TEAM 1200's Dean Brown

No Power Plays, Impossible.

2012-02-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

There has been a great deal of conversation about the recent Senators/Boston game in which the Bruins were awarded 4 power plays in the game and the Senators received none. Since there has never been an NHL game played in the history of hockey where one team didn't commit at least one foul, there can be only 3 reasons for this.

The officials had or have a personal axe to grind with the Senators or its GM or its coach or one, some or all of its players. The officials are not competent enough to call a game correctly or fairly. The third possibility is that the Boston Bruins are the cleanest team in the history of hockey and actually did not commit a single foul in that game. That seems completely unlikely since they do average more penalty minutes per game than any other team in the NHL. It also seems completely unlikely since there are TV cameras at the game. Those cameras caught Lucic hitting Condra from behind, Marchand chopping the stick out of Kuba's hand, Kelly hitting Neil in the neutral zone 40 feet away from the puck and Alfredsson being tripped 15 feet away from an official. Any one of the four were easy calls for any official to make.

Debating the reasons is a waste of time. What should be automatic from the NHL standpoint is, an automatic review of the officials performance on any night when one or both teams do not receive a penalty. As we all know there is no chance any team has or will ever play a foul free NHL game, so when no penalties are called, the officials should have to answer why they either did not see the infractions or chose not to call the infractions.

Ottawa fans are all churned up right now about this, but they are not alone. The New York Islanders have far more reason to be angry. In back to back games with the Leafs, the Islanders didn't receive a power play in either game. That's right, the Leafs played over 120 consecutive minutes of NHL hockey (one game went to overtime) without giving up a single power play. How is that possible? Its possible because of one of the 3 reasons stated at the top of the blog.

Recently former NHL ref Kerry Fraser wrote in his column on the TSN website that after reviewing the game he thought Boston in fact should be more upset than Ottawa since he spotted many more Senator's fouls which went uncalled. I am sure that is absolutely true, but that is a debate about quantity. My debate is about absence. The complete absence of the officials ability to see or willingness to call penalties on one team over another. I will not challenge Kerry on matters of officiating since his resume is long and mine is non-existent in this area, but I contend we have different arguments.

Refs are human and not robots. The are subject to anger, empathy, bias, contempt and vengeance just like any other human. I believe if you look at the way the Ottawa games have been officiated since coach Paul McLean publicly called out Dan O'Rourke after he called Erik Karlsson a "diver", you will see a pattern. Insult and dis-respect one ref, you disrespect and insult all of them and the brotherhood will make you pay for that. The NHL and every single ref will tell you they carry complete neutrality into every game. That is not possible nor reasonable to expect from any human.

The NHL should be very concerned each and every time any team in any game does not receive a single minor penalty. That is a clear indication there is something seriously wrong with the officiating job done that night.

See you at the rink.

(Note-before I get all the nit-picking comments, yes I am aware the Bruins did receive 2 fighting majors in the game. Neither produced a power play for either team.)

The Great Thomas Divide

2012-01-26T11:21:00.000-08:00

There is a great divide right now in opinions about the actions of Boston's Tim Thomas in deciding to boycott the team's visit to the White House.

I have not heard anyone say they don't respect his right to have an opinion and to act or abstain based on his belief's. But if he thought other Americans would agree with him he was mistaken.

I am not an American citizen, so my opinion is meaningless but none the less , here it is.

He should have gone.
You don't like the president, you don't like what government in your country has become, this was not the place to make that statement. This was a team event and you are a member of the team. If Tim wanted to make his statement to the media about his feelings its easy. They are the people with mics and note pads gathered around your locker each day. Just speak and they will communicate that to the world.

If you can't step into a government building because of your belief's, then try the hypocrisy hat on for size. There are many, many government buildings you have already been in I am sure. Ever renewed a drivers license?

Tim Thomas is an outstanding goaltender and from all accounts a great guy. But admitting that his favorite TV show was Fox's now fired right wing nutbar Glenn Beck made people raise an eyebrow and now this snub of the President and the White House makes people wonder even more.

See you at the rink.

Great 8 is 8 years old.

2012-01-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

Alexander Ovechkin is known as the "Great 8" for his work on the ice. Right now he is behaving like he is 8 years old.

Alexander gets suspended for 3 games for an illegal check. Its long overdue because he has committed many suspendable offences in the past, but was always given a pass because he is one of the stars of the game. The NHL can argue that no player gets preferential treatment, but we all know that part of the game has, is not and will never be changing.

But Alex obviously doesn't see it that way. If they want to suspend me of all people, a star, then don't expect me to come to the All Star game and help the league promote itself. Its classic pouting like you would see from an 8 year old.

The "I don't want to be a distraction" reason is a sad and failed attempt to turn himself into a martyr. The league's willingness to allow him to do it, is even more sad. Players in the past like Nicklaus Lidstrom have been suspended for refusing to go to the All Star game when healthy enough to play. Crosby went to the game even when he was injured and wasn't playing, only because the NHL asked him to for the good of the league and he did it. One superstar behaves like a man the other like a child.

Only Tim Thomas has damaged his own reputation more this week than the 8 year old Ovechkin.

See you at the rink.

Ban fighting? Ban the word Ban first.

2012-01-09T08:42:00.000-08:00

The debate continues about "banning" fighting in the NHL. New words are needed here. There is only one way to "ban" fighting in the NHL. If you fight you never play another game in the league. That will never happen.

The only thing that can change is stiffer penalties. If you fight you are gone for the rest of the game or gone for the rest of the game and suspended or whatever. There will always be fighting in hockey to some degree.

If you look at the leagues which don't allow fighting you may notice there are still fights. Baseball, Football, Basketball, NASCAR. They all have fighting "bans" but yet there are still fights.

Lets at least start using the correct verbiage in this debate and ban the use of the word ban when talking about fighting in the NHL.

See you at the rink.

Burke weeps for Orr

2012-01-08T11:00:00.000-08:00

Leaf GM Brian Burke was both enraged and sorrowful that he was "forced" to send fighter Colton Orr to the minors. His claim was that the NHL has moved too far away from on ice player enforcement, thus making Orr an un-playable player.

I agree with Brian on many of his points about the NHL becoming a league where weasels prosper (a term I prefer over "rats"). But I think Brian may have used the wrong example in Orr to make his point. Colton Orr is with the Marlies now because he isn't a good enough hockey player to play in the NHL and his worth is nowhere close to the 1 million dollars a year that Burke pays him.

Now if there comes a time in the NHL when there is no place for guys like Chris Neil, Shawn Thornton, Travis Moen, Matt Bradley, Brandon Prust, Tim Jackman, Ben Eager, Aron Asham, Chris Thorburn, David Clarkson and many many others....then we have a problem.

The NHL will not be a lesser league without Colton Orr or Jody Shelly or Steve MacIntyre or any of the other players who simply cant play and only wear a jersey to fight.

I agree with Burke's point, just disagree with his example. There are too many weasels in the NHL now, who don't have to adequately answer for for the dangerous and sneaky things they do. Matt Cooke has proven that a weasel can change his ways, but right now why would the likes of Brad Marchand, Patrick Kalleta or Alex Burrows consider changing? The penalties against those who seek to control their weaselery on the ice are far greater than the penalties for being a weasel, thus sadly, the weasel method works.

The NHL needs some new anti-weasel rules to control this type of scourge or at the very least a more stringent use of the unsportsmanlike rule and the intent to injure rule.

see you at the rink.

Fight for the sake of fighting.

2012-01-08T10:33:00.000-08:00

The NHLPA's recent rejection of the NHL's new realignment and playoff structure is nothing more than posturing by the Association. With the current CBA set to expire on September 15th, 2012, the players union simply wants the league to know, they are not going to easily agree to anything, including things they actually want.

That is the great irony here. The past executive director of the players association Paul Kelly has admitted that what the owners had proposed is pretty much what the players had asked for during his tenure as the union boss.

The players purported concerns of increased travel, playoff inequities and the league's inability to provide a mock schedule for them to inspect, are nothing more than obstructionist dithering.

Everyone knew that any system which involved every team playing every other team at least twice a year would involve more travel for some and less for others. But its what the players had asked for.

Everyone knows that playoff inequities will be solved once one or two troubled franchises are eventually moved (insert Phoenix, Florida, Columbus or anyone of 5 or 6 teams here) and a wildcard system is installed after the system is up and running.

Everyone knows, that unlike baseball Mr. Fehr, NHL teams do not have total control of their buildings and most NHL buildings are multi-purpose with shows and concerts to contend with and many have another tenant such as basketball, indoor lacrosse, football or indoor soccer to schedule around. Providing an iron clad mock schedule is simply impossible and everyone knows it.

The Players Association could have started this march towards a new CBA with a positive, collaborative gesture, but instead they erected the first road block.

Is it any wonder that public opinion during pro sports labour disputes never favors the players. They too often appear to be greedy, delusional and seemingly oblivious to current market and worldwide economic conditions.

In a league where you have some players making 8, 10 or 12 million dollars a season, its tough to get the average working man to feel their pain.

See you at the rink.

Shanny too trusting

2011-11-16T10:02:00.000-08:00

James Wisniewski must be the most angry player in the NHL when it comes to supplementary discipline. His pre-season hit certainly deserved a suspension but 4 games and then 8 in the regular season? His lost salary was over half a million dollars. That's between 700 and 800 thousand dollars before taxes.

Now he watches as Brian Gionta decks James Reimer and gets nothing. He watches as Wolski KO's Alfredsson. He must be apoplectic when Lucic freight trains Ryan Miller and gets nothing.

It appears one of the problems might be Brendan Shanahan's naivete. He says Lucic told him he didn't intend to hit Miller that way. Shanahan must be under the impression a player would not lie to avoid a suspension. Just because he never did doesn't mean others wouldn't. He believes 50% of hockey people think its suspend able and 50% don't. I haven't found any who don't believe its suspend able and at the latest meeting of the NHL's managers, the majority thought there should have been a suspension in an informal straw pole.

One of the problems might also be Shanahan's think tank. We were all told this was a separate body, with separate people, in a separate office in a separate city. They would not be connected to the group at hockey operations which had in the past doled out suspensions. This is the group headed by Colin Campbell and while a very deep set of hockey thinkers, a group which no longer had the backing of anyone to continue controlling supplemental discipline. The players, managers and owners all wanted this group to be uninvolved in this process going forward. So who did Shanahan consult about the Alfredsson hit? Colin Campbell and his group and their thoughts helped mould his non-suspension call.

What players, fans and mangers are all afraid of is a lack of true change. If we go back to an environment where nobody has any confidence in the consistency of supplementary discipline or the people who decide on it, we have not moved forward.

Brendan Shanahan in his first season in the job has taken many steps forward but also too many massive steps backward.

James Wisniewski deserves a substantial tax refund, and Lucic, Gionta and Wolski have not paid anywhere close to their fair share.

See you at the rink.

Can't Ban Fighting

2011-10-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

If we are going to continue the debate over the issue of fighting in hockey, can we at least frame it properly? Everyone should stop saying there is a movement to "ban" fighting in hockey". There will always be fighting in hockey. The only thing that will change is the penalty.

Right now fighting is not permitted in baseball, basketball, football, rugby, motor racing etc, etc. Yet in all those sports there are fights.

In hockey there will always be fights, but instead of getting a 5 minute fighting major, a player would get an automatic game ejection or more. Not a ban but rather just a different, more harsh penalty. There is only one way to ban fighting in hockey. If anyone ever gets in a fight, they are banned from ever playing again at any level in any recognized league. Now that is a ban! That will also never happen.

I am all for getting the designated fighters out of the game. The very few guys who serve no other purpose. There is no need for a rule about that though. It is happening by itself. Very few teams can afford to use a roster spot for a player who has no skill other than fighting,

Hockey is a dangerous sport and everyone who plays at the pro level knows that or should know that. If they don't want to accept the risks then don't cash the cheques and look for something else to do.

I do not believe that everyone who fights in the NHL is more or less prone to addiction or depression. I don't believe the internal turmoil from having to do that job creates more or less addicts or mental health issues. I asked a former NHLer if the guys he knew who had been fighters seemed like they might have had the kind of personality which might lead to addiction or mental health issues even if they hadn't been in the NHL and his answer was "yes, I suppose so".

There are also far more cases of players past and present in the NHL with addiction and mental health issues who were not fighters. Maybe just maybe, the percentage of NHL players prone to those 2 problems are exactly the same percentage as the rest of the general public. That's right, I am contending that NHL players are just as human as the rest of us and no more or less at risk than anyone else. I know, its a novel idea.

There are far more cases of injury, death, drug and alcohol addiction and mental health issues in many other jobs but we don't seem to care about that because there are no trading cards for crab fishermen or farmers or oil drillers.

I am all for serious discussion about fighting in hockey and safety. Every player should have to meet regularly with the team psychologist just like they have to see the team doctor and dentist on a regular basis. But this idea that hockey can be made completely safe is completely delusional.

Hockey is the fastest non-motorized team sport in the world. It is fuelled by 90% emotion. Unless the penalty for fighting becomes a lifetime ban, there will always be fights. No one is holding a gun to any ones head. If a player cant live with the risk, try another line of work.

See you are the rink.

What comes next?

2011-09-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

With the deaths of three NHL players this summer the biggest question is, what comes next? What does the NHL and more importantly what does the NHLPA do?

All three deaths seem to have different circumstances and now everyone is trying to find common links between all of them to find one easy answer. I doubt there will ever be one easy answer.

Is it the mental anguish of having to force yourself to be a fighter over your whole career? Is it the mental anguish of facing a life after the NHL? Is it drugs? Is it pre-existing mental and emotional problems which were never properly identified and dealt with?

The NHL has to be completely supportive and a willing helper in trying to get to the root of this, but it is the NHLPA which must take the lead. This is clearly a player care issue and that is the domain of the NHLPA.

Programs already exist to help players with drug, alcohol and emotional problems but those programs largely rely on the player asking for help. Men in general and NHL players especially are not good at asking for help.

NHL players must always pass physical tests to ensure they are able to play. It appears as much vigilance and testing must be done to ensure they are psychologically ready to play and live this life.

Is it time for each NHL team to be required to employ a team psychologist and sessions with each player become mandatory and not voluntary? Many teams employ sports psychologists but their job is primarily related to helping players with the mental and emotional side of being on a team and performing at their highest level and less about how they are as a person and their overall emotional well being in life not just the hockey life.

It is obviously time for the NHL and more specifically the NHLPA become as concerned about a players emotions as they are about a players brawn.

See you at the rink.

huge glass house

2011-06-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

Vancouver goaltender Roberto Luongo believes he would have stopped the game winning goal Max Lapierre scored on Boston's Tim Thomas in game #5 of the Stanley Cup Final. His assertion is that Thomas plays far out of his crease while Luongo plays the odds and protects the posts and tight chances better.

Wow! The goalie who was shelled in games 3 and 4 of the series has goaltending tips for the guy who might win the Vezina? Does Roberto spend the off days looking at any of the stats? His numbers in this final are nowhere close to those of Thomas. There is no official stat for "soft goals" but if there were Luongo would certainly lead Thomas handily in the post season.

Roberto Luongo is a very good goaltender. His inconsistency and volume of soft goals in this years playoffs prevent him from being termed a "great" goaltender. He is a very good player on a very good team which should win the Stanley Cup, but he has not been nearly good enough to start critiquing the other goaltender in this final.

As about a million coaches have told a million players over the years, "just shut up and play". Good advice for Luongo.

See you at the rink.

Joe no superstar yet.

2011-05-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts from the San Jose/Vancouver series.

Dany Heatley is too slow to be able to produce when the tempo of the game gets as high as it does in the 3rd round of the NHL playoffs. Patrick Marleau has proven again he is not an impact player in important games. What San Jose does with these two contracts is a major conundrum, but what is clear is that the Sharks cant win the cup if they have to depend on these two players to be major cogs in the big Shark wheel.

While admirable that Joe Thornton played the final game of his season with a separated shoulder, the reality is he failed once again to lead his team over the hump. A great many players have endured his injury or worse so he is by no means alone with the wounded hero tag. He is a star player but does not deserve the superstar moniker until he can take over a series and lead his team to the cup. He will always get more credit that he has earned because he is a wonderful guy, easy to like and thus the media loves him, but it doesn't change the fact that to become one of the greats you have to be the central figure in leading your team to greatness. He appears to be on the Eric Lindros track. Unlimited ability but just cant get it done.

Nobody in the East knew who Douglas Murray was until this series and now everyone knows who he is. Murray is huge and plays a rugged, effective game. He is a star despite the fact he doesn't produce much offence. His shutdown and punishment abilities are at superstar levels.

Roberto Luongo is a very good goalie. Better than average. Better than above average. Better than good. After the final 2 games of this series you could say he is a star player, but still not a superstar. Nobody has been called the best goalie in the NHL for a longer period of time without actually winning anything and carrying his team to those victories. Haven't heard anyone say he carried Canada to the Gold. Maybe a cup win would lift him to superstar status. Maybe a few cup wins and you could start having the conversation about him being one of the greats like Roy and Brodeur. Despite all the fan and media hype he has not yet earned that and wont until production matches promise.

Ryan Kessler is a very very good player. Also one of (if not thee) worst (or best) divers and actors in the NHL. His ongoing display of embellishments in this years playoffs is impressive (or embarrassing) depending on your perspective. It is difficult to trust that any of his reactions are legitimate. If and when he is ever seriously injured, how will we know? What cant be faked is his superior talent and ferocious competitiveness.

After being MIA in parts of round #1 and #2, the Sedins were outstanding against San Jose. When they were on the ice, they often controlled the whole game. Like many high skill players they will have to endure the criticism of shying away from contact far too often, but nobody cares about that while you are holding the cup.

See you at the rink.

No cash for you

2011-05-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

I am OK with the province of Manitoba announcing it will not subsidise the NHL's return to Winnipeg. I am not OK with the double standard which continues in this country and the skewed debate over partial funding of NHL facilities.

I always hear the ridiculous claims that taxpayers should not be helping millionaire players and billionaire owners. The taxpayers already are! Tax and funding fairness is the issue here. I am fine with provinces and the federal government staying out of those situations as long as they stay out of all of them.

industries and companies all across Canada are regularly the recipients of government assistance and we all accept that as a way of keeping jobs and helping the economy and the communities in which these facilities are based. Often the companies who receive this assistance employ the same number of people (or fewer) than an NHL team. Generate the same (or less) to the tax base and don't come close to NHL teams in what they bring to the city in exposure, culture, entertainment, spin-off jobs and a sense of civic pride.

So what is the difference? Political optics. Politicians are less worried about fairness and more optics. When Senators owner Rod Bryden was looking for fairness it was pointed out that Cognos at the time employed about the same number of people in Ottawa and their top 25 employees made more than the Senators top 25 employees (players), but Cognos still qualified for Federal research and development grants but the hockey team was told to go suck eggs. The fact is much of the city of Kanata's development was due to huge tax breaks and federal grants to millionaires with names like Mathews and Copeland whose top 25 employees all made much more than the highest paid NHL players. Are we all OK with that too?

The optics are created by the average guys awareness of what an NHL player makes and what the owner is worth because the media regularly talks about both subjects. The media does not talk about the top 25 employees salaries or what Cognos owner (Mike Potter at that time) has in the bank. Potter is worth more than many NHL owners.

Governments at all levels routinely try to both entice and hold onto businesses to keep the jobs and the tax benefits that come from those paychecks. You should want to keep 25 millionaire hockey players in your town because they pay big personal income tax.

The debate about directing funds to hospitals and schools instead of the NHL is also a circular debate. The best way to afford more hospitals and schools is to try and keep millionaires in your town to pay taxes. When has it ever occurred that more money was put into hospitals and schools when an NHL team left? Ask Winnipeg and Quebec City if their hospitals and schools are better or worse off since their NHL teams left. The answer on that and every single level is NO! Thus the reason both are so interested in getting teams back.

If you don't want to help fund NHL arena's I am fine with that but the same rules should apply to every single for-profit business in this country. Its only fair. We would have said good bye to Bombardier long ago. Two of the three big Canadian auto makers would likely be dead right now. The list is very long.

This should be about fairness not optics.
but it is not and will never be because politicians are about optics first and fairness, well, that is well down the list.

See you at the rink.

Scotty we've got the technology

2011-05-05T12:05:00.000-07:00

Nashville coach Barry Trotz has publicly complained about Vancouver's embellishments in game #3 of their series. Shea Weber's hooking penalty was caused by Ryan Kessler holding onto Weber's stick under his arm, or as everyone in hockey calls it "the chicken wing" move.

Jarred Smithsom took a penalty after moving his stick over Roberto Luongo's head and the goalie then jolted his head back drawing the penalty. Replays showed that the stick never hit Luongo.

This is not new. Gamesmanship is part of the game and a big part of the playoffs. Cant blame a guy for trying, but nobody feels good about players faking or finding sneaky ways to draw penalties. The logic on the Weber call is, if his stick wasn't there in the first place then Kessler wouldn't have a chance to hold it and draw the penalty.

The problem is these things are becoming more and more common and the game is just too fast for officials to see and call everything. In an ideal world Weber would have received his hooking call and Kessler would have received a holding the stick penalty. That did not happen and we all know what happened on that power play.

The NHL has the technology to try and curb this kind of thing. You cant possibly catch all of it during a live game but its fairly easy to see after on video. The NHL should use the power of video to lessen this behaviour and send a message to players that trying to embarrass NHL officials has a price.

Any player determined to have embellished or faked or chicken winged in a game should be subject to a fine and the amount of that fine and his name should be made public. The fine is not the most important part of all this since $2,500 dollars is the max a player can be fined under the CBA and that is peanuts to an NHL player. Being publicly outed for the behaviour is the most important part. Get caught 3 times, its a 1 game suspension. No player wants to face the media to answer those embarrassing questions.

If the NHL really wants to help stop players undermining the authority and credibility of NHL officials, the league has to do something to stop players from making them look foolish. Use the power of video to do that.

See you at the rink.

The balance is all wrong.

2011-05-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

The Washington Capitals were swept in their 2nd round playoff series by Tampa last night. It means in the last 4 years this mega talented team has lost in the first round twice and in the 2nd round twice. What is the problem?

Balance. They don't have any. I have said this about Washington for 3 years now and I said it again this year before the playoffs even started. Most everyone in today's NHL knows you cant score your way to the cup you have to defend your way to the cup. The last team to score its way to the cup was probably the Oilers of the mid-80's.

This requires a team to have the right balance of scoring forwards who also understand the idea of team defence. A strong defence corps with very good to great goaltending. In today's NHL that is the balance you have to try and find to have a chance at the cup.

Washington simply does not have it. The team is simply too heavy with players who are wired to be offensive. That's good in the regular season, but its the achilles heal in the playoffs. During the regular season this year, Washington head coach Bruce Boudreau tried mightily to get this team to play tighter defensively, but to no avail.

Boudreau will likely be fired, but I cant see the next coach having anymore success with that roster. Its a personnel problem. Yes you can coach any player to be better defensively but some players are just not wired that way. They can get better, but if their natural instinct is always offence, that is a tough job for a coach to change his stripes. That's why you draft and develop shut down defencemen or you sign them as free agents. You don't take an offensive defenceman and try to transform him into something he is not. Mike Green might get better in his own end, but he is always going to be obsessed with scoring not shutting down.

We have all watched those car restoration shows on the Discovery Channel. You can turn a Camero into a station wagon with a cutting torch, and a good welder, but it will never be as good as the real thing.

Washington doesn't need a new coach, they need some balance in their roster.

See you at the rink.

Kudos to Hughie

2011-05-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

Name pronunciation in the NHL is one of my pet peeves. Too often people in our business either guess or just ask someone they think knows how to pronounce a players name. Too often they are wrong. The only way to get it right is to ask a player directly how he wants his name pronounced.

The way the question is phrased is the most important thing. Some guys say to a player "is it pleck-AH-nits?" Often a player just says "ya" because that's close enough and they don't care. That's why you have to ask a player "how do you pronounce your name?" and then listen to how he says it.

I know this Montreal centre has his name pronounced two different ways. I asked him when he first came into the league to pronounce his name and I recorded him saying it. He pronounces his name "pleh-CAN-its" just the way Bob Cole says it on HNIC and not "pleck-UH-nits" they way some people pronounce it.

Kudos to HNIC's Jim Hughson doing the Vancouver/Nashville series. Preds goalie Pekka Rinne has one of the most mispronounced names in the NHL. His first year in the NHL Gord Wilson and I were in the Preds locker room and the first question we asked him was how he pronounced his name. It is not "RINN-eh" or "RINN-ey" it is "REE-NAY". Hughie did his homework and asked the simple question. It doesn't seem like a big deal but its one of the smallest but most important details of doing our job. Hughie does not miss the details.

See you at the rink.

Bush League

2011-05-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

The Snowgate debate in the San Jose/Detroit playoff series is nothing short of bush league. There should be some things that are just beneath the professional standards of an NHL player. Spraying snow and ice chips into the face of the opposing goalie is one of those things. We tell 8 year old kids to stop doing that because its disrespectful and stupid, but some NHL players think its a "tactic". If the best you can do to get a goalie off his game is spray him with snow, then you have no game plan at all.

It is hard enough to get some viewers in American markets to take our game seriously, but trying to explain this kind of buffoonery to them is difficult because there is no way to make it sound smart or professional. Reggie Dunlop and the Johnstown Chiefs would have loved this part of the series. Juvenile and moronic! If the NHL would spend as much time trying to get stupid out of the game as they do trying to get Zdeno Chara to not drink Coke on camera, we would all be better off.

