Gross Misconduct... HAS MOVED!

Inexcusable: CCHA Votes Down Alabama-Huntsville

2009-08-11T19:21:00.005-04:00

Today saw news that should make college hockey fans across America and parts elsewhere really upset:

CCHA Denies Alabama-Huntsville for Conference Admission

The CCHA has denied Alabama-Huntsville’s application for admission, putting the program’s future in even more jeopardy.

The Chargers are members of the CHA, which is set to disband after the 2009-10 season. The three other members have found other conferences, and UAH targeted the CCHA.

But the CCHA Council, a body made up of athletic administrators and faculty athletic representatives, on Tuesday voted by acclamation to deny UAH’s application for membership.

Well isn't that nice.

The CHA is disbanding because the other three members of the conference have found more convenient homes for the 2010-2011 season. Bemidji State, an enjoyed program of this blog, is moving to the WCHA with soon-to-be former CCHA patron Nebraska-Omaha. Robert Morris University and Niagara University of the lame-duck CHA will move along to the alive-yet-weak Atlantic Hockey Association.

This situation left Alabama-Huntsville on the outside looking in. Given that they're the only college hockey program located in the deep south, their program is one that has always raised eyebrows with casual observers of college hockey.

Hell, even long time college fans weren't always aware of the Alabama-Huntsville Chargers - that is until 2007 when the bottom-seeded Chargers took top seeded Notre Dame to double-overtime in the first round of the NCAA Tournament before ultimately falling to the Fighting Irish 3-2 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Coincidentally enough, it was the same Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids that saw soon-to-be former CHA mates Bemidji State upset Notre Dame and Cornell just this past year in the NCAA Tournament earning them their first Frozen Four appearance as well as the acceptance of the WCHA to join their "exclusive" club of teams.

Fate is one cruel bitch.

"Et tu... All of you?!"

What's fun about this announcement is that the CCHA decided to vote by acclimation so that no one school has to take the heat from the rest of the college hockey loving world for basically sending Alabama-Huntsville's hockey program out to pasture.

Yes, that's right, their hockey program is in a very bad spot right now. Other conferences that could have had UAH join up with them have already filled their ranks. That's not to say that the WCHA was even a possible destination for the Chargers, but at least they were one of the conferences looking to expand.

Atlantic Hockey and the CCHA were it as far as geographic common sense and flexibility go. Atlantic Hockey made their move by bringing aboard the two logical CHA squads in Robert Morris (Pittsburgh, PA) and Niagara (near Buffalo, NY). Both the ECAC and Hockey East are much too far out of the way in the northeast and are set with their number of teams.

UAH is now looking at life, once again, as an independent team. They spent their first year back in Division I hockey as an independent in 1998-1999 but then joined the CHA after that. Previous to that, they were a Division II team for six seasons and a damn good one winning two Division II championships, thus making their jump back to Division I (after spending five years there from 1987-1992 as independents) one that made a world of sense.

Now? Limbo awaits the Chargers. Life as an independent team in Division I hockey is one that doesn't lend itself well to any kind of success, be it on the ice or financially. Having no conference affiliation means there's no conference tournament to play in and win a berth to the NCAA Tournament.

Having life as an independent should, ideally, mean that scheduling gets to be easier as you can pick and choose from any of the other 58 D-I schools. Problem with that is, everyone else is playing in a conference and subject to their own conference schedule dominating their weekly lives and having to live by the scraps of open dates the schedule allows to make games with other schools.

D-I football is perhaps the best high profile way we can look at how UAH may have to handle their new lives, should they choose to keep it up. In the past, there had always been a rather large handful of teams amongst the Independent ranks in college football.

Now there are three: Notre Dame, Army and Navy. What these three teams have in common is playing against each other as well as a hearty mix of cream puffs and menacing world beaters. Hell, even Army football gets a game against VMI each year so they're guaranteed to not go winless.

Obviously Notre Dame sticks out here as the "shining example" of how to be a successful independent program. Then again, Notre Dame football is a beast unto itself having NBC carrying all their home games and a ridiculous legacy that is eternally fellated whether the team is any good or not.

Alabama-Huntsville hockey won't exactly have any of these luxuries. There is no lucrative television contract to give the school money nor are there well-placed media pundits out there to proclaim the wonder and glory of Chargers hockey. It's just how it is but the future is certainly very bleak for the sole Division I hockey program in the deep south.

For what it's worth, the 2012 Frozen Four being held in Tampa, Florida is set to be hosted by none other than the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Given that this location has already been beset by bad press, most of which centered around the owners of the Tampa Bay Lightning bailing out of a college hockey tournament set to be hosted in Tampa last year, Alabama-Huntsville having their program potentially folding before the Frozen Four even arrives in Florida would be a tremendous black eye on college hockey.

For now though, UAH hangs on while the CCHA will have to take their much-deserved lumps for leaving a program out in the cold with little to no explanation:

“The league completed its due diligence of the application for membership submitted by the University of Alabama in Huntsville with careful consideration and discussion of various issues,” CCHA commissioner Tom Anastos said in a news release. “At this time we have chosen to maintain our membership at its current level.

“The CCHA will remain focused on maintaining and strengthening our existing members to ensure the conference’s continued success and long-term viability.”

There's a lot of buzzwords in there but what this boils down to for the CCHA is that they're playing wait-and-see, which in this case, amounts to a game of chicken where they're not risking a damn thing for themselves.

At stake here instantly is the future of Alabama-Huntsville hockey but there are some other things that come into play here. Whether it's the imminent failure of another of its member teams in Bowling Green or the rise of a program out of the club ranks with a huge name to lend further credibility to both the CCHA and college hockey will remain to be seen.

If the CCHA has the ability to see the future and those situations do arise, I am sure they can also handle the responsibility of having the blood of potentially two (or maybe more) programs on their hands while allowing college hockey to become an even less-relevant niche sport on the collegiate landscape.

A year from now we could be just laughing at all of this as an incredible overreaction when the CCHA votes to allow UAH to join up with them after Bowling Green and other struggling CCHA members all find ways to prove their commitments to college hockey for the future and its all fun and games.

Then again, a year from now we could be looking at this vote to exclude UAH from the CCHAs reindeer games as the first domino to fall in what could prove to be a herd-thinning situation in college hockey.

RPI Plans To Take More Money From Fans

2009-07-31T00:10:00.008-04:00

One of the collegiate guilty pleasures you're going to have to get better accustomed to if you're a follower here is my fandom of the ECAC's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI, if you're nasty). The majority of my college hockey watching takes place at Houston Field House and I can virtually always be found there taking in an RPI game during hockey season.

So if you want to get into stalking me, enjoy beautiful Troy, NY.

So if you're curious as to why this latest bit of information from RPI found its way onto my radar, well, there you go. It reads like the standard "season is approaching, get ready to buy tickets" type of news, but this year there's a new spin.

The general public price remains as it has been in recent years for 14 home games, while four games feature premium pricing. The majority of contests will cost $10 for adults and $7 for children & seniors, while the four premium-priced games are $13 for adults and $10 for children & seniors.

The games with premium pricing are those against Cornell University on December 4, Union College on December 9, Clarkson University on February 6 and Princeton University on February 20.

That's right, premium ticketing comes to ECAC Athletics. At long last fans can feel like they're part of the big time as they'll pay up more for tickets to the games they REALLY want to be at.

Great.

What do you think of this Dr. Horse?

Hmm... No sir, I don't like it.

OK so I'm having some fun here because being dreadfully serious is dreadfully boring and this isn't a topic that deserves to be lambasted, but it is a bit troubling for the future.

Premium ticketing for certain games is something that's not new to sports fans in general (many NHL teams already do this including the Sabres) and, let's face it, the cost for RPI games isn't outrageous by any means. A weekend homestand will run you $20, there's no price for parking and you'll get a good night out of hockey in, at the least, a semi-festive college environment.

What's a bit disturbing about this is, of course, the timing. RPI appears to be a team headed in the right direction.

After a poor regular season, the Engineers found their way in the playoffs upsetting and sweeping sixth seeded Dartmouth in the ECAC tournament first round and then taking ECAC Tournament finalists Cornell to three games in the quarterfinals before losing.

This year, the Engineers bring in two 2009 NHL Draft Picks with forwards Brandon Pirri (2nd round 59th overall to Chicago) and Jerry D'Amigo (6th round 158th overall to Toronto) as well as other forwards C.J. Lee and Marty O'Grady to join an already very young team. RPI has struggled and head coach Seth Appert has, for all intents and purposes, rebuilt the program in the last three years at the helm.

Whether the progress continues to bring success hinges a lot upon what this new crop of players can do immediately and with that the folks at RPI have apparently decided that folks will pony up no matter what, especially for certain games. The games they've got picked out are the traditional big ticket games each year taking advantage of the opponent or the situation.

Puckman wants to see you in Troy... And make you pay for it.

In the case with the game against Cornell, RPI is looking to capitalize upon the swarm of visitors that descend upon Troy from Ithaca each year and looking to make a few more bucks off of the fans from Cornell... Well really, paying more to come to Troy will really stick in their collective craws and that's just fun to make them upset.

Much is the same with the fans coming from Schenectady from Union College. Making those folks pay a few bucks more for the pleasure of visiting Troy makes me laugh because they hate to do it.

RPI's games against Clarkson and Princeton in February actually are premium tickets as far as RPI fans are concerned.

RPI and Clarkson are big time rivals in the ECAC, at least they are from RPI's standpoint. Clarkson tends to have more rivalry-like hate for the likes of St. Lawrence and Cornell. In this case, RPI has chosen their game against Clarkson to be Alumni night and they'll be honoring the 1985 National Championship as it'll be the 25th Anniversary of RPIs last national title and hey, you don't need a good excuse to bring Adam Oates and Daren Puppa back to town now do you?

Putting this event the same night as their game with Clarkson is a really nice coincidence though.

The game with Princeton is a convenient double-whammy as Princeton, traditionally, brings very few fans on the road which will not help them as this game is RPIs annual Big Red Freakout as well as senior night.

As that link explaining the Big Red Freakout says, fans can thank RPI for the NCAA rule banning noisemakers at games as the gift given out to fans in 1987 were horns and well... Wild, rambunctious and boozed up college kids with horns at a hockey game? I can't see how that ever turned out badly.

RPIs record in the Big Red Freakout is something quite remarkable (18-9-5 since 1978) and they'll be looking to get off a three-year winless streak in 2010 as well as avenging their Freakout loss to Princeton two years ago that saw the Engineers lose 4-0 in a game that wasn't even as close as that score indicates.

Four premium ticket games, two of which are actually premium games that will very likely be sellouts. It's a shrewd financially-driven decision by RPI to do this and, let's face it they're going to get the money they're looking for here. It is a choice that I worry will be taken advantage of in future seasons and leading to ticket prices going up.

After all, RPI does have a nice new athletic facility to show off and try to make money off of (not that it has anything to do with the hockey program) but since RPI has made headlines locally for cutting jobs and talking about financial hardships making a few bucks off their only Division I men's athletic program should be no surprise.

That's a whole 'nother rant entirely however.

I wanted to really tear ass about this more, but I can understand why RPI is doing premium ticket pricing for these games, I just hope that this isn't a harbinger of doom for the future.

Sure, college hockey ticket prices are a bit higher in the midwest (Denver University's single game tickets range between $17-$35 for example), but the demand out there is much higher as well so it makes sense. If RPI starts winning again, the long lost dormant RPI fans will come back and the students will be out in force if for no other reason than to be seen at the games.

As it is, the exhibition game with Prince Edward Island on October 3rd is a date most RPI fans cannot wait for just so they can finally get a look at guys like Pirri and D'Amigo on the ice in cherry, white and black.

I'm sure the coaching staff is hoping that the new class is able to inspire more goals and victories and make the fans want to come to Troy on the weekends once again.

The Most Interesting Free Agent In The World

2009-07-24T18:11:00.007-04:00

Free agency season has died down and while there are still quite a few intriguing names left floating about while teams figure their cap situations out, there's one man out there who remains and his legend now grows as the pickings get slimmer.

His reputation is expanding faster than the universe you might say.

He's a man who has played in the NHL for nine seasons, almost all of them healthy... Except for his most recent when he got injured more seriously just to see how it felt.

He's never scored more than 30 goals in a season but passes with the greatest of ease despite being a left wing.

His blood smells just like cologne.

Darryl Sutter once traded for him because he was intrigued by how he might work with Jarome Iginla.

His hairless face has experienced more playoff success than the San Jose Sharks.

He's been known to cure a struggling offense just by walking into the room.

If you're the GM of the Coyotes, Panthers, or a host of other NHL teams perhaps you too would be interested in the most interesting free agent in the world.

When Alex Tanguay drinks, he prefers something with an umbrella in it.

Or perhaps you'd just rather have a shitty Mexican beer.

Alex Tanguay is certainly getting a lot of attention and sure, much of it is deserved. He played 50 games for the Canadiens last year and scored 40 points. Not bad. Not great, but not bad either. Teams that are in the hunt for him, the aforementioned Panthers and Coyotes could sure use a big point producer to help out. Florida in particular would make for a great destination with the emerging David Booth and the host of snipers situated in Miami right now.

These teams in the hunt for Alex Tanguay had better know what they're getting though.

They're not getting a big goal scoring winger.

Tanguay is a set-up guy and would fit in ideally on a team that has a center that likes to score goals (well hello Tampa Bay) or on a line with enough offensive talent to make sure that Tanguay's short comings (doesn't play physical at all) don't short-circuit the entire line (Ottawa, Dallas, even Phoenix perhaps).

Alex Tanguay is the ideal support piece for a team's offense but he's not the main event scorer. Of course, now that just about every main event scorer is off the market, Alex Tanguay is the last guy out there who has put up big offensive numbers in the past and will, likely, be able to get (over) paid by someone desperate.

Buyer beware because the Most Interesting Free Agent In The World is a lover not a fighter... ~~But he's also a fighter so don't get any ideas~~ He's a total pansy, have at it.

Stay thirsty, GMs.

Bettman's Stick Gets Caught In The Spokes

2009-07-20T01:39:00.008-04:00

A tip of my cap to Andrew Bucholtz for tipping me off to a brief footnote in a Globe and Mail column by Bruce Dowgibbin providing me with some more cannon fodder for our dear diminutive NHL figurehead.

Let's just cut to the quick:

Has Lance Armstrong become the Tiger Woods of cycling? The controversial American has been away from the Tour de France since 2005, but is making a comeback this year. For the first 10 stages of the 2009 Tour de France, ratings for Versus’ coverage are up 77 per cent through the comparable point last year. That includes an 85-per-cent rise among men 18 to 34 and 132 per cent for men 18 to 49. The 479,800 viewers for the Tour de France tops the 442,300 viewers Versus averaged for the first round of the ’09 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Yeah, I know the off-season is tough so we're reduced to cycling news and talking about Lance Armstrong and...

Wait a second, what was that?

The 479,800 viewers for the Tour de France tops the 442,300 viewers Versus averaged for the first round of the ’09 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Cycling is doing better than the NHL on television when the cycling takes place while most Americans are supposed to be at work and away from television sets.

Un. Freaking. Real.

Suck it Gary, this one's for you!

Remember, the NHL airs during prime time hours and they attempt to cater at will to anyone and everyone, meanwhile dudes in spandex riding a bike (RIDING A BIKE) do better TV business than the NHL on the SAME DAMN NETWORK?!

Wow.

I can see the visionary changes with Versus and the NHL now.

Games played at 11 in the morning on a mountain in Europe and changes to the uniforms to make them even tighter than they are now and more expensive for fans to purchase just so the league can cash in on this cycling craze that has the ratings all abuzz.

Leadership: You're (Still) Doing It Wrong

Better yet, let's just get right down to what this means for the NHL.

Bicycle Ice Polo.

Get ready for it - it'll be the most difficult sport ever created and it'll come to Versus because some inept boob can't make his current sport more popular/noticeable/marketable/affordable.

How can this leadership failure be allowed to continue? It'll be fun when the salary cap falls by $5 million dollars after this upcoming season and teams start to really cry foul about money. Good thing the NHL extended that non-lucrative TV contract with NBC recently because, really, who needs TV money to survive anyway?

Future NHL Ticket Purchases: Doing It Really Old School

Not Herr Bettman and certainly not the NHL - they operate in a world without money. They operate in the South Pacific islands where bartering is legal tender. Make sure you brought enough chickens and volcanic stones to the ticket office so you can see a game this season.

New Faces In New Places: Smorgasbord

2009-07-18T18:36:00.006-04:00

After what a rousing hit the last set of premonition photos were with Tampa Bay and Washington...

...Wait, what's that Professor Frink?

Ahh, yes, good to see yours is working. Well played, sir. Glavin!

Since folks aren't overly entertained by the Lightning nor the Capitals it was high time to step it up in a big way. Again big thanks to EA Sports and XBox Live for providing the means to whet all of your appetites for the upcoming season.

This time the top pick in the 2009 NHL Draft makes his (sort of) video game debut, the New York Rangers unveil an entirely new lineup, Professor Pronger dons the black and orange, Nikolai Khabibulin does his best Andy Moog impression and a guy lets his new paycheck commit to the Indian in Chicago.

I'm going to let these photos appear to be a bit smaller on the page here because there are A LOT of them, but as always, feel free to click on them to make them reasonably life size on your screen.

2009 #1 Draft Pick Jonathan Tavares slips around 2009 #3 Draft Pick Matt Duchene.

This will not end well for virtual Marian Hossa as Chris Pronger steps up in the slot to greet him.

Professor Pronger stays in form: Elbows up at all times

Poise. Grace. Steadiness. Ray Emery. Wait, why are you laughing?

It's John Madden doing what he does best.

Ian Laperriere was called in as a witness in Daniel Carcillo's assault case (background) against Niklas Hjalmarsson.

Tomas Kopecky deals out some beach justice to Chris Pronger.

Marian Gaborik shows how far into the defensive zone he'll ever go.

Nikolai Khabibulin stones Marian Gaborik in close. Gaborik pulls groin in process.

That's just Donald being Donald.

Matt Gilroy shows the rest of the team how to play defense correctly. Take notes Roszival!

How do you know its a video game? When Ales Kotalik is trying to play some defense.

Christopher Higgins is just playing it out until the post-game party starts.

Hey look! It's those two guys that got traded for Ryan Smyth!

What Dwayne Roloson doesn't know is that he's wearing Tommy Salo's number and he'll have to start more games than not. Let's see how he reacts...

New Faces In New Places: Washington vs. Tampa Bay

2009-07-16T11:56:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we debuted, with great help from EA Sports and XBox 360, a fun summer series to help us kill time and show off what all of the new free agent acquisitions and top draft picks will look like in their new duds.

Speaking of duds, today's photo shoot features one team who played like duds all regular season and another one that played like duds, eventually, in the playoffs.

That's right it's time for the, perhaps, much improved Tampa Bay Lightning and the happy-to-stand-pat Washington Capitals.

Tampa Bay's Victor Hedman excuses himself away from new Capitals forward Brendan Morrison.

Kurtis Foster unleashes the beast towards goaltender Simeon Varlamov.

New Capitals forward Mike Knuble dares to deke past Vincent Lecavalier.

Mattias Ohlund tries to escape the pursuit of Alexander Ovechkin.

Stephane Veilleux shows how to celebrate best on an empty net.

Now here's where you folks come in. Who do you want to see next? Red Wings exiles donning the Indian in Chicago? Marian Gaborik in Ranger blues? Ryan Smyth and his mullet in Los Angeles?

You make the call and the top two choices get featured next - just make sure the teams you select have, you know, actually made a move or two. Leave your suggestions in the comments or find your way to Twitter to let me know. I'm pretty easy to find there.

New Faces In New Places: Montreal and Toronto

2009-07-15T17:57:00.005-04:00

Because I'm a video game dork, in particular with NHL games (well, OK EA Sports' NHL game) and the summer leaves a dearth of fun NHL news to talk about, it's time for me to flex my video game photo taking skills and give you an idea of what some of the new players in new places are going to look like in their snazzy new uniforms.

I'll do a few of these photo galleries because I'm that bored and I have that kind of time. Suck it.

This gallery will feature two teams who have done quite a bit this off-season. It also helps that they're huge rivals with each other.

I bring you the newest Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens. Feel free to click the photos to enlarge them at your leisure.

Scott Gomez slams on the brakes in front of Matthew Stajan and Colton Orr.

Brian Gionta celebrates a goal he didn't score.

Mike Cammalleri lets a shot rip from the slot while Mike Komisarek sprawls out to block it.

Paul Mara skates head to head with Colton Orr.

Mike Komisarek lurks behind the net while Garnet Exelby defends. Jonas Gustavsson holds down the fort.

Jaroslav Spacek races through the slot to let a wrist shot fly.

Hal Gill does something other than stand around.

Travis Moen celebrates like a douchebag after scoring a back-breaking shorthanded goal. Francois Beauchemin stands by stoically.

Resurrecting Evil: Devils Hire Jacques Lemaire

2009-07-13T15:00:00.006-04:00

I'd like to say that this news surprises and horrifies me, but deep down it doesn't.

The Devils have gone back to the future for their new coach, bringing back Jacques Lemaire as the man to replace Brent Sutter, who resigned June 9. Assistant coach John MacLean, once again passed over for the job, will take over as head coach of the Devils' Lowell, Mass., minor league team.

"When Lou called me, I was excited, especially, it was a great organization, with a lot of people working for the organization, and it's going in the right direction,'' Lemaire said in explaining why he decided to return to New Jersey after stepping down as coach of the Minnesota Wild at the end of last season.

Pardon me for a moment:

There, now I feel a little bit better.

No, you know what? I don't.

I don't feel better because, finally, after what feels like a million years the Devils were getting to be interesting to watch. Zach Parise is a certified star in the league banished to Newark to apparently pay his sins for daring to be a college hockey deity with his partner in crime Travis Zajac. Patrick Elias vanquished his case of Hepatitis Q and was scoring goals again and hell, they even busted out Brendan Shanahan last year to make fans of the 1980s Devils get all warm and fuzzy again.

Bringing back Lemaire to a squad that seems to be two lines of legitimate talent and two lines of guys that should struggle in the AHL makes you wonder just what kind of coach can make a team like that into one that can make the playoffs.

Well hey, Jacques Lemaire has done it since he started coaching in the NHL so why not get him... again?

Listen, I know the Devils won't look like a thorough patchwork squad when the season starts because, as usual, Loophole Lou Lamoriello is waiting to see which players are really desperate to stay in the NHL and Lou will get them on the cheap knowing full-well what awaits the NHL next season and beyond as far as the cap goes. He got caught with his pants down once before and won't let it happen again.

Besides, he doesn't have Alexander Korolyuk to kick around anymore.

As much as I abhor this move by the Devils, I fully understand it. Lemaire gets the most of having the least especially when your general manager purposefully hates acquiring new talent and his name is Doug Risebrough.

There is an aspect of all this that has me petrified and having honest-to-God flashbacks to 1994-1995 once again. No, it's not the threat of a labor dispute after an epic Stanley Cup Final. It's about how, magically, the rule book got ignored setting hockey back even further than that work stoppage after the 1994 Finals did.

Take a look at how the rules were interpreted in this years Stanley Cup Finals. Detroit and Pittsburgh were allowed to do, seemingly, whatever they pleased to play defense on each other. Be it obstruction, interference, holding... All of that stuff that was supposed to become a part of the past after the labor dispute of 2004-2005. It was back and back with a vengeance and on full display by both teams.

What concerned many folks, including yours truly, was that the way the rules were being called in the Finals would become the new norm since a lot of players sounded off being OK with that. Case in point from Stu Hackel and Jeff Z. Klein from the New York Times:

Coming out of the 2004-5 lockout, the N.H.L clamped down on hooking, holding, tripping and interference with the intent of making the game more a show of skill. The referees had stuck to that strict standard for the last four seasons — until this series.

Through the first four games of this season’s finals, referees called a total of 21 penalties, compared with 43 through the first four games of last season’s finals. Obstruction calls also showed a disparity: 13 this season compared with 22 last season.

Some fans have complained about the change, though most seem to like it — including the Detroit and Pittsburgh players and coaches.

“I love it,” the Red Wings’ Kirk Maltby said. “They’re not going back to the old rules, where there’s dramatic hooks and holds. They’re letting guys battle, in the corners and in front of the net. As players and as hockey fans, all you ask is that it’s even on both sides. I’m not really used to this many penalties not being called, but it’s fun. You’re letting the guys go out and play and decide who’s going to win.”

I don't give a damn what Kirk Maltby has to say about the lack of penalties being called because, frankly, he's not the guy wheeling, dealing and scoring out there and having his progress halted with every stride. He's also the guy who'll be out there and trying to make sure the big guns for the opposing teams don't get the space or time to score and having officials look the other way only helps him out all the more.

I appreciate what Maltby has done as a grind line player in the NHL, but he's not the guy I wante to hear from on these matters because the more the whistle gets put away by the referees, the more he stands to gain from it.

Back in the NHL's "Dead Puck Era" I used to think of Mario Lemieux as the world's biggest whiner when he would openly complain about the holding and obstruction going on in the NHL and it made it more difficult to respect him. Learning more about the game and studying it closer I realized he was right all along. Mea culpa, Mario. Look what he had to say back in 1997:

"The game isn't as exciting as it was five or six years ago," says Lemieux, who is quitting after the next few weeks because he has grown tired of the way it is being played.

