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Bell's NHL, NFL mobile streaming deals breach CRTC rules

CBC News, Dec 12, 2011

Deals that make Bell Mobility customers the only wireless users able to stream National Hockey League and National Football League games on their mobile devices are breaking Canadian broadcast rules, the CRTC says.

"Canadians shouldn't be forced to subscribe to a wireless service from a specific company to access their favourite content," said Konrad von Finckenstein, chair of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission in a news release Monday announcing the decision.

Telus wanted to negotiate with Bell for the rights to NHL games and video highlights and NFL prime-time and playoff games, as well as NFL Network programming, for its own mobile customers.

It filed a complaint with the CRTC in January after negotiations were unsuccessful.

According to Michael Hennessy, senior vice president of regulatory and government affairs for Telus, Bell told Telus that it didn't have the right to sub-license the content and therefore could not negotiate.

The CRTC found that Bell Mobility's exclusive deals gave the company a "significant competitive advantage" and subjected Telus to an "undue disadvantage," violating 2009 rules that prohibit "undue preference" when dealing with internet or mobile content.

The commission has ordered Bell to file a report within 30 days explaining how it will ensure Telus has access to the NHL and NFL content "at reasonable terms."

Bell said Monday that it is studying the decision and can't comment on how it will move forward.

However, the company maintained that it doesn't have the right to sub-license or re-sell the NHL and NFL content.

"Bell does not control how the major leagues sell their rights in Canada," the company said in a statement. "The CRTC is imposing itself directly in how independent and in this case international content owners sell their content rights in Canada. We don’t have the ability to act on the CRTC’s behalf in the way they’re demanding."

However, Hennessy questioned whether that was true.

"All they have to do is get the permission of the content owner," he said. "The sports leagues are probably more than open to obeying whatever the laws of Canada are."

The CRTC ruled in September that companies such as Bell with rights to certain TV content must offer those rights to competitors at a reasonable price if the competitors want to broadcast content on mobile devices.

At that time, it proposed a code of conduct banning "anti-competitive behaviour" such as charging an "unreasonable rate," requiring the buyer to have minimum revenue or market penetration levels, or requiring the buyer to buy other programs in order to get the content that they want.

That ruling wasn't referenced in the latest decision because the complaint was filed before the ruling was made.

Companies are still allowed to offer exclusive programming to their internet or mobile customers if that content was produced specifically for the internet or a mobile device, such as behind-the scenes video clips.

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

[hockeygod]

Big difference this time around

Mark Spector, Sportsnet.ca, December 9, 2011

EDMONTON — As the National Hockey League governors reformatted their alignment and playoff system in California earlier this week, there were pockets across the Canadian prairies and the U.S. Northwest where hockey people were saying, "Didn’t we already go down this road?"

In fact, they have. The Western Hockey League long ago switched from a conference-based, one-through-eight playoff system to a divisional format where the postseason began with a traditional bus-ride rivalry. Exactly what the NHL has done.

That was back in the 2000-01 season. The difference was, years later the WHL went back.

"I remember the discussion being very similar to what the National Hockey League has gone through. We went to four divisions from an east-west conference (format) for the 2000-01 seasons," said WHL commissioner Ron Robison. "For six seasons, in the first round teams played within their divisions."

The Western League only stayed inside its division for one round. The NHL has divided into four conferences and plans to play the first two rounds within them, so they may declare four conference champs each season.

But what eventually spelled the demise of that format in junior hockey was the lack of parity. Any money made by lesser ravel in Round 1, anything gained by forging better rivalries with the team up the highway, was overshadowed by the fact teams with fewer points were making the playoffs in one division than a better team in another one.

"The big reason (for was original switch) was the concern over first-round playoff matchups and low attendance," began Maple Leafs amateur scout Roy Stasiuk, the general manager of the Lethbridge Hurricanes from 2005 to 2009. "Rivalries were going to help interest among fans. Rather than Moose Jaw playing Kootenay, they could end up playing Regina, Saskatoon or Prince Albert."

But something went wrong.

In Stasiuk’s first year as GM, the Hurricanes made the playoffs in the Central Division with 63 points. The next season Lethbridge had 71 points and missed, despite having more points than the third- and fourth-place teams in the Eastern Division. Prince Albert and Swift Current had fewer points in their weaker division, but they were in and Lethbridge was out.

"That's what went wrong," Stasiuk said. "Your performance in the regular season didn't bear out, because of the division setup."

"You didn’t travel as much, and it built better rivalries within the division," Robison said. But, he admits, the owners couldn’t get over the fact that the best eight teams weren’t making the playoffs.

Smaller, mostly five-team divisions in the WHL meant you only had to better than one team to make playoffs. And that’s where the difference begins between the two leagues.

In the NHL, seven- and eight-team conferences ensure there will be no playoff berth assured for one team just because the one below it in the standings is a disaster. And that can happen in junior hockey, when a team sells out one year to make the Memorial Cup and falls quite a distance the next.

"There is more parity in the NHL because of the salary cap," Stasiuk said.

And if nothing else, playing two rounds within the conference should improve the level of postseason play simply due to putting less wear and tear on the players. Plus, during the regular season there is a lot more to be gained by NHL teams (TV start times) than there was in the WHL.

"The NHL put competitiveness aside for the moment, and said, 'Let’s do what’s best for the industry,' " said Robison, who was surprised to see the NHL stick with the format through two rounds, not just one.

"I don't think there is (a perfect system)," he admits.

We like the new NHL system. But the minute somebody gets "Lethbridged," you know the howling is going to begin.

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

[hockeygod]

Campbell: Leafs sale means Toronto one step closer to second NHL team

Ken Campbell, The Hockey News, 2011-12-12

The first impression the new owners of the Toronto Maple Leafs made on you probably depends upon which target audience you comprise. If you’re a member of the business or investment community, they likely hit a tape-measure home run. This deal will undoubtedly open the taps even more at the Air Canada Centre and keep the money flowing.

But if you’re a fan, there was nothing in their initial address that would make you any more optimistic about a championship than you were prior to the announcement. Sure, these guys would love to win a Stanley Cup and if that’s a byproduct of their ownership, all the better. But let’s not kid ourselves, their primary concern is with getting their product on as many screens as possible, regardless of how good or bad it is.

Which brings us to the next thing that is crystal clear when it comes to the hockey scene in Toronto. And that is, any opposition to a second NHL team in Canada’s largest city evaporated before the ink was dry on the blood vow Canada’s two biggest communications conglomerates took when they spent $1.32 billion on 75 percent of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.

And the importance of this cannot be overstated. When MLSE was taken over by BCE and Rogers, it essentially paved the way for the Phoenix Coyotes to move to the Greater Toronto Area as early as this summer, right around the time the Leafs sale gets approved by the NHL’s board of governors. Provided the group that is proposing to build a 20,000-seat arena in Markham (http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/43120-Campbell-Construction-of-NHLsized-arena-to-be-proposed-in-Southern-Ontario.html) can get its shovels in the ground by then, the GTA will almost certainly emerge as the top contender to get the Coyotes.

Forget Quebec City for now. No owner, no clear vision for a new rink and exactly who is going to pay to have it built, which will likely scuttle its bid. There’s little chance Quebec will have all those details ironed out by the spring, when the league has to either have the Coyotes sold or decide whether it wants to continue to prop them up. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has already indicated the league has no appetite to do that and even pointed to the fact the deal to move the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg wasn’t made until last May. That leaves the second Toronto team, which will likely be welcomed into the NHL by open, unanimous arms now that the team has been released from the clutches of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

The Toronto/Markham group, led by Bauer chairman Graeme Roustan and Toronto billionaire developer Rudy Bratty, has its financing and building site in place, has gone through the design process and is well on its way to getting local approval to start building early in 2012.

There’s a good chance a Toronto franchise would have received approval from the NHL’s board of governors, anyway, but there was always the sticking point concerning the Maple Leafs and their belief they held a veto over any other team entering their territory, a belief supported by the league’s own constitution. But the NHL was just as adamant that no such veto ever existed and they were confident they were on solid legal ground to place a second team in Toronto despite the objections of arguably its most powerful franchise.

Well, all those matters are gone now. The fact is, both Rogers and BCE will welcome another NHL team into the Toronto market, so much so that it wouldn’t be a surprise to see another Bell Centre or Rogers Arena in the NHL once the new Markham arena is completed. Because as we already mentioned, content is king for these two companies and anything that can supply them with more of that will be eagerly accepted.

You can imagine NHL commissioner Gary Bettman would have wanted to have a unanimous vote on this one, and now he’ll get it. That was never going to come as long as the teachers’ pension plan owned the Leafs, because preserving their monopoly was what provided the best return on the investment for their members.

But with Rogers and BCE, having another outlet to display content will more than make up for the losses they’ll incur by losing their monopoly over the NHL in the biggest, most underserviced hockey market in the world. A new competing building will likely scoop a couple of concert dates from them and their merchandising sales might take a slight hit, but those losses will pale in comparison to the money they could potentially make by carrying an additional Canadian NHL team in the new four-screen universe.

No building for two years, you say? That’s right, but there is speculation the new franchise would try to use Copps Coliseum for two years while the new arena is being built. As long as the league can see by the spring this new building is going to be a reality, that’s an obstacle that can be overcome. And the NHL’s recent realignment will make it easy to move the Coyotes into the same conference as the Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Ottawa Senators, Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning.

Toronto is closer to getting its second NHL team than it ever has been before. And prospects for that happening took an enormous leap forward when the Maple Leafs were sold last week.

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

[hockeygod]

THE HARDY BOYS THE FINAL CHAPTER. . .
IN WHICH WE PLUMB THE MYSTERY BEHIND THE WILDLY SUCCESSFUL KIDS' NOVELS. AND BRING A GHOST TO LIFE

Gene Weingarten, Washington Post Staff Writer, August 9, 1998

I recently rediscovered my youth. It made me sneeze.