What makes this even more of a joke is the Sharks assertion that these snow showers are accidental. Simply the byproduct of going hard to the net looking for a rebound. Funny part about that is, if they really are accidental why is it these things don't occur in their own practice. Teams routinely do net drive drills at full speed with full contact, yet their own goalies never get snowed in practice? The claim of accidental snow showers insults the intelligence of every hockey fan. The idea that an NHL player can't change the angle of his skate blades in 10 feet is also comical.

The claim that there is no specific penalty to call in these cases is also laughable. Its called unsportsmanlike conduct. Its on page 105 of the rule book if you are looking for it. There was no specific penalty for the absurd stick waiving from Sean Avery in front of Martin Brodeur in the 2008 playoffs, but eventually it was called under this rule. This rule basically covers any behaviour which could be construed as the actions of a jackass. The snow in the face routine definitely falls into that jackass category.

Play the game hard. Play the game like a man. Stop the bush league tactics. It makes you and our game look stupid.

See you at the rink.

Shame on the twits

2011-03-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

Recently former NHLer Theo Fleury mentioned on twitter that he expected the Vancouver Cannucks would be first round upset victims in the NHL playoffs because he did not believe Roberto Luongo had what it takes to bring this team to glory. Fine. His opinion. Its not my opinion but he is entitled to his. Its sports. Like noses we all have our opinions.

The retaliation from some Vancouver fans on twitter is sickening. The comments made about his problems with drugs and alcohol are appalling. The comments made about his sexual abuse at the hands of his junior coach, far more than appalling. Disgusting doesn't cover it.

I know this does not represent the entire population of Cannucks Nation, but this particular cross section is a group of profoundly stupid and troubled people. The anonymity of twitter protects them from being called out by their friends, family and co-workers. That is the biggest problem with this type of social media. No one has to be accountable for their pathetic lack of IQ and alarming lack of class.

I call on Cannuck Nation to police their own. A larger outcry on twitter from Vancouver fans to both out these idiots and discredit their thoughts and tweets is necessary immediately.

See you at the rink.

Bravo to the Pens

2011-03-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

We all spend so much time complaining about whats wrong with the game and the rules and some of the buffoonery that sometimes we forget to talk about the stuff we love about the game.

Bravo to the Pittsburgh Penguins. As of today ranked 4th in the East and just 2 points out of top spot in the Eastern Conference. How in the world are they doing it?

No Crosby. No Malkin. No Orpik. There are very few teams who could keep their head above water missing their 2 best offensive players and their best shut down defenceman. Pittsburgh is missing 2 of the best players on the planet and still find ways to win.

Great goaltending is a large part of it, but a total buy in from the players to the ideals of what Penguins hockey is and the way everyone is supposed to play. Whether the stars are there or not, the system is the system and the style and attitude of the team remains constant. It creates an environment where no piece is greater than the sum even though the pieces missing are huge.

Dan Bylsma is the odds on favorite to win coach of the year and he is my top pick for instilling this attitude and adapting to some huge personnel losses.

Bravo to the Penguins.

See you at the rink.

why do we care????

2011-03-23T07:08:00.000-07:00

There are screams from every quarter over head shots and mandatory visors in the NHL again after the Matt Cooke hit and suspension and the Manny Malholtra incident where he took a puck in the eye.

Why do we care? These are pros? If they want these things they should be lobbying for them not us. There are still a great many NHL players who are against both visors being mandatory and head shots (even accidental ones) becoming punishable by a 2 minute penalty or more.

Why do we care more about protecting their careers and futures than they seem to?

Lets concentrate on amature hockey and make sure that kids are as safe as they can be. Visors, mouthgaurds and neck guards have been mandatory for years and the OHL already has a 100% head shot rule. More amature associations and certainly Hockey Canada should adopt that across the board.

But the pros? Save your emotions. Until the players are determined to protect themselves there is no reason for the rest of us to have concern for them.

The first major step in getting the number of NHL concussions under control has nothing to do with rule enforcement and everything to do with vanity enforcement. Players don't start wearing special concussion helmets until AFTER they've had a concussion. Why not wear one to prevent it in the first place ? The reason is simple vanity. Most concussion helmets don't really look cool.

Why doesn't the NHL demand a 4 buckle chin harness like the NFL does? The reason is simple. Vanity. They don't look very cool on a hockey helmet and that drooping chin strap has become the trendy look no matter how little it keeps the helmet in place.

I simply can"t get myself all riled up about all this until I see players demanding protection from each other and they are not.

I will start to care when they start to care. Until then lets just keep counting the concussions and make plans to feed these people through straws later in life.

See you at the rink.

now we are talkin!!!!!

2011-03-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

The NHL has finally issued a suspension for dangerous play which actually has some teeth in it.

Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke has been suspended for the remainder of the regular season (10 games) and the first round of the playoffs after his deliberate elbow to the head of Ranger Ryan McDonagh on Sunday.

Cooke will lose just under $220,000.00 in salary and as many as 7 playoff games. Players don't get paid in the playoffs so there is no monetary loss there, but clearly its a heavy punishment to miss playoff games for regular season crimes.

Most people in the NHL have for some time, considered Cooke the most dangerous player in the NHL. Not because of his size, but because of his ongoing disregard for the safety of other players. Youtube is filled with Cooke hits and other buffoonery which is extremely dangerous and often causes injuries. The fact that none of his 4 previous suspensions were longer than 4 games points out how little supplementary discipline affected his actions.

This suspension may get his attention and the attention of others around the league. That is until the next incident occurs and a softball suspension is levied. For this punishment to have an affect on what players do on the ice, it has to be followed up with a new level of deterrents for everyone, not just Matt Cooke.

Bravo to the NHL for finally getting tough. Now the question is, can they remain tough?

See you at the rink.

Common sense starting to set in.

2011-03-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

I have been paying close attention to all the debates and panel discussions in the media and on fan blogs since the Chara/Pacioretty incident. Thankfully much of the conversation has now turned towards player safety and away from the ridiculous assertions made by some that this was a planned attack by Chara.

David Booth of the Florida Panthers should have a personal perspective on this, since his career was nearly ended by a blind side head shot. He says this incident has no connection to the plays the NHL is trying to weed out of the game. Hits like the one he took are on the decline because they are now against the rules and the penalties are stiff. He says the Chara hit was simply an accident. That is exactly what it was and the sooner Montreal fans move past their misplaced anger and onto player safety questions, the faster the game will be safer for players.

There will always be injuries in hockey. It is the fastest non-motorized team sport in the world and there is no way to eliminate accidents. The players accept those risks but some fans and members of the media refuse to.

If these accidents appall you, then don't watch hockey. I agree with Leaf coach Ron Wilson. He makes some good points. When players get hit with pucks in the face, do we talk about banning raised shots? When players get broken feet, do we talk about banning slap shots? This accident was more graphic and spectacular, but never the less, still an accident.

Lets talk about stanchions and not Chara.

See you at the rink.

Top 5??????

2011-03-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

Right now with a 7-3-0 record in the last 10 games, the Senators are one of the 5 hottest teams in the NHL. No disrespect meant, but look at this roster and tell me how that is possible? I guess it tells you what can happen when you get good goaltending, you work hard within your system and other teams take you for granted.

The good news is, this team is fun to watch again. The bad news is they are now winning too many games and diminishing the chances of getting that first overall pick.

See you at the rink.

The Deals

2011-03-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

Ok lets go through the deals.
Fisher to Nashville for a 1st and a 3rd.
Surprised that it was the first deal to happen, but not surprised in the sense that everyone knew he was a player many teams had interest in and house cleanings usually start with your prized possessions not your least prized.

Kelly to Boston for a 2nd.
Surprised me a bit because I thought Boston coveted Chris Phillips more than Kelly, but he is certainly a Claude Julien type of player and a 2nd round pick is very good return.

Ruutu to Anaheim for a 6th.
Not surprised he was moved, but was surprised Anaheim wanted him.

Elliott to Colorado for Anderson.
Was surprised only in the sense that it is rare to be able to trade a goalie who's numbers were as bad as Elliott's and who's game was so in shambles as the time of the trade.

Kovalev to Pittsburgh for a 7th rounder.
Good deal for both. Ottawa gets him off the books and if the Pens can get a few playoff goals out of him, its worth their while.

Svatos off waivers from Nashville.
A warm body to finish out the season without having to raid Bingo for another skater.
If he performs he might be a keeper, if he doesn't there is nothing lost.

Potulny and a 2nd from Chicago for Campoli and a 7th.
Move out some money and make way for some of the kids like Rundblat and Cowen who are coming next year. Pick up a prospect in Potulny who could be a good organizational depth guy.

McElhinney off waivers from Tampa.
Allows them to send Lehner back to Bingo to get playing time.
Good stop gap.

See you at the rink.

Chara not a criminal

2011-03-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

The Chara hit on Pacioretty was interference.
It was called properly on the ice. It did not deserve a suspension and did not receive one.
There was no intent to do anything but rub out a player chasing the puck.

The criminal investigation is a joke. If there is going to be a criminal investigation after every player in the NHL is injured, the police are going to be very busy people.

Air Canada threatening to withdraw their sponsorships from the league is also a joke on many fronts. No other hits or incidents in the league have bothered them except for the one which occurred in the city where their head office is located and where it is safe to assume, a good number of their employees and management are Habs fans. It also rings hollow considering its not a threat which would have been considered if Canadian Airlines still existed or any other true national carrier. Walking away from the naming rights to the ACC and their other sponsorships is one thing. Its a different ball of wax when those sponsorships are then placed in the lap of your direct competition. The lack of a direct competitor gives Air Canada a lot of bluster.

I hope that during the police investigation there is as much investigating of workplace safety issues as there is any possible criminal wrong doing. The logic of having that stanchion where it is seems to be a far bigger issue.

This issue being discussed in the House of Commons is also a joke. You can tell an election is on the way. If the politicos are really concerned about the health and well being of Canadians start putting warning lables on bacon.

I have been listening to all the assumptions about retribution, intent to injure, head shots and people supposing to know what was going through Chara's mind. If Chara really wanted to injure Pacioretty he could have gone after him numerous times. Could have punched him in the face on numerous occasions. Mapping out this intricate, full speed plan to catch him just right during a rub out so that his head hit the stanchion is fascicle.

Everyone seems to have one, and this is my opinion. The only difference is, I don't have an emotional tie to either team or either player.

See you at the rink

A New Way.

2010-11-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

With the whole Colin Campbell debate still raging about supplemental discipline and the implied conflict of interest, it makes me believe that the things I said 5 years ago remain my opinion today and in fact lead me to believe that it is more important than ever. Colin Campbell is a solid hockey man in an impossible situation. In the position he is in right now as it relates to supplemental discipline, it is not and can never be pure. There is simply too much input, too much politicking, too much coercion from too many different sources involved in almost every case.

When a case is reviewed there are league pressures, marketing pressures, seat sale pressures, team pressures, opposing team pressures, player pressures and everyone at every level has the ability to call Colin and talk to him. They all have their case to make and it is impossible for any human to field all those pressure tactics and consistently come out with the proper ruling and precedent based decision.

So, as I have said before, like arbitration a third party should be the one deciding supplemental discipline in the NHL. That person would be sent all the relevant video evidence along with written perspectives from the two teams involved. No one from the league, the NHLPA or the teams would be allowed to have any contact with the adjudicator unless he or she requests direct contact for the purposes of clarification. Decisions would be based on the exact interpretations of the rule book and precedent.

This would take politics out of the process and remove any hint of bias. One of the important byproducts would also be the NHL being forced to make its rule book and the often talked about but never seen, "situation book" more clear with fewer things open to interpretation. One of the biggest problems in the NHL is that almost every rule and every call are open to interpretation which leads to every call being debated. That continually undermines the NHL's ability to have fans, media, players, coaches and managers believe that the rules of the game are called with consistency.

The NHL employs the best officials in the hockey world yet almost everyone agrees that the biggest problem with the game is officiating. No one seems to know what a foul is on a night to night basis. The ambiguity of the rule book and its application is a huge part of that and the NHL would do itself a favor by dealing with that.

See you at the rink.

Sobering perspective

2010-11-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that right now talking about the Power Play or which team is the best one in the East or the lack of trades in the NHL all seems pretty trivial right now. The suicide death of Luke and Stephanie Richardson's youngest daughter Daron has put so many things into a different perspective for all of us who are around Luke, this team and this league.

Maybe because all of us who live in this NHL life have an unsaid arrogance that this type of horrific tragedy doesn't happen in our world. Clearly it does.

This tragic loss of this young life is no different than any other. It is the same grief and sorrow that comes with any teen suicide, but this is different because its public. Working in the NHL means that you must forfeit some of your privacy and anonymity. The Richardson's know that and have been remarkably public about the details of their daughters death. If I were in their shoes I doubt I could be that strong and I admire their grace during what is the very worst time in all of their lives.

What has come of this so far is remarkable though. Out of such a brutally heart wrenching situation is some good that benefits all of us who have children. First was the organ donation and second the conversations. There are parents all over the city, the region and the league who are having conversations with their children about suicide. Conversations about depression and dark thoughts. Conversations about making sure there are open lines of communication with their children. Conversations about what to do if you ever feel like you have no options and the world is not worth living in.

There is nothing that can ever erase the pain the Richardson family is going through and even with that, by being so public about their situation they have given all of us a gift. The gift is a sobering perspective on teen suicide which may help prevent one or two or five or ten other ones.

There is nothing any of us can say to the Richardson's to ease their pain. Sadly it is theirs to carry for the rest of their lives. But we can say thank you for finding the very little that is good from this and sharing that sliver of good with the rest of us, to help the rest of us foresee and avoid the horror you are now going through.

God be with you.

I am still alive and blogging

2010-11-09T20:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was driving my daughter to school. Kenny Walls the producer of the morning show called and asked if I was listening to the show. I had my 10 year old daughter in the car, so no I wasn't listening. Love the show but never have it on when the kids are in the car. I don't even want to begin trying to explain the Turkey Skin Luggage song to my kids.

Kenny wanted to know if I was listening as JR slagged me on the air about never writing in my blog. I went on the air with the boys ready with my excuses. Unfortunately I didn't have any good ones. I still don't. Just stopped at the end of last season and never really started again at the start of this season.

generally I write my stuff in a separate file and then after I tweak it I copy and paste it to the blog. I have a new laptop with Microsoft Office 10 and I have not yet learned all the nuances of this great software. For some reason it allows me to copy but will not paste to the blog. So the 3 or 4 pieces that I have written, I have not posted because I am simply too lazy to re-write them from scratch.

I wish I had some better excuses but I don't.
I am simply the laziest blogger out there and now being shamed into changing my ways.

I promise to write something sometime about something somebody might care about.

See you at the rink.

No Shame

2010-04-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

After the Senators lost last night and their season came to an end, I listened to the Team 1200 Post Mortem with JR for a while. There was the usual questioning of earlier trades, and the use of the goaltenders over the run of the season and all the usual “what ifs”.

The overwhelming sense I got from the fans while listening on the web from my hotel room in Boston was that they were disappointed “for” the team and not disappointed “in” them. Two very small words which make a very big difference. Years ago after the 4 game sweep at the hands of the Leafs fans were disappointed in that team. The compete level, the emotion level, the courage, in fact everything was questioned.

Losing to the defending champs in 6 games, 2 of which went to overtime, is no shame. Especially considering Ottawa was missing one veteran top-4 defenceman (Kuba), two top-6 forwards (Kovalev, Michalek) and the captain played the entire series with a torn abdominal muscle with a rookie defenceman logging the most minutes in the series.

Their compete level was high. The emotion level was high. The resolve to beat the odds was high. Their grit level was high and for all those reasons there is no shame in this loss.

Now more than ever I believe these players became a much better team the day Heatley was traded. They swapped a me for a we and traded goals for character and this team had plenty of that against Pittsburgh.

See you at the rink.

The Sutton hit

2010-04-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

As I am working the Buffalo/Boston series for HNIC during the first round I am surrounded by people who are not Senators fans nor are they media who regularly follow or cover the Senators. With no bias to be found I can tell you there is no hockey person I have spoken to here in Buffalo who does not think the Sutton hit was a clean, legal, hockey hit. None were surprised that there was no supplementary discipline.

Most of the surprise is that a veteran like Leopold was caught like that. Sutton’s continued use of that move is because players continue to come down the wing with their head's down, apparently unaware that he is on the ice and he has done this many, many times. If something works keep doing it until it doesn’t.

Penguins defenceman Brooks Orpik admitted as much after the game when he was asked about the hit. He said it was a clean hit and they had all watched video of Sutton’s tendencies both good and bad.

It continues to beg the question, why aren’t today’s players more tuned in to who is on the ice and what they tend to do. It was the same story after Chris Neil hit Tampa’s Viktor Hedman. It drove him backwards and he suffered a concussion when his head hit the boards while falling. It was a clean hit from the front, and Hedman saw it coming but said he didn’t think Neil would hit him. What did you expect him to do? Did no one tell him what Chris Neil does for a living? Did no one warn him that #25 plays hard, finishes his checks and will drop the gloves? How could this have possibly been a surprise?

Did Daniel Alfredsson complain when he was injured after a hit in Pittsburgh? He blamed himself for allowing himself to be vulnerable. Just because a player gets injured doesn’t mean that the play that injured him was illegal.

See you at the rink.

Paging Kreskin

2010-04-14T20:23:00.001-07:00

The NHL playoffs started last night and I watched the opening games from my hotel room in Buffalo. While I will call the Buffalo/Boston series for HNIC, the Senators opened up against the Pens with a 5-4 win. Some shaky goaltending at both ends and Ottawa doing a very good job at closing gaps and jumping up into the play. With a team like the Penguins, laying back and trying to defend is a quick way to lose.

Ottawa is certainly the underdog in this series, but it’s probably the toughest series to predict. A bunch of us were throwing some ideas around and realized that Ottawa sweeping Pittsburgh is a legitimate possibility. Pittsburgh sweeping Ottawa (which is now impossible) was also just as legitimate. This series going the full 7 games is also very easy to envision. The Senators have been so streaky this year that it makes it hard to handicap this thing.

When Ottawa has been hot this year, there is no team they have been unable to beat. When the Senators have been cold, they have been ice cold and at times looked like they couldn’t win a practice. So what will happen in this series?

I have no clue. I only know how tired Pittsburgh must be after playing more games than any team in the last 2 years. I also know how much it would mean to the Senators and the city if they can rebound from missing the playoffs to upsetting the defending champs in round #1.

See you at the rink.

Where is the honour?

2010-03-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

Ok let’s start the debate again. Was Matt Cooke’s blindside hit on Marc Savard legal or not? It was clearly cruel and intentional but was it illegal?

I have listened to the guys who call themselves “old school” and claim its part of the game and Savard has a responsibility to protect himself.

I am old school but obviously I went to a very different school. I love hard hockey but I greatly dislike hockey without honor and that hit had no honor. I watched it 20 times on Youtube and Cooke clearly saw what he wanted to do and also clearly knew Savard had no clue he was behind him. That is the key for me. Hitting a man like that simply because you can, knowing he doesn’t see it coming is just wrong.

I have spoken to Matt Cooke several times and have always enjoyed the conversations. He seems like a wonderful guy, but you can’t escape the history. All you have to do is type his name into Youtube and you can find all the video you want. His hit on Shean Donovan that blew his knee out. His head shot on Artem Anisimov which got him a measly 2 game suspension. The time he kicked Detroit goaltender Chris Osgood. His kneeing of young Zach Bogosian. Blowing out Eric Cole’s knee. Slew footing Kurtis Foster. Crosschecking Andrei Markov from behind into the boards. Anyone can go to Youtube and type in his name and these are some of the videos’ that come up, but these aren’t the only incidents.

There is a very serious pattern here. The pattern is a complete disregard for other player’s safety. There also seems to be too much evidence to suggest this is just a series of coincidences from a player who has to play on the “edge”.

My question is, why is a player with this history not seeing the level of supplementary discipline escalating? You don’t injure this many people by accident.

Talk of a “new rule” this summer to be added which will curb these kind of hits kind of makes me chuckle. The NHL rule book is already twice as thick as it needs to be. Officials can’t call current rules consistently enough now and we are going to add more rules? How about this for a revelation. The rule already exists. It’s called intent to injure. That is already in the book and is next to never used despite the fact players in this league intend to injure each other every night.

Officials need to use the power they currently have to do their part. The NHL needs supplementary discipline at a high enough level to change behavior and players need to find a way to inject a little honor back into the game.

The countdown clock is ticking. We are getting closer and closer to the next on-ice death. Mark my words it will happen and when it does all 3 of the above mentioned bodies will have questions to answer.

See you at the rink.

Gord is the hardest working man in hockey.

2010-03-07T09:37:00.000-08:00

I want you to know a little bit about my longtime partner on radio, Gord Wilson. You hear him on the radio doing games and likely have little understanding of what goes on in his life each day.
First you should know he is and has always been a hockey junkie of the highest order, so while his schedule seems ridiculous, I can assure you he loves every day of it.

Let’s take Saturday for example. Before anyone else from the media is at the rink, Gord is already there with his suit on. He doesn’t have the luxury of going home during the afternoon to change, so he is ready to rumble before any of the rest of us are even there. Gord is MCing an ESSO fan event which will happen during the morning skate and he is at the rink early to prep for that and start gathering information which he will use in the afternoon to build his depth chart for the Leaf game later that night.

After the MC thing is over, he grabs his notes and a pen and heads up to the stands to watch the morning skate and take note of line combinations and who is missing, who is playing with whom and gather tid bits from some of our friends who cover the Leafs to add to our radio broadcast.

When the skate is over, it’s downstairs to listen to Cory Clouston’s media conference and after that a separate one-on-one interview Gord does with Corey to run during the pre-game coaches’ show. Right after that he is handed a mic by a camera man and it’s into the locker room to interview players for Sens TV. When that is completed its back into the stands to watch the Leafs skate and take more notes before heading downstairs to talk to Leaf players and listen to Ron Wilson.

One third of Gord’s working day is now done. He goes back to our broadcast office, takes his jacket off and gets down to work. On each game day we each construct a depth chart. It’s a layout of line combinations, league and personal stats of all the players in the game and taking all the tid bits both researched and discussed in the morning and logging them onto the depth chart for easy access during the game. It takes on average a little over 3 hours to build a depth chart for each game.

Since this is a Saturday, Steve Lloyd is off and that means Gord is also hosting the 2 hour pre-game show on the Team 1200. Gord is not the kind of person to just walk into the booth, flip the switch and start filling time. He wants it to be current, compelling and a must-listen for hockey fans. That takes work. Gord collects interviews and sound bites from earlier in the day and gets them ready for drop-in’s during the pre-game show. He gets his out of town scoreboard information ready which entails researching what is going on with each team playing in the NHL that night. He then writes his opening to the show and lays out a plan to synchronize when topics will be raised and how much time each discussion point will be given.

When most of the rest of the media heads to the meal room for the pre-game meal, Gord heads to the booth upstairs to get ready for the pre-game show. At 5pm he is on the air and first up is a conversation with Bob Mackenzie. You don’t talk to this man without being prepared and Gord has already figured out every question he is going to ask Bob. The 2 hours fly by as Gord controls and guides the 4 ring circus of himself, Mike Eastwood, Bruce Garrioch and yours truly. When that ends its on to a 3 hour game which includes 2 intermissions, both of which Gord hosts and digs into what has happened in the game as well as what is going on in the rest of the NHL.
Usually the first commercial break in the 2nd period is when Gord runs down the hall to go to the bathroom. You may want to listen to that some time because if you know the inside story you will get the inside joke. I often ask Gord a question about something that happened during the 30 or 40 seconds of play he missed while running back from the bathroom. A question he cant possibly know the answer to, but I love asking him anyway just to hear the imaginative, vague answer which is always a masterful bluff.

When the game ends, Gord and I go through the game summary, pick the 3 stars along with the hardest working Senator. When the stars are announced in the rink, they always say it’s the Team 1200 broadcast crew who picks them, but really that is Gord too. When the selections are required in order to radio down and grab the guys as they leave the ice, the game is actually still on and I am still calling it. So while I have input during the game, it is Gord again who is left with the responsibility to make the final picks and fill out the form while trying to keep at least one eye on the game which is still going on.

Now our part of the actual game coverage ends but that is not the end of Gord's night. He heads straight downstairs and does a post game on-line show for Bell which begins as soon as he gets back down to the locker room area. When that is done, Gord's working day is done.

Very few people know what goes into a hockey broadcast and nobody puts more into their broadcast day than Gord Wilson and he does it every day with Professionalism, poise, good nature and great patience. Another part of Gord’s daily life is babysitting his 2 play-by-play announcers. Both Dave Schreiber and I rely on Gord for a great many things, some of which have nothing to do with hockey.

Gord and I have known each other for almost 25 years and very few people know me better. Gord has always been my behavior monitor. I wish I were not this way, but I can often say some inappropriate things both on and off the air. I am a blunt and often sarcastic person and Gord is the one who lets me know which things require my inside voice and not my outside voice. He has saved me from myself many, many times.

Our broadcasting styles are very different. I pride myself on not becoming emotional while doing a game. I feel I lose concentration and the ability to accurately describe what’s going on if I don’t treat the game like a science project which is to be described correctly, analyzed correctly and broadcast correctly. Gord is the opposite. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and you are never wondering how he feels. I believe that is why we have made a very good team for a very long time. My weaknesses are his strengths and vice versa.

Selfishly I love working with Gord because he gets my sense of humor and we truly enjoy each others company in the booth. Both of us know exactly how lucky we are to have these jobs and we never take them for granted and with that shared appreciation of our circumstance comes a shared gratitude for each night we get to spend in a booth calling the greatest game in the world.

