion.
This of course, flies in the face of the evidence. In the game that probably hurt them the most, last Wednesday's home-ice overtime loss to San Jose, they actually caught a huge break when defenceman Bryan Allen skipped a shot past Vesa Toskala midway through the third period that had no business going in — but did. It gave Vancouver a 4-3 lead. They just needed to hold it for about 13 minutes, win the game, gain some momentum - and everything might have changed. But they didn't and it didn't.
The Sharks tied it in regulation and then won in overtime when Thornton — for about the 10th time that night — drifted into the Canucks zone, pulled up at the right face-off circle and then circled, looking for the trailer. The Sharks' Christian Ehrhoff materialized. Bertuzzi — who was standing right there, right beside the only player on the ice who could have done some damage — turned away and the Sharks' rookie defenceman had a clear path to the net, rifling in a wrist shot from point blank range. They couldn't blame Alex Auld for that one. If that's the type of defensive zone coverage you get in the must-win 80th game of the season, then something is fundamentally wrong. Either the players didn't absorb the coaching lessons, or the coaching lessons were flawed.
But the one factor that no one wants to hear anymore is the injury excuse. Every team — the ones that made the playoffs and the ones that missed — dealt with injuries this season. Some, like Carolina, had as many as seven key players out at different times and still found a way to win. Philadelphia was practically crippled by injuries but will make the post-season. Vancouver's problems on defence were discussed and analyzed far more than Philly's (even though they had three key rearguards out most of the year as well) or for that matter, Calgary's too. The Flames went through a similar run of injuries to defencemen, without as much as a peep out of them. They lost Robyn Regehr (who, like Jovanovski, was a Canadian Olympian) for a month. They lost Roman Hamrlik (who, like Sami Salo, anchors the power play) twice because of separate injuries. They lost hard-rock Rhett Warrener for 17 games, or almost a quarter of the season. Even now, they're playing the No. 10 defenceman in the organization, Mark Giardano, because Nos. 6 through 9 are all hurt (Jordan Leopold, Cale Hulse, Bryan Marchment and minor-leaguer, Richie Regehr). Instead of crying and complaining, coach Darryl Sutter simply wouldn't allow his team to dwell on what they didn't have. Instead, he forced them to think about the things they could control. Calgary was only four wins better than Vancouver over the course of the season, pending the outcome of Monday's finale against Anaheim.
Sadly for the Canucks, in today's parity-filled NHL, four wins can be the difference between a three seed and a ninth seed. The Canucks need to find those four extra wins next season. Provided Nonis pushes the correct off-season buttons, there's no reason to think they can't either.
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Updated Monday, April 17 at 2:14 p.m.
Goodbye Sean Avery
There are two indisputable facts to ponder about Sean Avery, the loudmouth super-pest who played for the Los Angeles Kings up until Wednesday, when they told him not to bother showing up for work for the final three games of the National Hockey League season:
One, Avery is a monumental pain in the you-know-what, a high-maintenance loose cannon who required so much handling, that eventually, the Kings determined that his presence became counter-productive to what they were trying to accomplish as a group;
Two, that as a shift disturber, there are probably few players that can agitate at Avery's level and still contribute 15 goals and 40 points in 13-plus minutes of playing time, usually at even strength.
The Kings washed their hands of Avery after an on-ice argument with assistant coach Mark Hardy, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. With only three games to go and Avery set to become an unrestricted free agent at season's end, the Kings decided to part company with the unpredictable hothead now rather than waiting until their season came to an end next week.
Essentially, the Kings fired Avery for insubordination, following a meeting with general manager Dave Taylor and interim coach John Torchetti. They lived with him through the pre-season slur against Denis Gauthier, whom he described as, "typical of most French guys in our league with a visor on, running around and playing tough and not back(ing) anything up." They lived with him through the fines against diving and the verbal shots he fired at Colin Campbell, the head of NHL hockey operations. They lived with him through a nasty verbal duel with Ducks' broadcaster Brian Hayward — and Hayward got off a good one too at the end of their exchange, noting that Avery was failing eighth grade for the third time back in his playing days. Finally, they decided enough was enough - that in this last breach of protocol, involving Hardy, a popular assistant coach, Avery had taken his bad-boy act one step too far.
It'll be fascinating to see what happens to Avery, once he shops himself around the NHL this summer. If Avery's employment depended strictly upon his hockey-playing ability, there would be a long line outside his agent's door. He is a competitor, a 5-10, 185-pound 'little ball of hate' — to borrow Pat Verbeek's old nickname. His aggressiveness in the corners and on the boards can wake a team from a mid-game slumber, and provide energy to the next line over the boards. The fact that he has a reasonable scoring touch — and doesn't require a lot of power-play time to deliver offence — makes him all the more valuable.
However, team building is a tricky thing. More and more general managers are watching how clubs such as the Buffalo Sabres and Anaheim Mighty Ducks succeed by building team chemistry, developing an all-for-one and one-for-all attitude that can overcome their payroll or talent limitations. Sadly, chemistry is a mercurial quality in the game. No one knows exactly how it happens, or why it sometimes disappears. The Kings are the poster boys for that — they had chemistry early in the season, when few believed that they were legitimate playoff contenders. Over time — and partly as a result of injury — that chemistry disappeared.
Did they get tired of constantly coming to Avery's defence, on the ice and in the dressing room? In addition to injuries or Andy Murray's coaching style, is that partly why they fell on hard times in the final two months? It's hard to say conclusively.
In some ways, hockey is so different than any other industry when it comes to addressing that question. Beginning in July, when Avery can officially start looking for a new job, market forces will determine the answer. There will be a risk attached adding him to your line-up — and the potential for reward too. It'll be interesting to see how many teams will line up for the chance to roll the dice.
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca
Updated Thursday, April 13 at 11:25 a.m.
Assessing the chances of Leaf nation
So what sort of scenario would have to unfold for the suddenly surging Toronto Maple Leafs to make the playoffs? Put it this way: Even though it is mathematically possible, you wouldn't want to wager the mortgage on the Leafs actually running down the Tampa Bay Lightning for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
Six playoff berths are already decided, after the New Jersey Devils won a narrow 4-3 overtime decision over the Carolina Hurricanes Tuesday night. You can pretty much concede the seventh spot to the Montreal Canadiens, who need to earn a maximum of three points in their final four games to get in.
That leaves the 2004 champions from Tampa as the team on the bubble. The Lightning have been routed in back-to-back games by Florida and Atlanta and their goaltending, an issue all season long, collapsed in both games. First, John Grahame received the start last Sunday against the Panthers and gave up all six goals. Awful. Sean Burke, who had been playing pretty well recently, got the nod Tuesday and surrendered five goals on 14 shots, before coach John Tortorella gave him the hook in favor of Grahame — who gave up a breakaway goal to the Thrashers' Marian Hossa on the first shot he faced, putting the game out of reach and sending the Lightning back to the drawing board, looking for goaltending answers with less than a week to go in the season.
Tampa's best chance stems from the fact that it has 42 wins already this season — and should any teams end up tied in the standings, most victories is the first tie-breaker. That is pivotal because Tampa holds the edge on both on Atlanta (39 wins) and Toronto (38 wins) in the tie-breaker at the moment.
The Thrashers hold a one-point lead on the Maple Leafs, with four comparatively easy games left on their schedule (Washington, Boston, Washington again and then Florida). They could run the table, but they'll have to do it with Mike Dunham in goal, since starter Kari Lehtonen is on the injured list and may not be back at any point in the regular season. Atlanta can get to 93 points, if it wins its remaining four games, which would force Tampa to win twice in its three final games (home and home against Carolina and then Washington on the last night of the regular season) to get to 93. If Tampa finished with 44 wins and Atlanta 43, then the Lightning would earn the playoff spot.
That, of course, makes the task for the Leafs more daunting — because they need to reel in two opponents, not one, and thus need help from an unexpected source. Toronto's four remaining games are against the New York Islanders, Ottawa, Buffalo and Pittsburgh. Ottawa and Buffalo always give them trouble. If the Leafs somehow ran off four consecutive wins, they'd finish the year with 42 victories and 92 points.
That would mean Tampa couldn't earn more than two points in its final three games (because three points would also give them 92 and they'd get the nod on the basis of most victories).