What I want to know is this: If Mario Lemieux isn't on the edge of his seat before he takes the ice, why should we be any more excited?

"It's really disappointing," Lemieux says "There are so many great players in the league who can't show their talent. It's too bad for the fans. This could be the greatest game in the world, but with the rules as they are, we can't do our jobs."

Lemieux met with NHL commissioner Bettman last summer to plead his case for a crackdown on obstruction penalties. "Stop whining, Mario," he was told. "Just go out there and fight through the checking."

Care to guess which part of that Larry Wigge story I'm going to harp on? I don't think you need a road map to find it.

So what happens next? What happens if the rulebook enforcement goes south again and the heaps of brilliant talent that currently exist in the NHL all find their numbers and progress stunted because a new wave of non-skating, grabby ogres get to turn the NHL into a skating rodeo of sorts where the best skaters are all grabbed onto and ridden to the ice?

That sounds like a bad time had by all.

Lemaire showed how to win with that style and every expansion team of that era followed his plans to the letter to make it into the playoffs and even the Finals. Lemaire now takes the reigns of a Devils team with brilliant offensive talent buoyed by a no-name third and fourth line, a solid but unspectacular defensive corps and the same goaltender he had years upon years ago in Martin Brodeur.

I think I've seen this movie before and it ends with the fans ultimately losing out having their game destroyed both on and off the ice. Instead, let's just hope this ends with a great coach's swan song in the place where his legacy began and our game remains in tact.

Sheer Madness

2009-07-11T02:58:00.004-04:00

If I sat here and wrote something psychotic about every idiotic deal that has been signed since the start of the July 1st NHL Free Agency free-for-all I'd never stop writing.

Ever.

So what did I do instead? I holed up in a bunker while the NHL contract nukes dropped and now that nuclear winter has settled in and things are cooling off (after all the biggest name left to go after is Alex Tanguay), went to New York City to take in some baseball games and now sit here and wait for the NHL schedule to come out so in-season road trips can be planned.

Yeah, it's hockey's off-season all right.

What's particularly special about this off-season is how some teams seem to think the fountain of money is never going to run dry and how the salary cap managed to stay in basic neutral (with some help from the NHL Players Association) despite grim financial stories flying in from around the league's warmer climes.

Chicago appears to be going for it all in the 2009-2010 season even in spite of having three key young players eligible for restricted free agency next season. An epic contract to Marian Hossa followed up by a potential paperwork snafu that lead into Chicago locking up their cast of restricted free agents this year has made Chicago's salary cap in the seemingly doomed-for-dropping 2010-2011 season an incredibly amazing storyline that we're going to have to wait a full year for.

Let's hope this plays out like an old school Heinz ketchup commercial.

That Matt LeBlanc... He'll become something someday.

James O'Brien over at Cycle Like The Sedins did an epic, and I do mean epic, job of breaking down Chicago's hopes and dreams in what they hope is the post-coitus afterglow of the team's first Stanley Cup since the 1960s.

I'll give you the punchline of one of James' scenarios in hopes that it'll tickle you in dirty places and motivate you to click the link to his full rundown that I've so nicely provided for you.

d) So, if the Blackhawks lived in a dream world in which they could rid themselves of Brian Campbell, Cristobal Huet, Dustin Byfuglien and Patrick Sharp ...

... while signing Kane, Toews AND Keith to trio of bargain contracts ...

They would have five forwards and three defensemen for $30 million. This would give them $20 million to fill (at the minimum) seven forward spots, three defensemen and two goalies. To ice a hockey team, they would have approximately $1.67 million per roster spot.

Without a goalie. Without even two full lines of forwards or defense.

This is if the Blackhawks unload a murderer's row of idiotic contracts.

Even if this situation played out with the current cap, they'd have $2.16 million per open spot.

And this the DREAM scenario.

How boned are the Blackhawks if Cristobal Huet, Corey Crawford or Antti Niemi can't carry them to the Stanley Cup this year? "Pretty damn boned" is my amateur in-the-basement assessment.

The one pretty bow I can tie around Dale Tallon's neck for this incredibly short-sighted and reckless means to win it all is that he's at least being ballsy enough to say, "Screw it, we're going for it all and don't give a damn." It's really ballsy, but it's also epically freaking stupid.

Jonathan Toews is their captain, Patrick Kane is the face of the franchise and Duncan Keith is a borderline Norris Trophy candidate and they're ALL ripe for the picking next offseason and at least one of them is likely done in Chicago after this season.

That, my friends, is mind blowing.

After all, this kind of stupid isn't at all like what New York Rangers general manager Glen Sather has done. You know Slats, he's the guy who just a couple years ago signed both Chris Drury and Scott Gomez to ridiculous virtually identical $7 million dollar per year contracts that don't run out until the sun goes supernova.

Glen Sather gave Rangers fans hope for all of one day that he had learned the error of his ways when he packaged up Scott Gomez and some never-will-be prospects to the Montréal Canadiens for Christopher Higgins and two semi-stud prospects. Higgins was a restricted free agent waiting to be signed and off went over $7 million dollars per year until 2013-2014 from the ledger.

An unbelievably stupid move for Habs GM Bob Gainey and a brilliant stroke of genius for Glen Sather to pull one over on a savvy general manager in his own right in Gainey.

Then July 1st happened and Sather used all of that new found cap space on a guy who tweaks and twerks his groin more than just about anyone that doesn't play goal in the league in Marian Gaborik. Goal scoring was something the Rangers severely lacked and they went right out and got themselves a guy that will score in bunches. He's a legitimate scoring superstar who fell out of favor in Minnesota with the Wild for both not doing what coach Jacques Lemaire wanted all the time and for being an oft-injured bitch that seemed to disappear in the playoffs.

Of course when you're the only scoring talent on a playoff team that is otherwise offensively neutered it's not hard to just shut down one guy.

Huh... Maybe the Rangers weren't paying attention to that. Nor did they seem to pay attention to Gaborik's games played over the last few seasons in Minnesota. In his last four years Gaborik has played in 65, 48, 77, and 17 games respectively.

When he plays, he's dynamic - flat out. He's an incredible offensive talent. Problem is keeping him healthy and if fans in Minneapolis grew frustrated and impatient with Gaborik's inability to stay on the ice... Well, New York City won't be rolling out the red carpet for him everywhere.

What's incredible about this is that Gaborik managed to get an even bigger contract out of the Rangers than the one they gave up in Scott Gomez and one that ends the same year after 2014. If Gaborik's next five years go erratically with the games played the way his last four in Minnesota have Rangers fans are going to go out of their minds. Thankfully for them the Islanders and Devils have done next to nothing to improve themselves this off-season.

Even more fun for Rangers fans is the fact that the Philadelphia Flyers managed to only get scummier by adding Chris Pronger and Ian Laperriere and reverting to their old side show ways in goal bringing Ray Emery back from Russia and then getting former backup Brian Boucher to back him up.

At least they didn't lock Professor Elbows up to an obnoxious deal that they'll never be able to get rid of now that he's in his waning years.

Wait, they DID do that. From Ken Campbell:

When Pronger signed his seven-year contract extension Tuesday, it was front-loaded the way almost all long-term deals are. The extension kicks in for the 2010-11 season and carries a salary cap hit of $4.92 million per season. Pronger will make $7.6 million in each of the first two seasons of the deal, then is scheduled to make $7.2 million, $7 million and $4 million in the next three seasons before dropping to just $525,000 in Years 6 and 7 of the deal, which are the 2015-16 and ’16-17 seasons.

Now, nobody in the game expects Pronger to fulfill the terms of this contract. With Pronger earning $33.4 million of the $34.45 million in the first five years of the deal, it’s a virtual certainty Pronger will retire after the 2014-15 season.

Under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, the Flyers would be on the hook for the entire $4.92 million cap hit for each of the next seven seasons regardless of whether Pronger retires or not, because the contract kicks in after Pronger turns 35 (he turns 35 this October). But there is speculation the Flyers believe that since Pronger actually signed the extension prior to turning 35, they might not have to absorb the cap hit if he retires...

But the spirit of the provision is that it governs contracts that kick in when a player turns 35, not when it is signed.

“The league has sent out memo after memo after memo alerting teams about this,” said one former NHL executive. “If this is what they’re doing, they’re trying to drive a 747 through a loophole.”

The league has yet to hear from the Flyers about this and considers it to be unambiguous. And given that Holmgren has said the Flyers are willing to live with the negative ramifications of signing Pronger to a seven-year deal, it might not be an issue.

Whoops. It's almost as if Bobby Clarke is still the guy running the show there.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to just blow through this next season just to see how things go in the NHL. After all, the league that beats them over the head for attention and media glitz and glam, the NBA, just had their salary cap drop by a cool million dollars recently and they're supposedly awash in cash.

That makes the situation for the NHL, a league without a blockbuster media contract, even stickier and one that bears watching.

Gary Bettman may have been playing the part of Baghdad Bob and saying that everything is OK while we can all see what's on the horizon, but I will enjoy playing the part of Nero while Rome burns mixed in with my consistent ability to keep telling the Emperor that he's got no clothes on.

Gross.

Montréal: Surréal and Unréal

2009-06-30T15:24:00.008-04:00

Picture if you will a place where hockey is talked about day in and day out.

A place where newly drafted soon-to-be superstars high-five you for being hockey fans going into a bar.

A place where an NHL head coach could charm the pants off of just about any woman he wants to in the bar while he's just as hammered as you are and you're stuck standing around in awe of the whole scenario unfolding in front of you.

A place where 10 year-olds have no fear, ignore their grandparents and approach a group of hockey-centric strangers just to heckle a Bruins fan.

A place where out amongst the late night drunken revelers, loud and animated discussions about John Tavares erupt out of the blue.

A place where an inebriated 4:30 AM trip to McDonalds turns into a mind-blowing experience when you realize said McDonalds is across the street from what used to be the Montréal Forum.

A place where running into everyone you've ever cited or made fun of in the hockey blog world convenes to share a beer or twelve together.

This is what Montréal was during NHL Draft weekend. Part surreal, part unreal, completely incredible.

I'll say this about Montréal:

It's a city I loved before making this trip. I'd been there a few times before and had some incredible times up there and the city has always left an indelible mark on my memory for about a thousand different reasons.

This time will go down as one of the most incredible experiences for me because not only was this about being somewhat immersed in the middle of the madness that is the NHL Draft, but it also helped that it doubled as an end of the year convention for those of us in the "alternative" hockey media.

Oh sure, most of us may not have press passes and we may be playing the role of angry columnist at times (OK all the time over here), but anywhere you went in downtown Montreal this past weekend had hockey going on with it.

If you were out to grab a beer at a local tavern, you might run into some front office guys from an NHL team.

Need to get some dinner in Old Montreal? You might see folks from the Penguins stroll down the street with the Stanley Cup, much the way some of the other NHL Tweet Up folks did on Saturday night.

Going to Peel Pub to soak in the frat boy type of nightlife? Downstairs you might get high-fived by a celebrating Kyle Palmieri or you could head upstairs and see Puck Daddy's Greg Wyshynski among others.

That's just a sample of how things went down and, even still, there was more going on than all of that. I don't need to break down how the picks went or the backroom nonsense that was going on or any of that, you'll find enough about all of that elsewhere.

What I can say is that I'm glad I'm NOT in Montréal now after the announcement of the Christopher Higgins trade to the Rangers for Scott Gomez that also, seemingly, included the Canadiens top defensive prospect Ryan McDonagh.

The reaction to this deal, for Montréal fans has been, to put it lightly, hysterical. Not the funny kind of hysterical but the manic, crazed and angry kind of hysterical. For a good example of what it's like to be a dyed in the wool fan of Les Habitents, check this thread at Hockey's Future that reads like an Internet car crash turned into rally with pitchforks and torches. As of this writing, the thread based on this deal alone was up to 35 pages.

Now take folks like that and put them all in one city and have them dialed into what goes on with the hometown team 24/7. That's Montréal. Hockey all day, every day.

Heaven... I just don't speak the language in heaven is all. Well, the main language anyhow.

This kind of seemingly moronic deal sets the table quite nicely for the NHLs National Day of Insanity: The start of free agency.

We've already seen one highly-dubious contract handed out to Dave Bolland of the Blackhawks for five years and $3.375 million per year. He's on the young side, but he also notched a mere 47 points last year. The Blackhawks are banking on Bolland improving and making this deal into a bargain in future seasons.

Yeah, good luck on that.

Adding this to the dubious Rangers-Habs trade today you can see why I look forward to this each year, it's just funny that Glen Sather is on the positive end of the spectrum this time around. Perhaps he'll give an asinine contract to Christopher Higgins (a restricted free agent) to make up for it and we can mock him endlessly once again.

Bizarre part about this deal for Montreal is that they had oodles of cap space to work with and instead lock themselves into having Gomez as their top centerman, essentially kiss captain Saku Koivu goodbye and take themselves out of the running for the Sedin twins since Gomez is due over $7 million a year on the cap until forever.

Like I said: Seemingly and most likely a terrible development for the Habs.

For the Rangers, it's an interesting start and one that's rumored to continue into a deal for Senators winger Dany Heatley sooner than later. Should that happen, well, perhaps the Rangers will realize that they dealt the wrong centerman to Montreal as Gomez would work quite well dishing off to Heatley.

Chris Drury? Not so much...

All of this though is just the appetizer for July 1st. I'll be doing a lot of snap judgments through the day tomorrow on Twitter, so follow along with me as idiocy runs wild.

Bienvenue à Montréal

2009-06-26T02:35:00.007-04:00

The Gross Misconduct Hockey Road Trip extravaganza gets to close out the 2008-2009 season as well as get you prepared for the 2009-2010 season all at once by visiting one of my most favorite cities in the world:

Montréal, Québec, Canada

Those accents are very important.

Tomorrow morning I'll hit the road, the illustrious I-87, to attend the NHL Entry Draft. No, I won't be giving you a mock draft since that would be amateurish of me to do and would likely end up sounding really freaking stupid because, honestly, what am I going to tell you that you're not going to find more well informed elsewhere? Hell, just hit up the links on the sidebar and you'll find something you'll enjoy - it's out there and other folks are busting their ass a lot more on this than yours truly.

That's just how I roll. I guess.

The one bit of insight I'll give you is this, and these are the things I'll be keeping an eye out for.

Thankfully, one of them focuses in on the first two picks. I'm curious to see if Garth Snow and the Islanders have just been jerking all of us around for weeks and he's going to run to the podium and make it official that the Islanders give a crap about the team's future and select John Tavares first.

Not selecting Tavares would be damn near criminal and that's not a slight on Victor Hedman or Matt Duchene but Tavares was virtually NHL-ready last year. Hell, they tried to bend the rules to allow him to be drafted last year.

Tavares is the real deal and he'll be the guy to resurrect the Islanders back into relevancy, which is good since both Hedman and Duchene are pretty fantastic booby prizes for the Lightning and Avalanche who select after the Isles.

Provided the Lightning don't do something thoroughly insane they should take Hedman and have him starting on the blueline for the Lightning come September. He's big, he's Swedish, he plays defense. That's a pretty good pedigree to have coming to the NHL.

Then again, this is the Tampa Bay Lightning. The team owned by the wackiest pair of terrible owners in the league, a couple of guys in Oren Koules and Len Barrie who were brought into Little Gary's office this week to get their problems figured out. Of course Gary sided with Oren Koules and hey, why not, he deals in real estate that's a really solid industry lately. No problems there at all.

Oh and Koules wants to pare down the payroll and get rid of Vincent Lecavalier. That ought to go over really well for the fans in Tampa who have already had these two jackals ruin what was once the crown jewel of how to be a non-traditional market and thrive.

This is also the team with the general manager Brian Lawton who said in an e-mail to other teams that if you want to talk about the Lightning that you talk to him and him alone.

"Please be advised that in order to avoid any confusion over the next couple of weeks, as GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning Organization I am the only person authorized to speak on behalf of the team with regard to player transactions," the email read.
"No other person is authorized to negotiate player transactions. Any questions, feel free to call."

Oh good.

Of course with the flux in Tampa Bay and not knowing just what they'll do, Lawton has felt it necessary that Tampa will hang on to their pick which would be pretty wise considering a guy like Hedman would help sure up their defense for a good long while.

Then again, if Koules is getting the bigger share of the decisions on what to do, perhaps trading out of the spot will seem more appealing.

Sure it would. Then again, if the Islanders do go against the grain and do something unbelievably foolish like skipping over Tavares in favor Hedman then the power is in Tampa's hands. And if that happens? Hang on to your freakin' pants because Toronto general manager Brian Burke might actually start table dancing like the fine ladies at Club Super Sexe, full-frontal and everything.

Go ahead, go puke. I'll wait.

Feel better? Good.

If Tampa gets themselves into a position where they can use their #2 spot to leverage whatever they want to out of anyone, then perhaps even Burke might feel compelled to give up his BFF defenseman Luke Schenn in order to land John Tavares. Then again, who knows what other teams might want to throw at Tampa in order to get a crack at Tavares.

If, and these are HUGE ifs, the Islanders take Hedman or anyone else not named John Tavares the NHL Draft officially becomes a circus and the time allotted to Tampa at pick #2 becomes the most exciting time of the Draft as the Lightning phones will not stop ringing the whole time and with Lawton having to handle things with Koules and Barrie also calling to get their say in...

Well for chaos purposes alone I pray for this to happen. Then again, for the Islanders to become a relevant franchise again sometime before I'm dead, I hope they take Tavares. The Isles lack a lot but Tavares gives them the guy to build the franchise around and gives Kyle Okposo someone to have fun with out there.

The other things I'll be looking for this weekend come from a sheerly selfish standpoint in being an RPI Engineers hockey watcher and there's as many as four players with RPI connections who may get their names called this Saturday during the 2nd through 7th rounds.

Three of these players haven't suited up for the Engineers yet but two of them will in the 09-10 season in Jerry D'Amigo and Brandon Pirri. D'Amigo is getting a lot of press of late and could find himself getting called late in the second round or early in the third.

Christopher Ralph at HockeySpy has this scouting report on D'Amigo who he lists at #50 on his Top 60 list which includes some pretty high praise:

Scouting Combine Performance: Eug Sorokin observed: “Good looking guy, heard some chatter amongst the GMs and some teams like him a lot.” Sorokin was reminded of Zach Parise with respect to D’Amigo.

If RPI can bring in a guy who is anything like Zach Parise, head coach Seth Appert will do back-flips to celebrate because RPI will improve instantly from his presence.

Brandon Pirri comes into the draft having some questions over his defensive skills, but his offensive talents are unquestionably noticeable. His stats from this season playing for two different junior squads in Streetsville and Georgetown:

44 GP 46 G 48 A 94 PTS

For an RPI team that severely lacked scoring, Pirri will be a God-send for the program and any defensive shortcomings he may have will be picked up by his teammates. After all, when you're showing up as a sniper, worrying about backchecking probably doesn't rank out too high. Pirri also claims to have added 20 pounds of muscle to his frame bringing him up to 180 pounds, he'll need that to deal with some of the bruisers he'll line up against in the NCAA, most notably those at Cornell.

Pirri projects to be potentially anywhere from late third round to early fifth round for the 2009 NHL Draft.

The other players on the potential draft radar are 2010 recruit Jacob Laliberté and current Engineer forward Patrick Cullen. If either or both of them are selected, count on it being in the sixth or seventh round. Laliberté is a small sized forward but worked as a power play maven in the CJHL last year putting up astounding point totals. Cullen was a rookie sensation for the low-scoring Engineers and figures to build strongly on his freshman success getting teammates like D'Amigo and Pirri (among others) to join him in Troy this season.

One other quick note on this weekend. I'll be reaching out from the basement with a host of other tremendous bloggers from across the Internet this weekend at the official NHL Draft Tweet Up.

Yeah, I know, the Twitter name makes it sound sort of lame - deal with it, Twitter has taken over the world.

Nearly 100 folks from across the NHL blogging spectrum are taking part in this in some ways and even some of the big shots (Wyshynski from Puck Daddy, the folks from Pension Plan Puppets, even Eklund) are going to be there. I'd tell folks in Montreal to hide the beer and their daughters but it's too late to hide the beer and, well, who knows who's going to think it's a good idea to hit the "fun" parts of St. Catherine's Street on Saturday.

I kid.

I think.

Either way, this event, something as simple and kind of under the radar like the NHL Entry Draft has evolved into a blogger summit, and even the folks at All Habs have extended a special invitation to everyone's favorite diminutive analyst, Pierre McGuire, to make an appearance and shake hands with some of the folks who enjoy needling him the most.

If he shows up somehow, this turns into an epic gathering of MONSTER proportions.

As if it wasn't going to be already.

Stay tuned to my own page at Twitter for draft observations, pictures, and other assorted nonsense. Hell, there's even a chance you'll get to see me suited up in my own zebra stripes.

Report: NHL Still NBC's Bitch

2009-06-24T00:27:00.007-04:00

I talked a few days ago that the NHL was potentially thinking of doing a Winter Classic Doubleheader involving teams that serve both NBC and CBC's best interests to get them the biggest audience they can on New Years Day 2010.

After all, the name of the game is getting the league more well known with a high-profile event regardless of whether or not it waters down the novelty of the whole thing.

Forget about the potential Canadian game here for a second since the American game at the least had a host team selected already in the Boston Bruins but there was much speculation going on about just who they would face. The prevailing rumor was that the Washington Capitals and Alexander Ovechkin were going to be the foe allowing the NHL a major media event in which to promote one of the biggest stars in the game, the back-to-back NHL MVP.

Capitals Insider Tarik El-Bashir was able to track down Caps general manager George McPhee to find out if the prevailing rumors had any truth to them. McPhee's answer was surprisingly snarky:

"I have not," McPhee said when asked if he had heard anything from the NHL regarding Washington's candidacy for the event. "You think we would know by this point."

McPhee added: "It doesn't sound like we will be part of it. Maybe that's not a bad thing. When you go, you have to play in front of 40,000 or 50,000 of the other team's fans. ...I would just assume if we were in it that we would know by now."

Sounds like there's some sour grapes there, and I don't mean Don Cherry. Perhaps something unseemly was going on and McPhee was all too aware of it and not at liberty to speak about it.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

A funny thing happened on the way through the rumor mill though as stories started to circulate that the Philadelphia Flyers were getting some buzz to be the Bruins opponent on New Years Day, a choice that seems a bit odd as, well, let's face it the Flyers aren't exactly a cuddly and marketable team. They're abrasive, 29 other teams in the NHL generally hate their guts and so do the fans of those teams but they're high profile thanks to that disdain and Flyers fans are generally some of the most ~~psychotic~~ staunchly loyal fans in the league.

The Flyers aren't a team without talent as there's Jeff Carter, Simon Gagne and Pierre McGuire object of affection Mike Richards as well but let's face it, when NBC picks their same six teams out of a hat for their schedule each year the Flyers are getting more than their fair share of NBC attention and it's pretty obnoxious.

This was all rumor on scattered Internet pondering though and harmless for the most part until earlier this evening news came out from, of all places, The Delaware County Daily Times that it was confirmed that the Flyers would be the Bruins opponent in the Winter Classic in Fenway Park and writer Anthony Sanfilippo brought the thunder with how he was able to obtain this knowledge.

Hang on to your asses because this is going to blow it right the hell up:

The NHL was pushing the Washington Capitals. They wanted to market Alex Ovechkin.

NBC, the network broadcasting the game, said no dice.

They were concerned with the poor ratings the Caps' produced in the playoffs in an opening round series against the New York Rangers - the No. 1 U.S. market for the NHL.

So, they told the NHL to skip Washington and give them the Flyers... a more certain brand to market.

The NHL was stubborn for a while... mostly because the Flyers were more interested in a Jan. 1 date with Pittsburgh than Boston.

However, the NHL assured the Flyers that a future Flyers-Penguins outdoor game could still happen in a couple years.

The Flyers were satisfied and agreed to play.

Pardon me for one moment...

deep breaths

deep breaths

Don't lose your cool, Joe. It's not even fucking worth it anymore. Just let it go...

Now, I'm not going to completely blow a gasket here because, hey, who's to say that Anthony Difilippo has his story accurate here. That's not a knock against him, he's dealing with sources that may or may not have everything squared away on their side.

But I believe every friggin' word of it. Why? This is easy. Look how nicely they handled things with the Pittsburgh Penguins and their outdoor screen. The guys at The Pensblog thought very highly of how they handled things:

NBC, the channel that has used the Pittsburgh Penguins and Sidney Crosby in just about every commercial since the network started airing hockey games, is refusing to let the team show game three of the Penguins/Flyers series on the giant screen outside the arena.

Ironically, MSNBC published this article on Wednesday in which they wrote "during the Penguins' run to the Stanley Cup finals last season, the outdoor TV routinely drew a couple thousand fans."

And during the Stanley Cup Finals? More of the same as NBC refused to allow fans in Pittsburgh or Detroit to watch their teams road games on big screens at their arenas out of fear it would harm ratings.

And just where's Herr Bettman through all this?

Zdeno Chara looks away while Mike Richards nauseates over Bettman's posturing with NBC. Pierre McGuire salivates wildly.

