The Kids Are All Right

Eric Duhatschek, 30/05/07 at 8:07 PM EDT

From the signs of advancing age department: Just before they dropped the puck for Game 2 of the Stanley Cup, I was riding the elevator down to the hotel lobby and who should be there but Dave Gagner, with his son Sam. FYI: Every year at the Stanley Cup final, the NHL brings in the top half-dozen prospects for June's entry draft for a media event - so everybody can get to know each other a little before the draft actually takes place.

Gagner played for the Calgary Flames in the days I covered the team and this isn't the first time that the son of a retired player was old enough to play in the NHL itself. For me, it began with the Sutter family, all of whom played their junior hockey in Alberta in the 1970s and early 1980s. When Shaun Sutter, Brian's son, was eligible for the 1998 entry draft, I mentioned to Brian how old that made me feel - that he was now old enough himself to have a son on the brink of a professional career. In hindsight, Brian's response was not surprising: You're not the first person who's told me that, he said.

Then, a couple of years ago, three players who were all born within a year of each other - sons of Calgary players - were chosen in the first round of the entry draft: Robert Nilsson, son of Kent; Jeff Tambellini, son of Steve, and Patrick Eaves, son of Mike, who now plays for the Senators and is in a position to do something that his father never did - win a Stanley Cup. In Dave Gagner's last NHL season, his linemates were a pair of NHL rookies - Jonas Hoglund and Jarome Iginla. Iginla often cites Gagner as an important role model in terms of adapting to the rhythms of NHL life. Gagner told me today that while playing junior this year, someone presented Sam with a photo of himself as a seven-year-old, getting an autograph from Iginla. Soon, he'll be playing with or against him in the NHL.

The prospects' press conference is always a little awkward - most of these young men want to say all the right things and thus don't reveal too much of themselves in interviews. Gagner, for example, talked about excited he was that the draft was almost upon him - "you try not to think about it too much about it and just focus on playing and having fun. Coming here to the Stanley Cup finals has been a great experience."

Usually, players of his background have an advantage over their peers because they grew up in a professional athlete's household and thus understand that the draft is just a beginning, not an end in itself. In fact, Gagner said as much: "I don't think you can put too much pressure on yourself to make it right out of the gates. But at the same time, you need to really push yourself to make it to that next level, and that's what I'm going to try to do." That's the sort of approach that will serve the younger Gagner well in the months and years to come.

 

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California Dreamin' on the eve of the Stanley Cup final

Eric Duhatschek, 27/05/07 at 11:02 AM EDT

I’ve been gently badgering my colleagues over at Hockey Night In Canada to use Nancy Sinatra’s How Are Things In California? for the opening of their broadcast of Monday night’s Stanley Cup final, but with little success so far. Jimmy Hughson thinks I’m living in the past; Scott Oake just thinks I’m crazy; and last year, when I handed executive producer Joel Darling a disc of California songs, he said there were some songs under consideration, but then Edmonton went to the finals and that was that.

Question: What would be the best California song to set the stage for an Anaheim Ducks-Ottawa Senators’ showdown? Every year, before the Stanley Cup final opens, I burn a disc of songs to play in the rent-a-car stereo on the drive to and from the airports and the arenas – and here, where it takes 45 minutes on a good day with no traffic to get from LAX and Orange County and even longer to get to the beaches (must find Ducks fever somewhere!), it’s even more important to have a good, scene-setting musical compilation.

Naturally, with so many great California songs out there, this year’s selection turned out to be easier than most. Ultimately, I opted for two by Nancy Sinatra (the aforementioned track plus her cover of Route 66). I also took two by The Thrills (Big Sur and Santa Cruz, both of which would have been more appropriate for a Sharks’ final); and two by the Chili Peppers (Dani California and Californication). There is the Beach Boys’ California Girls and Chilliwack’s California Girl; the Eagles’ Hotel California and the Wallflowers’ Back To California. There are three different songs, all entitled California, one by the Wild Strawberries, one by the Pretenders (off the Pirate Radio box set) and one by Wilson Phillips (a cover version of Joni Mitchell’s California). I have Marc Jordan’s live version of Livin’ In Marina Del Rey (thanks to Mike Brophy of the Hockey News for pointing me in that direction).