So Leaf Nation needs to cheer for a Carolina sweep over the fragile Lightning; needs to see the maddeningly inconsistent Thrashers fritter away a couple of easy points; and then needs to see the local heroes run off four consecutive victories, two against divisional rivals that would like nothing better than to see Toronto's playoff hopes go up in smoke this weekend. It's a long shot, but considering where they were about 10 days ago, the fact that they're alive at all constitutes something of a minor miracle. Now they just have to pray for more of the same over the next six days.
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Updated Wednesday, April 12 at 11:24 a.m.
Lucky Luc calls it a day
On draft day in June, 1984, the Los Angeles Kings were so sure of Luc Robitaille's Hall Of Fame potential that they used their ninth pick, 171st overall, to select him from the Hull Olympiques of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
Five rounds earlier, with the 69th pick in the draft, the Kings chose what they considered a surer bet - a Minnesota high school prospect named Tom Glavine, who never played a game in the National Hockey League, but went on to have a pretty good major-league baseball career, mostly with the Atlanta Braves.
It didn't take long for NHL teams to discover the error of their ways, regarding Robitaille (or Glavine too, for that matter). Robitaille produced 84 points in his rookie season and scored 44 or more goals in each of his first eight years in the league, prompting former Hartford Whalers' scout David McNab to ruefully observe once: "If we had known Robitaille was going to be this good, we would have taken Glavine, John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and the rest of the Braves pitching staff in rounds one-through-eight just to get Robitaille in the ninth."
McNab's team — and everyone else's — was fooled by one line in the scouting report on Robitaille. After noting the good hands and effervescent personality, it also made reference to a Montreal newspaper report suggesting Robitaille "skated slower than the Zamboni."
Robitaille never did get much faster on his blades, but he always got to where he needed to be — and that was the front of the net, where he paid a heavy physical price for poking in 668 career goals, 10th on the all-time list. When Robitaille leaves the NHL following a 20-year career, he will go out as the highest-scoring left winger in history. He passed Johnny Bucyk just before the lockout and counting the 24 points he mustered this season, is now at 1,394 career points, good for 18th on the all-time scoring list (three ahead of Brett Hull).
Robitaille had virtually all of his success in the 14 seasons he spent in a Kings' uniform. He was traded away once — in 1994 to Pittsburgh for Rick Tocchet — and he left voluntarily once — in July 2001 to Detroit as an unrestricted free agent - after the Kings lowballed him a contract negotiation. Robitaille won the only Stanley Cup of his career with the 2002 Red Wings and even though he played a limited role (averaging about 13 minutes per night), he was front-and-centre in the game that mattered, when Detroit steamrolled Colorado (and Patrick Roy) in the seventh and deciding game of the Western Conference final. That single virtuoso performance against Roy, an old nemesis, made his signing in Detroit worthwhile, according to Red Wings' sources.
Robitaille eventually made his way back to Los Angeles for a third stint with the team, but ultimately his greatest years with the Kings came in the early days of the Wayne Gretzky era. In their memorable 1993 run to the Stanley Cup final, Robitaille scored 63 regular-season goals and added 22 points, including nine goals, in 24 playoff games. The Kings were on their way to sweeping Montreal on the road in the first two games of the series when defenceman Marty McSorley got caught using an illegal stick. The Canadiens tied the game in the dying seconds, won in overtime and cruised to victory, winning the series in five games. L.A. never came close to winning another Stanley Cup and when the Kings missed the playoffs the following year, Robitaille was traded away to the Penguins for Tocchet, who began his long-standing friendship with Gretzky at that moment in time.
Robitaille's perpetually smiling face and sunny disposition contributed to the Kings' dressing-room chemistry just as his scoring totals contributed to their on-ice successes. Once, in the first year after Gretzky's acquisition — in the days when players actually changed clothes in the dressing room - the Great One was holding court for a handful of visiting reporters, when Robitaille plunked himself down in the middle of the dressing-room floor and started doing sit-ups "Doogay" style. This was a reference to pretty-boy Ron Duguay, who had been picked up by L.A. in what ended up as his final NHL season — and involved Robitaille completing one (1) sit-up and then collapsing in an exhausted heap on his side, to giggles all around.
By the time the 2005-06 season rolled around, there wasn't much to laugh about in the Kings' dressing room anymore. Hockey can be a grim, serious business in many NHL precincts nowadays and that was the case in the final year of the Andy Murray regime in Los Angeles. Robitaille was coming off a decent pre-lockout year (his 51 points led the team in scoring), but he never really got it going this season, after the year-long layoff.
Murray benched Robitaille for four games earlier this season and his eventual replacement as Kings' coach, John Torchetti, sat out Robitaille for three more games last week, in a desperate hope to salvage the Kings' season. It didn't work.
So Robitaille read the tea leaves, considered the date on his birth certificate (he turned 40 in February) and made it official Tuesday, ending a career that spanned two decades and included a Calder Trophy, a Stanley Cup, plus five first-team and three second-team all-star selections. His stature as the premier left winger of his generation — and a player willing to pay a physical price night after night to score a goal in traffic — should cement his Hall Of Fame credentials.
With the Kings pretty much out of playoff contention, Robitaille's hope was to be in the line-up for the final three games of the season, so he could go out the way he came in — with a smile on his face and maybe even one more goal on his stick.
Not bad for a guy who skated slower than the Zamboni.
Not bad at all.
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Tuesday, April 11 at 1:02 p.m.
Handicapping the West race
More and more, it looks as if one of the two Canadian teams in the Western Conference playoff race — the Edmonton Oilers or the Vancouver Canucks — will miss out on post-season play altogether this season.
But which one?
The Oilers frittered away an enormous opportunity in Sunday's 2-1 loss to a St. Louis Blues team that had previously lost 13 games in a row. Yes, they needed to sit in the dressing room an extra 45 minutes, while the Blues retired Al MacInnis's jersey, but that hardly represents an excuse, not at this time of year, not when the games are so important.
The Oilers showed no desperation — or they didn't until it was too late to make a difference. Their 23-shot outburst in the third period probably should have netted them the tying goal, but where was push in the first period (when they managed just five shots against Jason Bacashihua) or in the second, when they managed just nine? On their current make-it-or-break-it-road trip, the Oilers lost to Minnesota, needed overtime to defeat Chicago and then lost again to St. Louis. They netted three points, away from home (where they'd been good all year) against three non-playoff teams.
It isn't good enough — and it wasn't just that they lost the games either. Now they'll need to go into Detroit to play the final game of their trip against a Red Wings' team that will get Henrik Zetterberg back from the injury list. The Red Wings have little left to play for, which may be the Oilers' only saving grace.
With five games remaining on their schedule, Detroit has already wrapped up the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference and need just one more victory to win the President's Trophy for first overall and home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. When the Red Wings last won the Stanley Cup in 2002, they were also President's Trophy winners that year, so it does matter; it can matter. More than anything else, the Red Wings need to sort out their line-up and their goaltending in the remaining nine days of the season and so, they might just get caught napping.
Sadly, Edmonton has just the three games remaining on their schedule and even with a two-point bulge over the Canucks, they are probably in a more precarious position than Vancouver is at the moment. After the Detroit game, the Oilers played Anaheim at home on Thursday and then are off until Monday, when they wrap up the season with a game against Colorado. By then, the race could be decided.
Vancouver holds the tie-breaker edge — more wins — over Edmonton and makes up its game in hand Monday against the high-flying Ducks. With a win in regulation, Anaheim can become the fifth Western Conference team to clinch a playoff spot (Detroit, Dallas, Calgary and Nashville are already in) — and there would be some juicy irony if they did it at Vancouver's expense.
The Canucks bounced Brian Burke as their general manager in the spring of 2004, declining to renew his contract, even though he had overseen the evolution of a 58-point sad-sack franchise into a Stanley Cup contender. When Burke landed in Anaheim, he was faced with a massive rebuilding job on every level. He inherited a team with the eighth-highest pre-lockout payroll (five players earned over $5 million, including Sergei Fedorov, who made $10 million, before the 24 per cent salary rollback went into effect). Burke's predecessor, Al Coates, ditched one of those contracts (Vaclav Prospal) and Burke got rid of three others (Fedorov, Sandis Ozolinsh and Petr Sykora). He also dumped Nos. 6 and 7 (Steve Rucchin and Keith Carney) in what was supposed to be a complete makeover year … and still they're contending.
