Articles

[hockeygod]

Road trips a whole different game for NHL rookie:
Nugent-Hopkins has to dress the part, but he also gets a healthy per diem, travels by planes and stays in nice hotels

Jim Matheson, edmontonjournal.com November 1, 2011

Apart from the fact that teenager Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has to look the part of an NHLer when he goes on the road now, there’s the matter of pocket money.

“I got $80 every two weeks when I played in Red Deer. I think per diem in the NHL is $98 a day. I don’t think I’ve touched much of that yet,” said the 18-year-old Edmonton Oilers centre.

Nugent-Hopkins gets more money for dinner and cabs in the National Hockey League than he got paid to play with the junior Rebels as one of the Western Hockey League’s marquee draws, and the buses go from the hotel to the rink, not down the highway to Prince Albert, Sask., or Cranbrook, B.C., in the dead of winter.

“The bus in Red Deer was a nice-looking bus, but it’s sometimes eight hours on the road and you have to play the next day,” said Nugent-Hopkins, who will be heading out on his first extended NHL road trip on Wednesday.

The Oilers will play in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Montreal, Boston, Detroit and Chicago.

“A plane is still, uh, better than a bus,” he said.

Also, nobody’s yelling at him to do his homework.

“Exactly,” said Nugent-Hopkins, whose education is now on the ice, not the classroom.

“It’s going to be interesting for me to see different buildings.”

The Oilers have had only three road games at St. Paul, Minn., Calgary and Denver. Nugent-Hopkins was drafted first overall at St. Paul, so he’s been there, done that. Calgary? He’s played there lots in junior. No big deal. He was in Denver for about 20 hours. There was no time for sight-seeing; barely enough time to see the retired jerseys of Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg in the rafters.

He did get to see Steve Tambellini’s hotel suite, though, when the Oilers general manager had Nugent-Hopkins come up to tell him he was staying with the NHL club and not going back to Red Deer. So, Denver will always have a soft spot in his heart. The JW Marriott, especially.

“I’ve noticed the hotels are probably a little nicer in the NHL than junior,” Nugent-Hopkins said with a laugh.

Now, he’s going to four of the Original Six cities. Will he sit in the seats at Montreal’s Bell Centre before the game and eat a couple of chien chauds? Will he be looking for the octopus on the ice at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit? Is he keen on looking up, way up, to see Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chara? How’s he going to do against Chicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews if he’s matched up against the Canadian Olympic hero?

It’s always interesting for young players on the road in their first NHL season, especially ones like Nugent-Hopkins. He’s taking part in the team’s “Movember” campaign, hoping to get a worthy moustache going to help raise money for prostate cancer, but he’lll probably find it easier to stickhandle past Chara than grow any hair on his lip.

“I’m hoping I have one by the time we get back from the road (on Nov. 14),” he said optimistically.

Nugent-Hopkins can expect a full-court press of media on the road since he’s in the top 10 in NHL scoring. He’s a point-a-game guy with 11 in 11 games.

But, the Oilers, as a team, have caught the fancy of the public and the media after getting absolutely no notice the last two years. That happens when you’re 7-2-2, of course, having a cadre of youngsters, Ryan Smyth back and scoring, and the best goaltending in the NHL.

“Sports Illustrated’s calling, The Hockey News, NHL Live, the NHL Network, ESPN … that’s great for us,” said Oilers public relations director J.J. Hebert.

“I’m happy that the fans of Edmonton can be proud of their team at home or on the road … that’s a huge part of all of this,” said coach Tom Renney. “I’m happy we have good stories to talk about with other media people around the league. I’m happy, too, that our opponents might have to pay particular attention to what might be a threat, that they’ll have to battle for two points.

“It’s a continuation of a work in progress and I hope the story continues.”

This is an acid-test month for the Oilers, who’ve had eight of their 11 games so far at Rexall Place. Not only do they have this six-game road trip, but 10 of their 14 games in November are on the road. Generally, about 80 per cent of the teams that are in the playoffs (the top eight in each conference) on the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend in late November are there in April, too.

“I honestly don’t know if I thought we’d have these results (in October), but I did know we’d have the effort, that there was some continuity from last season,” said Renney. “There’s all sorts of ebbs and flows in a season, though, and there will be on this road trip. I’m sure of that.

“We have to embrace this upcoming trip as an opportunity to see if we can sustain our work habits.”

And to keep the wins coming.

It took the Oilers until Nov. 29 to win seven games last year, 23 games into the season.

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

[hockeygod]

Boudreau sends a message

By DAN DI SCIULLO, SPORTS NETWORK, Nov 2 2011

PHILADELPHIA – Bruce Boudreau has a reputation as a player's coach, albeit a foul-mouthed one for those of us who watched him chew up the scenery last year in HBO's acclaimed 24/7 series.

But, Boudreau played against type in Washington's latest game and by doing so he sent a powerful message to his team.

It happened late in the third period of Tuesday's game against the visiting Anaheim Ducks. The Capitals were trailing Anaheim by a goal with just over a minute remaining in regulation and as Boudreau prepared his team for the ensuing faceoff, superstar Alex Ovechkin stood on the ice and listened to his coach set up the play.

But, when it came time for Boudreau to send his six skaters on the ice, Ovechkin was not one of them.

It may not seem like a big deal, but it was.

Ovechkin is a two-time league MVP and possibly the most dangerous offensive player in the world. When your goalie is out for an extra attacker it's hard to fathom finding a better potential scorer to put on the ice over Ovechkin.

Instead, Boudreau went with a gut feeling, sending forwards Nicklas Backstrom, Brooks Laich, Joel Ward and Jason Chimera to the ice with defencemen Dennis Wideman and John Carlson. Boudreau's premonition came true as Backstrom tied the game with 42 seconds left in regulation.

"I was playing a hunch," Boudreau told the media on Wednesday. "That line was going so good and I thought that every time they were on the ice they had the puck in their zone. I just thought they were going to score."

Backstrom would score again to win the game in overtime. Ovechkin picked up an assist on that one, but after the game all anybody wanted to talk about was No. 8 not being on the ice at the end of regulation.

Much of the hubbub surrounded Ovechkin's reaction to being left on the bench, as he was caught by TV cameras hurling an expletive or two in his coach's direction. But Boudreau, who said he didn't hear what Ovechkin said, was glad that his captain responded the way that he did.

"I don't want him to be complacent and say 'Oh, that's nice.' So, I think that's what the idea was, not the plan, but knowing him, he's going to be upset."

For the most part, Boudreau did his best to play down Tuesday's events, taking the stance that the benching of Ovechkin was more about playing a hunch and going with hot players than proving a point. That may be true to an extent, but Boudreau also revealed that getting under Ovechkin's skin is a great way to motivate his star player and that knowledge had to play a role in the coach's controversial decision.

"Alex understands and gets it," Boudreau said. "He's a great captain that way. He gets mad because he wants to play and he wants to compete."

In the end, all of this comes back to Boudreau feeling the heat in Washington. He has brought tons of regular-season success to D.C. since taking the job in 2007, but the Capitals have not performed well in the postseason, losing in the first or second round in the four previous campaigns. Another 121-point season like Washington had in 2009-10 — when the Capitals lost in the first round to eighth-seeded Montreal — may not even be enough to save Boudreau's job if his team falters in the postseason yet again.

The coach has tried before to fix the club's postseason problems during the regular season and he must know that he is running out of chances to do so. Boudreau put a stronger emphasis on team defence last year, but the Caps still wound up getting swept in the second round by Tampa Bay.

That's why this year has been all about accountability and taking nothing for granted. If Boudreau can't fix his club's bad habits and make a deep playoff run then he could be looking for a job this summer.

It doesn't matter that Washington won its first seven games of this year and is currently boasting an 8-2-0 record, Boudreau knows that if he doesn't raise the stakes for his players then it could be the same old story this spring. The head coach wants all his players, including his superstar, to be on the same page at all times and he knows that sometimes actions speak louder than words.

"There's nothing to talk about," Boudreau said Wednesday when asked if he had spoken to Ovechkin about the benching. "We've all understood it, it's from day one … I hope the message has gotten clear from July to now and I'm hoping we don't change that message. We're going to try and stay strong with it and that's the only way we're going to be successful."

Ovechkin isn't the only player to feel Boudreau's wrath this year, but his benching had to carry the most weight with his teammates. There was no better way for Boudreau to send a message to the entire team than sitting his captain and franchise player in a key situation.