Then there is California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and the Papas; California Blue by Roy Orbison; California Nights by Lesley Gore; California Promises by Jimmy Buffett; California Soul by the Fifth Dimension, plus two versions of California Sun (by the Rivieras and Los Straitjackets). I left off Albert Hammond’s It Never Rains in Southern California because I didn’t want to jinx the weather (cool and not so sunny as of this moment) and Ventura Highway by America, which I seem to have misplaced. I simply forgot about Warren Zevon’s Desperadoes Under The Eaves, which includes the brilliant rhyme, ‘if California slides into the ocean, like mystics and statistics say it will ….’ Geez, I wish I could write like that. There is even an Anaheim specific song – Jan & Dean’s follow-up to their hit, Little Old Lady From Pasadena, called The Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga Sewing Circle, Book Review and Timing Association (featuring the timely observation, “they work all day, making jam and preserves; and on weekends, they negotiate curves”).

So California is well-covered; the problem is, five days hence, we land in Ottawa and I can not come up with a single tune to hum about our nation’s capital. There are Montreal songs (Montreal by Blue Rodeo, I Just Want To Stop by Gino Vannelli); Toronto songs (Raised On Robbery by Joni Mitchell, Coldest Night Of The Year by Bruce Cockburn); Vancouver songs (English Bay by Blue Rodeo); and Alberta songs (Alberta Bound by Gordon Lightfoot and Four Strong Winds by either Ian Tyson or Neil Young), but for Ottawa, unless there's something by Alanis Morisette that I'm forgetting, I need help … and of course, so do are friends over at Hockey Night.

 

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Predators' on-ice fortunes rise, in the wake of the sale

Eric Duhatschek, 25/05/07 at 11:37 AM EDT

In the near term, the biggest single difference in the Nashville Predators’ operating strategy will involve the National Hockey League team’s budget. Had owner Craig Leipold been unable to sell his team to Canadian gazillionaire Jim Balsillie – or if the deal falls through at the 11th hour, pending approval of the league’s board of governors – chances are, the Predators' payroll would have been slashed significantly from the $38.2 million total they operated with for the majority of last season.

Leipold made two things clear at Thursday’s press conference – one, that he was tired of losing money on his operation; and two, that he was frustrated by his inability to coax a local ownership partner into helping him stem the bleeding. The Predators have a number of possible unrestricted free agents on their roster – from Peter Forsberg and Paul Kariya to Kimmo Timmonen and Scott Hartnell – all of whom could have bolted to other NHL cities. Some may anyway – the suspicion is that if Forsberg plays at all next season, it’ll be with either Modo, his former Swedish league team, or the Colorado Avalanche, his long-timer NHL employer.

Still, with the salary cap scheduled to rise to about $48 million, if the Preds’ payroll had been set between $30 and $35 million, not only would that have limited their ability to make competitive bids for any of their potential unrestricted free agents, they might have had to dump some signed players as well. Now, with Balsillie waiting in the wings, the odds are good that general manager David Poile will get permission to operate with a more realistic budget, which will heighten the chances that Kariya, for example, might return to Music City (where he enjoyed his first two years with the franchise).

Ultimately, the Predators are at least one or two years (and maybe more) away from shifting to the great Canadian north. In the meantime, the fan in Balsillie will want to see the team stay competitive, rather than stripped to the bone because of budgetary considerations - or the prospect of spilling even more red ink in a football-crazed market where the corporate community has shown little interest in supporting the hockey team.

 

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Why the NHL needs to adopt a 2-3-2 playoff format

Eric Duhatschek, 23/05/07 at 12:32 PM EDT

Has the time come for the National Hockey League to revert to the 2-3-2 playoff format for the Stanley Cup final?