It lay unremembered at the top of a tall bookcase: 15 vintage Hardy Boys novels by Franklin W. Dixon. In getting them down I took a faceful of dust and beetle carapaces.

I carried the books to my favorite rocking chair, beside my favorite lamp, and reverently broke them open to revisit the literature that had inspired in me a lifelong love of language. The pages were as thick as a shirt collar and ochered with age. They smelled the way old books smell, faintly perfumed, quaintly mysterious, like the lining of Great-Grandma's alligator handbag out in the steamer trunk. I began to read.

Pretty soon a new smell entered the room.

The Hardy Boys stank.

When a group of literati last month published a list of the hundred greatest English-language novels of the 20th century, lionizing "Ulysses" and "The Great Gatsby" and "The Sun Also Rises," I was privately disappointed they had not included "The Missing Chums." I remembered "The Missing Chums" as the pinnacle of human achievement, a meticulously crafted work of American fiction in which Frank and Joe Hardy, the sons of famed sleuth Fenton Hardy, braved choppy seas and grizzled thugs to rescue their kidnapped friends. I had first read it in a backyard hammock strung between sycamore trees during the summer of my 12th year.

Now, through my bifocals, I again confronted "The Missing Chums." Here is how it begins:

"You certainly ought to have a dandy trip."

"I'll say we will, Frank! We sure wish you could come along!"

Frank Hardy grinned ruefully and shook his head. . . .

"Just think of it!" said Chet Morton, the other speaker. "A whole week motorboating along the coast. We're the lucky boys, eh Biff?"

"You bet we're lucky!"

"It won't be the same without the Hardy Boys," returned Chet.

Dispiritedly, I leafed through other volumes. They all read the same. The dialogue is as wooden as an Eberhard Faber, the characters as thin as a sneer, the plots as forced as a laugh at the boss's joke, the style as overwrought as this sentence. Adjectives are flogged to within an inch of their lives: "Frank was electrified with astonishment." Drama is milked dry, until the teat is sore and bleeding: "The Hardy boys were tense with a realization of their peril." Seventeen words seldom suffice when 71 will do:

"Mrs. Hardy viewed their passion for detective work with considerable apprehension, preferring that they plan to go to a university and direct their energies toward entering one of the professions; but the success of the lads had been so marked in the cases on which they had been engaged that she had by now almost resigned herself to seeing them destined for careers as private detectives when they should grow older."

Physical descriptions are so perfunctory that the characters practically disappear. In 15 volumes we learn little more than this about 16-year-old Frank: He is dark-haired. And this about 15-year-old Joe: He is blond.

These may be the worst books ever written.

I felt betrayed. Or, as Franklin W. Dixon might have said: I thought to myself, "Golly," assailed as I was in that moment by a dismayingly uncomfortable feeling that I had been jolted with an unfairness that was profoundly extreme.

Thomas Wolfe warned: You can't go home again.

But shouldn't you be able to saunter past the old neighborhood without throwing up?

The Hardy Boys are still published — all the old titles and dozens of new ones. They sell by the millions, still troweling gluey prose into the brains of America's preadolescent boys.

It is too late for me, but what of them?

I felt I had to do something.

Writing is an exercise in power. You wield the words, shape events. You are God. You can make anything happen. You are bound by no laws but your own.

And so I decided to find Franklin W. Dixon. And kill him.

Drat. He's already dead.

In one sense, Franklin W. Dixon never existed. Franklin W. Dixon was a "house name," owned by a company called the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which created and published the original Hardy Boys. From 1927 through 1946 each Hardy Boys book was secretly written by a man named Leslie McFarlane.

I found myself, quite literally, chasing a ghost.

I caught up with him on the telephone, in the person of the ghostwriter's daughter, Norah Perez of Youngstown, N.Y. Perez is an accomplished novelist. Her father died in 1977.

Recently, Perez leafed through some old Hardy Boys books. "I was almost shocked," she said with a laugh. "I thought, omigod. They are not great."

So her father was a hack?

"My father," she said, "was a literate, sophisticated, erudite man."

He was?

He loved Dickens, she said. "He was a great Joycean."

He was?

"He corresponded with F. Scott Fitzgerald. He had aspirations to be that kind of writer."

She seemed uncertain where to go with this. Finally:

"He hated the Hardy Boys."

It turns out the story of the Hardy Boys — call it their Final Chapter — isn't about the worst writer who ever lived, not by a long shot. It is about a good writer who wrote some bad books, and if you wonder why that happened, as I did, then you are likely not very old and not very wise. Sometimes homely things are done for the best reasons in the world, and thus achieve a beauty of their own.

Leslie McFarlane kept voluminous diaries. His family has them. He wrote in fountain pen, in elegant strokes that squirreled up a little when he was touched by despair or drink. In these diaries, "The Hardy Boys" is seldom mentioned by name, as though he cannot bear to speak it aloud. He calls the books "the juveniles." At the time McFarlane was living in northern Ontario with a wife and infant children, attempting to make a living as a freelance fiction writer.

Nov. 12, 1932: "Not a nickel in the world and nothing in sight. Am simply desperate with anxiety. . . . What's to become of us this winter? I don't know. It looks black."

Jan. 23, 1933: "Worked at the juvenile book. The plot is so ridiculous that I am constantly held up trying to work a little logic into it. Even fairy tales should be logical."

Jan. 26, 1933: "Whacked away at the accursed book."

June 9, 1933: "Tried to get at the juvenile again today but the ghastly job appalls me."

Jan. 26, 1934: "Stratemeyer sent along the advance so I was able to pay part of the grocery bill and get a load of dry wood."

Finally:

"Stratemeyer wants me to do another book. . . . I always said I would never do another of the cursed things but the offer always comes when we need cash. I said I would do it but asked for more than $85, a disgraceful price for 45,000 words."

He got no raise.

He did the book.

And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another.

"Writing is easy," said the author Gene Fowler. "All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."

Writing, particularly fiction writing, is an act of quiet terror. You are alone all at once with your genius and your ineptitude, and your errors are as public as possible. To be a writer of fiction requires extreme self-discipline and extreme self-confidence, and many of the people drawn to writing have neither. It can be a recipe for dismal failure.

Writing is also, financially, a crap-shoot. Always has been. Sometimes, good writers starve. Sometimes, dreadful writers succeed. John Grisham's sentences thud and crepitate all over the page, and he has become a literary tycoon. Edgar Allan Poe nearly starved.

Mostly, you become a writer not because you want to get rich or famous, but because you have to write; because there is something inside that must come out. When a baby is to be born, she is born.

Leslie McFarlane, a 5-foot-4 Irishman with mischievous eyes, grew up in a northern Ontario mining town and never got past high school. He had to write. He knew it from childhood. He served his apprenticeship at a succession of small, gritty daily newspapers. At his first, the Cobalt (Ont.) Nugget, he received his first lesson in journalism from grizzled news editor Dan Cushing:

"Spell the names right. Get the addresses right. Don't use the word very' in a sentence."

Thus schooled, McFarlane was off to be a reporter.

As Cushing might say, the kid had something.

Once, at the Sudbury Star, he covered a fire that consumed the town he grew up in:

"A leering tornado of flame from the southwest roared down through a half mile of underbrush upon the town of Haileybury basking sleepily in the September sunlight on the shore of Lake Temiskaming early Wednesday afternoon, ate its way across the railway tracks and then, fanned by a 60-mile-an-hour gale, ripped its way to the water's edge, scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast."

Later, as an old man, in his memoirs, McFarlane would recall this fire. His prose had matured considerably:

"Paul Cobbold had been the local weatherman. Every morning, for years, I had watched him emerge from a doorway like some quaint figure in a mechanical clock, to read his instruments and jot down the figures in his little notebook. My mother said she had last seen him there in the smoke and wind when the fire was beginning to ravage the town. Paul and his frail little wife were victims of the fire. Next door another Englishman, the gloomy, taciturn Mr. Elphik, whom no one knew very well, was a charred skeleton in the garden of the home he had refused to leave."

But small-town newspapering seldom sees excitement like that. Mostly it sees fender-benders and sewage hearings and the petty maneuverings of beady-eyed local politics. After a time McFarlane was bored. He dreamed of writing fiction. He began noodling at his desk, after deadline. Once he sent off a short story to the magazine Smart Set, edited by the great H.L. Mencken. It was about a young man who one day runs into his long-lost sister. Reunion by coincidence is an ancient device, as old as Shakespeare. But McFarlane added a wicked twist: They meet in a whorehouse.

Unfortunately, McFarlane had never been to a whorehouse. He may well have been a virgin. The most gifted of writers — the giants of literature — can bring to their work a maturity of thought and an understanding of human nature that transcends their callowness. T.S. Eliot wrote "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" — perhaps the greatest exposition ever on the anguish of growing old — at the age of 26. There are few Eliots, and McFarlane was surely not one of them. Mencken rejected the manuscript. Sent it back with a one-word notation:

"Naive — HLM."

McFarlane would keep this note for 50 years.

He became desperate to hone his fiction skills, but he had no time. He was newspapering in Canada and then in Springfield, Mass., for 15 hours at a stretch.

One day he answered an ad from the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a fabulously successful enterprise that wrote children's books through a conveyor-belt production process. The New York syndicate made the strangest offer: Would McFarlane like to write books for youths based on plot outlines Stratemeyer would supply? He would be paid by the book, and have no copyright to the material. In fact, he could never reveal his authorship, under penalty of returning his payments. The company shipped him samples of some books about a character named Dave Fearless — dreadful, thickheaded novels with implausible plots and preposterous narrative.