The Ducks' Randy Carlyle is arguably the Western Conference's coach of the year and he too was plucked out of the Vancouver organization (he ran their farm team in Manitoba for years). An Anaheim win would guarantee the Ducks an unexpected spot in the post-season and put more pressure on Vancouver to sweep their home-and-home series later in the week with the red-hot San Jose Sharks.
The Sharks' recent surge from outside the playoff picture is the primary reason that one of Edmonton or Vancouver will miss out. Unlike their Canadian counterparts, the Sharks didn't stumble down the stretch. Joe Thornton, their main in-season acquisition (and a player the Boston Bruins didn't think could meet the challenge in big-game scenarios), just keeps piling up the points. His 85 assists is 29 more than the league leaders (Scott Gomez and Martin St. Louis) had in 2004 — and the main reason Jonathan Cheechoo is poised to become the league's third 50-goal scorer.
The best hope for a playoff that includes both Edmonton and Vancouver would be if Colorado were to collapse in the final week. The Avalanche has a winnable game Tuesday night against the Phoenix Coyotes. A victory there, in what will probably be Jose Theodore's first start in a Colorado uniform (he came on in relief of Peter Budaj during Sunday's 5-2 loss to the Wild) would give them a cushion.
If the Coyotes found a way to win, however, then Colorado finishes its season with a three-game swing through Western Canada — first Calgary, then Vancouver, then Edmonton. That would put the three teams in a position to help themselves (and each other). The Oilers' best hope may be to stay within a point of the Avalanche, pending that final game of the season against Colorado next Monday.
Colorado owns the tie-breaker against Edmonton too, so the Oilers' season could come down to getting it done on the ice themselves in the next week and desperately looking for help elsewhere (hello Wayne!, it's Kevin Lowe on the phone). It's not an ideal scenario, but when you leave so many points on the table so often in one season, it may be the best they can hope for.
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Monday, April 10 at 12:10 p.m.
The Jagr turnaround
Jaromir Jagr, the league's MVP favorite, was on a conference call Wednesday, reflecting on his extraordinary comeback season and the fact that he's led the New York Rangers to their first playoff berth in eight years, snapping the longest current drought in the NHL.
According to Jagr, there was more than one reason for his strong play this season, which puts him in line to win his sixth NHL scoring crown. "First of all, I think the lockout helped me a lot," he said. "I was able to play in Czech Republic, Russia. The same routine for 14 years, I'm not saying it's getting tired, but mentally, it probably is a little bit. When you play in Europe, you can do anything you want. You can relax, but you still play hockey. I think the year off helped me a lot. Plus the whole organization here in New York, it's all about professionalism. They (are) just helping you with everything. They just make sure you play the best hockey you can play."
Jagr started the 2004-05 lockout playing for Kladno in the Czech Republic, but switched to the Russian team Avangard Omsk for the second half. Omsk is owned by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who also includes the English soccer team Chelsea among his sports properties. Omsk and Ak Bars Kazan were the two big spenders in Russia during the lockout, but neither team won the championship. That honor went to Moscow Dynamo, a team that employed Pavel Datsyuk, Alexander Ovechkin and others.
The irony is that Omsk and Kazan, without a bevy of NHLers to fall back on, have both advanced to the Russian Superleague final. Kazan made it easily — they swept Yaroslav Lokomotiv in three straight behind the strong goaltending of former NHLer Freddie Brathwaite and the scoring of ex-Penguin Alexei Morozov (and are 9-1 in the playoffs overall this year).
Omsk had a more difficult time of it. They split their first two games with Metallurg Magnitogorsk, Evgeni Malkin's team, and then won two straight at home, in overtime. Omsk actually won all three games in the series in OT to bounce Magnitogorsk, the team coached by Dave King that won the regular-season crown in Russia by 29 points and lost only four games (out of 51) in regulation all year.
A week ago, Jagr talked about going back to Russia to play in Omsk once his contract expires, but if he goes on to win the scoring title, that might not happen as quickly as he thought.
When Jagr originally signed his seven-year, $77 million contract with the Washington Capitals, there was an option for an eight year if he won the Art Ross, Hart or Conn Smythe trophy as playoff MVP (there was no Rocket Richard award for goalscoring when the contract was originally signed). Jagr will almost certainly take home one and probably two of those awards this spring, meaning he will be contractually committed to the Rangers for the 2008-09 season (for $8.36 million, which is his original $11 million contract, minus the 24 per cent rollback).
Not that the Rangers will mind. When they acquired his rights from the Capitals (in a January, 2003 deal for Anson Carter), Washington agreed to pick up just under one-half of Jagr's contract — not just for that year or this year, but for every year of the deal. Not only are the Rangers paying Jagr just under $5 million per season, that also represents their salary-cap charge. Effectively, the Rangers are getting an $8 million player for $4.94 million, meaning they get about an extra $3 million in salary-cap room that other teams don't enjoy.
They may need it too. So many of the players contributing to their turnaround — Martin Straka, Martin Rucinsky, Petr Sykora — are all unrestricted free agents next season, meaning GM Glen Sather will need to get them signed to new contracts, if he wants to maintain that Prague-On-The-Hudson collegiality that the Rangers have enjoyed this season.
The good news is that two of the biggest contributors — goaltender Henrik Lundqvist and centre Michael Nylander — are signed for next year, meaning the team's nucleus isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Jagr predicted a Rangers' playoff berth back in September, but generally, that type of observation carries little weight. What player, going into a new season, is going to concede that his team has little chance of qualifying for post-season play?
Still, according to Jagr, he genuinely meant what he said: "I knew what kind of players we got on the team. There were five or six players who play world championship in Vienna. It was five guys from our team. Mike Nylander was there, Henrik. I knew we were going to have a good goaltender. I didn't know anybody from third and fourth line, but those guys, they proved (to) me during the training camp; I feel if they going to play the way they play in training camp, we should have no problem to make the playoffs."
To comment, click here, or email me at eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca
Updated Thursday, April 6 at 12:55 p.m.
Aging gracefully
The gospel according to the Detroit Red Wings' Chris Chelios is never dull. Whether he's railing against changes within the National Hockey League players' association, or pondering the possibility of playing hockey at the age of 50, Chelios always has something on his mind.
Last week, when the Los Angeles Kings' Jeremy Roenick, passed through town, he ventured that Chelios, the 44-year-old Red Wings' defenceman, just might play until he's 50. That would be virtually unprecedented in any major sport, although the obvious footsteps that he'd follow in belong to Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe, the former Red Wings' star, who was able to play with his sons, Mark and Marty professionally, and spent parts of six decades in the NHL and WHA before finally hanging up the skates for the last time.
Chelios didn't rule out anything, when the subject was broached Monday morning.
"I guess, on a team like Detroit, where we have the depth, I've got the luxury of not having to worry about going over the other team's blue line," said Chelios, with a semi-straight face. "I just stay back and kill penalties. If I feel like I do physically, 50? I'll do it. If I break down next year, who knows? But right now, I've had just as much fun the last couple of years as I did my first two years in the league. So as long as we're winning and I fit in …"
Chelios is already in his sixth season with the Red Wings, after joining them in a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks in March of 1999. He won the Stanley Cup in his second full season (with the '86 Montreal Canadiens) and then waited 16 seasons for No. 2 (with the '02 Red Wings). This is his 22nd NHL season in all, after joining the Canadiens from the University of Wisconsin in 1984. Altogether, he has played 1,469 games through Monday, scoring 923 points and picking up 2,799 penalty minutes. He is playing about 18 minutes per night, following injuries that kept two younger rearguards, Jiri Fischer and Nicklas Kronwall, out of the line-up for extended periods of time.
Fischer is done for the season, but Kronwall is back and Mathieu Schneider is currently being held out of the line-up with a minor "lower body injury."
Otherwise …
"We're healthy," pronounced Chelios, "and that's the main thing. I don't think there's been too much of a burden on any individual playing too much, aside from Nicklas Lidstrom, who is seeing a lot of minutes now that Schneids has been out the last couple of games. We're a team that doesn't play a physical game obviously, we're a puck possession team. A team like Calgary's got to play a physical game and if you're tired, you're going to make mistakes and you tend to hold onto the puck too long, or sometimes, you get injuries."