For the fourth year in a row, the NHL has ended up with a final that is a geographic nightmare, pitting a team (Ottawa) from about as far north and east as it can get, against a team (Anaheim) about as far south and west as it can get.

There are no direct flights, which doesn’t pose as much of an issue to the players, since they all charter anyway, but it still means they’ll be in the air at least five hours and thus, probably wouldn’t fly out after games when the series switches venues, but will hunker down in their hotel rooms for an extra night, just to reduce the wear and tear on the players’ bodies.

It was like that in ’06 (Carolina-Edmonton), ’04 (Tampa-Calgary) and ’03 (New Jersey-Anaheim), all of which went the full seven-game distance. In fact, the last final with relatively easy travel was in ’02, when the Red Wings defeated the Hurricanes. It was also the last time a Western Conference team prevailed in a Stanley Cup final, no small coincidence. One could argue that teams in the West are used to the rigors of the travel and that makes it an advantage, if they have to start ping-ponging back and forth, across the country for Games 5, 6 and 7.

More likely though, the toll of a year’s worth of logging travel miles tends to catch up with the Western Conference representatives – and that certainly might have been the case if Detroit had advanced.

The Red Wings, an Eastern time zone team, played its opening round in the Mountain time zone (Calgary) and then had consecutive series against Pacific time zone teams (San Jose and Anaheim). One day, last week, I was outside the Red Wings’ dressing room in the Honda Centre and Kirk Maltby was frantically riding an exercise cycle – after the game – saying that he was doing it to get his legs going, which seemed to have been lost somewhere above 30,000 feet on the flight out.

Generally, teams have rejected the 2-3-2 format in the Stanley Cup final for two reasons: One, it might grant the lower-seeded team an extra home date if the series ended in five; and two, for the brief time the NHL played a 2-3-2 format in the final, the Edmonton Oilers capitalized by getting a split on the road and then sweeping their three home games to win the Stanley Cup in 1984 and 1985. Still, major-league baseball and the NBA both play a 2-3-2 format and live with the consequences. If they can do it - in sports that are far less taxing than hockey - then it should be good enough for the NHL as well.

 

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Tomas Holmstrom, the Swedish Ryan Smyth

Eric Duhatschek, 17/05/07 at 11:46 AM EDT

Some people may not like the Detroit Red Wings' Tomas Holmstrom much because he can be so irritating in a Super Pest sort of way, but there's been little question about his effectiveness in these playoffs. Holmstrom has four goals and two assists in his last five games, despite getting banged into the glass, face first, in Tuesday night's 5-0 win over Anaheim (he missed only a handful of shifts at the end of the second period); or despite an eye injury that occurred in the first round against Calgary that kept him out of the first three games of the San Jose Sharks series (two of them Detroit losses).

Yes, the Red Wings are a tougher, more resilient team than they were a year against the Edmonton Oilers, but Holmstrom - a main stay for the better part of a decade - hasn't changed at all. He is a Swedish Ryan Smyth, able to take punishment in front of the net Energizer-bunny style - and keep going.

"Who's tougher than Holmer?" asked Red Wings' coach Mike Babcock.  "He gets hit in the eye in the Calgary series.  Power play goes dead.  Comes back, power play's turned around.  Holmer to me is what our team's about.  You can do what you want.  You can cross check him.  You can smack him.  You did whatever you want.  He's going to keep coming.  We plan on doing the same thing. I think that's important at this time of year - that you're just not going to be deterred."

In the first round, the Flames' goaltender Jamie McLennan received a five-game suspension for swinging his stick into the belly of the Red Wings' Johan Franzen. McLennan said he did so because of all the abuse that his stablemate, Miikka Kiprusoff, took from the Wings in the series, primarily from the maddeningly effective Holmstrom. McLennan suggested that Holmstrom was, “the best player in front of the net in the league. I thought Ryan Smyth was, but Tomas Holmstrom is. He was excellent. Detroit did what they had to do to get at one of the best goalies in the league.”