That message was received by everyone, including Ovechkin.

"It's one team and it doesn't matter who you are," Ovechkin said on Wednesday. "If you want to win you have to be on the same page. Everybody."

The next time Washington is down a goal late and has pulled the goalie for an extra attacker, expect Ovie to be out on the ice. It's not good strategy to leave such a dangerous weapon on the bench when your team needs a goal, but the benching did serve a valuable one-time purpose.

Whether that purpose pays off in end is a question that won't be answered until the playoffs, but Boudreau has taught his club a valuable lesson for now.

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

[hockeygod]

A family affair when the Ice face Everett
Father and son will clash on Friday night as Kootenay Ice general manager Jeff Chynoweth will face his son Ryan, a rookie with the Everett Silvertips

Trevor Crawley, Cranbrook Daily Townsman, November 3, 2011

It will be a battle between father and son in a meeting of two Chynoweths on Friday night, as Ryan, a 16-year-old rookie with the Everett Silvertips, takes on his father, Jeff, president and general manager for the Kootenay Ice, when the two WHL teams face off against each other in the Rec Plex.

Ryan is the third-generation Chynoweth to get involved with the WHL, as his grandfather, Ed, created and built the modern WHL into the organization it is today, and his dad, Jeff, has held various management positions for 25 years with different teams, settling with the Ice when the franchise moved to Cranbrook 14 years ago.

It will be a weird feeling watching Ryan take on the Ice, as there will be mixed emotions between rooting for his son and cheering for the team he manages, said Jeff.

"I tell everybody, I cheer for the Everett Silvertips 71 games of the year and the one time they play the Kootenay Ice, I want the Kootenay Ice to win and nothing changes." he said. "…The best-case scenario is we win and he [Ryan] has a good game and maybe gets his first WHL goal.

"That'd be the perfect scenario; Mom would be happy, the family would be happy and I would be happy."

Ryan has grown up with a pretty unique perspective of the WHL, which gives some advantages in understanding how the league works, but at the end of the day, he's still a young 16-year-old rookie looking to create his own identity, Jeff said.

Being a young player means he will sit out of a lot of hockey games, but the first year of playing major-junior hockey is more about adjusting to the pace and the lifestyle, Jeff added.

"I think growing up around the environment, he saw a lot things that most young kids don't see because that's our profession," Jeff said.

Ryan grew up hockey-mad just like every other Canadian kid, whether it was road hockey, mini-stick hockey or shinny hockey, and he took the initiative to advance in the minor hockey system with the support of Jeff and his mom, Michele.

One of the biggest hockey lessons he's learned from his dad is patience and understanding that every player is going to have their hot and cold streaks, Ryan said.

"It's a long season and every player is going to have their peaks and valleys," Ryan said. "When you're in the valley, you want to try to climb out and when you hit that peak, you want to stay up there. You can't get frustrated when you're a 16-year-old."

Ryan, a centreman, was a second round pick by the Everett Silvertips in the 2010 WHL Draft, coming out of the Lethbridge AAA Bantam Golden Hawks and AAA Midget Hurricanes programs.

Before that, he grew up in the Cranbrook minor hockey system, playing on teams that were managed by his dad.

"We had a great group of people here growing up at a young age and those are friends you make and keep forever," said Jeff.

Making the jump to major-junior hockey hasn't been the unfamiliar experience for Ryan that it may be to other players, and he is enjoying the intensity and the focus on training and development, Ryan said.

"You get an opportunity every day to get better. You're on the ice everyday, you're with your teammates everyday," he said. "It's a lot different from minor hockey when you're practicing only two or three times a week."

Don't expect the Ice to be making any trades for the rookie Chynoweth either, as Jeff believes his son has a better opportunity to develop as a hockey player and a young man with a different WHL organization.

"I don't think it would've been fair to him or this team to have him on this hockey club," said Jeff. "As much as my wife would love to have him at home, she realizes it's best for his development to move away and we obviously couldn't be happier with the Everett Silvertips."

The Everett squad has had a slower start to their season, with four wins in 16 games, but as with every other team in the WHL, they'll be gunning to knock the reigning league champions down a few pegs when they meet on Friday.

And when asked if he will cut his dad's club any slack, Ryan laughed.

"No, not at all," he said.

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

[hockeygod]

An immigrant's tale:
Bad luck is partly to blame for the end of Chad Starling's career; so is an ECHL policy that caused him to be sent back to Canada

J.P. Hoornstra, Staff Writer, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin,11/01/2011

The story of Chad Starling's hockey career already had been written when his pickup truck pulled into the U.S.-Canadian border station at Sweetgrass, Montana early in the afternoon of Sept. 29.

Starling played 503 games in the ECHL between 2000 and 2009, more than any ECHL defenseman during the decade. Last year, his third with the Reign, Starling was one of 12 players named to the league's all-decade team.

At 6-foot-6 and 205 pounds, the 31-year-old Starling looks like a typical hockey player, although his career trajectory was unusual.

While his peers from the 1999 draft class either established themselves in the NHL or moved on to their post-playing careers, Starling slugged through one of the least glamorous jobs in professional sports: A low-scoring, defensive-minded defenseman in a league known for long bus rides, three-game weekend series and sub-$20,000 annual salaries.

This was supposed to be Starling's 11th season of professional hockey. It began just like any other, with a 400-mile drive south to the border from his home in Delisle, Saskatchewan.

There, in Sweetgrass, a routine encounter threatened to re-write his legacy.

When he was greeted by Customs and Border Protection Officer Andrew Hoggan, Starling had a truck full of hockey gear, some personal belongings and a printed letter with the official Ontario Reign logo on top.

The letter was titled "RE: Application for B-1, Visitor for Business
Classification, On behalf of Chad Starling."

It began: "This letter is submitted in support of the admission of Chad Starling to the United States in B-1 Status. We have invited Chad to participate in training session with the Ontario Reign that will be held from September 27, 2011 to October 10, 2011 in Ontario, California."

Hoggan read the brief note, which was signed by head coach Jason Christie. He went to a computer to verify the information by performing a Google search on Starling's name.

Hoggan was not made available for comment but Lynn Hurst, the public affairs liaison for the station, said this is a common practice.

"If someone is claiming to be coming into the U.S. because of trying to get a visa for a sports visa or a work visa, and in order to substantiate their claim, they may Google that person's name, or Google the team, or the business that they're planning to work for," Hurst said.

What Hoggan found was a blog entry on this newspaper's website, dated July 25, 2011, indicating Starling already had re-signed with the Reign for the 2011-12 season. (Google "Chad Starling" and the blog entry still is among the top results.)

This presented a contradiction. The letter stated Starling was invited to participate in training camp, during which he "may engage in contract negotiations." However, as a simple internet search revealed, a contract already had been negotiated and signed.

To the government, that makes a big difference.

"When an athlete comes in to try out for a team, they're issued a B-1 visa, which for Canadians, there isn't any fee associated with that," Hurst said. "They come in temporarily to try out for the team. Then if they make the team, they have to adjust status to either an H-2 or a P-1."

Since Starling already "made" the team in the eyes of the government (in this case, a border guard), the B-1 visa wasn't sufficient. Hoggan filled out the U.S. Department of Homeland Security form for Withdrawal of Application for Admission.

He took Starling's photo and fingerprint and noted the explanation: "Application withdrawn in order to return back to Canada to either have a P-1 petition or proof that a contract has not been signed."

It was the first time in 11 seasons Starling had been turned around at the border.

"I called (Christie) right after and he said, 'We'll get right on that,' " he said. "I asked him how long it would take. He said no more than 10 days."

That sounded simple enough. Ten days and Starling would be back in business. Camp was two weeks long, so this wasn't a major setback. Starling was familiar with the organization, the city and the coach; even though Christie was hired by the Reign in August, Starling played for him for five seasons in Peoria and Utah from 2001-06.

Dollars and sense

But why make it difficult? Why would the letter from the Reign request a B-1 visa when Starling needed a P-1?

The answer is simple, but the logic is complicated.

To petition the U.S. government for a P-1 visa costs money – $325 to be exact, although that $325 won't get you very far.

Bob Hoffman, director of communications for the Central Hockey League, said each P-1 petition "ends up in a stack of papers. We've heard stories before of people waiting two months (to get their P-1 approved). None of our teams take that risk. Premium processing is more but it puts the paper at the top of the stack."