Gord Wilson is a talented and outstanding broadcaster who is rarely appreciated for how much he does and how well he does it.

I just wanted the rest of you to know.

See you at the rink.

Just what the Doctor ordered

2010-03-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

Just before the NHL traded deadline, Senators GM Bryan Murray brought in Matt Cullen from Carolina and Andy Sutton from the Islanders. Neither move brought a shudder from the rest of the NHL. There was no need in other Eastern Conference cities to make a move to match the bomb blast in Ottawa. Neither player created a feeling amongst other teams that they had to match nukes.

Both these players however are very important in subtle ways. Neither is a front line player. Neither is a game breaker. Neither is expected to come in and be “the man”. They are expected to fill a role.

Cullen is expected to be experienced and versatile. Play centre, wing and the point on the power play. He does 2 of the 3 very well. He does seem lost a bit when he plays the wing. Sutton is expected to play solid, boring defence in his own end. It is solid but not so boring when he uses that 6’6” frame to crush someone into the boards. Both have plenty of experience and most importantly the maturity to understand roles, situations and fitting in.

Sutton has walked into the lineup seamlessly and looks like he’s always been a Senator. Cullen has had a slower path to finding his spot and chemistry with his line mates, but as a smart veteran he will figure it out.

There have been other deadline deals that looked good at the start, but turned out to be busts. Many of those were not successful because the players being brought in were expected to play roles greater than they were able to. Murray and Clouston are not asking Cullen and Sutton to do anything they haven’t done regularly for the last 10 years.

These 2 players may quietly end up being 2 of the best deadline deals this franchise has ever made.

See you at the rink.

Hallmark has gone Hockey

2010-03-07T08:14:00.000-08:00

The NHL trade deadline has now passed and we will all speculate and guess about what deals were good and which ones were bad. We will all try to figure out who won and who lost. It caused me to think about this whole day as I watched Sportsnet and TSN and listened to the Team 1200 and the constant pinging of my blackberry all day.

TSN has done a masterful job of becoming the sports broadcasting version of Hallmark. The Hallmark greeting card company decades ago realized that by creating events out of what had been loosely held traditions, was good for business. People would need their products to celebrate those events. Things like mothers day, fathers day and others were literally the invention of Hallmark. It was a genius move.

The CBC has done that with Kraft Hockeyville and HockeyDay in Canada. TSN has done the same thing with the world junior hockey tournament. It used to be another one of those age group international hockey tournaments that no one other than parents and scouts paid much attention to. TSN has turned it into an event in Canada almost as big as the Grey Cup, the Briar or the NHL playoffs. Most of the same players took part in the world under 17 championship and nobody really cared about that. The reason is no network has turned it into an “event”.

The same holds true for the NHL trade deadline. It used to be a conference call that everyone knew about the day after it happened and life leading up to it and just after it, didn’t seem all that different. TSN changed all that and now every media outlet treats it like an event with special coverage and countdowns and tallies. It is now like an election.

I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing but I know it is now a “thing”. I love it! I love the excitement, the wondering, the anticipation and the hundreds of thousands of amateur GM’s who now break down every trade that either was or wasn’t made.

See you at the rink.

Congrats Vancouver

2010-03-07T08:12:00.000-08:00

The Olympic Games are now over. It is very easy to pick out every little thing that didn’t go as planned and drone on and on about some poor decisions. Putting a chain link fence around the flame was a bad idea. Karin Lee Gartner and Gaetan Boucher not being a part of the opening or closing ceremonies was a bad idea. Drinking beer and smoking cigars on the ice was a bad idea. Yes all these things are small negatives. But overall only a grim pessimist would focus on those types of things instead of what the games really brought out.

These Olympic Games may be the best thing to happen to this country since confederation. In my lifetime I can not remember anything that tied this country together like these games. The pride in our athletes was topped only by our pride in Vancouver and how well they hosted and that is topped only by how we as Canadians embraced our song, our country and most importantly each other.

It is certainly important that the rest of the world walks away from the games with a positive impression of Canada and Canadians, but selfishly I believe the greatest legacy will not be the facilities and infrastructure but rather the connection Canadians seem to feel in each other. The only other thing since confederation to unite this country in this way has been war. This is a far better form of national glue than the death and sacrifice of war.

Congratulations to the organizers, the broadcasters who brought it all into our homes, the people of BC for selling us this bill of goods and congratulations for all of us skeptical and reserved Canadians who bought what they were selling.

See you at the rink.

Head shot solution

2010-01-28T12:11:00.000-08:00

I was listening to a radio show when one of the commentators said that hockey is pretty much the same as it used to be and the focus on all the head shots is simply because so many more games at all levels are televised and there are so many more media outlets to talk about and debate the hits, than in years past. Despite that being a ridiculously long run on sentence, I can’t disagree more with the contention.

While it is true there is far more attention paid because there is far more coverage and access through hi-lite shows and youtube, the number and type of hits is infinitely greater than it used to be.

Yes there have always been head shots and dangerous plays in the game but the number is far higher now for a number of reasons. There are the obvious ones. The average size and speed of the players is greater. New equipment causes as much damage as it protects. The wide range of the size of players. There was a time when very few small players got to the highest levels and very few of the biggest players made it because they were too slow and uncoordinated. Now at the NHL and CHL levels we have players who range from 5’6” and 160lbs to 6’9” and 265lbs.

The biggest single difference is attitude and respect. Players do not have the same respect level for each other as they used to have. There is no shame now in being thought of as a dirty or dangerous player. Players now do not contemplate the down side of being thought of by their peers as a player without honor.

The instigator rule also plays a part in all of this. The number of head shots and the supplementary discipline which results from those hits shows us quite clearly that players have not been penalized sufficiently to change their behavior towards each other. Since supplementary discipline is having next to no affect it conjures up the old argument about the instigator rule. While certainly not perfect and those plays did occur before the instigator rule, the frequency was much lower. Players thought about the on ice repercussions of their actions. If you leveled one of those hits, you knew someone would be visiting you on the ice to force you to physically answer for your behavior. That fear had a greater impact on behavior than supplementary discipline has so far.

We will never see the instigator rule rescinded so supplementary discipline must be amped up to change on ice behavior. The NHLPA must also institute some sort of peer based supplementary discipline. A player’s greatest threat to his career is from another player. A player based disciplinary board is completely germane here since over 70% of NHL players believe it is a front burner issue in the NHL. If the players want a solution they have to be a part of it.

See you at the rink.

Speak no Evil

2010-01-13T11:12:00.001-08:00

Vancouver Cannuck Alex Burrows says referee Stephane Auger told him he was going to settle a score based on disrespect and did.

Let’s be real here. Referees are people too. There are some players they like and some they don’t. Some players in this league get more leniency than others all the time based on their personality, reputation, resume and other factors. If any of the allegations of Burrows are true, the only thing Auger did wrong was say the words out loud. It absolutely goes on all the time and everyone knows it.

This controversy has many tentacles. Firstly, some players have complained to the league in the past about referees swearing at them on the ice. That is a ridiculous double standard. Watch the lips of the people on the ice during any NHL game. You can clearly see that players use foul language towards, at and about officials all the time. Players can’t continually swear at officials and then be offended when officials use foul language when communicating with them.

Officials are also in an impossible situation. There is one easy way to end all of this from happening. Under NHL rules an official is not obliged to speak with any player or coach. If he chooses to, only captains or designated alternates are supposed to be allowed to speak to the officials and only if invited to have a conversation by the official. If you watch hockey you know that all players and all coaches are continuously speaking or trying to speak to the officials. Every one of them could be penalized if the ref chose to.

Referees however can’t do that. If a player can’t communicate with an official he complains to his coach. If the coach can’t communicate with the ref he complains to his GM. The GM then calls the league and complains that officials wont communicate and the officials are then instructed to have more communication despite the fact they are supposed to have the individual power to either accept on ice communication or not.

Do referees make calls in games based on some personal bias towards some individuals or teams? Absolutely they do. All you have to do is to go through the game sheets to map the trends. These things are discussed privately with the NHL all the time. Is there a way to fix it? No. Not as long as you have human beings calling the games. Just like teachers at school, some students are treated differently for a variety of reasons. It might not be right, but it is reality.

If Alex Burrows wanted the relationship fixed with Stephane Auger he should have done it quietly and privately. If Auger wanted to keep this from becoming public he should have just nodded to Burrows and skated away.

Why was Burrows disciplined by the league and not Auger? Because Burrows broke the publicity code by talking to the media about it and any discipline for Auger would have created at least the impression there may be credibility issues in his calling of games as it relates to fairness and unbiased neutrality.

At the end of the day Burrows broke the un-spoken code about speaking. That is the greater sin in the NHL, even if he was completely correct in everything he said.

See you at the rink.

Dany vs The Sens

2009-12-02T10:49:00.000-08:00

The Dany Heatley vs. Ottawa Senators date in San Jose last night turned into, well, just a hockey game.
The first game (and only game this season) where Heatley faced his former team became a very big media event. The amount of coverage normally seen in San Jose was doubled due to the Canadian interest. Sportsnet did a special half hour pre-game show and TSN dispatched a crew to cover the game and the story.

It turned out there really wasn’t much of a story to cover. Despite being riddled with questions neither Heatley nor anyone else said anything new or different about the circumstances of his departure from Ottawa. He spent a good deal of time telling everyone how happy he is here in San Jose. The bulk of the emotion left in this divorce will bubble to the surface next season when (with the cross over schedule) the Sharks visit Ottawa. The fans will get their first chance to vent directly at Dany and they will. With Alexei Yashin out of the NHL there will be a new “most hated” man at SBP.

Ultimately the fans will get to spray venom at the man who spurned their team and their city, but frankly I don’t get the sense that Heatley cares at all. He will expect the boo’s and they wont hurt his feelings. Dany appears to me to be a person who wants what he wants and doesn’t particularly care how it might affect anyone else thus he wont care about the boo’s.

Sharks fans might want to take notes on how all this works. Dany’s history indicates there is a good chance the same thing will happen eventually in San Jose. When that day comes the person I will feel sorry for is Sharks GM Doug Wilson. Every sports TV network will pull out his statements when the deal was done. Wilson said he had no concerns about Dany’s character or commitment when he arrived from Ottawa. When Dany pulls the chute in Northern California he will again have very little if any concern for those affected by it, but Wilson will be harshly judged for mis-judging the character of a high priced star player.

See you at the rink.

6 ways to fix baseball

2009-11-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

The World Series wrapped up last night and the Yankees are the champs. I watched parts of the final game mostly because I thought I should. Like always though, I could not bring myself to watch every moment of it because it is simply too boring and too long.

I am not a baseball hater. I played junior baseball and loved the game growing up. I have, over the years, become disenchanted with baseball simply because it takes too long. The last numbers I saw show that the average NHL game goes 2 hours and 22 minutes. The average baseball game goes 3 hours and 7 minutes.

I have friends who are hard core and tell me I simply don’t appreciate the tactics and subtleties of the game or its traditions. I have great appreciation for both, but what baseball fans don’t realize is those traditions have changed and those changes have made the game too snail like to be an enjoyable watch. Back in the old days players picked one of the 4 bats the team had and warmed up then walked directly to the plate to hit. Now players scan through their bin of 25 specially made personal bats before heading to the on deck circle and somehow still manage to appear rushed when its actually their turn at bat.

Here are my 6 changes to baseball that will speed it up and make it fun to watch again.

1-When a player steps into the batters box. He must stay there for the duration of his at bat unless he is knocked down by a pitch or has to leave the box because of a running play at the plate. No backing out to tap the cleats, adjust the batting gloves, spit, play mind games with the pitcher, tighten the hitting elbow, shin, or wrist protectors.

2-Pitchers may not leave the mound until an at bat is over unless they leave for injury reasons or to play a ball. No more standing on the grass bouncing the rosin bag off the back of their hand. No more rubbing the ball and spitting. No more walking off the mound to reset ones hat. Its one of the reasons I love Roy Halliday. None of that crap happens when he pitches.

3-If you can’t run in the equipment you wear to bat then don’t wear it. Why does the entire game have to stop because a guy gets to first base and calls time out so he can remove his batting gloves? Put on his sliding gloves. Change from his hitting helmet to his running helmet. Remove all of his protective elbow, shin, wrist and ankle gear and then stand there and spit 3 times before telling the ump he is ready to go.

4-You are not allowed to stop a game because you are dusty. If you slide into 2nd base and you get dirty, that’s life. Why does the entire game stop so that one man can wipe the dust off his uniform?

5-Each team is granted 10 time outs per game totaling 30 seconds each. A pitching change gets 60 seconds because the guy has to run in from the bull pen and yes he is required to run not walk. If you are a pro athlete and can’t run 400 feet then I am not sure this is still a sport. Calling all the players to the mound to talk to each other with their gloves over their mouths is a joke. If you need more than 30 seconds to have something explained to you during a game, then you are not smart enough to be a major leaguer.

6-And finally relief pitchers. No practice pitches while all of us sit there and wait for you. The relief pitchers have been in the bull pen for hours and know when they are likely to be called. They have been warming up for 20 or 30 minutes and in fact we often see them stop warming up because they are getting tired. If you are not ready to pitch when you get to the mound, they shouldn’t have called you in.

This tradition started when often outfielders came in and yes they needed to get their bearings from a raised mound after playing the earlier part of the game in the outfield. Also in the olden days the bull pen (when they even had one) often didn’t have the same height and distance as the game field. That is no longer the case. Run to the mound and throw the damn ball.

I apologize to baseball purists, but if you want me back stop wasting my time.

See you at the rink.

One year for almost ending one life.

2009-11-05T06:54:00.001-08:00

OHL Commissioner David Branch has ordered the suspension of Erie Otters forward Michael Liambas for the entire season and playoffs after his hit on Kitchener’s Ben Fanelli last Friday. This suspension effectively ends the junior hockey career of Liambas since he is a 20 year old player.

While the collision was brutal and the resulting fractured skull and orbital bone of Fanelli are worse than brutal, some argue the suspension is too tough since it was not a dirty hit and these types of hits are a part of hockey.

I am not one of those people. The hit clearly met the exact description of charging and the resulting discipline by Branch is completely in keeping with the severity of the injury. That is the key here. The injury and the placement of the injury is a documented part of punishment.

I do not have an OHL rule book in my office, but the NHL rule book I am staring at must be very close or exactly the same.

Rule 43.1
“A minor or major penalty shall be imposed on a player who skates or jumps into, or charges an opponent in any player. Charging shall mean the actions of the player who, as a result of distance traveled, shall violently check an opponent in any manner. A “charge” may be the result of a check into the boards, into the goal frame or in open ice”

That is the general description. Here is where the rubber hits the road.

Rule 43.3
“The referee, at his discretion, may assess a minor penalty, based on the degree of violence of the check, to a player guilty of charging an opponent.

This is the part that brings the injury into the equation.

Rule 43.5
“When a major penalty is imposed under this rule for a foul resulting in an injury to the face or head of an opponent, a game misconduct shall be imposed.”

So injury and the severity of it is a part of the penalty. As you can see next, it is also a clear part of the supplementary discipline.

Rule 43.6
“When a major penalty and a game misconduct is assessed for a foul resulting in an injury to the face or head of an opponent, an automatic fine of one hundred dollars shall be imposed. If deemed appropriate, supplementary discipline can be applied by the Commissioner at his discretion.”

Again, I am not sure the OHL rule book reads exactly the same, but I would be surprised if it did not.

Charging occurred here. The violence level was off the chart. There was extreme injury to the face and head of the victim and I would contend that a one year suspension is entirely appropriate based on the degree of injury.

You can debate whether this is just a tough hockey hit gone bad or whether this type of thing happens all the time and thus the suspension is too tough. You can blame the victim because a 16 year old kid turned the wrong way at the last moment.

The fact is this meets every and all the criteria for a penalty and a suspension and the only debate is, should a 20 year old energy player lose the rest of his junior hockey career for almost ending the life of a 16 year old rookie.

I do not accept the argument that he didn’t mean to hurt the kid. That has never held any weight with me in this case or the Bertuzzi case or any of the others. It’s almost a Clintonism. Of coarse he didn’t mean to fracture his skull but he did intend to hurt him. He just wasn’t concerned how serious the injury he inflicted would be. That lack of concern or what some people term a lack of respect is something that is rampant at all levels of hockey now because that’s the way we teach players to play. Coaches no longer admonish their own players for dirty or dangerous behavior. They simply rely on the on-ice officials to do it. If they ref didn’t think it was dirty or dangerous how could it be dirty or dangerous?

The only way to have respect is to be taught respect and that is something coaches no longer do.

See you at the rink.

Good Bye Dany

2009-09-13T20:10:00.000-07:00

It’s off to San Jose for the Heater. Let life begin again in Ottawa.
The deal was about as good as Bryan Murray was going to get with the pressures he was under and the circumstance created by this becoming public so long ago.

Dany Heatley will go to the Sharks and will score 50 again playing with Joe Thornton. The Sharks will again win the Presidents trophy and may still have the playoff troubles which have plagued them. In the end despite what you might think of Heatley’s personal integrity, he did get what he wanted. The players almost always do. Thankfully the vast majority do care, but some players could care less that the average working man ends up having a less than average opinion about the character of the player after all is said and done.

Dany made it vividly clear in his departure media conference when he said “I don’t think I did anything wrong asking for a trade. I had my reasons for it and if people think differently of me, that’s fine. I believe I did nothing wrong and it’s time to move on. It’s a sad day for me to leave this place, I had a great four years here, but I felt it was best for me to move on.”

Dany is correct. He didn’t break any rules or laws except those of good taste, loyalty and team sacrifice. Heatley has proven over his career that Dany is about Dany. He wants very much to be a captain and a leader but appearantly has no clue what qualities are required for those roles.

A very telling perspective came from Jason Spezza. A good friend of Heatley’s who tried to get him to change his mind for the good of the team but could not. He wished his friend well and said they remain friends. Spezza’s one comment told the story. “"He wanted out and I wanted what's best for our club”. That is so true. Spezza’s stock has gone up dramatically in many peoples books with that team first attitude. It goes back to something I said in an earlier post. There is a difference between being a good “team mate” and being a good “team guy”. I believe Dany thinks they are the same.

A good team mate lends you 10 bucks when you need it, laughs at your jokes, keeps your secrets, attends all the parties and is a friend to all on the team. By all accounts Dany was all of that. A “team guy” puts the team ahead of himself and will sacrifice his personal stats for team wins. Dany is foreign to that thought.

The other sub-story in all this is the information leak which started it all. Both sides have claimed the leak did not come from them. The veracity of the claims by the Heatley camp are seriously in doubt since TSN had the story of the trade less than 2 minutes after it happened. Bryan Murray had not yet even walked down the hall to the awaiting media to announce it when he received an email from a member of the media who claimed to know the deal was done. Certain members of the media were in electronic contact with Heatley’s representation while the negotiation was actually going on. Hard to find much integrity there.

In conclusion, the Senators will have a tough time scoring as many goals because the truth is it is impossible to replace a 50 goal scorer in today’s NHL. But it may be a better, more balanced team now.

At the very least, players on this team and others around the league may have learned a valuable lesson in public relations and how not to behave unless completely destroying your connection with the average working fan is your ultimate goal.

See you at the rink.

The NHLPA, rudderless again.

2009-08-31T20:14:00.000-07:00

For those of us who hate NHL work stoppages, how scary is this?
The NHLPA fired its executive director Paul Kelly less than 2 years into the job, on the eve of new CBA talks in 2011.

NHLPA ombudsman Buzz Hargrove told the Team 1040 in Vancouver that he spoke with all 30 team reps and the players didn’t feel Kelly was the right man to “unify and pull the group together and get them all working together. 'Trust and confidence' were the words they used and I think that's used appropriately.”

Wow!

They admit to having no candidates for the job. A search will begin immediately.
This is either a very bold move or an incredibly stupid one. Clearly the players believe it’s a move that had to be made. If there were any dissenters, they have not gone public with the exception of former player and union worker Pat Flatley who has resigned.

The NHL players have proven historically to have no clue as to who should lead them.
Alan Eagleson went to jail, Bob Goodenow was run out of office, Ted Saskin was canned after allegations of spying on player e-mails and now the chosen one, Kelly, has been unanimously fired. Will anyone ever retire after a successful career running the NHLPA or will all of them eventually have a grenade shoved into their pants?

My greatest fear is that somehow Buzz Hargrove will move from NHLPA Ombudsman to executive director. I don’t know Mr.Hargove and I have never met him. All I know is that as the leader of the UAW in Canada he played a major role in making the auto industry in this country unprofitable and as we have all witnessed, virtually bankrupt.

As someone who makes his living working in the NHL, this is a scary day.

See you at the rink.

Is this really a story?

2009-08-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

Maybe we are all getting a little too sensitive.
Alex Kovalev was at a charity golf tournament in Montréal and told reporters he loved Montreal, never wanted to leave Montreal and would likely return to Montreal if he has the chance once his 2 year deal in Ottawa is over.

That seems pretty straight forward to me. Is that a slight on Ottawa? I can’t see how.
The entire time he was playing in Montreal he talked about how much he liked it there. No flip flop so far. When his contract was up he talked publicly about wanting to stay. No flip flop there. When the Habs wouldn’t give him a multi-year deal he signed in Ottawa because at the time Ottawa was the only team offering him more than 1 year. No flip flop there.

I don’t get what all the commotion is about. The guy likes Montreal. That doesn’t mean he hates Ottawa. When Todd White was not offered a deal to stay in Ottawa he said almost all the same things as he left but the people in Atlanta didn’t get all upset. He liked Ottawa and wanted to stay but that wasn’t an option and he still plans on living here when his career is over. Does that make him a bad Thrasher?

Ray Bourque did not want to leave Boston. The Bruins did offer him a deal to stay but his reasons for leaving had to do with wanting to win a cup. Did the people of Denver assume he was going to live the rest of his life in Denver? Did they believe this life long Bruin was now a life long Avalanche?

We wonder sometimes why pro athletes won’t be straight with the media and fans. This is one of the reasons. Kovalev was asked a straight question. He gave a straight answer which did not differ from what he has said publicly in the past but now for some reason people are questioning his commitment to Ottawa?

I believe he will play as hard for Ottawa as he did for Montreal. He will play his 2 years here and if there is a deal to return to Montreal to finish his career he will take it. Just like hundreds of other NHL players who find themselves playing in places other than their first choice.

Do Ottawa fans think Kovalev grew up in Russia dreaming of one day being a Senator? Do they believe Jason Spezza grew up dreaming of being a Senator? Start adding names as you like to this question.

Alex Kovalev did not say anything new, outlandish or inappropriate. This is being blown completely out of proportion. Maybe we are all just so tired of talking about Dany Heatley we need a new distraction even if we have to engineer it ourselves.

See you at the rink.

Dany has "enjoyed" his summer??

2009-08-26T11:27:00.000-07:00

In today’s Ottawa Citizen there are more quotes from Dany Heatley and for me, more head scratching. I can’t figure out how a guy as smart as Dany just doesn’t get it.

"It has been a fun summer," Heatley said. "I've enjoyed it. Been out at the lake and getting ready for this season. It hasn't been unlike any other summer, really."

If Dany has found any of this “fun” then he is the only one. If this summer hasn’t been much different than other summers then he is living on a different hockey planet. Dany was asked if all the words from commentators and columnists calling him selfish, petulant and immature are unfair criticism.

"Yeah, I think so," Heatley said. "Any time when you haven't met the person or heard the whole story, I think it's tough to jump to conclusions. That's what we have to deal with sometimes, but the summer has been fun. I haven't really been listening too much. I'm just getting ready for the season."

"There's a process that has to take place," Heatley said. "I don't want to get into it. When I find out where I'm going and it's all said and done, I think then will be the time to talk about it."

Well Dany pretty much everyone in hockey has met you even if you don’t remember them. The reason no one knows the whole story is because you won’t tell it. You can’t claim to be the victim of unfair criticism and blame it on a lack of knowledge when you are the one refusing to impart that knowledge.

Hold on a second, how could you know about the comments since you haven’t paid much attention to it?

Dany has spoken publicly 3 times now since his prolonged summer silence ended. Each time he has damaged himself in the areas of public perception and character. Nothing Dany has done or said during any of this has caused anyone to change their mind about what they think Dany is both as a player and a person.

Stacey McAlpine and JP Barry are his agents. They might want to spend a little money on a public relations expert. This has become the gold standard as an example of how to assassinate your own reputation.

I am now tingling with anticipation to hear the “whole story” after Dany’s trade is completed. Judging by the way he and his people have mapped out their strategy so far, they might want to pre-book the noose and gallows right now for the death of what’s left if his reputation.

See you at the rink.

What diminished role?

2009-08-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

I was tweaked by Dany Heatley’s claim that he wants out of Ottawa because of his self diagnosed “diminished role”. When Corey Clouston took over as head coach there were a few games where Heatley got only 13 or 14 minutes of ice time but for the most part nothing much changed.

Last season Daniel Alfredsson got more ice than any other forward and deservedly so. He averaged 20:52 minutes per game. Guess who was 2nd? You got it! Dany Heatley at 20:06. On average he played only 46 seconds less per game than Alfredsson. In other words one shift. That puts both of them in the top 30 in the NHL for ice time amongst forwards.

Here is a very short list of some very good players who averaged less ice time than Heatley last season:

NHL Rank /Player/ TOI-GM
#32 Henrik Zetterberg 19:52
#33 Jordan Staal 19:50
#36 Jason Spezza 19:41
#37 Marc Savard 19:32
#40 Joe Thornton 19:27
#43 Alex Kovalev 19:25
#45 Alexander Semin 19:14
#46 Pavel Datsyuk 19:12
#60 Zach Parise 18:45

The two names of particular interest to me are Zetterberg and Datsyuk. Both are integral players in Detroit. Both have won the Stanley Cup. Both at times play on the first powerplay unit. Both at times play on the second unit. Both at times kill penalties. They quietly do what the coach asks them to do for the good of the team. Neither, to my knowledge, has asked for a trade because they feel their role has been diminished and their ice time is not in keeping with their status as super stars.