Steve Yzerman, Detroit's other 40something player, skipped the morning skate Monday, but he's been on something of a roll lately, with 11 points in eight games. Recently, Yzerman played his 1,500th NHL game (tonight will be No. 1,510). Many suspect that this may be his last hurrah, but Chelios — four years his senior — isn't about to concede that.
"It's great to see him contributing offensively like he has," said Chelios. "He's playing with Langer (Robert Lang), who is probably a pretty good player for him to be playing with — a playmaker and a goalscorer. Yzy's been scoring some big goals for us and it's great to see. I know everybody's pulling for him. It might just get in his head and keep him interested for next year too. That's what I hope anyway."
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Updated Monday, April 3 at 3:55 p.m.
The Battle of Alberta
EDMONTON -In the ultra-time Western Conference playoff race, the Edmonton Oilers left two important points on the table in Saturday night's 4-1 loss to their archrival Calgary Flames.
It was a bit of a throwback game to the days when the Battle of Alberta was the most engaging rivalry in the NHL. Georges Laracque and Chris Simon spilled blood in a fight of epic proportion.
The teams played a hard-nosed physical style and for the most part, the referees let them have at one another. The final score didn't illustrate how the game unfolded.
The Oilers dominated the early stages of the game and could have a three-goal lead before five minutes had elapsed, if it wasn't for their misses around the net and Miikka Kiprusoff's strong play in the Calgary goal.
"He held them in enough to give them a chance," analyzed Oilers' centre Michael Peca. "They're a team that's just kind of survived that way a lot this year. It maybe looks like they're behind the eight-ball, but the goalie makes a big save and they've got a very determined team that doesn't give up or quit at any time. You know it's a matter of time before their hard work creates turnovers. We handed them the puck in the slot about eight or nine times today. That's a frightening thing to see."
The Oilers lost a point to the ninth-place San Jose Sharks on Saturday, after the Sharks rallied to tie the Phoenix Coyotes, only to lose the game in overtime. The Coyotes visit the Oilers on Monday and between now and then, coach Craig MacTavish vowed to address the team's turnover ratio (he described their play as "suicidal").
According to MacTavish, the coaching staff's "mantra" over the past two-and-a-half weeks was to score some goals from in front of the net. "To see some guys not wanting the pay the price in terms of going to the tough areas of the ice is disturbing. You have to go with conviction. If you're tippy-toeing in there, you're not often going to be rewarded with a goal."
Traditionally a player who picks up his game as the playoffs approach, Peca played one of his strongest games of the season, but was stopped by Kirprusoff on a breakaway. A goal there — or on any of the two times Shawn Horcoff put the puck between Kiprusoff's legs but saw it come out the other side, might have made a difference.
"I thought it was the most physical game we had against each other all year," said Peca. "I know the stakes are higher; they always seem to be pretty high when these two teams meet each other. There's a lot on the line now. They came in here and played more of a playoff brand of hockey. Playoff hockey is not about the skill, or everything else, it's about working hard and minimizing your mistakes and capitalizing on the other team's mistakes. That's exactly what they did tonight."
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Updated Saturday, April 2 at 1:38 a.m.
Theodore finally shows up for work
There was a Jose Theodore sighting in Calgary Friday morning — the ex-Canadiens' goaltender finally joined his new team, the Colorado Avalanche, on a full-time basis after spending most of the first three weeks that followed his trade back home in Montreal, rehabilitating his broken heel and awaiting the birth of his new daughter.
Theodore took to the ice, in an Avalanche sweat suit but wearing no goalie equipment, just to fool around with a stick and a puck after most of the regulars had adjourned to the dressing room following Friday's morning skate. Afterwards, Theodore was not made available for interviews and according to a member of the Colorado public relations staff, will not be talking about his status until he starts formal practices with his new team.
The $64-million question is: If Colorado does qualify for the Western Conference playoffs, would they turn to Theodore ahead of Peter Budaj, their current starter, for post-season play? Coach Joel Quenneville hedged on that question when it was posed to him Friday, saying that he wasn't prepared to commit one way or another, until he could evaluate Theodore's progress in practice.
"It's a good situation for him that he's back around the guys and that he's getting closer to giving us an idea of when he'll be able to play," said Quenneville. "He's a real competitor. He wants a chance to get into the net. As an organization, we feel the upside there is tremendous for us. He's a great asset to have down the stretch. When he'll be able to play, we'll make that decision at the time, but I think it's a real healthy situation, having him around."
In Theodore's absence, Budaj — the young Slovak goaltender — has kept the Avalanche in the running for the Northwest Division title with strong netminding.
"He's a good pro," said Quenneville, of Budaj. "He's a student of the game. He comes to the rink every day. He loves the challenge he has right now. He thinks it's a great opportunity. He's done a good job with it right now. I don't think (having Theodore around) is going to deter him at all."
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eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca
Updated Friday, March 31 at 6:00 p.m.
The latest "biggest" game of the year
There are 20 days left in the National Hockey League regular season: 20 days for 20 teams to divvy up the 16 available playoff spots in what is, outside of Toronto, one of the most compelling, closely contested races in decades.
Officially, only three teams are in — Detroit, Ottawa and Carolina. Four others with 90 points or more (Dallas, the New York Rangers, Philadelphia and Buffalo) are almost certainly there as well, leaving 13 teams to chase the nine remaining spots.
In 17 of the next 20 days, at least one game will feature clubs fighting each other for a playoff berth separated by six points or fewer in the conference standings.
In the near term, the best match-up will be Friday's showdown between the Calgary Flames and the Colorado Avalanche, two teams tied for first place in the Northwest Division with 88 points apiece (Calgary holds a game in hand).
Here's what's on the line: The team that wins the Northwest will get the No. 3 seed in the West and more importantly, can avoid a first-round meeting with either Detroit or Dallas, two teams that are clearly the class of the conference.
Calgary is running out of healthy bodies after centre Jamie Lundmark took a stick to the eye from the Los Angeles Kings' Mike Weaver in Wednesday's 2-1 Flames win that went unpenalized. Coach Darryl Sutter was critical of that non-call, probably because the Flames were already playing a fourth line that consisted of Byron Ritchie, Craig MacDonald and Chris Simon even before Lundmark's injury. If Lundmark can't go against Colorado, the choice will be to call up yet another forward from their minor-league affiliate or to dress seven defencemen against the Avalanche.
Colorado, of course, can muster little sympathy for the Flames. They are muddling along without two of their top scorers, Alex Tanguay and Marek Svatos, as well while goaltender Jose Theodore is scheduled to arrive any day now to start working out with his new team. Theodore made a brief cameo in Colorado after the David Aebischer trade but returned to Montreal so he could be with his girlfriend, Stephanie Cloutier, who gave birth to their daughter last week.
Calgary meets Colorado once more after Friday night — on Apr. 13 — and it is well within the realm of possibility that they could face each other again in the opening playoff round, one as the third seed, the other as the sixth.
Sutter wouldn't mind having an easier path to the playoffs, noting: "The other conference, it's probably going to be five or six less points to get in. It's going to take 96 points here." Sutter added this, when asked to preview the Colorado match: "I guess it's just kind of the echo. I said, 'my job this year is to push Vancouver and Colorado' and we're still doing it and we'll try it again on Friday."
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Updated Thursday, March 30 at 3:38 p.m.
Crunching the numbers in the Calder race
For the first time in a long time, there is actually some value and merit to debating the Calder Trophy race, awarded annually to the NHL player selected as "most proficient" in his first year of competition. Once upon a time, the Calder went to players who would go on to have outstanding careers — Daniel Alfredsson, Peter Forsberg, Martin Brodeur, Teemu Selanne, Pavel Bure and Ed Belfour all won in a six-year span between 1991 and 1996. More recently, with the exception of Dany Heatley in 2002, the award has gone to a series of players that turned out to be quality pros, but not huge stars: Bryan Berard, Sergei Samsonov, Chris Drury, Scott Gomez. The two most recent winners — Boston Bruins' goaltender Andrew Raycroft in 2004, St. Louis Blues' defenceman Barrett Jackman in 2003 — have both suffered through harrowing unproductive seasons, but even when they were at their best as rookies, were would be hardpressed to crack the top five this time around.
