Articles

[hockeygod]

The Walk-On: The Community star recalls his two-year football career at the University of Washington

Joel McHale, Grantland.com, SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

I was in a fraternity with a bunch of football players for two rocky quarters at the University of Washington. It was a football house, but I got along with them really well. A great player named Chico Fraley asked me, "Why don't you try out for football?" And I thought, "Ah, yes, I do want to die." But that's what I did. I walked on.

I was actually on the crew team for a few weeks first. Out of high school I got recruited to row. Not a lot of people watch crew at the University of Washington, so the team made up for it by being assholes — they were less concerned about rowing than whether the freshmen were being hazed enough. Every year, they'd shave the freshmen's heads and eyebrows and make a hair pillow; they had a glass display case filled with years' worth of hair pillows, which they were quite proud of. One time I didn't push a chair in properly, so the varsity crew team surrounded me and their captain hit me for being insubordinate. So I switched to football.

I had played my freshman year of high school and really enjoyed it, but I quit sophomore year because I was busy doing a play. So I really had to sell myself to the guys at Washington. By "sell myself" I mean "lie." They were doing just fine without me — national championship fine, in fact. They'd just won the Rose Bowl and split the national championship with Miami. I had to convince them I could play, which, technically, I couldn't. I lied and said, "Oh, yeah, I got hurt my senior year. That's why you don't know me." The position coach was like, "Let me get this straight, you played, and I've just never heard of you?" "Yeah, I know. It's crazy, isn't it?" I just kept it vague and they let me on the field.

It was baptism by fire like I've never experienced in my life. When you're a walk-on, they just put you in full pads and you go for it. You saw a lot of guys get put into a drill and have their heads taken off. It was brutally fast. Plays happen within a split second. For me, it was like going from riding a bike to riding a motorcycle. I had to make a thousand adjustments just to hold on. In practice, I was always on scout offense, which ran the opposing team's plays against our defense. I made the defense look terrific. They must have thought, Wow, I just creamed that guy.

Joining the team was kind of like starting a construction job. At the beginning of the summer, you're pasty and small. But at the end, you're in great shape and you can swing a hammer well. It crept up on me before I knew it. I suddenly realized, "Oh, I can bench-press a lot more weight." I'm 6-foot-4, and when I got to Washington I was probably 220 or 225 pounds. By the time I left I was 250. I remember when I got on the scale naked and weighed in at 246 — I couldn't believe it. It was just tons of drills, weight training, and eating. And I wasn't trying to get big for big's sake. It was that I needed this to not be killed. Survival was key.

The hardest I ever got hit was by Dave Hoffmann, an All-American middle linebacker. It was basically a hot route, in which, as the tight end, if a blitz came you run three to five yards and turn around. The ball would just appear in your hands it was thrown so fast. The team ran this play a lot and they were very good at getting the ball over the blitz. So that meant the middle linebacker was sitting there waiting for you. The first time we ran it, I caught the ball, and he lit me up. He knocked the wind out of me.

Then, of course, after the scout play worked they wanted to run it again to see why. So this time, Dave knew exactly what was coming, and he lit me up again. I don't blame him. I'd just caught the ball in front of him, and who was I? Some lowly walk-on. I still hadn't recovered from the first wind-knocked-outing, so I got double the wind knocked out of me. I don't know if that's even possible — to remove air from your lungs that isn't even there. But I caught the ball again, so they made us run the play a third time.

I thought, I've had a good life. But then I looked up and saw Dave staring at me. He said, "Hey man, you're OK this time." I wasn't sure if that meant he was finally going to kill me, let me go, or most likely I was hallucinating. They said "Hut," and I ran a flat route off the sideline. He caught the ball and it was an interception, and we didn't have to do it again. Even though Dave wasn't one of our biggest players, he hit harder than anyone on the team, or in the Pac-10 for that matter. Really. Ask anybody. I'm just bragging now. I'll never forget those hits.

For a long time, the scholarship players kept the walk-ons at an arm's length, and rightfully so. A walk-on could quit at any time, and a lot of us did. But the night that I was finally accepted — probably for more than any play on the field — was skit night.

There wasn't much hazing on the football team. Nothing in the stratosphere of a stupid-ass hair pillow. The freshman had to perform skits, and I did an impression of our team doctor. He was a really nice guy, actually. But just like any team doctor, he was always asking the injured, "Well, you can play right? You're gonna be fine, just wrap it up and get back out there." The skit had players walking into the infirmary with ascending levels of injury, to which the doctor (ME) would say, "Oh, you can play," to the point that they dragged in a dead defensive back — to which I said, as the doctor, "He can still play right?" Then a kicker came in with a cut finger, and I freaked out. Afterward, the players kept asking me to do the impression, which I was more than happy to do, because they were acknowledging my existence. More important, they weren't trying to end my life. My impressions got a much larger response than anything I did on the field, which was a good indication that maybe acting was a better career for me than football. I don't know if the doctor agreed.

In my sophomore year, they redshirted me. For the first time, the coaching staff kind of believed I could do something. That was really cool. But toward the end of the season it was pretty clear I wasn't going to play in the NFL. Surprise. Also, I had just booked a national commercial and made the decision to go into acting. There was a part of me that knew that once I walked away from football I would never experience anything like it again. I knew it was for the best, but there was still some regret.

That team was really special. There were several guys I played with who played in the NFL for a long time — Mark Bruener, Mark Brunell, Lincoln Kennedy, Ernie Conwell. It was weird to see everybody retiring a few years ago. I'd watch games on Sunday, and I was like, "Hey that guy used to try to kill me! Ahh memories."

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Harvard wonk choreographs Flames’ ‘quantum shift’

Allan Maki, Globe and Mail, Oct. 03, 2011

He’s the Harvard-educated, Henry David Thoreau-reading, Stanley Cup winner who comes with a reputation for drafting big centres, his biggest being Dwight Howard.

Yes, that Dwight Howard, of NBA fame. Drafting Howard was John Weisbrod’s handiwork during his time as CEO and general manager of the Orlando Magic. Now it’s Weisbrod’s duty to secure top talent, including a front-line centre, for a Calgary Flames organization in the throes of what team president Ken King calls “a quantum shift.”

Under former GM Darryl Sutter, the Flames were essentially a one-man operation with a narrow view on hockey matters and scouting. Western juniors got top priority; Russians were ignored. Under new GM Jay Feaster, all options and opinions are encouraged, which is why Weisbrod agreed to leave a scouting position with the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins for a team that missed the playoffs last season.

“The [Flames] organization was like Boston’s six years ago,” Weisbrod said. “The Bruins were 28th in the league and had a lot of bad contracts. I enjoyed the way we broke it down and redefined what we wanted a Boston Bruin to be. That’s what Jay’s doing here.”

Depth and diversity have sophisticated the way the Flames are going about their business. They not only hired Weisbrod, whose sporting background knows no equal in hockey; they enlarged their scouting staff, expanded their front office and put more emphasis on analytical software programs such as PUCKS and Decision Lens.

The idea, Feaster insisted, is to examine all the data possible and use them in decision making, be it for which players to draft or determine how best the Flames can defend against certain rivals.

“We’re trying to be more scientific in what we do as opposed to analytical,” Feaster said. “Decision Lens allows us to prioritize players we scout by whatever criteria we want. We pick the category – maybe it’s by skating – and the program gives us its top-20 selections. PUCKS breaks down a game with percentage groups – where goals are scored from, league averages and it’s attached to video. If we’re contemplating a trade with Phoenix for Lee Stempniak, we can watch video of all his shifts against Western Conference teams.

“We’re not pioneers, but I think more and more you’re going to see [analysis work] done in hockey.”

Feaster has cleared out some bad contracts (Ales Kotalik, Daymond Langkow) and has $3.6-million (U.S.) in cap space to upgrade the roster. His grand vision of what he wants a Flames player to be is simple yet valued: “We want smart, high-character hockey players who, despite it sounding cliché, play for the crest on the front of the jersey not for the self-aggrandizement of the name on the back.”

