Articles

[hockeygod]

Getting To Know: Tom Pyatt

Mark Malinowski, The Hockey News, 2012-01-08

Status: Tampa Bay Lightning right winger.

Ht: 5-foot-11 Wt: 187 pounds

DOB: Feb. 14, 1987 In: Thunder Bay, Ont.

Early Hockey Memory: "Being on the outdoor rink in my backyard. Playing my first organized game when I was five."

Nicknames: "Bomber, Tom The Bomb, Py or Pyzey."

Hockey Inspirations: "My dad (Nelson) growing up, he played in the National Hockey League for a few years in the ‘70s. Pretty neat thing for a kid to have a dad who played in the NHL. I looked up to him growing up and he really taught me a lot."

Last Book Read: "Unbroken."

Current Car: "Chevy Tahoe."

Greatest Sports Moment: "Playing in my first NHL game in Boston (with Montreal in 2009)."

Most Painful Moment: "Struggling in my first year of pro, being sent down to East Coast (League in Charlotte in 2008)."

Favorite Uniforms: "I like the Blackhawks."

Favorite Arena: "MSG."

Closest Hockey Friends: "Mark Staal."

Funniest Players Encountered: "Eric Brewer. Just a funny guy, has that negative humor all the time. So it's pretty good."

Toughest Competitors Encountered: "A team or players? (Both.) Boston Bruins. They have a few guys that are tough to play against."

Most Memorable Goal: "First NHL goal against Washington."

Embarrassing Hockey Memory: "Missing an empty net. In junior. Should have been a goal."

Favorite Sport Outside Hockey: "Soccer."

Strangest Game: "I never had anything really weird. Just there's games where guys get injured and a lot of penalties and there's six guys on the bench."

Funny Hockey Memory: "I can't think of anything too crazy. Maybe just when you're filling the garbage can with water, so when they open the door, as soon as the door opens, there's water everywhere. Nothing too crazy."

Last Vacation: "I went to Punta Cana last summer after the season."

Favorite Player(s) To Watch: "I have to go with Pavel Datsyuk. He's my current favorite player in the NHL. He's fun to watch. Not fun to play against."

Personality Qualities Most Admired: "Positive attitude. Sense of humor."

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

[DaveM]

A Ranger Often Overlooked Makes His Hometown Proud
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/sports/hockey/rangers-girardi-gathers-motivation-from-slights.html?_r=1&ref=hockey&pagewanted=print
By CHRISTOPHER BOTTA

Welland may be easy driving distance from Buffalo and Toronto, but many residents of the southern Ontario town have adopted the Rangers as their home team. Dan Girardi, the Rangers defenseman who leads all N.H.L. players in ice time this season ? but was not considered good enough just a few years ago to be drafted by any of the league?s 30 teams ? was born and raised in Welland.

?To watch Dan play all the big shifts on defense for New York puts the biggest smiles on our faces,? said Mark Forster, Girardi?s coach with the junior-level Welland Cougars when Girardi was in his early teens. ?Danny beat the odds because he never stopped working at getting better. A lot of people here relate to that.?

Like Forster, Dave Hominuk ? Girardi?s partner on defense with the Cougars ? watched the Rangers defeat the Flyers in the Winter Classic last Monday.

?In Welland, a Rangers game used to be just another game,? said Hominuk, who served as Girardi?s mentor with the Cougars when he was 20 and Girardi was 15. ?Now, they are the games everyone wants to watch. We all know how much Danny overcame to reach the big leagues.?

The Winter Classic provided the latest example of the value of Girardi, whose first professional contract was a minor league deal with the Rangers in 2005. While Coach John Tortorella eased Marc Staal, making his season debut after sustaining a concussion, into the lineup by playing him about 13 minutes, Girardi played a team-high 28 minutes. Girardi is averaging 27 minutes 19 seconds per game.

Tortorella has campaigned for Girardi?s inclusion in this year?s All-Star Game and criticized league officials for omitting him from fan balloting. ?It?s because there?s no pedigree there,? Tortorella said of Girardi?s modest reputation. ?The league is so backwards when it comes to that.?

Girardi is accustomed to being slighted. When he was first eligible to be selected in the N.H.L. draft, in 2002, Girardi was ignored by all 30 teams over nine rounds. There were another 583 players selected in the next two drafts, yet team scouting directors did not think he was worthy of one of their picks.

?Scouting is far from a perfect science,? said Jim Devellano, a senior vice president with Detroit who ran drafts that built the Islanders of the 1980s and the Red Wings of the 1990s into Stanley Cup champions. ?Some players are late bloomers. When you?re passed over by 30 teams, you?re really passed over. But what I find is, if the player doesn?t make excuses and never stops trying to get better, eventually he?ll be rewarded ? if he?s any good.?

That is how Girardi came to play for the Rangers.

?I definitely used getting passed up by all the teams in the draft as motivation,? Girardi said.

After winning the Canadian Hockey League?s Memorial Cup at age 21 with the London Knights in 2005 ? beating Sidney Crosby?s team in Rimouski along the way ? the best offer Girardi received was from the Rangers? American Hockey League affiliate in Hartford. By the end of his first year of pro hockey ? including a seven-game stint in the lower-rung ECHL ? he had already filled scouts with regrets about their decision not to use a late-round draft pick on him.

In January 2007, in the middle of his second season in Hartford, Girardi was promoted to the Rangers to replace Darius Kasparaitis, who was injured. Girardi has been a Ranger ever since, for 399 games, but he is having a breakthrough this season. Despite the absence of Staal from the lineup, the Rangers are in first place in the Eastern Conference. Girardi may post unspectacular statistics (3 goals, 12 assists), but Tortorella double-shifts Girardi more than any skater. In five games this season, he logged more than 30 minutes. Girardi has also been durable; over five years, he has missed only two regular-season games because of injury.

?When we lost Marc, we weren?t sure how it was going to go,? Tortorella said. ?Dan has been the settling influence. He continues to do the little things that stabilize our back end.?

In Welland, many are convinced it wasn?t Girardi?s skill that was undervalued by scouts but his obsession with improving. Daniel Paille and Andre Deveaux, his neighbors in Welland and the best men in his wedding, were selected in 2002, Girardi?s first year of draft eligibility. Paille, a third-line forward with the Bruins, was drafted in the first round by the Sabres. Deveaux, now a wing in the Rangers? system, was a sixth-round pick of the Canadiens.

?The scouts just messed up when it came to Dan,? said Forster, who also coached Paille on the Cougars. ?He was a great kid who quietly went about his business. His play and his stats have never been flashy. What the N.H.L. teams didn?t take the time to learn about was his intensity to get better. Before I got to coach him when he was 14, I knew Danny was determined to make it in the N.H.L.?

When Girardi recently moved with his wife and young son into a Manhattan apartment, he found one of his projects from seventh grade at Glendale Elementary School in Welland. ?It was on red construction paper, and we were supposed to declare what we were going to be when we grew up,? Girardi said. ?Mine was all about how I was going to play in the N.H.L.?

Girardi is the only child of Mark and Carol Girardi. His father works for General Motors in nearby St. Catharines, and his mother is a registered nurse at Welland Hospital. Their dedication to their jobs meant they could not travel to Philadelphia to watch the Rangers in the Winter Classic.

?That was too bad,? Girardi said, ?but I guess it says a lot about where I get my work ethic.?

Girardi may be a long shot for the All-Star Game. Henrik Lundqvist and Marian Gaborik are locks, and the Rangers may not be able to get a third player on the Eastern Conference roster. The possible snub would be the latest character-builder for Girardi, who, somewhat appropriately, is not even the most famous Girardi in New York sports. In Welland, he is the everyman hero.

?Playing defense with him when he was 15, did I think he was N.H.L.-caliber?? Hominuk said. ?You couldn?t guarantee it. But everyone in Welland knew how badly Danny wanted it. Nobody here would have bet against him. Nobody is surprised about what he has become.?