Consider that five rookie goaltenders could win 20 or more games this season, beginning with the Rangers' Henrik Lundqvist, who is contending for the league lead in two goaltending categories - save percentage (third, .924) and goals-against average (third, 2.17) - and has the same number of wins already that Raycroft had in his rookie season (29). In addition, Buffalo's Ryan Miller (25), Philadelphia's Antero Niittymaki (22) and Ottawa's Ray Emery (20) will soon by joined by the Atlanta Thrashers' Kari Lehtonen, who has 18 wins, despite missing the first half of the season with injury.
Of those five, the only one with a legitimate chance of cracking the top three on this year's rookie ballot is Lundqvist — and if he makes it, it means that Calgary Flames' defenceman Dion Phaneuf won't.
Phaneuf leads all rookie defensemen with 17 goals, including six game-winners. Should he reach 20 goals, Phaneuf would become just the third blueliner in NHL history to do so in his rookie campaign, joining the New York Rangers' Brian Leetch (23 in 1988-89) and the Colorado Rockies' Barry Beck (22 in 1977-78). Phaneuf's mark dwarfs the numbers that Jackman achieved in his rookie season: Three goals, 19 points and 190 penalty minutes. Jackman is a stay-at-home defensive defenceman; Phaneuf does that and contributes offence too. Phaneuf may have to content himself for a place on the all-rookie team, where the second defence spot will probably go to Ottawa's Andrej Meszaros, who leads all players in plus-minus (+39) and has posted an even or plus rating in 61 of 71 games.
That doesn't even consider the two favorites for the award: Washington's Alexander Ovechkin and Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby, both of whom look certain to crack the top 20 in NHL scoring race. Ovechkin already ranks fourth all-time for goals in a rookie season, trailing Selanne (76 with Winnipeg in 1992-93), Mike Bossy (53 with NY Islanders in 1977-78) and Joe Nieuwendyk (51 with Calgary in 1987-88).
Ovechkin, born Sept. 17, 1985, could also become the fourth-youngest 50-goal scorer, after Wayne Gretzky (19 years, two months in 1979-80 and 20 years, one month in 1980-81, both with Edmonton), Jimmy Carson (19 years, eight months with Los Angeles in 1987-88) and Pierre Larouche (20 years, five months with Pittsburgh in 1975-76).
Through Wednesday's action, rookies have scored 12.9 per cent of all goals this season, the highest percentage since the 1981-82 season, according to NHL figures.
Ovechkin is second overall in NHL goalscoring with 47; leads all players in shots (360); and is closing in on the NHL's single-season record for a rookie (387), set by Selanne in 1992-93. Ovechkin's 47 goals are 15 ahead of Crosby (32) and Colorado's Marek Svatos (32). Three other rookies - the Rangers' Petr Prucha (28), Buffalo's Thomas Vanek (24) and Boston's Brad Boyes (24)) - all have a chance to exceed 25 goals, which is what the 2004 co-leaders, Michael Ryder and Trent Hunter, managed in the pre-lockout year.
Ovechkin will probably win the award in a romp over Crosby, the predicted runner-up, but for a change, the voters have a long list of candidates to consider for the award — as opposed to the past couple of years, when the challenge was to find five deserving names just to fill out your ballot.
Send your comments on this item to eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Wednesday, March 29 at 4:08 p.m.
Leafs' deadline strategy was a pipedream
There is no better illustration of how badly the Toronto Maple Leafs misread their plight at the trading deadline than by pondering the recent rise of the Florida Panthers. The Panthers were one of four Eastern Conference teams (along with the Leafs, Boston Bruins and New York Islanders) who were all in roughly in the same position some three weeks ago, with four points separating the four teams back on Mar. 8, or the day before the NHL trade deadline fell.
All four were just off the playoff pace, but close enough to entertain the vague illusion that if the stars aligned and everybody stayed healthy and played to the best of their abilities, they just might — might — sneak in and grab a playoff spot.
This, of course, required the collapse of one or more of the teams ahead of them and also the hope that Jupiter didn't align with Mars for one of the other also-rans in their conference.
Once in a while, a miracle occurs - George Mason qualified for the Final Four in the NCAA basketball tournament, right? — but to base a business plan on a pipedream was a poorly conceived strategy, not when the odds of coming from far off the pace in the final 40 days of the season were so astronomical. Predictably, the Leafs stutter-stepped along, winning a few and losing a few and now, slowly, the realization that they are finished has sunk in. With Ed Belfour out for the season and Jason Allison too, the excuses are readily in hand.
But even if that hadn't happened, look at Florida. The Panthers did catch lightning in a bottle. They've won six in a row; are 9-1-1 in their last 11; have an ultra-positive vibe going in their dressing room; and are on the move up the standings. Even at that, they are still six points behind the Canadiens and Devils, who are tied for the final playoff spot and can't afford a misstep in the next three weeks. Otherwise, their nice little run will be largely in vain.
Nor does that take into account how far back these lower-rung Eastern Conference teams really are. Shift any of them over to the Western Conference and their little charge up the standings would mean nothing. In the West, two 90-point teams will almost certainly miss the playoffs. The Calgary Flames, who've held first place in the Northwest Division pretty much since Christmas, are one more bad week away from falling out of the playoff picture altogether. Altogether, five points separate seven teams (Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, San Jose, the Canucks and the Kings) and if Tampa, Montreal and New Jersey, all of whom are in the Eastern Conference playoff picture were playing in the West, they would be outside the top 10.
Of course, the closeness of the playoff race in the West meant that a whole bunch of teams that wanted to be buyers at the trading deadline couldn't make a significant move because there weren't enough sellers, willing to put players out on the open market. That was Toronto's missed opportunity.
Sellers were getting a premium this spring. Instead of dumping all the players they'll rid themselves of this summer, they should have moved them all out in March, when fringe players such as Jason Wiemer and Sean Brown were going for fourth-round picks and rent-a-goalies with losing records were exchanged for No. 1s. Now, in exchange for two fleeting weeks of wishing and hoping that the playoffs were still in reach, they'll have nothing to show for their Allisons and Aki Bergs — instead of an extra ticket or two in the draft that might have paid a dividend or two down the road.
Sometimes, you wonder if there aren't too many numbers-crunchers running NHL teams these days; other times, you think, can't these people do a little simple arithmetic? Sometimes, you have to send a clear signal about the direction you're going. The Leafs didn't give off any kind of vibe, not that they were going for it, or that they were running up the white flag. They just seemed indecisive.
Send your comments on this item to eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Monday, March 28 at 12:49 p.m.
Ducks' rejuvenation flies under radar
They play their games long after most newspapers go to press at night, so to follow the fortunes of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks usually requires a working knowledge of Internet websites, plus a broader appreciation for the National Hockey League as a whole, not just one or two teams.
The Mighty Ducks have been a little like the Buffalo Sabres or the Carolina Hurricanes this year, without the attendant positive publicity that accompanied their respective revivals. They were a team in transition, with a new general manager (Brian Burke), a new coach (Randy Carlyle) and a mandate to rebuild what had been a skilled, but soft team into a hard-nosed competitive squad.
It looks as if that mission has been mostly accomplished. The Ducks won the last game on Wednesday night's NHL schedule in most dramatic fashion to continue their amazing run right into the thick of the playoff picture. Twice they rallied from two-goal deficits against the Colorado Avalanche and then they won the game in overtime on a penalty shot by Johan Hedstrom, a little-known Swede.
In November, the Ducks played and lost a game to the Avalanche in Colorado, a defeat that started an eight-game skid that left them well off the playoff pace. Since then, mostly under cover of darkness, they have fashioned a 28-11-8 run that lifted them up to sixth place in the Western Conference. In the past two weeks, they've leapfrogged Los Angeles, Edmonton and Vancouver and held off the hard-charging San Jose Sharks. They have won because of J.S. Giguere's goaltending (although he got the hook early Wednesday night) and unexpected scoring from a no-name line-up that features the likes of Andy McDonald, Chris Kunitz and a trio of emerging young players, Joffrey Lupul, Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry. They are also getting important minutes out of defenceman Scott Niedermayer, who signed with them last summer as an unrestricted free agent, so he could play with his brother Rob. Burke signed Niedermayer and then traded away Sergei Fedorov, Petr Sykora, Steve Rucchin and Mike Leclerc in order to make the salary fit into his payroll. Organizationally, the Ducks are pruning and winning, winning and pruning - and with less than four weeks to go in the regular season, represent an interesting darkhorse contender if they happen to hold on to a playoff spot.