That's why hockey teams at every level – the NHL, ECHL and CHL – pay an additional $1,225 Premium Processing Service fee. The P-1 then gets processed within 15 calendar days; if not, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services guarantees a refund.

The Premium Processing Service can be applied to multiple P-1 petitions. So, for example, if a team has 10 players who need P-1 visas, the team can put all 10 names on a list and pay the $1,225 fee once. In the cost-conscious world of minor league sports, that means a lot.

Hoffman said the Central Hockey League has a policy of filing the petitions, and paying the extra fee, for all its P-1 eligible players 15 days before training camp begins – typically on Sept. 15 – so that each P-1 is processed in time for camp. The league also keeps an immigration attorney, Christi Hufford, on retainer to monitor the immigration status of every player.

"Once we caught an issue 10 minutes before game time with an emergency backup goaltender," Hoffman recalled. "He had work authorization in a field other than hockey. If he had taken the ice to play hockey, he would have been technically breaking the law, so he didn't play."

The ECHL has a different policy.

"It's standard procedure for players crossing the border for camp to ask for a B-1," said Joe Babik, the league's Director of Communications. The Reign apparently were abiding when Starling handed over the letter in Sweetgrass.

This policy allows ECHL teams to save money, in case a non-tryout player who needs a P-1 visa is deemed expendable during training camp and is released before playing in a game.

The policy produced a letter stating "the purpose of the tryout is to introduce Chad to the team and to learn more about him while providing him with the opportunity to get to know the Ontario Reign organization."

The blog entry on insidesocal.com Hoggan read while Starling waited in his pickup truck showed that, three months earlier, the defenseman had "re-signed for an unprecedented fourth season in Ontario."

It was this apparent contradiction of facts that got Starling turned around at the border. But this isn't the reason he never made it to California.

Bad luck

Sure enough, within 15 days after Starling was turned around at Sweetgrass, his P-1 visa petition was approved. But a lot can happen in 15 days.

Four more defensemen whom the Reign signed in the offseason were unable to play. Adrian van de Mosselaer contracted mononucleosis. Jason Fredricks and Pat Bowen went down with knee injuries. Jordan Hill got a tryout with the Manchester Monarchs of the American Hockey League and earned a contract in training camp.

Starling called Christie on the evening of Thursday, Oct. 13, one day before the Reign's first regular-season game.

"He said, 'We got your papers done.' He said, 'We need you to leave first thing tomorrow,' " Starling recalled. "I told him, 'Well, I might not be able to leave until Saturday morning because I had a full day of work planned Friday.' "

Starling said he would call Christie back once he knew he could get the day off. He did. Christie didn't answer. Starling left a message.

The season began as scheduled as the Reign lost their first game and won their second. Starling was added to the opening-day roster and officially went on 7-day injured reserve.

A classic game of phone tag played out behind the scenes.

"I got up Friday morning, called, but (Christie) didn't answer, so I left another message," Starling said. "I went to work. He didn't call back Friday. He called back Tuesday at 11 o'clock in the morning."

Out of necessity, Christie had been working the phones to find defensemen to replace Hill, van de Mosselaer, Fredricks and Bowen. By the time he did, one week into the season, Starling was eligible to come off injured reserve.

Then another roadblock emerged: There was no more room for Starling in Ontario.

"We kind of have (limited) cap room there and there's apartments," Christie said on Oct. 20. "We're only allowed so many apartments and it's hurting us because we've got so many guys injured. That's the way the ball rolls sometimes with these injuries. We've got to make sure we're going to be on top of it."

The next day, Starling was released.

Christie said it wasn't easy.

"At the end of the day it comes down to money, the cap, not being able to have space," he said. "We have to make sure we have the right budget. Coming in late like this, missing last season (Starling missed the final four months with groin injuries), it was something where a decision had to be made. For me it was a hard one because I know him. You never like to see that, especially when you have a relationship."

The feeling was mutual.

"They never did send me any papers so I could leave," Starling said. "To have it end like this, sour grapes, that sucks. But that's the way it goes."

Hard lesson learned

Starling still is in Delisle working for his family-owned business, "cleaning out septic tanks, car washes, any kind of waste basically," in a rural nook of Saskatchewan.

He is an unsigned free agent and is comfortable calling it a career.

"You never say never, if somebody needs a D-man," he said. "My plan was to take over my parents' business. Now I just speed the plan up six months."

Starling said he has no hard feelings toward his teammates. He's convinced the discrepancy between the letter he was given by the team, and the letter of the law, is the reason he's still at home.

Christie acknowledged if Starling hadn't gotten turned around at the border, "this probably never would have happened."

So something needs to change.

The ECHL can adopt an airtight immigration policy, maybe one similar to the CHL's. Maybe the Department of Homeland Security can relax P-1 fees for minor-league sports teams who must pay the same amount as their major-league brethren.

Last week, Starling sent the following text message: "Well hopefully if u [sic] get this story done it will stop players in the future to have to go through what I did."

For now, his legacy remains only partially re-written.

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

[hockeygod]

Howe times have changed: Gordie wouldn't cut it in 'new' NHL

By WES GILBERTSON, QMI Agency, Nov 4 2011

CALGARY – Gordie Howe is showing off a permanent lump on his right hand, recalling the details of one of countless slashes he absorbed during his Hall-of-Fame career.

The deed didn’t go unreturned, though.

Still a story-teller at 83, Howe pauses for a moment then pokes a reporter on the chin.

“He got it right here,” he said with a grin.

There’s a reason they called him Mr. Hockey, not Mr. Nice Guy.

Howe, the only guy to skate a shift in the pro hockey ranks in six different decades, remains as famous for his elbows and his scoring touch.

The six-time Hart Trophy winner ranks third in NHL history with 1,850 points, but he also racked up 1,685 penalty minutes, good for 91st — just behind Wendel Clark — on the all-time list.

One of his lasting legacies is the Gordie Howe hat-trick — the feat of scoring a goal, adding an assist and dropping your mitts for a fight all in the span of one game.

As Howe pointed out Thursday without even a hint of guilt, “You can’t behave on the ice.”

These days, you have no choice.

Ironically, the all-time leader in Gordie Howe hat-tricks is now the NHL’s chief disciplinarian, and Brendan Shanahan has been busy handing out bans for head-shots and other illegal hits.

It makes you wonder whether a guy like Howe could get away with any of his old tricks in what they call the ‘new’ NHL.

“He was a tough man, but there’s no chance he could play in today’s game,” said Mark Napier, who spent a decade in the big leagues and is now the president of the NHL Alumni Association.

“Back then, a lot of games weren’t televised, and if they were televised, they only had one camera. Gordie used to wait for the referee not too look, and he’d pop a guy and knock him out cold, right? Now, they’d have three cameras following him around, and Gordie would be suspended every second game. He’d have to conform to the new rules himself.

“Back then, all the guys were tough. They did have one or two enforcers — like John Ferguson — but if you couldn’t look after yourself back in those days, you couldn’t play. They all were tough guys, and they could look after themselves.”

On Thursday, Howe made a pit-stop in Calgary to promote the second annual ScotiaBank Pro-Am, a fundraising hockey tournament that raises awareness of Alzheimer’s Disease. Howe’s late wife, Colleen, had a form of the illness.

The on-ice contingent for the April 13-15 tournament in Calgary — one of four ScotiaBank Pro-Am events planned across the country — will include former Flames stars Theo Fleury, Lanny McDonald and Gary Roberts plus retired tough guys Marty McSorley and Tiger Williams skating with city recreation squads.

He won’t skate, but Howe is the undisputed headliner. Even at 83 — and 31 years removed from his last NHL contest — he remains one of the most recognizable faces in the hockey world.

According to the former Detroit Red Wings star, it wasn’t always that way.

“Nobody knew you (back when I played early in my career), because TV wasn’t around, so when they’d see you in the doorway, they’re pulling out pictures,” Howe recalled. “When you’d walk into Toronto, from Yonge Street down into the arena itself, you’d see people going through the pictures, looking and then running for an autograph. When TV came along, it really introduced hockey.”

That’s not the only thing that has changed.

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

[hockeygod]

Marketing business as usual for NHL?

DAVID SHOALTS, Globe and Mail, Nov. 04, 2011

In the New York-New Jersey corridor – the heart of NBA territory – the league may be dark due to the player lockout, but there is no sign of the NHL stepping in to shine its light on disaffected basketball fans.