[hockeygod]

Body count becomes an NHL stat, in Cherry’s eye anyway

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN, Globe and Mail, Jan. 08, 2012

Okay, all you kids out there. You think winning hockey’s all about scorin’ more goals than the other guy and all that stuff. But there’s another statistic that matters. Sure. Opponents you injure. Here’s The Coach Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada talking about the “despised” Vancouver Canucks’ 4-3 win over his beloved Boston Bruins.

“Vancouver’s happy. The referees are happy, because they gave them [Vancouver] 11 power-play goals, er, four power-play goals … not 11 power-play goals, but four on them. And the Bruins are just as happy because they put two of their guys out.”

So the injuries to Vancouver defenceman Sami Salo and centre Andrew Ebbett are now an official NHL statistic. Of course, host Ron MacLean jumped in to contradict Cherry. He didn’t? Oh.

Nice network you’re running there, CBC.

Bowl me over

There are popular social phenomena that don’t bear scrutiny. The Iowa Caucuses. The View. Ben Mulroney. Wondering why only leads to a popsicle headache. In sports, the incomprehensible extends to sports played by teenagers. Here in Canada we just witnessed the world junior hockey championship, which is essentially Doogie Howsers in shin pads for the holidays.

The U.S. equivalent is college football bowl games. People in Tuscaloosa who can’t spell university become deranged watching their favourite college on the 54 inch. Sponsors such as Beef ’O’Brady and TaxSlayer and Bell Helicopter can’t throw enough money at not-ready-for-NFL lads in the latest Nike kit.

This curious process culminates Monday as LSU and Alabama meet in New Orleans for the mythical national championship of U.S. college football. We say mythical, because the teams were selected by a poll, not a playoff, and we know that polling is to reality as Tom Cruise is to acting. No matter. TV people are jacked about a couple of teams that played a 9-6 barn burner earlier this season (LSU won). They promise there will be more scoring this time. It could go 13-10 or even 14-13!

The difference between the world juniors just passed in Alberta and the NCAA Mardi Gras in Big Easy is that, while the hockey kids now go into witness protection for another year in junior hockey, college football is a multibillion-dollar TV staple six months of the year and grist for the journalistic mill 24/7. (Plus, you can bet on the National Collegiate Athletic Association.)

When it comes to programming, college football revenue is more than the froth on your caramel macchiato. While junior hockey teams are worth a million or two, the disgraced Penn State football program grossed $54-million (U.S.) last year. Most industry analysts see no brake on TV’s revenue accelerator as sports remain the final vestige of appointment viewing for networks.

Fuelled by the desire for more lucrative televised appointment games, the top tier of U.S. college football – Division I – is currently playing 52-pickup as teams skip from one conference to another in search of better TV revenues. The Big 10 now has 12 teams but the same title. The Pac 10 is now Pac 12. The Big East is losing two teams but gaining three others. The University of Texas now has its own network. These days it’s an Adam Smith, laissez-faire, I-got-mine jumble funded by ESPN, CBS and all those other TV acronyms.

In their quest to get more LSU and Alabama, TV executives are hoping that non-starters such as New Mexico State, Indiana and Tulane will just go away. The trend isn’t limited to NCAA football. Baseball is the pro sports league that’s closest to the NCAA, having figured out that ESPN and Fox only want a half dozen teams on network TV. The NHL (U.S. Division) is headed in the same direction, offering NBC a schedule of a handful of prime markets while shunning the Nashvilles and Carolinas.

Increasingly, pro leagues will be pressured to deliver big markets if they want the big money. Leagues can run their franchise schemes with 30, 40 teams if they want. What ESPN and NBC want is simpler, more efficient. Bad news if you want the Super Bowl in Minnesota or the Stanley Cup in Ottawa.

Who dat’?

ESPN NFL analyst Jon Gruden clearly doesn’t get out much. During the Orange Bowl last Thursday, a picture was shown of First Lady Michelle Obama. Said Gruden, “Hey there’s a picture of our Lisa Salters [an ESPN reporter].” Or maybe he’s a Republican.

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

[hockeygod]

Harper, Putin not playing Summit Series hockey galas: PMO

The Canadian Press, Jan 9, 2012

The Prime Minister's Office is denying a published report that Stephen Harper is making plans to play hockey this fall against his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The Prime Minister's Office says the claim is false.

The Toronto Star cited unnamed sources as saying Harper was making plans to play on a Canadian hockey team in two exhibition games against a Russian team that would include Putin.

"The story is false. The prime minister will not be playing hockey against Mr. Putin."
—PMO spokesman Andrew MacDougall

The two exhibition games would help mark the 40th anniversary of the Canada-U.S.S.R. Summit Series.

The front-page report says the first game was scheduled for Sept. 7 in Moscow as part of a month-long event to mark the eight-game series, which was played at the height of the Cold War.

A source also told the Star a second game featuring Harper and Putin was being planned in Toronto, tentatively for Sept. 28.

But a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office, Andrew MacDougall, said the story is not correct and that Harper will not be playing hockey against Putin.

Canada lost three of the first five games but went on to win the series, which has since become a pivotal moment in Canadian sports history.

Putin, now 59, has only been playing hockey for a year or so while Harper, who is 52, played just three years of organized hockey before the age of 13.

"The story is false," MacDougall said in an email. "The prime minister will not be playing hockey against Mr. Putin."

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

[hockeygod]

KHL: Gun-slinging owners, drugs, dodgy air travel all part of the game

Rick Westhead, Toronto Star, January 6, 2012

MOSCOW—The 18-year-old hockey phenom slumped over on the team bench.

If Alexei Cherapanov wasn’t dead, he would be in a matter of moments.

A first-round draft pick of the New York Rangers who was still playing with the Russian club Avangard Omsk, Cherapanov had suffered a fatal heart attack during the final moments of an Oct. 13, 2008, Continental Hockey League (KHL) game in Chekhov, a bedroom community south of Moscow.

Canadian Reid Simpson, a former NHL player who worked as Chekhov’s assistant general manager, sensed something was horribly wrong and scrambled from his team’s box seats down to the ice.

By the time he got there, Cherapanov’s body had already been taken outside and placed on the pavement. Dozens of spectators, smoking cigarettes, walked over and snapped photos on their cellphones of the lifeless teenager’s body.

Fifteen minutes later — a full 45 minutes after his collapse — the paramedics who hovered over Cherapanov’s corpse drove him to a nearby hospital.

Doctors were helpless. The hockey player was clearly dead, but that didn’t register with Nikolai, the Chekhov KHL team’s owner.

Nikolai, whose family name remains a mystery even to his own employees, burst through the emergency-room doors. “How can this happen? Bring him back,” Nikolai yelled at the doctors, according to Simpson.

The doctors understandably panicked.

Nikolai has a reputation for bringing a loaded gun into his team’s dressing room after a bad loss.

Gun-slinging owners, mandatory overnights in remote team bases, sometimes before home games, and even planting illegal drugs on high-priced players whose team owners want to stop paying is all part of life in the wild KHL, a hockey league that, high-profile warts notwithstanding, has quickly established itself as the second-best in the world outside the NHL.

The KHL was started in 2008 with the support of then-Russian President Vladimir Putin. Its aim was to create a strong cross-ocean rival to the NHL, a league that the best European players, particularly the best Russians, would call home.

The KHL has attracted Alexander Radulov, a former Nashville Predators star forward, goalies Ray Emery and Evgeni Nabokov, and veterans such as Jaromir Jagr, Alexei Yashin, Maxim Afinogenov and Alexei Kovalev, players whose skills may be on the decline but who still draw fans.

Spurred by Putin, who sees the KHL as a showcase for national pride, KHL team owners, which include natural gas, mining and construction companies, are throwing millions at journeymen and stars — more money than they could ever see in the NHL.

Simpson made $400,000 tax-free each year over two seasons with Chekhov. The most he ever made in 12 NHL seasons was $500,000.

“You’ve got taxes, team dinners, going out, tips, there’s just a lot more that you blow your money on when you play in the NHL,” he said. “You come to Russia and there’s not as much you do besides play hockey. You make $400,000 in the KHL and it’s like making $700,000 in North America.”