"There is a belief in each other right now, that if we go out there and work hard, we have a good opportunity every night," Niedermayer told the Orange County Register. "No matter what kind of talent you have on your team, you need that if you really want to do well and win hockey games. You need that feeling. We have to hold on to it now."
Niedermayer knows about these things because, in his days with the New Jersey Devils, they won with the exact same formula: Strong goaltending, an exceptional defence and a group of forwards that don't boast a lot of impressive press clippings, but are probably better than you think. Burke, the Ducks' new architect, has a long-standing relationship with Devils' GM Lou Lamoriello, dating back to their Providence College days. Just a coincidence? No, I wouldn't think so either.
Send your comments on this item to eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Thursday, March 23 at 12:50 p.m.
Hard to imagine Kings' change will make a difference
This just in: Life isn't fair, as Andy Murray, the now former coach of the Los Angeles Kings, learned — or probably had reinforced to him — just after suppertime on Tuesday when he was fired after almost seven years on the job. Murray's greatest failing as a coach was the inability to keep his star players out of sick bay. He couldn't do it in the pre-lockout year, with Ziggy Palffy, Jason Allison, Adam Deadmarsh and others — and he failed miserably again this past month, when the Kings lost all three members of their No. 1 line (Alexander Frolov, Pavol Demitra and Craig Conroy) to injury. With that trio leading the way, the Kings were the No. 1 team in the tough Pacific Division as recently as Jan. 5, but a two-and-a-half-month slide, culminating with Monday's disastrous 5-0 loss to the Colorado Avalanche, prompted general manager Dave Taylor to pull the plug on the fourth longest-serving coach in the NHL.
That, in itself, tells you something about Taylor's managerial style. He doesn't move rashly. This isn't the same as Mike Milbury, shuffling the deck, on the ice, or behind the bench, whenever there's a glitch in the season. Taylor joined the Kings as their GM in April, 1997. In nine years, he's employed exactly two coaches — Murray and Larry Robinson.
Nor was Taylor shy about explaining the rationale behind his move. The players, according to Taylor, needed to hear a new voice over the last dozen games of the season, in order to keep their sliding playoff hopes alive. The new voice that he selected, at this late juncture, belongs to John Torchetti, whom he rescued off the unemployment lines Wednesday morning. Torchetti has done the interim coaching thing once before, in Florida with the Panthers, with little appreciable success. Presumably, Taylor's hope is that Torchetti's appointment provides the short-term jolt that the Kings need to get their season back on the rails. They are currently in the midst of a six-day break in the schedule (and don't play again until Saturday), but they're sinking fast. When Taylor delivered his verdict to Murray, they were hanging on to the last playoff spot in the Western Conference. By the time play had ended for the evening, they were ninth — and the team nipping at their heels, the surging San Jose Sharks, were coming off an impressive 6-0 win over the St. Louis Blues and held three games in hand.
As a coach, Murray was a tireless worker who put a heavy emphasize on preparing for every opponent. Sometimes, in his early days with the Kings, the players would receive photocopied scouting reports on the road, slipped under their hotel room doors, instructing them how to prepare for the next opponent. In the minds of some players, that type of details-oriented approach frequently crossed the fine line into micro-managing — and rubbed a lot of them the wrong way. They responded by tuning him out, something Taylor could clearly see or sense, from watching their lifeless performance again the Avalanche. Judging by the players' lukewarm response to Murray's dismissal, they were essentially waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Murray's long-term future with the organization had been debated publicly over the last couple of weeks; Taylor himself acknowledged, on a conference call Tuesday night, that he'd been pondering a move for a quarter of the season already. Taylor obviously concluded, after Monday's debacle against the Avalanche, that the Kings' season would simply slip-slide away in the same way it did in 2004 if he didn't make a bold move.
Once in a great while, that sort of thinking pays dividends. The New Jersey Devils replaced Robbie Ftorek with Robinson in the spring of 2000 and they went on to win the Stanley Cup. However, no one should confuse the Kings of '06 with the Devils of '00. L.A.'s goaltending is spotty and inexperienced; its scoring drops off dramatically after the top line. Two of their off-season acquisitions, Jeremy Roenick and Valeri Bure, backfired. Roenick is in the midst of a terrible year; Bure didn't play at all, after his chronic back condition flared up. So in the midst of injury and underperformance and with the season and maybe even his own job on the line, Taylor did the only thing he could and dismissed Murray.
Sometimes, these things work out. Mostly, however, they do not.
Send your comments on this item to eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Wednesday, March 22 at 10:34 a.m.
How do the Oilers do it?
Just how do the Edmonton Oilers explain the fact that they've won five in a row from the Vancouver Canucks, a team that usually owns them in the regular season?
"It's a combination of a few factors," answered coach Craig MacTavish. "Good timing on our part. We like to think we're a better team than we have been the last few years. We're closing the gap in terms of the talent level on our team. I think that's helped. Any time you have a record like 5-0 against a real good opponent like Vancouver, it's usually an anomaly - just one of those things that happen. You can't really explain it. A lot of the games have been real close and you just try to do what you've done in the past and hope it continues."
That improved talent level MacTavish alludes to runs all the way through his line-up: From a new goaltender (Dwayne Roloson), to a new shutdown defence pair (Chris Pronger and Jaroslav Spacek) to a new sniper up front (Sergei Samsonov) to balance the scoring lines a little.
Roloson lost his first three games as an Oiler, but has been steadier since.
"People - most people - underestimate the impact a trade has on a player, even a veteran player like Rollie, who has played on a few teams," said MacTavish. "You get out of your comfort zone. Your routine changes. It takes a while to indoctrinate yourself into the new group."
Of all the Oilers' additions, the best has been Spacek, picked up in the Chicago Blackhawks' version of a February fire sale. It cost them only a prospect from Finland, Tony Salmelainen, that wasn't figuring in their plans anyway. A lot of defencemen changed hands at the trading deadline, but you'd be hardpressed to convince the Oilers that there was a better player to be had than Spacek, who has come in and gobbled up major minutes (23-plus) for the team. On a bad Blackhawks' team, Spacek had 24 points in 45 games and was a plus player. Spacek spent most of his career playing for a succession of bad teams, which made it easy for him to get lost in the shuffle.
"It must be that," said MacTavish, "because good players like that are rarely ever available. When you're playing on a good team and having success, you never get an opportunity to get a guy like him. He's surprised all of us - I haven't really identified a lot of weaknesses in his game. He competes, he's good on the power play, he's good on the penalty kill, he reads the play well, he reads the ice well and he moves the puck well. So far, so good with him.
"Playing with Pronger is an obvious advantage, because you're getting the puck in the right area at the right time, where you have a little time and a little space and you can really utilize your skill level."
MacTavish is satisfied with Pronger's play, even though the former league MVP was a little down in the first month over trying to adjust to the new penalty-filled NHL.
"He's a bit of a perfectionist," said MacTavish, of Pronger. "He doesn't allow himself to get comfortable. He's challenging himself to be better most nights. He's sure been a great addition for us. Like Spacek, he's the type of player that you don't often have an opportunity to add to your team.
"We're a little frustrated because we seem to be in the same situation that we always are, but at the same time, we feel like we're better staffed and better prepared for the last four weeks of the season."
Only time will tell if that actually translates into more on-ice success ... or not.
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Updated Tuesday, March 21 at 2:25 p.m.
The return of Joe Thornton
For anyone who saw Joe Thornton struggle to find his game for Canada at the Olympics, the fact that he returned to NHL play with such a flourish must register as something of a surprise.
Including Thursday night's 5-2 win over St. Louis, Thornton has managed five multi-point games in a row to take over the NHL scoring lead from the Rangers' Jaromir Jagr. He has played exactly 40 games now for the Sharks since coming over from Boston in that Nov. 30th trade. In 20 of those games, he has scored two or more points.
Moreover, his winger, Jonathan Cheechoo is now at 41 goals, 34 of which were scored in the 40 games since Thornton became his centre.