The New Jersey Devils, who share the Prudential Center with the New Jersey Nets, have an advertising campaign under way through their social media outlets, as well as the traditional broadcast and print ads, but there is no mention of the NBA’s labour troubles. The pitch is: come watch the Devils play because it’s a great evening’s entertainment, not because your basketball team is shut down.

As for the New York Rangers, they’re not saying anything (just like a lot of team and league executives contacted for this story). A Rangers spokesman, citing that The Madison Square Garden Company owns both the Rangers and Knicks, said they could not comment on anything to do with the NBA lockout.

John Collins, the NHL’s chief operating officer and marketing boss, declined to comment. A request for comment from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman went unanswered.

Across the continent, the Los Angeles Kings once again plastered downtown building billboards with pictures of their players. But the message is: the Kings are a good team worth watching, not that they are playing and the NBA’s Lakers and Clippers are not.

“We certainly don’t want to jump on labour issues, mainly because we’re friendly with all the professional sports teams in Los Angeles and we know what it’s like to go through that stuff,” said Chris McGowan, the Kings chief operating officer. “I also think it’s bad business strategy to plan for something that’s uncertain [like a lockout].

“An NBA lockout or another league’s lockout could last a year, or it could be over on Monday.”

Other NHL executives say while the topic was never formally discussed by owners, a conscious decision was made by the league and the teams not to capitalize on the problems of its corporate colleague.

Since the NHL has had its own lockout troubles in the past, and more could be ahead when the collective agreement expires in September of 2012, league executives say it wouldn’t be cricket to launch a marketing campaign trying to win over basketball fans. Besides, NHL teams like the Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Kings and Washington Capitals are owned or partly owned by the same people who own NBA teams.

“We wouldn’t want them to do that to us and they didn’t do that to us when we were out a year [in 2004-05],” said Jim Devellano, the senior vice-president of the Detroit Red Wings.

However, with 14 NHL teams in the same city as an NBA team and 10 of them sharing an arena, some marketing experts think the hockey league is missing a great chance to attract new fans.

“I think it’s a golden opportunity for hockey,” said Mike Sprouse, chief marketing officer of Internet marketing company Epic Media Group in Chicago. “I love basketball but as a sports fan I love to go to live events. The NBA lockout has been on for four to five months and I haven’t seen one piece of marketing from the NHL trying to leverage it.”

It isn’t necessary to hammer away at the fact the NBA is shut down, Devellano says.

“Everybody in Detroit knows it’s just the Lions [of the NFL] and Red Wings playing right now,” he said. “It helps us because there’s only two teams selling tickets instead of three.”

David Carter, the executive director of the University of Southern California’s Sports Business Institute, says the NHL is still capitalizing on the NBA lockout. But it’s been done in a more subtle way than telling fans to come watch because the other guy’s theatre is closed.

For example, teams are targeting the casual fans and their families who may budget for attending three or four sports events a year. If NHL teams can land those fans for a game and show them a quality evening of entertainment, maybe they will stick to hockey in the future.

“There are also things like group events held by corporations,” Carter said. “Companies take their clients or employees to an arena for a night. They can’t trust that the NBA is operating so the NHL can go after those group outings and it’s a more subtle thing.”

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

[hockeygod]

Kudos to Caps coach

By CHRIS STEVENSON, QMI Agency, Nov 4 2011

Early in the NHL season, who knew lip reading would be such a valuable skill?

First Wayne Simmonds and now it's Alex Ovechkin making noise out of earshot of the microphones.

It made me think of that Seinfeld episode when George borrows Jerry's deaf girlfriend to lip read from across the room and learn what George's freshly ex-girlfriend is saying at a party.

Only problem is between the deaf girlfriend and Kramer, they translate "sweeping together" into "sleeping together" and hilarity ensues.

I don't think there was as much confusion over what Simmonds or Ovechkin were saying.

Which brings us to Washington Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau, who left Ovechkin on the bench at the end of the game Tuesday, sparking Ovie's X-rated F-bombs (at least that's how it looked).

Boudreau is coaching like there is no tomorrow, which is probably true in his case if he doesn't find a way to get the Caps to the third round of the playoffs. He ran a boot camp (relative to past Caps training camps) and now is taking on the team's biggest star, who has a long-term deal, and not backing down.

At least Boudreau won't go quietly.

Good for him.

His actions are speaking louder than any words.

Infer what you want to infer.

UNDER THE HOOD

A look at what makes a hockey team work

One of the trends right now is players taking what would seem to be low-percentage shots on the ice from bad angles along the goal line. It wouldn't appear to be the best use of a puck possession but, according to one assistant coach, it creates trouble. Many of the big goalies in the league use the "one knee down" technique to defend the post. They put their pad closest to the puck perpendicular to the goal line against the post. This leaves them in a position to push off with the leg closest to the puck and go into the butterfly if the player with the puck decides to pass into the slot. Problem is, in that position the goaltender can't help but give up a rebound when the puck is hammered at his feet. "The other thing is, if the goaltender's technique is off by a little bit and his pad is even slightly angled, a shot into the pad is going right into the slot," a goaltending coach said.

One player said firing the puck along the goal line is near the top of the list when playing against Vancouver Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo.

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

[hockeygod]

Benching Ovechkin: The Caps get tough

By Katie Baker, Grantland. com, NOVEMBER 2, 2011

For the Washington Capitals on Tuesday night, the third line was the charm. With the Caps down 3-0 midway through the second period against the Anaheim Ducks, right wing Joel Ward netted a wrister that was set up by his linemates Brooks Laich and Jason Chimera to cut the Ducks' lead to 3-1. Three minutes later, Laich and Ward were credited with assists on a slap shot goal by defenseman Dennis Wideman. On the other end of the ice, Washington coach Bruce Boudreau took every opportunity to match up his third threesome against Anaheim's top line of Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, and Bobby Ryan, and it worked: The Ducks' stars were held to just one power play goal by Perry halfway through the third.

And it was the grinding third line that helped set up Nicklas Backstrom's game-tying goal, with Chimera and Laich earning assists on Backstrom's wrist shot with 42 seconds to play. The Swede would score his second in overtime to give Washington the stirring 5-4 comeback win.

Still, for all the third line's contributions, the Capitals' biggest headlines were made by their first line winger's play — or, as it were, his lack thereof. With just over a minute remaining in regulation and the Caps down 4-3, Washington head coach Bruce Boudreau called a timeout to diagram what to do. He pulled goalie Tomas Vokoun and sent six Washington skaters out onto the ice — none of whom were named Alex Ovechkin.1 Replays later showed an incredulous Ovi glaring at Boudreau, plunking himself down on the bench, and muttering in disgust what a legion of lip-readers determined were the words "fat fuck." He was sent back out on the ice in overtime, and played a strong shift that resulted in the primary assist on Backstrom's game-winning goal.

http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=fbmRKVJWEB8&feature=player_embedded

"I thought the other guys were better than him and I thought there was just a chance that other guys might score the goal," Boudreau said after the game when asked about Ovi's absence on the game-tying play. "I've got to put out the guys that I think are going to score the goal and 99 percent of the time Alex is the guy I think is going to score the goal. I just didn't think Alex was going to score the goal at that time tonight. You go with your gut feeling, thinking that line is going pretty good, and I got lucky."

In the same way a basketball player or coach can be vilified for a last-second shot that rims out but praised as a clutch player or genius if the ball bounces in, Boudreau risked widespread wrath had his decision not yielded a goal. It was a bold coaching move that spoke volumes about the kind of team he and the Capitals are trying to become this season: one whose role players don't just stand aside and watch Ovi take over. One with a locker room that is not lackadaisical and a coaching staff that is not blinded by stars. One where grinders like Joel Ward, who was acquired this offseason specifically to enhance the team's checking line, and Brooks Laich, who was re-signed this summer for the same reason, are considered as integral to the team as someone like Ovechkin. Because when it comes to the all-important postseason, they almost certainly will be.

Boudreau, long questioned for a permissive attitude toward his team's better players that, many complained, resulted in too much coasting and too many costs, has wielded his power more heavily throughout this young season. He's done so with some measure of success. In the very first game of the year he sat Vokoun in favor of goaltender Michal Neuvirth, saying simply that Neuvirth had "earned it" with strong preseason play. Whether that particular move was the reason or not, Vokoun has been one of the league's finest goalies since then. Boudreau scratched Marcus Johansson on opening night, and in the next game the young center responded with a goal and an assist. (He has recorded four more goals since, three of them game-winners.)2

Last night Boudreau effectively sent two important messages to the Capitals: that he's willing to bench even the team's biggest player, and, perhaps more importantly, that he's got faith in everyone else when he does.