Afinogenov arrived in St. Petersburg last year after playing 651 NHL games with the Buffalo Sabres and Atlanta Thrashers. While he made $15 million in an NHL career that stretched from 2000 to 2010, he never earned more than $3.5 million a year.

His five-year contract with St. Petersburg’s KHL team will pay him more than $20 million (again tax free) over five seasons.

“I remember calling my agent Donny Meehan and telling him I was coming to Russia and he said to me, ‘don’t go, you can still play in the NHL,’” Afinogenov says. “But I’m happy here. It’s good hockey, good money.”

Fat paycheques aside, Simpson and others agree the KHL remains “a pretty crazy place.

“You would have to have spent some time in Russia to understand,” Simpson said, adding that at least five times, he’s seen car crashes where “a person that was dead was left on the road with medical staff or police standing around looking like not much was wrong. That’s Russia.”

Pre-season training camps drag on for at least two months and, in a trend heralding to Soviet times, some KHL coaches demand players wear 50-pound weights over their shoulders during conditioning drills.

Players with Moscow’s legendary Spartak franchise are sequestered in a hotel the night before home games.

“I had no idea before I got here,” says Andre Benoit, a Canadian defenceman with Spartak, which began 1946 and whose alumni include Pavel Bure and Ilya Kovalchuk. “It’s really hard. Every home game I’m stuck the night before in a hotel almost across the street from my family.”

Other KHL clubs demand players stay pre-game nights in basas, remote bases in the middle of nowhere with small beds with thin mattresses, poor heating and worse food. A bad game can mean a second night’s stay.

A handful of teams regularly fall behind in paying their players, and even when they do pay, some clubs insist on paying in cash.

“This is not a place you want to be carrying bags of money around,” says one current KHL player. “And it’s not easy to wire money overseas back to Canada.”

Several North Americans said they keep stacks of currency in paper bags in their freezers. Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan’s Jon Mirasty, who plays for Chekhov, said he had been paid only twice since arriving in Russia in August.

There are problems players face when teams decide they’re no longer needed.

“One guy I know, playing for the KHL team in Kazan, was arrested after the team had (marijuana) planted on him,” says Simpson, who now lives in Chicago. “They took him to jail, wanted to sweat him out, pressure him to agree to go back to Canada without getting paid.”

The same thing happened to John Grahame, a Canadian goalie who played during the 2008-09 season for the KHL team in Omsk, a city in Siberia.

“He was arrested by police for going to a dance club because the team didn’t want to keep paying him,” Simpson said.

Simpson himself was on the verge of accepting a coaching job with the New York Islanders but a former teammate urged him to keep playing in Russia.

“I didn’t do it for the money, I did it for the experience,” Simpson said. “I enjoyed it, but I remember at one point towards the end of my first season with Chekhov going to the rink and they handed me some papers in Russian to sign.”

The team told Simpson the documents were a formality.

“I had them translated and it turned out the paper was an agreement saying the team didn’t have to pay me my last two cheques,” he said. “I didn’t sign it.”

Players have long regarded Russia as an unpredicatably dangerous hinterland. Former Soviet star Alex Mogilny said KGB agents were so relentless following his defection in 1989 that they followed him through the streets of Buffalo. In 1996, the mother of NHL player Oleg Tverdovsky was kidnapped and held for 11 days by five associates of a former coach who was jealous of Tverdovsky’s $4.2-million NHL contract. His mother was freed by police, who intercepted her and her abductors on a Russian train.

A former NHL executive who was trying to attract investors to rekindle Moscow’s famed Red Army hockey team was recently arrested and held by two drunk police officers.

The executive, who asked that he not be identified, said the police wouldn’t release him until a friend showed up at the police station with $2,000.

“They even took my watch,” he said. “It was terrifying.”

Benoit, 27, from St. Albert, Ont., is the typical North American who lands a job in European hockey.

A nimble 5-foot-11 defenceman, he was never drafted by an NHL team and played four seasons in the American Hockey League and two in leagues in Sweden and Finland. Eventually, he appeared during the 2010-11 season in eight games with the Ottawa Senators before signing a one-year contract this summer with Spartak.

He lives in a sixth-floor apartment in downtown Moscow with his wife Kelly and their two daughters, Emma, 3, and Hailey, five months. Downstairs is a Starbucks and across the street is a McDonald’s, but there are few other reminders of home in Benoit’s neighbourhood. Moscow is grey and bleak in December, a depressing stretch of year when it’s middle-of-the-night dark until at least 10:30 a.m.

The Benoits navigate the traffic-choked streets using a hired SUV and driver.

“I worry about them being out on their own here,” Benoit said.

“The toughest part is the language,” says Kelly Benoit, whose father, Rick Walmsley, was a longtime NHL goalie. “We don’t really get out much. There’s a water park north of the city we like to go to when Andre has a day off, but that’s about it.”

Benoit has been in Russia only a few months but he already has plenty of stories to share.

Like many pros, Benoit typically wears out at least three pairs of skates a season.

About a month ago, he called Spartak’s equipment manager and ordered another pair of $1,000 custom Reeboks, size 9 and 1/4.

After a few weeks, Benoit phoned Reebok and learned that the skates were sitting in a warehouse. Spartak had refused to pay for them.

The team’s president had vetoed the purchase. Give Benoit a pair from the September purchase, the equipment manager was told.

“I told them that was ridiculous, and after a bit, they came back to me with this good news,” Benoit said with a laugh. “They said I could go ahead and buy the Reeboks on my own, and they’d give me a pair of their extras that I could sell to make up some of the difference. It just left me shaking my head.”

Yet for all the stories, it’s impossible to ignore the progress Russian hockey has made in four years.

KHL commissioner Alex Medvedev (no relation to Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev) says the league has learned from its club’s miscues.

The 23 KHL rinks are required to have defibrillators, hard cervical collars, aspirators and tracheotomy kits, intended to prevent another death like Cherapanov’s.

Next season, teams will have enforced player salary caps. Clubs will be severely penalized for making off-the-book “black money” payments to players, says Medvedev, who also serves as a high-ranking executive with the government-owned company Gazprom.

“We know we have problems but we are trying to correct them,” Medvedev said. “Are we the NHL? No, but the NHL has been around for 100 years. We’ve been here for four. Where was the NHL after four seasons? We already have a great league and it’s getting better. This is our game, too.”

Russia started its first organized league in 1946 during its post-World War II recovery. Russian coaches were the first to use microphones during practices. They pioneered the idea of pairing a forward line with the same two defenceman throughout a game, so players became more familiar with one another.

After the Soviets lost to the U.S. in the 1980 Winter Olympics, in a game that would become known as the Miracle on Ice, at least one Soviet player left his Olympic silver medal in a garbage can in Lake Placid. In Russia, as in Canada, second place is nothing to celebrate.

Medvedev says the KHL plans to expand to 60 teams by 2015. A Western Europe conference will feature 30 teams in cities such as Prague, Milan, and maybe Berlin. A Swiss club recently signed an agreement to join the KHL by 2014. An Eastern conference may include 30 clubs in places like Seoul and Tokyo.

The KHL television channel generates $15 million a season in broadcast revenue, up from $5 million in its first season. Within five years, Medvedev says the KHL aims to generate half the national TV income that the NHL does — a bold claim considering the NHL generates nearly $300 million per year from its national TV contracts with Canada’s CBC and U.S. broadcaster NBC.

Its games are broadcast in 25 countries such as Finland, Sweden and Germany and, starting this season, players’ names are written on their uniforms in English for non-Russian viewers.

The broadcast quality, however, pales next to the glitzy NHL. Some game telecasts have shown a puck sitting at centre ice between periods. Others simply show the game’s line score of point-getters and penalties.

Critical analysis is not encouraged. Last season, the Russian player agent Alexei Dementiev was working as a colour commentator for a game between Magnitorogsk and Chelyabinsk. He suggested on air that the game was dull and predictable and the KHL fined Dementiev $17,000 for “tainting its image.” The league backed off after Dementiev threatened to sue.

This season, referees have been imported from Scandinavia, and players say officiating has improved. The league has also endorsed the creation of a players union.