McFarlane cheerfully agreed. Years later, in his memoirs, he would observe:

"To write a chapter of a book without having to worry about character, action or plot would call for little more than the ability to hit the keys of a typewriter. . . . They were straightforward, cheap paperbacks for a public that would neither read nor relish anything better. . . . And besides, I would be under no obligation to read the stuff. I would merely have to write it."

This was the cockiness of youth; the swagger of a young man with big plans and no horizons. He could quit his newspaper job, devote all his time to fiction.

And so he did.

The first Hardy Boys novel, "The Tower Treasure," was published in 1927. It begins with the boys on motorcycles, riding side by side, speeding along a shore road, having a conversation:

"After the help we gave Dad on that forgery case, I guess he'll begin to think we could be detectives when we grow up."

"Why shouldn't we? Isn't he one of the most famous detectives in the country? And aren't we his sons?"

Just how they could be having this ludicrous discussion over the roar of two motorcycles is never quite explained.

The fact is, McFarlane whipped off this passage in minutes, and it was just dandy with the syndicate.

It was dandy with him, too. The Hardy Boys were to be a brief, inconsequential meal ticket. They would take a few days apiece; he would expend no intellectual energy on them, and he would use the pay to underwrite more serious work. He would launch a family and a writing career, and in time be recognized as a man of letters.

Briefly, things went swell. And then came 1929. A bad time to be a writer without a steady paycheck.

"We had no car. We had no coal. My mother always had food on the table, but sometimes it was spaghetti with tomato juice on it."

This is Brian McFarlane, Leslie McFarlane's son. Brian McFarlane would grow up to be a hockey player, and later, a sports broadcaster and prolific writer of books about hockey. He is a member of the Canadian Hockey Hall of Fame.

In his father's diary there is an entry from the early 1930s. He took baby Brian for a walk, but had to return. Brian's only shoes had fallen apart. Another entry: He had to mail out a manuscript, but he had no money, so he borrowed 10 cents from Brian's piggy bank.

Another entry: "We are hoping for some money in time to go to the dance Friday night. It is humiliating to be so hard up."

McFarlane was writing good fiction, but few places were buying. He had only one steady patron, a syndicate that was paying him peanuts to write according to a formula it supplied.

There were children's books at the time written with eloquence — Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie," for example — but the Stratemeyer editors weren't interested in that, certainly not willing to pay enough to achieve it. They wanted simple and dumb.

In the early volumes, McFarlane gamely tried invention. As a foil for the ingenious Hardy Boys, he created two stumblebum local police officers, Chief Collig and Deputy Smuff, who dithered and blundered and misinterpreted clue after clue. It was a technique used by detective writers from Conan Doyle to Christie. But the Stratemeyer Syndicate was not amused. This was fostering a disrespect for authority, it said. McFarlane was ordered, in subsequent volumes, to give the cops a brain.

The message was clear. These were not McFarlane's books. They belonged to men named Edward Stratemeyer, who wanted bilge, and Franklin W. Dixon, who did not exist.

Around this time, McFarlane received a letter from Stratemeyer, reminding him that he might never disclose to anyone his role as ghostwriter of the Hardy Boys. McFarlane was actually relieved. He had been contemplating writing a letter of his own, asking that they never disclose his identity, either.

Nineteen thirty-one. Nineteen thirty-two. Nineteen thirty-three. Norah was born. Now there were three children, and no coal, and precious little food.

The Ghost was chained to his creation.

The best teacher I ever had taught 10th-grade English. He made books breathe and tremble. When he gave us an essay exam, he would write the question on the blackboard, and then sit down at his desk, infuriatingly, and wait. For 10 minutes, he would not distribute any paper. It forced us to think before we wrote.

He disdained Cliffs Notes and Monarch Notes, those crib-sheet synopses you could buy for a few bucks. They were intellectually bankrupt, he said. Tools of inferior minds.

He looked like a tormented artist. He had a hunted air about him. He dressed well, but often in the same suit, and sometimes it wanted a pressing. He was a talented, driven young man earning a small public school paycheck.

As final exams approached, I found myself swamped with no time to read. We were studying "Gulliver's Travels." Guiltily, I bought the Monarch Notes.

They were written by my teacher.

Sometimes, you do what you have to do.

To see Leslie McFarlane's talent, you need only read "The Ghost of the Hardy Boys," his autobiography published by Methuen Press in 1976, shortly before his death. It sold only a few thousand copies.

"The Ghost of the Hardy Boys" is an elegant book, full of charm and pathos and whimsy. The writing is restrained, the characterizations deep and rich, the humor nuanced.

McFarlane reveals that he was a poor student who barely survived high school math. He passed, he writes dryly, only "by a process of elimination, like a tapeworm."

He fell in love with newspapers as a boy when he walked into the offices of the Daily Haileyburian: "Every place of employment has its own odor of sanctity. At the sawmill you sniffed fresh pine boards and the wet bark of trees. . . . The movie theater had its own special fragrance of celluloid and collodion and the blonde cashier's eau de lilac. But the composing room of the Haileyburian was rich with the smell of Ink!"

His favorite editor was a curmudgeon named Beckett. One day, Beckett tried to stamp out a burning wastebasket, and got his foot caught. McFarlane writes:

"Laughing uproariously, Beckett lunged around the office with one leg of his pants on fire, trying to kick himself free. Every kick sent blazing papers in all directions. The society editor screamed and bent over to pick up one of the papers. If you have never seen a blonde society editor kicked in the ass by a flaming wastebasket, you have missed one of the rare experiences of journalism."

And, finally, Leslie McFarlane wrote of the Depression:

"There was so much that was demeaning about the Depression, such wreckage of hopes, plans, careers and human pride . . . if a family became penniless, there was merely relief' in dribs and drabs of food and fuel, grudgingly dispensed by a municipality that couldn't collect its taxes. And there was an old stigma attached to these bounties, the stigma of failure. Proud people would starve before they would let their plight become known."

I envisioned the young Leslie McFarlane, a fine writer, hunched over his typewriter, babies at his feet, desperate for the money to buy the coal to stoke the furnace to survive another day, haunted by fear, humiliated by his failure, guilty over his gall at subjecting the people he loved to the reckless dream he chased, banging out another idiotic novel for a plutocrat who abused him.

If you are a bad writer, then writing poorly must be no big deal.

But if you are a good writer, writing poorly must be hell. You must die a little with every word.

From the diaries, Saturday, Dec. 27, 1931:

"Did some more work on the juvenile. . . . It is dull stuff. . . . I will make a New Year's resolution never to do another if I can help it."

As he hacked away, year after year, anonymously becoming one of the most widely published writers in history, McFarlane held on to his dignity. He maintained a correspondence with great writers of his day, offering his opinions robustly. Norah Perez has a copy of a handwritten letter written to her father in 1938 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was responding to a letter from McFarlane in which he apparently had savaged "Tender Is the Night." Fitzgerald thanked McFarlane for his honesty:

"One of the ghastly aspects of my gloom was a horrible feeling that I wasn't being read. And I'd rather have a sharp criticism of my pet child Tender Is the Night such as yours was, than the feeling of pouring out endless words to fall upon {few} ears. I rather think I am done as a writer — maybe not, of course. The fact that I can still write a vivid metaphor or solve a technical problem with some suavity wouldn't be an indicator one way or another."

Fitzgerald was as skillful, and as rewarded, as any writer of his time. He died two years later, deeply doubting his talents.

For five years after the Depression hit, during the worst years of doubt and shame, Leslie McFarlane hit the bottle. Drink is the bane of the writer at war with himself, and it nearly destroyed this one. His wife, Amy, a woman of uncommon strength, threatened to leave him.

This is not a chapter of his life that McFarlane has chosen to chronicle in his memoirs. His son, Brian, reveals it. His father, he says, was endangering his life and his family.

A writer can be the most selfish person on Earth — demanding silence, expecting adulation, shamelessly mining the privacy of those around him for literary material. McFarlane did all that. He was no hero. But at his center lay something heroically unselfish. It showed up in the Hardy Boys — not on the pages themselves, but in the simple fact that he was writing them at all. McFarlane was willing to demean himself and, as he saw it, to betray his craft, in order to put food on the table.

And now he faced the loss of his family. The end was in sight, and he knew it.

So McFarlane took the page out of the typewriter, crumpled it up, and wrote a new end. Good writers know when to do that.

He left home for a few weeks and went to a clinic in Hamilton, Ontario. Got himself straight. And never was drunk again.

McFarlane finally unchained himself from the Hardy Boys in 1946; the syndicate didn't care. It found another hungry writer to continue the series. To date, there are more than 100 Hardy Boys mysteries, and they are still going strong. In 1959, many of the old Hardy Boy books were redone, streamlined, modernized, sterilized. McFarlane was never consulted, but he didn't mind. Nor did he feel ripped off by their fantastic success. A deal is a deal, he always said. He agreed to it, so he couldn't complain.

McFarlane found a new niche. Briefly, he was fiction editor of Maclean's magazine. He produced acclaimed documentary films, wrote an excellent hockey novel ("McGonigle Scores!") and TV scripts for "Bonanza" and "The U.S. Steel Hour." He never made a hell of a lot of money, but he made a living, and he did it the way he wanted.

Always, he encouraged his children to write, and Norah Perez credits her father's love and support for her successful career.

"In your writings," he wrote her in a letter in 1973, "don't ever give way to feelings of inadequacy or doubts. . . ."

In another letter: "It occurs to me that Shakespeare must have been the happiest man who ever lived. Imagine being able to set down really marvelous lines every day of one's writing life and being able to say: There now. That, by God, is really good.' "

Shortly before he died in 1977 of complications from diabetes, he spoke with Norah. He had been hallucinating, and when he came out of it he was afraid. Not of death, but of history.