Dany Heatley it appears is not pleased with being taken off the penalty killing team early in the season and being relegated to the 2nd power play unit in the last third of the season. Well the team was terrible early in the season and the penalty killing was awful. It improved when Heatley was taken off. It didn’t improve because he was replaced, but he didn’t make it better when he was on it. For 8 million dollars a year isn’t he supposed to be a difference maker?

The power play improved after Clouston came in and the number of important goals also increased. This was after Heatley was moved to the 2nd unit. It didn’t help his personal stats but it did help the team win more games.

The worst thing for Dany is that the longer this goes on, the more people are going to put his contentions under a microscope. The more that happens the worse he looks and sadly for Bryan Murray, the harder he is to trade.

See you at the rink.

Dany is a "team guy"

2009-08-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

So Dany Heatley has finally broken his silence.
We know a bit more, but not much more. Let’s run through some of the answers.

He wants a trade primarily because he believes he should be an integral part of the team and he feels his role has diminished.

He still wants a trade but will show up at Senators training camp and fulfill his contract if he is not traded before camp.

He says he has nothing against Ottawa or Senators fans and that this is a straight hockey issue and not a life issue like his departure from Atlanta.

He claims neither he nor his camp released the information to the public and he has not spoken until now because he didn’t want to make it more of a circus. Dany says these things are a process and he didn’t want to disrupt that.

Dany says he has nothing against Edmonton but turned the trade down because it was and is the only option presented to him. He wants multiple options to choose from. Heatley says he knows there are teams out there which are interested.

The entire conference call lasted just under 17 minutes and was cut off before all questions had been answered after Heatley’s agent Stacey McAlpine said Heatley had another media event to attend.

That one was a bit surprising since he hasn’t spoke in 3 months and now has 2 media events planned so tightly together he can’t fully complete one before heading to the other?

There were a few questions which were partially answered but not fully. That’s where the media training really helps in deflecting and sliding on questions. One late question from the Sun’s Don Brennan was interesting. Don asked if Heatley will turn in his “A” if he is a Senator to start camp. Heatley’s only answer was “I’ll be at camp ready to go”.

I guess he still wants a leadership role on this team even though he doesn’t want to be on this team.

Another puzzler is this “diminished role” issue at the centre of it all. In Edmonton he would have been their best and most important player the day he arrived. He would have been far more “integral” there than almost anywhere else with the ice time and situational ice time he desires, but he said no.

Although not said, I believe Dany wants to be a stand alone superstar but he wants that role in a cool city. New York or Los Angeles where there is more glitz, more trendy places to spend his millions and a greater ability to be anonymous when the spotlight starts to burn. If this was a straight hockey situation as he says, then why should the location of a trade matter if it means the criteria of him being an “integral” player is met?

For me the most telling questions and answers were about character and his battered public image. Dany says he doesn’t worry about questions about his character. When asked about being selfish he said you can ask anyone he has played for or with and they will tell you he’s a team guy.

I don’t believe Dany fully understands that one of the major reasons Bryan Murray can’t make a trade is because too many people in the NHL think he is selfish, has character problems and in fact is not a good team guy because he asked to leave his last 2 teams. Ron Hextall from the LA Kings said red flags went up for them as an organization because Heatley apparently had problems with his coach in Atlanta, Craig Hartsburg and now Corey Clouston. Leaders look for answers others look for exits and Dany has been too quick to look for his.

I think today’s conference call didn’t do much to help a GM feel better about making a possible deal for Heatley because the questions that dogged him during his silence were not answered today. Dany is about Dany no matter how well he gets along with his team mates.

Everyone I have talked to on the team echoes Dany’s claim. They like him and he’s a good team mate. But simply not hating a team mate doesn’t make them a good team guy. Being a team guy means putting your team mates and your club ahead of yourself. That has not been the case for Dany and it appears he is confused about what constitutes a good team guy.

Dany says he knows there are teams out there that are interested. Sure they are if they can get him for the value of a journeyman and not the value of a 50 goal scorer. That doesn’t make a trade any more feasible for Murray.

I may be wrong but my guess is that Dany Heatley will start the season as a Senator and may be in Ottawa for longer than he hopes. Today’s media conference proves there is a great divide between what Dany believes the reasons are that a trade hasn’t happened yet and the real reasons a trade hasn’t happened yet.

The problem is not the coach or an over demanding GM or a cautious business environment in the NHL. The only reason nobody has stepped to the plate to snag a 50 goal scorer is that there are too many GM’s who fear he will hurt their team more than his goals will help their team. Biggest of all the concerns are, giving away prospects, players and draft picks for a player who may walk out on his 3rd team and you are the GM of team #3.

See you at the rink.

Stealing from Ian Mendes.

2009-07-22T19:22:00.000-07:00

I would like to say this post is a direct copy cat. I am going to ask for the same thing as Sportsnet's Ian Mendes does on his current post in his Sportsnet blog.

Please don’t embarrass our industry by crashing Jason Spezza’s wedding just to try and get a quote from the currently mute Dany Heatley.

In this business there is pressure from the top to get the story, get the quote, get the picture. There are many readers/listeners/viewers who believe that when a pro athlete hits a certain pay threshold, they must forfeit their personal lives and privacy. I believe they do have to give up some anonymity as the cost of being a multi-million dollar public person, but there are limits.

Another persons wedding is that limit. If hearing Dany Heatley speak is important enough to ruin Spezza’s special day then he should be a president, pope or prime minister and not a hockey player.

This is one of those rare occasions where the media can demonstrate the kind of class and compassion they expect from their subjects but too often don’t demand of themselves.

I just can’t imagine Dany Heatley would have anything important enough to say. One day he will talk, but it shouldn’t be that day at that place and the media shouldn’t be there to report on his silence.

See you at the rink.

No guts, No glory.

2009-07-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

No one is going to say Bryan Murray has no guts.
First the trade deadline deal to move Antoine Vermette to Columbus for goaltender Pascal Leclaire. When healthy he has been one of the best goalies in the NHL. Problem is he hasn't been healthy enough over the past few years. Big gamble for Murray right there.

Now Alex Kovalev. When he decides he wants to play, he is one of the very best in the NHL. The skill level and strength are off the charts. Problem is, his game has been dotted with enigmatic play his entire career. He can do almost anything with the puck but on too many nights he looks like he doesn't want the puck.

The wild card for Bryan Murray is the Spezza factor. In his 6 years in Montreal, Kovalev never had a playmaking centre the caliber of Spezza. If anyone can get him excited to play it will be Spezza. The one thing that very creative players love is other creative players. Spezza is certainly all that.

Bryan Murray has been put in a horrible situation by Dany Heatley, but clearly he is not throwing in the towel. This Kovalev move is certainly high risk, but also has the possibility for high reward.

Say what you want about Bryan Murray, but he certainly has the guts.

See you at the rink.

The end of the No Trade

2009-07-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

One thing Dany has done through all of this is make no movement clauses more difficult for other players to get in their contract negotiations.
How many GM’s around the NHL are thanking the heavens they are not in the spot Bryan Murray is in. John Ferguson Jr threw no-trade contracts around like nickels and it helped make Toronto more of a mess as they tried to turn things around. Now after just 1 year of a 6 year deal Dany wants a trade and wants to decide where he goes.

It is difficult to move a player who is due 8 million dollars this season. It is more difficult when he gets to pick the team. It is ridiculously difficult when the player you are trying to move has had his reputation ravaged around the NHL as badly as Heatley has been ripped apart.

Trading a player who many other teams believe to be selfish and not a team player is very hard when the guy makes 2 million. Its even tougher when the guy makes 8 million.

Have a look at the LA Kings website. Ron Hextal works for the Kings and there is a video of him speaking at a “State of the franchise” luncheon. He is asked about Heatley since L.A. is appearantly one of the places Dany wanted to go. Hextal admits that their #1 priority is a high scoring left winger, but says the red flags went up because Heatley had problems with his coach in Atlanta, Craig Hartsburg and now Corey Clouston. Wow!

When you are exactly what a team needs and wants and they don’t want you for non-hockey reasons, that’s a shot. Hextall also pointed out the number of prospects they’d have to give up and Dany’s hefty contract go into the mix as well, but if you watch the video, the very first thing he talks about are character issues. Hextal even starts with “I don’t like to say anything negative about players, but….”. Yikes. Camp Heatley better think about a personal image consultant like the Hollywood stars use, because his personal image right now appears to be mud all across the NHL.

Right or wrong there are many teams which now feel this way about Heatley. He may get his wish to leave Ottawa, but it will be a very long time (or maybe never) that his reputation is restored.

See you at the rink.

Tom, stop helping!

2009-07-03T10:41:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday Wayne Scanlan wrote in the Ottawa Citizen about the comments from the former neighbor of Dany Heatley’s parents in Calgary. The guys name is Tom Malloy. He is a development coach in Austria so clearly he has the type of resume you need to have solid opinions in this situation.
Let’s go through some of his comments and see if they helped Dany.

“His mother is very upset. And the attacks are all personal stuff, about his character. Nobody mentions that this is a guy who gives up a month of his summer every year to play for Team Canada."

I would expect his mother would be upset. She is a mother. Hard to imagine she is surprised that the attacks are about his character. Also hard to imagine the rest of Canada should be kissing Dany’s feet because he gives up a month of his summer to play for Team Canada. He has always said it was a privilege but I guess the country owes him. Also maybe Dany has played in too many of these events. Had his teams done better he wouldn’t be available.

Tom talked about how Redden was crucified despite all his charity work, Hossa was traded and he thinks Melnyk should ask Murray “why don’t guys want to play here anymore”.

Well Redden didn’t want to leave Ottawa; the Senators could not justify his salary based on his current level of play. The Rangers are finding out the same thing. Wade was and is admired for all his charity work, but the hockey part didn’t work. As for Marian Hossa, he was told that if he got the money he wanted he would be too expensive for Ottawa to keep. When he got the money he said he was surprised to be traded. He also wanted to stay in Ottawa.

“Dany wants to play on a team that believes in his abilities”.

I think its pretty clear the franchise believes in his abilities since they signed him to a 45 million dollar contract and paid him 10 million dollars last year for his 39 goals. I think the point here is Corey Clouston and the Senators have a different idea about how to maximize those abilities and it does not correspond with Dany’s views on how his abilities should be used. Questioning whether he has them is not the point.

"The new coach (Cory Clouston) has decided that Dany is a second- or third-line player, uses him on the second power play and plays him 14 minutes a game. Dany had many closed-door conversations with him and was told that the situation would improve, but it didn't in the two months they were together."

Translation. Clouston didn’t do what Dany told him the way that Hartsburg and Paddock had done. I can imagine Dany would be perturbed about a coach who wouldn’t do what he was told. It is also preposterous to call Heatley a second or third line player. He didn’t always play with Spezza but neither did Alfredsson. In fact neither do Zetterberg and Datsyuk. Those two don’t always play on the same power play either. Does that mean Datsyuk has been demoted or is the coach just trying to force the opposition to defend against 2 great power plays because both units have elite players on them? And the playing time issue. Yes there were a few games where Heatley played 15 minutes or less. Most games he played over 20 and sometimes 23 minutes. Please let’s not pretend Dany didn’t get enough ice time to produce more. That is just laughable.

"Two years ago, they looked like the old Montreal Canadiens," Molloy said, "but they haven't been able to right the ship since."

As a guy who makes 10 million a year and asked for and received a letter and more team responsibilities, wasn’t Dany supposed to be one of the key guys to stop that slide? Now the responsibility lies with “they” and Dany is just a bystander?

Malloy says that maybe the Senators wanted to force Heatley to move by making things hard for him.

What? Are you kidding? What part of this is good for the franchise? What GM would intentionally put himself in this situation? This may be the dumbest of all the dumb comments from the Austrian Hockey teacher.

"Alfie is a god," Molloy said of Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson, "and nobody wants Spezza in a trade."

Mr. Malloy really thinks he’s helping the Heatley’s here. I believe the average person would surmise this is an opinion from Heatley’s parents which was likely former after private comments to them from Dany himself. So Mr. Malloy has now helped Dany to smear the team captain and his best friend on the team. Nice. Really nice.

Mr. Malloy my advice to you is to stay in Austria developing hockey players. You have to be better at that than helping Dany Heatley and his parents repair their public image.
Don’t do the Heatley’s anymore favors.

See you at the rink.

What does Dany want?

2009-07-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

I need someone to explain this to me.
I know that people expect those of us in the media to do the explaining, but this time I need some help.
Dany Heatley asked for a trade. He wants out of Ottawa and away from Corey Clouston and his outrageous demands that all players on his team play hard at both ends of the rink.

None of the teams Dany wanted to play for want Dany or at least some of them did not want him bad enough to make an offer that was reasonable. Edmonton wants Dany very badly. Presented a nice package to Bryan Murray. Dany was asked if he would consider Edmonton and he said “yes”. Then when the deal was done Dany said “no”. His agent JP Barry claims Dany needs more time to think about it. Well, thinking time ended at mid-night last night. Dany knew that was when his 4 million dollar cheque was to be paid and if a deal could not be worked out by then, there might not be a deal at all.

Besides everything, I don’t know exactly what Dany Heatley wants.
He won’t speak and his agents are extremely vague when they speak to the media.
His parent’s neighbor seems to be the only guy speaking out and I think he inadvertently damaged Dany’s reputation more with the logic he used to defend Heatley.

Will someone please explain to me exactly what Dany Heatley wants?
Dany if you are reading this send me a private email. I won’t divulge its contents. I would just really like to know what you want.

See you at the rink.

Too many clowns in the car.

2009-06-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

For such a smart, successful guy, its amazing Jim Balsillie isn’t getting the hint.
The NHL is not Walmart. You can’t go in and take what ever you want off the shelves just because your Visa card has no limit.

In the tech world he lives in, you can make your own rules. Out maneuvering and out marketing your opponent works. Those techniques guarantee a losing campaign in the NHL world or almost any other franchise based industry. Just because you can afford the franchise fee to acquire a Tim Horton’s store, doesn’t mean they have to grant you one. If they do, Tim’s decides where that store will be and how it will look. If you don’t like those rules you don’t have to apply for a franchise.

The NHL is no different. In effect this is a private club and its members have decided what the rules, procedures and protocol will be. If Jim Balsillie wants to be a franchisee he must go by their rules. I use the word “their” intentionally. Some believe this is a personal battle between Balsillie and Garry Bettman. Bettman is the commissioner but it’s the governors (owners) who decide what the rules are. In fact Bettman doesn’t even get a vote when it comes to ownership purchase or transfer. He is fighting the fight the owners want.

Why would an owner like Toronto arbitrarily give up a piece of the region they legally own and control just because Jim Balsillie doesn’t think it’s fair that they control it?

I don’t think it’s fair that the Shriners jam all those clowns into one car, but if that’s they way they operate what right do I have to challenge it. The Shriners have a private organization with their own rules and bylaws for their members and all the individual units which make up their organization. They are allowed to by law and I have no right to challenge it.

Jim Balsillie is now organizing a rally to keep the dream alive of buying and moving Phoenix to Hamilton. He is great at tech and marketing just lousy at reality.

When Jim Balsillie understands he has to go through all the laid out channels to acquire a team, the sooner his relationship will get better and maybe one day to the point where he would be accepted as a prospective owner. Right now he’s just that annoying freshman who keeps knocking on the door of the frat house party. He doesn’t know the password, but thinks that more knocking will do the trick.

Learn the rules and you’ll need less useless knocking.

See you at the rink.

Goodbye Roy.

2009-06-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

The Roy Mlakar era with the Ottawa Senators is now over. 13 years has flown by and the Prez has much to be proud of. He would never run through that list of things for you because Roy would much rather talk about the kid he met at CHEO last week or the new piece of equipment they just moved into Rogers House. That to me marks the Mlakar era. All the things Roy did not only for the franchise but for this community. The selfless use of his time and power to make things better for a great many people, while running a franchise from bankruptcy to the top of the NHL’s list of best run franchises.

Roy and his wife Tami will be missed of that there is no doubt. Get your office pool going now and try to predict what in this city will be named after him. You know something will.

I am very relieved that the reigns of the franchise have gone to Cyril Leeder. I think I am not alone when I say I like the fact that one of us is the new man. Someone from outside Ottawa would have a difficult time fitting in, filling the shoes and being accepted while doing it. Cyril has been around since before day #1 and in fact was one of the architects to put the bid together to get the franchise in the first place. Cyril is loyal, hard working and very, very smart. If two jobs are now going to be combined into one, Cyril is the right choice. He cares deeply, he is fully committed and he is the kind of competitive person who wants to win at everything. You have to admire that.

It is the nature of business and also the hockey business. The owner always has the prerogative to structure his company the way he likes and Mr. Melnyk has chosen this route.

My father once told me that change is not to be feared, it is to be expected. Still change can be hard. This franchise and this city is losing a very good man.

See you at the rink.

Crosby not the villian.

2009-06-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

With all due respect to Chris Draper, he may want to buy a stopwatch.
Draper was very vocal about his displeasure with Pittsburgh Captain Sidney Crosby after game #7 of the Stanley Cup Final. Draper contends Crosby showed a complete lack of respect for Nick Lidstrom and the rest of the wings by not being in line quick enough to shake hands after the final buzzer.

Crosby shook about half of the Red Wings hands, but missed the first half of the team as he was celebrating and doing network TV on-ice interviews.

Crosby has refused to apologize saying there was no attempt to slight or disrespect anyone. If the Wings wanted to get off the ice fast, then that’s their choice.

Draper has a great deal more experience than Crosby being in the final, but he doesn’t have much more experience in losing the final. There is as much etiquette for the vanquished as there is for the victor.

Simply roll back the video from last year when the tables were reversed. Put a stopwatch on the time it took the Wings to line up for the hand shake. We have all seen the pictures of the Penguins leaning against the boards waiting. Do you think they enjoyed that? Do you think they wanted to get off the ice fast? The answers are absolutely not and absolutely yes. But they didn’t. They suffered through the painful wait and were forced to watch the Wings celebrate.

Chris Draper I believe spoke out of frustration and emotion after just losing the cup. When you are expected to win, believe you are the better team, and don’t win, your ego crashes as hard as your hopes do. The loser is required to work off the winner’s time table, not the other way around.

In fact it’s not just the winners time table, it is also the NHL’s. They have network TV partners who have been promised immediate interviews with key players while the emotion is fresh and the time is now. Crosby can not dismiss those obligations.

The stopwatch would also be helpful is looking at almost every other final since the lockout when the NHL developed this new partnership with Network TV. You will find every losing team waiting for the hand shake.

Despite their great regular season and the premature anointment as champs long before the final was even played, Detroit lost. There may well have been a lack of respect issue in this case, but the accusers may well be the offenders.

See you at the rink.

Stacey said what? Oh....nothing.

2009-06-11T07:18:00.000-07:00

It has been several days since the news came out that Dany Heatley wants a trade out of Ottawa. One of his agents was on the Team 1200 yesterday with Steve Lloyd and Jason York. I actually felt sorry for Stacey McAlpine. While he is obliged to speak publicly for his client because his client clearly doesn’t want to do it himself, you could tell McAlpine wanted to be anywhere else but on the radio trying to explain this without explaining anything.

There was very little he said which would shed more light on the reasons. Yes Dany did have problems with head coach Corey Clouston, to which Clouston himself was more than surprised. McAlpine did say there are more things than just a difference in philosophy with the head coach. We still don’t know exactly what those things are and we may never know.

It may just be that Dany is a super star and didn’t feel like he was being treated like one. Being asked to forecheck, backcheck, skate hard and play defence when his team didn’t have the puck. It doesn’t sound like an outrageous expectation, but who knows maybe Dany sees himself as an offensive star and that defence stuff is someone else’s job. Ice time, Powerplay assignments, possitioning of his locker stall, I don’t really know because camp Heatley really isn’t saying.

It may be a Marian Hossa/Pittsburgh kind of deal. Marian wanted to leave Pittsburgh and sign in Detroit because he wanted to win the cup and believed Detroit had a better chance of winning. At least in that situation he was up front about it. You may not have agreed with what Marian was doing, but you had to respect the fact that he was up front about it.

Maybe Dany perceives serious problems within the organization and just wants to be polite and not make those feelings public. There are still a million maybe’s and we may never know all of his reasons.

I have always had a good relationship with Dany and I like him. I was surprised when I emailed him to get some clarification on his reasons and the response he sent me was simple. Ask JP or Stacey. JP Barry and Stacey McAlpine are his agents. I wrongly assumed that because of the relationship I have had with Dany that he would communicate with me in some way. I was obviously wrong there.

There is an expectation that people like me, Gord Wilson, Dave Schreiber and many others have inside knowledge of everything because we are at the rink each day and try to build relationships, that we know things others don’t. In this case that isn’t true. I don’t know any more than anyone else because Dany won’t talk to me and his agents aren’t saying very much.

At this point after listening to the call in shows on the Team 1200 the last few days, I get the sense the fans don’t really care what the real reasons are. If he doesn’t want to be here, they don’t want him here and the attention has now turned to the return on investment. What can Bryan Murray get for Heatley?

I must say I am impressed at how quickly the fans have dispensed with the scorn and emotion and moved on to the optimism of change. I think in many ways it shows how we have matured as an NHL city.

See you at the rink.

Dany wants out !

2009-06-09T14:42:00.000-07:00

Dany Heatley wants out of Ottawa and so far he hasn’t said exactly why.
I am a bit surprised that the information was not forthcoming when the news was leaked to the media. I would bet a million bucks it didn’t come from the team, so Dany or his agent JP Barry may well have been the ones to vault this from a whisper to a scream.

How it came out is irrelevant now. It is out. The reasons why Heatley doesn’t want to remain in Ottawa are also largely irrelevant. There will be the automatic guesses. Does he not like the City/GM/Coach/System/Team-mates/Eastern Canada/Division/Conference? Is it personal like his last trade demand from Atlanta where he just needed a fresh start after that horrible accident which claimed the life of his friend and team-mate? Maybe this time he wants to escape the constant reminders of a relationship gone sour or the amount of pollen in the air here affects his allergies. What ever the reason, he is not the first player in NHL history to request a trade and won’t be the last. The location where he collects his 8 million dollars this year is really his only question. Dany will be playing somewhere and somebody is going to give him 8 million bucks to do it.

Will the fences be mended and he will remain a Senator? Will a trade happen? What if a trade doesn’t happen but he still wants one? Does he hold out? Does he play unhappily and wait for a trade or a change of heart? Will the Senators get fair value for a 50 goal scorer? Will the teams that want him be able to absorb his substantial contract? Will the teams which can, be places Dany wants to go? Will this damage his reputation? Will it damage the reputation of the Senators? Will this go away quietly?

I have guesses like everyone else for the first 10 questions. I feel very confident that the answer to the 11th is NO. In a Canadian market that is hockey mad, this will not be a quiet process.

There will be talk shows and columns in the newspapers. Angry words from fans towards Heatley and the Senators and both. There will be supposition, there will be accusations, there will be unspoken innuendo about the “real” reasons. There will be unsubstantiated calls to talk shows about too many spottings in downtown bars and unsubstantiated calls about how he was treated by the club or the manager or the coach. One thing I have discovered over years of seeing these things happen. You never really ever find out what the tipping point was unless the player himself tells you in a moment of pure honesty. He may tell his wife or agent but he is never going to tell a fan or a member of the media. In fact he may never tell the Senators. There is no law that says he has to. He has the right to request a trade and they have the right to try and make one or not. If they choose not, then Heatley has a decision to make. Play or hold out. History has shown that ultimately players always win these things.

Alexei Yashin didn’t get his money from Ottawa and a court ruled the team and the NHL were correct in the interpretation of his playing contract. But he did end up getting 90 million dollars in Long Island. In the end he did get out of Ottawa and did get his fortune, so despite losing the court case, did Yashin really lose?

And what of tarnished reputations. There will be some who believe Dany is behaving like a selfish egomaniac and puts himself before the team too often. Even if that were true, Ray Emery’s apparent soon to be re-entry into the NHL proves again that a tarnished reputation is of no consequence in the NHL if your skill level is high enough and Heatley’s is certainly high enough.

There will be some who believe the club should have been more perceptive to Dany’s needs, wants and desires. After all there aren’t very many 50 goal scorers in hockey so making sure yours is happy should be important. Will the Senators, Bryan Murray and Corey Clouston’s reputations be tarnished because some will believe better care should have been taken to keep a star player happy? I doubt it. In pro sports today it is almost expected there will be a certain amount of drama involved with high level players at high level salaries.

There are 2 things I know for sure.
#1-This won’t be is a quiet summer in Hockey Country.
#2-It will mean less talk about Mats Sundin’s hockey future.

See you at the rink.

Pens hate "let em play"

2009-06-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

Watching game #2 of the Stanley Cup Final last night I was struck again about the age old debate about calling penalties or “letting em play”. Don Cherry on HNiC complimented the officiating crew of Bill McCreary and Marc Joannette over and again about not calling the chintzy little penalties and letting them get some flow into the game. On most nights I agree with that but I can’t help but think about the Penguins.

I doubt Pittsburgh see’s it that way today. The go ahead goal in that game should never have been scored since Marian Hossa clearly was guilty of an obvious hooking call and Thomas Holmstrom was in the crease before the puck arrived. Pick either transgression and the bottom line is that goal should never have happened. A goal in the Final is worth about 25 goals in the regular season as far as importance is concerned. I doubt the Pens like this “let em play” philosophy.

