Sunday, May 20, 2012 10:24 PM EDT
Tortorella comes to the defence of Prust
Roy MacGregor
Not many toddlers have grizzled grey beards, but there’s a lot of similarities between a stubborn two-year-old and New York Rangers head coach John Tortorella.
For weeks, Tortorella was stuck on the word “No” – at times expanded all the way to “No comment” – but suddenly this week he has become a positive stream of unexpected words and sentences.
Sunday morning at Madison Square Garden, during a quasi-optional skate for his team, Tortorella sounded off on the reaction in hockey circles to the nasty elbow Rangers forward Brandon Prust delivered in Game 3 to the head of New Jersey Devils defenceman Anton Volchenkov.
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Friday, May 18, 2012 4:47 PM EDT
Jamison takes another step towards keeping Coyotes in Arizona
DAVID SHOALTS
Greg Jamison took another step toward keeping the Phoenix Coyotes in Arizona when councillors in the suburban city of Glendale put a payment of $17-million (all currency U.S.) into their preliminary budget for the 2013 fiscal year.
The payment is called an “arena management fee” for Jobing.com Arena that is necessary to help cover the NHL team’s massive annual losses. The Arizona Republic has the details on the fee, which will probably be included in the budget that will be voted on Tuesday night.
At this point, four of the seven councillors indicated they will support the annual payment, although a formal lease for the arena is not in sight. The NHL said last week it tentatively agreed to sell the team to Jamison, the former president of the San Jose Sharks, as long as he reached a lease agreement with Glendale. One councillor told the Republic she expects a lease agreement to be struck by the time council meets on Tuesday.
Friday, May 18, 2012 9:08 AM EDT
Tippett strikes sour note after Game 3 loss
DAVID SHOALTS
Dave Tippett, normally a classy fellow, played a sour note after his Phoenix Coyotes were pinned to the mat by the Los Angeles Kings.
It's the referees, the Coyotes head coach said after the Kings beat the Coyotes 2-1 Thursday to take a 3-0 lead in the NHL Western Conference final. The referees are falling for all that diving by the Kings.
Why, it's ruining our game, the coach fulminated. Only the thought of a hefty fine from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman - should he switch hats from Coyotes owner to league boss - kept the put-upon fellow from telling it like it is.
Thursday, May 17, 2012 8:57 PM EDT
Renney shown the door after just two seasons as Oilers coach
David Shoalts
Tom Renney is the latest example of why coaching in the NHL is not much fun.
After letting him twist in the wind for six weeks after the regular season ended, Edmonton Oilers general manager Steve Tambellini announced Thursday that Renney’s contract as head coach will not be renewed. Tambellini compounded the slight by not doing much to slow down the speculation former Calgary Flames head coach Brent Sutter will get the job.
Renney, 57, never got much of a chance to show if his program would work with the young Oilers team. He took over at the start of the 2010-11 season and had a 57-87-22 record in his two years with the team.
Thursday, May 17, 2012 4:30 PM EDT
The human cost of keeping the Phoenix Coyotes
DAVID SHOALTS
The human cost of keeping the Phoenix Coyotes was paid Wednesday by 49 employees of the city of Glendale, Ariz.
As noted here by the Arizona Republic, those 49 people lost their jobs because the city is trying to close a $35-million (all currency U.S.) gap between its spending and revenue in its budget for the 2013 fiscal year. While a few of those jobs may be saved, the possibility of more layoffs remains. The city is also set to raise property taxes substantially and cut services.
Over the last two years the NHL, which owns the financially moribund Coyotes, swallowed $50-million of the Glendale taxpayers' money. Well, almost $50-million. The city only has available $20-million of this year's subsidy - due the day after the Coyotes are out of the playoffs - and Mayor Elaine Scruggs would like some of that back as well as a break from having to raise the other $5-million.
Thursday, May 17, 2012 4:40 PM EDT
The lovable New Jersey Devils? You bet
JAMES MIRTLE
Four days around the New Jersey Devils and I’m convinced: This is really a team more people should be rooting for.
