Now sit on the egg for 10 years

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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?

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.