To his credit, Ovi handled it all as well as he could have — he got (rightly) furious, he got back on the ice, he got an assist, and, in a development that ought to soothe worried Caps fans, he seems to have gotten "it," telling reporters on Wednesday that he understood what had happened. "Of course," he said. "[The third line] play[ed] unbelievable last night, they shut down Getzlaf line and score goals. No doubt about it."

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

[hockeygod]

The NBA Lockout: Why the Players Will Cave
A shockingly readable primer on the economics of professional basketball

Vishnu Parasuraman, Grantland.com, NOVEMBER 3, 2011

—–
Hopefully the NHLPA will be alert to this… although many NHL owners aren't like Paul Allan; lots might actually quit losing money of the NHL locked out / discontinued!
—–

The NBA lockout has been dragging on for months. Games have been canceled. Fans are wondering why millionaires and billionaires can't come to an agreement on how to divide over $4 billion in revenue. While those concerns are logical, a full understanding of the issues is necessary to understand the complexity of the situation and why accepting a deal is not a strictly financial decision.

What Is Basketball Related Income (BRI)?

Basketball Related Income (BRI) includes most income generated by the NBA outside of expansion-team money, fines, and revenue sharing. (For a full accounting of what is included in BRI, see Larry Coon's CBA FAQs.) Another important element excluded from BRI is operating expenses. As Raja Bell explained in an interview with the Dan LeBatard Show with Stugotz, this includes arena rental. So what do some owners do? They have one company that owns the arena, and then have that company rent the arena to the basketball franchise, essentially paying themselves and deducting that expense from BRI.

After all those calculations are completed, the players receive a percentage of that income. How does the NBA prevent overages and underages (the players getting too much or too little money)? A certain percentage (last year 8 percent) is withheld from every player's paycheck and placed in an escrow account. When the BRI is calculated at the end of the year, if it is determined that the players received less than they were supposed to, money is paid out to the players. If it is determined that the players were paid more than their percentage, the owners keep the escrow money, and if that is still not enough, then additional money is taken out of the players' paychecks for the following year.

This calculation is important because while the players' contracts are guaranteed, if the league makes less money, so do the players. The idea that the economy tanked, lowering revenue, which resulted in the players' salaries being unaffordable, is just not true. What is true, however, is that the owners can't collectively make a profit with a player percentage of BRI set at 57 percent, as is the case with the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.

So the players must take a lower percentage of BRI, but how low is too low? And how much money are the two sides arguing about? As an example, let's use $4 billion in BRI for the upcoming season, with $0.2 billion increases annually (values are in billions). (The current CBA has the players' share at 57 percent; they have since come down to 52 percent, with the owners offering between 47 and 50 percent.)

Year 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 Total
BRI $4.000 $4.200 $4.400 $4.600 $4.800 $5.000 $27.000
57% $2.280 $2.394 $2.508 $2.622 $2.736 $2.850 $15.390
52% $2.080 $2.184 $2.288 $2.392 $2.496 $2.600 $14.040
50% $2.000 $2.100 $2.200 $2.300 $2.400 $2.500 $13.500
47% $1.880 $1.974 $2.068 $2.162 $2.256 $2.350 $12.690

These are not peanuts being argued over — we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, as you can see in this chart that shows differences between various percentages:
Year 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 Total
BRI $4.000 $4.200 $4.400 $4.600 $4.800 $5.000 $27.000
57 to 52 $0.200 $0.210 $0.220 $0.230 $0.240 $0.250 $1.350
52 to 50 $0.080 $0.084 $0.088 $0.092 $0.096 $0.100 $0.540
50 to 47 $0.120 $0.126 $0.132 $0.138 $0.144 $0.150 $0.810

It's important to note the concessions the players have already made in order to understand their reluctance to go further. They've given back $200 million for the upcoming season and $1.35 billion over a six-year CBA. And the owners are asking for additional money, up to another $200 million and another $1.35 billion (if the players end up with 47 percent). One more thing to consider is what last year would have looked like with various percentages:
Change from Actual
BRI $3.817
Actual (57) $2.176
52 $1.985 $0.191
50 $1.909 $0.267
47 $1.794 $0.382

With the owners estimating losses of $300 million and players arguing that the losses are significantly less (with accounting differences taken into consideration), it is reasonable to assume that the players, with their proposal of 52 percent, have arrived at a percentage roughly where owners can make a profit.

The System

But this is much more complex than economics. The BRI/percentage determines how much in total players will be paid. The system, on the other hand, determines who can pay a player and how that money is distributed. The owners prefer a hard cap, punitive luxury tax, and a restricted Mid-Level Exception (an exception that allows a team over the cap to sign a player to a contract of a calculated value of around $5 million a year).

The players prefer a less restrictive system. Why does it matter? Because the union wants to create as many well-paying jobs as possible. A more restrictive system filters money upward to the superstars. The union exists to protect the middle-of-the-road player. This isn't about the overall payout, but the median payout. Let's take the following example with fictitious numbers to illustrate the point, where there are two players, the total BRI is 20, and the player percentage is 50 percent:
Contract Superstar Player Mid-level Player Total
Restrictive 10 2 12
Non-restrictive 10 5 15

Actual Payout Superstar Player Mid-level Player Total
Restrictive 8.33 1.67 10
Non-restrictive 6.67 3.33 10

As you can see, the overall salaries, when actually paid, are identical at 10. This is because the BRI and percentage determine that payout. But, in the less restrictive scenario, the mid-level player gets a larger piece of the pie, which the union prefers. The idea is that the superstar gets a lot of money anyway and also reaps the benefits of endorsements, so the union needs to protect the player who doesn't get any of that. If they wanted to support the superstar player, they would simply disband the union, which would make any salary cap restrictions illegal (as an antitrust violation) and allow the owners to get into a bidding war over elite players, with everyone else left to fend for themselves.

An Impasse

The owners have already been given enough concessions to address their concerns, and are largely independently wealthy anyway, so why are they continuing to draw a line in the sand? Because economics is a sideshow to them. Some owners are willing to cave. Micky Arison, the Heat owner, was fined $500,000 for intimating that he was willing to make a deal and that other owners were holding up the process. Mark Cuban used his brother to get the message out there that the owners would move to 51 percent. Yet other owners, most notably Dan Gilbert and Paul Allen, won't budge.

The owners aren't holding out for parity. They are holding out because of indifference and vindictiveness.

Does anyone really believe that Paul Allen, worth $13.2 billion, is holding up this deal for a few million dollars out of his pocket? (As a comparison, for Paul Allen, $5 million is the equivalent of $10 to someone worth $30,000. Would you hold up an entire sports league for $10? In fact, for Paul Allen, the entire stated losses of the league, $300 million, would be the equivalent of around $630 to someone worth $30,000.) Of course not. The reality is that there is not, nor will there ever be, parity in the NBA. You need an elite superstar to win a championship, and there are maybe 10 of those in the NBA. Parity is simply being used to hide their true intent.

The owners aren't holding out for parity. They are holding out because of indifference and vindictiveness. Financially, they have so much money and so many alternate sources of revenue that it doesn't matter if their teams play or not. And since most owners' teams aren't going to win anyway, the motivation just isn't there to cave. For certain owners, like Dan Gilbert, this is taken to an extreme. The man who penned the Comic Sans diatribe against LeBron James would love nothing more than to slice a year off James' championship window in Miami.

So, the players must cave, right? They need paychecks and the owners appear indifferent. The short answer is yes. Economically speaking, they should cave immediately. They are going to lose more money from missing games than they will lose from taking a worse deal. And the players will eventually cave. There will be basketball again. But it's the system that causes reluctance. Sure enough, it's being reported that the owners are not offering 50 percent with a system the players covet, but are instead offering a choice: (1) a 50 percent split with a restrictive system, OR (2) a 47 percent split with a non-restrictive system. So, the players are in a situation where they have already lost, already given so much, and already covered the owners' losses (some of which are unrelated to players' salaries), and they now must choose between keeping more raw money or protecting that middle class of players. Not nearly as simple as dividing a $4 billion pie.