Yeah, bending over for NBC again and again out of fear upsetting their drunken abusive father of a national broadcast "partner." How many times now has Bettman "fallen down the stairs" for NBC so they can call the shots as to how the NHL operates its own league?

Disgusting.

This lack of a spine shown by the NHL sickens me as they had the right idea for what to do with this game but instantly rolled over for NBC because they didn't like the matchup.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Out of all this the Flyers still get what they want by getting an outdoor game with cross-state rivals the Penguins in a few years when, who knows if the game will even be worth doing if they run this trick pony into the ground.

And what's more is... Who the hell do you market to the fans in a game between the Bruins and Flyers? Chara? I guess. Richards? Well, we'll hear enough about him from McGuire. Do they spend the whole game talking about hockey's supposed resurgence in Boston? What if the Bruins get off to a bad start next year and the crowd is swarmed over with people there to boo them or, worse yet, are only there for the spectacle and could give a shit else about the game?

That'll play great on television - silence with mixed jeers from drunken boors.

My stand, and I'm sure the stand the NHL had until NBC President Dick Ebersol took his belt off, was that with the Capitals in the game you are guaranteed a major superstar worth marketing for the league in the game.

The last two versions of this game was teeming over with stars. In Buffalo you had Crosby, Malkin and Staal for the Penguins while Ryan Miller and Thomas Vanek played for the Sabres. In Chicago you had Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews to push for the Blackhawks while the Red Wings came out with their crew of all-stars.

This time around? Marc Savard and maybe Phil Kessel for the Bruins with Richards and Carter and the potential Ray Emery sideshow carnival.

Wow, consider me glued to the set for this one.

With the NHL allowing themselves to be in a position to be abused by NBC like this the fans lose out because you don't get to see the best of the best out there. Instead you get what might turn into a street fight. Hell, don't even bother with Fenway, just play it behind the Green Monster on Lansdowne Street and turn it into a brawl since these two teams can always be counted on for that. I'm sure the NHL will love having these two teams beating each other's face in in a game that's meant to show off the best the league can offer in one of its most magical settings, the outdoor pond where everyone's careers began long ago.

What a joke this "leadership" is. The NHL, instead of getting what it wanted, ended up making concessions not only with NBC but with one if its own teams.

Unreal.

Assist Master Needs One For Himself

2009-06-22T21:56:00.006-04:00

The Hockey Hall of Fame announces the new class of inductees on Tuesday and the most stacked selection of first-year eligible candidates in a long time joins the list of players who already should be in. This year sees Steve Yzerman, Brett Hull, Brian Leetch, Luc Robitaille, Dave Andreychuk and Alexander Mogilny added to the list of Hall candidates that already includes should-bes like Pavel Bure, Dino Ciccarelli and Doug Gilmour.

I'm not even going to attempt to do something stupid and say that one of the newly eligible guys shouldn't be in the Hall on the first ballot. It would be a farce if I tried, even moreso since Brett Hull already admitted tonight that he knows he's going in.

I know that the Hall of Fame process for hockey is an odd one of sorts, only a maximum of four can be elected any given year and we've entered an era where some of the all-time best are put on the backburner while the supreme elite of the NHL and Russia go to the head of the class. I also know that the Hall won't want to bend their rules to "open the floodgates" and be more akin to say, the Baseball Hall of Fame.

With all these things in place there's one prime and overly-deserving candidate who just might be getting a big assist from a guy he helped become one of the top goal scorers of all time.

I touted Adam Oates' credentials here last year knowing full-well that he likely wasn't going to be voted in then and I bring it back up again this year knowing damn well he's not about to beat the likes of Yzerman, Leetch, Robitaille or Hull. But it's Brett Hull that will be sure to praise the work of Oates and do his share of campaigning for him now that Toronto's Hall awaits him.

Searching For Adam Oates... In The Hockey Hall Of Fame At Least

After all, Hull's work with Oates in St. Louis is the thing legends are made of. Hull's three greatest goal-scoring seasons came with Adam Oates as his centerman. In 1989-1990, Hull potted 72 goals.

The following season saw Hull come perilously close to Wayne Gretzky's single season goal record as he scored 86 goals, just six shy of Gretzky's 92 in 1981-1982.

In 1991-1992, Hull scored 70 goals in a season he played 54 games with Oates before he was traded to Boston for Craig Janney and Stephane Quintal. Nice work on that one St. Louis. Oates would move along to Boston to team up with Hall of Famer Cam Neely to help cement Neely's legacy with the Bruins.

Not a bad career for Oates and while campaigning isn't something that generally goes on with the Hockey Hall's process, it might not hurt to see Neely and Hull now come out and do a little preaching to the voters about a player that helped them directly on the ice piling up 1,079 assists over his NHL career, sixth on the all time list.

He's merely 16th overall in points all time in the NHL, yet some folks think that's not good enough.

Matt McCallum at Fox Sports crafted an objective formula to come up with a mathematical way to figure out who is more deserving than the next guy and while he qualifies that Oates is worthy of getting in eventually, he appears eighth on the list behind most everyone mentioned previously as well as John Tonelli of 1980s Islanders dynasty fame.

My problem with Oates' lack of attention here is that he played in the same era as guys who are head and shoulders above all the greatest to ever play the game, players that changed the landscape and even the rules of the NHL with their play and Oates' numbers are in the same stratosphere with the likes of these guys.

On top of all that, Oates had the marketability thing down cold while with the Bruins:

OK so we'll leave that off of his résumé for now unless we're factoring in unintentional comedy.

I know... It's not going to be 2009 that lets it happen for Oates, but can we make it so that 2010 becomes the greatest year of his hockey life? After all, it marks the 25th anniversary of his college team's National Championship and adding a spot in the Hockey Hall of Fame to join the rest of his wingmen through his career would make the perfect cap to a career spent feeding them everything needed to make it to the Hall of Fame.

Now if only he can just get a little bit of help from them.

NHL: Where Ruining A Good Thing Happens

2009-06-19T19:08:00.004-04:00

The last two New Years Days the NHL has taken the holiday to seize the day and make sure to do something that allows them to get airtime on a day when they know everyone is going to be home nursing a hangover or at the very least laying about on the couch.

The NHL to their credit came up with the idea to play an outdoor regular season game on that day during the afternoon. After all, it's January 1st and most of the northern US and southern Canada is in a deep freeze or at least winter-like conditions that lend themselves perfect to playing a game outside in a huge venue.

Two years ago, the Penguins and Sabres played at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, NY and last year the Red Wings and Blackhawks played at Wrigley Field in Chicago. January 1, 2010 will see a game featuring the Boston Bruins played at Fenway Park and the opponent to be announced later on this summer (rumors abound that either the New York Rangers or Washington Capitals will be involved).

Again, this is a great thing and a perfect setting for a game given the rejuvinated hockey fan base in Boston and getting a game with either the Rangers or Capitals is ideal because you're either getting your biggest media market involved or the team with one of the biggest stars in the world. You can't lose here...

...Unless you get the bright idea to do an outdoor game doubleheader on New Years Day with a second game set to take place in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Coming soon to the back of trucks all across Canada.

From the National Post in Canada:

Sources say the NHL is looking at building on the success of the Winter Classic by hosting two outdoor games on New Year's Day. The first is rumoured for Fenway Park with the Boston Bruins hosting the Washington Capitals. The second is pencilled in for Calgary between the Flames and another Canadian team - likely the Toronto Maple Leafs.

CBC TV is a major push behind the Calgary proposal.

"I can't see anything that jumps out to me that would be a roadblock logistically," Haverstock said.

Now, I understand that he's talking about logistics of doing a game in Calgary. Obviously its going to be cold as hell there and having conditions able to sustain the ice outdoors won't be an issue.

The sort of logistics I'm thinking of here are those involved in wearing out the NHL fans and the wonderful novelty of the whole thing. Obviously Canada is bothered that they've, again, been left out of the NHL's reindeer games in regard to doing an outdoor game. After all, it's Canada that got the ball rolling with this thing back in November 2003 with the Oilers and Canadiens playing an outdoor game at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton.

Now with NBC and the NHL teaming up to make sure all the US marquee teams get taken care of with mid-season showcase event, Canada wants back in and for that I can't blame them. Problem here is that a second game will get no attention in America.

The Heritage Classic in Edmonton nearly six years ago was an event that ESPN and ABC should've gone bonkers over to cover considering how much went into it with the legends game featuring the all-time greats for both franchises playing an exhibition game and then the real game itself. Instead, the event was largely ignored in the United States and video and highlights of then Canadiens goaltender Jose Theodore playing with a toque over his helmet in the frigid Edmonton air were about all we were left with to soak in.

When Buffalo and Pittsburgh played on January 1, 2008 the event was heralded as incredible and amazing a magical and all that with very little credit in the way given to what had happened five years previous but now this event was going to take over as a yearly staple - and hey, why not? It generates attention, looks great on the air and manages to steal airtime away from putrid college football bowl games.

Should the NHL decide to double its pleasure in 2010 to throw viewers a bone in both countries, because God knows Americans won't watch Canadian teams on TV and Canadians are ruthlessly nationalistic and wanting some attention from Herr Bettman for all the financial propping up they do - sure, why not - let's just slaughter the novelty of the whole thing and cave into everyones television demands.

Bettman has already shown that he's got very little backbone to stand up for any sort of principles for the NHL and is now on the brink of selling out to both countries national broadcast partners at NBC and the CBC. This does come with a catch, however:

No one bothered to clue in the NHL Players Association.

Whoops.

From TSNs Darren Dreger:

''This is all news to me. We are breaking news, this is an insider moment that Calgary is potentially going to get an outdoor game and this is the first I've heard of it,'' Glenn Healy, the NHLPA's director of player affairs told TSN.

The NHL confirms the outdoor twin-bill will be discussed on June 25th at the competition committee meeting, however based on Healy's reaction; there is reason to believe the event may be in jeopardy.

''We have never been approached by the league about a second outdoor game ever in Calgary and if they want to approach us, then our numbers are in the book.''

Then again, why would the NHL ever communicate something with the group of people they dislike more than NHL fans when its so much simpler to have someone at CBC let something slip out and get the buzz started instantly.

I can't really top that because this is all it boils down to.

A man sits in his lonely board room cooking up ideas with his media pals... You know, the ones that he's trying to win over so that they'll give him some kind of money to turn a profit after he's already given them carte blanche to boss him around and make a joke of the league by bumping off playoff games from their air in favor of horse races.

He cuts his deals, he makes his promises, and gives no regard for how things will work in the future when he's trying to figure out a way to do an outdoor game in Tampa, Florida. You know he'll have to do that because he'll running out of ideas on where to do the next game or two on New Years Day all the while the fans have gotten over the novelty of it all and the idea just gets stale.

True Bettman style: Get a hold of a truly great thing and abuse people with it simply because it "works" and then be forced to ride the negative tide that sweeps in when things get out of control.

Take a guess what tide rolled in today with this rumor of a New Years Day doubleheader.

Don't get lost in what I'm ranting about here.

The Winter Classic as a singular game and big-time event yearly on January 1st is a great thing. Turning it into an annual circus having to look for new locations at all times to the benefit all the teams looking to cash in on a sideshow-like spectacle is a BAD idea.

The novelty is killed, the interest is nullified and pretty soon people stop noticing and giving a crap altogether. Doubling up sets a terrible precedent for this event in the future because you're not only continuing a bizarro hockey xenophobia that exists with American and Canadian audiences, the simple greatness of a great spectacle event is worn out twice as fast as it would otherwise.

Leave it to Herr Bettman to continue his version of Sherman's march to the sea to make sure anything good that happens with the NHL is soon burned to the ground.

NHL Awards Summary: Epic Failure

2009-06-19T03:47:00.006-04:00

I'll keep this short for you. The NHL had their awards show in Las Vegas to try and sleaze things up a little more for everyone and while this event is generally really awkward to watch, the NHL outdid themselves this year.

Want to stay in touch with the fans of the NHL and try and generate positive buzz? Yeah, go to Las Vegas - great. Everyone loves Vegas, after all it's a city that has zero ties to the NHL aside from crazy Jerry Bruckheimer who someday wants to own a team.

Say, I hear there's a team that is nearby that's in some sort of financial tangle. What's that Jerry?

BOOM!

Right, right. Boom. I get it. Explosions sell. I know.

Oh, hey, let's book Chaka Khan and Robin Thicke to perform. Yeah great, cause that makes fucking sense - about as much sense as getting Def Leppard to play your kickoff event. Old, washed up and NHL fans and players couldn't give a shit about them.

Then we'll get comedian Gerry Dee to do sarcastic interviews with NHL players and legends and it'll be a laugh riot!

Who the hell is Gerry Dee?!

To top it off, we'll have guys like Jeremy Roenick and Glenn Anderson make asses out of themselves!

Perfect.

Well thought out Gary, you aimed as high as you could and hit yourself in the nuts.

I can't wait to see Hootie and The Blowfish headline next years awards with Jim Belushi hosting.

Fuckin' stupid.

Only the NHL would find a way to take their most awkward event and make it somehow worse while adding "laughably bad" as a good adjective.

There's only one way to describe how this came off tonight:

...of epic proportions.

As for your award winners, here you go:

Hart Trophy: Alex Ovechkin
Norris Trophy: Zdeno Chara
Vezina Trophy: Tim Thomas
Selke Trophy: Pavel Datsyuk
Calder Trophy: Steve Mason
Lady Byng Trophy: Pavel Datsyuk
King Clancy Trophy: Ethan Moreau
Jack Adams Trophy: Claude Julien
Jennings Trophy: Tim Thomas and Manny Fernandez
Masterton Trophy: Steve Sullivan
Pearson Award: Alex Ovechkin

The only one I really take issue with is the Masterton Trophy. Never mind that Chris Chelios was a nominee solely for being an old guy but the other finalist was Richard Zednik who overcame getting his throat cut open last year to come back and have a stellar season for the Panthers.

Don't get me wrong here, Steve Sullivan is a deserving winner and he too has come back from a terrible injury, but after this scene:

What the hell does a guy have to do to get an award for perseverance these days?

Jeez.

Hopefully the NHL Draft will be able to put the pieces together and give the league something to hold up as a great post-season event.

No pressure there Montreal, just try to keep Chaka Khan away.

Court to Balsillie: GTFO

2009-06-15T21:28:00.007-04:00

Everything's coming up Bettman, but this isn't a surprise:

The Coyotes are staying in Phoenix.

A bankruptcy judge has rejected the proposed sale of the team to Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie, who would have moved the team to Hamilton, Ontario.

Judge Redfield T. Baum issued a 21-page ruling late Monday afternoon, concluding that the June 29 deadline imposed by Balsillie did not allow enough time to resolve the complex case.

"Simply put, the court does not think there is sufficient time (14 days) for all of these issues to be fairly presented to the court given that deadline," the judge wrote.

If this shocks you that the court didn't approve the sale to an owner looking to supersede the rules of the NHL, then you need to go back to school.

I've said from the get-go of this drama party that there's no way the courts would see things Balsillie's way, especially after he put a deadline on getting a sale done when it was clearly out of his, Jerry Moyes and even the NHLs hands.

Not coming to a Jobing.Com Arena near Glendale.

Of course, this is all just window dressing on the larger problem at hand for the NHL in that they have a franchise that is bleeding money yearly and something needs to be done to rectify that situation sooner than later. In this situation, however, it appears that Jim Balsillie and his moving van won't be coming to Phoenix to take them away.

What happens with the Coyotes next will be very important to see how dedicated Herr Bettman is to actually keeping the Coyotes in Phoenix or if all of his talk about keeping the team there was just that.

NCAA: Failing At Sports, Academics, and Life

2009-06-15T18:48:00.007-04:00

I try not to assume too much about the readers here but I'm going to go out on a limb that you're all more knowledgeable about sports than you let on. I'm assuming that you're all more than just hockey-centric sports fans and that you're familiar with the NCAA.

I'm also guessing that you'll be aware of how they've "handled" themselves and member schools over certain academic faux pas in the past, especially those having to do with the eligibility of athletes that play football and basketball.

All of those assumptions and suppositions aside, it's time I introduce you to Air Force Academy defenseman Kevin Wright.

One is a well-respected American institution, the other just hates student athletes trying to learn.

Kevin Wright just completed his sophomore year at Air Force, a United States Academy and one of the most esteemed academic institutions in the nation. The Air Force Academy mission statement reads as such:

...To educate, train and inspire men and women to become officers of character, motivated to lead the United States Air Force in service to our nation.

Serious business and the kind of place that instantly gets respect from anyone that comes into contact with them, much like how the United States Military Academy and United States Naval Academy does. These guys are the best and the brightest and choose to give part of, if not all of, their lives to their country.

For Kevin Wright, however, the NCAA thinks differently of him. They think that he's the kind of guy who would backdoor his own academics to get into the Air Force by taking too many classes before enrolling at Air Force.

Get ready to be disgusted:

He wanted to play Division I college hockey but had no offers from D-I programs or from junior hockey clubs - from which collegiate programs recruit players. Because he was 17, however, he had a year of midget hockey eligibility. He decided to play that final year to attract junior teams.

His parents were OK with the decision but wanted him to take classes, so he enrolled at West Valley Community College in Saratoga, Calif.

This is not uncommon. According to Air Force coach Frank Serratore, virtually all of Wright's teammates took some classes at community colleges while playing junior hockey. It shows a commitment to academics.

Wright's error was taking too many classes.

Unbelievable.

So, the NCAA who often enjoys shrugging off coaches wantonly breaking rules by supplying prized recruits with gifts, money, what-have-you now has a problem with a kid who busted his ass to keep up academically so he could even qualify to enroll at the Air Force Academy.

What the hell is wrong with this picture? You would think that the NCAA would go nuts over having a kid who wanted the opportunity to play and compete so badly that he made sure he took classes to ensure his application to the Academy would go through.

Then again, perhaps the NCAA just doesn't give a damn about hockey players since that's not a sport that helps make them a lot of money. After all, when Myron Rolle was going for a Rhodes Scholarship while playing football for Florida State (one of those sneaky, shady institutions that likes to run afoul of the rules) they couldn't do anything but gush and praise the man.

But what about Kevin Wright?

Nope, screw him because he took a few too many classes before entering the Air Force Academy. At least that's what the NCAA tells him:

According to NCAA bylaw 14.2.1 - the five-year rule - once someone takes enough classes to be considered a "full-time" student, he has five calendar years in which to complete his four seasons of participation. By taking enough classes to be considered full time at West Valley, Wright started his NCAA eligibility clock.

That means, according to the NCAA, time's up. Year one was spent playing midget hockey for the San Jose Jr. Sharks (2004-05), two and three were spent playing junior hockey for the Southern Minnesota Express of the North American Hockey League (2005-07) and his fourth and fifth years were his freshman and sophomore years at the academy (2007-09).

"He could have sloughed off and not gone to school at all and not had any of this happen," Serratore said. "But he and his parents wanted to do the right thing. He's punished for being academically motivated."

Academically motivated student-athlete. Isn't that what the NCAA is ideally all about?

Oh right, it is:

Our purpose is to govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount.

Quite the conundrum we've got here, isn't it?

What makes this entire thing all the more painful is that Wright received bad advice about what to do about his academics if he wanted to retain his full eligibility. Kevin and his family of course wanted to do right by the rules and the NCAA has enough loopholes around their rules that they could look the other way and allow him to go through.

As is obvious by his story as told by Jake Schaller of the Colorado Springs Gazette, he's not trying to fool anyone and he's trying to do right by the rules and regulations, something the folks running the Air Force Academy would be proud of.

Instead, the NCAA feels the need to flex their muscles and show how much of a stickler they can be for their own rules:

But the NCAA turned down Wright's waiver, and the committee on student-athlete reinstatement denied Wright's appeal because it "was unable to identify compelling extenuating circumstances to meet the requirements for extending the five-year period of eligibility or for waiving the start of the student-athlete's five-year clock."

In such cases, according to Stacey Osburn, the NCAA's associate director for public and media relations, the committee and staff also weigh that a student-athlete like Wright made the decision to delay enrollment at an NCAA school for athletic reasons (not for personal or academic motives).

The five-year rule attempts "to ensure a fair and level playing field for all student-athletes, including those that compete against the student-athletes applying for waivers," Osburn said.

"I thought that once they saw that I wasn't trying to cheat the system and that I was just trying to take care of my education that there was no harm or any negative side effects from my actions as far as athletics go," Wright said.

But in the letter confirming the denial of Wright's appeal, Jennifer Henderson, the NCAA's director of membership services/student-athlete reinstatement, wrote that "no additional appeal opportunity" exists.

But he hasn't given up. His family has begun a campaign to draw attention to the matter in the hopes that someone, anyone will intervene.

Ahh yes, the campaign to draw attention to the NCAA ruling like a pack of iron-fisted dictators and having no idea on when to use common sense when judging the case of some kid who, by all understanding is just a regular guy looking to play hockey and keep throwing up a 3.4 GPA.

Count me in on this battle because the NCAA seems to want to play like they're standing hard by their rules, and that's a good example to set for other sports that are continually finding ways to get around or outright break the NCAAs rules. Hockey, generally, isn't one of those sports that looks to flout their ability to stick it to the NCAA and playing hard-ass with a hockey player, and one at a United States Academy at that, seems shortsighted and foolish on their part.

This opinion seems to be shared amongst other members in the NCAA Hockey community as is shown in this special correspondence sent to Jack Schaller courtesy of Air Force coach Frank Serratore:

Frank: Very, very sorry to hear about the Kevin Wright/NCAA issue. I am of the opinion that Kevin has a legitimate case and it should be pursued. The NCAA objective regarding eligibility, should be a fair and honest effort to insure that every athlete has an opportunity to compete. Opportunity, opportunity it should always be about opportunity for young adults to participate. Seems to be very clear that Kevin was given incorrect advice by an academic counselor in whom Kevin trusted. For this reason alone he should have his eligibility restored. There was no attempt on Kevin’s part to circumvent the NCAA rules. The key words are TRUST and INTENT. Kevin delayed his entry into DI athletics in order to better prepare himself to compete. At least 95% of all hockey players contemplating D-I hockey competition, play junior or some other level of hockey in order match the experience level of their contemporaries. Football and basketball players don’t have to go the same route as hockey players in order to be on the same competitive level as their contemporaries. Unfortunately, most of the NCAA staff members that deal with eligibility have no hockey background. The end result is that Kevin becomes an innocent victim.

That was sent to Coach Serratore from former Bemidji State Athletic Director and newly retired commissioner of College Hockey America, Bob Peters. One of the last lines from Peters really sticks out to me: "Unfortunately, most of the NCAA staff members that deal with eligibility have no hockey background."

Why doesn't the NCAA have some folks on their staff that know more about hockey? How is it possible that this organization that governs most of the collegiate sports in America doesn't have someone with a lick of common sense or detailed hockey knowledge? And if there aren't any folks at the NCAA that know better about these things, why are they even making a ruling on this situation without understanding it?

I know why. They're the NCAA that's why. They're like Alec Baldwin's character Blake in "Glengarry Glen Ross" and if you ask them what their name is you get, "Fuck YOU, that's my name!"

No one around to check them, no one there to balance them and certainly no one there to listen to the story of Kevin Wright and put things into the proper perspective for them.

But that's why we're here on the Internet, to bring stories like this into the light.

We're here to help a kid who's getting the short end of the stick courtesy of an organization that would rather play hard with the rules than gain any insight or understanding into someone's situation.

Spread the word.

Game 7: Epic Series Goes To Pittsburgh - Penguins Win 2-1

2009-06-13T03:41:00.003-04:00

Just watching this series, even while watching it with a stray eye from afar in Washington, was exhausting. For fans, for media, for bloggers, for everyone alike.

Just imagine how it is actually playing the games.

The Penguins showed in Game 7 that they did, in fact, want it more. They played harder and more aggressive for the better part of the game. They played smarter for the entire game and didn't allow for Detroit to wheel and deal the way they like to.

Most importantly, and this was something I made it a point to say both last year and this, their third and fourth lines responded better than Detroit's did, a point that was made emphatically in Game 7 by Maxime Talbot scoring both Pittsburgh goals. Talbot last year was the lone player on Pittsburgh's third and fourth lines who proved to be a burr in the side of the Red Wings.

This year, Talbot solidified himself as a folk hero win or loss given how he handled himself against the Capitals and how he played smartly and selflessly throughout the playoffs. I know that the folks in Pittsburgh's blogging circles will write folk songs and sing the praises of guys like Crosby, Fleury and Malkin but Talbot is the guy for whom much of Pens fans adulation and warm memories from here on out will be saved for.

Evgeni Malkin is the superstar you should get forced down your throat.
(Photo - AP)

In this go-round, Talbot had sustained help from Ruslan Fedotenko - a guy who already has Stanley Cup folk hero status for the last 25 Tampa Bay Lightning fans that haven't been run off by the new owners there. Adding characters like Craig Adams and Fedotenko helped solidify the other lines for Pittsburgh helping younger players like Tyler Kennedy and Jordan Staal feel more at home working the grinder lines and realizing that by doing their job checking and defending you can still find a way to pot a goal or two.

Pieces like that are what the team was missing last year and they were able to capitalize best on playing the aggressive forecheck (you know, like I kept saying they ought to do) and put pressure on Detroit's defense.