Helping determine who those players are is a major part of Weisbrod’s job as assistant GM of player personnel. A Harvard University English grad with a fondness for the classics, Weisbrod played hockey, but a shoulder injury ended his minor pro career. He found administrative work in the IHL, where he ran the Orlando Solar Bears. The Bears owner, Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, liked Weisbrod so much he named him president of the NBA’s Orlando Magic.

Unfortunately for Weisbrod, he got off to a bad start with Magic fans. Instead of drafting Emeka Okafor, he went for Dwight Howard fresh out of high school. The result was garbage bags filled with hate mail, a sampling of the hostility that followed when Weisbrod traded Tracy McGrady to the Houston Rockets. For that, Weisbrod received hand-delivered death threats at his home.

“[McGrady] was one of the most talented players in the league, very popular, but I came to the conclusion he didn’t have the internal fortitude to win a championship,” Weisbrod said. “I went to the ownership and said, ‘He can be Robin, not Batman.’ The FBI moved me out of my house to a hotel under an alias [because of the public’s anger].”

Weisbrod resigned in 2005, returned to the NHL and later joined the Bruins, where he was hired as a scout by former Harvard teammate Peter Chiarelli. Impressed by Weisbrod’s résumé, Feaster got permission from the Bruins to talk to him. That was before the 2011 playoffs began. Once the Stanley Cup was secured, Weisbrod listened to Feaster and saw another chance to redefine a franchise.

“The Flames have been one of the worst drafting teams in the last 10 years. We have to change that,” Weisbrod said, referring to the fact Calgary has developed only one first-round draft pick for its 2011-12 roster (centre Mikael Backlund). “We have to have open-mindedness about where guys come from and we have to find them. You certainly need talent to fill the skill sets, but we’re going to be focused on the intangibles in what people are bringing.”

For Feaster, that means believing in the process and the people he’s brought in.

“I run a participatory democracy,” Feaster said. “Of course, the ultimate decision rests on my desk. But I don’t want to cut off opinions. I want to hear that.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Scientists back new test for HGH

STEPHEN WILSON, The Associated Press, Oct. 03, 2011

A new test that can detect use of human growth hormone going back as far as 21 days has been endorsed by international anti-doping officials, clearing the way for its possible implementation at next year’s London Summer Olympics.

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency chief executive officer Travis Tygart said Monday the “biomarker” test for HGH won strong consensus among doping scientists and experts from around the world who attended a London symposium on detection of growth factors.

The test, which still needs final validation by the World Anti-Doping Agency, widely extends the detection window from the current “isoform” test, which can only identify HGH use going back 12 to 72 hours.

The new test, which also uses blood samples, can go back “anywhere from 10 days to 21 days,” marking a potential breakthrough against one of the most potent performance-enhancers in sports, Tygart said.

“This is an important step,” he said. “We’re hopeful it’s going to be approved by WADA soon.”

In addition to use in the Olympics and international sports, the test would also be valid for use in the NFL, whose players’ union has yet to agree to introduction of any HGH testing.

The biomarker test was the main focus of a closed-door conference held over the weekend and jointly organized by USADA and UK Anti-Doping.

“The consensus … is that this test is a well validated, scientifically reliable test which extends the window of detection and would also be important to implement,” Tygart said after a separate anti-doping and ethics symposium in London on Monday.

He said the biomarker test had been supported by more than 30 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

The isoform test, used for the first time in 2004, is designed to detect the presence of synthetic HGH in the body. By contrast, the biomarker test scans for chemicals produced by the body after HGH use, detecting “the effects of using human growth hormone,” Tygart said.

The biomarker test could be used alone or together with the isoform test.

“The two tests are complementary,” Tygart said.

WADA has to go through its own scientific validation process before the new test can go into effect.

“I would hope it’s imminent,” Tygart said. “Clean athletes, once they’re satisfied that it’s scientifically validated and should be used, they want it out their immediately.”

Olivier Niggli, legal director of WADA, said the agency would assess the new test fully before giving it the go-ahead.

“Scientists are always very optimistic,” he said. “We’ll see where exactly where we are. We’ll see whether every aspect is covered. Before anything comes into place, we want to make sure we have the answers to the questions we’ll get when we go to try [the test] for the first time.

“It’s very promising. There’s still a bit of work to be done but we’re getting there.”

Niggli was coy about whether the new test would be in place at the London Games.

“If it would be, I wouldn’t tell you,” he said. “We want to keep the element of surprise.”

While HGH testing has taken place at the Olympics since 2004, no positive tests for the hormone have been recorded at the games. Outside of the Olympics, there have been eight positive tests for HGH in seven sports detected at seven different labs.

In the most recent case, two-time Olympic cross-country skiing champion Andrus Veerpalu of Estonia was banned for three years by the sport’s governing body last August. The federation said he tested positive for HGH in Estonia last January, while preparing for the world championships.

Tygart and Niggli both defended the isoform test against questions raised by the NFL Players Association. The NFL would be the first major professional sports league to implement HGH testing.

Blood testing for HGH was part of the collective bargaining deal struck between the league and players this summer – but only if the union agreed to the methods.

The union has asked for more information about the process and questioned the safety and reliability of the test.

“There is complete consensus that it’s a good test, is scientifically reliable, has been well validated and should be used by any entity, professional or Olympic, that wants to protect clean athletes,” Tygart said.

Niggli added: “This is a test which was done over many, many years. We’ve got a lot of studies behind it. We’re very comfortable to defend it.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Hockey’s in Manitoba's blood

ROY MacGREGOR, Globe and Mail, Oct. 03, 2011

Prove ’em wrong.

That, not gloriosus et liber – glorious and free – should be the motto of Manitoba.

The history of this area is a history of overcoming the seemingly impossible, right from the aboriginals who mastered this unkind climate to the Selkirk Settlers who came here in 1813 – sailing through the north and wintering on Hudson Bay before trekking here with their supplies – and even the forcing of provincial status itself in 1870.

It could also be the mantra of hockey in Manitoba: forever up against the doubters, forever having to prove ’em wrong.

If they need it in Latin, perhaps the provincial motto could be sibi fidens – trusting in oneself.

It is the story of the 1896 Stanley Cup champion Winnipeg Victorias and the 1920 Olympic champion Winnipeg Falcons, all lovingly recounted in Richard Brignall’s Forgotten Heroes: Winnipeg’s Hockey Heritage.

Given that we are less than a week from the reborn Winnipeg Jets’ NHL home opener against the Montreal Canadiens, it might be useful to remind outsiders of Winnipeg hockey’s experience with Eastern arrogance.

Hockey came later to this part of the country – there are accounts of shinny being played on the Red River in the winter of 1886-87 – but it caught on so fast that in 1892-93 a team of Manitoba all-stars was dispatched east to see what might be learned from the Eastern inventors and masters of what would become the national game.

“The idea,” the Montreal Gazette noted, “of Winnipeg hockey men playing in Montreal with anything like a chance of winning is so far out of the way that it is hardly worthy of consideration.”

Montreal teams were used to paying expenses for teams coming from Ontario – yet refused the same courtesy to Manitobans. “This is all very well for Ontario,” rationalized the clubs, “but in Montreal there is no reason why we should guarantee expenses … we don’t think we can learn anything from Winnipeg.”

Ha! Lesson No. 1: Never, ever tell people from Manitoba it’s useless.

Fired up, the all-stars went first to Toronto and whipped Osgoode Hall 11-5, then beat Queen’s University in Kingston. They lost in Ottawa and Montreal, but finished with a record of eight wins in 11 games and outscored their opponents 70-37.

By 1896, these upstarts thought they could challenge for the Stanley Cup. The Victorias headed off to Montreal and, in a two-game series, Montreal couldn’t even threaten, losing 1-0 and 2-0. Fans gathered in hotels to listen to reports coming over the telegraph and erupted in a frenzy when it was over.