He told her he feared he would be remembered only for the accursed Hardy Boys.

Well, here they are. The accursed Hardy Boys. Volumes 1 through 21. The official Canon.

I read them again, for the first time.

Yes, the writing is pedestrian. Words are misused and overused. Teenagers speak in a language so dated it likely never existed. "What the dickens!?!" says Frank. "That fellow is certainly a queer stick," says Joe. Between Pages 9 and 17 in "Hunting for Hidden Gold" a storm "redoubles" its "fury" four times. Cliches abound. Hearts pound with excitement. People breathe sighs of relief.

I can see McFarlane at the typewriter, numbed stupid by the strictures under which he wrote.

Still, I couldn't help but notice that virtually nowhere in these books does one find the word "very."

And in some odd way, I found myself reluctantly captivated by these idiotic coincidence-driven plots. They do move along nicely. Every chapter ends with a cliffhanger.

McFarlane made you turn the page.

And as you turn, you notice something else. After page upon page of dreary writing, there is an all-too-brief moment in which the writer seems suddenly engaged. You stumble on a passage of unmistakable quality. It often occurs at the appearance of Gertrude, the Hardy Boys' cantankerous maiden aunt. McFarlane liked Gertrude.

Here she is described as "an elderly, crotchety lady of certain temper and uncertain years." That's nice.

And here, from "The Missing Chums," is Gertrude's debut: "Frank rushed to the window in time to see Aunt Gertrude, attired in voluminous garments of a fashion dating back at least a decade, laboriously emerging from the taxicab. She was a large woman with a strident voice, and the Hardy boys could hear her vigorously disputing the amount of the fare. This was a matter of principle with Aunt Gertrude, who always argued with taxi drivers as a matter of course, it being her firm conviction that they were unanimously in a conspiracy to overcharge her and defraud her."

If you are a good writer, you cannot hide it forever, no matter how hard you try. It's like trying to stifle a sneeze.

Gertrude enters the house and learns that Frank and Joe are planning on going out on their boat to search for Biff and Chet, who are missing. She lectures the Hardy boys' mother:

"I suppose they were out on a boat trip, too. I knew it! And now they're lost. That's what happens when you let children go out in boats. They get lost. Or drowned. And now you would let these two youngsters go out in a boat, too. And I suppose in a few days some of their chums would have to go out in a boat to look for them. They'd get lost, too. And then some more little boys would go out to look for them. And they'd get lost. By the end of the summer there wouldn't be a boy left in Bayport. Not that it would be much of a loss."

There, now. That, by God, is really good.

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

[hockeygod]

L.A. Kings fire coach Terry Murray after slow start to season

GREG BEACHAM, The Associated Press, Dec. 12, 2011

The Los Angeles Kings fired coach Terry Murray on Monday after a slow start to a season of high expectations.

Murray was replaced by assistant coach John Stevens, who will be the Kings' interim head coach when they open a four-game road trip Tuesday in Boston.

Murray was behind the long-struggling Kings' bench for their best moments in the past decade, leading Los Angeles to consecutive playoff appearances after an eight-year absence.

He has the highest winning percentage (.560) of any coach in Los Angeles franchise history, but the Kings lost both of their first-round playoff series while under his direction.

Murray clearly has struggled to reach his current club, which is mired in mediocrity after entertaining hopes of contending for the Stanley Cup. Los Angeles has lost four consecutive games to drop to 13-12-4, culminating in a lifeless effort in a 2-1 home loss to Dallas last Saturday.

The Kings have sunk to 11th place in the Western Conference standings while managing just 65 goals, second-fewest in the NHL. Despite adding forwards Mike Richards and Simon Gagne in the off-season, Los Angeles is scoring an NHL-worst 2.24 goals per game, including just 13 in its last eight games.

Murray is the fifth coach to be fired already this season in the always-impatient NHL. He joins St. Louis's Davis Payne, Carolina's Paul Maurice, Washington's Bruce Boudreau and Anaheim's Randy Carlyle, who was replaced by Boudreau on Nov. 30.

Although Murray has a deserved reputation as an excellent defensive coach, he lost his job largely because the Kings have struggled to score goals despite boosting their payroll to its highest level in several years.

Los Angeles general manager Dean Lombardi believes his club has the talent to compete with the NHL's best teams, but just three players have scored more than five goals this season, and most of the Kings' forwards are mired in miserable offensive seasons, including Justin Williams, Dustin Penner, captain Dustin Brown, Brad Richardson and Jarret Stoll.

Murray went 139-106-30 with the Kings after taking over the club in 2008. Los Angeles earned 46 victories — matching the franchise record for wins — in each of the past two seasons while racking up 199 total points, the most in any two-year stretch for the club.

Murray is one victory shy of 500 in a coaching career that also included stops with Washington, Florida and Philadelphia. But the 61-year-old's impassive, stone-faced demeanour behind the bench sometimes appeared to be reflected in his Kings, who showed little passion for long stretches of the season.

The Kings entered the season with championship expectations for a club built on a solid defensive system in front of goalie Jonathan Quick. Los Angeles has an impressive corps of defencemen around prodigy Drew Doughty, who held out through training camp to get a $56-million (U.S.) contract, and Jack Johnson, but that defensive toughness hasn't been bolstered by offensive proficiency, with the Kings acknowledging they frequently play ugly hockey.

Murray was under contract through next season.

Stevens, Murray's longtime associate and the Philadelphia Flyers' former coach, joined the Kings' staff before last season. He is the 23rd head coach in Kings history.

He led the Flyers to the Eastern Conference finals in 2008, but Philadelphia fired him the following season. He might not be a long-term candidate for the job if the Kings are looking for a change of pace from the two coaches' similar styles.

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

[hockeygod]

Carlyle's vaction is over + 30 Thoughts

Elliotte Friedman, CBC Sports, December 12, 2011

Randy Carlyle took his vacation. Now he's ready to go back to work.

"For sure," he said Sunday (a day before the Kings job opened) when asked if he was ready to coach again. "Without a doubt. I think I have something to offer."

Yes, he does. The marriage between Carlyle and the Anaheim Ducks came to an abrupt end two weeks ago. But, it's a guarantee that prospective employers will look at the positives of his first six seasons, rather than what went wrong in Year Seven.

Even though Carlyle coached the Ducks to the 2007 Stanley Cup championship, it isn't an uncommon belief that some of his best work came last year. Anaheim charged to fourth in the Western Conference, despite losing its No. 1 goalie to vertigo.

As for critiques that Carlyle can be too tough on players, well, Ken Hitchcock isn't always a favourite for the Wally Cleaver Award. And, look what's happening in St. Louis. If anything, that makes it even more likely that Carlyle's shot could come quickly.

(The fact Carlyle returned my call usually means nothing is imminent. My experience is that when someone is about to take a new job, it's harder to reach them. Of course, now that I've written this, Carlyle will get a job tomorrow.)

In the meantime, he spent some time relaxing in a small California city called Bishop – the "Mule Capital of the World," according to Wikipedia.

"I wanted to make sure I had some time to look back, think about what happened…and why it happened," he said.

So, now that you've had some perspective, what do you think?

"That's something I'm not going to share," Carlyle said. "I'm not going to throw stones. A lot of great things happened in Anaheim and that's what I'm going to remember. It was a great experience."

Won't be long until he'll have a new one.

30 THOUGHTS

1. Possible replacements if John Stevens doesn't keep the job? Keep an eye on Tony Granato. Lots of ties to the LA front office, and ready for another shot. (The Colorado fans are attacking that, but he's got much more experience now. People grow.) Two questions, though: would Pittsburgh allow him to go during the year? And, is Granato, as nice a person as you can find, what Dean Lombardi wants? Lombardi likes Darryl Sutter – a lot. And Sutter sure fits the "hard-ass" image people think Lombardi wants.

2. That also fits Carlyle's profile. He's under contract through 2013-14, so teams will need Anaheim's permission to get him. When the Los Angeles Times reported Terry Murray was in trouble late Sunday night, Helene Elliott and Lisa Dillman wrote the Kings "are not thought to be interested" in Carlyle. President Tim Leiweke loves the headlines (he brought David Beckham to MLS). This would certainly create some. Not sure, though, the Ducks would want that.

3. Lombardi said he decided Sunday and flew to Boston first thing Monday. Wouldn't be surprised if the story forced the issue. One of two things probably happened: Murray asked if it was true, or Lombardi felt he owed it to Murray to make a quicker decision once it got out.

4. Sounds like Lombardi really gave it to the players, blaming them for the firing. "He was very upset," said one. He sounded as disappointed as I've ever heard him on the conference call.

5. The Senators are being understandably tight-lipped about Patrick Wiercioch's injuries (the defenceman was hit in the neck by a puck in an AHL game last Friday). When we do find out more, sounds like we're going to learn that Binghamton trainer Glen Kinney is a real hero in this story. Patrick, we hope you make a full recovery.

6. Sidney Crosby met with reporters on Monday, saying he's not feeling bad, but has some symptoms and wants to be careful. He added the Chris Kunitz collision was not the cause. Glenn Healy wondered about that; with Crosby's great vision, Healy was surprised he didn't see Kunitz.

7. After Glenn said that, a few of us watched Crosby's previous shifts. (You kind of feel bad for the guy, everything he does is so picked apart.) He did a first intermission interview that night with Dan Potash and is cut under his right eye. On his very first shift, he's hit by David Krejci and it looks like his visor bends back into his face. That's probably where it happened.

8. Now, we'll get the questions: why was he playing? Ever since David Perron, I've hated that. Perron gets hit by Joe Thornton, scores on the ensuing power play and is accused of faking. Next thing we know, he misses 97 games. The most frustrating thing about this is it's not an exact science.