No, not Nick Lidstrom and Brian Rafalski - those guys you can't exactly rattle. Brad Stuart and Niklas Kronwall however...

To this point in the playoffs, I had been singing the praises of Brad Stuart as his play through the first three rounds had been solid if not spectacular. In the Finals, however, Stuart's efforts in Game 7 are what folks are going to be paying attention to. Stuart took a bad slashing penalty in the first period and had a brutal turnover and mis-timed moment to pinch in leading to both of Maxime Talbot's goals.

Having that kind of résumé in an elimination game will often get a guy run out of town. For Stuart, it's a Finals he'd like to forget as his play suffered. Whether that be from his own mistakes or for having to perpetually look out for Niklas Kronwall who would take himself out of plays looking to deliver a hit elsewhere or do too much on the puck it's tough to say.

For all the advances that Kronwall seemed to make last season in his play after finally finding a way to remain healthy, I couldn't help but find myself watching him to see how he would handle himself and his positioning. A lot of the time he's solid, but there's enough brain farting going on that teams were finding ways to expose him.

I hammered on a lot of this after Game 3 of this series and his +/- rating didn't change after Game 3. In Games 4 and 5 he pulled in a +1 rating and in Game 6 he was even.

Yeah, you guessed it, he was a -2 in Game 7 along with Brad Stuart. Game 7 saw plenty of reckless play from the two of them and if anything that -2 was well earned on their part. The poor unfortunate guy that had to deal with all that was Chris Osgood who truly played stellar all throughout this series and the playoffs.

For Pittsburgh though, Conn Smythe Trophy winner Evgeni Malkin was the story from beginning to end.

Enough about Crosby and him captaining the team to the win - I'm done with that. Good for him for winning but it's not because of him they were able to beat Detroit. Not in Game 7 and not in the rest of the series. He's the guy you're going to get forced down your throats from now until Lord knows when, but it's got to be eating him up how much more sound the Penguins play when he's not around. Malkin carried this team last year while Crosby was out with an injury and he carried the team again in Game 7 when Crosby left with an injury in the second period after taking a hit from Johan Franzen.

This was Malkin's baby from the start of the playoffs and he earned it. Worst of all? Fans in North America aren't going to hear enough about him because he's Russian and speaks poor English and the NHL can't wrap their head around marketing players that don't come from North America.

Amazing, isn't it? I've got a full-blown man-crush on the Hart Trophy candidates this year (Alex Ovechkin, Pavel Datsyuk and Malkin) but the league can't do anything with them. This is why if you too are a Twitter user you should be following Dmitry Chesnokov, one of the contributors at Yahoo's Puck Daddy.

He's Russian and gets all the juicy interviews with the Russian stars and gets the personality out of them that the NHL is too ignorant or lazy to try for and hey, guess what, Russian players aren't the robots you see elsewhere around the league.

Look at it this way, when your favorite Russian player is giving a poorly-worded interview in English, that guy is a regular Jeremy Roenick or Brett Hull when interviewed in Russian.

It's so frustrating to see such marketing ability available here and no one putting it to use it's even managed to derail my Stanley Cup wrap up.

I know a lot is going to get made about how Herr Bettman's wet dream finally came true here, and it did let's not think differently, but what we've got here is a damn spanking nice little cross-conference rivalry teeming over with superstars. Canadians, Russians, Swedes, Finns and Slovaks all over the place.

Sets the stage pretty nicely for Vancouver in 2010 now, doesn't it?

Don't worry, training camps open in three months and the NHL Draft is two weeks away with the Free Agency window opening soon after that.

The off-season begins now.

How (Not) To Prepare For A Game 7

2009-06-12T14:17:00.005-04:00

A lot of you may be stressing the hell out today because your team is playing in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight.

Others of you may have hitched a ride with a team for the Finals after having yours bumped off along the way either before or during the playoffs. It's OK, I'm not here to rat you out or tell the others in your fanbase that you may have given up the team colors in favor of the "prettier" horse that came along.

That's not my job to rat you out and besides, you've got to live with yourself anyhow. Enjoy the anguish of living a lie should that be your course of action.

What I'm here to do is try to share with you what it is to live in the hell of having the next game be your last, when you're that close to taking home the prize that your team is dying to reach. I'm here to tell you that if you want to live life as a hockey fan in a brilliant kind of tortured hell there's one thing you have to do:

Become a college hockey fan.

I'm not joking and hell, if you want examples of that already, take a look at the stories from my Back To School tour of excellence back in March and April.

OK so you don't want to check it out, fine. Here's what the teams in tonight's final have to look forward to (click to enlarge):

Thrill of Victory:

Agony of Defeat:

Those are shots from the conclusion of this year's National Championship game that saw Boston University defeat Miami University in overtime. Yeah, ouch.

Pretty simple, I know, but seeing it is another thing entirely and let's face it, Penguins fans have tasted defeat in the Finals once, just last year. Detroit fans, at least the more modern variety, got a piece of it back in 1995 at the hands of Jacques Lemaire's ruiners of 1990s hockey, the New Jersey Devils.

I can tell you first hand, however, that living and dying by your team is mentally and physically exhausting and having a hand in it with the college team of your upbringing or graduation can make even the most even-keeled of folks become raving lunatics.

For me, my roots are based in Division III college hockey, graduating from Oswego State in 2002. Working games from the press box while in college doesn't allow you to fully give into your fandom, after all, there's no cheerleading in the press box.

In 2003, Oswego State reached the Frozen Four for Division III and you better believe I was there with friends to witness this in Northfield, Vermont. Oswego was the newcomer to the party in dealing with local favorites Norwich and Middlebury (both in Vermont) as well as St. Norbert's College from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Oswego drew Middlebury in the semifinals and trounced them "surprisingly" 6-0 and met the hosts from Norwich in the Finals.

There's no more nervewracking of a setting than being there in person, on hostile ground no-less, hoping to see your team win the big prize. That afternoon we would leave Kreitzberg Arena to the sounds of the place going bonkers as the Cadets would beat the Lakers 2-1. A long, humbled and quiet car ride would follow as we headed back to the Albany area.

Four years later, Oswego would be back in the NCAA tournament and would open up at home against Norwich and exact a revenge of sorts for the 2003 loss beating the Cadets 3-0, this time on Oswego's home ice. A date in the Frozen Four was set again, this time in Superior, Wisconsin.

There would be no road trip, there would be only reliance on the Internet broadcast of the semifinals against St. Norbert's and then praying they win that so I could watch them on CSTV in the Finals.

This is where I leave things off to our media successors at Oswego State campus TV WTOP-10 to show you how this played out. I can tell you this right now, every time I watch this my adrenaline races and I break out into a cold sweat.

(ed. note: YouTube is being a bit buggy lately so be patient and come on back again to see the video.)

Full disclosure:

After Garren Reisweber scored that OVERTIME GAME-WINNING GOAL, I leapt out of the chair, did a lap around the house, then ran outside leaping into the snowbanks via backflip.

I've never done a backflip before, and I've never dared try one since but it's true, adrenaline can make you do super-human things.

That said, your team is on the road looking for their first championship and the road to get there goes through overtime in the semifinals and in the finals, it's a wonder myself or any other Oswego State hockey alum survived.

But I did and I'm alive to pass this on to those of you who will be locked down into Game 7 tonight to let you know that win or lose, you're still going to be there to fight again.

Neither Detroit nor Pittsburgh are going anywhere bad after this season. Folks want to write the Red Wings off and say that their demise is imminent.

It's not.

Pittsburgh has already proven that they'll be able to stick around by making it back again this year, especially after dropping their dead-weight of an albatross named Michel Therrien.

If your team loses, yeah it's going to sting like a son of a bitch and it's going to eat you up for a while. You probably won't want to look at anything hockey for some time after that and you can't be blamed for it.

But if you come back from it and you hunger for more and you develop that war wound with your team, and believe me losing in a game where it's all or nothing is a cannon blast to the midsection in the Civil War, the reward is worth the wait.

Game 7 wins and losses weed out who belongs and who doesn't and if for some sick psychotic reason you want to give yourself a better chance at experiencing this sensation of living on the brink with a team you know and love and adore... Sign up for college hockey. Pick a team and go along for the ride.

If you went to college that has a team, even better, you're already in the family. All you have to do then is start caring about them. Don't have a team yet? Snoop around, adopt one, adopt a local team if you've got one. Remember though, you're adopting them not to half-ass your attention to them you want to accept them into your life because you're a maniacal hockey fan and you seek more and you have wanton disregard for your sanity.

Detroit fans I probably don't have to tell about college hockey given that Michigan alone has University of Michigan, Michigan State, Michigan Tech, Northern Michigan, Western Michigan, Ferris State, and Lake Superior State all contained within their borders.

Joe Louis Arena plays host to the annual Great Lakes Invitational pitting Michigan, MSU and Michigan Tech against a fourth team to be named later. RPI joins them this upcoming season. Yes, consider that foreshadowing for what may come in December.

For Pittsburgh fans and those of you actually in the Iron City or close by, you've got a couple of teams within reach of you: Robert Morris University and Mercyhurst College. Robert Morris plays in Pittsburgh itself while Mercyhurst is located to the north in Erie. There is a bonus to becoming a Mercyhurst supporter though:

Mercyhurst Lakers goalie Matt Lundin shows off Whalers-colored glory.

Your team wears the colors of the Hartford Whalers. I can see no other reason than that to want to become a fan of Mercyhurst. If you're into the women's college hockey scene, Mercyhurst's squad is one of the better ones in the country. Double your pleasure Pennsylvania.

I know that this post offers in no way any kind of comfort or solace for those looking to find a way to get through tonight's game and I'm only serving to be more of an enabler of further stress, hair loss, anxiety and short fuses but I just want you all to be able to join me in that club.

Some say "misery loves company" but in this case it's more like the asylum seeks more patients.

You're hockey fans after all, be proud of your insanity.

Going Retread Is Retarded

2009-06-11T16:03:00.007-04:00

What makes analyzing the foibles of the power players in the NHL so amusing is that they very often continue to make the same mistakes repeatedly thus dooming franchises to continued failure.

It began a couple weeks ago when the Montreal Canadiens announced that their new head coach would be former Florida Panthers coach and general manager Jacques Martin. Martin, of course, is one of the many contributors to driving the Panthers into the ground over the years before stepping out from behind the bench and hiring former Canadian juniors coach Pete DeBoer.

Of all the bad moves Martin made over the years in Florida, his best move was hiring the very green DeBoer to try and make something out of the deck chairs on his version of the Titanic in Florida. The results? Florida just barely missed the playoffs only losing out in the number of wins compared to the Canadiens who they finished tied with for points in the Eastern Conference.

The way the Panthers were arranged, well, let's just say that some writers out there didn't have a lot of faith for how they were going to do given the apparent lack of talent and throwing a new coach to the wolves with such a rag-tag bunch.

Oops.

So DeBoer does well enough for Bob Gainey to think that hiring Jacques Martin must be a good idea, right? Well, OK some (Four to be exact) Habs fans are at least warming up to it sarcastically. That's not a good sign.

So of course that leads some stupid owners to think, "Well shoot, we've got to get in on this before we lose out on our opportunity to give some failed reject yet another chance to prove why they've lost their job over and over again."

Is it any shock that Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks is that stupid owner?

In spite of the fanatical drama created last year thanks to the Sean Avery fiasco and Marty Turco's abysmal start to the season, the Dallas Stars rallied to be mostly respectable in a very difficult Western Conference. All of that was petty drama for Stars owner Tom Hicks and new general manager Joe Nieuwendyk as they first fired head coach Dave Tippett and then hired Marc Crawford to replace him behind the bench.

Look out Nelson, Crawford will send Krys Barch after you for laughing at Tom Hicks.

Uh... what? Why Marc Crawford?

He's a guy who was a terrible fit in Los Angeles, wore out his welcome in Vancouver (not to mention his fingerprints being all over the Steve Moore-Todd Bertuzzi situation) and saw his only real success with a team full of superstars in Colorado ten years ago.

Then again, he spent the last year or two working on Canadian television as an analyst so hey, he's got to be good right?!

Ugh.

Given how soon this decision came down after Joe Nieuwendyk's hiring, there's little doubt here that he's got a plan on how he wants to set the team up and for that, I guess, Nieuwendyk deserves the benefit of the doubt but some of his quotes at the press conference raise some questions for me:

"We went through an extensive process of evaluation, talking through many areas of the organization and evaluating where we were as a club and we believe that Marc has the qualities that we need moving forward. I talked to several former players of Marc's, such as Joe Sakic, Mike Keane and Trevor Linden and they all spoke very highly of Marc."

Well that sounds peachy, but how about the guys in the locker room that you're going to be managing?

"I did not speak to any current Stars players because I don't think any of them have ever played for Marc before."

Oh.

Well there it is, Joe Nieuwendyk rules with an iron fist.

Perhaps this is his subtle way of telling the guys that the sort of rampant semi-mutiny that appeared to roll through the locker room last year (in particular with regard to Avery) won't be tolerated. For that, bringing in a fiery personality like Crawford may actually be a good thing.

After all, given the brand of hockey that Crawford is going to want to play, expect an even bigger role to be played by Steve Ott, someone that Crawford may view as Bertuzzi-esque in his size and physical play. I don't want to do the obvious tie-in with questionable physical play, but Steve Ott makes it kind of easy to do that.

As for some of the other things Nieuwendyk and Crawford will have to contend with, Stars Scene takes a nice peek at the list for them to contend with and one thing in particular gave me pause:

3 – Get a capable backup goalie for Turco

Oooh, I know how to handle this one and I think Marc Crawford will be a really easy sale for it too considering his love of this goaltender is like that of a fat kid and cake.

Dan Cloutier at his best in Vancouver.

Yeah, come on, you know we all want to see Dan Cloutier back in the NHL to serve up some of the most embarrassing goals you've ever seen.

Perhaps Tobias Stephan isn't such a bad idea after all.

After all of that, what does Crawford have to say about the current outlay of the Stars?

"I think that what impresses me so much about the Stars is the tremendous core values that team already has in place. They have a great foundation of habits that I will continue to build upon. You don't lose the strengths of previous coaches and previous regimes, there's still a part of Bob Gainey, still a big part of Ken Hitchcock and huge part of Dave Tippett still with this team and my job will be to add to that moving forward. I'm confident that the strengths I'm going to bring to the team are going to help the Dallas Stars."

There's Bob Gainey's name again. And Ken Hitchcock. I'm sure we'll hear about Dave Tippett landing somewhere else soon enough (New Jersey, perhaps?). I don't know quite what the "core values" of the Dallas Stars are but given how the roster is set up, they apparently value either beating you up (Ott, Krys Barch) or employing diving sissies (Mike Ribeiro) to drive Mike Modano crazy.

The key components of the Stars from this point on should be James Neal, Brad Richards, Brenden Morrow and Marty Turco. The team needs a lot of blueline help and were ravaged by injuries last year along those lines. They lack some serious forward depth while Joel Lundqvist and Loui Eriksson are nice pieces, they need a lot more here.

Rebuilding this team is going to be a tough job and I surely hope that Nieuwendyk is capable of handling it with a crazy overlord of an owner in Hicks watching him and a gamble retread of a coach in Crawford trying to make his pieces work.

A hire like this I'm sure makes the Stars brass feel like they're going to recapture some of the magic but I can't help but think that recycling old blood like Crawford is only going to make things worse.

It's up to Nieuwendyk in the off-season to make sure things don't get out of hand further in Dallas because things could go south fast for Dallas in the meantime, their division isn't exactly a cakewalk anymore.

A Break For Reality: Good-Bye to Nathan Marsters

2009-06-10T13:33:00.007-04:00

I know this is the day when I should be wrapping up Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals and getting psyched along with everyone else about a Game 7, but during last night's game news came down that probably doesn't hit on most of your radars about the passing of someone who I had the pleasure to watch quite a bit here at home and monitor his career from afar.

In the heights of Game 6, I broke the news on Twitter that former RPI goalie standout and 2000 Los Angeles Kings 5th Round pick Nathan Marsters was killed in a car accident. This morning, the details of the accident became available to me and it's an even bigger gut-punch to read the information.

Nathan Marsters at RPI (courtesy of rpihockey.net)

I can't say that I knew Nathan personally and I only know him as someone on the ice who always impressed me with his playing ability for teams that sometimes failed to support him with the goals needed to win. A good friend of mine blogging for the St. Cloud Times offers a a better and more personalized view of Nathan Marsters.

It pained me to try to reach him as best as I could while he's on the move supporting our country in Iraq and proved why sometimes technology while helpful doesn't offer the personal touch necessary to pass along terrible news.

Marsters was a four-year starter during his time in Troy, NY with the RPI Engineers, a credit to his game. At 6'4" 200 he was a big, lanky goaltender and presented an intimidating figure on which opposing shooters had to deal with.

His tenure in Troy saw him put up stellar numbers three out of his four seasons (his junior year being the lone hiccup) and his senior season he saved the best for last finishing with a 21-13-1 record with a .922 save percentage and a 2.15 goals against, earning career marks in wins and goals against that year.

After college, Nathan became one of the many uncredited unknowns that move on to journeyman careers in the minor leagues hoping to hone his game and catch on in the AHL and eventually the NHL.

Round about 2006, Marsters got the call while playing for the Portland Pirates, then a Mighty Ducks of Anaheim affiliate. It would be a brief moment and there wouldn't be any time seen on the ice, but the Ducks thought enough of him to call him up while Jean-Sebastien Giguere was out with an injury and Marsters dressed as the backup goalie for Game 1 of Anaheim's Western Quarterfinal game against Calgary.

One cup of coffee had and in playoff time no-less, not a bad credit for the résumé. That 2005-2006 season in Portland for the Pirates, he went 23-9-2 with a 3.10 GAA and .900 save percentage. Marsters would get one more turn with Portland the follow season but for only a few games. From there, he moved on to the ECHL and this past season saw some work in the German Professional League playing in nine games for the Krefeld Penguins.

That's the rough road of being a professional hockey player and the part of Nathan's story that really brings this all home for me. He was a guy just about my age trying to do whatever it is that he can to make it stick and to make it count and maybe catch lightning in a bottle and in one, horrible instant it's done and over with.

For Nathan, he was trying to be one of those guys that I hope to someday write about on the big scene and going anywhere he could just to keep playing.

To keep trying.

Hearing of this loss has really thrown me for a loop for a handful of reasons which would be immensely disrespectful to bring up here. For now though, it's time to remember one of hockey's fallen and honor him.

Herr Bettman's State of the Reichstag

2009-06-08T15:54:00.005-04:00

I've held off on this piece for a bit because, well, there's a big series going on right now. That said, I couldn't allow for Herr Bettman's yearly, rambling spin doctoring speech which he calls the State Of The League address go without giving it proper roasting.

Now I know that some of you may think that the harping on Bettman goes over the top and that's fine and a fair criticism to which I just ask that he not make it so easy to find ways to hammer him. That said, it's getting more popular to needle the man as Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy did quite nicely with his piece examining the NHL constitution and bylaws. If you haven't given that a look over you should because the NHL constitution goes over about as black and white as the rules interpretations do for officials.

No wonder this league is such a mess.

What we're going to focus on here, however, is Bettman's May 30th press conference about what he thinks of the league and its many sticky issues and why he's the kind of lying liar lying about lies that drive us crazy.

Black and White makes this blog classy-ish. It also opens the door to break Godwin's Law.

If you've watched or absorbed sports enough in your life you know that when you get a talk from or an interview with someone involved in the game either they're going to bore the crap out of you with the standard athlete/coach speak in which they offer up little to nothing informative or interesting.

If you're dealing with someone in an executive position you're probably going to get lied to a lot and if you're on to their game and understand that they're lying to you to mess with you, it's fun.

Red Wings coach Mike Babcock is a superstar at this because he not only flat out lies, he twists reporters in knots with a British comedy-like dry wit in which allows him to both insult and take down a reporter who thinks they're ahead of the game.

You also have guys like John Tortorella who don't mind actually taking you down a peg or twelve and believe me, that's quite the moment to have.

For Gary Bettman though... We know he's lying, we know what he's lying about and he thinks he's being cute with us while others are more than happy to eat up what's spoonfed by the Lying Mouth That Fails.

Honestly, do you think anyone out there believes it when he says this:

With regard to Phoenix, there has been a lot of commentary on the subject. So let me spend a brief moment on it.

The team was never in jeopardy. It was literally 20 minutes away from being fixed in a way that we thought was going to work quite well, and it's our view, my view, that the Coyotes should not be in bankruptcy.

Give me a freaking break.

"Literally 20 minutes away from being fixed" - if you believe that I've got a ~~team~~ bridge to sell you.

Considering that the incredibly awful situation in Phoenix has now allowed for the soft underbelly of the NHL to be out in full display opening the door for every crazy canuck with lots of money to come running out to make a claim, how is it possible that the league was that close to righting the ship when they can't even get out of their own way in the first place?

How difficult would it be for Bettman to be up front from the get-go to say, "Listen, things are in a bad way in Phoenix. Jerry Moyes has come to us with concerns and has asked for the league to help out in finding a buyer for the franchise interested in keeping the team tied to the city."

At worst, the league takes a hit for playing things parallel to what goes on in corporate America with financially miserable companies getting a taxpayer bailout but at best everyone in the situation comes out looking like they're trying to do the right thing for everyone concerned. Not only does it allow for everyone to look good, it's solid PR for the league and for Jerry Moyes.

NHL Planning: It's fannnnnntastic!

Instead you get this from the press conference following the State of the Game address:

Q. Publicly you've painted a fairly optimistic portrait of Phoenix's financial health all season, yet court documents relating to the bankruptcy suggest there were some serious issues all year round. How do you imagine it turning around in that market?

COMMISSIONER BETTMAN: First of all, I know there have been suggestions that either Bill or I have been optimistic. That was not the case. What we've always responded to has been the notion that the club was not in any jeopardy. The club's losses are comparable to what they've been.

The City of Glendale is prepared to work with the club in terms of building arrangements. And we believe there are buyers out there who are willing to step up, invest and make it work. This is a club that needs new ownership and a change in management and needs to perform better than it has. As long as there are people prepared to invest in doing that, we think the prospects can be optimistic and should be. At least some of the people that I've spoken to believe that it can be turned around and turned around rather quickly by doing a lot of the right things that haven't been done.

Spin, spin, spin away.

The best part about reading this transcript is that you can see Bettman's mood change from the start of the press conference to the end of it and he knows that what he's shoveling isn't being bought by those in attendance and hey, when you go into one of these things knowing full well that the reporters are going to come at you armed with a litany of hot-button topics you have to think he'd be prepared for this or more media savvy about it.

But it's great to read an exchange that goes like this:

Q. Having said that, you've been in the south now, and your southern expansion, you've been 30 teams for, correct me if I'm wrong, 7 or 8 years now - the goal to be to get the big U.S. TV contract. The reward has never come. You don't have the big TV contract?

COMMISSIONER BETTMAN: Really?

Q. Is there any shelf life on being in these cities where across the board down there you've got financial problems. Do you ever pull your horns in on this whole 30?team thing and bring it back a little bit?

COMMISSIONER BETTMAN: The answer is I don't agree with your premise. It wasn't all about just the big TV contract. It was about expanding our footprint and connecting with fans in more places than before. If you count, I don't have the exact number, but the number of people that have attended games in the new markets since they've come into the League goes into the tens of millions. We have a number of Stanley Cup champions and/or finalists who have come from the so?called Sun Belt.

To use your methodology of seven years, I'll make it 10 or 12 years, that's a relatively short period of time in the life of a franchise.

We like where we are. And this is not something that you take a snap shot over. We believe that our franchises can all be successful where they're currently located. And somebody could have asked me the same question that you just asked eight years ago about the Canadian franchises. They could have said; 'Why do you have any franchises other than Toronto or Montreal?' eight or ten years ago, because the buildings in all the other places were two?thirds to half empty. And the answer is because that's where we belong having franchises. We're working with our fans. And we don't run out on cities. We try to make it work. I think at this stage to pronounce that our expansion and the places where we are isn't working is premature.

With respect to television, the television landscape is a lot more complicated than the discussion about it. Taking the year off that we took had an impact on where we are and who had what needs when, and the perceived value of our product.

The fact is we decided coming back to go in a certain direction in the United States. Our ratings are growing very nicely with a partner who is growing with us. And it's playing out pretty much the way we planned. So if it's not living up to the standards, perhaps, that you've set for these franchises, I apologize. But we think we're doing okay.

Freaking hilarious.

I can picture in my head how Herr Bettman pouted over this and about how no one believes what he says when it comes to just about anything having to do with the league.In fact, I don't have to imagine it.

Gary's head being this cartoonishly large makes my Photoshop work all the more realistic.

I can just look at this and feel a lot better knowing that this is the look on his face.

With regard to what he's saying about Phoenix, I doubt there will be any deviation in how things go at tomorrow's hearing in the desert even though the Toronto Star seems to think that Balsillie has a good enough case to win out over the NHL. While we're talking about super-wealthy rams butting heads here, I doubt that the courts would ever go with someone trying to back-door their way into owning a team and violating the way the league does business.