The KHL has also started two feeder systems: One is comparable to the American Hockey League and the other to Canada’s major junior leagues. That startup, said Soviet hockey legend Slava Fetisov, is the single best development to come out of the KHL’s creation.

“In the 1990s, agents were basically selling young Russian players to junior teams in North America,” said Fetisov, the KHL’s chairman. “So many would go and burn out after a year and we’d never hear from them again. They’d be out of hockey. It got so bad that for years in Russia, so many good young players left that the country didn’t even hold a national championship for 16 or 17 year olds. Can you imagine?”

On a recent evening in St. Petersburg, 12,000 fans packed the decade-old Ice Palace arena for a game between hometown SKA and Salavat, a team from Ufa in Siberia. Before the game, two dozen cheerleaders and SKA’s mascot, an unnamed brown horse, worked the crowd.

Pop songs like LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It” rocked the palace during breaks in play. Like the NHL, a large screen over centre ice showed couples in the audience and urged them to kiss. A video board wrapped around the arena demanded in Russian that fans cheer, “Win, win, win.”

Vendors sold roasted and buttered cobs of corn for $1. There was a lineup 20 deep for wieners tucked in pastry ($2) and pints of beer ($2). In some ways, it was better than the NHL: the team even offered fans a free coat check.

“To me, it’s just as good as any NHL arena,” said Afinogenov.

Fetisov said KHL hockey, played on large Olympic-sized rinks, is elegant and refined, a style he, fans, and some players prefer to the bruising NHL.

“How many players in the NHL are from Europe this year?” Fetisov asks. “Just 30 per cent now. Soon, (Europeans) will all come to the KHL, and the NHL will be left with the best players from North America only.”

The International Ice Hockey Federation says 22.8 per cent of the NHL’s players in 2010-11 were European, the lowest total in 11 years. In 2003-04, the last season before the lockout, 30 per cent of NHL players were European.

Times weren’t always good for hockey in this west Russian metropolis, a popular tourist destination known as the Venice of the north for its rivers and canal system.

Five years ago, the St. Petersburg arena was half empty for games. The few fans in attendance watched quietly.

“It was like they were watching the ballet,” says Natalia Chereshneva, a former marketing executive with the St. Petersburg club who now oversees public relations for a Russian hotel chain.

At one point, Chereshneva said she wanted to overhaul the pre-game national anthem. She wanted to drop the aging men whose renditions reminded many of the Soviet Union’s military May Day parades. Let’s have a young woman sing, Chereshneva suggested.

Problem was, Russian superstition holds that women have no place either on the ice or in a locker room, Chereshneva said. For four years she battled for a change.

Finally, team executives relented.

“We had this young woman walk out to centre ice to sing, and she completely wiped out when she got on the ice,” Chereshneva said. “It was a playoff game. We lost and I figured that’s it, it’ll never happen again.”

Fortunately for Chereshneva, the team’s executive ranks were purged and their replacements had no problem with modern, acapella singers.

“You can’t imagine how hard it was to modernize and westernize,” Chereshneva said over the din of the crowd.

Trouble is, for every arena like the one in St. Petersburg, there’s another that’s like the 38-year-old Sokolniki Arena, home to Moscow Spartak.

As Spartak took to the ice on a recent weeknight against Lev, a new KHL entry this season from Slovakia, about half of the aging stadium’s 5,000 seats were filled. Between periods, most fans rushed outside for a cigarette. And why not? There was little room in Sokolniki’s second-floor cafeteria, a wood-panelled den that might comfortably have held 10 people.

Outside the cafeteria, a vendor sold red and white Spartak scarves off a wood table. He hung a team jersey from a coat hanger that was fixed to the wall with thick masking tape.

In the locker room, things were little better.

Benoit, the Canadian defenceman, said toilet paper and shampoo both were hard to find in the change room.

“I guess they want you to buy your own,” he said.

Again, it could be worse.

Several players said there are a few rinks in the KHL circuit where teams still have to bring their own toilet seats.

Medvedev and others with the KHL promise this, too, will improve.

For all of his promises, however, it’s unclear where the money to fuel the KHL’s expansion plans and improvements will come from.

Many KHL teams generate enough money to cover just one-tenth of their annual budgets. The balance is typically paid for by state-owned corporations such as Gazprom.

This exposes the KHL and its teams to a fall in the price of gas, oil and other commodities.

“If oil goes to $200 a barrel and the KHL expands into western Europe, this league will be able to buy any player in the world,” says Anders Hedberg, a former NHL player who now scouts the KHL for the New York Rangers. “But if oil goes down to $30, forget it. Close the doors.”

Sergei Voropov, an executive with the consulting company Deloitte, was involved with planning the launch of the KHL. From the start, the league was structured impractically, he said.

The first season, Voropov said the KHL generated $13.6-million worth of sponsorship revenue, including $6.8 million from the Russian insurance company Sogas, $4.2 million from cell phone firm Megafon and $1.9 million from Toyota.

But the league’s operating costs, including marketing and hockey operations, totalled more than $33 million.

The KHL’s pledge to move the league to a North American business model have yet to materialize.

Canada’s Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, recently offered to refurbish the luxury suites in Red Army’s home arena in Moscow. The stadium owners inexplicably said no.

When the KHL approached the Espo Blues, a pro team in Finland, its owner Jussi Salonoja travelled to St. Petersburg to discuss the league’s $2 million offer for moving to the KHL.

Landing a Finnish team would have been a breakthrough for the KHL. Salonoja arrived in St. Petersburg with an open mind.

But after 30 hours waiting for a KHL official who failed to show for their scheduled meeting, Salonoja went home.

“They make decisions like they would in the old Soviet Union,” Voropov says.

The KHL has a staff of about 70, including 11 full-time lawyers on staff, the same number you would expect in a typical Russian company with 14,000 employees.

“You know how many times Fetisov would come in to the KHL office and hand over a bill to be paid for $7,000 or more for drinks with his friends at a hotel bar?” Voropov says.

During his time with the league, Voropov said he suggested that rickety old rinks like Sokolniki be torn down and tenders be issued for rinks built inside mega-malls with shops, movie theatres, and food courts.

“Ownership is such a mess,” Voropov said. “There’s no political will.”

But for some players, the drawback to Russia isn’t poorly stocked arenas or even two-a-day practices. A bigger worry is the amount of air travel that’s required in a country which last year recorded nine commercial airline crashes, giving it a worse safety record than less-developed nations like Congo and Indonesia.

Russia is an expansive nation with 13 time zones. A flight from Moscow to the KHL team in Khabarovsk, near the Chinese border, can take nine hours.

In September, the KHL team in Yaroslavl was wiped out in a plane crash that was said to be caused by pilot error.

While the league pledged after the tragedy that its teams would only use state-of-the-art planes, those plans have since been quietly dropped. Many KHL clubs still charter Soviet-era planes

“It’s maybe the wildest part of it all,” Simpson said. “Our trainers were the ones who packed the equipment in our plane and it would be sliding around in the back during the flight. Almost as soon as we were airborne, the coaches would light up cigarettes.”

Two weeks after the Yaroslavl plane crash, Benoit remembered stepping aboard a Russian jet for his first road trip with Spartak.

He’d been worried about flying and had asked Spartak officials about their own transport plans. They showed him a photo of the interior of a clean, modern jet.

But the plane Benoit boarded, a Tupalev Tu-154, looked nothing like the picture. Its aging cabin was wood panelled and reeked of cigarette smoke.

“There was nothing new about it,” he said.

Benoit would only learn later that the Russian-built jet was about 30 years old and had been banned from flying in the European Union because of safety worries. Since 1968, there have been at least 39 fatal incidents involving the Tu-154.

As teammate Marcel Hossa gave him a worried look, Benoit tried to reassure himself.

Flying a few weeks after the crash was probably the safest time to fly, he reasoned. “It’s like flying after 9/11,” Benoit said he told himself.

“What are you to do?” he said later. “Get off the plane? If you do that, you’re done and they send you home. For now I’m here and I’m just trying to make the best of it.”