Travel on more than a century and the same show-’em ethos is found throughout Back In The Bigs: How Winnipeg won, lost and regained its place in the NHL, by the Winnipeg Free Press’s award-winning Randy Turner.

One small chapter in this colourful and beautifully written book tells the story of Craig Heisinger, who seems to embody the notion of can-do Prairie resilience.

The little man they call “Zinger” began his hockey life as a 22-year-old heading off in his pickup truck – brand-new sewing machine in the back – to become equipment manager for the junior hockey Brandon Wheat Kings.

He lived in a trailer park and taught himself first aid through books. He never stopped believing he could have a life in hockey, even from such humble beginnings. He was good enough that he was taken on as a trainer for the 1988 world junior championship, then hired to work in for the Jets’ minor-league team in Moncton. They brought him up to work with the NHL team and he was there, vacuuming the dressing room in tears, after the Jets played their final game in 1996 and left for Phoenix.

Zinger could have gone, too, but he refused, preferring to stick it out in Winnipeg with the steadfast belief that, one day, the NHL would have to come back to where hockey truly matters.

He worked for the Manitoba Moose – the minor-league team that replaced the Jets – and was soon assistant general manager, then full GM of the franchise considered “the gold standard” of the AHL. When the Jets finally returned, 15 years after they left, he was offered the GM position but declined, preferring to stay closer to the players and dressing room as director of hockey operations.

He got to introduce the new general manager, Kevin Cheveldayoff, whom he had first spotted when Cheveldayoff tried out for the Wheat Kings and Zinger was the guy cleaning the jerseys. When they stick together out here, they stick fast.

The reborn Jets may turn out to be more stubborn than skilled, but it will be a profoundly different team than the team that went unnoticed and nowhere in Atlanta.

Simply by dint of location.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Taking Flight in Philly:Jagr hopes to find old magic in NHL return

DAN GELSTON, The Associated Press, Oct. 03, 2011

Jaromir Jagr had a personal soundtrack at the old Spectrum.

He was one of the more gifted players in the game and played for the hated Pittsburgh Penguins, a potent 1-2 punch that made it easy for Philadelphia fans to jeer him.

But that mulllet!

With his party-in-the-back locks flowing out of his helmet, it was even more fun to razz him. Flyers fans pursed their lips for derisive whistles and catcalls, and Aerosmith's Dude (Looks Like A Lady) blasted through the arena.

Hairstyles and jerseys change.

Now, the dude looks like a Flyer, and Jagr lined up for the home team still seems as weird as seeing the hairs on the back of his neck.

Jagr left Russia's Kontinental Hockey League to make a return to the NHL, and he's not alone. Goaltender Evgeni Nabokov, a two-time all-star and former winner of the Calder Trophy for top rookie, also found a desire to get back. After a stint in the KHL, he's now with the New York Islanders.

But Jagr is the marquee name in the equation. And boy is it strange to see him in the orange and black.

“They whistled and booed him,” Flyers president Peter Luukko said about Jagr's former days. “But they all wished they had him.”

Wish granted.

When the Flyers underwent their off-season makeover — jettisoning stars Mike Richards and Jeff Carter — they shocked the league when they swooped in and signed Jagr after a three-year stint in Russia.

At 39, and two decades removed from winning two straight Stanley Cups, the Flyers are counting on Jagr to still be a 50-to-60-point force on a team with serious Stanley Cup aspirations. The preseason returns for the 1999 league MVP were promising. Jagr scored four goals, shined on the power play, and seems set to share a potential dominant line with franchise cornerstones James van Riemsdyk and Claude Giroux.

He wowed Giroux, an All-Star last season, with the looks-effortless way he takes over a game.

“Just the way he gets open, it's pretty unbelievable,” Giroux said. “He moves the puck quick and it takes two seconds and he is open again. Any time you play with a guy like that, it's going to open up a lot of plays.”

Just what the Flyers are counting on.

Jagr surprised even himself that he now wears the sweater with the famous “Flying P” on it in his NHL comeback. He scored 66 goals in 155 games over three years and enjoyed life playing in the Kontinental Hockey League for Avangard Omsk. But he played last spring for the Czech Republic in the world championships, totaling nine points in nine games. And he proved to NHL scouts — the Flyers sent Ken Hoodikoff, Ilkka Sinisalo and Matti Kautto to work the tournament — that he had still had something left in the tank.

Detroit expressed interest in bringing Jagr to the NHL for the first time since he played the 2007-08 season with the New York Rangers. Led by his former teammate and now Penguins owner Mario Lemieux, the Penguins made a pitch. Coach Dan Bylsma even publicly lobbied for Jagr to return to his original NHL home.

The Penguins offered Jagr a $2-million, one-year deal and awaited his decision. When Jagr hesitated, the Penguins withdrew the offer, allowing Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren to extend a $3.3-million, one-year contract.

“I don't know if I'm going to play good or bad, I can't answer that one,” Jagr said. “But I'm 100 per cent sure I'm going to do everything to play well.”

Jagr has given an instant boost to the power play, the special teams unit that caused the Flyers fits last season. The fans love him — those Penguins days are all deep in the past — and players who grew up admiring the five-time scoring champion can't believe they share a locker room with him.

Even in the preseason, with plenty of empty seats at the Wells Fargo Center, there still could be seen several Jagr jerseys and T-shirts already in the stands.

“I don't think anyone expected him to come back and be as good as he has shown so far in camp,” Flyers forward Danny Briere said. “It's very exciting for everyone. It's exciting for me to have the chance to skate with him and to play with him.”

That respect goes both ways.

One reason Holmgren traded goal scorers like Carter and Richards was because he believed van Riemsdyk and Giroux were good enough, maybe, even better, to fill their roles. It's their turn to carry the burden of leading the Flyers to their first Stanley Cup championship in 1975. Van Riemsdyk had 21 goals and 40 points last year with the Flyers, then scored seven goals in 11 playoff games. Giroux led the Flyers with 76 points.

Pair them with Jagr and that Stanley Cup just might find its way back to Philadelphia.

Asked who Giroux reminds him of, Jagr took a long pause, and realized the answer was in front of him.

“Me? A younger me?” he said, laughing.

“But no, it's like playing with Mario Lemieux, but just a little but smaller. Good player, and he's has a good career in front of him.”

For now, all is good between Jagr and the Flyers.

Jagr, admittedly, had worn out his welcome with Pittsburgh and his relationship with Lemieux became strained. He wanted to be paid more than Scott Gomez and Chris Drury if he was going to spurn the KHL offer and stick with the Rangers. When it didn't happen, he bolted. Both Gomez and Drury are now no longer with New York, either.

Jagr is sensitive and his penchant for freelancing takes some getting used to. He played parts of three seasons with the Capitals, too, before being traded to New York. Washington wasn't a fit, either.

“It's not easy to play with me, trust me,” Jagr said. “I couldn't find many guys who would get used to me and who I was happy with.”

Jagr said this comeback isn't about money or being a franchise player. He's promised nothing but effort and has done his part to lead a team already captained by fellow MVP Chris Pronger, a defenseman. He's been meticulous in his conditioning, and returns to the ice after practice for some late-day workouts.

Luukko had a conversation with new Flyers forward Jakub Voracek, acquired in the Carter deal, at his introductory news conference. Voracek played with Jagr in the world championships and was awed by his dedication at working out for another two hours after a game.

“You could see the impact it had on him,” Luukko said. “It was like, `Wow, that's guy's amazing.’ It does a lot of good.”

Amazing just scratches the ice.

Jagr has 646 goals and 1,599 points in his NHL career, ranking among the game's all-time best. The Czech star is one of 25 players with a Stanley Cup and gold medals from the Olympics and world championships.

But all of that is behind him now.

It's making an impact on the Flyers that matters this year.

“I want,” he said, “to be a plus for this team.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Rangers to place Sean Avery on waivers

David Shoalts, Globe and Mail, October 4, 2011

The NHL career of a player whose time in the spotlight was never commensurate with his ability may be over.