They’re personable. They play hard. They also have a relatively exciting style that relies on a hard, two-man forecheck and creating turnovers that turn into offence.
They don’t, by the way, block many shots.
Thursday, May 17, 2012 2:52 PM EDT
Dealing with John Tortorella is part of the job
DAVID SHOALTS
If you took most of your news from Twitter or other social media, you would swear John Tortorella is the chief figure in the NHL playoffs.
The New York Rangers head coach has always been a media antagonist but he’s really hit his stride this spring. His press conference after Wednesday night’s 3-2 loss to the New Jersey Devils was typical of such encounters, ones that are so short that scribes are jokingly setting over-under lines of less than a minute. Here’s the official NHL transcript:
Question: Coach, looked like you had them and it slipped away. What went wrong?
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 11:11 PM EDT
Devils put stars together in bid to generate more offence
James Mirtle
Getting a goal is top of mind for the New Jersey Devils in Game 2 on Wednesday night.
They'd like more than one, obviously, but they realize they may have to settle for a single in a series that is going to feature defensive hockey from both sides throughout.
"We know this is not going to be a high scoring series," Devils vet Patrik Elias said. "We've just got to get it in our minds to try and win the game 1-0. That's the bottom line."
To that end, Devils coach Peter DeBoer had some new line combinations at the morning skate, with captain Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk skating together on a trio with Travis Zajac.
"Definitely not married to those combinations," DeBoer cautioned.
Those three have played together a lot in these playoffs already, however, (it's actually the Devils most common combination at even strength) even though lately DeBoer had been trying to spread his offence out a little more with his two top guns on separate lines.
New York Rangers coach John Tortorella countered that in Game 1 by putting defenceman Dan Girardi on Parise and Marc Staal on Kovalchuk, something that seemed to work relatively well given the 3-0 final score.
What DeBoer appears to be aiming for with his new combinations is having his lines be more specialized, with the first unit obviously focused on generating shots in a variety of ways and perhaps even splitting Girardi's focus so he can't key on just Parise.
(Whoever plays the left wing on that line will run into Girardi on the right side no matter what, which is another thing to keep an eye on in Game 2.)
The new second line, meanwhile, looks like it'll be aimed at a two-man forecheck and punishing the Rangers defence, with David Clarkson, Alexei Ponikarovsky and rookie Adam Henrique well suited for a more physical style.
"Poni's a big guy that down low is pretty hard to push off the puck," Clarkson said. "It'll be good. We're going to have to get the puck in down low, do some cycling and grind it out a bit in the corners. Sometimes moving things around a little bit is a good thing."
(The revamped third unit is a trio of European veterans in Elias, Petr Sykora and Dainius Zubrus.)
Henrik Lundqvist is getting a lot of credit for the Rangers win - and in fairness he did play well - but New Jersey also only generated 21 shots, which included a pitiful four in the third period.
Putting pucks on goal was a weakness during the regular season, as the Devils had the fewest shots per game of any playoff team, and it could be a fatal one in this series if they can't find a way to correct it.
"We want to be a little bit more productive tonight," Kovalchuk said.
The only other potential lineup change for New Jersey will be on the back end, where rookie Adam Larsson could sit in favour of Peter Harrold. That change would be part of DeBoer's push for more offence, as Harrold would play on the second power play unit.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 1:35 PM EDT
NHL seeks to terminate CBA this fall
DAVID SHOALTS
Just in case you thought the NHL was going to sail smoothly into collective bargaining this fall, word arrived the league served notice it plans to terminate the current agreement in September.
Under the terms of the existing deal, which expires at midnight Sept. 15, either the NHL or the NHL Players' Association has to provide notice to the other 120 days before the expiry date if it wants to terminate or modify the agreement. The NHL passed along its notification Wednesday, which was first reported by the Sports Business Journal.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 2:22 PM EDT
Brodeur under fire for shoot to hurt comments
James Mirtle
It was all over the back page of the New York Post on the morning of Game 2, with normally uncontroversial netminder Martin Brodeur at the centre of a mini-controversy.