From a goalie's perspective, what does Holmstrom do that is so singular and so effective? To fully appreciate McLennan’s answer, you needed to see him physically demonstrate. McLennan moved across a make-shift goalcrease, raising his left shoulder and his right shoulder, as a means of demonstrating how “big” Holmstrom would make himself to provide a screen. McLennan said: “Holmstrom has unbelievable moves. They’re not in your face. It’s guarding. It’s like – and here McLennan put his palm an inch from my face, completely blocking my view and said, in a children’s mocking, sing-song voice – ‘not touching you, not touching you.’"

It might go a long way in explaining why everybody is after Holmstrom - and why he just keeps going along, getting his job done.

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Why Andy Murray should be considered for 2010

Eric Duhatschek, 11/05/07 at 3:00 PM EDT

It'll be at least two more years before Hockey Canada needs to address the issue of who replaces Pat Quinn as coach of the men's 2010 Olympic hockey team, but Andy Murray's record in the 2007 world hockey championships suggests that he needs to be on the short list of candidates, no matter what happens next for Canada's entry, now that they're in the tournament semi-finals.

Canada's best and brightest talent didn't exactly race to join the 2007 squad, given that it's being played in Moscow after yet another long, drawn-out NHL season. As a result, GM Steve Yzerman cobbled together a good but not necessarily great or star-studded line-up from the available players. The fact that they're going with a college player, Jonathan Toews, and a Canadian playing in Europe, Cory Murphy, is a sure sign that they couldn't quite get the recruits they wanted from NHL teams that either missed the playoffs or were bounced in the opening round. For all that, Murray's team is a perfect 7-0 thus far in the tournament and most importantly, was able to continue winning, despite the nuttiness of the attack on team captain Shane Doan, by a whole lot of Canadian parliamentarians that should have had better things to do with their time.

The ability to channel, in a positive manner, these sorts of ill-advised distractions will be a primary challenge for the 2010 team, given that the Olympics are in Vancouver and the pressure to suceed will be enormous. Nor is this Murray's first successful plunge into the international hockey waters either. The St. Louis Blues' head coach led Canada to gold-medal victories at both the 1997 world hockey championships in Italy and the 2003 event in Finland (his team also finished sixth in 1998 in Switzerland, a result that could mostly be attributed to a post-Nagano hangover - and geniune troubles recruiting players that year as well). In two seasons as the head coach of Canada’s national men’s team, Murray's teams posted an impressive 77-29-14 record. Accordingly, Murray clearly knows the international game and what it take to pull a team together on short notice, something that Hockey Canada executives need to be mindful of when they assemble their list of candidates for the job.

Auditions for the playing positions on the men's 2010 team are an ongoing process. A similar evaluation process should apply to the coaching staff as well.

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Don't blame Roberto!

Eric Duhatschek, 04/05/07 at 3:42 AM EDT

J.S. Giguere, the wonderfully engaging Anaheim Ducks' goaltender, was talking afterwards about the way his team won - or more precisely - how the Vancouver Canucks lost the fifth game of their playoff series. It happened in double overtime and his counterpart in the Vancouver Canucks' goal, Roberto Luongo, had played a brilliant game up until that point. However, on the winning goal, he tried to get the referee's attention with his left arm - his catching arm - to protest a hit by Rob Niedermayer and in the split second Luongo took his eyes off the puck, Scott Niedermayer rattled it past him for the winning goal.

Luongo, to his credit, was a stand-up guy to the end, blaming himself for making a poor decision and ultimately costing his team the game. Thankfully, nobody else saw it quite that way. Coach Alain Vigneault acknowledged the obvious - without a rare, extraordinary performance from his goaltender, his team would have been buried early.

And leave it to Giguere, who had his own magical playoff run in 2003, as the Ducks went to the Stanley Cup final - and he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP - to put it best.