Sean Avery, 31, will go on waivers Tuesday as New York Rangers head coach John Tortorella decided the team’s last forward spot will go to centre Erik Christensen, who is four years younger. Avery’s agent, Pat Morris, told ESPN.com his client is looking at all his options, including playing in Europe, and indicated Avery would report to the Rangers’ American Hockey League farm team if necessary.

In order to collect the $4-million remaining on the last year of his contract, Avery would have to play in the AHL unless he and the Rangers work out an arrangement with a European team. The Rangers are only charged $1.93-million against the salary cap for Avery because they claimed him on re-entry waivers from the Dallas Stars in 2008. The Stars are responsible for the other $1.93-million of Avery’s total cap hit because they put him on waivers.

The whole Stars episode sums up Avery’s career in the NHL – he was signed away from the Rangers as a free agent in hopes he would add some grit to the forward ranks but all he brought was unwanted media attention for tasteless remarks about another player’s girlfriend. After less than one season with the team, the Stars were so eager to be rid of Avery they took the cap hit so the Rangers could bring him back to New York.

Avery’s second go-round with the Rangers was less noisy than his first – he even found public approval with by supporting gay marriage in a public-service ad – but he was never more than a fringe player. His best NHL season was 2006-07, split between the Los Angles Kings and the Rangers, when he compiled a modest 48 points.

But Avery’s value was never about points. Although challenged many, many times, the native of Pickering, Ont., was not much of a fighter. But he was a skilled agitator, a player adept at getting under the skins of opposing players, driving them to distraction with his prickly play and active chatter.

An inability to govern what came out of that active mouth kept Avery at the heart of one controversy after another. The end came for him with the Stars when he made vulgar, sexually charged remarks about Dion Phaneuf’s girlfriend, whom he once dated. Ten days ago, Avery accused Philadelphia Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds of directing a homophobic slur at him, although the league was unable to substantiate the charge.

Given the size of his salary and the headaches that come with him, it is unlikely any NHL team will claim Avery from the waiver wire.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman tackling realignment, CBA, Coyotes ownership

The Canadian Press, 2011-10-04

Gary Bettman's leadership skills are about to be put to the test.

With the NHL in discussions about realignment—a process the commissioner describes as being "among the most difficult and potentially contentious issues" a sports league can face—Bettman knows it likely won't be possible to keep everybody happy.

"You do the best you can," he said in a wide-ranging interview with The Canadian Press. "There are probably four or five clubs that would like to see something different in alignment. All of those clubs have had a chance to address their concerns and make their position clear to the rest of the board—we did that at the meeting (on Sept. 20). It's a process that's ongoing.

"But alignment isn't just geographic groupings—it's how many clubs play each other, how you qualify for the playoffs, how the playoffs play out—that's among the most difficult and potentially contentious issues any sports league can deal with. We started that process and we're going to work our way through it."

Bettman wants a final decision to be made at the board of governors meeting in December. A new league setup requires the support of two-thirds of owners and would be put in place for the 2012-13 season.

It's been more than a decade since the NHL last changed its alignment, but the relocation of the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg necessitated a shakeup. The Jets will spend this season in the Eastern Conference before moving West next year and a number of teams are eager to be shuffled around with them.

Various proposals have been discussed—ranging from a minor tweak that would see Winnipeg switch places with a Western team to a major shakeup that would see the league rearranged into four new conferences.

One governor who attended last month's board meeting said Bettman did a good job of listening to the wishes of each individual team, particularly the five that most want to be moved out of their current division (Detroit, Columbus, Nashville, Minnesota and Dallas). The goal now is to try and satisfy the various desires that were expressed.

"We have a sense of where all the clubs (are at)," said Bettman. "Looking for a consensus within what the clubs told us, we'll try to develop a framework that we think will get us to the right place."

Once the realignment issue is settled, the commissioner will enter into an even more important set of negotiations.

The collective bargaining agreement is set to expire Sept. 15, 2012, and Bettman expects to start discussions with NHL Players' Association executive director Donald Fehr shortly after the all-star break at the end of January. While the NHL says it is prepared to begin negotiations at any time, Bettman notes that his counterpart has a "steep learning curve to get through" after taking the job less than a year ago.

"Donald has made clear to me that he still has some homework to do and preparation to do," said Bettman. "He didn't think he would be in a position to start substantive discussions or negotiations until at least all-star (time). We have a year to go, they're not ready to talk and so as far as I'm concerned for the world this is a back burner issue.

"Let's focus on playing hockey."

Another issue sure to take some attention away from the ice in the coming months is the ongoing uncertainty with the Phoenix Coyotes.

The NHL has been operating the money-losing franchise for two seasons while searching for a new owner. Bettman feels progress has been made on that front recently and made it clear a sale needs to happen soon.

"We're running it as long as we think is necessary and appropriate," he said. "I hope to be out of that business certainly before the end of this season."

Among the other topics Bettman touched on:

—On fighting in the wake of three enforcers dying over the summer: "It's something that always gets discussed. I think those who have historically been against fighting try to paint these individuals' different situations with a broad brush. And I'm not sure that that's a valid assumption."

—On whether anything will be done to try to prevent similar tragedies in the future: "We've actually had a meeting (with the NHLPA) to discuss it. I know the Players' Association is looking to get some feedback from its initial club visits at the start of the season—getting feedback from the players before focusing on what additional steps might be taken."

—On the new concussion protocol, which requires players with a possible head injury to be tested in a quiet area before returning to play: "We intend to enforce the protocol. I'm not using this as a forum to be threatening clubs, but everybody knows what's expected and we expect rules to be complied with."

Bettman's image in Canada seems to have improved in the wake of the Thrashers sale to True North Sports and Entertainment at the end of May. In allowing that to happen, he started making good on a promise to try to return the NHL to cities that have lost a team.

He is currently in his 19th year as commissioner—a job that gets busier with each passing season. As a result, there isn't any one particular area he feels warrants his attention.

"When you are involved in the day-to-day administration of a sports league, there are tens of thousands of things that go on in the course of a season that people never know about and shouldn't know about," said Bettman. "When the game is out there and people are enjoying our 1,230 regular-season games, they don't just happen (on their own)."

Team owners clearly recognize that. Bettman was reportedly paid in excess of US$7.5 million last season.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Rock royalty at the rink

Matthew Sekeres, Globe and Mail, October 4, 2011

His father is a rock star from Scotland. His mother is a supermodel from New Zealand. And his siblings were once part of the young, hot, party crowd in Hollywood.

But if you’re looking for Liam Stewart, son of Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter, you won’t find him at the latest L.A. night spot, nor will you find him at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum Wednesday.

He’ll be back in Spokane, Washington, nursing an injury, and will miss the Chiefs’ only road game against the Vancouver Giants this season.

The 17-year-old from Hermosa Beach, Calif., is a first-year forward with the Western Hockey League club, and has played two games this year. Born in London, he has also been cleared to play for Great Britain in international competition, which means you won’t be seeing him at any Olympic Games or world championships unless there is a huge improvement in “ice hockey” across the pond.

But if you ever see him in the NHL (he is draft eligible next year), then commissioner Gary Bettman and his minions should jump for joy. Liam’s connections to celebrity would have to run deeper than any hockey player before him, and if you can’t market the son of a rock star and supermodel, than there is just no hope for your marketing.

Here’s a look at the family, not exactly a crowd you’ll see on Saturday morning at the local Tim’s:

Father Rod has moved from rock, to pop, to songbooks, taking his legions of fans with him. He dates (and marries) tall, gorgeous blondes, and his celebrity status is strong on both sides of the Atlantic, even at age 66.

Mother Rachel is a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition cover girl who was once engaged to L.A. Kings centre Jarrett Stoll, but they broke it off before walking down the aisle. She has starred in a series of reality shows on both sides of the Atlantic. And, of course, there is the Stacy’s Mom video found here.

Half-sister Kimberly once dated Jack Osbourne, son of Ozzy, and more recently gave birth to the daughter of Oscar winner Benicio del Toro. Delilah, born in August, is Rod’s first grandchild.