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

[hockeygod]

Players fake injuries irk Canadian fans

ERIC FRANCIS, QMI Agency, Jan 9 2012

CALGARY – Rene Fasel didn’t mince his words when asked about the fake injuries that peppered the world junior hockey championship in Calgary and Edmonton.

“It’s the European illness,” said the International Ice Hockey Federation president as amused Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson chimed in with, “I like that question.”

“It’s a culture question,” Fasel continued. “You know football — soccer — is big, and (injuries are a) part of the game.”

Does it embarrass him as much as it bothers Canadian fans who booed most European players for their theatrics?

“What can we do?” Fasel asked.

“The football federation is trying to correct it. We in our sport should also do so.”

Indeed, they should. Different from the type of diving the NHL has cracked down on to draw penalties, many European players writhe on the ice as if seriously injured following harmless contact, a la soccer.

“You’re not used to that,” Fasel said with a smile before taking a playful dig at the North American game. “We’re not used to so much elbowing as you are.”

Now for more notes, quotes and anecdotes from a sports world wondering if players on Canada’s junior team take solace in the fact most will go on to make millions of dollars in the NHL before getting concussed.

AROUND THE HORN

There can be little doubt that after stints in Ufa, Russia and Malmo, Sweden, the next Canadian stop for the world juniors will be in Toronto or Montreal in 2015. What may help Montreal’s bid is the prospect that awarding it to a joint Montreal/Quebec City bid may help spur on the building of an NHL arena in Quebec City … Calgary Stampeders equipment manager George Hopkins after adding his expertise to every team at the Dome during the world juniors: “Now, I can swear in nine languages.” … There have been plenty of times along the road to 500 goals Jarome Iginla was unsure what his future as a scorer held. Few were scarier than the injury he got early in his career that saw the knuckle on his ring finger swell so much for several months he had to order a custom-made wedding ring that snapped into place after fitting over the knuckle … I’ve never cheered for the Montreal Canadiens a day in my life, but given the ridiculous disrespect afforded a good man like Randy Cunneyworth simply because he doesn’t speak French, I’d relish seeing him turn that team around against all odds.

PARTING GIFTS

Steve Tambellini is actively shopping for defencemen (join the club), and there is an outside chance they may just have to eventually shut Ryan Whitney down for the season. His foot woes have limited his play this year, and he is still out of the lineup. The Oilers have won eight of their last 29 games in what is quickly becoming another lost season. When you see the heart and sacrifice exhibited by Taylor Hall and several of the youngsters on the Oilers, it’s clear Ales Hemsky’s time there is coming to an end. Last week, the oft-injured second-line winger flamingo’d on a shot that got through for a goal and later gave up on a race to try erasing icing in the final minute of a win in Chicago. Not popular moves. A UFA this summer, Hemsky and the Oilers are better off with him elsewhere if they can find a suitor … Fasel met with Donald Fehr, Hockey Canada and USA Hockey in Calgary on Thursday with hopes of finding out more about possible NHL participation in the 2014 Olympics. “We’re open,” said Fasel on seeing the world’s best at the Games. Fasel will meet with the NHL in two weeks, but nothing will be determined until a new CBA is agreed upon … Who wouldn’t be in favour of scrapping the NHL’s realignment plans if the alternative has the Boston Bruins playing the Vancouver Canucks 10 times a year? … As laughable as the fans’all-star selections are, what many fail to remember is that such a flawed system actually gets people talking about a game nobody would otherwise discuss. In that vein, it works … Slap Shot translation of Rene Bourque’s apology following the hit that prompted his five-game suspension: He feels shame.

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

[hockeygod]

Calgary, Edmonton set attendance record for World Junior events

Kristen Odland, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal January 9, 2012

Calgary and Edmonton set a new attendance record for the IIHF world junior championship.

The two host cities of the 2012 event attracted 571,539 between the Scotiabank Saddledome and Rexall Place over the 11 day tournament, averaging 18,437 fans per game. Including the 31 tournament games in Calgary and Edmonton, world junior action made stops in nine communities during the pre-competition schedule.

The total smashed the previous record of 453, 282 set by Ottawa at the 2009 world juniors, which averaged 14,622 fans per game.

Next year's tournament will be held in Ufa, Russia, while the 2014 world juniors are staged in Malmo, Sweden. World junior action will return to Canada in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021.

On Jan. 5, Sweden defeated Russia 1-0 in overtime for the gold medal while Canada missed the final for the first time in 11 years but managed to walk away with hardware after defeating Finland 4-0 in the bronze medal game.

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

[hockeygod]

Penner sidelined by pancakes

QMI Agency, Jan 9 2012

Los Angeles Kings forward Dustin Penner says he was injured while eating a plate of pancakes over the weekend, sidelining him for a game.

"Apparently it's one of those mysterious things, where you can throw it [back] out [from] sneezing," the L.A. Kings Insider reported Penner saying.

"I just leaned over to dip into some delicious pancakes that my wife made. It's just like it [the pain] wraps around you and squeezes. So it was disappointing. Hopefully it's just an isolated incident, and not something that's going to become chronic."

He said his back hurt so bad he needed his wife's help to put on his clothes.

Penner did practise Sunday and said his back was feeling better. The Kings lost the night earlier to the Blue Jackets, 1-0.

The huge, 6-foot-4 forward was traded to the Kings by the Edmonton Oilers during the 2010-11 season.

He has two goals and eight points with the Kings this season in 30 games.

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

[hockeygod]

Press Box Musings: One-on-One with Paul Kelly

TJ CAPS, Artic Ice Hockey, Jan 9, 2012

Hey all! On Saturday, the NCAA along with the Universities of North Dakota and Clarkson held the inaugural College Hockey Classic in Winnipeg, MB. Paul Kelly, current Executive Director of NCAA College Hockey and former Director of the NHLPA also attended the event and hosted an informal presentation for hockey players of the Bantam and Midget levels in the greater Winnipeg area. The intent of the presentation was to provide information to any athletes who consider NCAA College Hockey as a viable option for them past their junior hockey careers.

I was fortunate enough to catch up with Mr. Kelly afterwards and he afforded Arctic Ice Hockey the luxury of a one-on-one interview.

This is a one-time feature that delves into topics such as Saturday's College Hockey Classic and the current relationship between College Hockey and the CHL.

If you require any further information regarding NCAA College Hockey, I strongly suggest visiting their site at http://www.collegehockeyinc.com. You can also follow their twitter feed @_collegehockey.

Hope you enjoy.

Q: What goals did you want to achieve by hosting the College Hockey Classic in Winnipeg and what made you choose Winnipeg as a destination?

KELLY: We obviously want to expose the college game to the Canadian audience, whether it's done by television broadcast or in person.

The decision to come to Winnipeg is based on the fact that Mark Chipman is a graduate of the University of North Dakota and is a college hockey proponent who has been very supportive in hosting this event. Also, Winnipeg has not only been a source of players to the University of North Dakota over the years, but also fans of North Dakota as it is only a short drive away. The University of North Dakota has been looking at holding a game in Winnipeg for a number of years and they were finally able to make the arrangements and find a number of teams who expressed interest to play in this event. We are very excited to be here.

Was there any particular reason for choosing North Dakota and Clarkson as the two teams to participate in this year's event?

The University of North Dakota has been so active in scouting and recruiting players from the greater Winnipeg area that they wanted to come back here. Dozens of players over the years that played for the Fighting Sioux have been from Manitoba so I think it was the administration and the UND coaching staff that really wanted to make sure that if we were going to do this, the first place we would come would be Winnipeg .

Were there any different Canadian markets you were exploring to promote NCAA College Hockey?

We have looked very seriously at playing in Toronto as they have expressed an interest in running a four team tournament there. We have also been contacted by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment and they have asked about the possibility of bidding for the NCAA Championship – The Frozen Four – so yes, there is a lot of interest, certainly in the Toronto area to bring College Hockey in.

Does the NCAA plan to host the College Hockey Classic on an annual basis or was this a one-time event?

We certainly don't want it to be a one time thing I don't know that we will be in a position to do it every year but if this is as successful as we believe it will be, then we will try to host this event at least every couple of years and most likely in different cities across Canada.

What was your main objective in this morning's presentation to the attending athletes and their families?