I am sure they didn’t like it much in game #1 either when Henrik Zetterberg should have clearly been called for closing his hand on the puck in the crease. That should have been a Pittsburgh penalty shot. Either of those 2 goals could have changed the outcome of those games.

At the end of game #2 the little fracas between Evgeni Malkin and Zetterberg netted Malkin an late game instigator penalty which usually means an automatic 1 game suspension. That was quickly waived off by the league before any newspapers went to print last night. The NHL couldn’t get their decision out fast enough. Colin Campbell’s official response included the many criteria for the suspension and the repeated clarification that the automatic suspension can always be reviewed and rescinded and this one was. The rule is meant to stop teams from sending messages late in the game. The rule clearly is meant for role players and not star players. The other point missed is the match penalties to Zetterberg and Malkin. Neither had their tie downs done up which is an automatic match penalty.

So let’s review. Leaving the Zetterberg hand on the puck penalty from game #1 out of it, let’s just look at game #2. The officiating crew missed an obvious hook which led to a go ahead goal. The officiating crew missed the fact that Thomas Holmstrom was in the crease before the puck on that same goal. An Automatic suspension was lifted before the ink on the game sheet was even dry and 2 automatic match penalties went un-called. Is that really a good night of officiating?

If you are Detroit you have to be loving this “let em play”. If you are Pittsburgh you can’t hate it enough.

See you at the rink.

SI's Dirty Boys.

2009-05-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow Sports Illustrated’s latest edition hits the news stands. In this edition there is a story on the dirtiest players in the NHL. The fine people at SI sent me an advance copy. This is not some panel of media people or blowhards like yours truly giving you their list. This list was compiled by polling 324 players. Yes, NHL players telling you through blind polling who they think the dirtiest players are. I love this type of thing because the anonymity allows the players to vote exactly they way they feel even if they are voting for a team mate or against a team mate….you know what I mean.

Not shockingly the winner is….Anaheim’s Chris Pronger. Actually he tied for first with Dallas agitator Steve Ott. Both garnered 13% of the total vote. Senators forward Jarkko Ruutu is 3rd at 12%, then in 4th is Rangers carney Sean Avery and in 5th is Flyers forward Scott Hartnell.

The top 5 are all dirty in different ways with the exception of Ruutu and Ott. Pronger simply wants to hurt people. His long list of suspensions and head shots have clearly been documented. I like him. I would have him on my team any day.

Ott and Ruutu are both the sneaky guys who try to annoy and distract you until you snap. I would have both on my team simply because they are both indeed weasels, but they will fight when push comes to shove. This type of role in the NHL is effective, but I still have a problem with the players who create these situations but leave the fighting to their team mates.

That brings us to Sean Avery. He (in my view) is in the category above. I know he has been in fights, but too often his team mates have had to do it for him. I know some of them and they don’t appreciate the situations he puts them in, but is rarely around to account for. In addition too many of his antics both on and off the ice are an embarrassment to the game. He has brought nothing to the game thus far except farcical ridicule especially from non mainstream hockey media. CNN shows very little in the way of hockey and Sean Avery has been on CNN more times than any player in the last 5 years. They have never shown anything about him or the league which is the least bit flattering to either.

And last but not least in our top 5 is Scott Hartnell. I don’t mind Hartnell at all. Very good player who competes hard and has a decent skill level. Problem with him is too often thinking comes after acting. He led the NHL in minor penalties this season. That usually means too many dumb penalties, lazy penalties and discipline and selfishness related penalties. Wouldn’t want him on my team. Good guy by all accounts but just hurts his team too often.

I clearly have a problem though. As I look over this blog before I post it, I realize the dirtier the player, the more I seem to like him. Maybe that isn’t exactly true either. The players I like have an edge but also some degree of honor. You might not find many players who agree that Ruutu and Ott have as much honor as they would like, but that’s just the way I see it.

Chris Pronger is the dirtiest and maybe the most dangerous player in the NHL and if I were a GM I would want him at the top of my list too.

See you at the rink.

A tough time to trust.

2009-04-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

Why does the gnashing of teeth and bleeding eye reviews of game tape from the first round loss of San Jose seem so familiar? For Senator Fans the questions being asked in San Jose seem too familiar. A team with great talent which had a wonderful regular season falls so desperately short in the post season.

The team’s big super star centre is at the centre of all the talk about what is wrong with this team. Joe Thornton is currently trying on the goat horns owned for the past year by Jason Spezza. Right or wrong when you earn North of 7 million and are the #1 centre on an underachieving team, they just fit you for the horns at the start of the season and wait for a good time to give them to you. Hardly seems fair in a team sport, but that’s the way the fans and media look at it, so fair or not that’s the way it goes.

The big difference between the two teams is the fact that Ottawa got to the final with all this talent while the Sharks still could not find their way out of the first round and they haven’t gotten past the 2nd round in the 3 previous seasons. That makes the Shark tank more acidic than the Nation’s Capital.

All the same discussions about breaking up the core of the team are now taking place in Northern California. But how do you rid yourself of Thornton, Marleau, Cheechoo or even Nabokov? There would certainly be teams interested but absorbing those big salaries is tough with the cap destined to go down over the next 3 seasons. All this is predicated on the assumption that the big dollar guys would be willing to waive their no-trade clauses. There will be changes, but don’t expect Doug Wilson to tear down this house. It would be nearly impossible to do even if he wanted to.

No this is the time to trust your earlier decisions despite the fact it’s the toughest time to have trust. You loved this team when you signed all these guys. You loved this team when they won the President’s Trophy. You loved them when the first round of the playoffs started. Now 7 games later some want it ripped apart? It might be the right thing to do or it might be the worst thing to do.

Here in Ottawa before Corey Clouston took over as coach, the talk shows were filled with people who were absolutely positive the only fix was to trade Spezza, Heatly, Alfredsson, Phillips…etc etc. By the end of the season people were talking about this team being 2 players away from being a contender again.

The Sharks will change before next season and one of the big guns may actually be moved, but not a full scale rebuild. But one individual may have been badly damaged by the first round exit. That is Jumbo Joe and the assumption he is about to become thee dominant centre in the NHL at long last. His stock has now plummeted so quickly there is talk he will not only not captain Team Canada in the Olympics, but he might not even make the team. The biggest Shark may have lost his teeth in 7 simple playoff games.

See you at the rink.

The Start of Tomorrow

2009-04-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

The Senators season ended on Saturday night in Toronto. It is amazing how attitudes can change. No post season is certainly not a good thing, but surprisingly the fans I speak too feel optimism. There isn’t this feeling of being at a wake after the season ends. It’s almost as if people believe the operation was a success. The patent still isn’t out of the woods and is headed to the recovery room, but for all signs there is reason for cautious optimism. The patient will have the summer to heal and rehab before heading back to work and punching the time clock next September.

People seem to have the sense that the major ills of this team have been cured and the off-season of chasing the 2 specs of gold dust can begin. Those specs are the same 2 that 28 of the 30 teams in the NHL are all looking for and seem to each year. Ottawa GM Bryan Murray wants to find a top-4 defenceman and a top-6 forward. Those are the specs of gold that everyone wants but can’t find in abundance at a price that works.

Since February 3rd only one team in the eastern conference had more points than Ottawa. That was Pittsburgh. Ironically the two teams which fired experienced NHL coaches and replaced them young aspiring AHL coaches. Ironically the two teams which have gone to the final the past 2 years and both have tried to carry forward the huge weight of expectations in their respective communities.

It really makes the Detroit Red Wings even more amazing. Those expectations are squarely on their shoulders each year and the weight seems to have next to no affect. Even if they don’t make it to the final, the 18 straight years of being in the playoffs is simply amazing. Pressure and expectation I have come to realized are the 2 toughest things to manage and 2 of the most crippling things to deal with for professional athletes. The huge paychecks can’t stop internal 2nd guessing and the burden of so many fans almost guttural need for their team to win.

The Ottawa players will have something this coming season that they haven’t had the last 3 years. The knowledge of who their coach will be before this season ends. They will come to camp next season knowing who he is, what to expect, what he expects and what the system and the plan is. That is a large step forward because it means no buy-in time. No worries about the players believing in the new coach and the new system. They already believe in both right now.

I will end this season with a bold prediction about next season. Many things will happen this off season and some players will go and some new ones will arrive. I am ready to make my prediction right now. The Senators will make the playoffs next season. The bitter taste of a 5 month summer is the horrible cough syrup required to remind players they don’t want to catch this kind of cold again.

See you at the rink.

The view from outside.

2009-03-31T10:53:00.000-07:00

With the Senators season set to end on April 11th in Toronto, for me that could mean the end of my season unless like last year Hockey Night in Canada needs an extra play-by-play guy and I get to work in the first round. For the first time in 11 years I may not work in the playoffs and that is both financially and emotionally disappointing. The post season is more fun than you can imagine. This is a wonderful and fulfilling job any time of year, but the playoffs carry such a different excitement level for everyone involved, it’s hard to imagine not being a part of it.

This situation does however give you a chance to reflect on ones good fortune in the past. I believe you do develop a certain arrogance based on the unspoken assumption that the team you cover will be in the playoffs and thus the startling reality of not working during that time hits you in the head pretty hard.

Looking at the Senators roster at the start of the year I would never have guessed this was a possibility. I first started to think about this team not making the playoffs just after Christmas when I started doing some math on probabilities and possibilities. While the last several weeks have been impressive for Ottawa, simply the hole is too deep. Making up ground in this current scheduling system is next to impossible. If you take last season for example, the teams in the Eastern Conference which were in the 8 playoff positions on February 8th were the same ones which got those playoff spots when the regular season ended. There was some shuffling from February 8th until the end, but in the end those same 8 got the spots. A depressing reality for teams chasing with more than a few points to make up down the stretch.

For a team like Montreal, holding the 8th spot is tough but for Florida and Buffalo catching up is even harder. With the number of in-conference games and division games, it means that when you lose to a team you are chasing the plight is obvious. But when you look at all the games this time of year where you have 3 point games, that is the killer. You don’t fall back but you don’t catch up either. When the Senators for example went on their run winning 8 of 9 games they only moved up from 12th to 11th and the spread between them and the 8th place team changed by only 3 points.

It is like walking down the street in your old neighborhood remembering when this was the street you lived on. “Chasing Lane”. In Buffalo, Florida and St.Louis I have spoken to friends who are in the chase. Their excitement and hope is wonderful and uplifting. Emotions I had come to take for granted because of the run the Senators have had for the past 11 years.

It makes me appreciate far more what this franchise has done for a very long time and what it will do again. While the thought of a long off-season is not an appetizing one, I have learned some lessons in appreciation. Getting to work in the playoffs is a privilege earned not granted for both players and even old broadcasters too.

See you at the rink.

Sitting firmly on the fence.

2009-03-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

First the facts. Back on March 18th Vancouver’s Ryan Kesler caused a stir when he told the Vancouver Province newspaper "If we're going to win the Cup, we need guys to take pay cuts. The way the salary cap is now, you really can't get what you're worth now if you want to win. Everybody in this locker room knows that."

As you can understand he received a call shortly after from the NHL Players Association. NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly said "We talked to Ryan and he regrets some of the comments he made,"

A few days later Kesler’s agent said publicly no one should assume his client will be taking a hometown discount to stay with the Cannucks in his current contract talks. He continued that he will be looking for fair market value for Kesler.

I doubt Kesler regretted his remarks until he was told he regretted them. Kesler did not say anything that everyone doesn’t know but his mistake was saying it. The NHLPA is well aware of players accepting below market salaries to stay in situations they like, but the association would have a tough time trying to drive up the average salary in the league if the player’s expectation is less and not more.

I am on both sides of this fence. I understand exactly what the association is doing. It’s not intimidation but probably closer to coercion. But as an association, unanimity is tough to establish and tougher to keep and control. Make no mistake though, the association’s strength is based on how close to one voice, one thought and one plan they can get. 100% is impossible but the leadership has to try and keep the number high and reminding players that their actions and public comments can erode the NHLPA’s strength is not out of line.

This is the not so subtle difference between an association and an actual union. This association is a collection of highly paid independent contractors who may or may not sign individual contracts which drive the comparables up for other players. Free agent contracts and arbitration in the NHL are based on comparables and if too many players accept less it becomes impossible to keep salaries high. If the NHLPA turned into the NHLPU and became certified as an actual union then negotiating contracts for all players could then fall under the umbrella of union leadership. Players would never want that. One small group of people negotiating a pay grid system or some such arrangement is fantasy. It will never happen because the best players would not want to be contained by that kind of hockey socialism.

There is nothing new about this though. For years the association was not happy with Ray Bourque. The belief was that he took too many home town discounts to stay in Boston and some believe he was a major reason salaries for many defencemen remained artificially low because none of them could use Ray’s salary as a comparable. Martin Brodeur is also one of those problem children for the NHLPA. He may go down as the best goaltender in NHL history and yet has never been the highest paid netminder in the NHL. He also has taken less many times to stay in New Jersey and make sure there was enough money to keep the rest of the team solid. The difference between these cases and Kesler is they did take home town discounts, they just never said the words out loud publicly.

I can’t tell you who is right and who is wrong here. If I ran the association, I would also encourage players to get as much as they can for the greater good of all players. If I was a manager I would want players to see the bigger team picture. Take less so that the team is strong at all positions and has a chance to win in the salary cap world.

I sit firmly on the fence on this one. I suppose if you in your life are a staunch union member you see it one way and if you are not in a union or an employment association you probably see it differently.

See you at the rink.

Kill Ovechkin!!!....er...maybe not.

2009-03-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

This is when it is sometimes embarrassing to be a member of the media. I agree totally with Washington head coach Bruce Boudreau. This whole Tampa/Washington retribution story was completely a media engineered non-story. Invent some news which doesn’t actually yet exist to then cover the self-made news to see if it really occurs and becomes actual news.

The last time Tampa and Washington played Alex Ovechkin scored his 50th goal of the season and then performed his now infamous “my stick is too hot” shtick. Reporters in lockers across the NHL were asking players the next day for their opinions. Some laughed and said they liked it or didn’t mind or didn’t care. Others thought it was showboating and mocked both the Lightning and the game. Coaches, Managers, retired players were all asked their opinions and theirs varied as much as the players.

The opinions which received the greater number and higher placement in news stories were the negative ones. That helped generate an environment to question the possibility of retribution from Tampa the next time the teams played. That possibility then spawned some analysts to predict retribution which caused others to expect it and those expectations led sports editors to send reporters to cover this game just in case things boiled over.

Did anyone from Tampa ever say or intimate they would try and exact revenge? Were there any legitimate conversations about payback? Did anyone of the large number of NHL insiders have any of their sources tell them it was possible or even probable? If they were told this I assume they would have said it since un-named sources are the chief rumor mongers in both politics and the NHL. I don’t remember anyone saying any of that. Many of the insiders did phrase it in the form of a question which led me to believe that no one had told them it would happen otherwise they would have said that.

The game occurred and Washington won. Was there anything directed at Ovechkin other than the dismay many teams have trying to contain him?

Sometimes we in the media should be reminded that our job is to cover the news not make it.

See you at the rink.

Throwing games

2009-03-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

We have all listened as fans and the media talk about and debate the Senators recent turn around. Since Corey Clouston became head coach the team has played better and won more. The net result is that Ottawa has now moved up in the standings to the point where they will still not make the playoffs but also it appears will not have a shot at the #1 pick in the draft. The way the draft lottery works is that should a team get the #1 ball in the bingo draw, that team can not move up more than 4 places in the draft. It means that even if you get that #1 ball, you can only get the #1 pick if you finish in the bottom 5 of the league. Ottawa is now out of that bottom 5. If they were to get that #1 bingo ball they could move up and pick 2nd or 3rd but not first.

There are those who contend that teams like Ottawa and Toronto should stop trying so hard to win games when it won’t change their playoff chances, but will damage their draft position. My first question to those people is always the same. How do you get players to not play hard and get coaches to coach to lose? If they are competitive people playing at the highest level, they simply don’t have that chip in their hockey brain. There are also integrity issues. How could you ever look a coach or a player in the eye knowing they didn’t try to win? It goes against everything we’ve been taught in areas of competition and goes against what we all try to teach our children. How would you like to be that fan who paid good money for his ticket, sitting there watching a team not try to win so that next year or the year after things will be better? That fan would feel cheated and rightly so.

While Ottawa may not have a shot at the top pick maybe the way to find a silver lining in a disappointing season is to consider the things you thought were lost but now have been found. Maybe the Senators have finally found a coach who can push the right buttons while still holding a stern hand. Maybe the Senators have discovered that some of the players, who were thought to have lost something, might still have it. Maybe this dose of humility after an 11 straight playoff seasons is something we all needed to calm the arrogance which comes from never considering your team might not make the playoffs.

The idea of being lousy enough to miss the playoffs but not being lousy enough to get a shot at the #1 pick is fair comment. But it’s a loaded comment. The integrity of your manager, coaches and players is at stake when people believe you are no longer trying to win. That is worth far more than a lost season or a chance at the #1 pick. That can lose you a generation of ticket buyers who would always wonder.

See you at the rink.

Stick-Gate

2009-03-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

In last nights Ottawa/Toronto game, with just over 2 minutes to play in regulation time, and the Leafs down 2-1, Toronto coach Ron Wilson called for a stick measurement on Jason Spezza’s stick. Jason shaves the end of his stick and the measurement was not on the curve but on the width of the blade. The officials on the ice deemed it to be an illegal stick and the Leafs got the powerplay. They did not score and Ottawa won the game.

Ron Wilson was fully within his rights as a coach and the rules do exist and he did wait until exactly the right time to give his team a chance to tie the game. Great coaching move although considered by most in the NHL to be a cheesy move. Every team in the NHL has a few players and some teams have more than a few players who have illegal sticks. There is a reason why few coaches call for measurements. It is considered by most to be a minor league method of getting a power play. I personally don’t see it that way and I can’t understand why more coaches don’t do it. They are all looking for every advantage and this could be one. But I guess that’s why I am not an NHL coach. The coaches also have a code and this I guess is breaking the code of good taste. It’s like this type of thing is beneath an NHL coach. I guess its just one of those things I will never understand.

That being said, I don’t understand why there are any restrictions on sticks at all. The legal limits were all instituted and later modified because of goaltender safety. Restrictions on curves for example came into effect to protect goaltenders from high hard shots at a time when some goaltenders still didn’t wear masks. That time has long past in the NHL. How many goaltenders are actually injured by a puck each year? I can only think of one from last year. That was Ryan Miller in Buffalo who broke his thumb when hit by a puck. Most goaltender injuries after from players falling on them or tweaking their adductor muscle and things of that nature. So how is a big curve or thin blade now a danger to a goalie? It isn’t and thus players should be able to use any kind of curve, thickness or length of stick they want.

Back in February Calgary coach Mike Keenan accused Vancouver defenceman Willie Mitchell of using a stick which was longer than allowable by NHL rules. Why should the league care if a player uses a longer stick? Yes it would be better for the poke check but worse for shooting and stick handling. Is a very long stick really an advantage to the average player? It may be, but also a disadvantage in other ways. If a bigger curve gives Alex Ovechkin a better shot is that not balanced out by the fact it would become virtually impossible for him to backhand the puck with that same stick?

The rules were instituted for safety reasons. With their new equipment goaltenders are no longer in danger. Let the players use what ever curve, thickness or length of stick they want. Don’t we all have more important things to worry about?

See you at the rink.

The Crash

2009-03-10T06:10:00.000-07:00

The financial chill of the world economy was evident during the NHL trade deadline this year. While the number of deals consummated before the deadline is only slightly below average, the type of deals definitely showed the financial caution NHL owners are wise to employ in this environment.

Jay Bowmeester did not move. Chris Pronger did not move. With the exception of Ollie Jokinen there really weren’t any big salaries which were moved around. Fear is the simple reason. Managers and coaches wanted these players but owners know what is coming.

The NHL has done considerably better than most industries in weathering this global financial storm, but let’s remember that most of this years revenues with the exception of attendance were already in the bank before the season started or early in the season from sponsors and partners. That means that next years cap will be based on this years revenues which were good. So the cap may go down, but not by much. Problem is next years revenues decide the cap the year after. Everyone in the NHL who operates a calculator is dreading the 2010-2011 season because that is when the cap is expected to drop like a stone. Some believe over the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 seasons the combined cap drop could be as much as 10 to 12 million. That would bring the cap back into the mid-40 million range. Problem is the long term contracts signed for 6,7,8 or 9 million dollars must still be honored while the teams try to fill out their rosters with enough inexpensive players to meet the cap.

I am no financial whiz, but if I were part of the NHL’s middle class I would be scared. Very, very scared. Many or most of those players don’t get contracts longer than 2 or 3 years. They don’t wield enough power to earn term in their contracts. It means many of those players in the 1.5 to 3.5 million dollar per year price range will be free agents when the cap collapse occurs. That could mean playing for half or a third of your previous contract even if your stats increase. If you are unwilling to accept the pay cut teams will simply use more entry level players out of simple financial necessity. What kind of market place will it be for those players in today’s middle class when hundreds could be looking for work at the same time? Many will jump at the first offer and that will keep the financial bar low, thus those who hold out on principle and/or ego will find themselves without a team to play for.

When this time comes some will blame the calamity facing the players on the owners and/or the CBA. Lets all remember how economics works for the rest of us in the real world. Companies struggle, they don’t buy sponsorships. When they don’t buy sponsorships NHL owners make less or lose more. When NHL owners make less or lose more, they reduce staff and cut costs. When that doesn’t work they reduce the budget for hockey operations and players have to go and cheaper ones brought in. It takes a while for the economy to reach an NHL player but when it does, the NHLPA will certainly tell all of us who are to blame. The list will be long and the accusations of incompetence, greed and wacky accounting will be pointed directly at the owners or an ill conceived CBA.

What really will have happened is the rest of the worlds problems will have burrowed through all the layers of financial insulation players often enjoy and the real world will hit them square in the head. The only difference is millions of people with lesser means will have suffered greater financial hardship and woe for a longer period and a lot earlier than any NHL player.

See you at the rink.

Hey, it's not personal !

2009-03-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

I have received many comments since the last post on Mats Sundin’s return to Toronto and everyone’s re-visitation of his reasons for not waiving his no-trade last year. The vast majority I will not allow for viewing on my blog. In this case and all others, vulgar language, demeaning verbiage and personal attacks on me or anyone else are always rejected as postable comments. I will answer 3 which were typical but still printable.

Anonymous said...
Wow, you really can't stand Mats Sundin. Give it a rest! He is a classy individual. Face it Dean, you bought "Daniel Afredsson" stock ten years, and it's turned into a steaming pile of crap! Sounds like sour grapes to me...
February 26, 2009 7:17 PM

Anonymous said...
This post is about 2 months out of date.We've al moved on - why haven't you ? I bet you never got your term papers in on time back in High School.
March 1, 2009 8:13 AM

Anonymous said...
Did Sundin steal your lunch money when you were in Grade 3
March 2, 2009 8:01 AM

As you can see there are some people out there who believe I have some kind of personal issue with Mats Sundin. I do not. In fact as I have stated before I believe he was and is an outstanding player, very strong leader and a classy guy. In my dealings with him he has never been anything but a gentleman and a professional. I have never personally attacked Mats Sundin, but only gave my opinions on his own words and actions.

If you are a Mats Sundin fan, I apologize that my opinions don’t drip into the adoration pool you continually swim in, but that is life. If your only responses to thoughtful comments and opinions are demeaning barbs about what you believe I do or don’t think about Mats personally, then save the time you spend writing me and use it to read with your children. It’s a far better use of time. If you would like to engage in objective debate I am willing and eager.

See you at the rink.

Don't cry for Mats

2009-02-25T06:56:00.000-08:00

On Hockey Day in Canada, Mats Sundin made his return to Toronto as a Cannuck. The fans at the ACC cheered and adored him for the most part, to honor the 13 years he spent with the team and how he wore the captain’s “C” with such class for so many years. Mats deserved all the adoration and his teary response to the fans was real and moving. That was the wonderful part of the return for me. Fans who loved him and he who loved the fans and the city. Both treated him very well while he was a Leaf.

The debate over the departure is the part that bothers me. I have seen and listened to commentators who say they are “disgusted” by those who question Mats for not agreeing to waive his no trade clause in his final year to help the franchise which helped him so much. Disgusted? I love a good debate, but I don’t hate or condemn those who debate against me. You are disgusted by anyone’s opinion which doesn’t align with yours? Really. Wow that is the kind of intellectual arrogance usually reserved only for politics not hockey.

I agree with the basic facts here. Mats Sundin had the no trade clause and it was his right to choose. There are many rights all of us have, but not all are weighed evenly against good taste. It is legal to burn the flag, but most people find it distasteful as a form of protest.

The question is not whether he had the right to exercise his no trade clause, but was it the selfish thing to do? That’s really the question here. How do people feel about Mats doing what was best for him and not the franchise despite the fact he had the right to choose?

Mats at the time said he didn’t believe in being a rental player and that you are only a part of a team if you go through camp, pre-season, regular season and the playoffs as a member of that team. Joining Vancouver mid-way through this season clearly means he has changed his mind on that very important point of integrity. On the weekend Mats expanded on that saying that the Leafs were only 6 points out of a playoff spot and he thought the team could make the playoffs and he wanted to stay and be a part of that. Well if Mats really thought that team could make the playoffs, he was in very select company since the clubs management made it very clear to everyone they didn’t think it was possible as evidenced by the fact that they asked all the important players to waive their no trade clauses, not just Mats.