9. A few of you asked (via Twitter) why they don't just call it a concussion. One GM has a theory: "That word is so negative right now, teams just want to stay away from it…Behind the scenes, I'm sure these players are getting proper treatment. But every story you hear about concussions is so bad that I think they're worried about the effect it has on players and media." Considering how often we're seeing this now, I think he may be on to something here.

10. So, best to Crosby, and also to Chris Pronger, two guys who have more in common than they'd probably want to admit. Initially, we were concerned with Pronger's eye after Mikhail Grabovsky's stick hit him in October, but it appears as if his forehead took the brunt. He went into the boards hard against Carolina on November 14 (trying to break up a two-on-one) and versus Phoenix on the 17th (Martin Hanzal hit). The cumulative effects are the issue here. Thing that concerns me: Pronger doesn't miss time unless it's serious.

11. In case there is any confusion, Pronger has been on the long-term injury list (retroactively) since November 19 – the last game he played. Depending on how long they think he'll be out, it gives the Flyers an extra $5 million US in cap space.

12. Something new I learned this week: other teams really like dealing with Paul Holmgren. "No B.S.," one GM said. "He asks what you want, he tells you what he wants and if there's a match it gets done quick."

13. Okay let's lighten things up a bit. NHL Man of the Year: Tyler Bozak. Don't know what's going on with him and Kate Upton, but I'm very impressed.

14. Conference call sometime this week between the NHL and NHLPA to discuss re-alignment. Donald Fehr is used to consultation on this issue, because every time MLB went through something like this, there was discussion between the two parties. That's never happened in hockey. Most people seem to think the new plan will get approved. There is some wariness from the league that the NHLPA might want something in return. That would complicate the process, if true.

15. One thing that does look like it's headed for arbitration: the dispute over whether or not the players are entitled to the $25 million the city of Glendale pays to the NHL to run the Phoenix Coyotes. If it's not settled in the next week or two, sounds like someone else is going to have to decide.

16. Vancouver's power play is number one in the NHL at 26 per cent, five percentage points ahead of second-place Toronto. That's significant, because you could see Colorado and Ottawa try the Boston model last week — punish them into submission. The Canucks' preference is to make you pay on the man advantage. It dried up in the Cup final, which was a major reason Vancouver lost.

17. Kevin Bieksa said he went to referee Kevin Pollock on Saturday night, asking him to watch Chris Neil. The Canucks defenceman claimed Pollock told him "they were good friends and he knows him well and he won't cross the line." Had a good debate with the NHL about this. I wanted Pollock's reaction, but a couple of league officials said no because "what is said on the ice should stay on the ice." So, I went to a few "independents." Most of them agreed with the league.

18. One scout on Tomas Kaberle: "He's playing very carefully right now." Translation: he doesn't want to get hit.

19. Zach Parise was so impressed with Mike Cammalleri's shot that he asked the Canadiens' winger about his blade, which is unique among NHL players. Parise, however, switched back to his old one, because he couldn't control the backhand. Ironic then, that Carey Price stopped that kind of attempt on a penalty shot to save Montreal's win in New Jersey on Saturday.

20. Boy, did the Canadiens need that. They tied Columbus late in regulation on Tuesday, but lost in the shootout. They led Vancouver 3-0 on Thursday, but you could see the Canucks believed they were going to come back and win. Another blown lead might have sent them off the rails.

21. Kirk Muller has a lot of fans. The one question, though, is: What will his system be? "We know he'll get his team to work hard," one GM said. "We know he'll have a good rapport with players. But we're not sure how his teams will play."

22. Karl Alzner said earlier this year that Eric Staal was the unluckiest player in the NHL. "Every time I see him, he's hitting the post or getting stopped by a great save." While that may be true, his low numbers were affecting his play. A few coaches/GMs saw Staal cheating offensively because he so badly wanted to score. That would explain the bad plus/minus.

23. Got to think an AHL stint is coming for Magnus Paajarvi. I can see why the Oilers are waiting on this, because it's hard to send a first-round pick down to Oklahoma City and not have it framed as a major disappointment. But, there comes a point where it's better for him to play there and not risk being a healthy scratch every couple of weeks.

24. One assist in 13 games is only proving how important Ryan Whitney is to Edmonton. The team's probably praying Taylor Hall's shoulder doesn't have the same recovery issues as Whitney's ankle.

25. With the World Juniors in town, Calgary plays 11 of its next 13 on the road. For the Oilers, it's nine of 11. Huge part of the season. Comparisons: Buffalo went 5-4-1 last season (seven of 10 on the road); Ottawa 2-7-1 (nine of 10) during the 2009 World Juniors; Vancouver was 8-5-1 on a mammoth road trip necessitated by the 2010 Winter Olympics.

26. Nice story from After Hours with Scott Oake and Craig Simpson: Jay Feaster's son, Bobby, was named Baseball Alberta Umpire of the Year and intends to pursue that as a career. Good luck.

27. Get the sense Nazem Kadri is being scouted hard. Could be Brian Burke's trade chip.

28. Claude Julien told NESN's Joe Haggerty that the Bruins were working hard to keep Joe Corvo's confidence up. In Ottawa, Bryan Murray basically banned Corvo from watching video because he used to beat himself up so badly.

29. Richard Bachman, who beat the Kings in his first NHL start last Satuday, is drawing several comparisons to Jhonas Enroth. That's not too bad for the Stars.

30. Was somewhat surprised to hear the Maple Leafs' new owners didn't raise the question of compensation should the NHL decide to put another team in the Toronto area. What did happen was the Teachers' Pension Fund asked for another $80 million if that second team arrived in the next few years, but Rogers/Bell rejected that. (That amount was added to the purchase price, instead.)

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

[hockeygod]

Campbell: Darryl Sutter would be poor choice to replace Terry Murray
Darryl Sutter hasn't been behind an NHL bench since 2006.

Ken Campbell, The Hockey News, 2011-12-13

We get that Los Angeles Kings GM Dean Lombardi felt he had to fire Terry Murray, even though his timing couldn’t have been worse. The guy was one win away from 500 in his career and who knows now whether he’ll ever get another chance to reach the milestone?

But nobody said life in the NHL was fair and that is especially true for NHL coaches. If life were fair, GMs wouldn’t have the carte blanche right to suddenly take somebody’s employment away from them when, in many cases, they are only a small part of the problem. There is a GM who assembled the team and 23 players in the room who are usually every bit as culpable as the guy behind the bench. To suggest this particular case was any different would be a distortion of the facts. As usual in these cases, Lombardi even admitted as much when he announced the change Monday.

(By the way, we at THN.com are thinking of selling advertising around a new bi-weekly feature called ‘Look who got gassed this time!’ Next installment should be forthcoming within the next fortnight. Please call our offices if you’re interested in an advertising spot.)

But, as we said, we get that the Kings felt they had to fire Murray. Spending perilously close to the cap for players who should be far more productive, being in 11th place in the Western Conference and a shocking 29th in the league in goals scored, well, that’s pretty damning evidence on anyone’s employment record.

What we cannot understand is the name that is floating around as Murray’s replacement. Let’s get this straight. The Kings fired Murray ostensibly because they aren’t nearly creative enough given their personnel and can’t score goals and their answer to that problem is to possibly hire Darryl Sutter?

Apparently that’s the value of knowing the right people in the NHL, not exactly a new concept these days. When all else fails, people in management generally turn to people with whom they have a history. And Lombardi and Sutter have that, going back to their days together with the San Jose Sharks. But if you’re going to hire Sutter, what’s the point of firing Murray in the first place?

Perhaps before the Kings give Sutter his first NHL coaching job in five years, they should consider he has coached three teams during his NHL tenure for a total of nine full seasons and two partial ones. In those nine full seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks, Sharks and Calgary Flames, his teams finished in the top half of the league in NHL scoring exactly once, when his Sharks finished fourth in the league in goals scored in 2001-02. In the other eight seasons, his team finished an average of 20th in offensive production. (That includes one season when the league was comprised of just 24 teams, two when it was 26th, one when it was 27 and one when it was 28.)

In the three-plus years Murray had coached the Kings, the one thing he was able to do was install a very good defensive foundation. He was able to turn Anze Kopitar into a dependable two-way player, even though there were times when it seemed Kopitar was sacrificing offense to be a more conscientious player in all zones. The Kings are already a very good defensive team. That’s hardly the problem.

Therefore, the fact they’re even considering replacing Murray with Sutter is nothing short of confusing. The Sutter way, which is heavy on rhetoric about hard work and short on success, involves playing suffocating, mind-numbing defensive hockey that is enjoyable to neither watch nor play. And Los Angeles is one of those markets in the NHL where the team not only has to be successful, it has to be entertaining. With Sutter in charge, we predict the Kings will be neither of those. If the Kings think Murray was no barrel of laughs, wait until they experience a couple of months under Sutter.

But recycling coaches is a tried and true method of managing a team. If the Kings were truly looking to turn the page and recreate their identity, wouldn’t they be better served asking the Toronto Maple Leafs if they could speak to Dallas Eakins or the Pittsburgh Penguins permission to interview Jon Hynes, two up-and-coming American League coaches who would bring a refreshing attitude and a new set of eyes to the Kings situation?

We appreciate that the Kings, who have put themselves through enormous amounts of pain to get top young talent and through financial challenges to augment that talent with star players, need to win now. But there’s no guarantee they’re going to get that with Sutter, whose teams have made it out of the second round of the playoffs only twice.

None of that will stop the Kings from, at the very least, seriously considering Sutter to fill the job. And as far as we can see, that will provide the Kings with more of the same, which isn’t very good.

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

[hockeygod]

Coaching continuity keys success in pro sports

PAT HICKEY, The Montreal Gazette, December 2, 2011

It's open season on National Hockey League coaches, and that provided the backdrop as the Canadiens met the Anaheim Ducks Wednesday night.