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

[hockeygod]

The Beginning of the End for the NCAA
Compensating players was just the start — the entire system is about to collapse

Charles P. Pierce, Grantland.com, NOVEMBER 1, 2011

—–
Interesting to see what happens in the hockey world if this occurs… NCAA (amateur) vs Major Junior Hockey (professional). Now, the lines will be removed. Both leagues will be considered professional. Kids could move from one league to the other (unless the leagues put in rules restricting it)…wow!
—–

In June of 1970, Bill Veeck, a renegade baseball owner, took the stand for the plaintiff in the case of Flood v. Kuhn, in which St. Louis Cardinal outfielder Curt Flood essentially sued major league baseball to break the power of the "reserve system," a pernicious practice that bound a player to one team for as long as that one team wanted to keep him. It was this system of, at best, involuntary servitude on which the business of baseball had remained a rigged game in favor of management for over a century.

Veeck thought the system doomed. Sooner or later, he believed, a judge, or somebody else in authority that didn't give a damn about sitting in the owner's box for Opening Day, was going to get a good look at the system. That person probably then would spend four or five minutes laughing so hard that they nearly fainted, and then that person would throw out the whole system for the fraud that it was. Better to eliminate the reserve system gradually, Veeck testified. (He recommended a system of seven-year contracts, much like the system that had prevailed at one time in Hollywood.) That way, he thought, the owners could control the transition between the reserve system and whatever came next. Veeck also pointed out that the reserve system, as it was practiced at the time, ran counter to some cherished American beliefs about the country's values.

"I think it would certainly help the players and the game itself to no longer be one of the few places in which there is human bondage," Veeck testified, according to the account in Brad Snyder's A Well-Paid Slave, an exemplary book on the Flood case. "I think it would be to the benefit of the reputation of the game of baseball … At least, it would be fair."

The owners didn't listen. Veeck was not one of them. He had a predilection for putting midgets on the field. And black people. And, as far as the authoritarian exercise of whiteness went, baseball management made the Politburo look like the O'Jays. They ignored Veeck. They even beat the Flood case in the Supreme Court. Then, in 1975, an arbitrator named Peter Seitz threw out the reserve clause and free agency fell onto baseball all at once and everywhere. The system utterly collapsed and, just as Veeck had predicted, it was not a soft landing.

Something like that has happened over the last 20 or 30 years in regard to college athletics. Every few years, some angry, stick-waving prophet would come wandering into the cozy system of unpaid (or barely paid) labor and start bellowing about how the essential corruption in the system wasn't that some players got money under the table, but that none of them were allowed to get any over it. Sooner or later, these people said, the system would collapse from its own internal contradictions — yes, some of these people summoned up enough Marx through the bong resin in their brains from their college days to make a point — and the people running college sports had best figure out how to control the chaos before it overwhelmed them. Nobody listened. Very little changed, except that college sports became bigger and more lucrative, an enterprise of sports spectacle balanced precariously on the fragile principle that everybody should get to make money except the people doing the actual work.

Now, though, the indications are that the reckoning is finally here. In its role as the protector of the lucrative status quo, the NCAA is under assault from a number of different directions, and the organization seems to be cracking from the pressure. Just in the past two years, we have seen the lawsuit brought by former UCLA star Ed O'Bannon in which O'Bannon and several other former NCAA athletes challenged the NCAA's right to profit from their "likenesses" in perpetuity. Earlier this month, legendary center Bill Russell joined that suit. In the October issue of the Atlantic, historian Taylor Branch took a mighty whack at the entire system and made a case for paying college athletes on the grounds of simple fairness. Branch's credentials as a chronicler of the civil rights movement gave his critique a profound resonance in places where nobody much cares if Alabama beats LSU this weekend. Yesterday, Congressman Bobby Rush of Illinois, a former Black Panther who once escaped being murdered by the Chicago Police Department through the expedient of not being at home to get shot, and still the only man to defeat Barack Obama head-to-head in an election, likened the NCAA to Al Capone, which is not a compliment, not even in Chicago. And, perhaps most significant of all, a petition is being circulated by current football and basketball players requesting (politely) a cut of the vast ancillary revenues that the colleges and the NCAA are raking in.

On October 27, undoubtedly in response to all of this, and in an obvious attempt to keep order within the help, the NCAA voted to allow its member conferences to decide whether to pay their athletes an annual stipend of $2,000 to cover the "incidental costs" of a college education. NCAA president Mark Emmert was firm in his denial that this constituted "pay for play."

Nonsense.

Of course, it is.

And that's the ballgame right there. As soon as you pay someone $2,000, you cannot make the argument that it is unethical to pay that person $5,000, or $10,000, or a million bucks a year, for all that. Amateurism is one of those rigid things that cannot bend, only shatter. Amateurism is an unsustainable concept. It could not last in golf. It could not last in tennis. It couldn't even last in the Olympics, where it was supposed to have been ordained by Zeus or someone. It is the rancid legacy of a stultified British class system in which athletes were supposed to be "gentlemen" and not "tradesmen." Which is to say that sports are supposed to be for Us and not Them, old sport.

It was particularly badly suited for transplantation to this country, where we — theoretically, anyway, and against a preponderance of available evidence today — believe that we are a classless society based on upward mobility and the essential fairness of our system.

(Yeah, yeah, I know, but play along for the moment, OK?)

Sports have always played an important role in the construction of that part of our national self-image. Sports as a "way out of poverty" is one of our more cherished national myths, and it always ran headlong into the British concept of amateurism, which was based on a class system that didn't believe in ways out of poverty for the lower orders, or the Irish. But I repeat myself. Basically, amateurism offends against this country's image of itself and, therefore, its support here always has been tenuous.

Give Americans a chance to be greedy and noble at the same time, and the cultural momentum becomes unstoppable.

Which is part of the reason why every major "scandal" in college sports begins with the crash of a cymbal and ends with a stifled yawn. What we have in college sports at the moment is a perfect example of a functioning underground economy. People tolerate that economy because, fundamentally, we believe that, if you work a 40-hour-a-week job that requires travel all over the country, you ought to get paid for it. We also love the games. Hence, out of both selfishness and a kind of innate sense of fairness, most people are more satisfied with the sausage than they are horrified at how it's made. Give Americans a chance to be greedy and noble at the same time, and the cultural momentum becomes unstoppable.

The counterargument, of course, is that athletes are "compensated" by the scholarships they are granted to the universities they attend. In a time in which the middle class is being squeezed, and a college education is pricing itself out of the reach of thousands of families, this argument gains a certain amount of power. However, let's accept it on its face for the moment. You can say that the university is entitled to the gate receipts from its games based on the value of the scholarships it grants to its players, and I might even grant you that, at which point I will lie down until this feeling passes.

But the ancillary income — television revenues, the sale of jerseys and other gear, the use of a player's "likeness" in video games, and on and on — completely overwhelms the equation and makes the relationship inequitable. The Southeastern Conference made over a billion dollars last year. The Big 10 made $905 million. These people may have a moral right to their ticket sales based on the scholarships they provide, but they don't have a moral right to every last nickel they can squeeze out of their labor force. That's absurd. It's un-American. And it cannot last.

The NCAA is floundering now, proposing a cheap pay-for-play scheme while denying it is doing so, and hoping to buy a little more time against the looming inevitable. Eventually, one night, they'll throw up the ball at an NCAA tournament game and none of the players will jump. Or, a judge will rule on one or another of the lawsuits. Let's look at the history of one of the plaintiffs.

In 1963, Bill Russell went to Jackson, Mississippi, and, in the face of the worst America had to offer, conducted integrated basketball clinics. In his way he helped redeem the distance between this country's promise and this country's reality. Bill Russell's been threatened by experts, boys, and now he's suing you. If I were you, I wouldn't screw with Bill Russell.

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

[hockeygod]

Before I made it: Johnny Oduya

Kevin Kennedy, The Hockey News, 2011-11-05

I was seven years old when I started playing hockey back in Sweden. I remember most of our games were at outdoor rinks. Some of them had a cover on top, but they weren’t fully enclosed. My brother also played hockey so I was always hanging around the rink and I actually don’t remember using any new equipment probably until I made it to junior. My gear was mostly hand-me-downs from my brother for sure. My mother was a single mom and having two boys playing hockey wasn’t the cheapest way to get some exercise. We’d buy some used stuff, I’d use some of my brother’s gear and we’d make it work.