Half-brother Sean is one of those tragic Hollywood stories: drinking and drugging in his young teens; appearing on celebrity rehab shows in his late-20s.

Stepmother Penny Lancaster-Stewart is a former lingerie model.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Donald Fehr brings order to NHLPA

JEFF BLAIR, Globe and Mail, Oct. 04, 2011

Donald Fehr doesn’t do leaks. In what he now refers to as his “previous life,” the head of the National Hockey League Players’ Association showed he wasn’t much interested in grand pronouncements or taking credit.

So the approach the hockey world saw last summer as the NHL tried to make public and private sense of the loss of Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak – in addition to waiting for some clarification of Sidney Crosby’s status – is what it can expect to see from Fehr when negotiations begin on a new collective agreement.

“I would remind everybody that a few years ago, the association proposed a rule that they wanted to eliminate head shots altogether,” Fehr said Tuesday, 48 hours away from the start of the NHL regular season. “And I have been talking with players and they with me ever since I’ve been here, about the problems with concussions and all the things that go with it.

“Most of my conversations and comment is with the people I work for, not with others,” Fehr continued. “There is a growing awareness of the issue.”

He paused.

“Maybe that’s the issue: I don’t think it’s part of my role, most of the time, to hold press conferences.”

Fehr spoke from Finland, as the NHL continues its European tour. He was sitting in an office at the home arena of Jokerit Helsinki, staring at the team’s schedule written in Finnish and trying to figure out which were the home and away games. “It’s the visual counterpart of when you say something to someone and they don’t understand English,” Fehr said, chuckling. “There’s a natural tendency to slow down and speak louder, as if that will help.”

Fehr’s real cultural test has been to take his skills and reputation as the head of professional sports most powerful and successful union, the Major League Baseball Players Association, and attempt to install reason and cohesion to the mess that was the NHLPA under his predecessor, Paul Kelly, whose currency with the hockey establishment outweighed what seasoned labour observers saw as limited negotiating abilities.

The NHL, frankly, has a lot riding on Fehr. An engaged and informed players’ association is a must at a time of pressing big-picture and economic issues. To that end, Jonathan Toews of the Chicago Blackhawks spoke last month of the association “running almost like a company now,” while Martin St. Louis of the Tampa Bay Lightning spoke about Fehr having a “calming and soothing effect.”

Added the New Jersey Devils’ Zach Parise: “You always heard before about how the players were in the dark and things would just sort of happen. We’re a lot more informed about basic things like day-to-day operations, and plans, at least I know I am.”

Fehr was not a flag-waver when he ran the MLBPA, but he said the NHLPA needs to have the sanctity of the collective agreement driven home as part of its preparation for negotiations. “If you want to change it [the collective agreement], you have to go and bargain something different,” Fehr said. “There’s no law. Law covers taxes you pay the government, it doesn’t cover salary caps or training equipment.”

An unexplored aspect of Brendan Shanahan’s video-clad iron fist in his new role as league disciplinarian is whether it might devolve into an “us-against-them” wedge issue in labour negotiations, which Fehr expects will begin after the all-star break. Fehr said the NHLPA has been involved in the disciplinary process from the beginning, but he also wants to see the degree of consistency of the video explanations, whether they are “helpful in a fashion that helps players understand what the interpretations are going to be.”

When Fehr talks about learning as a result of last summer’s turmoil, that there’s “one degree of separation among hockey people, not six degrees,” it’s clear he’s read his membership well. In the meantime, know this: When the sabres start to rattle, it won’t be the NHLPA reaching into the scabbard first.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Apple co-founder and Silicon Valley pioneer Steve Jobs dies at 56

Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News, October 5, 2011

Steve Jobs, who sparked a revolution in the technology industry and then presided over it as Silicon Valley's radiant Sun King, died Wednesday. The incandescent center of a tech universe around which all the other planets revolved, Jobs had a genius for stylish design and a boyish sense of what was "cool." He was 56 when he died, ahead of his time to the very end.

According to a spokesman for Apple Inc. – the company Jobs co-founded when he was just 21, and turned into one of the world's great industrial design houses – he suffered from a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer for which he had undergone surgery in 2004. Jobs had taken his third leave of absence from the company in January of this year, and made the final capitulation to his failing health on Aug. 24, when he resigned as Apple's CEO. After 35 years as the soul of Silicon Valley's new machine, that may have been a fate worse than death.

Jobs died only a few miles from the family garage in Los Altos, Calif., where he and fellow college dropout Steve Wozniak assembled the first Apple computer in 1976. Jobs transformed the computer from an intimidating piece of business machinery – its blinking lights often caged behind a glass wall _ to a device people considered "personal," and then indispensable.

Jobs was the undisputed "i" behind the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and there was very little about his personality that was lower-case. According to Fortune magazine he was considered "one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs," but Jobs also cultivated a loyal coterie of ergomaniacs – ergonomic designers who created the sleek stable of iHits – whose devotion to him was the centrifugal force holding Apple together. Shares of the company's stock plunged 22 points after Jobs announced his final medical leave on Jan. 17.

"A hundred years from now, when people talk about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Gates is going to be remembered for his philanthropy, not technology," said tech forecaster Paul Saffo, "the same way people remember Andrew Carnegie for the money he gave to education, not the fortune he made in steel. But what they're going to say about Steve Jobs is that he led a revolution."

It was a war waged on three fronts – computers, music and movies – and with each successive Apple triumph, Jobs altered the landscape of popular culture. With its user-friendly interface and anthropomorphic mouse, the Macintosh forever changed the relationship between humans and computers. After acquiring Pixar Animation Studios in 1986, Jobs became the most successful movie mogul of the past half-century, turning out 11 monster hits in succession. The 2001 smash "Monsters, Inc." could just as easily have been the name of the company.

But it was with the iPod – originally released just six weeks after the cataclysmic events of Sept. 11, 2001 – that Jobs engineered another tectonic shift in the digital world. The transistor radio had untethered music from the home, and Sony's Walkman had made recorded music portable. With one of the world's premier consumer electronics businesses, and a music label of its own, Sony was poised to dominate digital distribution for decades.

But it didn't happen. Jobs took a digital compression format that had been around for a decade, synced it to Apple's new digital download service, iTunes, and with the iPod changed a system for delivering music to consumers that had been in place since Edison invented the phonograph.

It was Jobs' genius for simplicity that led to a pricing standard of 99 cents per song that remained unchanged for eight years, despite initial resistance from the music studios. And it was his irresistibility as a pitchman that brought the record labels so completely into line that iTunes now is the dominant player in the digital music business.

A man of sometimes confounding contradictions, Jobs once traveled to India and shaved his head seeking spiritual enlightenment. But he also brought a fierce urgency to his business dealings, often screaming at subordinates and belittling foes. Feared and revered, Jobs commanded the respect of his competitors, loyalty from the engineers he goaded relentlessly, and loathing from almost everyone.

"It's not easy to like Steve close up _ he does not suffer fools gladly," said Bob Metcalfe, founder of the networking giant 3Com and an old friend of Jobs. "But I like him very much. His energy, and standards, and powers of persuasion are amazing. He is the epitome of a change agent."

Whether by accident or design, Jobs created such an intense aura of mystery about what he was on to _ and up to _ that he developed a cult of personality, sometimes called "Macolytes." His appearances at the annual MacWorld Expo were often an occasion for the rollout of some new product that Jobs – with a rock star's sense of theatricality – had managed, until that very moment, to keep top secret. To his loyal fans, it seemed to matter little that Apple's new device inevitably cost far more than its competitors'.

And while his personal fortune – often the measure of success among the tech elite – was dwarfed by peers such as Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp. and Bill Gates of Microsoft Corp., Jobs' matchless record of innovation over three decades made him the coolest computer nerd in the valley.

"He reinvented the paradigm of what computing is three times with the Apple II, the Macintosh and the iPhone," said Mike Daisey, who built a theatrical performance, titled "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," around a life notable for its highs and lows. "And to be clear, the rest of the tech industry reinvented the paradigm zero times."