Cheechoo is much like Thornton's former winger in Boston, Glen Murray, good around the net. San Jose must be happy that they got him to sign a five-year, $15-million deal earlier in the season that locks up Cheechoo's rights for the foreseeable future at a pretty good number considering his recent production.
The Sharks are a respectable 7-2-1 in their past 10 games, but still need to make up ground to grab one of the final Western Conference playoff positions, so coach Ron Wilson is planning to play Thornton a lot from here until the end of the season.
"He's a horse. The more you play him, the better he gets," Wilson told the San Jose Mercury News. "If we were in first place, it would be a different story, but we're not. I'll do everything I can to get ourselves in position to make the playoffs and, according to how the game goes, manage his ice time that way."
With 97 points in 64 games, Thornton looks as if he'll be the first player to get to 100 points this season and the first to do so since the 2002-03 season. Coincidentally, he was also the last to do it as well. In 02-03, three players cracked the 100-point barrier — Markus Naslund (on Mar. 27), Peter Forsberg (on Mar. 31) and Thornton (on Apr. 4 of that year). Jagr has the highest point total of the 21st century — the 121 points he accumulated in the 2000-01 season. That mark is within both Thornton's and Jagr's range, as they have 18 and 16 games respectively left to play in the season
Send your comments on this item to eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Friday, March 17 at 5:13 p.m.
Tampa's goaltending merry-go-round continues
This was Tampa Bay Lightning coach John Tortorella, on why he decided to start Sean Burke in back-to-back games against the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens this past week: "I just thought (Burke) has made more saves (than John Grahame) since the break. But it's their job. There is no No. 1. It's Johnny and Burkey's job."
Or it was until Thursday morning, when Burke suffered a non-displaced fracture of the distal phalanx in his right index finger during practice at the St. Pete Times Forum. Translation: Burke broke his finger and now, it's Grahame's job again, for the foreseeable future anyway. Burke is out indefinitely, according to the team. His finger was placed in a splint by the team's medical director and he will be re-evaluated next week.
In the meantime, Grahame — who started 41 of the team's first 64 games — will be back in goal Friday when the Philadelphia Flyers, fresh off a 4-0 win over the Florida Panthers, pay a visit. Grahame was going to be watching from the bench after last Tuesday's game, when the Ottawa Senators pulled out a come-from-behind win by scoring with only seven seconds remaining in regulation, denying the Lightning a valuable point in the playoff race. Tampa was seventh heading into Thursday night's play, a point ahead of Montreal and four ahead of the Atlanta Thrashers, who were making up their game in hand by playing the visiting New York Islanders. With 16 games to go in the regular season, the defending Stanley Cup champions look as if they'll be touch-and-go just to qualify for the playoffs. The last time a team won a championship and then failed to make the playoffs the next year was the 1995-96 New Jersey Devils.
Burke played well in last Monday's victory over Montreal, but without the veteran looking over his shoulder, Grahame now gets one more chance to get his act together, with time running out on the season. He has run both hot and cold this season, once winning nine games in a row, another time losing five in a row. That Tortorella has been exasperated with his goaltending is no secret — he went public with his disenchantment in December. The team's collective performance since the Olympic break has done nothing to change that. They've given up 55 goals in the past 11 games - great if you love the new NHL, bad if you're trying to win in the new NHL. Tampa parted with goalie Nikolai Khabibulin for salary-cap reasons after winning the 2004 Stanley Cup, but if they miss the playoffs as a result of sub-part goaltending, it will prove to be an expensive lesson in the NHL's new economics.
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Updated Thursday, March 16 at 6:51 p.m.
Time for Vancouver to panic
The time has come for the Vancouver Canucks to officially press the panic button. On the heels of Tuesday night's 5-0 loss to the Nashville Predators, the Canucks are a precarious eighth in the Western Conference standings and by the time they play their next game — Friday, on the road, against the Columbus Blue Jackets — there's a chance they may be ninth and out of the playoff picture altogether.
Nothing seems to be working for the Canucks these days. They have lost five games in a row. The decision to switch to newcomer Mika Noronen against the predators backfired — he gave up five goals on 27 shots in his debut. The nominal big line — Brendan Morrison, Todd Bertuzzi and Markus Naslund — have failed to register a point during their latest slump.
Once upon a time, the Canucks' primary shortcoming - the thing that did them in playoff after playoff - was the fact that they were a one-line team. Well, they've become a one-line team again, only this time, the only line that's producing any scoring to speak of features the Sedin twins, Henrik and Daniel, playing alongside Anson Carter, who have scored all six goals in their past five defeats.
While the Sedins are both in the middle of breakout seasons — Henrik is already 21 points past his previous career best, with 15 games to go on the schedule and Daniel exceeded his previous best of 53 last week — the rest of the team is mired in a collective scoring slump that came to a head in Nashville. Playing for the second time in two nights, they were collectively skated out of the rink in the second half of the game by a Predators team that has now defeated them three times since the Olympic break.
Vancouver's schedule is weird like that. They played Dallas back-to-back earlier this week (both losses) and theoretically, could have their season on the line next week when they play three consecutive games against the Edmonton Oilers. The Oilers and Canucks each have 76 points in the standings, with Edmonton holding a game in hand. The Canucks also play Minnesota twice in a row at the end of March and San Jose twice in a row in the final week.
The only good news is, Vancouver's schedule down the stretch is comparatively soft. They, along with Minnesota and Colorado, have played more games than anyone this season (67). Of their 15 remaining games, 10 are at home, where they boast a 20-7-4 record. Only two are against division leaders. On the other hand, it's reasonable to expect that it may take 95 points to qualify for a playoff spot in the Western Conference.
In 2004, Nashville grabbed the last playoff spot with 91 points and this year, with 113 extra points already awarded for shootout losses — or almost four per team — it's going to take a few more than that to lock up a playoff spot. Vancouver entered the final 20-game stretch, needing perhaps 10 wins to guarantee its spot in the post-season, where anything can (and usually does) happen. Now that they're down to their final 15, they still need 10 wins to guarantee a playoff spot. It can be done, but the prospect of actually missing post-season play — which seemed inconceivable 10 days ago — now looms as a real possibility, unless they can get their act together … and soon.
Send your comments on this item to eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Wednesday, March 15 at 1:35 p.m.
Don't rush to judgment on deadline acquistions
Rushing to judgment on the effects of the NHL trading deadline is often fraught with peril, something Carolina Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford warned about almost a month ago.
Long before he and his colleagues manufactured 25 trades, involving 40 players in the final six hours of last Thursday's trading deadline, Rutherford made a major transaction by acquiring Doug Weight from the St. Louis Blues for three prospects and three draft picks. At the time he made the deal, Rutherford cautioned against expecting too much too soon from Weight, noting that it often takes a month or so until a new player is fully integrated into a team's line-up, which is why the Hurricanes moved so early to get acquire his rights.
"You do need time," said Rutherford, "especially when you look at someone like Doug Weight, who'd been in one place for a long time. Periodically, you'll make a trade where a guy will come in and score a goal in his first game and everybody's all excited. But the fact of the matter is, when you play on another team, you're coming in with new teammates. You're living in a hotel. You have a family left behind. These are all things that people take for granted. There is an adjustment period. Then, of course, the trade-deadline deals, there are higher expectations. Everybody thinks once a trade is made, the team is instantly going to change. The fact of the matter is, as long as the player fits in, in time, you're really building your team for the start of the playoffs. It's very difficult for a player to come in and immediately feel comfortable with his new team."
Weight struggled to find his scoring touch in his first month in Carolina, picking up just a single assist in his first 10 games with the Hurricanes, but in the last week or so, has finally settled in and is scoring at his usual point-per-game pace.
"Doug didn't put points up immediately when he came," said Rutherford. "He played fine. He didn't play at the level he was capable of, but he factored in some games. He scored a shootout goal to help us win in Boston. But now in the last four games, he's back to the level of player he was in St. Louis. Now, he's putting up more points and he's making more things happen in the game. Clearly, there was an adjustment period, but he's pretty much through it."
The Hurricanes will apply the same philosophy to Mark Recchi, acquired from Pittsburgh at the deadline to replace the injured Erik Cole. Recchi was held without a point in his first two Carolina appearances. The Hurricanes planned to try Recchi on a line with Eric Staal and Ray Whitney for Tuesday's home date with the New York Rangers.