I remember my mom would always stand in the corner of the rink to watch the game, never with the crowd of parents. Like any mom watching her son, she would get stressed out during games, but she never put much pressure on me.

I was never a star player growing up and never played with older guys or was moved up a level. I really took my time. When I was 12 years old, we actually came over to Canada for a tournament in Barrie, Ont., and that was definitely my most memorable moment from playing hockey when I was a kid. It was amazing to come over from Sweden and play against a bunch of Canadian teams.

I didn’t really play any other sports as a kid. Usually kids in Sweden play soccer, but I didn’t do any of that in an organized way. I think everybody I grew up with played soccer, but for me it was only hockey.

When I was going to school I worked in a cemetery during the summers. Not digging graves, but doing some landscaping type of stuff, for about three years. When I was 18, I came over to Canada to play junior and since then it’s only been hockey.

Being a seventh round pick, my path to the NHL was different from a lot of guys. In my draft year, I was playing junior in Quebec and at the end of the season I went back home to Sweden for the summer and got the word there that I had been drafted. At that point I was just happy somebody knew I existed. Unfortunately, it never really never worked out with Washington and it took another five years before I played my first NHL game.

When I got back, I was much more ready to play at the NHL level and I have no regrets. I’m not going to say the younger players get rushed in to the NHL these days, but there’s definitely more pressure to perform at a much younger age and I never really felt that pressure when I was just starting my hockey career. There’s a different path for everybody.

Throughout that time I never thought about a career outside of hockey. I mean, I obviously wanted to make it to the NHL, but there are other places you can make a career playing hockey so I don’t remember ever being really worried about it.

After training camp in 2006, I went down to the minors in Lowell and was there for only one day before getting the call to go back to New Jersey. I remember somebody from the office drove the four hours to get me to the rink and honestly I had no idea whether I was going to play.

When I stepped on the ice I remember thinking I was really doing it. This is real. The first game I remember not playing too much, which was kind of nice to get into it slowly. I remember my first shift I was partnered with Brian Rafalski, but the rest of the game was a blur.

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

[hockeygod]

Getting To Know: Joe Mullen

Mark Malinowski, The Hockey News, 2011-11-06

Status: NHL right winger from 1980-1997 with St. Louis, Calgary, Pittsburgh and Boston. Currently serves as an assistant coach for the Philadelphia Flyers. Joe Mullen scored 502 goals in his NHL career.

Ht: 5-foot-9 Wt: 180 pounds

DOB: Feb. 26, 1957 In: New York

First Hockey Memory: "Roller hockey, playing with my brothers in the schoolyard across the street from where we lived in New York – 49th Street between Ninth and Tenth."

Hockey Inspirations: "Well, New York Rangers. Watching them all those years, living up the street from Madison Square Garden. My dad worked there. My dad and my brothers playing roller hockey were inspirations."

Last Book Read: "I just read one Mr. Snider gave me. About a guy from Hell's Kitchen – a friend of his who started out in the mafia, became a producer and a pilot. Pretty cool book, it was called Mafia Summer.”

Nicknames: "Oh, you don't want to know that (laughs). I don't want to put them out there either."

First Car: "Oldsmobile Omega (blue)."

First Job: "Sweeping the streets in New York City."

Current Car: "I got a Toyota Venza (charcoal)."

Greatest Sports Moment: "Winning the Stanley Cup with Calgary. And two with Pittsburgh."

Most Painful Moment: "Probably the first time I tore up my knee. Not so much it hurt, but I knew I was done for the season. And that was painful to take. (How did it happen?) It was freaky. Just skating on, actually it was Bernie Nicholls, I was backchecking on him and I was going to go rub him out. And I just kind of fell. When I went to get up I could tell the knee was done. (Where?) It was in St. Louis."

Favorite Uniforms: "Probably the Calgary Flames."

Favorite Arena: "Edmonton's ice surface was always my favorite ice surface. Was it my favorite rink, probably not (laughs). But that was the best ice surface. I always enjoyed Minnesota. (Why?) I guess because I did pretty well there."

Closest Hockey Friends: "Probably my brother Brian."

Funniest Players Encountered: "Oh, Marc Bergevin. (A lot of people say him.) Did you catch his act? (No.) OK. Well, he'd bring a bag of props with him. When he got traded, he had two bags – his equipment bag and his bag of props. And just…he had wigs, he had everything. He's a character. And he'd come in and blast the music, he'd dance for the guys when we won. He was just a funny guy. Not because of that, but he's funny all the time. Pulling pranks. We had Krzysztof Oliwa and he pulled pranks on the guy like every 10 minutes. I mean, he was an easy target. Marc just wanted to prank the guy all the time."

Toughest Competitors Encountered: "Messier's gotta be in there for sure. I thought Ray Bourque was a pretty fierce competitor. Those two stick out in my mind."

Most Memorable Goal: "That's probably the first time I got 50 in Calgary against Winnipeg (1989). (Goalie?) I'm not exactly sure."

Strangest Game: "We had a snowstorm in New Jersey one year. Maybe 500 people in the building. And we had to play the game that night. The Devils team was late for the game. Of course, they were driving. And we had the bus and were there early. So we beat it and got there early. They just got stuck. It turned out to be really late. To play with 500 people in the stands is like practice. Plus, our goaltender (Doug Dadswell) – he was a rookie. It was his first game in the National Hockey League. And he had to play that game."

Last Vacation: "We probably went to Disney World. That was a few years back. With the kids."

Favorite Players To Watch: "Well, growing up, guys like Brad Park and Rod Gilbert and Vic Hadfield, that were obviously New York Rangers. Growing up right next to Madison Square Garden, I was definitely a Rangers fan. Then when I was playing, Rick Middleton was always one of my favorites. Mike Bossy. Current guys, right now, Sidney Crosby I really like to watch. Mostly the team I'm coaching. I really enjoy coaching, so, to watch our team every night and seeing improvement and seeing the guys do what you tell them is pretty cool."

Favorite Sport Outside Hockey: "I like playing golf, that's what I do during the summer."

Personality Qualities Most Admired: "Just happy-go-lucky people. Just love life, don't really have a bad thing to say about other people."

Career Accomplishment: Winner of three Stanley Cups, played in three All-Star Games (1989, 1990, 1994); Led NHL in playoff goals in 1986 (12) and 1989 (16); In 1,062 regular season NHL games, scored 502 goals, totaled 561 assists for 1,063 total points; In 143 NHL playoff games, scored 60 goals, 46 assists for 106 points; Signed as a free agent in 1979 by St. Louis out of Boston College.

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

[hockeygod]

What's Carey Price worth to the Montreal Canadiens?

Mike Boone, The Gazette, November 4, 2011

Psst! Wanna buy a top-tier National Hockey League goaltender?

It’s going to cost you. Let’s put on our math hats and figure out how much.

To celebrate his 29th birthday on Thursday, Pekka Rinne signed a seven-year, $49-million contract extension with the Nashville Predators. And with the ink barely dry, Rinne made 35 saves to shut out the Phoenix Coyotes.

That singular performance will have faded from memory when Gerry Johannson sits down with Pierre Gauthier, likely some time in the spring of 2012. But just as sure as there are dobros, pedal steels and pickup trucks in Nashville, the Rinne contract will come up in the course of conversations between Carey Price’s agent and the general manager of the Canadiens.

Whoever coined the expression “comparisons are odious” wasn’t a player agent. Let’s look at some comparables:

Drafted in the eighth round (258th overall) in 2004, Rinne got a late start, breaking into the NHL in 2008 when he was 26. His regular-season record is 101-58-20 with a goals-against average of 2.33 and a save percentage of .921. In playoff action, Rinne is 8-10 with a 2.60 GAA and a .908 save percentage.

Rinne’s salary in his rookie season was $725,000. He then signed a two-year deal worth $6.8 million, of which he’ll be paid $4 million this season.

Price – a/k/a The Franchise, The Franchise Saviour and Jesus Price – was a first-round draft choice (fifth overall) in 2005. Price played 41 games for the Canadiens in the 2007 season when he was 20 years old. Heading into his Friday night start in Ottawa, Price was 102-80-26 in the regular season with a GAA of 2.60 and a .915 save percentage. He is 8-15 in the postseason with a GAA of 2.84 and save percentage of .907.

Price’s entry-level contract included bonuses and paid him $2.2 million a year for three years. His current two-year deal is worth $5.5 million, and Price will be a restricted free agent if the Canadiens don’t re-sign him by July 1.