I would say it's the importance of emphasizing education in general. You can never go wrong with improving or advancing your education and you can still continue to develop as a player and make it to the National Hockey League through the NCAA. If for some reason you fall short or an injury cuts your playing career short then the education the NCAA offers will be so valuable. Our programs do a terrific job of educating young men and we not only turn out great hockey players but we also turn out doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs and scientists; so we want young people to understand the importance of education as part of the whole package.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in putting today's presentation together?

Identifying, reaching out and contacting young players. This is an element of a recruiting battle that goes on. I know that our presence here probably isn't well received by the Western Hockey League because in their view, we're potentially recruiting away players that may be of interest to them. I'm sure that there are some coaches who may discourage players from coming to this event for that reason, so that's always a little bit of a challenge. I wish it weren't the case because I think it's important for people to hear the information. We're not negative when we talk about other leagues but we try to provide the accurate factual information to the families so that they can make an informed decision about what's the proper path for their kid.

Were you pleased with the overall response that you received?

We thought it was great. I don't know the total number but I came here with 100 t-shirts and I think I have about 20 left so I think we had about 70-75 kids, most of whom were bantam and midget ages which is exactly the target audience we are seeking.

Over the past few years, NCAA Hockey has had issues with athletes withdrawing from their university commitments, instead opting to play hockey in the CHL. Has there been any discussion on how you can curb CHL teams from poaching players after they have committed to universities?

We in fact had that very discussion last week in Edmonton during the World Juniors. We annually have a meeting between Hockey Canada , the CHL, USA Hockey and College Hockey where we sit down for several hours to talk about a range of issues and that is always one of the more prominent issues on the table.

Right now it's a one way street; there's no issue with our coaches recruiting their players because their players are already rendered ineligible, so there is no point in it. But we do have the problem of players that have made commitments – particularly written commitments – that continue to get recruited and poached by CHL teams. We did talk about a point after which NCAA committed players can no longer be recruited by CHL teams and our stance is that once a player signs a letter of intent in his senior year of high school to go and attend a certain university that at that point – at least until his first year of college – he should be off limits and not subject to being recruited. We are going to continue this discussion with the CHL and Hockey Canada in the next couple of weeks so that is a ripe topic for discussion.

This summer, you stated that you hoped the NCAA would tweak its eligibility rules to allow any player who had played less than 10 games in the CHL their NCAA eligibility. Has there been any discussion on retooling of the current rules?

It's still the status quo. These rules cut across all sports so the NCAA doesn't make exceptions that are unique or exclusive to College Hockey. As much as we would like to see that rule changed allowing those kids that maybe just played a handful of games not to lose their eligibility, currently that's not the case. If you play even a single game you are ineligible.

There is an appeal process however. People should know that if you played 8-10 games in the CHL and you decide that you want to play College Hockey, you probably will be able to regain your eligibility. Athletes would most likely have to sit out their first year and then be allowed to play in their second year so playing in the CHL is not completely fatal, but it does have consequences.

The Winnipeg Jets website had a promotional video for tonight's College Hockey Classic presented by Zach Parise. Have you thought about reaching out to other NCAA alumni such as Dany Heatley or Jonathan Toews to help promote the College Hockey brand in Canada?

Actually, we use those players quite a bit once the NHL season has completed and we are doing educational presentations across North America. We almost always have an NHL player or two along with us. In the past we've had Jonathan Toews, Ryan Miller, Zach Parise, Brian Gionta, Hal Gill and others in a long line of players from Canada, the US and from overseas who have helped to promote the game and they are always happy to oblige us when we have asked.

Unless you have specialty cable packages (NHL Network, Big 10 Network), it's rare for NCAA College Hockey games to be broadcast in Canada. Are there any plans to have Canadian networks televise events like the Frozen Four or "The Big Chill" to garner more exposure to your product?

Yes, we actually had discussions with The Score about picking up College Hockey broadcasts. Now that we've had the shake-up of broadcasters in the US where Comcast has purchased NBC and re-branded the NBC Sports Network, I think that NBC has given its contacts to TSN. NBC is going to become far more involved in broadcasting College Hockey games, so you will see more of that broadcast in the coming years.

Finally, what do you think is the biggest misconception about NCAA College Hockey?

I think it's the misconception that Coach Casey Jones mentioned during this mornings presentation. There are people who believe that either you elect to go to the CHL in hopes of making it to the NHL or you elect to go play College Hockey and then end your career. That's a misnomer and it's not what is happening. I would say that a competent player has just as good of a chance of making it to the National Hockey League coming out of one of the elite NCAA college programs as he does the CHL. The colleges today have superior facilities; good coaching and competition that's at the same level if not a higher level because the NCAA has bigger, strong, faster players. [These programs] are turning out really high caliber players and you are seeing an increasing number of college hockey players that are playing in the NHL. That's a myth that we are trying to debunk.

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

[hockeygod]

FRASER: SORTING OUT THE MELEE BETWEEN THE BRUINS AND CANUCKS

KERRY FRASER, TSN.CA, Jan 9 2012

Hi Kerry,

You are probably being bombarded with e-mails in reference to Saturday's game between the Bruins and Canucks. As a hockey fan for the past 40 some odd years, I find myself having a great feel for the game and its rules. But Saturday, there were a couple of incidents that had me somewhat confused.

During the scrum that occurred in the first period, Shawn Thornton was piled on by five or six Vancouver players during his altercation with Burrows. Is there still the rule of a third man in or has that been removed from the NHL rule book?

There was not only a third man in, but also a fourth and fifth and six man in! Should Vancouver have been called for that? Not only were they not called for it but what resulted was Milan Lucic being tossed out of the game for apparently leaving the bench to join into the scrum (which the NHL later rescinded) and the Canucks ended up with a two-man advantage! This had a major turning point in the game. Please clarify to me the third man in rule.

Kerry, if you could clarify this situation or provide your opinion on what happened that would be greatly appreciated.

Hockey Fan Forever,

Steve Cymbaluk from Oromocto, New Brunswick

Steve:

You are absolutely correct that there should have been a game misconduct assessed to one of the third, fourth or fifth Canuck players that entered the altercation already in progress between Alexandre Burrows and Shawn Thorton. My pick as the third man in would have been Maxim Lapierrre as the most obvious and aggressive of the entire Vancouver player contingent.

While I have outlined the "third man in" rule and the definition of an "altercation" in previous columns, it obviously bears repeating because both continue to be misinterpreted and/or incorrectly assessed.

Let's get something straight; while rule 46.16- "third man in" appears under the Fighting Rule, the language is very specific relative to intervening in an ALTERCATION already in progress. Some might still hold onto the old terminology or thought process of the third man to enter a "fight", and if you do, please lose it immediately! That definition was changed after Darryl Sittler squared off to fight with a Philadelphia Flyer in Maple Leaf Gardens during the Stanley Cup playoffs and was blindsided by another Broad Street Bully and knocked to the ice. (Sittler and his opponent had dropped their gloves, squared off and even though they had yet to throw a punch, they were going to be penalized.)

Rule 46.3 (still under Fighting) clearly defines an "altercation" in the simplest language; "An altercation is a situation involving two players with at least one to be penalized."

The third man in penalty was designed to allow for a fair fight between two willing combatants and to stop brawling when an unfair advantage was gained on an outnumbered opponent in an altercation.

Rule 64.16 needs to be consistently applied by the definition in the rule book as to what constitutes an altercation.

On this play, Alexandre Burrows gave either Daniel Paille a little tap with his stick as the players were retiring to their player's bench for a change. Shawn Thornton was the trailer heading to his bench and, while taking exception to Burrows cheap shot, poked his stick forward making contact with Burrows.

Burrows responded with a meat-tenderizing poke of his own on Thornton, which infuriated the Bruins tough guy. Thornton lunged forward with a glove punch to the face of Burrows and pressed forward to continue this roughing situation.

Let's freeze frame at this point and apply our above definition of an altercation; "A situation involving two players with at least one to be penalized."

We know that Burrows and Thornton received slashing minors for their stickwork on each other. Thornton also was assessed a roughing minor for his hefty, stinky glove punch to the face of Burrows. There is no doubt we have an altercation in progress!