On the topic of what the Leafs “owed” Mats for his years of service, I find this one tough to understand. Mats has everyone’s admiration as a standout player, wonderful leader and classy gentleman through many turbulent times in Leaf Nation. Other than that admiration the Leafs don’t owe him anything. Mats has earned over 74 million dollars in his playing career so far and most of it in Toronto. His thanks was deposited in his account on the 15th and the 30th each month for 13 years. It should be noted that no player has earned as much or more than Mats without also winning the Stanley Cup. There are many great players who have made a great deal of money and not won, but Mats is at the top of this list. I only state this because we are talking about what Mats is “owed”.

The biggest question fans debate is, did Mats owe the Leafs something for all that adoration and cash. Was it fair to ask Mats to waive to the no trade clause so they could start refilling the franchise tank? It was fair to ask, just like it is fair for players to ask for more money, better terms or no trade clauses in their contracts. There is nothing demeaning or insulting with asking. Did Mats in fact have a moral responsibility to a franchise and fan base which had given him so much, and I believe the answer is yes if we take Mats himself at his word.

Mats is the one who has said over and over how much he loved the Leafs, the city and the fans. If that’s true then you make personal sacrifices for the things and people you love. We all do that in our personal lives all the time for a family and friends, but up to a point. Mats simply didn’t love the Leafs, the city and Leaf Nation enough to do something he didn’t want to do. No harm in that. It simply points out Mats love for the Leafs had limits and being traded was one of them.

This points out one of the oldest adages in life. Judge a man by what he does, not by what he says. Too often they are different things. The actions of Mats Sundin do not match his words. It doesn’t diminish his contribution to the Leafs for 13 years it just means he had a no trade clause, no desire to move and no concern about what that might do to the Leafs. It’s not what he said it’s what he did that tells the story.

See you at the rink.

Loyalty and Trust

2009-02-02T18:07:00.000-08:00

And the coaches just keep falling. Craig Hartsburg and Curtis Hunt lost their jobs yesterday because the players either couldn’t or wouldn’t buy what they were selling. I was asked yesterday if “Hartsburg lost the players”. I am not sure he ever had them. That is not an indictment of Hartsburg but rather the players. In the last year this team will now have had four coaches. John Paddock, Bryan Murray, Craig Hartsburg and now Corey Clousten. Are they all bad coaches? No in fact all are very good coaches. So what is the common denominator here? The core of this team is the same and maybe that is the problem. There are some very talented hockey players who, for what ever reason, do not seem to want to battle at a high enough level to make this team competitive every game. It also seems that no matter how many times true consequences are threatened, it just doesn’t happen and that causes everyone to wonder about all the accountability that has been promised.

To be sure this team is not as skilled as it was 2 years ago, but it still has more than enough talent to be better than the worst offensive team in the NHL. The microscope is centred squarely on Bryan Murray and the players. Murray will be watching very closely to see how this group of players reacts to yet another coaching change and that inspection will play a major part in who might be leaving or at least on the block at trade deadline time. Murray will be judged by ownership on how he evaluates and tries to fix this team

Bryan has all the experience needed and is also well aware his job might be the next one on the block. Knowing Bryan I know he will not make a move to save his job if it’s a bad move for the team long term. History may show us that Bryan’s biggest mistakes may have been made out of loyalty and trust. Loyalty to players who might not feel any sense of guilt in not trying to repay that loyalty. Trust in expecting some of those players to do the things they said they would at the level they said they could.

While I can not foresee what will happen next I do know this is the beginning and not the end of this. No matter what type of results Clousten has from here until the end of the season, this team’s make up will change before next season starts. The only question is how big will those changes be and will they all be wearing skates. In this game players always have an impact on those in the sport who don't play. Players play well and its extensions and raises. Players play poorly its firings and demotions.

Whether they know it or not, accept it or not, their play decides many futures.

See you at the rink.

No-Show Punishment

2009-01-26T05:52:00.000-08:00

Nicklas Lidstrom and Pavel Datsyuk from the Detroit Red Wings will not play against Columbus on Tuesday when the NHL fires back up after the All-Star game. They won’t play because both will be suspended for 1 game. They have been suspended because they did not attend the NHL All-Star festivities in Montreal. Neither is supposedly injured but both are banged up. The NHL made this unprecedented move to try and stop players from taking a pass simply because they don’t feel like going or have something better to do.

For the NHL I understand the concern. The game is a showcase to the fans of all the best and most popular players in the game. Maybe the more important part is the schmoozing with corporate sponsors at a time when they are hugely important. Like the rest of the global economy, the NHL’s revenues will be dropping simply because some corporate sponsors won’t be able to justify the expense or indeed some corporations may no longer exist. So making sure the NHL’s relationship with sponsors is strong, is very, very important to both the league and the players.

The players association is in a difficult situation because while they are partners in the business and it is important, they are also required to represent the player’s wishes and will. Some players just don’t want to go to the All-Star game. They have bumps and bruises, injuries and in some cases just don’t want to go because some feel they have done enough, others just believe the event is lame and don’t want to be bothered.

In the case of Sydney Crosby I have nothing but applause. Could not play but came to play with the sponsors and fans. The very best have a higher level of responsibility and he seems to get that and always finds a way to step up and help out.

In the case of Datsyuk, he has taken a pass on NHL awards dinners, All-Star games and other NHL functions. It appears he wants to play his game and cash his cheques and that’s it. I have a problem with that. Those cheques are as big as they are because of the NHL and its relationship with sponsors, TV networks and most importantly fans. The “I don’t feel like it” excuse is shameful.

In the case of Nick Lidstrom, he has done it all for this league. Won every award, won cups, the Norris, been to 11 All-Star games, World Cup, the Olympics and this weekend just wanted to see his son play in a hockey tournament. I have no problem with that.

This is the problem. How do you develop a one-size-fits-all policy which punishes players like Datsyuk who live by the “take but don’t give” motto, while allowing players like Lidstrom a pass because he has years and years of doing more than his fair share to grow this game.

I don’t have the answer, but I do know the way the NHL dealt with this seemed knee jerk and not completely thought out. Maybe they can deal with it in some kind of financial way since that is what seems to impact players the most. Maybe if you want to take a pass and you are not injured you have to make a half million dollar donation to an All-Star charity based in the city where the game is being played. Its easy to suggest but difficult to implement since anything like that would have to be a part of the CBA.

If the players and owners are now partners in this thing, that has to mean you are partners when its time to give not just when its time to take. There are many more givers than takers in this game thankfully, but finding a system that punishes one without persecuting the other is difficult.

See you at the rink.

Thumbs up for Jarkko

2009-01-07T14:20:00.000-08:00

Jarkko Ruutu has been suspended for 2 games for allegedly biting the thumb of Buffalo’s Andrew Peters. If he really did bite him then I understand the leagues need to suspend him. You can’t have players biting each other. I get that. I personally think he did bite him and I would have done exactly the same.

I am not applauding Jarkko Ruutu and his actions but I thought about what I would do in the same situation. Ruutu did not go hunting on the ice looking for someone to chomp into. The two men were tied up and Peters jammed his thumb into Ruutu’s mouth. Watch the video closely. That thumb didn’t get into that mouth by accident. This is the logic I don’t understand. A player can intentionally jam his thumb into one players mouth and try to rip his cheek, but biting that thumb goes against the code of hockey?

What is the code of hockey now? I really don’t know. I know what it used to be and I know it’s not nearly the same anymore, but I really don’t know what the code is anymore.

In this same game Chris Kelly was put in a head lock and his head jammed into the boards by Drew Stafford. It is unclear whether he was injured by his head being stuffed into the boards or a cross check to the head from Craig Rivet. Either way Kelly’s eye is swollen shut today and the train track stitches in his head are no act. This play was not penalized and was certainly not reviewed by the league. It apparently falls into the code of acceptability. The tiny piece of broken skin on the end of Andrew Peters finger is obviously a far more egregious offence. Apparently because it offends the sense of “Code” that all players live by.

That code did nothing for Patrice Bergeron in Boston last year when Randy Jones from Philly nearly ended his life with a hit from behind. That hit just barely stirred the keepers of the code. That death defying hit warranted just a 3 game suspension. So let me get this straight. You can almost kill a man and that’s worth just 1 more game suspension than biting the thumb of a man who intentionally jammed his opposable digit into the mouth of the biter?

I don’t get the code anymore. I don’t get the logic of those who defend the code and the men who punish those who break this ever changing code.

Jarkko Ruutu deserves to be suspended. So does Andrew Peters if for no other reason than the stupidity of jamming your thumb in someone’s mouth, trying to rip their cheek open and then being appalled that you were bitten.

In the end does anyone really care? A pest bit a goon. Peters has injured that thumb worse tying his skates. No, this suspension is about the code. I just wish I knew where I could buy a copy of it so I could read up on this. I am heading to Chapters right now and I am going straight to the Comedy Section.

See you at the rink.

I wish I had the answers.

2009-01-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

I am like every fan right now in that I wish I had the answers. There isn’t a day that goes by when someone doesn’t stop me in the grocery store or at the gas pump and ask what is wrong with the Senators. I wish I had an answer. The one thing that makes me feel better about this personally is the fact that many many very smart hockey people don’t have an answer either. I am only a play by play guy and thus me not having an answer is not a surprise. The fact that actual hockey experts can’t figure it out either is a testament to how confounding this situation is.

I think everyone knew that this team would not be the high flying, high scoring Senators of old where they could seemingly score 6, 7 or 8 goals a night if they wanted to. I don’t believe anyone thought they would be the lowest scoring team in the NHL though. In Boston they appear to have about 5 or 6 players who are on pace to have their best seasons ever. It is indeed good fortune when those stars align at the same time and Boston’s record is all the better for it. Conversely what are the odds that 5 of Ottawa’s best offensive players would have their worst season’s ever at the same time. The odds are probably the same except a franchise and its fans feel the pain more when those hockey odds are working against you and your team.

The only thing I know is that you can only do one thing. Keep on playing. Keep trying to find some magic again. Keep on pushing the players to find their top level. There is no magic wand. There is no easy way out. Trades in this league are now nearly impossible to make and GM Bryan Murray will soon have an ear replacement with his current one nearly worn off from working the phones. Changes in the on-ice system are not the issue. Craig Hartsburg has tried every line combination and every fore-check system known to man. Nope, it appears this is a problem that must be solved from within using the oldest method in the books. Perseverance!

I wish I had a better answer. I wish I could figure out a better way. If I was a smarter guy maybe I could see one.
Last January after the Detroit game the switch on this team somehow got mysteriously got turned off. Maybe it will somehow get mysteriously switched back on if there is enough perseverance.

Sorry….wish I had the answers.

See you at the Rink.

Who does the NHLPA protect?

2008-12-05T14:45:00.000-08:00

Will there ever be a day when this association has 2 sides to it. The PA becoming 3D is simply too much to dream about.

This whole Sean Avery thing has me wondering again who the NHLPA represents. As a dues paying member Avery is entitled to the union’s support and legal representation. They can attack the NHL even if they look foolish defending someone whose actions are repeatedly indefensible. They are required to do it. But how hard to they have to fight? They didn’t fight that hard to help Alexi Yashin when he tried to get out of a signed contract. Again in that case they are required to represent him, but to what extent?

This case is not much different. Few if any players support their union’s use of time, funds and efforts to fight for the rights of a player who has no problem in denigrating the rights and reputation of other association members. Is the NHLPA going to file suit against Avery on behalf of Dion Phaneuf for the public remarks made by Avery? I don’t think so. Does Phaneuf not have rights to a defense even if he requires defending from another member of the union? Do you really think Glenn Healy and the NHLPA lawyers really want to try and find a way to make this sound different than what it is? I am sure they are embarrassed to even be there arguing the case.

The greatest risk to an NHL player’s career is not the actions of the big bad league or the owners. The greatest risk to a player’s career is the actions of another player. Accidents happen but clearly there are certain players who are extremely dangerous to the health of others on skates. The NHL has supplementary discipline to deal with those people but is that enough?

For the repeat offenders who have clearly not been convinced by supplementary discipline to change the way they play, why is there no player-based disciplinary board at the NHLPA to internally sanction players who other players believe put their careers at risk?

Why is it the NHLPA lawyers are at the ready to grieve a dispute over a cloudy waiver issue, but one player getting his 7th suspension for almost killing another is not even a conversation?

Players are now involved in equipment, the rules, off site games, promotions, outdoor games and a whole host of other things. But they still can’t seem to understand that self discipline of its own membership for their actions on the ice might be the greatest single service they can do to help prolong the career of every NHL player. Is that not the union’s primary job? To protect the career of each paying member with passionate advocacy?

I just can’t figure it out. That’s now #18,996,087,438,227,877 on my list of stuff I can’t figure out.

See you at the rink.

Avery Who?

2008-12-05T14:15:00.000-08:00

First my apologies. It has been some time since my last post. I have had some personal things going on and just have not had the time or the desire to do it. Again my apologies.

This is something that simply can’t be passed up though. The Sean Avery affair. Just too delicious, too “Entertainment Tonight”.

First the good. People who never talk about hockey or care about hockey are talking about this. Broadcast outlets which rarely have a hockey story like CNN have covered this. Even more amazing the BBC ran a story about it. Great! Or is it?

Now the bad. Well just about everything. This guy is simply a train wreck. A few teams will always want him because he is a very good player but the list is going to start dwindling because he comes with so much baggage and has found a way to embarrass everyone who believes in him and pays him or plays with him.

The commissioners 6 game suspension is neither too much or too little as far as I am concerned. The number of games will be debated by everyone. He gets 6 games for bad language and poor taste while Randy Jones from Philly got 3 games for almost killing Patrice Bergeron from Boston last year? You can’t compare apples and oranges and this is a completely different fruit so I am not going to even bother considering if Avery’s suspension is too much or too little. I am anxiously waiting to see what the Dallas Stars do and what the NHLPA does after that.

Here is the statement from the NHLPA following the announcement of the suspension.

NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE PLAYERS’ ASSOCIATION STATEMENT REGARDING SUSPENSION OF SEAN AVERY

TORONTO (December 5, 2008):
NHLPA Executive Director Paul Kelly’s statement regarding the suspension of Sean Avery for six regular season games: “While the NHLPA does not condone Sean’s comments, which were clearly inappropriate, the discipline imposed by the Commissioner is unprecedented both in its severity, as well as the process by which it was handed down. We have also seen signals from the Dallas Stars that Sean’s contractual rights might be challenged. We are monitoring the situation as it develops, and we will evaluate all legal options as the circumstances warrant. In the meantime, our first priority is supporting Sean’s efforts to learn from his mistake and move forward in a positive manner."

The juicy part is the contractual rights being challenged. In every NHL contract there is (what amounts to) a morality clause and there is talk the Stars may attempt to get rid of his contract by claiming he has violated it. There is also talk the Stars (who do not own their own AHL team) might send him to their East Coast League team and hope he won’t show up so they can suspend him. If he does show up, they will either pay him until the date rolls around when they can buy him out, or hope that someone else is willing to take a flyer on this wild card player. If they do, the Stars can recall him and that team can take him on re-entry waivers and Dallas would only have to pay for half of his remaining salary.

Avery has clearly had the spin doctors doing surgery on him. His apology was obviously not written by him and I doubt his offer to get psychological help was his idea. I would love to see that psychological report. I am no Dr.Phil but I don’t believe he has any clinical problems. His issues are ego and morality based with a huge dose of self entitlement mixed in with a healthy portion of showmanship and self love. I believe the clinical name for this is jerkitis.

I believe the cure is the end of his multi-million dollar paychecks combined with some anonymity and a little bit of in-your-face scorn for any working man who would be fired him his 30 thousand dollar a year job if he behaved this way. In other words a severe reality check.
I am all for 2nd chances. Avery is now on chance #17 and at this rate could soon be a team mate of Ray Emery’s.

See you at the rink.

Less won't happen.

2008-11-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

Today in the Globe and Mail columnist William Houston polled a group of hockey people whose job it is to have an opinion. The question was the number of games that should make up an NHL season. The list of pundits included CBC’s Mike Milbury, Nick Kypreos of Rogers Sportsnet and TSN’s Ray Ferraro. All rightly suggested a reduction in the NHL schedule from 82 games to 72, 74 or 76 would increase practice time and rest thus improving the quality of hockey we watch and listen to. I can’t find anything in that logic which is wrong. I also have no faith it will happen.

The quality of hockey is on the list of concerns of the NHL and the NHLPA but it is not close to the top of the list. I mentioned both the league and the union because both have to agree to a reduction in the number of games. Both sides discussed this during the lock-out and both sides dismissed it after looking at the numbers. Those numbers had dollar signs. Reducing the number of games reduces revenues for the teams and salaries for the players. Neither party was interested enough in quality to reduce the quantity of the revenues they share.

For the NHL and its owners, they sell to the public rivalries and star players. The players rely on the fact that the hockey paying public and the media does not expect the very highest level of hockey each night simply because almost everyone understands that in an 82 game schedule it is impossible to practice enough and get enough rest and recuperation to play at the highest level each night. Attendance across the league has not declined thus its fair to assume the fans have accepted this reality and are still willing to pay for the quality of hockey they have become used to.

So can both masters be served? How do you reduce the number of games without decreasing the bottom line? Maybe the happy medium is not changing the current system, just modifying it or maybe even increasing the number of regular season games. That’s right I said increasing it. It could be accomplished without increasing the actual number of games a player must play.

Right now teams are allowed to play as many as 9 pre-season games. Teams don’t have to play that many but several do because they need the revenues. What if you made the maximum number of exhibition games 5. You could add 2 regular season games and make it an 84 game season, have the mathematical ease of being able to have a true conference cross-over schedule and have players still play 2 fewer games or more depending on how many exhibition games your owner or president wants.

Players all come to camp in shape now so conditioning is not a reason for a long pre-season. Some players have told me that if their team is basically set and there are no real jobs to compete for 3 pre-season games is plenty to get game ready for the season.

General managers would not favor this type of system though because pre-season games are often a chance for them to see prospects and juniors in NHL like competition and it’s a great help in evaluating their progress or their ability to make the jump to the NHL. But the fact is any system will have a certain group or groups against it. There is no perfect system including the one we have now

The one thing I do know is, if the system is ever changed it will be revenue sensitive first and a quality of play issue second because the league and players are driven to make more not less on the balance sheet despite how it might affect play on the sheet of ice.

See you at the rink.

Thank you

2008-11-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

It is remembrance day. This is my thanksgiving.
My father taught me this is the day to make sure you give thanks.

To all those who have fought for this country I thank you.
I thank you for my life.
I thank you for the life me and my family enjoy.
I thank you for the freedom I have.
I thank you for the dreams I can chase.
I thank you for the dreams which have come true.

I can never repay the debt I owe you.
I can only promise that my children will always know of your sacrifice.
My children will always know you.
If I have done my job and fulfilled my promise they will tell their children.

You were, are and will always be the very best of us.

Thank you.

A Simple win in Buffalo

2008-10-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Ottawa Senators ended their 4 game losing streak in Buffalo last night with a 5-2 win over the Sabres. What was the single biggest difference between this game and the 4 they lost previously? Battle level. Yes there were many other ingredients but the team's overall battle level by all 20 players for all 60 minutes was for me the biggest difference in the game. They won battles for lose pucks, they won one-on-one fights for the puck, they won battles for position and they won the battle for emotional swings in the game. There were many other things which were greatly improved from the last 4 games but those things happened because the team won more battles than Buffalo.

Often times we all try to make this game more complicated than it has to be. People believe that tactics or system are at fault when things don't go well for their team. Truth be told its most often the most simple things which turn games. Battle level, energy, simple plays, and a defence first mindset are almost always more important than which team ran their trap the best. Just like a golf swing though the simple stuff can be difficult to do at a high level every day in a very long and very tough season. In golf the best instructors always tell you to relax and create a smooth and balanced swing. When you are all tense thinking of the 70 things that make up a good swing its difficult to be relaxed and balanced. That's why golf is such a tough game. That's why those simple things in hockey are so difficult to do at a high level each day. They are easy and simple to say and very difficult to achieve each night in the best league in the world where the other guys are trying to do exactly the same thing.

Last nights victory for Ottawa was based on simplicity but there is nothing simple about doing it over and over again.

See you at the rink

The Leafs (part 2)

2008-10-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

The Globe and Mail has a story in the paper today about an un-named league executive talking about the murmurs about having another NHL franchise in Toronto. Other league executives have pointed out this has not been a topic at any of the Governors meetings thus it is all speculative. It has also been pointed out that if it were to ever happen it would have to be the move of an existing franchise. Adding new teams when several current teams are in financial distress is not generally regarded as a prudent move.

So let’s just play the pie in the sky game for a moment. Would it be a good idea and could it possibly happen?

Toronto is the biggest and most feverish hockey market on the planet. Despite the fact that this new team would always be the 2nd team in Toronto I am sure it could make money and more importantly make money for the league. I am told that right now the 6 Canadian teams account for over 30% of the NHL’s revenues. Another team in Toronto would only increase that. Is the market big enough? That isn’t even a question. If New York/New Jersey is big enough for 3 teams and the city of New York is big enough for 2 football teams and 2 baseball teams (as is Chicago), Toronto is certainly big enough to support 2 NHL teams. The building would overflow with all the average fans who have no chance of ever getting a ticket to see the Leafs in their lifetime.

What could stand in the way? The Leafs would stand in the way. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment has a wonderful monopoly on the hearts and minds of the Toronto sports fans. Why would they allow any of that to be eroded to benefit another owner and the NHL? Toronto had the chance to have a rival on their doorstep when Hamilton bid for a team at the same time Ottawa did. The Leafs and Sabres both let the NHL know they would both exercise their right to veto as a Hamilton team would infringe on their territorial exemption. Yes the new owners could pay a fee to the Leafs, but only if they choose to accept it and they are not obliged to. I believe they won’t. If I were running MLSE I would not. Why allow someone come in and cut little chunks out of your huge pie if you have the ability to stop it before it starts?

There will always be the talk of a team relocating to the Kitchener/Waterloo area as long as RIM owner Jim Balsillie has a voice and reporters have microphones, but he is clearly not a partner the NHL governors want despite his bulging bank account.

Would another team in Toronto work? Of course it would.
Will it happen? I doubt it.

See you at the rink.

Hartsburg Hates Soft

2008-10-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

Senators coach Craig Hartsburg was in a grizzly mood yesterday when he met with the media. You know the earlier meeting he had with his players was likely less cordial. He is not at all happy with the way his team has played in its first 3 regular season games in North America. Lines have been shifted, players have been challenged and the most important point he is making is the idea of changing the way this team plays. It has to be harder, nastier, faster, less polite and more determined.

The word “soft” in the hockey world is a swear word. Rarely does a coach use it when talking about his own team but Hartsburg did. He says players have to understand things are going to change around this team and they had better buy in. He wants to shake up all the comfortable things. That cozy blanket of knowing Heatley and Spezza will play together, that Chris Neil will play with Mike Fisher, that Vermette and Kelly are inseparable. My father used to say to me “change is not to be feared, it is to be expected”. The Senators had better start expecting more of this.

Fly by’s on opposing defenceman will not be ignored. When a hit is there and it’s not taken, questions will be asked. When a forward is not skating full out on the forecheck a spot at the end of the bench awaits. When a defenceman fails to punish an opposing forward harsh words will be spoken.

Hartsburg has seen enough to know that this is a very talented team which is simply too polite and too often waiting for the big boys to do their magic thing with the puck and then everything will work out. Those days are over with this coach.

Most of the focus has been on Jason Spezza and his realignment with Foligno and Winchester, but others might not be on the media’s radar but you know they are on the coach’s. Chris Neil thought by many to be a 2nd line kind of guy is now one of 2 forwards (Donovan is the other) skating on the 4th line. One of them might be a healthy scratch on Wednesday.

The defence corps was supposed to be inferior in moving the puck, but superior in nastiness compared to last years top 6. Hartsburg has not seen enough of the nasty. Those are not expectations placed on Kuba and Lee, but they are on Smith, Phillips, Volchenkov and Picard. Right now Smith and Volchenkov are the only ones making the coach's grade.

This is not an overnight thing. Changing the way a team plays and its on-ice attitude does not happen with a few practices and some video. It will take some time and it may require the movement of some disgruntled players who ultimately don’t want to buy in, but it will happen.

I will be very interested to see the way this team plays by Christmas. My bet is that the type of game Hartsburg wants will be under the tree before the 25th.

See you at the rink.

Solution: Mr. Hollweg meet Mr. Probert.

2008-10-13T19:24:00.000-07:00

I just saw the hit Toronto’s Ryan Hollweg laid on Blues rookie defenceman Alex Pietrangelo. It got Hollweg a 5 minute boarding major and the 2 goals the Blues scored were the biggest part of their come from behind win over Toronto.

It also gives all of us who are not in favor the instigator rule more fuel for the fire. I am absolutely not in favor of more fighting in the NHL. Especially the hopelessly boring staged fights between enforcers who play 4 minutes a game and simply meet the other team’s enforcer, they fight, they go to the box and the game goes on. That is a huge waste of time.

I do believe that the natural emotion of this game will always bubble over into legitimate fights in the heat of the battle between 2 players who care deeply and compete with all their being. Those fights would happen even if fighting was completely banned because things do get that heated in hockey.

I know to many this will make me sound like a caveman, but I also believe in “visits”. I believe that player’s actions on the ice would again be tempered if they had any true fear that someone would come to visit them for their mis-deeds. That was part of the code of this game that helped protect star players and it’s a part of this game which the instigator rule has changed for the worse.