Jobs insisted the products Apple brought to market not merely be great, they must be "insanely great." It was his focus on design that allowed Apple to maintain a hold on the imagination of the public that often was disproportionate to the company's market share.

Apple's product lines were a projection of his sense of style, transforming the boring, putty-colored boxes of computers sold by competitors like Dell Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. into a compote of fruit and berry-flavored iMacs. Yet Jobs himself rarely deviated from a single, Mao-like uniform of blue jeans, black turtleneck and sneakers, turning that into a kind of meta-fashion statement: Think different. Dress the same.

His first brush with pancreatic cancer did nothing to slow Jobs down during the final years of his life. If anything, he seemed more driven than ever. Speaking to the Stanford University graduating class of 2005, a year after surgery to treat his illness, Jobs said, "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

In a curious way, Jobs started his own life by living someone else's. He was given up for adoption by his biological parents – Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian-born graduate student – shortly after his birth in San Francisco. His parents eventually married and had a daughter, but it was not until Jobs and his long-lost biological sister were both grown that he discovered she was the best-selling novelist, Mona Simpson.

Even growing up in the profoundly non-conformist '60s, Steven Paul Jobs always seemed different than his peers. His adoptive parents – Paul and Clara Jobs, a machinist and an accountant in middle-class Mountain View – took every utterance of their restless son seriously. When Steve declared he wasn't learning anything at his junior high school, and told them he refused to return the following year, the family abruptly moved to Los Altos so he could attend Homestead High.

It was there that he telephoned William Hewlett, president of the electronics manufacturing giant Hewlett-Packard Co., and asked him to donate parts for one of Steve's engineering projects at school. Hewlett was so impressed that he offered the teenager a summer job.

If Jobs already had a sense of his own manifest destiny, he didn't reveal it. After a single semester at Reed College in Portland, he dropped out of school, then spent the following year learning the I Ching _ a Chinese system of symbols used to find order in chance events _ while dropping acid and dropping in on Reed's philosophy classes.

He took a job with the computer game maker Atari in 1974, but stuck around just long enough to save money for a pilgrimage to India. After tramping around in traditional Indian garb and a backpack _ his shaved head and spectacles giving him a vaguely Gandhi-like appearance _ Jobs returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, spiritually uplifted and flat broke.

He stumbled upon Wozniak in 1975, presiding over a geekfest called the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, Calif., and convinced the brilliant Woz to start a company with him. Jobs would remain the man behind the curtain, creating Apple's razzle-dazzle, but unlike the Wizard of Oz, Jobs welcomed attention.

"Every time I designed something great . . . he would say, 'Let's sell it,' " Wozniak recalled once at an Intel Corp. conference. "It was always his idea to sell it."

Jobs decided to name the startup Apple, after the Beatles' record company. From the outset, he made no secret of his appetite, conspicuously taking a bite out of the Apple logo. He and Wozniak trumped Microsoft's early operating system by adding a mouse and a pioneering graphical user interface that allowed users to stop typing commands in bewildering DOS code. It took Microsoft until 1985 to counter with its clunkier Windows operating system.

But in one of his rare miscalculations, Jobs refused to license Apple's interface to other computer makers, and it quickly became a Microsoft world. As a business, Apple computers were a boom and bust operation. The sophistication – even artistry – of the engineering created a fanatical following for the company's products, but the Apple faithful remained a small, if vocal, minority.

Jobs needed a businessman who could turn his ideas into gold, and found him in Pepsi CEO John Sculley. When Sculley wavered, Jobs reeled him in with his most famous seduction line: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water to children," he asked Sculley, "or do you want a chance to change the world?"

But it was Sculley who rocked Jobs' world, outmaneuvering him in Apple's boardroom, and forcing him out of the company in 1985. "What can I say?" Jobs admitted later. "I hired the wrong guy. He destroyed everything I spent 10 years working for. Starting with me."

With the fortune he made on the sale of his Apple stock, Jobs immediately started another computer company. But NeXT – which started as a manufacturer of overpriced workstations, and ended as a designer of overpriced operating systems – represented for Jobs a decade of wandering through the wilderness.

He didn't make the journey alone, marrying Laurene Powell in a Zen Buddhist ceremony in 1991. The couple had three children – Eve, Erin and Reed – and Jobs had a fourth child from a previous relationship with Chris-Ann Brennan. Lisa Brennan-Jobs, now 33, was born around the same time as Apple's third-generation computer, which was marketed as the Lisa.

By 1995, NeXT still had not acquired the type of industry buzz that Jobs was accustomed to creating. The workstations had a sheen of technological sophistication, but were so expensive to produce that few companies could afford to buy them.

Apple, meanwhile, was faring even worse. Its share of the personal computer market had dwindled so alarmingly that the company was even considering a switch to Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. Inside Apple, that was viewed as such a full blown retreat that when NeXT's operating system was offered as an alternative to Apple CEO Gilbert Amelio, he grabbed it. Apple paid $429 million for NeXT, but taking Jobs back as an adviser turned out to be far costlier to Amelio than the price tag.

Jobs derided the CEO behind his back as a "bozo," helping to set the stage for Amelio's ouster a few months later. Insisting he had nothing to do with Amelio's firing, even as he was installed as the company's "interim" CEO, Jobs hand-picked a board of directors loyal to him, then set about returning Apple to profitability.

Apple was still teetering on the brink of extinction in 1997, with just a tiny fraction of the PC business, when Michael Dell, Jobs' PC doppelganger at Dell Computers, sneered that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."

Never one to back away from a fight, or to forget a slight, on the day that his company's market capitalization surpassed Dell's in January of 2006, Jobs sent a congratulatory memo to Apple employees _ though by that time, nine years later, he may have been the only one still keeping score. "It turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future," Jobs gloated. "Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell."

Jobs' resurrection at Apple remains one of the most dramatic turnarounds in the annals of American business. Until his rebound was cut short by cancer, it stood as a near-perfect rejoinder to the F. Scott Fitzgerald aphorism, "There are no second acts in American lives." As a young man, Jobs merely helped lead the world into the computer age. In the final years of his life, he turned Apple into a kind of beloved nation-state: a company whose reputation for innovation gives it a reach far exceeding any worth calculable on a balance sheet.

"Steve Jobs has a way of making people believe," 3Com's Metcalfe told the San Jose Mercury News in 1997. "It's called the reality distortion field. Whenever you get near him, no matter how mean he might be, there's this field that distorts reality. You are made to feel that if you disagree, you are a jerk."

The iPhone was an example of the kind of upside down world Jobs could create with his distortion field. Long lines formed outside Apple stores before the first iPhones went on sale in 2007, and the device received endless _ mostly rhapsodic _ coverage in the press. Yet even after the fourth-generation iPhone was released in 2010, Apple's share of the U.S. cell phone business stood at 22 per cent, behind Android and RIM's BlackBerry.

Even Apple stores, which were originally created to provide showplaces for the company's product line, turned into tech temples, and became so popular they generated the most profit per square foot of any retail outlet in the country.

Though computers remain Apple's most profitable product line, Jobs sought to lead the company away from what had become, increasingly, a commodity business. He made the transition from computer niche player to consumer electronics giant official in 2007, dropping the word "Computer" from what is now simply Apple Inc.

For a decade, Jobs was the only CEO of two major American corporations, running Apple (as the iPods got smaller and smaller), and Pixar (as the box office hits got bigger and bigger). With comparatively little fanfare, Jobs annexed this second fiefdom when "Star Wars" filmmaker George Lucas decided to cast off his digital animation division. Jobs scooped it up cheap in 1986, and within two years, Pixar had won its first Oscar for the animated short film "Tin Toy," director John Lasseter's five-minute forerunner to "Toy Story."

"Toy Story," the first fully computer-animated feature, followed in 1995, and it marked the beginning of a box office run so successful that Jobs was able to sell the company to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion in stock. That transaction made him the largest single shareholder in the world's dominant media conglomerate.