"He played fine, but we were at the end of a road trip and the team wasn't under normal circumstances. Half of them had a virus. He was just popping in and then he went back home for a few days. He was in the team picture yesterday, but it's still going to take him a week or two to get comfortable with us.
"For anybody to think that a player is just going to come in and instantly change their team is asking a lot."
The Edmonton Oilers have had a hard time integrating goalie Dwayne Roloson into the line-up and the Vancouver Canucks haven't won since they added a trio of defencemen at the deadline either. It may be that those deals — or others consummated at the deadline - don't work out either. A month from now, when they're either in or out of the playoffs; three months from now, when they know their playoff fate; that's when the post-mortems need to be done, not a few days into the proceedings.
AN ERIK COLE UPDATE
Realistically, Rutherford doesn't think Cole, who has been out of the Hurricanes' line-up since fracturing a vertebrae in his neck after being checked into the boards in a game against Pittsburgh, will be ready to play again until the second round of the playoffs, provided the Hurricanes get that far.
"It's a six-to-eight week injury," reported Rutherford. "The start of the playoffs would be six weeks. I think everyone's being overly optimistic, because he can't work out for the first four weeks. Realistically, we have to get to the second round to give him a chance to get back to playing. That would be more like eight weeks."
According to Rutherford, the injury could have been much worse.
"It was in the best possible place of any vertebrae to heal the quickest," said Rutherford. "If it had been in a worse spot, it could have been 12 weeks or 16 weeks."
Send your comments on this item to eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Tuesday, March 14 at 1:27 p.m.
Major deadline dealing finally begins
Once they started, the deals started to happen fast.
After hours of pondering the merits of Todd Simpson (to Montreal), Brad Lukowich (to New Jersey), Sean Brown (to Vancouver), Sean O'Donnell (to Anaheim) and Denis Gauthier (to Philadelphia), the major transactions — or as major as they'd get at the 2006 NHL trading deadline — began to unfold.
Until the Edmonton Oilers landed Sergei Samsonov from the Boston Bruins, immediately making them the biggest early winners among the six Canadian-based teams, the biggest story involved a signing, not a trade, when the Florida Panthers locked up centre Olli Jokinen on a four-year, $21 million contract. The Panthers ultimately paid Jokinen $5 million more on a multi-year contract than they offered him a month ago, when their overtures to sign him to an extension were turned down.
Jokinen had been linked to the Ottawa Senators and other contenders as a possible player rental, but the Panthers — signaling a determination to keep their core intact — took him off the market by opening up their wallets to get him signed. That, in turn, may also enhance their chances of getting goaltender Roberto Luongo, their other cornerstone player, to commit to a long-term deal sometime over the summer.
Once the Senators knew they were shut out of the Jokinen sweepstakes, they turned their attention to Chicago and acquired Tyler Arnason from the Blackhawks for prospect Brendan Bochenski and a second-round draft choice. Arnason represents an interesting choice for the Senators. He is considered a skilled offensive player — even on the scoring-challenged Blackhawks, he'd managed 41 points this season — but he is considered a liability defensively and an immature player. The Blackhawks, in the midst of a rebuilding program, would not trade a 26-year-old, who scored 55 points in the pre-lockout season, unless they were completely fed up with his act.
For reasons that were difficult to explain, almost half of the day's deals were made right up against the 3 p.m. deadline, which meant that many of the details trickled out after the deadline had passed (and some were in danger of being rejected by NHL Central Registry because the teams couldn't get the paperwork done on time).
The Washington Capitals eventually joined the fun by sending Jeff Friesen to the Mighty Ducks for a second-round pick. The fact that the Caps were able to get so high a pick for a player who was in the midst of a terrible season demonstrated just how difficult it was for teams that needed a scoring upgrade to find any available talent. Depth defencemen were moving every five minutes. Scoring forwards — or even forwards with even a hint of offensive upside — weren't going anywhere.
Friesen, who had managed only one 20-goal season in his last four, was in the midst of his worst year as a pro, contributing only three goals in 33 games of an injury-filled season, after joining the Caps in September in a salary-dumping deal from the New Jersey Devils. Friesen remains one of the speediest players in the NHL and he scored one of the most discouraging goals in Ottawa Senators history, when he helped the Devils eliminate them in the deciding game of the 2003 Eastern Conference final.
Friesen went on to win the Stanley Cup with that same Devils team, a club that also included his new Ducks' teammate, Scott Niedermayer by — coincidentally - defeating Anaheim in the final. The history doesn't stop there either. Niedermayer had been traded to the Ducks at the '01 deadline (in the Teemu Selanne deal) and then was subsequently moved to the Devils for Petr Sykora in July of 2002.
Accordingly, Friesen has played with both the Niedermayer brothers (Scott in New Jersey and Rob in Anaheim) and spends his summers in southern California, meaning he skates in the off-season with a number of current Ducks' players.
It shouldn't be that difficult for Friesen to fit into his new team; it's less certain if he's capable of turning his season around. Just about everybody that watched him this year wasn't sure if his injuries had slowed his down; if his attitude (playing for a non-playoff team) wasn't good; or both. The Ducks gambled that he would be motivated, in the short term, to play hard and provide depth up front.
Without putting Todd Bertuzzi into play, the Vancouver Canucks filled two gaps in their line-up by acquiring goaltender Mika Noronen from the Buffalo Sabres (for a second-round pick) plus a trio of defencemen: Brown, Keith Carney and Eric Weinrich. The Canucks have been playing without their three best rearguards (Ed Jovanovski, Mattias Ohlund and Sami Salo, all out with injuries). Of the three that they added, Carney is probably the most valuable, in that he was an important contributor to the Ducks' 2003 run to the Stanley Cup final. Carney was still playing upwards of 19 minutes for the Ducks, but with Sandis Ozolinsh returning to the line-up after a stint in rehab and Scott Niedermayer coming back unexpectedly soon from knee surgery, he was considered expendable by Anaheim. Ozolinsh was subsequently traded to the New York Rangers for a third-round pick, a salary dump by Anaheim, who got out from under a $2.75 million commitment for next year (which would have been their third-highest salaried player).
Noronen provides a back-up to Alex Auld, someone who can spell him down the stretch, as the Canucks try to stay in the chase for the Northwest Division title. The Ottawa Senators also snared their goaltending insurance policy by picking Mike Morrison off waivers from the Edmonton Oilers.
Brendan Witt (from Washington to Nashville) and Willie Mitchell (from Minnesota to Dallas) represented two of the more interesting of a dozen deals involving defencemen, the quality that was most sought after at this year's deadline.
On balance, the early hours of the '06 trading deadline featured more tweaking than major reconstruction. The first five deals all shared two qualities — they all involved depth defencemen (No. 4s or lower) exchanged for draft choices or minor-league prospects.
Of the five, Gauthier commanded the highest price (two second-round draft choices, plus prospect Josh Gratton) because more was expected of him than any of the others.
Gauthier ended up in Phoenix in the summer of 2004, after missing out on the majority of the Calgary Flames' unexpected run to the Stanley Cup final. Gauthier was a regular on that team until the sixth game of the opening round, when he injured his knee against the Vancouver Canucks. Following surgery, Gauthier watched the last three rounds from the press box as Mike Commodore and Steve Montador saw regular duty as the Flames took the Tampa Bay Lightning to seven games in the Stanley Cup final. Tampa earlier knocked the Philadephia Flyers in the semi-finals, also in seven games. With Derian Hatcher injured the other day and a pair of regulars (Kim Johnsson and Chris Therien) out because of concussions, Gauthier was expected to play important minutes for the Flyers, especially in the short term.
The Coyotes tried to sign Gauthier, an upcoming unrestricted free agent, to a contract extension, but were unable to do so. The Flyers were in a position to trade second-round picks because they had four of them, acquired through previous deals.
Phoenix was also able to get out from under O'Donnell's contract, a player that they signed as a free agent who was playing minimal minutes (about 16 per night) on a team that had a number of decent young defencemen on the roster. O'Donnell essentially replaces Carney in Anaheim's line-up, but unlike Carney, who is an unrestricted free agent this summer, he is signed for one more year at $1.6 million.
Send your comments on this item to eduhatschek@globeandmail.caUpdated Thursday, March 9 at 3:51 p.m.
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