All over comments on the New York Rangers shot blocking tendencies that went largely unnoticed in the aftermath of the New Jersey Devils’ 3-0 loss in Game 1 on Monday.
“We might be able to hurt a few guys [by] hitting one-timers in the foot and their head or something,” Brodeur said.
The article raised enough of a stink that the Devils goaltender, who is not speaking on game days in these playoffs, issued a statement through a spokesman that his “off the cuff” comment wasn’t intended to be offensive.
“No one would think like that,” GM Lou Lamoriello told Devils reporter Rich Chere. “For anybody who knows Marty, it’s not an issue. People are looking for something. It’s the playoffs.”
It has been rather remarkable how healthy the Rangers have remained despite blocking some 20 shots a game, something that has been a core part of their game in winning nine of the 16 games required to take home the Stanley Cup.
If there’s now an injury as the result of a shot, expect it to generate plenty of discussion over the “intent” of the shooter.
Obviously there’s an “intent to injure” rule on the books already, one that comes with an automatic ejection and reads rather vague: “A match penalty shall be imposed on any player who deliberately attempts to injure or who deliberately injures an opponent in any manner.”
Whether or not a shot aimed at another player’s face would qualify isn’t certain, but officials would likely get into a situation where they couldn’t possibly tell if it was intentional or not.
Which makes one wonder: Are shot blockers simply fair game for whatever comes their way?
For their part, the Devils all said this wasn’t a strategy they’d ever employed in the past or intend to going forward.
Instead, their game plan is going to focus on generating more traffic in front of Henrik Lundqvist and being less picky with their shot locations.
“They’re boxing out well,” winger David Clarkson said in borrowing some basketball terminology. “This is playoff time: We’ve got to battle harder than they are to get to those spaces.”
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Globe On Hockey Contributors
James Mirtle
James joined The Globe as an editor and reporter in the sports department in 2005 and now covers the Toronto Maple Leafs. A graduate of Ryerson University and Thompson Rivers University, he has written about hockey from junior on up the past decade and has a background in new media, statistical analysis and blogging. Follow him on Twitter here and Facebook here.
David Shoalts
A native of Wainfleet, Ont., David joined The Globe in 1984 as a layout and copy editor in the sports section. He attended the University of Waterloo and Conestoga College. After graduating in 1978, he worked at the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun, and later the Toronto Sun. He has covered the Toronto Maple Leafs and the NHL since 1990 and became a hockey columnist in 2003.
Eric Duhatschek
Eric was the winner of the Hockey Hall Of Fame's Elmer Ferguson award for "distinguished contributions to hockey writing" in 2001. A graduate of the University of Western Ontario's grad school of journalism, he began covering hockey in 1978 and after spending 20 years covering the NHL and the Calgary Flames, joined The Globe in 2000. Eric has covered four Winter Olympics, 19 Stanley Cup finals, every Canada Cup and World Cup since 1981, plus two world championships.
Sean Gordon
Sean Gordon covers sports in the Globe and Mail's Montreal bureau and admits to being a long-suffering Newcastle United supporter. Raised in Ottawa, he studied political science and economics at McGill University, where he discovered the wonder that is Forum hot dogs, and journalism at the University of Regina, where he developed an unreasonable attachment to the "other" Riders. Prior to joining the Globe in 2008, he covered crime, politics and sports, at various points, for the Calgary Herald, Montreal Gazette and Toronto Star, and during 15 years in newspapers has written on topics ranging from rodeo cowboys to street gangs in Haiti.
Allan Maki
Allan joined The Globe in 1997 after spending 19 years as a reporter and columnist at the Calgary Herald. Born in Thunder Bay, he graduated from the Ryerson School of Journalism in 1977. A past president of the Football Writers of Canada, Allan has covered every Grey Cup since 1980. He's been to seven Olympic Games and covered everything from rodeos to the World Series to the Super Bowl.
Darren Yourk
Darren is the editor of globesports.com and host of the Hockey Roundtable podcast.