A few more comparables: Cam Ward’s six-year Carolina contract pays him $6.3 million per through the 2015-16 season. Pittsburgh’s Marc-André Fleury is signed through the 2014-15 season at $5.5 million per, and Jaroslav Halak’s four-year contract in St. Louis averages $3.75 million.

OK, have you entered all those dizzying numbers into your spreadsheet? Let’s play You Be the General Manager.

How much should the Canadiens offer Price? $30 million over five years?

Or perhaps you’d prefer to play You Be the Agent. The pay is probably better, and an agent doesn’t deal with the media. (Neither does Gauthier, but I digress.)

Should Johannson advise his client to go long-term on another contract with the Canadiens? Or should Price sign for two years, which would set him up to make stupendous coin as an unrestricted free agent (at least under the current collective bargaining agreement, which expires after this season)?

Tough decisions, but that’s why GMs and agents get the big bucks – which, unlike player salaries, are not public knowledge.

How did the gargoyles take over the cathedral at Hockey Night in Canada? Within the living memory of many Canadians, HNIC was a great national institution. Along with Radio-Canada’s Soirée du Hockey, the CBC Saturday broadcast was an occasion for fans across the country to gather around the electronic hearth for what we in Quebec call a truc rassembleur, a cultural phenomenon that bind this diverse country together.

Danny Gallivan, Rene Lecavalier, Foster and Bill Hewitt, Bob Cole … their rich, radio-trained voices still echo down the years. And between periods we had Frank Selke Jr., Brian McFarlane, the brilliant Dave Hodge.

Hockey Night in Canada was square, but it mirrored white-bread blandness in nine of the 10 provinces watching hockey. And the telecast did have Howie Meeker as its in-house eccentric.

If Meeker was the crazy uncle, sprung from the attic on Saturday nights, HNIC’s current star is the frothing grandfather released from the basement, like the Gimp in Pulp Fiction.

What’s left to be said about Don Cherry? Many hockey fans like him, some don’t. At least he’s provocative – and never dull.

What irks me most about HNIC is Cherry’s supporting cast. With the exception of Elliotte Friedman, Canada’s premier sports broadcast features a collection of on-air mediocrities that add nothing to a viewer’s enjoyment of the game.

Contrast Hockey Night in Canada with any National Football League telecast. The studio shows feature witty hosts (Chris Berman is the ne plus ultra), Super Bowl winning coaches (Tony Dungy, Bill Cowher, Mike Ditka, Jimmy Johnson) and former All-Pro players: Terry Bradshaw, Dan Marino, Shannon Sharpe, Tom Jackson, Howie Long, Boomer Esiason, Keyshawn Johnson, Rodney Harrison … the list goes on and on.

On HNIC we get Cherry, a coach who never won a Cup; Mike Milbury, arguably the most inept general manager in the history of the NHL; journeyman goaltenders Kelly Hrudey and Glen Healy, and the man I fear the diabolical MacLean is grooming to skate into the Corner when the Coach is clinically non compos mentis: P.J. Stock, who was a fourth-line scrapper for four NHL teams, amassing more than 500 minutes in penalties while scoring five goals in 243 games.

How many sleeps till TSN snatches the rights away?

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

[hockeygod]

BLUES RELIEVE PAYNE AS HEAD COACH, HIRE HITCHCOCK

THE CANADIAN PRESS, 11/6/2011

ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Blues have changed coaches after a disappointing 6-7 start, firing Davis Payne and hiring Ken Hitchcock to a contract through next season.

The 40-year-old Payne was the second-youngest coach in the NHL but got only one full season with St. Louis after being hired in January 2010.

The 59-year-old Hitchcock is 534-350-88-70, winning a Stanley Cup with Dallas in 1999-2000 and also coaching at Philadelphia and Columbus. Hitchcock was also an assistant coach for Canada's men's hockey team when it won gold in the 2002 and 2010 Winter Olympics.

He had been under contract with the Blue Jackets through the end of this season for US$1.3 million

The team called a news conference for Monday with Hitchcock and general manager Doug Armstrong, and said there would be no comment until then. Hitchcock will be on the bench for practice that afternoon.

The Blues begin a five-game homestand Tuesday night against Chicago.

Hitchcock and team president John Davidson didn't return telephone messages from The Associated Press.

The Blues were 67-55-15 under Payne. He was interim coach the remainder of the 2010-11 season after replacing Andy Murray and the interim tag was removed after the Blues finished 23-15-4.

Payne coached two seasons for the Blues' affiliate in the AHL before getting promoted.

The Blues were optimistic about making the playoffs for only the second time in seven seasons after adding veterans Jason Arnott, Jamie Langenbrunner and Scott Nichol to a base of young talent.

Goalie Jaroslav Halak in particular has struggled with a 1-6 record, while backup Brian Elliott is 5-1. Forward Chris Stewart is off to a slow start with three points.

St. Louis lost four of its first six, then seemed to right itself with a three-game winning streak that included victories at Vancouver and Philadelphia but has dropped three of the last four.

Hitchcock's teams have won six division titles and topped 100 points eight times. He inherits a team expected to contend for a playoff spot after missing the post-season five of the previous six seasons.

Since being fired by the Blue Jackets in February 2010, Hitchcock coached Canada at the IIHF World Hockey Championship earlier this year. Hitchcock has worked with seven national teams for Canada, including the 2008 world championship squad that won the silver medal in Quebec City.

Hitchcock and Armstrong also have plenty of history together. Armstrong was GM with Dallas when Hitchcock coached there, was an assistant GM with Canada at the 2010 Olympics and also worked with Hitchcock at the 2008 world championship.

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

[hockeygod]

Hockey: A young man’s game

DAVID SHOALTS, Globe and Mail, Nov. 06 2011

Scoring is down slightly in the NHL – an average of 5.22 goals a game were scored entering the NHL’s schedule Sunday compared to 5.46 for all of last season – but the surprising thing is who is doing the scoring.

The youngsters are taking over the offence this season, as three of the top five and six of the top 15 scorers were 25 or younger. At the top of the list is Toronto Maple Leafs winger Phil Kessel, 24, followed by Claude Giroux, 23, whose rapid development made the Philadelphia Flyers feel comfortable trading star centres Mike Richards and Jeff Carter last summer.

A look at the scoring statistics for individual NHL teams is even more startling. The leading point-producer on 13 of the league’s 30 teams is 25 or younger. Teenagers such as Jeff Skinner (Carolina Hurricanes), Tyler Seguin (Boston Bruins) and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (Edmonton Oilers) dot the lists.

Hockey experts say this is a trend, not one or two bumper crops of great prospects moving through the system. The youngsters at the top of today’s scoring parade are not likely to fade.

“You’re getting 20-, 21-year-olds stepping up now and doing more things,” Winnipeg Jets head coach Claude Noel said. “They are more confident in their abilities.

“When you look at players now, when they’re 21 years old some of them have two, three years of [NHL] experience and they’re good players in the league. Before, the maturity [age] used to be 27. Now it’s 21, 22.”

Both Noel and Tim Bernhardt, whose playing and scouting career in the NHL goes back 30 years, say the improvement of coaching and training techniques in minor and junior hockey is driving the youth movement. So is the dedication of hockey parents and coaches, who send their children to hockey schools, put them in summer leagues and hire nutritionists and personal trainers.

“Before, when you were 20, you had so much to learn about becoming a pro, the training and conditioning it took,” Bernhardt said. “Now, the process has been sped up. Junior hockey is now like a miniature NHL and midget hockey is crazy. These kids have personal trainers and they’re hitting full stride at 21, 22.”

“You go into any minor-league rink, like the American Hockey League, see the facilities and they’re better than any NHL rink was 20 years ago. It’s the same in junior.”

Several of these precocious young men go head-to-head this week and the details are in the Five Games To Watch list.

Despite the payoff for the NHL, Bernhardt is ambivalent about the single-minded preparation for the big leagues among minor hockey players. The vast majority of parents and players spending thousands of dollars in the hope of making the NHL will see their dreams go unfulfilled.

“I was talking about this to someone a while ago and we both said we had a lot more fun when we were younger,” Bernhardt said. “You see these kids now, they’re 18 years old, they can’t eat hamburgers, can’t go have a beer. Most of them aren’t going to make it and they miss out on a lot of stuff.”

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

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