Ryan Hollweg is one of (but not the only) poster child for the ineffectiveness of the instigator rule and supplementary discipline. Thus far no sanctions the NHL has imposed on Hollweg in the past have caused him to change the truly dangerous and illegal way he plays. The price a team and player may pay to make him physically suffer for his actions is too high. The suspensions and possible lost games due to the penalties a player and team must take to track down and punish Hollweg are simply too high in a league where parity means a lost game in October really can mean you miss the playoffs in April.

Ryan Hollweg’s willingness to hit people from behind would be severely tested if he knew someone might try to break his jaw each time he tried to run someone from behind. As we all know there is no need for Hollweg to play with that fear in today’s game. Again no one will come to visit him because the price for those who come knocking is higher than the price Hollweg will pay for doing it in the first place. That is a very dangerous policy for the rest of the players in the league to live with.

See you at the rink.

Swedenpalooza 2.

2008-10-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

It was tour day in Göteborg (Gothenburg). After Senators practice Daniel Alfredsson took some of the members of the media on a walking tour of some of the beautiful downtown portions of this port city. It was founded in 1621 and the history here is deep. Daniel’s love for this place is also obvious and he seems to love teaching us about where and how he grew up. A better cultural guide you could not find. We went to his high school which is right across the street from the rink. We poked our heads into the gym and there was Alfredsson’s old gym teacher Eva. A quick hug and hello and she was back to teaching the kids badminton.

Anyone who has traveled outside North America has already seen and noticed this, but one of the things you do see a lot of is cars we just don’t see at home. I don’t mean the exotic ones. I mean the everyday cars made by the big 3. They make some vehicles just for export and they are not sold in North America. Today I saw a Chev Kalos sub compact car and a Ford Galaxy micro van.

One of the other things you really notice if you come from Ottawa is how bi-lingualism is handled here. It isn’t. It just happens by itself. Swedish students start taking English in grade 4 and thus most everyone here can speak both Swedish and English. I have run across only 2 or 3 people who could not speak English. Signs on business’s are Swedish or English or both. There are no laws to force a business to use any language. I don’t want to get into a French/English debate but Swedish TV is filled with North American shows in English and our language and culture is all around them yet none of their culture seems to have been lost or diluted nor do they see it as a possibility. Maybe that’s what we need in Canada. Get rid of sign laws and institute mandatory French in all of our schools. If all Canadians are bi-lingual then cultural protectionism seems to take care of itself.

Just more observations from Sweden. Oh and yes it is still raining. It has been raining off and on since the moment we arrived.

Tomorrow is game day and I can’t wait. The atmosphere in that building is going to be wild and Gord and I get to broadcast the game from the stands with the fans so it should be wild.

See you at the rink.

Swedenpalooza 1.

2008-09-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Senators great Swedish adventure is underway. The plane ride over was uneventful although I envy those who can fall fast asleep on planes. It makes a 6 hour time change so much easier to take.

The first surprise when we landed in Göteborg (Gothenburg) was the smiling immigration officers. The ones in Ottawa are very good and very polite but our policies require filling out forms. Not a big deal but I have never landed in a country where they simply look at your passport; stamp and it welcome you to Sweden. Not forms to fill out at all.

The first thing we noticed when driving from the airport to the hotel was the landscape. We could have been on a trip to Sudbury. Pine trees lined the highway which was often cut through rock that looked exactly like the chunks of the Canadian Shield which were blasted out to make the highway into Sudbury.

The city is about the same size as Ottawa and in many ways is very similar. I now understand why Daniel Alfredsson often says Ottawa reminds him of his home. The weather is apparently standard Göteborg fall weather. Cool (about 12 degrees during the day), cloudy and periods of rain forecast for each day we are here.

The Senators had a light practice in the afternoon just to get the players legs moving after the long flight. The local media was out in full force to see Alfredsson. He is like a rock star here. His old club team Frölunda was playing tonight against a club called Rögle BK (the team Kenny Jonsson plays on). During the first intermission they unveiled Frölunda’s first Pillar of fame. They don’t really have a wall of fame. Alfredsson is the first to have a pillar on the concourse adorned with his image, story, signed stick and action shots. The 2nd player to be honored will be Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist who is also a Frölunda alum. This is a rare thing. Swedish hockey reflects Swedish life which is to rarely accentuate the individual over the team.

I have to say the Frölunda game was lots of fun to watch. The Euro fans bring drums and sing and clap through most of the game. Fireworks and flags that cover an entire section of seats are rolled out after each goal. Things you just don’t see at North American games.

The other thing you really don’t see much of in North America is the type of logo the Frolunda Indians have. It’s the head of an Indian chief in full head dress. We all know on our continent the political correctness debate about the logo’s of the Chicago Blackhawk’s and the Atlanta Braves.

The final thing for today is our hotel. The rooms are just like they were taken out of the displays at Ikea. They really do use this stuff over here in everyday life.

Tomorrow the agenda features something very interesting. After Senators practice Alfredsson is going to take the media on a walking tour of his home town. It is heartwarming to see how proud Daniel is of his home and how much of it he wants us all to see. This might be the first and last time this will happen during his career and he is clearly enjoying all of it.

See you at the rink.

Senator questions??????

2008-09-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

The Senator's training camp is now in full swing. There isn’t a day that goes by that someone doesn’t ask me about what I think of this year’s team. It is no different from any other year. Everyone asks the people they meet the same questions. They want to debate the changes, they want to hope, they want to dream, they want to worry, they want to keep caring. That is one of the most wonderful things about living in a Canadian NHL city. There are very few people you meet who do not care about hockey and who don’t care about this team.

I have to say I have a very good feeling about the forwards on this team. Lots of skill, lots of size, lots of speed. Proven scorers and proven checkers. Ottawa like every other team in the NHL except Detroit would love to have another affordable, veteran scorer who is proven and playoff tested. No small task in finding that without blowing the budget.

I also don’t have any great issues with goaltending and I believe that puts me in the minority after having daily discussions with friends in the stands and hockey fans at the supermarket. I think Gerber will be what he has always been. A very good, steady veteran goaltender. Not an all-star but a solid hard working pro. Alex Auld is the wild card. The book on him everywhere he has been is that he is great until he realizes he is the number #1 guy and then the pressure gets to him. A little older, a little more experience and maybe now he is ready to take the heat if he ever gets a real shot at the #1 job in Ottawa.

My questions are on defence. I think this new group will be bigger, tougher and harder to play against but I still wonder about their ability to move the puck. You can say what you want about Wade Redden and Andrej Mezaros but they were both better puck movers than anyone left on this Ottawa roster from last years team. If you look over his career Filip Kuba should help a great deal in that regard and Brian Lee showed some promise in that area as well but I an still interested to see how it works overall. Bryan Murray has made no secret about his on-going search for an affordable, veteran puck moving defenceman but again, get in line with just about every other team in the league. Anaheim seems to be the only team that doesn’t need more. They simply can’t sign forward Teemu Selanne until they free up cap space by moving Mathieu Schneider. You have to think Bryan Murray would love to get him, but it would have to be at half price and the problem for Murray is there will be several teams in line ahead of him.

We will know more as training camp continues and the exhibition games begin, but right now looking at it on paper, the Senators look to be a team that will still score more than their fair share and likely be a lot nastier in their own end, but might have some problems developing a lot of their offence off the rush without a solid first-pass defenceman unless Kuba is that guy. We will have a good idea about that in short order with the pre-season close at hand.

See you at the rink.

Do us all a favor and just quit Mats

2008-09-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

Mats Sundin told a Toronto radio station this week that he has not yet decided “IF” he wants to play hockey anymore let alone where he wants to play. The former Leaf Captain continues to struggle with that heavy decision.

It really isn’t a decision at all then is it. If you are in September and you still cant decide if you even want to play hockey anymore doesn’t that mean that you don’t. If you get to September and that burn to get on the ice and compete isn’t there then maybe the question has been answered already.

Fans are waiting, teams are waiting and other players are waiting and Mats it appears could care less. Several NHL teams have been saving a roster spot and a big hunk of cash in case Mats wants to play and he wants to play for them. Other players will be moved to accommodate that. They would love to know what is happening with their careers too, but that's no concern to Mats.

Last season when Sundin turned down several requests from Toronto to waive his no trade clause one of his reasons was the full season issue. He believes players should finish the season with the team they started with and anything less is simply a rental and he didn't want to be a rental. OK, so a full season includes a training camp and exhibition games. Camps open in less than 2 weeks and Mats is still deciding if he wants to play? If he decides he does but not until December was last years reasoning a smoke screen for something else?

Mats has no money issues in his life. Over his career he has earned over 74 million dollars plus endorsements and investments. Mats and generations of his family will never have to worry about money. So the issue is really desire and he seems to have a complete lack of it.

For that reason should NHL teams be lining up to try and lure him back? Just like the teams which were wary of his drive to win when he refused to waive his no trade clause in Toronto last year, he seems to be completely lacking in the kind of push you need to play in the NHL at the highest level.

Mats has never been a dog player. He has never mailed it in and maybe that’s his biggest fear. Maybe he is scared that with this lack of excited anticipation for the start of the season he see’s himself as a player who might not be able to push himself to be the player he has always been. No shame in that. The shame is waiting for some epiphany or some magic voice inside Sundin’s head to tell him that he does or doesn’t want to be an NHL player anymore.

This waffling is not only infuriating for those teams who have set aside money to sign the big Swede should he return and pick them as the winners of the Mats lottery. It is an insult to every hockey lover who would give anything for one day of his gifted life. When the fans watching the game care more about Mats playing than he does there is something very wrong with the wires that spark his hockey DNA. Maybe those wires are no longer connected.

Come back or go away I don’t much care anymore. Just stop the waffling. Retire and fade away and then if you decide in a year (or maybe by Christmas) you do want to play again just un-retire. The NFL has the Brett Favre flip-flop Mats can be ours.

See you at the rink.

Sex in sports.

2008-08-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

I got into trouble several years ago during a talk show when I said in jest that women’s beach volleyball was more soft core porn than sport. That didn’t go over well with many of the sports fans and I was joking….sort of.

Watching some Olympic women’s beach volleyball I was struck by the same notion again. They are wonderfully skilled athletes and play a difficult sport at a very high level. But why are most of the better players former full court volleyball players? Why are they no longer full court elite volleyball players? Why do experts in the sport still consider the best players to be those who play the indoor game? If the indoor game has the better players then why is there next to no TV coverage of the full court game while there is tons of coverage for the beach game and in fact a full pro circuit? Could the bodies and the “uniforms” be part of that reason?

Is there some competitive advantage to wearing a bikini or less while playing? Would the full court indoor players get this advantage if they started wearing less while they played? Or is it just the fact that it’s on a beach, bikinis naturally go with beach activities and all the TV coverage is based solely on the fact that beach volleyball is a far better game than full court indoor volleyball?

Who are we kidding here? TV coverage is based on what the people playing wear and often how little people in the stands wear. This is a sex appeal sport plain and simple. Start putting the players in the same uniforms that the indoor players wear and watch the ratings drop.

I guess I just got myself in trouble with those same beach volleyball people again.

See you at the rink.

No gaurantees

2008-07-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

Gord Wilson and I did the afternoon show on the Team 1200 yesterday because all the normal talk show hosts wanted to attend the funeral of Buzz in Georgetown, Ontario. Gord and I both wanted to go but someone had to do the show and we felt the people who worked with Tim Kilpatrick everyday should have that chance.

While the show wasn’t nearly as difficult as the tribute morning show on Monday carried out perfectly by Steve Warne, Stuntman Stu and Kenny Walls, it was still very difficult because we agreed not to talk about it until the very end of the show. All the while emails were coming in asking us to talk about Buzz. We never read any of them on the air as we tried to do a show that was fun, irreverent and upbeat and reading those emails and giving our thoughts and feelings would have made that impossible.

There is nothing new I can tell you about the emotions of this loss. It just strikes me that this is another in a long line of examples that we as humans have no guarantees in life. Tim was just 41 years old when he passed away of complications from a chest infection. I think we all have an underlying belief that with the exception of catastrophic accidents, today’s doctors can fix or treat almost anything. The massive cancer increases prove that is not true, but the strides doctors and researchers make everyday make us all feel a little safer until something like the death of Tim hits you square in the head.

I remember vividly when my father passed away due to bone cancer. We had 2 years to prepare for it and he never suffered. Our family and my father were very lucky compared to many. After that experience I often tell people when faced with the same type of situation to say everything. Tell the people you love everything you feel. The funny, the embarrassing, the criminal, the impressive, tell them everything. I was very fortunate with my father that we did not have any lingering awkward domestic turbulence which had to be settled and said before he died so my conversations with my dad were all about what he was thinking and feeling as a father when I was a boy when different things came up in my life. I remember them as the kid while he remembers them as the father. I understood why he did the things he did and said the things he said at the time better because I understood more about how I was as a kid. Now as a father myself I understand completely and everyday I try to think of what my father would say to Connor and Maya if he were here.

I don’t want to get into a complicated religious debate, but I do believe in God or an entity greater than us. The fact is when my daughter was born she nearly died at birth. I sat in a room they put me in all by myself while the doctors worked to save my little girls life and at that time I didn’t pray, at least not to God. I found myself having a mental conversation with my father. I am not a theologian or a psychologist so I can’t tell you if my father was my subconscious symbol for God, but I can tell you it helped me. It made me calm and hopeful. When the doctor finally came in to tell me that my wife was fine and Maya was not out of the woods, but had rebounded and things were looking positive, I thanked my father. I guess I expected he would pass along my thanks to God when next he saw him/her/it.

There are no guarantees of when and how long each life will last. The only thing we can do for the people we love is be an open book while we are living. Hug them everyday and tell them you love them everyday. That is the only way to guarantee they know the true you when that time comes for all of us.

I’ll miss you Buzz.

See you at the rink.

"I don't have a drug problem"

2008-07-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

Former Senators goaltender Ray Emery appeared on TSN’s Off The Record this week and among many things was asked if he had a drug problem to which he responded “no”. The tougher question would have been “did you take illegal drugs while an Ottawa Senator”.

There are drug rehab centres jammed with people who for years honestly did not believe they had a drug “problem” but did take drugs regularly. The OTR interview left you with more questions than answers’ relating to Ray’s rumored drug use. That is not the fault of the show’s host Michael Landsberg knowing full well it was not a topic Ray would be willing to entertain in full and open discussion. If he walks off the set, the show is over and that is not good for TSN or its viewers. For all we know Ray may have agreed to be on the show only if the question was posed in that specific manor.

I do not know if Ray did or did not take illegal drugs during his time in Ottawa. I like most others have had many people repeat the many rumors to me. Many ask why the Ottawa media refused to speak openly about the rumors in print or on TV and radio. The reason is a simple one. In this country the laws covering libel, slander and defamation are far different from those in the USA. Down south as long as you slap the word "alledgedly" in front of a sentance you can say almost anything. It does not work that way in Canada. Also in both countries when you get sued you can’t tell the judge “well your honor everyone has heard it”. That is not a defence. Unless you know absolutely and can prove it with presentable, verifiable evidence, the reporter is the one headed to jail not the rumored drug user. I can speak of it now, because Ray himself has spoken of it and my observations are directed at his comments and those alone.

The very positive sign from the interview was that Emery wasn’t using his air time to blame other people. He seems to now at least be willing to consider the possibility that he was the author of his own demise. There was no “Ray Conspiracy” to be mean or unfair to Ray. I still got the sense from his body language and the tone of some answers that he doesn’t believe some of the things he did or didn’t do are that big a deal. That tells me he still believes he should not have to abide by the code of conduct almost every other athlete in a team sport lives by. His new Russian club mates will find out soon enough if that is true or not.

Lastly Ray spoke of some of things he will miss about playing in Ottawa. Saturday night games at Scotiabank Place and the love of hockey in this city. He won’t miss the Ottawa media he says. Ray should be careful what he wishes for. There are many who contend he got a far easier ride here than he would have received in several other NHL cities. I guess he will find that out if or when he ever returns to the NHL. Ray may also learn some valuable lessons about ethnicity while in Russia. Just ask Fred Brathwaite how some Russians treat non-Caucasians. Utterances which could bring out the hate crimes police in Ottawa, I am told can barley raise an eyebrow in some parts of Russia.

I believe Ray has learned many things about himself in the last few months. I believe his time in Russia will teach him many more things about what one misses being in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, Canadian city in the NHL.

See you at the rink.

Garry please send them to bed without supper

2008-07-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

It is now time for NHL Commissioner Garry Bettman to step in and stop the stupidity. Anaheim GM Brian Burke and Edmonton GM Kevin Lowe continue their name calling and spitting match over Lowe’s signing of Ducks RFA Dustin Penner last year. Yes that’s right last year. The most recent volley from Lowe was in the form of a radio interview where, among other things, he called Burke a moron and a media junkie. This came after Burke continued to blame Lowe for almost every contract in the NHL which he believes is higher than it should be. His belief is that Lowe changed the salary structure in the league with his offer sheet to Penner.

A gag order should be placed on both with fines for both and the guarantee of heavier fines if the war of words continues. Burke should get the higher of the two fines since he is the one who started the public smear campaign and he is the one who refuses to let it go.

The NHL is often annoyed with the media for what it believes is a propensity for dwelling or searching out the negatives to report on. The NHL can not control the media but it can control the juvenile behavior of its executives. When Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban runs his mouth, the fine is almost immediate. In the NHL it is ignored.

While it is great theatre for newspapers and radio talk shows, it’s a sad method to garner attention for the NHL. Since the Ducks won the cup, this is one of few things to get them any space in their local newspapers, so maybe Burke has a method to this childishness, but again its a sad way to get newspaper space.

Sad also in a different way is the departure of Jaromir Jagr from the NHL. Poor Jaromir was forced to leave for Russia because no one wanted to offer him a contract longer than one year. I feel bad for Jaromir having to endure making millions in Russia after pocketing over 98 million dollars during his career in the NHL.

Do you think that Jaromir will ever consider the possibility that no one was willing to offer him more than a 1 year deal not because of a clause in the CBA putting the team’s salary cap on the hook for his entire contract even if he retires before the expiration of a new long term deal, but rather too many teams have finally figured out that he is simply too much trouble and too much of a gamble to invest in him for more than a year at a time.

Jagr has always been a player with unquestionable talent and the ability of change a game in a few seconds. He is also a player who has divided locker rooms, sulked for seasons at a time and on too many occasions was just not willing to try very hard. He is coming off a very strong season with the Rangers, but lets also remember this is the same player the Capitals were willing to eat millions and millions of dollars in salary just to get him out of their locker room.

A player in Washington once told me they knew which games he was going to give effort. If he put on his shoulder pads for the warm up, he was going to try. For at least 2 years in Washington he didn’t put them on very often. Its also sad when his team mates know almost to a certainty before the game starts that they cant count on their best player because that night he just doesn’t feel like it. The last franchise player Washington had was Jagr before their current franchise player in Ovechkin. The difference in the marquis player and his impact on the team is hard to dispute.

There are so many good stories in the NHL and so many uplifting tales to tell, I wish both of these stories would just go away. Mudslinging managers and forlorn enigmas hold little interest for me.

See you at the rink.

Good bye Ray, hope you find Ray.

2008-06-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

The Ray Emery era is over in Ottawa. With the Senators unable to trade the explosive goaltender and then Ray clearing waivers, the path ahead is uncertain. The team will buy him out and he will become an unrestricted free agent available for any team to sign.

Contrary to what some people believe, I think there will be a market out there for Ray but it will be a market drastically different from the deal he is currently losing. Instead of making over 3 million per year on a one-way contract, I think there will be teams which offer him 7 or 8 hundred thousand a year on a 2-way deal. That way if Ray has a melt down or becomes a distraction he can be banished to the minors and his salary will drop to 70 or 80 thousand dollars. He is a good enough player that a few teams will roll the dice on him in the 2-way contract world.

As the Ray era ends I am struck by just how sad all this is. Sad that an athlete with such great promise and ability could have lost his way so badly that his team would rather pay to have him not be with them than pay to have him stay. Sad that his personal off ice issues have so negatively impacted what looked like a blossoming career. Sad that the Senators will lose the first top flight goalie they have ever developed from draft to starter. Sad that a goaltender could lead his team to the final and 1 year later there is no team in the league which will take him at anything but a bargain basement price because they fear his act may corrupt their dressing room.

I am not Dr.Phil but for those of us who are around the team day in day out are convinced that Ray is suffering from a massive identity crisis among other things. Ray grew up on a farm outside of Hamilton listening to country music. Ray’s fashion choices and body language leave most people (who do not know his background) believing he grew up in a large urban American centre listening to rap music. A great many people grow up to lead lifestyles very different from their parents, siblings and friends but Ray routinely put himself under the media and public microscope causing people to wonder what Ray really wanted. He always publicly stated he didn’t want or appreciate attention for anything other than his hockey but Ray found ways each week to put himself in the spotlight.

Note to self. Ways to not remain under the radar:
1-Drive big white Hummer.
2-Tatoo’s
3-Eat bugs for cash
4-Fist fight with team mates
5-Get in yelling matches with senior citizens on the highway.
6-Miss team flights
7-Miss team practices.
8-Stand around in practice like a pouting pylon
9-Leave practice early
10-Snarl at media for asking questions about any of the above.

I sincerely hope that Ray finds a way to retrieve his career and find himself as a person. I believe the latter will have the greatest affect on the career reconstruction. As a young, eager player trying to crack the NHL I liked Ray and liked his attitude and competitiveness in the times we spoke. I did not particularly like the angry, brooding malcontent he became and I have no clue how that happened since he stopped speaking to most people who covered the team except in a very superficial, Q&A type of setting. Sitting and chatting with Ray in a hotel lobby just stopped happening and I believe it also stopped happening with many of his team mates. That distance was not a good thing for anyone.

I am not saying Ray needs to make friends with the media or even his new team mates, but Ray I think has to find a way to make friends with himself and his personal demons and worry about hockey after that.

Best of luck Ray and I mean that sincerely.

See you at the rink.

Now sit on the egg for 10 years

2008-06-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

NHL entry draft week is over in Ottawa. Ask any team and they believe they got nothing but future stars and diamonds in the rough. That’s the wonderful thing about the draft; there is no way of knowing for 5 or 10 years whether it was a good draft for your team or a bad one. Every team believes it now has great potential which will evolve into promise and eventually production and ultimately a proven winner.

A couple of random thoughts about draft week in the Capital. A record 13 deals in the first round with 12 defencemen selected and 8 of them are right handed shots. It is rare that this many blue liners are good enough in one draft year to all go in the first round. Rarer still is this many right handed shots. It is one of the toughest things to find in the NHL with some teams unable to find even one good right handed shot for their team. To have this many in one draft in one round is unbelievable.

On Wednesday and Thursday the NHL staged its yearly broadcast meetings. These are for the on-air people along with all the producers and directors in TV and radio who broadcast NHL hockey. A wide range of topics are discussed over 2 days including content related issues and technical stuff which I don’t pretend to understand. We also get to have direct question and answer sessions with director of officiating Steven Walkom, Vice President of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell and Commissioner Gary Bettman. These are very frank and open debates about things where the broadcasters and the league must co-operate and there are some where the broadcasters and the league clash. Sometimes the discussions get very heated and that’s a good thing.

The one topic that drew the most debate and some of the more heated exchanges was about developing some system to get explanations of video reviews in a timely fashion. Broadcasters (as we always do) want a system that is immediate and there was even talk about having live cameras’ and microphones in the NHL’s War Room in Toronto where these calls are made. That will not happen, nor should it, but the league understands complete explanations are required as quickly as possible for the viewers and listeners but I am not sure they can ever be delivered as quickly as broadcasters want those answers.

I must say the one presentation that blew me away was from the people who run the NHL’s broadband department. When you see what the league is going to start rolling out on their website and the NHL on the Fly website you won’t believe it. It will be the best, most interactive and complete website of any of the major pro sports. If you want to see a goal that Daniel Alfredsson scored in a game 5 years ago it will be just a few clicks of the mouse.

All in all it was a great week in the Capital. There were a few glitches as there will always be with events of this size, but Ottawa looked pretty good on the NHL stage. Now all we have to do is wait for 2018 to figure out which team got the best picks of the 2008 draft.

See you at the rink.

I have questions.

2008-06-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

Just some things I am having a hard time figuring out. Maybe you can help me. I saw the on ice picture of Detroit after winning the cup in Pittsburgh. You know the traditional shot with the entire team lying on the ice with the cup at centre ice. Everyone is holding up 1 finger, you know the “we’re number one” gesture and almost everyone is wearing a ball cap which says Stanley Cup champs. Look on the bottom right of that picture and you will see Dominic Hasek. He is holding up 2 fingers making the peace sign, or I’m now number two, or maybe I’ve won 2 cups , or maybe I’ll take 2 vodka and soda’s please. I am not quite sure. Also he is the only one wearing a teuk in a building which was about 90 degrees or at least I think its a teuk. The Dominator has always been a different kind of guy. This is a portrait of just that. He is not trying to be different to make a point. He just is a different kind of cat and maybe the most interesting thing is, he has no clue he’s different.

Tampa fires a Stanley Cup winning coach (John Tortorella) who also was named coach of the year. According to reports new ownership plans to replace him with ESPN’s Barry Melrose who has not coached in the NHL in 13 years? One of the reasons speculated by the media is that the new ownership wants a high profile guy. A high profile coach would be Scotty Bowman or Mike Babcock or maybe a Stanley Cup winner like, oh maybe John Tortorella. Barry is only high profile as a hockey analyst on TV. Most believe poor coaching has not been Tampa’s problem, but rather the fact that they have so much money tied up in 4 players and have no goalie since they couldn’t not afford to keep Nikolai Khabibulin. I don’t see Barry Melrose changing that reality.