Both Manny Malhotra and Kevin Bieksa attempted to grab hold and act as peacemakers but appeared to be pretty much blocked from doing so by the lineman, who was quick to jump into the altercation.

The player that threw gas on the fire by going airborne to jump into the upright pile of players and officials in the scrum was Vancouver Canuck Maxim Lapierre, who was able to inflict some punishment with a flurry of visible punches levied from over the top.

That's why Lapierre is my pick for the third man to enter the altercation (one in progress between Thornton and Burrows). Instead of receiving just the 10-minute misconduct that Lapierre was assessed, I would have given him a double minor for roughing (for number of punches thrown) in addition to a game misconduct under rule 46.16 as the third man in the altercation (as defined in rule 46.3).

Milan Lucic was very aggressive in his involvement and worthy of a double minor as well but would have remained in the game since he did not leave the bench.

I'm good with the double minor penalty to Shawn Thornton for slashing and roughing as well as the slashing penalty to Burrows, whose first love tap on the shin pad of Paille, if detected, was worthy of a misconduct penalty which was ultimately assessed.

The fight between Nathan Horton and Dale Weise stood alone (toe-to-toe) and the major penalties for fighting were appropriately assessed.

To recap Steve, Maxim Lapierre of the Vancouver Canucks would have been ejected from the game in addition to a double minor for roughing. Milan Lucic would have remained in the game and received a double minor for roughing as well. Boston would have played one man short (not two men short) and the B's would have captains choice as to which remaining minor would be served on the penalty clock; one of Shawn Thornton's or Milan Lucic. In either case Claude Julien would have to place a player in the penalty box to serve the minor.

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

[hockeygod]

Remembering Ron Caron

David Shoalts, Globe and Mail, January 10, 2012

The Professor passed away Tuesday and you can bet there were lots of smiles around the NHL at the thought of Ron Caron.

And not just because he picked the day of a game between his two most beloved teams, the Montreal Canadiens and St. Louis Blues, to take his leave.

You couldn’t help but smile at the former St. Louis Blues general manager even though seconds after he impressed you with his thoughtful, gentle nature it was just as likely you were convinced the man was possessed. No one could tear up a press box like Caron, who turned into a raging maniac as soon as the puck was dropped for a game featuring his Blues.

Everyone who’s been around the NHL for more than 15 years has a Ron Caron story. They called him The Professor for his hockey intellect and amazing knowledge of baseball, Caron’s second great passion, but it was his temper that forged his legend. And the distinctive sandpaper voice that broadcast his temper meant almost everyone did a Ron Caron impression.

No team set Caron off more than the Toronto Maple Leafs, who always seemed to finish near the bottom of the NHL standing and then knock off the favoured Blues in the playoffs during the late 1980s, Caron’s salad days as the Blues GM.

Caron loved to howl about the rough-housing of Leafs like Wendel Clark and John Kordic against his Blues, who were not quite as rambunctious but not exactly choir boys. Not with the likes of Basil McRae in the lineup.

One night at Maple Leaf Gardens, Caron could be heard shouting that Kordic or some other Leaf miscreant, “should be in jail.” During another contentious game, Bob Stellick, then the Leafs’ public-relations chief, asked Caron to tone it down after a chair was sent flying in the press box. Caron drew himself to his full 5-foot-7 or so and challenged Stellick to a fight.

However, underneath all that noise was a smart, resourceful hockey man. And Caron had to be nimble, given that he was hired by the legendary tightwad Harry Ornest just after he rescued the Blues from being moved to Saskatoon. At the time, Caron was still hurting from being fired as assistant GM by the Canadiens but he didn’t hesitate to take the job even though Ornest had a reputation as a difficult boss.

Here’s a look at Caron I wrote almost 22 years ago:

—–

Team Caron built shows he's no buffoon

DAVID SHOALTSm 7 April 1990, The Globe and Mail

ST. LOUIS

Of the many words used to describe Ron Caron, one serves better than the rest: mercurial.

The St. Louis Blues' general manager is famous across the National Hockey League for his lively temperament. As a game progresses, so do Caron's emotions. Soon, he is striding up and down the press box, railing against the injustices of the referee or the opposition in his gravelly voice.

Almost everyone has a Caron story, similar to one told by Joe Bowen, the Toronto Maple Leafs' broadcaster. On one occasion this season in St. Louis, Bowen was handling a radio broadcast by himself when he received an unexpected commentator.

Caron, who sits next to the visiting team's radio booth at the St. Louis Arena, was growing increasingly annoyed at the roughhouse tactics of the Leafs. The shouts built to a pitch, until Caron burst into Bowen's booth while he was on the air, screaming, “Take your (censored) team and go home!”

“You know, I always promise myself I won't do that stuff. But I never keep it,” said the 60-year-old Caron, who is a popular, engaging man despite his outbursts.

“I get very emotional as a game goes on. If I have to watch a game in public, like in the press box in Toronto, it's tough. I believe it has something to do with my strong, competitive soul.

“Talk to me after a game and I'm a rational soul.”

Caron's emotions have been in full evidence during the Norris Division semi-final between the Blues and the Leafs. During the first game, he complained loudly about the work of referee Dan Marouelli. He felt Marouelli missed several fouls, particularly by the Leafs' Wendel Clark.

A check by Clark on the Blues' Rich Sutter on what Caron thought should have been an icing call prompted him to complain to officiating supervisor Bryan Lewis. And to a number of reporters the next day.

Caron also says he'll push for a rule change this summer to eliminate body contact on icing calls.

Like many people who freely display their emotions, Caron has been labelled a buffoon. But as the Blues' recent success has revealed, this is a narrow judgement.

In building his current team, Caron made numerous trades, particularly with the Calgary Flames. When he shipped players like Joey Mullen, Doug Gilmour, Rick Wamsley and Rob Ramage to Calgary, Caron was accused of running a Flames' farm club and helping mould their Stanley Cup champion team.

A look at the Blues' roster now shows Caron to be an astute trader. Of the 24 players currently on the team's NHL roster, 16 were acquired through trades, two as free agents and only six through the NHL entry draft.

“You've got to believe in player movement if you don't like what you see,” Caron said.

It's an unorthodox way to build a team, although Caron had little choice when he was hired in the summer of 1983 by former owner Harry Ornest. The club had just been dumped by Ralston Purina Ltd., and the situation was so chaotic the Blues had not taken part in the 1983 entry draft.

During the three years Ornest owned the club, money was tight, until attendance improved, new ownership came along and Caron was able to start building with the draft.

When Caron came to the Blues, he was still demoralized by his firing by the Montreal Canadiens. He spent 26 years with the club, rising to assistant general manager before his firing. It is a day he still remembers: "I was let go the 13th of April, 1983," he said yesterday.

In the early days, Caron was not reluctant to trade his No. 1 draft picks, which goes against the current wisdom. “What's the use of looking to the future if you don't know you're going to survive?” he said.

In his first year, Caron traded his first pick to get Wamsley because he knew Mike Liut needed a solid backup goaltender. “And down the road I knew Liut would be moving because he was expensive.”

Caron's typical trade in those days was one quality player for two or three journeymen. “We went for quantity,” he said.

One such trade was sending Perry Turnbull to Montreal for Doug Wickenheiser, Greg Paslawski and Gilbert Delorme. Turnbull never lived up to his potential, while the three players Caron received provided years of service.

On the current team, recent trades have brought Sutter and defenceman Harold Snepsts from the Vancouver Canucks to provide valuable assistance in the playoffs.

And of course there are the two big trades that landed centre Adam Oates and right winger Brett Hull in the past two seasons. On the basis of those deals alone, Caron has gained much respect.

This season, the Blues spent a good part of February in first place in the Norris Division, before slipping to second with a 37-34-9 record.

Now there are even a few No. 1 draft picks on the team. Rookie-of-the- year candidate Rod Brind'Amour was the team's top pick in 1988.