It was a showdown between two teams desperate for a win, and speculation swirled around both head coaches. Anaheim's Randy Carlyle tried to slough off a suggestion he needed a win to save his job, but he had to be concerned after receiving a vote of confidence from his longtime friend, general manager Bob Murray.

The Ducks emerged 4-1 winners, but that didn't save Carlyle's job. Shortly after the final siren, Murray fired Carlyle.

Murray said it was important to have a new voice in the room, and announced Bruce Boudreau would be taking over. Boudreau was the head coach in Washington until Monday, when Capitals GM George McPhee decided a new voice was needed in the room and he replaced Boudreau with Dale Hunter.

As for the Canadiens' Jacques Martin, we'll never know whether he has received a vote of confidence, because general manager Pierre Gauthier is up there with the Sphinx when it comes to keeping his counsel. What we do know is that Wednesday's loss sparked a new chorus of howls from disgruntled fans who have a coaching change in Montreal at the top of their Christmas wish lists.

Longtime readers will know I'm no fan of coaching changes. I believe if an organization has hired the right person, it should stay the course. That has been the key to success for teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Los Angeles Dodgers and any National Basketball Association team coached by Phil Jackson. Barry Trotz in Nashville and Lindy Ruff in Buffalo provide good examples of that theory in the National Hockey League.

Teams aren't going to win every year. There are down cycles created by injuries, free agency, aging players or, quite often, a lack of talent. But the lamest excuse in sports is to say that a coach has "lost the room" or "a new voice is needed." Comments like these say more about the character of the players than they do about the ability of the coach.

I happen to believe Martin is a pretty good coach. In his first season with the Canadiens, he took the team to the Eastern Conference final. Last season, the Canadiens lost to the Stanley Cupchampion Boston Bruins in seven games, and three losses – including Game 7 – were in overtime. As Boston general manager Peter Chiarelli told me: "Montreal probably gave us our toughest series."

The most common complaint about Martin is that his style is boring. Of course, many of the fans who offer this opinion also believe the Canadiens would be better off with Jacques Lemaire, whose New Jersey teams provided an instant cure for insomnia.

Martin has put together high-scoring teams in Ottawa, and the Canadiens' power play was among the best in the NHL in each of the past two seasons.

The Canadiens are struggling this season, but they are not alone, which is why Montreal is within a short winning streak of a playoff spot.

How much of the Canadiens' woes can be traced to Martin?

I don't know, but here are things you can't blame on the coach:

You can't blame Martin for the Canadiens' lack of size. When Bob Gainey blew this team up in 2009, he had a chance to add some size, but instead opted for Scott Gomez, Michael Cammalleri and Brian Gionta. Gainey took on a bad contract Glen Sather gave to Gomez, and compounded the error by sending defence prospect Ryan McDonagh to the Rangers as a throw-in.

You can't blame Martin for the injuries that have plagued this team, especially the lingering absence of defenceman Andrei Markov.

You can't blame Martin for Gomez's lack of production, or the growing pains experienced by P.K. Subban.

You can't blame Martin for the fact the Canadiens have the least-experienced defence corps in the NHL

You can't blame Martin for the Canadiens' being up against the cap and for the long-term contracts that could prove problematic in the future.

There are signs that some players have tuned Martin out, but there are two encouraging signs in the NHL statistics. The Canadiens rank third on the penalty-kill and lead the NHL in blocked shots.

Those categories are not about skill. They are a reflection of hard work, determination, a willingness to sacrifice yourself for the team. The key is to bring that commitment to the other facets of the game and combine that commitment with a few more healthy bodies.

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

[hockeygod]

WHL: Connor Honey explains mid-season move from USHL to T-Birds

By Neate Sager, Yahoo! Sports, Dec 12 2011

WHL: Connor Honey explains mid-season move from USHL to T-BirdsThe case of Connor Honey illustrates something that gets lost in the never-ending bun fight between the Canadian Hockey League and the USHL and NCAA — teenagers make up their mind on their own schedule.

Last week, Honey, a 17-year-old forward from Edmonton, took a rare step of leaving the USHL in mid-season to join the WHL's Seattle Thunderbirds. Honey, who initially committed to the University of Denver in January, played for the Green Bay Gamblers for two months, all the while never feeling sure of which path was right for him.

"You have so many things coming at you every day, people trying to persuade you one way or the other, you know what I mean?" says Honey, who debuted with the T-Birds on Saturday. "I think maybe I listened to too many people on which way to go and I didn't make the right assessment with myself. That's kind of what I have to say about it. You're a young guy, you take a lot of advice, perhaps you have to put more weight on your own decision.

"They [his parents, mother Anita and father Gord] just said, 'whatever you do, make sure you're comfortable with your own decision. You're going to have to live with it,' " the 6-foot, 180-pound Honey adds.

"The decision was not about emotions at all, it was just something that was building up."

Honey went to Seattle's training camp in Septmber before deciding, in his words, "test the waters and keep my options open" by heading to Green Bay and preserving his NCAA eligibility. He played there until Nov. 26 before deciding he'd left his heart in the west. He got in touch with Seattle about joining them and returned to Edmonton. It took close to a week for Thunderbirds GM and owner Russ Farwell to negotiate a release with the Gamblers, a loaded team which has a 10-point lead over defending USHL champion Dubuque in the East Division.

"They weren't happy about it and didn't want to give him up, Once the season starts, the existing agreement [between Hockey Canada and USA Hockey] doesn't really deal with it," Farwell says. "So if a team just wants to hold a player, they can hold him for 3-4 weeks without giving him a release. So that potentially was what was at play.

"I'm sure there were two very different perspectives on this case," Farwell adds. "Connor went to our training camp in the fall. He went there, tried it, played the two months and then called and said, 'I would like to come back.' In our mind, he was as much returning to us as leaving their team and their mind, it was probably that he was leaving their team."

'Left on good terms'

The Gamblers' spin on Honey's departure was a little idiosyncratic. On their website, the team referred to Honey's departure as a trade, with coach-GM Derek Lalonde stating, "Connor simply couldn't balance school and hockey." Were it not for the cross-border hockey politics involved, some would think that was rather cold.

"He's a great guy and you got to do what you got to do," Honey says of Lalonde. "I left on good terms. I'm not going to worry about that stuff because it wasn't my call to write that stuff down. It just wasn't a great fit for me. I have nothing but positives to say about Green Bay. At the end of the day, you have to do what your heart tells you."

The USHL and CHL don't trade players. Farwell said he didn't see much point in replying to how Green Bay portrayed the move.

"It was an odd way to describe it," he says." I figured, maybe, it was something that was better for him in his own market, to describe it that way."

Honey stressed that when it comes to hockey, one brand does not fit all. For a time, he could be fit into the mould of many Canadian kids whose physical maturity arrives relatively late, leading to them being lightly regarded by major junior teams and thus opening their eyes to the NCAA. Honey was a later bloomer ("in my draft year I was about 5-foot-4"). However, he started to come into his own last season, which raised the interest of the WHL and NCAA programs. The latter is often attractive to finesse players who can benefit from a shorter USHL and NCAA schedule and more practice time, while working toward a degree. Players in Canadian major junior are probably more hockey-first, while they are also entitled to an education package once finish junior.

"I don't know how to judge it," Honey says. "The USHL has a lot of smaller guys who are really skilled. I think it's just fair to say the WHL was more my league from Day 1. I work hard, I hit, I get the puck and I just try to create plays. That really wasn't my game plan in Green Bay. Just the Dub was more my game with the hitting and how organized it is. I would say [the USHL] is more of a dangling kind of league. You can't knock either of them. They're both great leagues."

Farwell notes that Honey is an smart player who can create a lot of opportunities for his teammates.

"He plays with a real energy — throws everything into it. I think he has a really good read offensively. He's not a player who does it through sheer talent, he's not beating guys one-on-one, but he thinks the game at an advanced level. He makes good plays down low.

"It's a little tough catching up, adjust to a new coach, a new philosophy and new systems," Farwell adds. "I know he'll be able to do that, climb our ladder and gain more and more time. I think he can do that."

Honey has joined a team which has missed the playoffs in each of the past two seasons, but is improving under new coach Steve Konowalchuk, a former 14-season NHL forward who played in a Stanley Cup final. The Thunderbirds (12-15-0-1) are neck-and-neck with the Prince George Cougars for the final playoff position in the Western Conference. Honey is hopeful his style of play will help endear him to the Thunderbirds faithful, noting his unique surname doesn't hurt his cause.

"In Green Bay I was voted No. 1 for fan favourite among the rookies," he says. "I don't know if it was the play on the ice. It probably was the name."

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

[hockeygod]

Is Darryl Sutter poised to become the Kings' next coach?

Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail, December 13, 2011

Could Darryl Sutter become the next head coach of the Los Angeles Kings? Maybe. On a conference call with reporters Monday night, general manager Dean Lombardi wouldn’t answer any specific questions about Terry Murray’s successor, other than to suggest that he had a very “short list” of candidates.

John Stevens is handling the job on an interim basis, but Sutter’s name was the only one that made any sense, given Lombardi’s history (the two worked together in San Jose for years) and his tendency to hire people from within his inner circle.

Early on, before he landed in Calgary and coached the Flames to the 2004 Stanley Cup final, Sutter earned a unique distinction shared only by Al Arbour up to that point – he was behind the bench for a Sharks’ team that showed improvement in five consecutive years.

When asked specifically about what he wanted to see from a new coach, Lombardi invoked his San Jose experience and compared that rebuilding process to where Los Angeles sits now, a young team that started the year with high – some might argue overly high – expectations and thus far, hasn’t met them, for a variety of reasons.

“I’ve been through this before,” said Lombardi. “I saw it with the (Patrick) Marleaus and the (Brad) Stuarts and the (Evgeni) Nabokovs.”