Ron Wilson is the new coach of the Leafs with a 4 year deal. Didn’t Cliff Fletcher say quite a while ago that a coach would not be hired before a new GM.? That the new GM should have the right to pick his own man. What changed? It couldn’t be that Brian Burke has let the Leafs know through indirect back channels that he would take the GM’s post next year when his Anaheim deal is up. Ron Wilson would likely be Burke’s man because of their long hockey and personal relationship. But that can’t be true. That would be tampering and that’s against the rules. No, that can’t be it.

CTV now owns the rights to the HNIC theme composed by Delores Claman and used by Hockey Night since 1968. According to media reports she has an on-going law suit for 2.5 million against the CBC for its overuse of the song. Also according to media reports CTV paid 2.5 million for the rights to the song. Could it be that this was more about hurt feelings and money?

I love the hockey song and it will be a great addition to the TSN and RDS broadcasts next season. But this contention that HNIC will never be the same is ridiculous? There was theme music on HNIC before 1968 and the country’s national fabric didn’t fray when that song was replaced. I seem to remember a world famous (not just Canadian famous) song and visual opening to ABC’s Wide World of Sports that was replaced, brought back and replaced again. I don’t see the United States, ABC Sports or that unfortunate ski jumper going to the federal government to complain like some of us.

Again it’s a great song, a great jingle but no greater or more widely listened to than the one that opened and closed Front Page Challenge. I think we’ve all gotten along just fine without that show and its jingle.

TSN’s broadcasts will sound great with that familiar tune, but TSN’s hockey broadcasts are about the hockey and they are excellent at it. Hockey Night in Canada ultimately is also an exceptionally good hockey show and that will not change.

Hey, I’ve got an idea! Since some say Delores’s song is like a 2nd National Anthem, why doesn’t CBC just use the first National Anthem to open their shows? I don’t believe you have to pay any rights fee to do that and those who believe #2 is a part of our national identity can’t complain when song #1 is nothing but our national identity. You could get different school kids to sing it each Saturday to open the show. Every Canadian born celebrity could take a crack at it and you never have to worry about Delores Claman again.

See you at the rink.

Lidstrom now semi-Canadian

2008-06-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

So are we now finally done with the Euro Captain thing?
Detroit won the cup and Nick Lidstrom becomes the first Euro to captain a team to the win. For years there has been a debate based on the fact that until now no team had won the cup with a Euro captain. They just didn’t have the right stuff. They just didn’t care as much as Canadian born players.

Well that has been wrong for sometime now, but just by coincidence a Euro had not worn the “C” on a championship team. The fact is this Detroit team is more team Sweden and team Euro than it is team Canada. Add to that the Conn Smythe Trophy winner in Henrik Zetterberg is also a Swede. He becomes just the 3rd non-Canadian to win. The other 2 were Brian Leetch and Nicklas Lidstrom.

Should we as Canadian hockey fans be fearful that we have lost our passion advantage? No! Absolutely not! There is no country in the world which cares more about hockey than ours and there is no country in the world which produces more high level players than Canada. That may change, but I doubt it and certainly not in our lifetime.

I love the fact that the non-Euro captain thing has finally been snapped. I love it because I love this game and if you love this game, you want others to love it as much as you do. The fact that other countries now have a passion for this game is a testament to how much we have impacted them not the other way around. Euro players and Euro hockey programs are trying to be more like us for a reason. We create more players, better players and more passionate players than anyone else. Lidstrom snapping the captain’s jinx will never diminish that but it will lessen the ridiculous notion that nobody can care as much as a Canadian. We just have more players who deeply care than any other country.

Congratulations Nick Lidstrom. You now qualify for Canadian citizenship. You need not write any other exam. You have already passed the only test we truly care about.

See you at the rink.

Sweden...er...Detroit wins!

2008-06-05T05:58:00.000-07:00

The Detroit Red Wings are the Stanley Cup Champions. There will be celebrations, a great deal of back slapping and the conversations which always start with “I told you in November…..”

In Pittsburgh the conversations will be about what happened. How the fairy tale could have ended without kissing the cup. There will be questions about coaching and the choice to not use Crosby on the penalty kill which led to reduced ice time for the kid when compared to the ice time of Detroit’s star forwards. There will be conversations about Malkin and his pressure/illness based collapse. There will also be conversations about puck luck, timing, one save here, one momentum swing there.

You can look for all the tiny indicators but the simple truth is Detroit was the better team and Pittsburgh is just not ready to win yet. Not yet mature enough, not yet experienced enough, not yet Stanley Cup ready.

Detroit had a marvelous season and capped it with a Cup victory. As I have said before, the only question I still have is (and will always be) unanswerable. Dallas in my estimation did all the heavy lifting for the Wings. Detroit never had to face the physical challenge of playing either Anaheim or San Jose. When they did play Dallas the Stars didn’t have much left in the tank. We will all just have to wonder if they could have met that physical challenge. The reality is Detroit played and beat every team put in front of them so second guessing the “what ifs” is a fools game left to us fools with Blogs and radio shows to chew on over and over again.

In only a few weeks we will all be forced by the inevitable hockey clock to ease up on our Cup reminiscences and start looking at what these 2 teams will look like next year. The RFA’s, the UFA’s, the draft picks and the surprise finds. The coaching vacancies, the GM vacancies and the health of the NHL.

Our league is now a 24/7/12 talking point. It is a discussion topic 365 days a year. Tedious to some, but I think a great sign that this league is now at the stage where there is rarely a time when fans don’t talk about it. That tells you it’s a part of their every day emotions. It has been that way through most of Canada for the better part of 100 years, but now it’s the same in many American markets too.

Congratulations Detroit!

Have a great summer….talking about hockey every day.

See you at the rink.

Stick to toe loops Elvis.

2008-05-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

Former Canadian figure skater Elvis Stojko and current Canadian Olympic paddler Adam Van Koeverden are having a disagreement. Elvis says Canadian Olympic athletes should make a political stand and boycott the Beijing games because of China’s human rights record. Van Koeverden says Stojko should keep his nose out of it. The Olympics are not supposed to be a political event. In fact the point is that in the past, countries which have been at war with each other still sent athletes who competed with honor and resolve on a world stage. Oh ya, those Berlin games had a lot of political meaning, but the athletes still went.

I don’t have a problem at all with Elvis having a point of view and a conviction. But telling other people what to do about his point of view and conviction is a little much. I would much rather hear about what Elvis himself plans to do to make a point about China. Elvis said if he were competing today he would “consider” boycotting. WOW Elvis you are really making a stand here! You can’t even be definitive about a hypothetic? Maybe Elvis will make a strong move to show how much he cares by banning himself from ever using the music from Dragon (the Bruce Lee story) in his routines again? That will teach them!

Funny thing though. Maybe I just missed it, but since it started in 2003 the Cup of China has been on the Grand Prix Figure skating tour and I cant remember Elvis telling Jeffrey Buttle, Joannie Rochette or Emanuel Sandhu to stay home as Canadians of good conscience. See that’s the problem. Once you start telling someone else what their moral code should be, people start looking at yours and nobody can stand up to that scrutiny.

In 1991 Elvis was 6th in the games in Albertville, France and he was 8th in 2002 in Salt Lake. Let’s skip those Olympics and look at the ones where he won something.

Elvis won a silver medal in the Lillehammer Olympics in Norway in 1994. Let’s just think back to some of the things he could have boycotted the games over to make a political statement. War in Sarajevo, massacres in Rwanda, the U.S. sent troops into the Persian Gulf, The Russians attacked the Republic of Chechnya, fellow figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked, Bill Clinton was accused of sexual harassment, Kurt Cobain killed himself, OJ was arrested for allegedly killing his wife and a friend, a MLB players strike and no World Series, Dallas beat Buffalo in the Superbowl, the Rangers beat Vancouver in the Stanley cup and Canadian icon John Candy died. Clearly many, many important things to make a stand over. Elvis went to the games. Guess he didn’t know or care about the other stuff.

In 1998 Elvis went to Nagano, Japan and won a silver medal and I guess he didn’t feel there was anything happening in the world worth making a political statement over. Let’s see what was happening in 1998. There was that Serb/Albanian blood fest in Kosovo, India had 3 atomic bomb tests, Pakistan had 5, Bill Clinton ordered air strikes on Iraq, embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, the Russian economy collapsed, Bill Clinton was accused of doing naughty things in his office, Monica Lewinsky bought a new dress, the Unabomber was sentenced to 4 life sentences, impeachment proceedings began against Clinton and he was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, a gay student in Wyoming was beaten to death in a hate crime, Dow Corning Corporation agreed to a $3.2 billion settlement for tens of thousands of women claiming injury from silicone breast implants. Gene Autry, Sonny Bono and Frank Sinatra all died that year. Plenty to protest there for sure.

It’s like going to a nice restaurant for dinner and complaining to the piano player about your meal. He didn’t cook it or serve it. His job is to play the piano. Adam Van Koeverden’s job is to paddle. If Elvis feels this strongly about it call the IOC. I am sure they’d take the call after all he’s a former Olympian. Maybe stage a hunger protest outside the IOC’s offices or…oops…there I go telling someone what to do. Isn’t that rude of me.

How about this for a deal. Politics and making political or moral stands are very personal things. What is right and true for you may be meaningless to someone else. It doesn’t make them a bad person; it just makes them a person who doesn’t care as deeply about that cause as you do. I have a huge problem personally with China’s human rights record, but I am not going to tell someone else what they should do about it.

So why don’t former Olympians refrain from telling current Olympians how to live their lives and what they are supposed to care about. Elvis is currently still skating, acting, singing, and involved in martial arts and dirt biking according to his website. We will all assume none of those activities will occur in China and I am sure Chinese culture will be the poorer for it.

See you at the rink.

Wings owe the Stars

2008-05-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

The Detroit Red Wings are now headed to the Stanley Cup final after beating the Dallas Stars in the Western Conference final 4 games to 2. When the final game ended and the players lined up to shake hands, the Wings were likely more grateful than they let on. Not because the series went longer than the apparent 4 game sweep it looked to be early on, but rather because Dallas had done the Wings a great service before this series even started.

Despite winning the Presidents Trophy and having the best record in the NHL almost wire-to-wire, the Wings were not chosen by many to win the cup. Nagging concerns about Detroit’s ability to play a physical series and win it. Uncertainty about the legitimacy of the Wings regular season point totals based on the fact they play in the worst or second worst division in hockey depending on your assessment of the Central and Southeast divisions and which one was weaker. Add to that the historical fact that few teams which win the Presidents Trophy actually win the Stanley Cup and Detroit was missing from the top of many experts’ prognostication lists.

But in comes Dallas and takes care of Anaheim and San Jose for the Wings and in the process drains themselves of the kind of gas you need to win this marathon. We will never know if this Detroit team would have survived a grinding, physical series with the larger and meaner Sharks and/or Ducks. My thought is no. But that is how the playoffs work. You don’t get to pick your opponent and the only thing you can do is play the team in front of you. It’s not the Wings fault, but it certainly was to their advantage and it’s the Dallas Stars who provided that advantage.

In Detroit they will not be wondering or worrying about these questions as they head to the final nor should they. Debates about how easy or tough a run to the final are, happen in the cities where their team didn’t get to make that run. In Dallas it will be a debate. How would the Stars have fared had they been afforded the opportunity to play Nashville and Colorado instead of Anaheim and San Jose?

Everyone who has won the cup says (amongst many things) that you have to have some luck and you have to have at least one easy series. Detroit must thank the hockey gods for the luck, and Dallas for taking care of the Ducks and Sharks for them.

See you at the rink.

Too much too soon?

2008-05-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

The Penguins are on their way to the Stanley Cup final. The 3 to 5 year building plan has suddenly become a 2 year plan. The Kid Crew was bounced in the first round last year by Ottawa and obviously learned some valuable lessons. The next year they skip the normal 3 or 4 years of almost getting there, with now, a legitimate shot at the cup.

Based on their age, experience and Detroit’s age and experience the Wings have to be considered the favorites, when they finally get around to finishing off the Stars and officially advance to meet the Penguins. Pittsburgh may be the underdog but you just don’t know until you play the games.

Both these teams will want to play a puck possession game, but Detroit is the better team in that regard. Detroit has the edge in both performance and experience in goal. We can run down all the columns and compare them all. That will happen over and over again until the series begins, but the one factor I am looking at the most is the “free pass” factor.

One of the things I was told about and realized last year in the final is the fact that there are certain players because of their age or reputation or star status who are allowed to do things which other players are not, they often get a “free pass”. Last year in the final Scott Neidermayer and Chris Pronger were allowed to do things which no Ottawa player could get away with on a regular basis. If you go through the Stanley Cup winning teams of years past the winning team usually has 1 or 2 of those kinds of players. Tampa had Vince Lecavalier and Dave Andreychuck and try to remember back to some of the things Messier, Stevens, Brind’Amour and others were allowed to do. It’s one of the reasons those players are so valuable. They are not only great players, but in the biggest games, they get a wider berth than most others.

In this all important area the Wings are the heavy favorites. Pittsburgh has Crosby and after that nobody who fits into the “free pass” category. Detroit has a list of guys who will get more leeway. Nick Lidstrom, Chris Chelios, Chris Draper, Thomas Holmstrom, along with Zetterberg and Datsyuk.

There are always complaints about officiating in the final. My prediction is the heaviest complaints will come from Pittsburgh and they may well have a case. They won’t be the first or last to discover reputation, vintage and star status do play a big part in the final like it or not.

See you at the rink.

Negative Canada.

2008-05-05T06:35:00.000-07:00

The San Jose Sharks were bounced from the NHL playoffs last night, falling in quadruple overtime in Dallas. A very impressive comeback after being down 3-0 in the series, they did not give up and nearly became only the third team in NHL history to come back from 3-0 to win a series.

Now that it is over, what if anything will become of Sharks head coach Ron Wilson. There was speculation prior to the playoffs starting that his job was on the line if the Sharks didn’t go deep into the post season. Is the 2nd round deep enough? That will be an interesting situation to watch as most hockey observers put San Jose and Ottawa in the same boat. Both have so much talent on paper, but for some reason can’t get over the hump.

What happens if Wilson is fired? There is no question he will get another coaching job, but he may have reduced the marketplace for himself by six teams.

As I am sure you have seen or heard his little snit fit while doing an in-game interview with TSN reporter Jermain Franklin, who asked Wilson last Sunday whether he needed more out of his captain Patrick Marleau. Wilson’s face was blank and then he said, no, and then walked away, muttering: "It's always freaking negative. That's TSN, that's Canada."

Poor Jermain has been skewered by almost everyone for his question which Don Cherry called “stupid”. I would not go that far, but rarely will a coach respond when you are essentially asking him to criticize his player during a playoff series. So Jermain learned a lesson and Wilson confirmed what many people in the business believe about him. That he is arrogant and has nothing but disdain for the media and especially the Canadian media.

I do not know Ron Wilson other than the few times I have been on hand for media scrums and interviews. I have never had a one-on-one conversation with him nor have I covered the team on a daily basis the way the San Jose reporters do, as few of them as there are. But when you have listened to others who talk about Wilson and then see a display like this, it does make you wonder if the rumors are true. I have had coaches tell me that Wilson is the type of guy who believes he invented hockey or at least re-invented it.

So why does Wilson believe TSN and in fact all of the Canadian media are negative? Could it be that as a control freak he hates the fact he can not manipulate them the way he does some others? Is it because he lives in a world where very little media, especially national media, covers his team thus he believes anything that is not complimentary is automatically negative reporting? Maybe Ron just thinks everyone is dumb compared to him.

I watch TSN everyday as I am sure you do also. They do some of the best sports programming in the world and the talent and resources they put into hockey are second to none. I do not find TSN to be constantly negative but rather constantly opinionated and some of those opinions are not positive. I believe viewers want to hear those opinions thus TSN is servicing its client base even if Ron Wilson isn’t one of them. But clearly he is. You have to watch something more than once or twice to believe that as a broadcaster they are negative across the board.

If Coach Wilson is fired and is looking for another job, it will have to be in his own country. If he cant handle TSN’s, and in fact our national negativity, while in the hockey cocoon in San Jose, just imagine what he would say each day being questioned by dozens of reporters in a Canadian city.

This also means the rumors about Wilson can not be true. He could not have invented hockey or even re-invented it. If he had, the game would have no media, no TSN and no Canada. Oh, hold on a minute there, if none of those things existed there wouldn’t be an NHL and there would be no Sharks, and they wouldn’t need a coach and Ron would be….well….I don’t know where he would be, but where ever it is, he would be the smartest guy there.

See you at the rink.

Impossible Perfection

2008-04-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

The biggest single problem in the NHL today is officiating. Everyone except the NHL head office agrees on that. What is the solution? There isn’t one and everybody knows it.

The problem is the expectation level is now so high there is no human being or group of human beings who could ever officiate the fastest non-motorized team sport in the world and call each foul and make the correct call on each play. A perfectly officiated game has never occurred and will never occur. Just like a perfect game has never been played and never will.

The NHL wants the fans and media to stop talking about it because the league believes it distracts everyone from the high level of play and diminishes the excitement that the best players in the world create. In reality the excitement level can be highest when officiating is a central part of the game. It’s one of those unpredictable components of live sports which make it exciting in both good and bad was, but it is exciting.

The NHL would most like the media to stop talking about officiating because it believes the media incites the fans into their displeasure by repeatedly showing blown or missed calls and then using their expertise to explain to the common fan how bad a call it was and why. Second guessing and critiquing officiating is now almost a secondary sport unto itself but is the media, especially the broadcast media, really doing the fans a dis-service when they don’t call and or comment on all facets of the game. Especially when some of these calls or non-calls directly result in goals, wins and losses? Sometimes a bad call or a non-call really does cost someone a game and the media should not comment on that? I agree that a never ending preoccupation with officiating during a broadcast is not productive, but a fearful aversion to any negative officiating analysis is cheating the fans of the coverage they deserve.

Network TV doesn’t help in this regard. While there has never been a perfect broadcast, the level of expertise and technology in network TV has never been higher. There is very little which is missed by the cameras and often it’s in beautiful high definition where something the size of the head of a pin can be microscopically analyzed. This time of year the production trucks are filled with the most experienced and very best producers and directors in hockey and their talents bring everything to the surface for both appreciation and exasperation by the fans.

Let’s look at last night’s controversial call in the San Jose/Dallas game. Marty Turco is down and we can see clearly he did not have the puck covered and it was poked into the net. The goal was waived off by the official because he had lost sight of the puck. This morning I was listening to the debates on radio. One of them was that the official was in the wrong place on the ice. The fact is, he was in the right place and made the right call but TV is right there to magnify the fallibility of human referees. Media and the fans now have come to expect technology can fix everything. Every play should be reviewable, every foul should be called, every game should be perfect. It is both impractical and impossible.

Officials try each game to call things fair and equal. At least that’s what they say. It’s a great goal to work towards, but it’s ultimately impossible. Officials are human beings and as such are prone to the same things the rest of us are. Why do some players get away with things others do not? Why do some teams seem to get an unfair shake from certain officials? How can a coach or player expect to get a completely unbiased call from an official when those same players and coaches often scream at and berate certain officials?

If I were an official I would have grudges and historical bias towards certain players, coaches and teams based on the way I had been treated by them in the past. I like the officials in the NHL would never admit it publicly but let’s face it, it is human nature. Pretending it doesn’t exist is naive.

So there it is. The bottom line in officiating is “S___T Happens” and that will never change no matter how much technology is added to the process. Technology has only increased the fodder for our debates not decreased their likelihood.

Here is another undeniable truth. Everyone except the NHL believes officiating is the leagues single biggest problem yet the officials we have are the best in the world. It can not be called by someone else who is better. We already have the best.

Technology has shown us all the warts. We knew they were there before, but now they are shoved in our faces in high definition and everyone knows a wart under a microscope is not pretty. But when that wart is on the chin of your loving grand mother, you choose not to focus on it because everything else in that dress and sensible shoes you love so much more. Try to think of that when next you want to dump on this game and its officials. If you can look for what you really love about the NHL without focusing so much on a wart that can never and will never go away. If you can’t, just keep on bitching about things you can’t change. It’s a useless waste of emotion but its everyone’s right to waste it if they choose to.

See you at the rink.

Coach of the Year

2008-04-30T09:51:00.000-07:00

Who picks the coach of the year in the NHL? Who picks the other award winners? When do they do the voting? Does playoff performance have an impact? These are the questions often asked at this time of year when the 3 finalists are named in each of the NHL’s individual award categories are named.

For most of the individual player awards the voting is done by the NHL writers. Each NHL city is given a certain number of writer votes. Every NHL writer does not get a vote. It prevents certain cities from have voting dominance based solely on the fact they live in a city where there are more writers like Toronto, Montreal and New York.

The Jack Adams trophy for the coach of the year is voted on by the NHLBA. That’s the NHL broadcasters association. Only play-by-play and color announcers who a dues paying members are entitled to vote. The ballot has 3 positions on it for first, second and third place. Points are given to each position. 5 points for a first place vote, 3 for a second place vote and 1 point for a third place vote. So technically it is possible to win the coach of the year and yet not have received any first place votes as long as the coach receives enough points through second and third place nominations. To my knowledge it has never actually happened.

For both the player awards and the coach of the year award, the ballots must be in by the end of the regular season. Thus playoff success or failure has no impact on who wins the awards with the obvious exception being the Conn Smythe trophy for playoff MVP.

As I mentioned the Writers do most of the voting with the exception of the Jennings, Rocket Richard and Art Ross trophy’s which are awarded based on simple mathematical performance. The GMs’ vote on the Vezina, the Governors vote on the King Clancy.

Often we get asked why playoff performance is not taken into account for many of these awards especially the Jack Adams and the Hart Trophy as the league MVP. It is true that often coaches and special players separate themselves from the pack in the playoffs and when the awards ultimately don’t reflect that it does seem uneven when the hardware is handed out. The problem is logistics. With writers and broadcasters all over North America, the ballots are still done manually. That means a piece of paper, a pen, an envelope and a stamp. With the awards being handed out in June shortly after the Stanley Cup is awarded, there would be no way to get the votes in, counted and then arrangements made to try and get as many of the award winners at the cerimony as possible.

It is not a perfect system, but it’s the only one which works for now. I can see a day in the very near future where it will all be done electronically so there is a possibility of having playoff performance included in the decision making process. But that still would not make it all completely without controversy. Firstly this league has so many great players you could argue for 3 or 4 or 5 guys for almost every award and none of the answers would be wrong. Second you can’t take a personal proclivity out of the voting process.

I will use the Hart Trophy as the example. This is supposed to be awarded to the player who is most valuable to his team. It is not necessarily the best player in the league. If Sydney Crosby is the best player in the NHL is he the MVP even though his team didn’t miss a beat when he was injured? Is Martin Brodeur the MVP since most hockey people believe that the Devils would be average or below average as a team if they didn’t have him. He clearly is a player who is hugely important to his team. The reality is many writers don’t bother to weigh team importance because it’s impossible to judge in any non subjective way. So they just pick who they think is the best player in the league.

Another example is the Lady Bing. Nobody really wants to win this award as the most gentlemanly player but for some reason writers don’t believe a defenceman can win it. I had a discussion with a writer friend of mine years ago and I used Igor Kravchuck as an example. In the 1997-1998 season he played 81 games, had 35 points, was a plus player on a winning team in a position where you can not avoid body contact and he had only 8 penalty minutes playing about 23 minutes per game. Even though he probably would not want to win it, but how can a guy like that be overlooked. I was told he is a defenceman and they don’t win the Lady. I checked the criteria and nothing says the writers can’t vote for a defenceman, but for some reason over time, it’s been decided nobody does.

See you at the rink.

My week with Harry and the Kids in the Prior.

2008-04-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

I arrived back home in Ottawa on Monday after flying all day from Nashville, through Washington and finally into Ottawa. Doing the play-by-play of the Detroit/Nashville series on Hockey Night in Canada was a great experience for me because of Harry. I had worked with Harry Neale before in single games, but on a playoff series the whole crew pretty much stays together til its over. I spent most of the week with Harry, producer Larry Issac, director Jacques Primeau and host Scott Oake. The best part of all the time I spent was with Harry. When you get that much time you get a chance to prompt him on all the hundreds of stories he has from a life in hockey. Coaching Gordie Howe. His time in Vancouver and Detroit and the years of broadcasting with hall of famer Bob Cole. I must say I am shocked that Harry is not in the Hall of Fame. He should be and I believe will be and if I had a vote it would already be cast.

When I got home on Monday one of my oldest friends Cam Baldwin arrived from Winnipeg. His son Corbin was playing in the Telus Cup National Midget Championship in Arnprior for the Winnipeg Thrashers. The kid is 16 years old and already 6’5” and drafted by Spokane in the Western League. His team is unbelievable. The Thrashers lost one tournament game early in the season, did not lose a regular season game in Manitoba and lost just once in the regional round robin to the Notre Dame Hounds who they beat in the regional final to get to Arnprior.

After watching the games in Arnprior I found myself with a very settled feeling about where we are going as a nation with our developmental programs. The hockey at the Telus cup from these 15 and 16 year olds was amazing. The Ottawa Valley Titans are a hell of a team and had a great season and they couldn't win a game in this tournament. It tells you how good the best midget players in Canada really are.

If you want to see the kids that are coming down the hockey pipe in the next few years, you may want to check it out today in Arnprior for the semi’s and the bronze medal game tomorrow at 10am and the gold medal game at 4pm with the delayed broadcast at 6pm on TSN. These kids are fantastic and well worth the watch.

See you at the rink.