"Your emotions get involved in the game," explained Giguere, when the subject of Luongo's actions on the winning goal came up, "and sometimes, you just can't help saying something to the referee."

Giguere paused for effect.

"Are we really going to blame Roberto tonight? I don't think that would be fair."

No, we're not. Not the rational ones among us anyway.

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Scotty Bowman: Hockey world's most knowledgeable blogger

Eric Duhatschek, 01/05/07 at 6:00 PM EDT

The hockey world’s most knowledgeable blogger, Scotty Bowman, turned at the HP Pavilion Tuesday morning for the Detroit Red Wings’ optional skate. Though retired, Bowman remains a consultant to the Red Wings’ staff and he spent a good 15 minutes or so visiting with coach Mike Babcock before practice, mostly talking about the gridlock that has punctuated this and other NHL playoff series to date. “Whatever happened to the new NHL?” said Bowman, a question a lot of us have been asking in the aftermath of a series of 2-1 and 3-2 and 2-0 games. It’s not as if the teams aren’t working either. They’re playing like madmen for the most part. There just isn’t a whole lot of room out there.

The NHL asked Bowman to offer his thoughts on the playoffs in a once or twice a week blog. He actually has a ghost blogger, who calls and transcribes his thoughts. Bowman has never met his blogger, but says: “He’s a big Rangers’ fan, so I’ve got to be careful. The Devils don’t get a tumble. He was so excited after (the Game 3 win over Buffalo) he called me about an hour after the game.”

Is Bowman reading his own blog? “Sometimes.”

Just to make sure he’s not misquoted in his own blog? “No, he tapes it.”

Thirty years ago, could Bowman ever imagine that this is what he’d been doing, in his retirement years, keeping an on-line diary?
“I didn’t even know what the hell it was,” he said. “No, I knew what it was. He calls and I just give him what I think.”

Bowman is on his way to the world championships in Moscow, where he’s become a fixture these past few years, participating in the various charity games organized by his former player Igor Larionov. Larionov has another game going later this month, featuring a handful of ex-NHLers, plus the Russian oil executive Alexander Medvedev (Gazprom Export) who owns the St. Petersburg team in the Superleague and recently hired Barry Smith as its coach. Smith was Bowman’s long-time assistant with the Red Wings and more recently, spent two years on Wayne Gretzky’s staff with the Coyotes. When Medvedev came to Phoenix to hire Smith, he stayed on to participate in Gretzky’s fantasy camp. The link there is Larionov, who knows all of the principals and put them all together.

Larionov is among a handful of players who retired after the NHL lockout, who are eligible for the Hall Of Fame this summer. He has recently relocated his family to southern California, so that his daughters can pursue singing careers. In the meantime, Larionov plays pick-up hockey on Sunday nights when he’s in town with Hollywood’s hockey-mad contingent – Jerry Bruckheimer, Cuba Gooding, Kiefer Sutherland and the rest.

“Igor would be a good coach,” ventured Bowman, “but I just think he’s too busy.”

 

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NHL All-Star Game returns to Sunday afternoons

Eric Duhatschek, 29/04/07 at 5:53 PM EDT

Not that anyone is focussed on the All-Star Game in the middle of the NHL playoffs, but there's good news for everyone who complained about last week's mid-week start in Dallas. After a one-year experiment with a Wednesday night All-Star Game, the NHL is going back to scheduling it on a weekend. The 2008 Game is in Atlanta and it'll be played on the Sunday between the National Football League's conference championship weekend and the Super Bowl.

In theory, that'll reduce the competition for NBC, the over-the-air rights holders in the United States. Ratings, if you'll recall, were miniscule for the 2007 All-Star game, because it went head-to-head with American Idol. The fascination with that phenomenon eludes me - how does a mixture of gargling and yodelling make such inroads in American pop culture? - but that's how sad things are for the NHL's presence state-side right now. The league needs all the programming breaks it can get.

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