Then again, you just never know - law is funny that way. For my own greedy purposes, I'd love to see Balsillie win out in court tomorrow. Getting a judge to help me and others across the Internet give the NHL and Bettman the finger is something I pray will happen some day, I just doubt beyond anything else that tomorrow is going to be that day.

Of course, should it break down like that, the NHL already has the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on stand-by ready to smack that down just in case Judge Baum wants to get frisky.

At least the league is always ready with a backup plan.

Er... Right.

Going On A Holiday

2009-06-04T12:55:00.003-04:00

I know that sometimes trips are really often poorly timed and, well, you could say that this is one of those times as I'm headed to Washington, D.C. for the weekend and will NOT be recapping Games 4 and 5 while I'm there because, honestly, who knows if I'll even get to see them.

No, that's not a dig at Versus for not being in a hotel there - I'm not even staying in a hotel.

So to commemorate this occasion, I was going to play you the video from Mr. Show with the stars of the show singing "Going On A Holiday" but that's lame and it sucks. So instead if you'd like to complain about me dumping out on recapping the game, I want all complaints to be like this:

Good luck keeping up with that! See you next week.

Game 3: It's Just Getting Creepy Now - Pittsburgh Wins 4-2

2009-06-03T12:49:00.003-04:00

I should really just re-print my game recaps from last year and see if anyone bothers to fact check me at this point.

Just picking up and running with this acid flashback kind of thing for this series turned out to be the right thing to do since, just like last year, the Penguins pulled off a Game 3 victory.

In this version, a crazy up and down first period with two goals for each team lead to a Detroit-dominated and defensively locked down second period which saw Detroit get its opportunities to take the lead and then turn into a third period where Pittsburgh turned up the pressure and get the lead and the victory on the power play.

Once again, however, officiating is at the forefront of the discussion after an obvious too many men on the ice call was missed in the first period. Shortly after that, Detroit was booked for a penalty which lead to a Pittsburgh power play goal to tie the game at two. Even the guys in the NBC booth were going bonkers over the call.

All the officiating faux pas aside, Abel to Yzerman made it plain as day what the chink in the armor of the Red Wings is:

The Penalty Kill is this family’s dirty secret. The Kill is the clepto dad, the dirty sister who hands it out like candy at Christmas, the mom who got a DUI last week, pulled over and arrested in the middle of the day. Our penalty kill is a problem like that. It’s not going to just go away without treatment. And, left to its own devices, it’s going to humiliate us all at the worst possible moment.

The truth hurts. In short-handed situations there's something drastically different about how the Red Wings go about business. The pressure on the point men isn't there, defensive positioning is certainly off, hell, look where Niklas Kronwall is standing on this goal:

Pretty tough to help your goaltender when you're screening him. Then again, Niklas Kronwall is a bit of a dirty secret for Detroit as it is anyhow. Kronwall is currently a +4 on defense in the playoffs. Not bad, sure, but how does he stack up with his teammates?

Nick Lidstrom: +10
Brian Rafalski: +10
Jonathan Ericsson: + 10
Brett Lebda: +9
Brad Stuart: +7

Brad Stuart has been a stud throughout these playoffs so why are his numbers a bit off from the rest? Look no further than his defensive partner Kronwall.

Yeah, I know, he makes the big hits and makes the highlight reels and all that fun stuff but positionally he's a bit off and already in this series we've seen him make a misplay that leads to a Evgeni Malkin breakaway.

You think this is something Dan Bylsma and the Penguins staff haven't taken note of? You bet they have and they know that Stuart is playing out of his mind and doing even more to help/cover up for Kronwall's mistakes.

How does this translate out in Game 4 though? Who knows. At this point, why even try to deviate from how things shook out from last year. Detroit has shown an uncanny ability to rebound from losses and make corrections in their game to make sure these problems don't come up again.

Pittsburgh is going to need to bring the thunder like they did for the third period last night all game long. Another period like their second period last night where Detroit controls play and gets the chances they did will not turn out well for the Penguins. Then again, perhaps the Penguins had a bit of hockey karma coming their way after some of the bad-break-bounces they suffered in Game 1 and that's why you see Mikael Samuelsson rip a couple of shots off the post.

Then again, I could say that unicorns will stampede the ice and leprechauns will take over and control Game 4.

Wait, nevermind, a leprechaun already runs the NHL.

The scariest and dumbest of all Leprechauns.

Game 2: Department of Redundancy Department - Detroit Wins 3-1

2009-06-01T02:14:00.006-04:00

Stop me if you heard this one before.

Detroit beats Pittsburgh 3-1 in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Me breaking out Yogi Berra is apparently rubbing off in a big way because not only are Detroit and Pittsburgh in the Finals for the second straight year, but now the Red Wings have come out on top of the Penguins by identical 3-1 to scores in each game this year and are once again ahead in the Finals 2-0... Just like they were last year.

Invoking more of the acid flashbacks to last year was Valtteri Filppula who scored the game-winning goal in tonight's Game 2 in a play that's come under some major scrutiny from at least one very famous Penguins blog. Have a look for yourself and see what you think, highlights from NBC:

The contention from the Penguins loyalists comes from the stick-work from, who else, Marian Hossa. On the play you see Pens forward Pascal Dupuis try to maneuver away while be harassed by Hossa. Hossa lifts the stick, he stick checks him all while Dupuis' stick breaks in his hands. I'll admit, his reaction to having the composite lumber fall apart in his hands had me fooled but after the replay... Well, that's just crappy luck.

What stuck out to me here is that Dupuis instantly tried to sell a call and stopped playing. Now, I know selling a call is all part of the game... You don't stop skating to yell though. Dupuis realizes a couple seconds too late that he has to keep playing and by that time, Detroit is at the half-boards and firing away and then the scrum ensues leading to Filppula's insane backhand goal.

After all that, however, that goal wasn't the backbreaker. Filppula's goal made the score 2-1 but a familiar face from Game 1 was going to notch his second goal of the series and coincidentally enough it would again be the goal to make the game 3-1. The fresh-off-the-TV video from NBC:

From that point on in the third period, the Penguins were toast and it showed for the better part of the next ten minutes of play as Detroit toyed with and puck-controlled for that time. Puck control was a huge issue for Detroit in the first 30 minutes of this one as they found themselves uncharacteristically turning it over and dumping and chasing rather than staying back and patient.

Give the Penguins a lot of credit here as their forecheck forced the issue on Detroit but the Red Wings seem to always find a way to bend and not break and to resist the waves of pressure.

The one glaring issue with the series to this point, however, is the difference between the defensemen of these teams. It's already unfair to have the Red Wings roll out there with Nick Lidstrom, Brad Stuart, Brian Rafalski and Nick Kronwall. Adding 6'5" former NHL Draft Mr. Irrelevant Jonathan Ericsson to the mix and having him produce (he scored Detroit's first goal tonight) and help out on the special teams with seamless effectiveness turns the tide even more in favor of Detroit.

Penguins defenseman Hal Gill in his natural state.

Pittsburgh's extreme lack of solid play on the blue line is becoming more noticeable and bigger efforts in shutting down Detroit's third and fourth lines, never mind the top two lines, are needed out of guys like Rob Scuderi and Hal Gill who have looked beyond abysmal through two games.

Scuderi was a -1 and Gill a -2 in Game 2 and Gill, while a solid shot blocker and space-taker-upper, is slow and prone to grabbing and holding out there something for which he should be fortunate the officials are letting go. So far through the first two games, Scuderi is -3 while Gill is a -4.

Not good.

Topping off the amazing coincidental party was how a game that was virtually decided managed to have some shenanigans break loose involving one of Pittsburgh's super-duper-mega stars. Tonight, it was Evgeni Malkin's turn to embarrass the Penguins as he instigated a fight with Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg after a fracas near the Detroit net, sparked by Maxime Talbot spearing goaltender Chris Osgood into flopping like Vlade Divac. Take a look:

Now, really, this whole Déjà vu thing takes a life of its own in this situation if you'll think back to last year's Game 2 and what occurred that night:

OK a questionable hit from a Penguins player leads to Osgood hitting the ice and then we're playing the feud where Evgeni Malkin gets made to look really bad against someone from Sweden. Last year it's Johan Franzen and this year it's Zetterberg.

I really don't know how this can play out any more similar than it has already.

The one "issue" that came up out of tonight's schoolyard horsing around was that Malkin was booked for instigating a fight in the final five minutes of a game, something that according to the NHL Rule Book leads to an automatic one-game suspension.

Of course, if you believed the league was going to stick by that rule in the playoffs, you're crazy as less than an hour after the game, Colin Campbell didn't even bother to spin his Wheel of Justice and said that there would be no suspension for Malkin.

The one stark difference between this year and last year in spite of the results is the professionalism coming from Pittsburgh's locker room, namely from head coach Dan Bylsma. While guys like Crosby and Malkin are busy running around like idiots and Maxime Talbot is too busy mouthing off at Marian Hossa or jabbing at Chris Osgood, Bylsma keeps his head held high and offers no excuses and points no fingers.

Imagine the explosion if Michel Therrien were in charge this year? Ye gods.

Here's a look at Bylsma's comments in the post-game press conference from tonight:

Q. Did you see the Hossa hook-slash on Dupuis before the second goal, and if so, what did you make of the whole sequence?

COACH BYLSMA: I think the way I saw the replay that our guy was trying to get the puck out. Hossa came in and used his stick to lift up their guy's stick. You can make the judgment. The referee made the judgment that it wasn't a hook.

I can slow it down and look at it myself and make my own judgment, but that was what happened. We failed to clear it with that hook and it led to the goal.

Pretty calm and collected there and it's that kind of thing this Penguins team needs in that locker room so they don't lose their heads and run around like idiots. Too bad Dan Bylsma wasn't with this team last year.

Compare that to what Michel Therrien was ranting about after last year's Game 2 loss:

It’s really tough to generate offense against that team. They’re good on
obstruction. It’s going to be tough to generate any type of offense, if the
rules remain the same. So it’s the first time we’re facing a team that the
obstruction is there, and we’re having a hard time skating to take away ice.

We took two penalties tonight on the goalie. We never take penalty to
the goalie in the playoff. I’ll tell you something, I reviewed those plays.
He’s a good actor. He goes to players, and he’s diving. Took away our power
play. Got to get focused. I know our players are frustrated right now. It’s
tough to play the game. But Osgood did the same thing against Dallas under
Ribeiro.

It's like night and day.

Should the "history repeating itself" theme continue, Pittsburgh will take Game 3 and get talk of this being a series once again started in earnest. That said, if Detroit gets Pavel Datsyuk and/or Kris Draper back in the lineup on Tuesday life gets even more difficult for the Penguins because right now, they're having a very hard time keeping up with the Red Wings AHL Invasion Unit of Justin Abdelkader, Ville Leino and Darren Helm. Adding in an MVP Candidate and a defensive face-off wizard only makes the Penguins hill to climb even more treacherous.

Coming Soon: Gary's Spin City

2009-05-31T12:52:00.004-04:00

I'm well aware of Herr Bettman's "State of the NHL" speech he made yesterday and there will be much laughter and criticism to be made of it soon enough but let's face it, the Finals come first and I really want to soak in all of his spin-meistering to pick and blow it up to my best.

In the meantime, let me point you to Aaron Portzline's story from the Columbus Dispatch today and let this set the table for what's to come:

At least eight of the NHL's 30 franchises are thought to be suffering significant annual losses.

Phoenix currently is in bankruptcy court. Atlanta, Florida, Nashville, the New York Islanders, St. Louis, Tampa Bay and Columbus are claiming big losses.

Also, owners in Dallas and Montreal are so overwhelmed with personal debt that rumors persist their clubs could be sold.

"No club is in jeopardy," NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said yesterday before Game 1 of the Finals. "We are in a recession, and there are a variety of issues affecting businesses and owners.

"It's happening in all sports. We are no stranger in dealing with harsh economic realities."

But of the 24 U.S. clubs, as many as 15 expect to finish the 2008-09 fiscal year with financial losses.

The clouds on the horizon are as black as vulcanized rubber, and they closed in on central Ohio last week.

"The Columbus team is just one of many in the U.S. that are in very difficult financial situations," said Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economics professor at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

"I can't tell you if (the club's) claim of $80 million in losses the last seven years is entirely accurate or not. But it's certainly credible. It is certainly in line with what you hear and see from other NHL franchises in a similar situation."

Don't worry Herr Bettman, your time is coming.

Game 1: House of Bounce - Detroit Wins 3-1

2009-05-31T00:35:00.004-04:00

Tell me you predicted this would happen.

OK sure, you may have predicted Detroit would win the game. That's possible.

Did you predict that Sidney Crosby would be held off the scoresheet?

Did you predict that there wouldn't be a true highlight goal scored?

Did you predict that the one goal that would be the highlight goal would be scored by Justin Abdelkader?

What you can't see there is Abdelkader smacking the puck out of mid-air and floating it into the upper corner to put Detroit ahead 3-1.

As for the other goals scored in this game, well, the Joe Louis gremlins were in full effect and the Hockey Gods enlisted a Hanna-Barbera least-favorite to lend a hand in scoring tonight:

Don't know this guy? Yeah, we're not surprised.

That's right, it's Ricochet Rabbit.

You don't know him? That's OK, he's not worth looking up on YouTube or trying to find him on Cartoon Network - he sucks. Given what went down this evening with Pittsburgh's Marc-Andre Fleury we're sure he feels the same way.

Check out the two other goals he allowed this evening:

I know the best way to sum that up is, "Shit happens" but yeah - ouch.

How Marc-Andre Fleury felt in Game 1 of the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals.

That said, as bad as Marc-Andre Fleury had it, Chris Osgood had it going the other way for the Red Wings in stopping 31 of 32 shots and while a bit shaky early on in controlling rebounds, one leading to Ruslan Fedotenko's seventh goal of the playoffs, Osgood was a rock.

What's turning out to be one of the crazier phenomenons of the NHL Playoffs is that the more folks seem to discount the work of Chris Osgood, the better he gets. From the second he set foot on the ice in last year's Stanley Cup Finals as a desperate replacement for the struggling Dominik Hasek, Osgood has been a playoff freakshow.

His efforts in Game 1 brought his playoff goals against average this year to 2.00, second only to Tim Thomas of the Bruins. His save percentage sits at a lofty .928 yet some folks out there more than happy to discount whatever he brings to the table.

But see, now's the time when I act like a dick and trample all over what I just wrote about him and say: You just never know with Osgood though.

Old memories fade slowly and while you'd like to think the visions of Osgood leading both the 1998 and 2008 Detroit Red Wings to Stanley Cup titles would be the lasting vision of him... The ugly goals and previous poor performances out of both Osgood and some past Red Wings teams tarnish his now incredibly sick and lofty NHL legacy.

Chris Osgood through all this remains the NHL version of Rodney Dangerfield. If he keeps up with the tremendous output and numbers and wins... He's the benefit of a great defense. If he gives up a few and Detroit loses in rough ways, it's "typical" Osgood and he has to do better than that for Detroit to win.

No respect I tell ya! No respect at all!

For all that talk about having the great defense in front of him, Chris Osgood sure is facing a good amount of shots. After Game 1, Osgood has faced an average of close to 29 shots per game (28.5+ for those wanting more accuracy). Obviously he's not having boring games in goal and his 2.00 GAA proves that he's been on top of his game.

Of course, if he goes the way of Cam Ward and melts down completely all this talk is moot and Osgood will probably never shake off the, "You're not good enough" demons for the rest of his career and eventual heated debate on whether or not he's a Hall of Fame goaltender.

After all of that, however, it wouldn't be an official Penguins game if Sidney Crosby didn't get involved in some way. This time it came after the final horn:

Ah jeez. Now, honestly, what is the point of doing that? According to Sidney Crosby, well... You figure it out:

"Yeah, Kirk, he was doing what he always does. Giving guys lip service and things like that. I two-handed him I think on top of the foot there as we were skating by. He felt it was necessary for him to keep talking after the game, and I thought I'd whack him."

Yeah, I don't understand it either.

Signs of early frustration from Crosby? No, that's dumb so punch yourself in the yambag if you think that's the case.

Trying to bait Kirk Maltby and the Red Wings into doing something stupid to go running around after him in Game 2?

Well... Crosby can't be that naive to think that that would actually work. Detroit has already gone through two teams that are both a lot better at that sort of thing and a lot more nasty about it (Anaheim and Chicago) than Crosby thinks he is being in this case and Kirk Maltby running his mouth and getting that kind of reaction out of Crosby means that he's doing his job well.

The storylines for Game 2 are going to be about whether or not Maltby and the Red Wings respond to Crosby's petulance (they certainly won't go out of their way to do it) and whether or not Crosby can give his team a lift and a split before the series turns to Pittsburgh.

Both teams played this game very well and for all intents and purposes it was a very even game. Some folks will be critical of the officiating both ways and there were certainly a lot of non-calls but the key here is that the flow and pace of the game was not affected by it. It didn't become a slow, plodding, slug-it-out sort of game with both teams playing dump and chase all night and if that sort of thing can continue throughout the playoffs and matters stay consistent the series will stay entertaining to watch.

With the quick turnaround for Game 2, this will provide a good test for both teams fitness level because neither one is going to want to head to Pittsburgh gasping for air.

A Stanley Cup Preview - The Prophecy Revealed?

2009-05-29T16:26:00.007-04:00

"It's déjà vu all over again."

Simple brilliance plays its way out all the time it seems and the Stanley Cup Finals this year are no different, especially since it involves the same two teams we saw there last year.

Detroit and Pittsburgh: Let's dance again.

When I wrote my preview on last year's Finals, I surprised myself with how tuned in I was. To make a long story short, I shocked myself with how I was able to sound more competent than a CBC Color Analyst.

Obviously I watched a lot of hockey.

One of the things I said last year about the Finals seemed to come through in how the Pittsburgh Penguins played this entire postseason and it's how they have to approach the Red Wings this year as well. Last year, Michel Therrien was too stubborn and too foolish and too immature to implement a plan of attack that took it to the Red Wings and he ignored this sage advice from the relatively unknown blogger who calls himself Hockey Joe:

Pittsburgh's plan of attack here has to be to push, pressure and force the issue. Make Detroit get back on their heels and defend, to throw the puck at the net and keep control of it themselves. If Pittsburgh does indeed decide to pile into their zone defensively and rely on blocking shots and trying to stop Detroit at the blueline...they're going to spend a lot of time waiting for Detroit to just give up the puck to them on a dump in or turnover.

Pretty brilliant stuff there, right?

This year's version of the Penguins, at least the ones coached by Dan Bylsma anyhow, have shown that they'll attack and forecheck and pressure the living hell out of the other team and force them to make bad passes and turn it over.

Well how about that?

Then again, I like to pat myself on the back as it is anyhow with regard to the Penguins because the Pens have shown that they're begrudgingly listening to me from afar as it is anyhow.

Again, a flashback to something I wrote last year after just Game 4 of the Finals:

It's tough to say that you want to run a guy out of town after he takes his team to the Stanley Cup Finals, but these finals have shown me that Michel Therrien is the absolute wrong guy to take the Pittsburgh Penguins into the future. He's certainly not Glen Sather, who in the same position with a similarly young and talented team in the early 1980s, was able to take his lumps against the New York Islanders and use that as a building block to take the league over. I don't recall ever seeing Glen Sather hitting the press and setting a bad example for Gretzky and Messier and Kurri.

Given what Michel Therrien has shown here, he can only lead this young bunch to more bad habits. There are some good coaches out there waiting to be hired right now that would suit this team a lot better. It might behoove the Penguins to make a move once the series is over and should the Penguins, indeed, lose out to get Therrien out of there and get someone who can mold this team better for the future.

On February 15th, 2009 Michel Therrien was mercifully fired by the Penguins. Not-so coincidentally enough, the Penguins got their collective heads out of their ass and steamed their way back into the playoff picture and now they're in the Stanley Cup Finals after disposing of a gassed and punchless Carolina Hurricanes team.

So what did we learn here? We learned that I'm an idiot savant and master of the obvious. We also learned that ONE YEAR AGO I was using the already-tired comparison of the current Penguins squad to the 1980s Edmonton Oilers.

Then again, it doesn't help that the Oilers in the 80s got smacked around by the Islanders in 1983 and then bitch-slapped an old and on-the-way-out Islanders team in 1984 to win the Stanley Cup. I feel I have to be the guy to put this nonsense comparison to rest.

The Islanders after 1984 have been irrelevant to the NHL outside of a few stunning and spectacular finishes in the playoffs, but they never made it back to the Finals after that drubbing at the hands of Gretzky and Messier and Kurri and all the other Hall of Famers on that team. The Oilers, of course, moved on to be a powerhouse for the rest of the decade until Peter Pocklington needed money and Wayne Gretzky got too big for the City of Edmonton.

These Penguins are set for a while with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal. Coincidentally enough, these Red Wings while some of the parts are old (Nicklas Lidstrom, Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby, Chris Osgood... I guess) this isn't a team that's going anywhere.

Andrew Divoff, the Wishmaster, says: Fulfill the prophecy.

Should Detroit lose to Pittsburgh and fulfill the Gretzky Prophecy, these Red Wings won't fade into oblivion, they'll be back again and again and again as long as Mike Babcock is behind the bench. I'm not going to prattle on about the depth of Detroit, that's been shown off enough already in Game 4 and 5 against Chicago.

No Lidstrom and no Datsyuk? Meh, no problem.

As for this Final... Good luck breaking it down because there's a lot going on here that doesn't point to any definitive answers.

What do I know? Crosby and Malkin look a lot better and are teeming over in confidence, a lot more so than last year. Are they as dangerous offensively? Sure they are... As long as they follow the guidelines I told them to follow last year - which means not changing a damn thing from what they've been doing in the playoffs so far.

The Penguins have stayed healthy most of the playoffs and the one guy who may still be iffy out there is power play guru Sergei Gonchar whose knee hasn't been the same since having it knocked around by Alex Ovechkin in the second round.

Christopher Walken in "The Prophecy": I thought prophecies were my thing. I mean, jeez. Come on!

As for Detroit, a lot of the attention on them is on injuries. After all, Nick Lidstrom missed the last two games against Chicago with a mysterious "lower body injury" rumored to be a problem with his ankle. Pavel Datsyuk has been out with the same "lower body injury" since after Game 2 against Chicago, of which no one can really guess what the deal is although rumors of a broken foot have swirled.

Kris Draper has missed time with a groin problem although his replacement in the lineup, Darren Helm, seems to be doing all right for himself and had his definitive game of the playoffs to this point in Game 5 doing a masterful job killing a penalty and scoring the game-winning goal in overtime to vanquish the Blackhawks.

I can't help it, I'm a sucker for the Keyboard Cat.

The reason why I say it's tough for me to gauge just how well Pittsburgh is doing is because the Eastern Conference has been a joke all year and that really showed through in the playoffs.

No, the Penguins aren't a joke - settle down. The Penguins (along with the Bruins) were the two teams I was banking on to find a spot in the Finals. Everyone else? Flawed beyond belief. Flyers, Capitals, Devils, Rangers... flaws everywhere. Boston getting bounced by a hot Carolina team (and they were red hot coming into the playoffs) was about as shocking a result as you could ask for in these playoffs. The Hurricanes having to go through brutally tough defensive teams with a penchant for falling asleep offensively like the Devils and Bruins drained them and the fact that they were able to make their way to the Conference Finals blows my mind. There's no reason why they beat the Devils and it's unreal that they beat the Bruins.

Cam Ward should get a medal of honor for his work having a bum squad of defensemen playing in front of him like Joni Pitkanen, Denis Seidenberg, Anton Babchuk, Niclas Wallin, the mentally fragile Joe Corvo, Tim Gleason, Frank Kaberle.

Really, who the hell are these guys? Whoever they are, they couldn't handle Pittsburgh and Cam Ward only had so many horseshoes up his ass to sustain the 'Canes.

What I do know about Pittsburgh is that they're immensely talented and can score in bunches but are they the dominating buzzsaw we watched in the latter stages of the series with Washington and all throughout the Carolina series?

Can't answer that without making myself into some jerk, so I won't bother.

A lot of folks want to harp on the goaltending for these teams and frankly any fair praise and criticism lobbed at either guy is earned and fair. Many folks are waiting for the "real" Chris Osgood to show up, same goes for Marc-Andre Fleury. Fleury got through his potential buzzsaw series with the Capitals and Osgood got through his nightmare with Anaheim.

I'd like to say I'd be shocked if I saw Osgood or Fleury get lit up in the Finals... But I can't in good faith say that. If either or both goaltenders fell off the wagon in this series I would be confident in saying, "Yeah, you could see that coming."

Them's the breaks but anyone looking to cite the regular season performance and trying to apply that to how these guys have done in the playoffs so far is an idiot, a jerk or both. Apples and oranges there kids and it makes me wonder what the hell the deal is with Detroit and I can't help but feel we're getting played by Mike Babcock.

The Wings for the better part of the regular season played sloppy, made folks buy into the talk of a Stanley Cup hangover and Osgood was often outplayed by backup Ty Conklin this season. They were defensively sloppy, Osgood looked lost more often than not and the team would seemingly take two out of three periods off in a game only to turn it on to show that they can still do it.

The playoffs start and Detroit has to deal with a Columbus team that gave them fits all year long and then promptly mops the floor with them in four straight.