At his death, Steve Jobs sat at the summit of an information and entertainment empire, through which he controlled a large part of the culture's digital means of production _ and with the iPhone and iPad, its reproduction. He tamed Leopard; befriended Mickey Mouse; kept music and movies, and even Pluto, all spinning in their separate orbits, so they intersected, but rarely collided.

Jobs did all that through the force of his personality, which was sometimes maddeningly abrasive, and the perfection of his vision, which often seemed limitless. But now, suddenly, the bright star at the center of Silicon Valley's universe has gone out.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Enforcer cut his teeth in a boxing ring: Letourneau-Leblond was discovered playing Midget double-B hockey

Vicki Hall, Calgary Herald October 6, 2011

As a matter of habit, Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond calls home to Quebec after every game — even if his team is playing on the west coast.

As a National Hockey League enforcer, the man known as PL3 (a shortened form of the longest name on the circuit) classifies timely updates on his personal well-being as mandatory.

Such is the life of an on-ice police officer in the pros.

“My mom doesn’t even watch,” says Letourneau-Leblond, the newest toughie for the Calgary Flames. “She hates it. So does my dad. I think they understand, the job, but they never watch. I can’t blame them.”

After the deaths of three NHL enforcers this summer (Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak), Letourneau-Leblond dealt with a steady stream of questions from concerned friends and family.

Boogaard died of a prescription drug overdose. Rypien’s body was found in his home in the Crowsnest Pass. The former Vancouver Canucks enforcer was known to suffer from depression.

Then Belak, a former Flame, killed himself in a downtown Toronto condominium. He also experienced depression.

“I don’t think (fighting) has anything to do with happened,” Letourneau-Leblond said softly. “Until they prove it, I’m going to keep doing what they ask me to do.”

Letourneau-Leblond is a pugilist by trade. At 15, the Levis, Que. native strapped on his headgear and took up Olympic boxing.His record shows four fights and three victories — including two over the Canadian junior heavyweight champion at the time.In the crowd for one of those bouts just happened to be a scout from the Baie-Comeau Drakkar, of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Sensing something special, the scout attended one of the boxer’s hockey games.

“I always played for fun with my friends,” Letourneau-Leblond said. “I was playing midget double-B. That’s pretty low. You have triple-A, double- A and double-B. “I guess that guy was really good at what he did.”

Through that “guy”, Letourneau-Leblond earned his first invitation to a major junior camp at age 18. As expected, he suffered through an awkward apprenticeship on the job.

Exchanging punches on skates is something entirely different from fighting in the ring.“My first fight I fell, and I cut my thumb,” he said. “I needed eight stitches.

“My first games were tough. Really tough. I got in some hard fights. My first eight fights, I didn’t look good at all. But my coach, he kept sending me out there. He trusted me.

“I guess I got better at it.”

He got so much better at it the New Jersey Devils selected him in the seventh round (216th overall) of the 2004 NHL Entry Draft.

From there, his journey took him from the United Hockey League, to the East Coast Hockey League to the American Hockey League, the National Hockey League and back again.

The Flames acquired the bodyguard this summer for a fifth-round draft pick.

“He’s responsible,” said Flames head coach Brent Sutter, who also worked with Letourneau-Leblond in New Jersey. “He’s obviously got toughness in his game.“I just like the way he forechecks . . . he’s very team-oriented.”

Letourneau-Leblond hit the headlines in the pre-season as one of the first offenders punished under the new NHL justice regime. Disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan suspended him for all but one exhibition game and the regular-season opener.His crime? A hit from behind on Vancouver’s Matt Clackson.On a one-way ($550,000) contract, Letourneau-Leblond is expected to stick with the Flames after his suspension is served.

As an enforcer, he realizes his role could eventually be phased right out of the game all together.

“I’m happy,” he said. “I’ve got a good family. I’ve got good friends . . . As long as I like what I’m doing, I’m going to keep doing it. I have another things on the side, too.

“I have big plans for the future. I think it’s important that guys realize once the hockey career is over, there’s got to be something else.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Red Wings coach a Mac man

By BRUCE GARRIOCH, QMI Agency, Oct 7 2011

DETROIT – When asked about facing his good friend Paul MacLean, Red Wings coach Mike Babcock smiled.

“Did he tell you that (we’re friends)?” Babcock asked.

All kidding aside, the Red Wings boss was singing the praises of his former assistant, who will make his head-coaching debut Friday night at Joe Louis Arena.

For nine years, Babcock and MacLean worked together — first in Anaheim, then in Detroit. They built up a friendship based on mutual respect and that’s why Babcock believes MacLean was a can’t-miss choice.

“He went to three Stanley Cup finals with me and we won a ton of games here,” said Babcock. “He knows what winning is all about. He knows what expectations are. He knows how to handle a bench.

“He’s been the minor-league coach of the year in the St. Louis organization. One of the reasons I hired him in Anaheim is he was willing, as a former NHL player, to go to Quad Cities (UHL) and win a championship. No NHL player is going there.

“That just meant the guy wanted to coach. He’s going to do a really good job. He’s going to have a good relationship with (GM) Bryan Murray and I think that’s imperative as a coach. Your relationship with your general manager is so important. They’re a team in need of change. They want to get younger and better. He’s the right guy for the job. I’m going to wish him luck every night, except when he plays us.”

Babcock said one of MacLean’s strengths is communication with the players.

“I think with his pedigree as a player, scoring as many goals as he did, and the work ethic he developed as a coach, I think he’s set up for success,” said Babcock.

“The line I always like that Mac had was, ‘No one ever made me do it.’ He was talking about backchecking and the defensive side of the game and he really believes the coach’s job is to make them do it. I really believe the same thing.

“He’s going to be good. With the relationship he has with Bryan Murray, he’s going to have the backing of the GM. When you have the backing of the GM, your communication skills get better.”

Babcock spoke with Murray — who gave the Wings bench boss his first head coaching job in Anaheim — in the spring and gave MacLean a ringing endorsement.

“When a guy calls you and you have a relationship with him, you don’t just promote your own guy — you tell him the truth. And I told him what I knew about Mac and the job he had done for me. In the end, it was a decision (Murray) had to make. In the end, they’ve chosen a real good man, a real loyal man and I think he’s going to do a real good job for them.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

DREGER: IDENTIFYING COACHES WHO START SEASON UNDER PRESSURE

DARREN DREGER, TSN.CA, Oct 7 2011

It's called the "Hot Seat" and every coach understands its definition, although some jokingly refer to it as the "hit list". Plain and simply, the NHL coaches we are identifying are those under the most pressure entering the season. Some are more vulnerable than others. Toronto's Ron Wilson enters the regular season in the final year of his contract.

There has been no offer of an extension and no plan to negotiate until management gets a solid read on the direction of the Leafs. A bad start could spell the end of Wilson's four-year run in Toronto. Washington's Bruce Boudreau survived off-season speculation of his demise after another disappointing playoffs performance by the Caps. But, an early or mid-season slump could be enough to finally get Boudreau bounced. Calgary's Brent Sutter, Colorado's Joe Sacco and St Louis Blues coach Davis Payne are facing medium heat in their organizations. Following two seasons of non-playoff hockey, fans are restless in Calgary. The Flames should be better. If they're not, Sutter could be replaced.

Colorado is still very young, but capable of being competitive. If the Avs fail to meet that standard, Sacco will likely pay the price. And there's a complicating factor in Denver: GM Greg Sherman traded away the team's 2012 No. 1 draft pick to Washington for Semyon Varlamov; the worse the Avs do this year the higher the draft pick for the Caps. Payne's Blues should hold their own in a tough Western Conference, but with ownership uncertainty, St. Louis needs to be strong or Payne could be an easy mark if things go south early.