Lombardi then went on the lay the blame for the Kings’ poor showing of late (four consecutive losses, tied for 11th in the Western Conference standings), on the players in the locker room, old and young. Defenceman Drew Doughty has had a particularly hard time of finding his game after missing training camp because of a contract dispute, but Lombardi was prepared to name other names as well, noting: “The (Jarrett) Stolls, the (Justin) Williamses, the (Dustin) Browns, all these guys have to look at themselves as much as the younger players (do).”

Well, Sutter would certainly make life interesting in Los Angeles. Overall, he has coached 860 NHL games, posting a 409-320-131 record over 12 seasons. For a Kings’ team interested in not only making the playoffs, but making some hay once they get there (apologies for the farming pun), a more pertinent stat may be Sutter’s playoff record – under .500 at 47-54.

Sutter guided the Flames to the 2004 Stanley Cup final where they lost in the seventh game to the Tampa Bay Lightning, and then stepped away from the bench in July of 2006, after Calgary lost in the opening round of the first post-lockout playoff, to the Anaheim Ducks.

Sutter also made it the finals as an associate coach under Mike Keenan in 1992, where the Blackhawks lost to Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Sutter retained his GM portfolio in Calgary until just after Christmas last year, when the Flames replaced him with Jay Feaster. He has been on the outside ever since.

After years of painstaking rebuilding, the Kings imagine themselves as a team poised on the brink of playoff success.

Six consecutive years out of the playoffs produced a bundle of top draft choices, including Brayden Schenn, Doughty, Thomas Hickey, Jonathan Bernier, Lauri Tukonen and Dustin Brown. Schenn was traded this summer to Philadelphia in the blockbuster deal for Mike Richards, the signal in L.A. that the push was on.

Instead, they went backward, which is why Murray is on the outside looking in, and Lombardi is on the prowl for a new man behind the bench. Darryl Sutter? In the win-at-all costs NHL, stranger things have happened.

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

[hockeygod]

FRASER: THE OFFICIALS' ROLE WHEN A PLAYER IS INJURED

Kerry Fraser, TSN.ca, Dec 13 2011

Hey Kerry:
During the Ottawa/Vancouver game on Saturday, Cody Hodgson took a hit along the boards and went down. Play continued for a while; when Cody tried to get up it was obvious that he was in trouble and the play was (thankfully) whistled down. Just wondering what the rule is, if there is one, about stopping play when there is an obvious injury. Can any one of the four officials blow the play dead if he is concerned? Does it matter who has puck control at the time? Is it a discretionary thing?

Thanks,
David (in Vancouver)

David:

Player safety is the primary concern of every game official. With the rule book as a guide, the officials must exercise their best judgment as to the perceived seriousness of the injury to determine when to blow the whistle and stop play. When an injury is deemed serious in nature and a quick medical response is required the official will stop play immediately, regardless of who has possession of the puck.

Rule 8 – injured players reads "when a player is injured so that he cannot continue play or go to his bench, the play shall not be stopped until the injured player's team has secured possession of the puck. If the player's team is in possession of the puck at the time of injury, play shall be stopped immediately unless his team is in a scoring position. In the case where it is obvious that a player has sustained a serious injury, the Referee and/or Linesman may stop the play immediately."

In the practical application of this rule we often see a player struck with the puck while blocking a shot or with a stick on the follow through of a shot. Most often these types of injuries are not something that would require the official to halt play immediately. They are usually "stingers" that can be walked or skated off. We have even seen players get up when the whistle doesn't blow and attempt to defend as they hobble through the injury. Even if the injured player stays down on the ice play will normally be allowed to continue when the non-offending team has possession of the puck and always when they are in a scoring position.

The exception to allowing a play to continue is when a player is struck in a vulnerable location such as the stick Chris Pronger accidentally received to the eye area on the follow-through of a Mikhail Grabovski shot or when Steven Stamkos had his nose rearranged in the same fashion during the Stanley Cup Playoffs last year. Stamkos quickly returned to the game wearing a visor while Pronger's injury required bed rest. In both cases however, due to the location they were struck play needed to be stopped immediately.

Player reaction will also be an indicator for the official if the injury sustained is deemed serious in nature. The worst injury that I observed occurred in the 1996 Stanley Cup Playoffs when Pat Peake, a talented first round draft pick for the Washington Capitals raced toward the end boards to nullify an icing and was upended from behind at the goal line.

Peake flew into the boards feet first, shattering his right heel. I was the first responder on the scene and killed play as soon as Pat landed feet first and writhed in pain. It was an ugly result and I thought if this kid isn't seriously hurt he sure as heck should be. Even though Peake attempted to resume his career it ultimately ended on that race for an icing. He has had 15 surgeries on his heel and now coaches his son's AAA hockey team in Detroit.

Who can ever forget the gruesome, life-threatening injury that Clint Malarchuk sustained when his throat was sliced by a skate blade while tending goal for the Buffalo Sabres. It was only the quick response from Sabres medical staff that saved his life.

Seconds can be precious when injuries such as these have been sustained. The referee's whistle is the first response to obtaining medical treatment.

Erring on the side of caution is especially true given the dangerous and high hits that we have seen within the game in recent years; both open ice and into the boards. In cases where potential head and/or vertebrae injuries result, swift medical response is vital. Max Pacioretty fracturing his neck vertebrae after contacting the stanchion at the players' bench is just one example.

At the amateur level and especially in youth hockey games I believe the referee should stop the play so that the player who appears injured can be properly attended to.

Even though embellishment is approaching epidemic proportions some nights, if it came down to a coin toss, I would ere on blowing the whistle more quickly than not in attempting to determine the ultimate seriousness of a player injury.

David, I hope that I have established that player safety and their well being is of primary concern for the on-ice officials. It is a responsibility each of us takes seriously and will usually give the benefit of the doubt to the player that remains down on the ice through an apparent injury.

There is always an exception to the rule and that is unless a player embarrassed me and the game by feigning injury for the purpose of gaining a stoppage in play. If that were to happen, rest assured I would look more closely for evidence of injury in the future just short of the bone poking through his skin. I would inform any player guilty of this attempt that medals are awarded for courage and not cowardice.

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

[hockeygod]

Chris Chelios inducted into U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame

The Associated Press, Dec. 13, 2011

Chris Chelios had a simple reason why he not only survived 26 seasons in the NHL, but earned a spot in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.

“I've been surrounded by great players my whole career,” Chelios said during the induction ceremony Monday night. “But the most enjoyment I ever had was seeing the enjoyment of my friends and family when I played.

“I hope I entertained you,” Chelios said. “I couldn't skate any more. I had to hang ‘em up.”

Chelios was one of five American hockey notables inducted Monday. He was joined by fellow defenceman Gary Suter, with whom he played at the University of Wisconsin and with the Chicago Blackhawks, forward Keith Tkachuk, Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider and broadcaster Mike Emrick.

Chelios, a three-time Norris Trophy winner who grew up in the Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park, said his greatest moment in the game, aside from winning the Stanley Cup for the first of three times, was taking the ice to play for the gold medal in the 1992 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

“You wanted to win the gold medal, but there was no disappointment (when Canada won),” Chelios said. “It was the best hockey I've ever been involved in.”

Tkachuk, who played for Winnipeg, Phoenix, St. Louis and Atlanta, had a vivid memory of one encounter with Chelios.

“Cheli and I tangled at Chicago Stadium, got me in a headlock and I couldn't breathe,” Tkachuk said, grinning. “I was down to my last breath. He was strong for a little guy.”

Chelios remembered Tkachuk “turning colours. I let him go right at the last second, but I could have made him pass out easy if I wanted to. And he knew it.”

They were loyal teammates on Olympic squads and during the 1996 World Cup of Hockey, in which the U.S. came back from losing the first game to sweep the last two games on Canadian ice. Suter was also on that team, while Snider hosted the first game in the Wells Fargo Center, the Flyers' then-new building, and Emrick called the contests on American television.

“I didn't expect to hear my name associated with a Hall of Fame unless it involved penalty minutes or eating,” Tkachuk told the gathering of about 450. “This means everything to me. I'm only retired for two years, and to go in with this class is amazing.”

Tkachuk scored 538 goals in 19 NHL seasons, but counted the World Cup victory as his top achievement.

“That generated great momentum, not only for me, but for U.S. hockey in general,” Tkachuk said.

Suter's 17-year pro career opened in Calgary, where he was named the NHL's top rookie in 1985-86, and went through Chicago and San Jose. Like Chelios and Tkachuk, he was inspired by the American hockey victory in the 1980 Olympics.

“That was so unexpected, but in 1996 (at the World Cup), we were a good solid team, among the top four in the world,” Suter said. “I think winning that had a similar effect to 1980 on kids, and American hockey has continued to get stronger.”

Snider's stewardship of the Flyers started with the team's inception in 1966. He helped grow a small business into a corporation that became a unit of Comcast, but said he was prouder of his foundation's taking over the hockey rinks in Philadelphia's park system and creating educational programs associated with hockey for disadvantaged youths to flourish.

“We have a 94 per cent graduation rate, compared to 54 per cent for the city,” Snider said. “We used hockey as the hook. It's the only thing I've put my name on. It's my legacy. It will last forever.”

Emrick's dream of being an NHL broadcaster started in the corner of the rink in Fort Wayne, Ind., where he called minor-league games into a tape recorder for practice. Decades later, the voice of 13 Stanley Cup Finals, and the lead announcer for hockey on NBC and Versus, still has boyish enthusiasm.

“I wanted to be a baseball announcer until I went to a game at the Fort Wayne Coliseum,” Emrick said of a 1960 visit. “I get in free, I still get a good seat for the game, and I still like doing that. So until my bosses don't want me doing that, or I'm unhappy with my work, I'll do it.”