Wha... What happened?

They draw Anaheim and predictably struggle with a team that rolls rough and tumble with the best of them and Detroit even manages to get through some suspect rulings and find their way into the Conference Finals against the new up and comers of the NHL and the feel-good story for the Original Sixers in Chicago and manages to get through them seemingly easily in five games.

What's at play here? I think Babcock and the Red Wings have been giving everyone the Milton Berle treatment. Yes, that's right, I'm going to give credit to Bill Simmons here. What's the Milton Berle treatment? From Simmons:

In case you didn't know, Berle was famous in Hollywood circles for being more endowed than anyone else. Basically, he was the Dirk Diggler of Hollywood. (Note: There's a hysterical anecdote in the SNL book "Live From New York" about this. Highest of high comedy.) Anyway, the famous story about Berle (maybe an urban legend, maybe not) was that somebody challenged him to a "who's bigger?" contest once, and Berle soundly defeated the guy, then bragged to someone else in the room, "I only pulled out enough to win."

I don't 100% believe that's what the Red Wings have been doing all season, but the final two games with Chicago showed me something that Mike Babcock has been in his own way trying to keep a lid on and that is how sickeningly deep and talented this team is. The regular season for all NHL teams is an unending grind filled with unlimitless potholes and boredom. The playoffs is what it's all about and for teams like Detroit where they're playing 82 games just to get to the real show... Well, why open the bag of tricks right from the get-go so everyone knows how to prepare for your team?

Just ask the Sharks about how that worked out for them.

Add in the new mysteries here in the playoffs with Lidstrom's injury (which I'm not buying for a second) and Datsyuk's injury (which I do sort-of believe to be mostly true) and the whole thing stinks to me of Babcock only breaking out just enough to win.

After all, when your team dismantles the opponent 6-1 in a game where Lidstrom is out, why suit him up again and risk injury when everyone had everything sealed up nicely without him? Why not rest him up for what could be a short turnaround to Game 1 of the Finals if you win Game 5. Worked out well this time I'd say.

Kris Draper goes down with the same groin injury he had previously and Darren Helm and his fresh legs and speed to burn get to jump in the lineup without controversy? Sounds pretty ideal to me.

Same thing with the talk of Osgood being "dehydrated" during that 6-1 flogging and not playing the third. I don't buy into that for a second, but Mike Babcock will feed that to all the beat reporters and they'll all report it as fact meanwhile he's back in the office laughing at them knowing full-well that he wasn't going to leave his main man in a game where the other team is skating around like a bunch of angry kids and you don't know what they'll do next. Why risk a needlessly stupid injury at the hands of guys that could give a crap about your players in that kind of hornets nest - just sit him out for the third period and get him ready 20 minutes sooner for Game 5.

Will they need all hands on deck to make sure Pittsburgh doesn't run wild like Macho Man Savage on Detroit? Absolutely, although I don't think Babcock is terrified of the Penguins the way many folks seem to think they will be.

I'm just wondering if my Milton Berle supposition here is going to play its way out and say, perhaps, Pavel Datsyuk has a "good enough" morning skate on Saturday and he's a go for Game 1. I think Babcock is playing everyone here and look out if he is, because if he whips it out all the way... It's going to be a freak show out there.

If he's not doing that and Pittsburgh is exactly what they've looked like the last few weeks this is going to be a series for the ages and the official start of a cross-conference rivalry for all of us to sit back and enjoy for the years to come.

Just remember, if the Penguins win and writers from across the Internet start proclaiming their ability to predict the Gretzky Prophecy just remember that it was right here where the comparisons began in earnest a year ago and that Andrew Divoff and Christopher Walken are going to kick their asses for fulfilling the prophecy.

The Cost of Words

2009-05-26T00:13:00.006-04:00

Colin Campbell's Wheel of Justice was called in to weigh the cost of words against NHL Officials in regard to Joel Quenneville's loony outburst after Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals.

The Wheel spit out a $10,000 fine for these words:

“I think we witnessed probably the worst call in the history of sports there,” Quenneville said after the game. “Nothing play. “They scored, it’s 3-0. They ruined a good hockey game and absolutely destroyed what was going on the ice. … Never seen anything like it.”

Hilarious.

Let's go back down the notable checklist of punishments from the Wheel of Justice.

Sucker-punching a player while he's not looking: No suspension.
Criticizing officials: $10,000 fine
Making fun of other players for banging girls they used to: Indefinite suspension and league-wide scorn.
Deliver an open-ice hit similar to that of Mike Brown of Anaheim: Six games and national scorn... If your name is Donald Brashear.

It all makes complete sense.

Stupid NHL.

Keeping It Real - The Day After

2009-05-25T01:21:00.008-04:00

It's funny, I figured that by citing the Chappelle Show in my last entry about how Brian Campbell was maybe the last guy to step up and start swearing vengeance was going to go over poorly, but Ike th didn't think it would actually play out lie skits do on the show.

So how did Brian Campbell and the Chicago Blackhawks enact their revenge on Niklas Kronwall and the wildly short-handed Detroit Red Wings (who were missing Pavel Datsyuk, Nicklas Lidstrom and Kris Draper in Game 4)?

Well...

First there's this. You'll see Brian Campbell in this video pinched in too far on the power play (he's behind the Detroit net!) leaving Cam Barker by himself as the Red Wings break shorthanded the other way two-on-one.

Then there's this one where Campbell is used as a screen by Johan Franzen who proceeds to shoot the puck BETWEEN HIS LEGS and over the shoulder of Cristobal Huet.

And then there's Valtteri Filppula who scores off a rebound untouched after Marian Hossa uncorks one from the left wing side.

Who jumped out on Filppula after he gained the zone in the first place?

You guessed it... Frank Stallone.

Er, Brian Campbell.

What makes this all the more amusing is that the third goal, a power play goal for Filppula (one of three power play goals the Red Wings would score in a 6-1 rout of the Blackhawks) is that apparently Joel Quenneville had some issues with how the Red Wings got that power play in the first place.

That's right folks, the worst call in the history of sports. I can't rip into Quenneville as well as his own fans can, so leave it to the folks at Second City Hockey to step in and do the job for me:

Joel Quenneville - You were brought in to keep your cool and provide a guiding hand for a young team. Your players saw you lose your composure, and promptly followed suit. That outburst was unacceptable.

Unacceptable, immature, and about a thousand other adjectives you could throw in there. As for me, let me just offer up one suggestion for Joel Quenneville:

Wire Brushes: Guaranteed to get the sand out of your vadge or your money back!

Use that in your nether regions to get the sand out of the most delicate of crevices. Perhaps you could get away with whining like that in just about any other series.

Not this one though, not after what happened with Niklas Kronwall in Game 3. This is frustrated petulance at its ugliest out of Coach Quenneville. It also allows me to quote myself:

Hyperbole is a dangerous verbal weapon because it often renders the user stupid.

As for Martin Havlat, he played in this game.

Ballsy? You bet.

Gutsy? Absolutely!

Stupid? You bet your sweet ass it was and here's why:

You won't get a closer view of that, but that was Havlat getting taken out by Brad Stuart. He left the ice and did not return to the game after that. What Havlat is doing out there in the first place will remain a mystery as Coach Quenneville already made it a point to cover his tracks and proclaim that all was well.

You can lie to us all you want, coaches do it all the time, but you can't lie to us about this one because this is what Marty Havlat looked like in Game 3:

The guy from The Karate Kid was heard yelling, "Get him a body bag! YEAH!"

You cannot tell me he had it all together enough to be even thought of as remotely ready to play. Jesus, looking at this picture hurts my head and I've never had a concussion. James Mirtle at From The Rink has a great entry just on this angle and whether or not Havlat should have played.

James hits it home on this closing thought:

He's fine. He's ready. He's all right.

Perhaps. But he didn't look all right, at least to my eyes. I wish the question was asked if Havlat had suffered a concussion and what treatment, exactly, he's had in the interim. It's not impossible that he recovered just fine from having his bell rung a few days earlier, but why then does he have to leave the game after taking a routine check early in the game?

Isn't that cause for concern? Perhaps especially so for a player with Havlat's extensive injury history?

You bet your ass it's a cause for concern and the question of whether or not Havlat BS'ed his way into the lineup or the Blackhawks trainers and Quenneville would willfully ignore Havlat's condition is something that I hope the beat writers will try to find out more about.

As for this series, for all of Brian Campbell's talk of the Red Wings being a "gutless" team, the 'Hawks have a lot of soul-searching to do after putting in a putrid performance like that in a game that was set up for them on a platter to take. Two of the best players in the NHL, nevermind just on the Red Wings, the entire league were in the press box for this game as well as one of the top defensive forwards and Chicago comes out with that performance?

Brutal. Simply brutal and a truly gutless performance out of this team that was too caught up in seeking redemption for a guy who ended up wrongly suiting up for the game. I'll let the guys at Hockee Night wrap this one up for how Chicago "performed" in this crucial Game 4:

Christobal Huet. What a sieve. He probably wound up with sunburn fro the red light. He gave up a lot of goals, and none of them were particularly tough. He was absolutely brutal.

VERSTEEG! When you're down 4, you don't skate out of the box and get chippy in open ice. That's dumbshit hockey, and that isn't what makes a good team a top team. Oh yeah, calling out guys when you're down 5? Nice set of balls you grew there, kid.

The Hawks' passing. They've gotten this far by opening up the ice with stretch passing, but the Wings have just run a passing clinic, everything has been tape-to-tape. At times the Wings looked like they were doing some Harlem Globetrotters stuff out on the ice, moving the puck at will.

Things are not looking up for Chicago and this is setting up for a blowout of even more embarrassing fashion for the Blackhawks because if you can't nut up and strap it on for a game where the other team is ridiculously shorthanded from the get-go... Then what game can you get up for?

When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong

2009-05-23T17:44:00.004-04:00

By now you've already seen the Niklas Kronwall hit on Martin Havlat from Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals.

Far be it from me to prevent you from viewing it all over again.

The last time I saw a look on a guys face like that was a couple years ago...

Oddly enough, that's the last time Brian Campbell ever checked a player. Even stranger still, that hit looks pretty similar to the one Kronwall delivered to Havlat.

I bring this up because in the press conferences today, Brian Campbell had something to say about Niklas Kronwall and his bodycheck:

"I thought [Kronwall] jumped," Campbell said. "Marty didn't have the puck, I thought his forearm came up high. I thought it was gutless all around. [Kronwall's] done it hundreds of times in the league and it seems like nothing ever happens. He could as easily came in and used his shoulder and hit him with his side and it would have been fine. Instead he comes up and explodes with his fists and his forearms and jumps. I just don't understand it. It's unacceptable and it's not like it's the first time it's happened with that guy."

Hundreds of times? Yikes. Hyperbole is a dangerous verbal weapon because it often renders the user stupid.

As for what the Blackhawks plan to do about it, Campbell added this juicy tid-bit.

"These guys gotta pay for it, guys that are taking shots to the head. It's unacceptable, and it's not like it's the first time it's happened with that guy."

All right, I get it.

A guy lays a clean hit, and this one certainly was, yet people are going to blow it up into something worse. It just follows suit with everything else that's gone on this year and allows Mike Milbury to hang on to the one thing he's ever been right about.

Oh sure, some folks are arguing that it's interference, others are arguing that it's charging - some folks even whipped out the rule book thinking that it helps solidify their case that's turned into an Abraham Zapruder-inspired Internet brouhaha.

Problem now is that Brian Campbell, of all people, has laid down the gauntlet and said that Kronwall is going to pay. This threat would sound more imposing if it came from just about anyone else on the Blackhawks roster. Adam Burish, Dustin Byfuglien, Ben Eager... Pick one.

Brian Campbell though? What's he going to do to Kronwall, sweat all over him?

This is when keeping it real goes wrong.

Charles Wang Wants To Flex His Nuts

2009-05-21T18:03:00.008-04:00

Everyone's pretty well consumed with what's going on with the Coyotes but there's another team to get on the radar, a team whose owner has already warned the locals about his plans to get out of town (well, he'd take a look around at least) should they not work with him to improve their facilities.

Get your relocation radars prematurely locked in on the New York Islanders.

We know that Charles Wang is a loose cannon and that his trust in people is sometimes bizarre and greatly unwarranted, take a look at Rick DiPietro's contract and Mike Milbury's tenure on the Island for examples.

Give Wang credit where credit is due, however. He's been battling the Town of Hempstead and more pointedly the town supervisor Kate Murray. Two of the NHL Blogosphere's biggest Charles Wang backers are B.D. Gallof at Islanders Independent and Chris Botta at Islanders Point Blank.

Strange things are afoot at the Lighthouse.

Chris Botta offers the perspective of a guy who has worked for the Islanders as a PR man for Charles Wang's operation. Botta's name came up in the news today after it was announced the Islanders were mysteriously letting go of Corey Witt, the PR man that replaced Botta. As is mentioned over at Islanders Independent, it's curious that Wang's operation would do this as both Botta and Witt are perfect PR people for the organization since they're local homegrown guys that genuinely love the Islanders.

The thought presented at II is that strange things are afoot in Long Island and none of them mean good things if you like the team where it's currently located.

Sue me for jumping to conclusions, but this organizational change is just another indication of why I am just about convinced that the Isles will not be in NY (much less LI) very much longer. I won't list my "indicators" here, but I have been pointing them out on Logan's blog for about 3 months now. (No anticipated free agent signings, failure to secure or even make an honest attempt at Mr. Hobey Baker, etc etc) Greg describes Corey Witt as a lifelong, born and raised, love LI til he dies, Islander supporter. Not much different than what Chris Botta brought to the Wang Organization. Botta is gone...and now so is Witt.....Another "home grown, ties to the community, press and media relations" guy. Someone that Wang WOULD NOT want involved in certain details about the long term plans of the organization......if those plans were dark.

Now that's the kind of tinfoil hat talk I like. No, seriously, I dig it a lot.

Aside from drumming up more of your own bad public relations, what's the point of letting go of people with strong local ties to the Islanders and have been life-long fans? You know, the kind of person you're ideally looking for to fill that position.

Strap it on, we're going deep.

OK so Charles Wang made sure to say that if the Town of Hempstead doesn't get something done to allow him to build his impressive and paid-for-with-his-own-money Lighthouse Project that he would begin to look for other options on where to go and whether or not he should sell the team.

And this, to me, shows that in this era when sports teams are busy yelling at locales to build them a new arena to sell luxury boxes in and getting the cities to pay for them it's stunning to me that Charles Wang, a guy people don't realize is solely responsible for the Islanders remaining on Long Island, is willing to plunk down his own money to build this sprawling and, honestly, incredible project in Hempstead.

Yet the town wants nothing to do with Wang's money or development seemingly citing the lack of support the Islanders get as their reasoning for not allowing an eccentric millionaire to build what he feels the team needs to survive and help draw crowds to see the Islanders once again.

Dear Hempstead: LET ME SPEND MY FUCKING MONEY ON YOU!

This is where I question Kate Murray and her seeming vendetta against the Islanders because what are people coming to Hempstead, New York for in the first place? If you were to believe Hempstead's website for tourism, the Islanders are one of the main attractions.

Well then what the fuck gives?

Charles Wang isn't a totally crazy guy and he can tell when he's not wanted and with the Town of Hempstead continues to dick around with him, as is detailed at Islanders Point Blank:

And so it goes with the Town of Hempstead and the Lighthouse Project, the development of Tom Suozzi’s HUB that Nassau County has tried for decades to get off the ground. So it goes for the revitalization of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, as set forth by a Request For Proposals by Nassau County and approved by a 16-2 margain.

Wang, who is said to be completely satisfied by the stewardship of the proposal by Suozzi and the County, has set a October 3 deadline for Town approvals for obvious reasons. The Islanders lease expires in 2015. A “transformed” Coliseum would take four off-seasons to complete. The math is simple. Wang has to decide if he’s finally done losing at least $20 million a year with no development deal in sight.

So, there's a method to all the madness here for Charles Wang - who'dve thunk it? So much for being an eccentric millionaire if you're not going to just haphazardly make deadlines and want to spend loads of money on something a town doesn't even want to bother with.

So what if there's nothing in place by Wang's October deadline to get things started?

Just like Islander Independent said: Start lining up ownership prospects and new locations.

Sure, if Balsillie's attempt to land the Coyotes fails (and there's virtually no doubt in my mind that it will) he'll make a move on the Islanders and for that, all I ask is a seat in the board room at that meeting between Balsillie and Wang.

Imagine that pow-wow. Amazing.

Outside of that, perhaps Bruce Ratner gives Charles Wang a call since the roadblocks in his development of his Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn appear to be falling and construction may begin soon. Why not add another tenant to join the Nets in what would be a huge piece to revitalize Brooklyn?

Then again, maybe Wang will be thoroughly tired of dealing with being unappreciated and asinine politics in New York and just look for the first readily available green pasture that wants to have a hockey team.

I don't know, maybe that pre-season audition they'll get against the Los Angeles Kings in Kansas City is a nice way for the folks at AEG to shmooze it up with Wang to show him everything the Sprint Center can offer the Islanders.

I know this was all theorized before when the game was scheduled (as is proven by that TSN link) but with Hempstead's seeming disdain for anything and everything Charles Wang tries to do perhaps he's left with no recourse but to aggressively start looking for a new place to call home.

It's easy to be critical of Charles Wang, he brings it upon himself quite easily by playing outside the norm and operating his team like a maniac but in his dealings with Hempstead in trying to revitalize the Nassau County Coliseum and develop the area around it and turning it into a place people will want to go to...

Well, perhaps Charles Wang is just the alchemist the Islanders need.

Jerry Moyes to Gary Bettman: Up Yours

2009-05-20T18:00:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was a huge day as far as the Phoenix Coyotes saga goes as the NHL and Jerry Moyes headed to court to hash out this whole bankruptcy issue. When they got there, however, the big dust up was over who, exactly was in control of the team to decide it's future.

And you thought this would be easy, didn't you?

Apparently since that entire issue is still a sticky mess, like I was talking about a little bit here the other day, Judge Redfield Baum said, "Screw you guys you're going to mediation." Well not quite like that, but he did say that's how this thing will get squared away.

In the aftermath of that decision as well as the choice by Judge Baum to have a relocation hearing in June just a week ahead of the draft has turned this already ample PR game into a sideshow of Bearded Lady proportions.

The good news out of this for fans in Phoenix is that their team probably isn't going anywhere next season. The bad news is that their maybe/maybe not owner Jerry Moyes is busy scorching the earth to make it impossible for anyone with the money needed to make hockey in the desert work to make the investment.

"Even a winning team would not stop us from losing money unless we received some concessions," Moyes said in his letter.

He made no apology for trying to abandon the Phoenix market by selling the team to Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie, whose $212.5 million (all figures U.S.) offer is conditional upon moving the franchise to Hamilton.

"I have a responsibility to all of the creditors of this business," said Moyes. "No one other than Canadian businessman Jim Balsillie's company has offered enough to pay the creditors, which led to my initiating a court-supervised sale process. This process will be open and transparent, and all offers current and future must be fairly examined; guaranteeing an equitable offer."

In other words, Moyes had this to say to Gary Bettman for butting in on his attempt to backdoor Jim Balsillie into owning and moving the franchise:

Dear Anyone Trying To Keep Hockey In Glendale: Up yours!

Unfortunately for Jerry Moyes and NHL fans in southern Ontario, the NHL and Gary Bettman are always able to unearth someone who wants to keep the show around locally. In this case, word has come out that Coyotes minority owner John Breslow wants to right the ship in Glendale and keep the team there.

Well if that ain't a spike strip on the highway for the trucking magnate.

Of course, since Breslow is a bit late to the party and given how well him stepping up to save the franchise in Arizona would work out for Bettman, you'll have to forgive me if I worry about his full-fledged financial credentials.

After all, the last guy that stepped up this big to keep a team in a struggling market seemed to have some issues of his own.

I certainly don't think that Breslow is a crook here, but this is the bed Herr Bettman has made for us by putting his faith in people who are scumbags, scam artists and all around pricks.

That's not even taking into account Len Barrie and Oren Koules in Tampa Bay who have made it their mission to ruin Tampa, Florida as the shining example of how the NHL can work in a non-traditional hockey market.

I know that sounds goofy and all, but the attendance figures speak for themselves in the case of the Lightning.

2009: Lightning were 22nd in average attendance (out of 30) filling up at an 85.6% rate and over 16,497 per game.

In previous seasons?

2008: 8th (18,692 per game)
2007: 3rd (19,876 per game) filling at 100.6%
2006: 2nd (20,509 per game)
2005: No Season - Thanks Gary

Forgive me if I don't completely buy into John Breslow being the knight in shining armor for the Coyotes because Gary's track record in being able to pick a winner is less-than stellar.

Even better still is that Jerry Reinsdorf was the guy Bettman was pushing as the guy who would get the sweetheart deal even though his plan was to fire Gretzky and move the team to Las Vegas in two years.

That makes me wonder if Bettman refers to Reinsdorf as "Boots" just out of habit. You know, since Boots Del Biaggio's whole plan with the Predators was to supposedly move them to Kansas City yet Bettman was completely unaware of all this.

What a joke.

Bettman's Cloak and Dagger in the Desert

2009-05-18T17:17:00.006-04:00

It's quite amazing what this hurricane of scheisse that is the Phoenix Coyotes and Jim Balsillie Dance has done for the appearance of Gary Bettman the commissioner.

To the folks in Canada, he solidifies his position as the most hated man in the country by continuing to apparently deny Canada their seventh professional hockey team. Never mind that 15 years ago Canada used to have eight, that's beside the point here. Canada wants to bring a seventh team back "home" and Jim Balsillie is their cult leader at the helm.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not against Canada getting another team or two - I want it to happen and I want it to happen badly. My issue is with Jim Balsillie going about things the absolute wrong way to make it happen. That's all. I think Jim Balsillie would be the most fun owner to join the "club" in a long, long time and would help draw more attention to the league and for good reasons.

I maintained a couple of weeks ago when this story broke that there was something really wrong with how things broke down with the situation in Phoenix and while onwer Jerry Moyes being desperate to get out of owning an NHL team that's bleeding money is part of that and Jim Balsillie looking to grossly overpay for a team and move them back to his home is key here, there are other parts to this story that aren't getting the airtime or notice and guess who that all falls on?

That's right: Herr Bettman.

Who am I not going to take issue with here are the folks in Phoenix who are the tried and true fans of this team and are caught in the middle of this mess like kids in a divorce settlement. There's only one way the kids really win out here and that's if their parents can reconcile and get a solution worked out and that doesn't appear to be on the horizon.

After all, when you're a fan in this situation you're completely helpless and you have to hope that a solution that works well for you can be had. Let's face it, this is an ugly and dire situation in Phoenix and a team that loses this much money isn't marketable to other owners in it's current location and a solution to make money has to be found to be able to pawn it off to some other ~~sucker~~, I mean owner.

What sucks about this situation for the fans in Phoenix is that their hero is also the guy looking to save his own skin and why he's operating a sick sort of cloak and dagger operation.

80s movie reference so deep Dennis Miller is at a loss for words.

Leave it to Gary Bettman to play the part of the parent who bad-mouths the other parent to the kids to show how much he loves them while saying things to his attorney (PDF), in this case Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, that contradict those sentiments completely.

It would figure that Bettman would manage to find a way to drag fans that had their team run away from them as part of the Great Southern NHL Manifest Destiny and get them all excited all over again all in a means to save his own skin while chapping the ass of the guy that's looking to fork over nearly $100 million dollars more than what's being asked of others for a team that's been losing $30-$40 million a year.

It would also make sense that Bettman would make sure to keep it a big secret that the NHL has been in control of the Coyotes since November 2008 while it sniffed around to find other potential owners of the club.

Meanwhile, in this story from AZCentral.com dated April 29th, the Coyotes denied that the NHL was in control and that everything else was just fine. Well who in the world would ask them to stay hush-hush about this because it might hurt the prospect of finding new buyers for the team?

Oh, right.

Look at this quote, it's amazing considering that it would just be days later the truth would be revealed.

Coyotes President Doug Moss refuted that report late Wednesday night, saying the league has not assumed control of the Coyotes.

"We are not reporting to the league," he said. "We report to (owner) Jerry Moyes. I'm dealing with things in my area, the business side, and Donnie (General Manager Don Maloney) is dealing with the hockey side.

"It's business as usual. He's preparing for the draft. I'm preparing for next year on marketing and sales."

This is stunning that a team could just spin the tires in the mud like this. This portrays the Coyotes management acting like the Wizard of Oz after they've looked behind the curtain.

This means that since November, since the second month of the season, the NHL has been pulling the strings of the Coyotes, a team that wasn't fully out of the playoff hunt until there was about a month left to go in the season, you know, around the trade deadline when Phoenix started lopping off valuable baubles like Olli Jokinen and Derek Morris.

The catch here is that Coyotes GM Don Maloney isn't a sham of a general manager and was able to get a nice return or else everyone's red flags would be waving all over the place, especially after how well Olli Jokinen and Derek Morris worked out for the Flames and Rangers respectively. It still doesn't sit well with me that a team that was still within a distant shot of the final playoff spot decided to pack it in rather than empty both barrels and go for the playoffs.