Meanwhile, three coaches facing back burner heat are Philadelphia's Peter Laviolette, Vancouver's Alain Vigneault and Montreal's Jacques Martin. The Flyers made drastic changes and spent a ton of money on Ilya Bryzgalov, so if the direction of this team stalls, or takes a turn for the worse, fingers will be pointed. Losing Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Championship to Boston only increased Vancouver's thirst to be first. And Martin is entering his third season in the pressure-packed Montreal hockey environment.

It's highly unlikely Vigneault or Martin would face the music during the regular season, but an early post-season exit might prompt change. This list of coaches on the hot seat may be too long, or too short, but when the regular season opens, the clock starts ticking.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Tom Thompson: Should the NHL season start earlier?

Tom Thompson, The Hockey News, 2011-10-07

Change is the one constant in professional sports – from the product on the field to the scheduling of the games themselves and everything in between. In the past, who would have predicted Super Bowls in February, World Series games in November or Stanley Cup finals in mid-June? Sports fans appear to be happy with this timing, as interest in all of the championship finals is at an all-time high.

Each sport is now re-examining its approach to the start of the season. Traditionally, baseball, football and hockey have held lengthy training camps with numerous pre-season games, but in recent years, each sport has questioned this approach. Athletes condition their bodies year-round and report to training camps in close-to-peak form. A lengthy training camp conditioning regime may not be necessary any longer. Each league must now consider the wisdom of moving more quickly into the regular season, especially because pre-season games don’t generate the same revenue as regular season games. This presents hockey with some interesting challenges.

NHL training camps currently open about one week later than they used to. However, a good deal of informed opinion within the NHL claims the league should follow the NBA’s route and opt for a later start to the regular season. Why compete with the baseball playoffs throughout the month of October? With no need for extended training camps anymore, this school of thought could lead to even later camp openings.

But there are other hockey people who are now expressing a contrary point of view. They argue the start of the regular season should be even earlier than it is now. Give each club a few days of training camp and a limited number of pre-season games and they will be ready for regular season action. They claim hockey should actually be an easier sell to the public in early autumn than in June.

Proponents of an earlier start concede the fact competition in autumn comes from both baseball and football. In June, the baseball season is still in its first half and the only other competition comes from the NBA playoffs. However, if the Stanley Cup final took place in May, the competition from baseball would be less and the basketball playoffs would be in an earlier stage. Hockey would have an easier time dominating the media limelight during the time its most important games are being played.

Recent talk about expanding the playoffs makes it even more crucial to consider starting the regular season earlier. Given the outstanding entertainment level of last season's playoffs, who can blame the NHL for wanting to increase the number of post-season games?

Several other factors will encourage an earlier start to the season. The NHL has shown a commendable concern in recent years for various types of injuries. Common sense would dictate that if players are tired, they are more vulnerable to injury. Expanding the number of days available to complete the regular season would reduce the fatigue burden on players.

Another consideration can be referred to as the "European factor." The NHL, quite understandably, has been attempting to enhance its global presence in the game. More and more teams are venturing to Europe to play pre-season and regular season games. This is a trend that is sure to continue and likely to expand. The travel required is substantial, so more days for the regular season would reduce this burden as well.

The argument about the start of the regular season isn’t totally one-sided. The competition for the entertainment dollar in autumn is fierce. NHL crowds in October are typically the lowest of the season. In many parts of the United States, there is considerable competition from college and even high school football until well into November. Comparable competition simply doesn’t exist in May or June.

The NHL is a business trying to survive and prosper in difficult financial times. Strategy must make sense on a business basis. The format for scheduling is an integral part of this process.

Tom Thompson worked as head scout for the Minnesota Wild from 1999-2001 and was promoted to assistant GM in 2002, a post he held until 2010. He has also worked as a scout for the Calgary Flames, where he earned a Stanley Cup ring in 1989. He currently works as a scout for the New York Rangers. He will be writing his Insider Column regularly for THN.com throughout this season.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Winnipeg Jets looking to move away from the past and form new identity

The Canadian Press, 2011-10-08

WINNIPEG – There's a good reason Manitoba Moose banners still hang above the ice at MTS Centre.

In the eyes of the man who convinced the NHL to come back to Winnipeg, the Jets team that takes the ice for Sunday's highly anticipated opener is more of an extension of the American Hockey League franchise than the original Winnipeg Jets.

"When we acquired this team, we had 125 people working for (the Moose)," co-owner Mark Chipman said Saturday. "It's now up to about 175, but those 125 people had a very deep sense of pride in what we had done for the 15 years prior. So, to us, this is the same organization with a different name.

"It's not like we're trying to distance ourselves from the past—we're just trying to forge ahead as the reincarnation or the next step of what we've been doing."

While it's tempting to refer to Sunday afternoon's Jets-Montreal Canadiens game as the rebirth of a NHL franchise, it's not being treated like that within the organization.

Beloved former Jets players Dale Hawerchuk, Thomas Steen and Keith Tkachuk will be in attendance, but they won't be formally recognized as part of a special ceremony. On the ice, Evander Kane will be wearing No. 9 and Brett MacLean will be in No. 25—the only two numbers officially retired by the former Winnipeg Jets, for Bobby Hull and Steen, respectively.

MacLean was claimed off waivers earlier this week and didn't put much thought into his selection.

"I wore it when I was younger," he said. "To be honest, there wasn't too many options and I was so shocked (about being claimed on waivers) that I just picked it. Then I kind of remembered the history of it."

In many ways, the second version of the Jets is starting fresh this season.

The players have pretty much run out of adjectives to describe what it will be like to play in Winnipeg after being asked about it on a daily basis since the sale and relocation of the Atlanta Thrashers was announced May 31. To a man, they were impressed by the small taste of it they got during pre-season.

Even coach Claude Noel, a hockey lifer, was caught off-guard by the emotion during the national anthem prior to the first exhibition game.

"It's almost like 15 years of vented emotion—I don't know if it's anger or whatever—(was released)," he said. "As soon as the anthem started, everybody sang. It just gave you goosebumps, like everybody was singing. It almost brought tears to your eyes. It was beautiful.

"I can't imagine what it's going to be like out there (on Sunday)."

His 80-year-old mother Alice and two sisters will be among the crowd of 15,004 in the stands. The coach plans to do everything he can to soak in the atmosphere.

"I won't be sitting missing any moments," said Noel. "I'm walking out there for the warmup and I'll be walking out there for the start of the game and I will smell the coffee, I will smell the roses, there's no doubt.

"Life's too short, I learned that a long time ago."

There might not be a tougher ticket to get your hands on anywhere in the NHL this year.

After practising at MTS Centre on Saturday morning, some players were still making last minute plans on behalf of family and friends. Forward Kyle Wellwood even went to the trouble of ordering some protective gear so his six-month-old son Roman can witness the historical afternoon in person.

"We got headphones," said Wellwood. "We had to have them shipped. We had them on this morning and I was yelling at him, and he couldn't hear, but he was laughing."

This moment has been a long time in the making for Chipman.

He was a central part of the group that made a last-ditch effort to try to save the original Jets in 1996 and later oversaw the building of the MTS Centre and the successful Moose franchise. While he always believed Winnipeg could support another NHL team if given the chance, he's been shocked by the level of enthusiasm in the community over the past four months.

"Honestly I couldn't have imagined the depth of the response," said Chipman. "I couldn't have. I mean it's just extraordinary and it's hard to get used to. It's hard for me personally. People stop you in the street, you can't pump your gas. You can't, and it's great.

"But it's awkward sometimes too because I'm not used to it. I'm happy that people are really excited but I never would have known that people would be this excited."

While many will wear the retro sweaters of the original Jets, more and more people are donning the new logo and colours. The team store continued todo brisk business on Saturday morning, with lines stretching out the door and shelves needing to be repeatedly restocked.

Starting with Sunday's game, the Jets players hope to show fans that this is a new team with an identity that should be separated from the previous NHL squad that called the city home.

"Obviously, there's some history here with the Jets before and obviously we're the Jets again," said defenceman Randy Jones. "But we have a different logo and it is a different organization, it's a different setup. We do want to go out and build our own identity.

"It's been 15 years. A lot can change in 15 years."

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

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