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

[hockeygod]

Coach Mike Yeo guides Minnesota Wild into league’s elite

Paul Waldie, Globe and Mail, Dec. 13, 2011

Ever since he was a 17-year-old boy growing up in North Bay, Mike Yeo wanted to be a head coach in the NHL.

Now, 20 years later, he not only has his first NHL coaching job, he’s turned the moribund Minnesota Wild into the hottest team in the league with a roster of largely no-name players who’ve somehow responded to their boyish boss.

Ask just about any Wild player, including Kyle Brodziak, the team’s top scorer with 10 goals and 17 points as of Monday, just how Yeo has done it and you get smiles and shrugs.

“I don’t know,” Brodziak said Tuesday as the Wild prepared to play the Winnipeg Jets at the MTS Centre. “He’s young but he definitely has confidence and he knows exactly what he wants to accomplish and how he wants the team to play. When he’s on the bench, he’s calm and composed and there’s a reason for everything, and he seems to know what’s going on all the time.”

Calm and composed on the outside, maybe, but he’s intense inside – so intense he chews his fingernails to the bone and once had to take time off from assistant coaching because of high blood pressure.

Yeo cites things like commitment, determination and getting the players to work together. “We’ve pushed them hard there’s no question,” he said Tuesday. “But they’ve responded and they’ve pushed each other and it’s group that cares very much about each other and is really trying to build something here.”

When asked to describe the team identity he is hoping to build, Yeo didn’t hesitate: “Fast, physical, aggressive.”

It shows. The Wild have perfected a close-checking style with a balanced attack that has translated into a record, entering the Jets game Tuesday, of 20-7-3, good enough for 43 points to lead the NHL. The Wild arrived in Winnipeg on a seven-game winning streak. They have allowed just 64 goals, one of the lowest tallies in the NHL, thanks in part to some remarkable goaltending by Niklas Backstrom and backup Matt Hackett. And they’ve done it with only a couple of players anyone has heard of – Dany Heatley and David Setoguchi, who arrived last summer in a trade with the San Jose Sharks.

The physical, no-name approach isn’t surprising considering Yeo idolized players such Cam Neely, Wendel Clark and Rick Tocchet while growing up. He liked them because they had an edge and played hard every night.

His own playing career didn’t last long. It ended in 1999 at 26 because of a knee injury. He landed a job as an assistant coach with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ American Hockey League affiliate, and soon moved up as an assistant with the Penguins in 2005 to then-head coach Michel Therrien, just as Sidney Crosby joined the team. He remained on the staff when Dan Bylsma took over from Therrien in 2008. But Yeo still hankered for the top job and left Pittsburgh in 2010 to coach the Houston Aeros, the Wild’s AHL affiliate.

He led the Aeros, also a collection of no names, on a remarkable run that ended just two victories shy of the Calder Cup. Winnipeg coach Claude Noel, who coached the Manitoba Moose of the AHL last year, recalled tight, low-scoring games with the Aeros.

“They played a real simple game last year, it was fast and simple,” Noel recalled this week. “I thought he did well with what he had last year. He’s got more bullets this year [with the Wild] so he can play different ways. I like the way he coached. He’s done a really good job.”

Last summer when the Wild were looking for a replacement for Todd Richards, general manager Chuck Fletcher eschewed big names such as Ken Hitchcock and Craig MacTavish and opted for Yeo, making him the youngest coach in the NHL.

“Every day is the best day of my life,” Yeo said Tuesday, offering a rare smile and laugh. “You’ve got to love this job. You’ve got to love coming to the rink and getting to do what you love.”

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

[hockeygod]

The puck remains the same

Roy MacGregor, Globe and Mail, Dec. 13, 2011

It is the game’s one constant.

Everything else in hockey has changed – the rules, the players, the protective equipment, the nets, sticks, skates, boards, glass, standings, ticket prices, even the ice itself – but not the puck.

It remains as defined by Rule 13.1 of the NHL official rulebook: “The puck shall be made of vulcanized rubber, or other approved material, one inch (1”) thick and three inches (3”) in diameter and shall weigh between five and one-half ounces (5 ½ oz.) and six ounces (6 oz.).”

That tiny rubber disc hit the news this past week when it brought an end to the NHL’s current Iron Man streak, stopping the remarkable run of Tampa Bay Lightning forward Martin St. Louis at 499 consecutive games. St. Louis took a puck in the face during practice, the edges of the puck cutting him badly and the impact fracturing nasal and orbital bones.

There still would have been damage, obviously, but Harry McEachern can’t help but wonder if it might have been lessened if only the NHL had elected to go with a puck he helped Dave Hay develop more than half a century ago.

McEachern, now 87 and retired in Hudson, Ohio, was working for Polysar Ltd. in Sarnia when Hay – whose father, Hockey Hall of Famer George, had played for the Detroit Red Wings – came up with a puck made of butyl rubber that was the same size and weight as the puck in the rulebook but had somewhat different characteristics.

The new puck required no freezing, as is still done to NHL pucks in order to keep them from bouncing. Butyl rubber, McEachern says, is an “energy-absorbing material” that doesn’t bounce well. The puck appeared to slide more easily on the ice and, mysteriously, caused very few cuts when flying up into players’ faces.

“If it came in touch with the skin,” McEachern says, “it didn’t break. I can’t explain it.”

Local leagues experimented with the new puck for a couple of seasons in the late 1950s and the Red Wings tried them out in practice and were suitably impressed. But the league never adopted it.

The butyl puck today stands in a long line of pretenders who could not bump the puck first developed by Art Ross, Eddie Shore and others in the 1930s and manufactured by Tyer Rubber of Andover, Md. In March of 1951, the Art Ross Puck – U.S.A. patent 2226156 – was named the official NHL disc. Today, the official puck is manufactured by Soucy Baron of St. Jerome, Que., shipped to InGLasCo in Sherbrooke, stamped with appropriate logos and delivered around the league.

In the decades since McEachern and Hay thought they had reinvented the hockey puck, hockey historian J.W. (Bill) Fitsell says there have been numerous attempts to come up with something new, including a U.S. initiative to replace the black puck with a red one – more patriotic, the argument went, by having a red puck with blue lines and white ice.

The most famous attempt, surely, was Fox TV’s so-called smart puck, during the network’s lame attempt to give NHL hockey a national platform. FoxTrax was hilarious to Canadians, who couldn’t get enough of laughing at the blue streak on their screen that often showed the puck flying about the first two rows of seating.

There have also been attempts to apply reflective materials – the Glowpuck and Firepuck – and even a plan to outfit pucks with internal sensors that could tell, for example, precisely whether a smothered puck had crossed the goal line. In that case, price was obviously prohibitive: Unlike in children’s leagues, fans don’t throw pucks back in the NHL.

McEachern and Hay still believe their long-ago improvement was the best of them all – a puck that slid better, didn’t bounce and, most significantly, didn’t appear to do the same physical damage that today’s errant pucks can cause.

As for practicality, McEachern fondly remembers that when they tried it out with the Red Wings, Gordie Howe had the only question that truly mattered to the players.

“Will it go in the net?”

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

[hockeygod]

Team Canada vet bearer of bad news

SCOTT FISHER, QMI Agency, Dec 14 2011

CALGARY – Jaden Schwartz answered The Call.

Even though it wasn’t for him, the veteran forward hated to hear the phone ring.

Schwartz, whose name is written in ink on Team Canada’s final roster, said he didn’t feel good about handing the phone to roommate Matt Dumba, one of seven players released Tuesday morning.

“The phone rang and they asked for Matt,” Schwartz said. “I just tried to wish him the best. He’s a young kid and I thought he played really well.

“I talked to him last night and he said that’s some of the best hockey he’s ever played.

“I don’t he has any regrets. He’s a young kid and he’s going to have plenty of shots. He’s got a bright future.”

Calgary Flames draft picks Michael Ferland (Brandon Wheat Kings) and Max Reinhart (Kootenay Ice) were also sent packing along with defencemen Jerome Gauthier-Leduc (Rimouski Oceanic) and Brenden Kichton (Spokane Chiefs) and forwards Mark McNeill (Prince Albert Raiders) and Zack Phillips (Saint John Sea Dogs).

Schwartz, one of Team Canada’s four returnees, told Dumba, the youngest player in camp and a Calgary native, to look at a couple of other recent Team Canada cuts — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Tyler Seguin — for inspiration.

Nugent-Hopkins failed to make last year’s squad, but went No. 1 in the draft to the Edmonton Oilers and is the clear-cut frontrunner to win the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie.

Seguin received the dreaded call two years ago and he already has a Stanley Cup ring on his finger.

“I felt bad,” Schwartz said. “I felt really bad.

“You look at Nugent-Hopkins and how he had such a strong second half and look where he ended up. I just told (Dumba) to look at that. And Seguin did the same thing. They were two guys that popped into my mind. The same thing happened to them and they’ve done great things ever since.

“He’s an unreal player and I just tried to help him as much as I could.”

Schwartz said losing his roommate was a reminder of how fortunate he is to get a second chance after being knocked out of last year’s tournament with a broken ankle.

“It’s never fun,” the St. Louis Blues prospect said. “You don’t get a lot of sleep during these nights. It’s a scary thing because you want to make this team.

“Once (Dumba) left the room, it made me realize today is the last day and you can’t take anything for granted.

“It put things in perspective and made me want it that much more.”

Team Canada coach Don Hay, who will make the remaining cuts Wednesday morning, said there isn’t a single easy release in the bunch.

“Whenever you’re dealing with elite players, the decisions are tough,” Hay said.

“I thought Matt did very well. We knew he would do well here.

“But is he ready for this tournament at this time? We don’t think so.”

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

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