It's all water under the bridge now and Phoenix will help load the youth coffers in the draft yet again, something that a smart and wealthy person will recognize with the Coyotes. Something that one disturbingly wealthy Canadian has already recognized and is willing to throw money at anything possible to bring his team home.

If I'm on the board of governors and I've got some wild-eyed Canadian crazy man who is busy sponsoring just about everything that he can on the United States network that covers the NHL (that being NBC) and even starting up websites like Make It Seven to serve as the PR mouth of his operation... Isn't that the kind of attention-getting guy you want to have on your side rather than working against you?

Instead, the NHL chooses to look at Balsillie as an enemy combatant looking to horn in on their Good Time Fun Club any way that he can. Balsillie thinks that money can buy his way in and the owners tell him to get lost, meanwhile Bettman operates behind the scenes to try and play the role as Savior of the Coyotes meanwhile coming up with a contingency plan that finds a way to stick it to Balsillie and still find no one interested in buying the team to even move them to Winnipeg or Kansas City or anywhere else.

Well, maybe Jerry Bruckheimer can be convinced to bring them to Las Vegas for that other AEG tie-in, but that's just an even goofier side-plot.

Is this really how things operate in the big grown-up world of professional sports? Amazing.

What's hilarious here is how the public relations game played itself out from the get-go. Balsillie rides in to save the day for Jerry Moyes and his failing and bankrupt empire and Balsillie is set to ride off to Canada.

Meanwhile Bettman and gang step in to say that's not going to happen (and legally that's absolutely correct) and rather than be completely upfront about the situation in Phoenix all along, the league says all is well and that everyone will stay the same. And yet, all along, Bettman is searching around for someone to swoop in for the save (namely Jerry Reinsdorf) and keep the team in Phoenix so he doesn't suffer an epic PR hit for taking a team out of Canada and moving them to the desert where they ultimately failed and then had to tuck tail, literally, to move back to Canada.

Got all that? I'm sure there's a run-on sentence in there somewhere.

Unreal. No one is being truthful, at least no one was before all of this shit was thrown into the fan, and now that attention has been turned to the entire fiasco the scramble is on to save face and make sure no one is turned off to the NHL... at least in Phoenix.

Canada? Yeah, well, they're the ace in the hole Gary can count on. Canadians love hockey no matter what and they're not going to give up on the game. He can suffer the PR hits in Canada all he wants because he knows that Canadian fans aren't going anywhere and that they'll stick to the NHL for life. For fans in Winnipeg, Manitoba or Hamilton, Ontario they're going to be watching the Maple Leafs or Flames or Oilers every Saturday night on CBC and all season long on TSN whether there's a team in their backyard or not.

The Canadian NHL Fan is the closest thing Bettman has to a sure thing in his operation, they are his easy money. Getting more money out of Canadians by putting another franchise there doesn't excite him, especially if it means a team playing in an arena that doesn't pass the sniff test (like Copps Coliseum in Hamilton) or one that doesn't hold as many folks as they'd ideally like to see (MTS Centre in Winnipeg).

What can't Bettman afford to do? He can't afford to do what David Stern did so egregiously with the Seattle Super Sonics and just pick up stakes and move to an out-of-the-way place like Oklahoma City all while giving Seattle the finger and lecturing them about how to cave into the NBAs demands.

After all, we're not talking about the Coyotes demanding a new arena they've got that in Glendale with Jobing.com Arena. We're talking about a team that is bleeding money in a market that, media-wise, didn't give a damn about the Coyotes until they were about to run out of town and leave a hulking monument to failure in their backyard.

Bettman and the NHL can't afford (literally and figuratively) to have an empty year-round Jobing.com Arena stand as their legacy and run out of town screaming leaving one of the United States largest cities franchise-free with any and all of the fans they had left behind pissed off and hating the NHL forever. This isn't the kind of situation that happened when the Cardinals of the NFL left St. Louis for Arizona only to have the Rams move from Los Angeles to St. Louis later on.

If the NHL leaves Phoenix, this is what they'll be doing: Not just burning the bridge down, but blowing it up.

There may be a lot of fans in Phoenix and surrounding cities that love hockey, but they will never trust nor care about the NHL ever again should they leave town and every bridge out of town would be exploded and set ablaze to never come back to again. Phoenix would be Gary Bettman's failed experiment in expanding the NHL to new and unthinkable locations.

This is what is at stake here for the NHL and the fans in Phoenix, Scottsdale and Glendale are all caught in the middle. Bettman's e-mail to Bill Daly expressing his thoughts of going back to Winnipeg are a sign of fear.

After all, if things cannot be sustained or saved in Phoenix you might as well bring the team back home before exploring something new and different in Canada and deal with the legal wrangling that would have to take place with the Maple Leafs and Sabres not to mention potentially screwing Jim Balsillie out of his wishes to join the ownership club.

If Bettman were to take the Coyotes back to Winnipeg, he's viewed as a hero and a humbled one for righting a wrong and bringing a team back to Canada and back to a place that once had a much beloved franchise. If things are saved in Phoenix, then it's all status quo and the financial eye just locks in on the Coyotes even more for the time being and the new owners that come in get to play the part of saviors all at Gary's urging.

The only thing that will stay constant in all this is that Jim Balsillie will not be the knight in shining armor for southern Ontario because that's the side in all this that everyone wants no part in...

Unless your name is Jerry Moyes and there's $215 million at stake in the matter for you.

Something Rotten In The State of Arizona

2009-05-06T00:23:00.005-04:00

Tell me where we've heard this one before.

Team in a non-traditional hockey market is in financial trouble.

A whimsical super-rich maven from southern Ontario wants to grossly and disturbingly overpay for the team and move them to his home, back in Gary's Hate Zone in Ontario, Canada.

Not sure where you read about this before?

It was right freakin' here.

It's like Jim Balsillie wants to keep me busy writing because after going after the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Nashville Predators and now he's hot after the Phoenix Coyotes.

Why the Coyotes? Because their owner Jerry Moyes has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

"Extensive efforts have been undertaken to sell the team, or attract additional investors, who would keep the team in Glendale," said Coyotes' Chief Executive Officer and Managing Member Jerry Moyes.

"Creating a process under the supervision of a judge assures that anyone wishing to purchase the team will have the opportunity to bid. Likewise, the City of Glendale, which has been very cooperative with efforts to keep the team in Glendale, will be able to provide potential buyers assurances of the City's willingness to offer incentives to keep the team as a tenant in the Jobing.com arena, the lease for which is subject to rejection in bankruptcy," Moyes stated.

"The process assures that the identities of the new owner and the team's location will be known by June 30, 2009, thus enabling the NHL to include the team in its 2009-10 schedule."

Cutting things awfully close, aren't we Jerry?

Then there's the... Let's call it "timeliness" of Balsillie's offer to buy the Coyotes.

This evening myself, as well as other NHL bloggers, received an e-mail from the Managing Director of causeacommotion.com, letting us in about the efforts to help get the word out about Mr. Balsillie's bid to buy the Coyotes and their urge to get folks to get connected at their website Make It Seven, a nod for the push to get a seventh NHL team to come to Canada.

From the official press release put out by the Make It Seven:

Jim Balsillie tabled an offer today to purchase the PhoenixCoyotes, following the team's bankruptcy filing. The offer to purchase the team for $212.5 million (U.S.) is conditional on relocation to Southern Ontario, to become the seventh NHL franchise in Canada.

"The current team ownership asked that I table an offer to purchase the Coyotes and significant discussions resulted in an offer that is in the best interests of the franchise, the NHL, and the great hockey fans of Canada and Southern Ontario," Mr. Balsillie said.

"I am excited to move closer to bringing an NHL franchise to what I believe is one of the best un-served hockey markets in the world, Southern Ontario. A market with devoted hockey fans, a rich hockey history, a growing and diversified economy and a population of more than 7 million people," he said.

At the request of the Coyotes franchise owner, Mr. Balsillie has also agreed to post
debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing of $17 million (U.S.). Debtor in possession
financing is bridge financing provided when a company is in an insolvency proceeding which allows the company to continue to operate through the proceeding in advance of a restructuring or sale.

Prior to a final decision being reached on the proposed sale, he called for Canadian fans who want to see a seventh NHL franchise in Canada to make their voices heard.

Obviously, that's a nice hand-picked piece of PR cotton candy fluff and you can't expect me to eat it up.

So I'm not going to.

Balsillie's Blackberry Moving Company: I wonder if he's got a hook up with Swift Trucking?

There's something amiss here about how all of this just happened to blow up on the same night. It's probably not out of the realm of possibilities that Moyes and Balsillie have been working on a plan together that is mutually beneficial, something hinted upon here by James Mirtle.

It gets Moyes out of being an NHL owner with an obscene lease agreement with the city of Glendale, Arizona that agreed to build him a new arena and back fully into his trucking company, Swift Transportation.

It then gives Balsillie the open door to play the White Knight and save a financially addled team and bring them back to his home in Canada.

Sounds great, doesn't it? I know I sure thought so when Balsillie was doing this dance with the Predators before. The difference between then and now is that back then, it really seemed like he was doing the right thing.

This situation with Jerry Moyes and the Coyotes stinks to high hell and it's so obvious that there's something wrong here that even the NHL has declared shenanigans. From NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly:

We have just become aware of today's Bankruptcy Court filing purportedly made on behalf of the Phoenix Coyotes. We are investigating the circumstances surrounding the petition, including the propriety of its filing. We have removed Jerry Moyes from all positions of authority to act for or on behalf of the Club. The League will appear and proceed before the Bankruptcy Court in the best interests of all of the Club's constituencies, including its fans in Arizona and the League's 29 other Member Clubs.

You see that? Balsillie and Moyes served the NHL, the NHL served right back - now it's officially on.

The response to all this from blindsided Coyotes fans is not pleasant. There are too many posts to link over at Five For Howling, but I urge you to give it a look and a bookmark to keep tabs on this situation because over the next few weeks there's going to be a lot happening with this.

You would think that after going through this song and dance with the NHL and the Board of Governors twice already that Balsillie would have a better plan of attack and would actually, you know, really try to sweeten up to these old farts and curmudgeons and make them want to take his millions of dollars.

Instead (let me flex my geek muscles here) he's playing the part of Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back thinking that surprising the Board of Governors was the best way to go about getting his way.

Now's the part where I get to bust out with a Darth Vader comeback for Jim Balsillie, and it's tough for me to say this considering the guy is the inventor of the friggin' BlackBerry but: You're as clumsy as you are stupid.

Since the NHL has basically seized control of the Coyotes until the bankruptcy hearing on Thursday and depending on the outcome of that what we've got brewing here is a situation that makes folks recall the plight of the Montréal Expos in Major League Baseball.

Think about it. Shifty ownership making a brash move to get what they want, the league shuffles pieces around to make it work all the while taking control of a team while they search for a new owner.

Remember how that turned out? Yeah... not so well for Montréal.

So what is the end game here? Obviously for Balsillie it's to obtain the Coyotes and get them moved to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It always has been and it always will be his motive and he's obviously got the money to burn to pull it off... Just so long as he plays nice enough with the NHL to make it work - something he seems to either not know how to do or not want to do.

I always was quick to side with Balsillie and bought the whole push before about just wanting to do right by the game of hockey and bring a team back "home" to Canada. Now that he's teamed up with a shyster like Jerry Moyes to try and fast track a deal to get himself a team and run screaming away from a situation that while dire and God-freaking-awful with that wretched lease agreement

For Moyes it's to get out of owning the Coyotes and away from losing multiple millions of dollars in Glendale, Arizona under a lease agreement that won't allow him to just pick up and leave on his own. Between Balsillie and Moyes, Moyes comes across like the truest villain of the bunch as he's more than ready to just walk away from everything. Considering that the City of Glendale has more often than not helped him out, he doesn't seem to care about the team, the city and certainly not about the fans.

Keep on truckin' asshole.

As for the NHL and Gary Bettman... Saving face. That's always the trick with the league but this time they've been put in a bad place by Moyes and Balsillie alike and after seeing how things transpired this evening, the NHL has a pretty strong case on their hands to stuff it in Moyes' face hard that he's the guy that screwed this up. The catch there is that it still leaves the NHL on the hook with the team and figuring out what to do with the Coyotes and their overbearing lease agreement.

If the NHL and the City of Glendale can get a renegotiated lease agreement figured out, there's no reason why finding a more reasonable buyer for the team can't be found thus giving Moyes what he wants but still boning over Jim Balsillie.

Then again, perhaps Balsillie should've thought better about teaming up with Jerry Moyes to try and pull a fast one on everyone. I dig Balsillie, I dig his passion and I dig his love of hockey. I also like that he's a crazy bastard and would really be a great owner to have around to mess with Bettman.

What I can't believe is that a guy who is this good of a businessman with BlackBerry would be this obviously reckless in dealing with the NHL. It blows my mind that this guy could be this dumb about business and go for what amounts to be a hostile takeover of the Coyotes.

He has to know that if things are that out of hand with the ownership that the league would just step in and take over. He couldn't possibly think this was a coin flip deal where either the team goes bankrupt and folds or he steps in and plays the hero.

What Jim Balsillie apparently hasn't realized is that the professional sports world, especially the NHL, doesn't operate by the same rules and use the same handbook that the real world does and this is a lesson he's continuing to learn the very hard way. The highest bid doesn't always win in the NHL and hostile takeovers just don't happen.

The NHL operates in Bizarro World. Plain and simple and going by the executive world playbook is not going to get it done, especially when everyone else in the board room seems to hate your guts.

Don't Make Me Hate You, Sid

2009-05-05T02:03:00.004-04:00

I'll come out and say it and I don't give a crap what it makes you think of me or my opinions.

Sidney Crosby is a gift to us all.

I know what you're thinking now...

"OH SHURE HOCKY JOE! U R A BETMAN SUCKUP!! LOLZ!1!"

Right, sure, whatever.

Like it or not, Sidney Crosby is awesome and the NHL is a million times better off having him, his talent and his presence around than without it.

Is he over-exposed? Maybe to NHL fans, but not to the world that's for damn sure.

Is he a great player? Fuckin' A right he is.

He's phenomenal and his talent is a once-in-a-generation kind of talent and we're blessed as NHL fans to have three other players in the NHL that are on that same kind of unearthly level of talent (Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Lidstrom).

Are NHL fans pissed that three of those four players are playing in the same series in the second round? Maybe the jerk-off fans that are self-loathers are - but me? I'm tickled. Gary Bettman is tickled too, no doubt, because he gets to see the two prizes he cares about most finally have their "Bird vs. Magic" series.

Never mind that it's taking place in the second round, that's irrelevant. What matters is that it's happening and, as of right now, it's absolutely electric.

Just like most things in the NHL, sometimes things happen that help amp up the story. Sometimes when superstars collide, the best is brought out of them. Case in point, Game 2 of this series. Hat tricks from both of the superstars (their first hat tricks in the playoffs) including this stirring series of bombs from Alex Ovechkin:

As it goes, as it has always gone, when you're the home team and your home guy nets a hat trick, the hats come out on to the ice. It's a tradition that's been around since the dawn of time (give or take an epoch) and it's awesome. Flat out, it's awesome.

Unless you're on the visiting team.

Enter the man in the white uniform and the black hat, Sidney Crosby.

From the DC Sports Bog:

"People kept throwing hats," Sidney Crosby said tonight. "I was just asking if he could make an announcement to ask them to stop. I mean, the first wave came and then I think they were all pretty much picked up, and then more started coming. So for us, we just wanted to make sure we kept kind of moving and kept the game going, wanted to try to get back in it. So wasn't complaining about anything."

Ah, jeez.

Listen, I get that he's being the captain of the team. That's good, that's fine, that's the admirable thing to do. He's also being brutally honest with the press when asked about this.

As a person who has done plenty of sports interviews and gotten nothing but Athlete-speak from them, to get a freaking gold mine of a quote like this is awesome because then jerks like me cite your website, give you more hits and all that fun.

No, they ain't sippin' on some sizzurp - that's straight Haterade.

When your name is Sidney Crosby though... Stuff like this gets a lot more run. Like it or not, Sid's got the reputation for being a whiner. As a fan of hockey, it sucks more than life itself to see that one of the most marketable guys in the league, the like-it-or-not face of the NHL is labeled a big pansy bitch.

That sucks a lot and it drives me nuts to see Sid continue to do things that feed into this image. I want him to be Captain Cool, I want to see him make people that hate him shut up by delivering every damn time. I want him to be The Terminator and crusher of souls. As an NHL fan I want the biggest name and the league's icon to be the man.

Simple as that.

In a series that features the two guys that are fighting to be the A #1 icon of the game, some folks might point to this game as the one that separates them for good. They both deliver hat tricks in stunning performances. Ovechkin with his bomb shots and Crosby doing the down and dirty work in front of the net putting home rebounds.

Had the Penguins won this game, Sid would rightfully be getting the praise for throwing a change up at the Capitals and doing things differently. Sure, maybe that quote gets some more run, but at least that can get spun off to make him more of an honest-to-badass villain. Like, say...

"Hey ref, tell these chumps to stop throwing hats - this game is fucking over with because I said so."

Cutthroat? You better believe it. Cocky? As hell. Bad-ass? Hell fucking yes it is.

Instead, reality deals us a Capitals win with Ovechkin waving his junk at everyone because he's that damn good. In his case, being a Russian helps add to his allure. The interviews are tougher to do with regular schmoe reporters because his English skills are mostly limited to Athlete-Speak.

The one time he did let loose was in an interview with Maxim Magazine and he was instantly villified for what came out there.

Thanks for nothing mainstream media. Dicks.

So now what's the fallout from this for Crosby? He unfortunately solidifies a reputation that's already been made bad enough to handle by a well-paid PR firm.

After all, when you're playing a rough game like hockey where there's a delicate balance between being a cocky braggart and cutthroat competitor, being a crying wuss wins you no favor and makes the job of sticking up for your boy even harder.

At least if I was Sid, I'd be happy to have the guys at The Official PensBlog on my side, I'd hate to see how they'd handle having that kind of ammo to use against him. For that alone, I'd hope to never leave Pittsburgh without a Stanley Cup or two if I were him.

What kills me about all this is that I enjoy how Sid plays the game and he makes it so incredibly difficult to love Sidney Crosby the player. Whether it's the opinion of the other players that he's a whiner or the consistent cries from fans all over the NHL that he's a diver on top of all of that... It's incredibly hard to embrace him as the MAN when there's a guy doing all of those things that you admire playing against him. It creates an instant divide amongst fans.

You're either a Sid fan or an Alex fan.

Simple as that.

When you're put on the spot after a tough game, a tough loss particularly, and you're getting a thousand different questions about the game and someone mentions the other guy, the other big gun outshining you for a night and you're frustrated that you couldn't do more than your own three goals and your answer is to just blurt out that you wanted the officials to make an announcement about the hats being thrown on the ice for the other guy's hat trick...

The best way for Sid to answer all of this is to flip the script and do it right back and let the fans at The Igloo shower the ice in hats. Then to do it again the next game and not relent.

Sid's shown us he can wear the Black Hat and be the villain by driving hockey fans nuts with these things like whining and diving, now it's time to fully embrace the darkside. Be comfortable with being thoroughly hated in places like Philly and Washington and New York.

Score that game-winner in overtime some night and then proclaim afterwards that you knew you'd get it all along. Sid is referred to as "Bing" over at PensBlog, but I'd rather seem him break out something a little more like another cocksure legend:

Is it wrong to want all of our new hockey heroes to be bad-asses? I don't think so.

Snap out of it already Sid.

Do it.

Hockey Wilderness: Cheap Plug

2009-05-04T17:25:00.003-04:00

I've been laying low here soaking in the first few games of the playoffs and getting a kick out of Colin Campbell's Wheel of Justice acting funny again.

In the meantime, I've got a new piece over at Hockey Wilderness with my friends with the Wild talking about their search for a new general manager and how the Toronto media is looking to hook their friends up again.

Oh joy, more teams to be bad like the Leafs - wonder of wonders!

Go check it out because it's awesome and they're bored not having anyone to root for in the playoffs.

Gary Bettman: Happiest Man on Earth

2009-04-29T03:12:00.007-04:00

Since a lot of you are new to this page and probably weren't keeping tabs with me last year for the playoffs, let me dust off something I said last year after the results of the First Round were completed:

The only real downside to the Capitals losing is that it prevents us from seeing Sid the Kid and Evgeni Malkin from taking on Ovechkin and Backstrom in the second round. Say what you will, but Bettman had the perfect opportunity to take what he learned under Stern and to put it to use to set up a real dazzler of a matchup.

Much like everything else, however, Bettman fails to put the hit out to guarantee this will happen.

Upon the completion of Washington's stirring victory over the Rangers in Game 7 that featured Sergei Fedorov dial up an Yzerman-esque ripper of a shot over the newly-exposed glove hand of Henrik Lundqvist, in my many posts on Twitter (you know, since I've got nothing else to do) I stated this:

Now let's see how (bad) Gary wants the fix. If the #Canes beat the #Devils we get Sid vs. Ovechkin.

In my head I had one of the greatest creative minds of the modern sports entertainment era, at least he was for a while, in mind as I wrote this. I thought about it last year when Washington stormed back against Philadelphia only to lose in Game 7 to the Flyers and there it was in my head again this time as the New Jersey Devils had a 3-2 lead on the Carolina Hurricanes in their Game 7.

Some say a man fitting this description was seen in the tunnel at The Rock shouting, "Just go down Marty!"

Would Lil' Gary put on his big boy shoes and put in the call for the Devils to lay it down or would it play out legendarily like this:

In a series that had so many great goaltending performances from both Martin Brodeur and Cam Ward and two teams that truly left it all out on the ice and given everything that I was able to witness all throughout this years NCAA Hockey Tournament, I didn't think the NHL had it in them to produce a finish to a game that so thoroughly stunned me as this one did.

Doc Emrick and Chico Resch from MSG+ with the call:

Un-Freaking-Believable.

I mean... This is the New Jersey Devils, the team that made sitting on a one-goal lead the new black in the 1990s. This is Martin Brodeur - The Franchise - The Legend.

How in the blue hell did this happen? This stuff doesn't happen to the Devils. It never does... Well, unless you're the Ottawa Senators.

It's hours upon hours later now and this one just stuns me. Jussi Jokinen is the new cursed name in the swamps of New Jersey? The same guy that was waived by the directionless Tampa Bay Lightning? That Jussi Jokinen?!

Shocking.

What's more shocking about all of this is that Herr Bettman got his wish. With the Hurricanes beating the Devils, that set up a second round date between Sid the Kid's Penguins and Alexander the Great's Capitals - a playoff matchup that people have been dying to have happen.

Sure, it's not for the Conference Title or the Stanley Cup - but for the press and the attention and the real bad blood there is between these teams it might as well be.

Two of these four second round series are now set to be, potentially, the best series of the entire playoffs. Anaheim did their job and disposed of a gutless Sharks team to set up a date with the Red Wings and then you get the headliner between Pittsburgh and Washington.

This isn't to say that Chicago and Vancouver is going to stink, far from it, as that's going to make for an incredible tilt and the Wonder Boys in Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews are going to have their hands full in dealing with Vancouver's system all backstopped by the new stud Roberto Luongo.

Boston and Carolina would be a lot more fun if, say, Herr Bettman's Southern Conquest wasn't involved and the Hurricanes were wearing blue, green and white and celebrated each goal with some Brass Bonanza.

Then again, getting Ric Flair prominently involved in hockey really isn't so bad and given that it took the Hurricanes to overthrow the Devils to make Gary's Dream Match-Up come to fruition... Well maybe it's worth looking into.

Adirondack Phantoms: It's Official

2009-04-28T16:40:00.008-04:00

It's official - per the AHL website:

“On behalf of our Board, it’s my privilege to welcome these three cities to the AHL family,” said Andrews. “We are looking forward to these new opportunities in Austin and Abbotsford, and we’re excited to be returning to the rich AHL tradition and history in Glens Falls.”

You hear that Gary? Tradition and history, two things you wouldn't know about if they sat on your face. It's also a couple of things that Austin, Texas and Abbotsford, British Columbia, don't have a lot of.

That's beside the point though.

I told you to get used to calling them the Adirondack Phantoms.

As I expected, this move was being made whether Glens Falls hit the 2,500 season ticket goal or not and as of the last update at the Post Star website on Monday, the total was a bit over 1,600. If they don't hit the 2,500 mark now after the confirmation of the team moving, I'd really worry if I were part of the Brooks Group, owners of the Phantoms. After all, if you can't get folks to pony up when it is a sure thing... I don't know what to tell you.

At the least, we now understand why the target date was moved up to today, the 28th. The AHL was ready to make the announcement regardless.

What remains to be seen is how long this remains the home of the Phantoms or if this is just Glens Falls' way of auditioning for another full-time gig when/if the Phantoms get their own place in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

ESPN: Contra Cl-Owned

2009-04-27T19:37:00.006-04:00

Being that this is a hockey site, we enjoy bringing up ESPN failures in hockey coverage. ESPN has provided a jackpot of hilarity today.

It started this morning when ESPN insisted that Mike Green and Donald Brashear were being looked at for potential suspensions for their actions in Game 6 against the Rangers.

I'm sorry... Mike Green?! The same Mike Green that isn't noted for his defensive prowess at all?

Yeah.

Turns out that was all part of a joke played on ESPN. ESPN retracted their story after a half hour.

The jokes haven't ended there today for the World Wide Leader.

If I might get my "Jump To Conclusions" mat out, it looks like ESPN has upset the space-time continuum courtesy of old-school 80s video gamers.

Code Of Honor: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start

This afternoon, word started circulating around Internet forums that if you visited ESPN's website and entered in the Contra Code you would find an amusing result.

Obviously I'm an easy sheep to snare but this was worth it to give it a look-see. Click to enlarge it, of course:

It's like Napoleon Dynamite's Trapper Keeper crapped on ESPN's homepage.

I don't know what's funnier about this, NASCAR being front page material or the unicorns or the horse from 80s kids show Rainbow Brite being prominently involved.

Whoever the mad geniuses behind these presumably unrelated pranks are are hilarious and deserve a pat on the back.

That is unless they've hacked everyone's computer - which in that case I'd like them to be burned at the stake while tarred and feathered.

Like I said, this is loosely related to hockey but too hilarious to NOT share. I'll call this karmic retribution for being wholly ignorant of the NHL.

Wheel of Justice Strikes Again

2009-04-27T16:53:00.004-04:00

Donald Brashear is a bad motherfucker, there's no getting around that. He's also a really lame fighter too on occasion, I guess some guys need proper motivation or to not be a complete wuss.

Whatever.

It's not always a knockdown drag out affair with Huggy Bear Brashear

Thanks to Colin Campbell's amazing and unpredictable Wheel of Justice, this:

Is worth a six-game suspension.

OK so it's not just that hit, it's the pre-game nonsense he instigated with the Rangers Colton Orr and... well, insert whatever other reasons you might want to toss in for having the suspension be six games. Dirk over at On The Forecheck has the hands-down winner on his Twitter page to this point:

It sucks to be Donald Brashear. He got 1 game for the pre-game shove, 1 for the head shot, and 4 because it's Ulysses S. Grant's birthday.

Beauty.

Truth is it's one game for the pre-game shenanigans and five for the hit.

Was Brashear wrong here? Absolutely. It's a reckless hit. It's a hit coming full force on Blair Betts while he's unsuspecting and that's not necessary in the NHL.

I find myself watching this over and over again and trying to figure out what the motivation is here for Brashear and if Betts is in the wrong at all (ie: head down, admiring his pass) and while Betts is caught flat-footed and somewhat admiring, it stands out to me as a prime example of everything in hockey happening a lot faster than in other sports.

Check out the YouTube video above once again. Betts gets the puck at the :12 second mark, has the puck away and down the ice at :13 and Brashear clobbers him at :14. I know there's big heaps of fractions of seconds involved here but that's a span of two seconds where Betts goes from safe to dismantled with a highly questionably timed hit.

TWO SECONDS!

Incredible. This does boil down to Brashear crossing the line between hitting a guy who has a basic idea the hit is coming and a guy that has no clue it's coming which gets into all sorts of grey area stuff as far as the NHL is concerned. After all, guys who get caught skating with their heads down get creamed and concussed the same as guys that are caught watching their passes as if they're Monet paintings.

Does this put Betts in a different category at all? Brashear was on the ice the whole time and, let's face it, he's not out there to score goals or play rock-solid defense. Betts was looking to dump the puck in deep to get the Rangers a line change and Brashear was looking to, for lack of a better phrase, light a fire under his team - a team that's been criticized all playoffs long for being physically soft.

Sending a message in a different sort of way? Probably, but now Huggy Bear is going to have to pay the piper for six games.

The Capitals aren't really going to lose too much not having a guy who has averaged about 3:25 of ice time in the four games he's played in this series. Brashear is so vital to the Capitals that he didn't suit up for the first two games of the series, the same two that Jose Theodore yacked away at home.

Betts, meanwhile, is likely out for Game 7 and the Rangers will miss him dearly. He's played an average of 10:44 per game before having his day shortened in Game 6 and logged over 13 minutes of ice time in Game 4 which the Rangers won 2-1 and held Washington's power play to an 0-6 performance, much thanks to Betts' work.

Moving On Up To The Northside

2009-04-22T23:32:00.007-04:00

Folks may not be too up on this unless you're a big fan of the AHL, but the Philadelphia Phantoms are about to become a homeless hockey team.

Their home in Philadelphia has been the famous Philly Spectrum which will be demolished once the Phantoms season comes to an end and with that comes a search for where the Phantoms will play in the meantime.

Adirondack Phantoms - Get Used To It

A couple of areas have jumped to the forefront of the debate to pull in the Phantoms, one close by to their current location in Pennsylvania and the other... Well, the other is a throwback to a bygone era of the American Hockey League.

First up is a location in the Lehigh Valley, namely Allentown, PA. There's some buzz about going here, but it appears there's not much in the way of current infrastructure (read: An arena to play in!) to make it happen right away.

The debate going on in Allentown taps into something more of a microcosm of what happens in the major metroplexes when it comes to building such places: Why spend public money for sports luxuries?

An interesting note made in that opinion piece that helps justify the cause for building a new arena is something that everyone can understand:

That said, if a local government is bent on building a new arena or stadium, now may be the time to do it, because costs are lower and the new construction can create jobs and a short term economic stimulus.

Well, duh.

All that aside, Allentown is at a huge disadvantage compared to their apparent competition for the affections of Phantoms management. After all, Allentown can't make the claim that they've once been home to a Calder Cup championship team or two the way Glens Falls, New York can.

OK now picture this with a hockey rink and fans decked out in purple and orange.

That's right, Glens Falls the former home of the Adirondack Red Wings, wants the Phantoms to come north in the worst way.

I could pick and snipe from a few articles from the local newspaper (hey, remember those?) The Post Star, but they've gone hog wild covering the Phantoms situation as well as the local efforts to lure them in by dedicating a full page of links and articles on their website.

Honestly, the media focus on its own is pretty impressive considering that Glens Falls is a city that is actually starved to get professional hockey back there. You know, honest to goodness professional hockey, not something that is fighting on ice skates like they had with former Civic Center residents the Adirondack Frostbite (out of the UHL) also known as the Adirondack IceHawks.

The last two seasons, Glens Falls made time and room for the former Adirondack Red Wings blood rivals, the Albany River Rats by having some regular season home River Rats games played at the Civic Center - a shrewd move by the city to show that they can still bring folks into the arena and support a local team - even if it's one that they may still hate for eventually chasing away the much beloved Red Wings.

The folks with the Phantoms have been smart about this though. The Brooks Group, the Phantoms ownership, have pledged to folks in Glens Falls that if they get 2,500 folks to commit to season ticket packages they will move the team to the city and rock their faces off with real, actual professional hockey once again.

According to the story, all it takes for folks to help bring a team back to Glens Falls is a $25 deposit and the good faith to drop between $320 and $760 for a 40-game season ticket package, prices that really aren't unreasonable at all.

Think about that, $8 a game to watch professional hockey? That sounds pretty awesome, especially since Glens Falls Civic Center doesn't have a bad seat in the building, you just have to make do without the super modern amenities available in many other arenas.

As always, there's a catch involved.

The goal of 2,500 season ticket pledges has a new target date of April 28 (it was April 30), less than a week from today, and currently sales are just over 1,000. The Brooks Group has made it known that the language in the lease agreement says that the date can be made negligible if they decide to go ahead with the city anyways.

I'm sure the Brooks Group would feel a lot better about things if they had 2,500 to go with right off the bat, but this is where reality sets in pretty hard. Glens Falls is a poorer city than Albany, and Albany has certainly shown they struggle bringing folks to the Times Union Center averaging just over 3,500 fans a game, third worst in the AHL.

While Glens Falls is a more hockey-centric and hockey crazy place than Albany, the residents there also come from a more blue-collar background and may not have the disposable income needed to plunk down the kind of money needed to keep the owners happy.

That said, Glens Falls hasn't had actual good hockey in the city in a long time (10 years gone now) and the Philadelphia Phantoms have been successful recently, including playoff runs the last two seasons.

The fans in Glens Falls are savvy and a good team will bring fans out in droves, at least enough to make the near 5,000 seat arena fill up and provide the home ice advantage teams in the AHL yearn for.

The Brooks Group is being quite wise and political about the process, however, and they don't want to burn a bridge in Pennsylvania, especially since the lease agreement with Glens Falls is so beneficial to them and allows them to use Glens Falls a temporary place to stay should they want to head back to the Lehigh Valley if/when Allentown, PA bends over backwards to get the Phantoms to come back home.

Brooks said Wednesday that the Lehigh Valley remains their first choice as a permanent location for the team.

“We’re working with Allentown and Bethlehem. We’re working on the financing of it,” he said. “It’s a market that we’ve been working on for several years.”

I don't know about you, but reading words like that don't really do a whole lot to inspire any feelings of potential loyalty I would have towards a team that might come to my home town.

I know it makes sense to keep a Flyers farm team near Philadelphia for logistical and hometown fan-cultivating needs, and I know it seems silly to have a farm team of a not-really local team in an area not known for having many Flyers fans in the first place. Hell, Glens Falls is still a Red Wings town to this day.

The city and the mayor want professional hockey back there in the worst way and everyone loves a winner and Glens Falls certainly loved the Red Wings. Should this pan out and the city gets its chance to be "big time" once again with the Phantoms, I'll be more curious to see if folks warm up to them right away - especially with both the "out clause" and potential short-term status Sword of Damocles hanging over them.

If there's something fans in this part of upstate New York don't like it's being jerked around by professional sports (see: Albany Patroons, Albany-Colonie Yankees, Albany Firebirds, Albany River Rats, Capital District Islanders, Albany Choppers), and investing time and money into a team that might bolt town in three to five years sets up potential disaster towards the end of that run.

Playoff Thermometer

2009-04-21T02:13:00.011-04:00

Bend over everyone, it's time to take the temperature of the playoffs.

The Playoff Doctor will see you now.

I see the Canadiens, Blues and Sharks are already in position. How nice of you to be so helpful to myself and your opponents.

I know that Bruins fans want to think that they're exorcising playoff demons here, but considering how schizophrenic the Habs were all season long, how awful they played leading up to the playoffs and how beat up they were... Is this really a surprise at all?

Yeah, yeah I know - rivalries, history, magic, aura... All that crap gets brought up and its stupid. None of that has anything to do with how horribly overmatched the Canadiens were going into this series and now that they're on the brink of being shown the broom there's nothing incredible nor overwhelming about it.

The Bruins weren't the underdogs in this battle and they're certainly not a rag-tag bunch of kids going up against Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson and Ken Dryden Canadiens either.

Wait, what's that Jack Edwards?

Good lord.

Jack Edwards: Certifiably Insane

If the Bruins struggled at all in this series I would've been at a loss for words and then if you twisted my arm I might buy into that nonsense about never getting by the Canadiens ever.

Things change and this year things got a lot better for the Bruins and a lot worse for the Canadiens and its more than evident in this series.

The Bruins will get their first actual test in the next round...unless they face Carolina (trailing New Jersey 2 games to 1) or Philadelphia (trailing Pittsburgh 2-1), then forget it it's a walk to the Eastern Conference Finals in that case.

If they get either the Rangers or the Penguins in the second round, things get shaky for the B's since the Rangers (leading Washington 2-1) would have a goalie that can carry them far and steal games and the Penguins have offense to burn and give Tim Thomas fits.

In the Western Conference, I want to say that there's rhyme or reason for why the Sharks are failing so hard, but I can't even begin to imagine what the hell their problem is.

Presidents Trophy jinx? Get lost and stop reading my website.

Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau aren't clutch enough in the playoffs? If you believe that kind of nonsense I'm going to find you and fire you into the sun.

Demotivated team whose boredom carried over into the opening round? Ehh...

That would make sense if they weren't playing a team they hate in the first round, and let's face it, San Jose hates Anaheim and there's no way around that.

You want the truth of the matter? Here it comes:

San Jose went sputtering into the playoffs and then got the worst possible opponent they could draw in Anaheim - a team that was on fire since the trade deadline, a team that didn't have a favorable schedule to close out the year when it came to making the playoffs.

Yet, here they are and they're on fire and they've got that savvy veteran leadership that the playoffs was meant for.

Oh yeah, and they've got a team that plays sick defense. Remember the 2007 team that won the Cup much to everyone's chagrin? Yeah, they're just like that team was only this time they've got a lot of younger guys up front, a lot of whom came up in the Ducks system and they know it backwards and forwards.

The Niedermayer brothers are still there. Teemu Selanne is still there. Physics egalitarian Chris Pronger is still there. Hell, even Jean-Sebastian Giguere is still there and he looks dashing in a baseball cap while Swiss freak Jonas Hiller backstops the Water Fowl.

They're not your normal eighth seed - these guys are good and they're happy staying under the radar. They're also still douchebags - so they got that going for them.

Should the Ducks move on, and with the way San Jose is playing it seems foolish to think that it won't, a potential match-up with Detroit (who is busy schooling Columbus on the finer points of how to play hockey) in the second round will go down as the best series in the entire playoffs.

Bank on it.

Then you've got the St. Louis Blues...

Let's face it, I got Andy Murray's team all sorts of wrong here back in October when I said that they didn't need to even show up this year because they weren't going to make the playoffs.

No, really, I did say that.

What I didn't get wrong though was about Andy Murray himself. Let me cite noted hockey blogger Hockey Joe, author of Gross Misconduct about what he had to say about Andy Murray:

The best part of this team, however, is the head coach Andy Murray. Murray is a smart enough guy and is always able to get the best out of his teams. He did very solid work with the L.A. Kings until things turned horribly southward there and it's that experience Murray will have to draw on for handling this Blues team.

Such grace in those words - someone should give that guy a pat on the back. Of course, the next phrase after that was:

The Blues will have a spurt or two in them where they're able to man-up and pull a few surprises out and goaltender Manny Legace, or presumptive backup from Nashville Chris Mason, are more than capable of stealing a couple games throughout the season, but don't buy what they're selling. This team is bad.

Damn it all.

I should've been wiser to Manny Legace having a meltdown at some point this season and I should've stuck to my guns about Murray as a coach. I also should have been smarter about the youth on the Blues roster and respecting what they could bring to the table right away in a situation that would demand they do it sooner than later.

Some how, some way the Blues managed to end up sixth in the Western Conference and their reward for that was Roberto Luongo and the Freaky Swedes with their Bore You Into Submission brand of hockey.

Any other time in my hockey life I'd be openly rooting against Vancouver because they're like ether on ice.

Not this time.

I'm spiteful.

I'm angry.

I'm vengeful with my words and my middle fingers.

The Blues screwed me out of going five for five on my pre-season prediction and now they're paying for it.

Hey St. Louis! I got two words for ya!

Suck it.

As for Vancouver, a tune up agains the Blues in what basically boils down to a rough scrimmage is just what they needed. Hell, the Canucks are even getting over on trashing the Blues verbally too:

Embarrassing - glad to have the Canucks on my side in this one.

The Canucks are getting hot and they're destined for a second round match-up with either Chicago or Calgary (Chicago leads the series 2-1) and that works out just fine since those two teams are going to beat each others brains in for a while, or at least be cheap-shotting pricks:

That sets things up rather nicely, eh?

Snap Judgments Blow

2009-04-17T16:36:00.006-04:00

I know that a lot of folks want to make their judgments on how the playoffs will go after one game, which is really fucking stupid.

I know I don't usually swear around you guys but the fucking hockey media is fucking making me do it.

Denis Leary approved that rant and theft of his act because I write about hockey, assholes.

Sure, I could come out now and say that I think that there's ZERO point in having any more games of the Penguins-Flyers series because the Flyers looked beyond putrid and that all they're going to do over the next three games (yeah, I feel that confident) is take cheap shots and try to purposefully injure people.

You know, like Daniel Carcillo.

I could go that route very easily.

I won't.

I could also talk about how irrevocably inconsistent the NHL is in that it suspended Carcillo a game for that for "message sending" but won't do the same to Mike Cammalleri of the Calgary Flames for doing THE EXACT SAME THING to the Blackhawks Martin Havlat.

Yet, Cammalleri will not be suspended by the NHL because, apparently the only difference between these two cheap and brutal shots to the head (Hey, remember that whole initiative Gary? How about you Colin?) is when they occurred during the game.

Actually the NHL's actual reason is even more worthless than timing: It's because it's Cammalleri's first offense.

Hopeless.

Other snap judgments I could make after Game 1 are:

How the playoffs could be the undoing of Mike Green's campaign for Norris given how he allowed Sean Avery to play him like a chump. Save the complaints, I know the awards are based on regular season play. I'm sure the voters are really on top of these things. Right...

How the Blue Jackets look terrified of being in the playoffs and should've faced off with the San Jose Sharks just to see if an NHL series could end with neither team moving on.

How the Anaheim Ducks are reaching back into the 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs playbook for how to get away with murder on the sneak.

How the St. Louis Blues and Vancouver Canucks series will make wish to meet up with Dr. Kevorkian if I watch any more of that crap.

I don't care if Vancouver is playing dirty or if St. Louis is too busy crying about getting abused like a teenage girlfriend from her 'roided up football player boyfriend.

I don't care, it's boring and the Sedin Twins freak me the fuck out. They remind me of something I saw in a movie once...

Just jump ahead to the 0:25 second mark of that bad boy and you'll laugh your ass off for a week. Or vomit. Either way, it's a winner.

I won't make those snap judgments though because they're classically stupid. Expect better analysis than that after the weekend because even I'm a bit spooked by Chris Osgood's outstanding goaltending against the Blue Jackets. Does that mean we just throw away everything that happened in the regular season now?

My head hurts.

Stupid As Hell

2009-04-15T17:41:00.004-04:00

I don't expect much from the NHL nor from the Versus Network, and frankly that's a good thing, it saves me a lot of aggravation.

Thanks to Wyshynski at Puck Daddy though, I've gotten my mojo back.

How else can you explain that the lowest of the low amongst hockey bloggers gets the call to help out Versus, the American network of hockey?

That's right, Versus has hired the infamous Eklund (that link is a MUST read) to be their voice of the hockey blogosphere.

I provide you the link to the Versus site merely to prove that it's not some jerk-around that Versus did something this stupid and I do NOT encourage anyone to visit Dwayne Klessel's page either at Versus or his own kingdom of stupid.

I'm not going to pile on about Klessel because, let's face it, if you're familiar with him at all you know his site is a joke and that the man himself is a poser of the highest order and a phony. If you don't know him, don't bother getting to know him or his joke of a hockey blog full of terrible rumors.

What's got me amazed here is that there is information galore all over the Internet about what a fraud he is and Verus still found him to be their go-to-guy for web analysis of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Unreal.

This is an amazing level of carelessness on the part of a network that has not improved much since Day One of their contract with the NHL. I can't believe that it makes me this angry especially when there are at least three kings of the hockey blogosphere that could have been/may have been contacted about this instead.

Any one of Paul Kukla, Greg Wyshynski or James Mirtle would've lent a lot more credibility to Versus on this one, even adding any of the numerous folks who are acolytes at any of their respective big time sites would have done the trick as well.

Instead we get a heaping dose of continued failure from a network that insists on continuing to treat their core audience like children who have never been to a game.

Versus: The Official Network of the Failboat

I've heard back from all three blogging gurus about this and Mirtle reports that he was not approached at all. I have to wonder if that has more to do with James being from Toronto and Versus folks not really being aware of where or what Canada is.

Greg Wyshynski adds in a similar tale in that he was never approached about such a thing either. Wyshynski also has a distinct pedigree having come from both Fanhouse and being featured at Deadspin.

Paul Kukla, on the other hand, was approached by Versus at the beginning of the season and tells me that while he was flattered and intrigued by the offer he didn't want to lend his and his website's name to something that might be "tied in with other less-reputable bloggers." Versus said they could not guarantee this would be the case, a response that opens up another entirely insane can of worms regarding the network.

Interpret that how you wish, but apparently Kukla's response was taken seriously enough that he wasn't approached about doing the same for them for the playoffs and obviously Versus decided to go with, perhaps, the least reputable guy on the Internet.

What an awful network and what an awful set of decision makers. I can't say how happy I am that the NHL is tied up with them until 2011.

Coming Soon

2009-04-15T01:00:00.003-04:00

I'm a slacker, I get it.

I spent too much time in D.C. drinking and carousing with friends and treating it like the end of the year party it's meant to be and now I'm paying for it in the form of illness.

Whether it comes from spending a day and evening in Baltimore and breathing the air or from getting too close to some of the hippies from Vermont, is up for debate but there is going to be a cure for this maniacal head cold soon and with it will come:

A photo recap of a trip to Baltimore to sample Chap's Pit Beef and the amazing scenery entailed with that.
The wonder and beauty of Camden Yards and what happens to a flaccid Wang in chilly temperatures.
Viewing two more of the most incredible hockey games to be played this year including the National Championship.
My scathing words of hate for the St. Louis Blues who dared be the only team to defy my pre-season decree.

The NHL Playoffs are coming up? Why do I not feel at all excited by this? I suppose I will analyze something about them at least. There's only a few series that I find honestly intriguing this year and I'll zero in on those.

Crosby haters/lovers be ready.

Cinderella Dreams

2009-04-07T00:51:00.011-04:00

I'm a slow packer, and I'm dragging ass doing so but wanted to get one more story posted, and yes, it's beaver-centric.

I can't help it - I love the beavers.

Found in my e-mail today was this story from the D.C. Sports Bog and Dan Steinberg.

It looks like the Cinderellas are sticking together in a fine mid-major alliance as Bemidji State is getting a helping hand in the way of a rental pep band.

From who though?

They're getting some help from the local Patriots.

Yes, the George Mason University Patriots.

As Steinberg finds out, it turns out that pride in the beaver runs wild all over the country, especially in Washington, D.C. where George Mason's "Green Machine" pep band resides.

The wacky truth, though, is that Mason's pep band was chosen neither for the school's underdog connotations nor for its Green Machine name and blingy-greened-out accessories. The Mason kids were chosen because the Red Line Swingers--who usually represent the Beavers--had other commitments and were unable to make the trip, and because the school was scrambling to find a band, and because Caps employee and Bemidji Super Fan Rachel Becker had an in with Mason.

It's all about who you know, obviously, and with the Capitals having a Bemidji alum working for them, it seems like too much of an inside job to be true, but there it is.

It also works out pretty well that the "Green Machine" won't have to alter their wardrobe to support the green and white clad team from Bemidji, although hiding the yellow might come in handy lest they be confused for being the band from the University of Vermont.

Then again, I'm doubting very highly that the band leader for UVM's band looks as cool as Doc Nix of George Mason does:

(photo: John McDonnell - The Washington Post)

If I had a suit like that I don't know that I would ever take it off. Then again, there's no way that I'd look as bad-ass as Doc Nix does either.

Such is life.

I get it that Beaver Fever is running wild now, especially in D.C. Even in the political hell that is Washington they love an underdog story, but having some well-placed alumni can do a lot for a school looking to bring some of the flavors from home and it's paid off well for Bemidji on the national scene and in D.C. itself now.

Bemidji State isn't the only princess looking for the glass slipper in Washington, however.

I know there are plenty of Miami University fans are feeling like the red-headed stepchild here and I honestly feel bad for them because not only is Miami the other #4 seed that upset their way to D.C. but now they have to face off against the biggest Cinderella in the tournament and become the instant villain because of it.

That's not fair at all and it definitely sucks to be Miami in this case. The last two years Miami's been the team with the lofty goals and fell one round short of the Frozen Four with much more talented teams, bowing out to Boston College in the regional finals each time.

The look on the face fits pretty well given the lack of Cinderella attention for Miami.

This season the expectations fell off a bit with former power scoring stud Ryan Jones playing for the Predators and goaltender Jeff Zatkoff signed away in the Los Angeles Kings system. Miami has gotten their comeuppances and truly earned their way into Washington knocking off the top two seeds in their region.

Miami has to feel that their uppances have finally come after getting stung by the Eagles two years in a row and that now is their time to take advantage of the "golden road" to the finals set before of them. After all, one would like to think that facing off with Bemidji State instead of either Notre Dame or Cornell would have to be a bonus.

Right?

One way or another, Cinderella is getting a shot at the National Championship. The only question here is whether or not Cinderella is going to be happy-go-lucky full of warm-fuzzies or really, really pissed off and out for their deserved recognition.

Preparing For D.C.

2009-04-05T17:13:00.006-04:00

Short and sweet here.

In preparing my gear to head to D.C. on Tuesday, I figure it's in my best interests to show off exactly who I'll be there to rep for on Thursday at the very least.

Those of you who have followed me on Twitter probably won't be shocked by this, but going into my bag for the trip will be this:

Thanks to the great local suppliers (well, if you're in Bemidji, Minnesota that is) at BeaverSporsWear.com I was able to land a Bemidji State jersey to sport around in D.C. on Thursday for the National Semifinals.

Call it bandwagon, call it Johnny-come-lately, that's all more than fair and extremely accurate. I won't deny any of that.

That said, how do you not love Bemidji's story?

They're the worst team in the tournament (they're not in the top 25 in the PairWise Rankings and 37th in Ratings Percentage Index) and yet here they are, two wins away from a D-I National Championship.

Awesome.

There'll be more tomorrow, but I just wanted to recognize the elephant... Make that the beaver in the room.