“I did trade one No. 1 pick this year (to Vancouver in the Sutter and Snepsts trade),” Caron said. “But it was a pick I got from Montreal (he switched No. 1 picks for 1990 in a deal for defenceman Mike Lalor) so it won't be a good pick anyway.”

The ability to change with his circumstances has put Caron and the Blues on the edge of becoming one of the league's top five teams. What won't change is his nature.

“I'm intense, but I'm not tense,” he said. “You can't wind yourself too tightly. I let my emotions out.

“I'm not going to get ulcers. I'm going to give them.”

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

[hockeygod]

Sutter has ‘tremendous’ respect for Lamoriello, Devils

John Down, Calgary Herald January 10, 2012

Another game against the New Jersey Devils holds no special meaning for former coach Brent Sutter.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for (GM) Lou (Lamoriello) and that organization,” said the Calgary Flames bench boss, following Monday morning’s practice at the Saddledome.

“I learned a tremendous amount there in two years and Lou was great to work with and for, tremendous support, tremendous hockey man. He was a father-type to you and I have nothing but great things to say about my experience in New Jersey.”

Sutter coached the Devils for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons before taking a year away from the game. He hired on as the Flames head coach in 2009.

With his Devils days just more water under the bridge, Sutter is more concerned on devising a game plan against the team that stands fifth in the Eastern Conference and has a couple of talent-laden forward lines

Seven players have 10 or more goals, including proven snipers Patrik Elias (14), Zach Parise (14) and Ilya Kovalchuk (15). Rookie Adam Henrique also has 15, along with David Clarkson.

They also bring in a couple of tough goalies in Martin Brodeur and Johan Hedberg and the league’s most lethal penalty killers — a leading nine short-handed goals.

Once renowned for their trap system and low-scoring games under former coach Jacques Lemaire, the Devils have shifted to a more offensive style under coach Peter DeBoer.

“They’ve got some top-end guys, like Parise, Kovalchuk, Elias and obviously their goalie, Marty, if the plays,” said Sutter. “They’ve got some quality players you have to be aware of when they’re on the ice, but their system is a little different than what they played the last half of last year.

“Pete is a different coach than Jacques. They’re pressing a little bit more . . . more pressure in their game and they’ve got some good players. They’ve had a pretty good first half, so we have to make sure our game is where it needs to be.”

Precious patience

Rookie centre/winger Paul Byron hasn’t scored since being recalled from the Abbotsford Heaton on Dec. 19 after batting in a couple of goals during his first recall in early November.

Is the five-foot-seven, 155-pounder getting a little antsy?

“Maybe sometimes,” he confessed. “I try not to think about it too much. When you do, you start putting added pressure on yourself and I think I have a job here that doesn’t revolve around scoring goals.

“It’s providing energy, finishing checks, skating hard, making smart decisions and that’s what I’m really focused on. I think the goals will start coming, hopefully the sooner the better.”

What century?

Sutter admitted he never even had a thought about Saturday’s victory over the Minnesota Wild being his 100th as coach of the Flames, what with so much hoopla surrounding the 1,000-game silver stick to Olli Jokinen, Lance Bouma notching his first NHL goal and Jarome Iginla rattling in his 500th goal.

“It never crossed my mind,” smiled Sutter. “I never even thought about it. But I wish there was an extra 50 or 60 (wins) and we would have made the playoffs the last two years and be in a different spot than we are today.

“But it’s the way it is.”

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

[hockeygod]

Worlds vets in WHL trades

Dave 'Crash' Cameron, Edmonton Sun, January 10, 2012

EDMONTON – Starting today, every team in the WHL — but one — will be fans of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

They'll be cheering for Steve Yzerman's team to make a push for the NHL playoffs: therefore needing whatever they can get out of rookie Brett Connolly.

Because everyone in the Dub can imagine what he can do for the already loaded, league-leading Tri-City Americans.

Tri-City boss Bob Tory made a nothing-to-lose deal with the lowly Prince George Cougars for the rights to the five-goal man for Team Canada. Connolly, WHL and CHL rookie of the year in 2008-09, was loaned out for the world junior tourney by the Lightning, and Tampa has until the NHL's Feb. 27 trade deadline to decide whether to keep the 19-year-old power forward.

The draft picks are conditional on Connolly's return.

Tory said he has spoken to Yzerman.

"We trust that, in the end, Steve will make a decision that is in the best interests of Brett's development and the Lightning's plans."

And the worst nightmare for the rest of the WHL.

But it was the East that did the most on a relatively quiet deadline day.

The surging Regina Pats helped themselves by rescuing the tall Slovak 19-year-old defenceman — and Edmonton Oilers draft pick — Martin Marincin from the wilds of Prince George. Essentially it is for first and second-round bantam picks from the Pats, though D Ricard Blidstrand also heads to P.G.

The 19-year-old Swede will probably feel like he's been sent to Lapland.

Moose Jaw and Brandon made most of their noise on Monday.

Crafty Kelly McCrimmon cashed back in some of the haul the Wheat Kings got from Saskatoon last January for Brayden Schenn (namely a first-round pick, plus two solid players) and added another gun — Kevin Sundher — to load up alongside Team Canada's Mark Stone and the other run-and-gun Wheaties.

Sundher's shown his stuff by sitting 7th overall in league scoring playing for the struggling Victoria Royals.

Moose Jaw went for experience and leadership as much as skill, adding two 20-year-old captains — Cam Braes from Lethbridge, and James Henry from Vancouver.

The Edmonton Oil Kings, the team currently being chased in the East, stood down.

Sort of. They had already traded for high-scoring 20-year-old Tyler Maxwell and listed 18-year-old Minnesota d-man Cody Corbett earlier in the season. And on Tuesday, they introduced Henrik Samuelsson who projects as a skill-size mix.

The American-born draft-eligible forward was playing in the Swedish Elite for Modo, coached by his father, former NHL defenceman Ulf Samuelsson.

See http://www.whl.ca/2012-whl-trade-deadline-tracker for the full list.

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

[hockeygod]

Sutter brothers try mending fences

By Eric Francis ,Calgary Sun, January 10, 2012

CALGARY – Those who expected the Sutter boys to hug it out or apologize to one another obviously never saw them play.

But in the quiet confines of their respective homes — far from the cameras and the microphones — Darryl and Brent Sutter did the next closest thing: They finally talked.

After more than a year of silence prompted by anger, frustration and personality clashes that dotted their working relationship as GM and head coach, respectively, while with the Calgary Flames, the two spoke Sunday night.

They didn’t discuss their differences, nor bury the hatchet, nor agree to disagree or dissect old wounds …

They just talked.

And for a pair of proud, stubborn farmers, whose only contact came at their family golf tournament in Red Deer last summer when they exchanged hellos while passing one another, a simple phone call was the first and biggest step towards a healing process some thought might never begin.

“We had a good chit-chat — it was good,” said Brent, whose brother initiated the call.

“We talked about their team, about our team … never once did we talk about anything personally. We talked about the kids. We were all over the map with it. That was the first time I talked to him. It was nice.”

Exactly when they last spoke previously is uncertain, as the two weren’t exactly on speaking terms for a time leading up to Darryl’s ouster as Flames GM Dec. 28, 2010. Retreating to the family homestead in Viking, Alta., Darryl disappeared from the hockey world and has yet to comment publicly on his time in Calgary or his requested resignation from the franchise he helped rebuild.

Hired by the Los Angeles Kings last month as head coach, Darryl has since gone on record admitting he had trouble adjusting to the move from coach to GM, which is the crux of what led to the tension between him and his younger brother, whom he hired in the summer of 2009.

On Saturday, Darryl returns to Calgary with the Kings for the first time since making his way back into the NHL coaching ranks. It likely spurred on his decision to reach out to Brent.

“You have to move on,” said Brent before Tuesday’s game against his former employer, the New Jersey Devils.

“Through good and bad, everything you go through is an experience. I learned a lot in New Jersey, and with Darryl here, I also learned a lot. I think there was a lot made out of some things that were said — and not all of it was true either. Perhaps some was. Darryl and I aren’t ones who are going to talk to the media about it. That’s personal. Certain things go on in an organization that you don’t talk about. And that’s no different in a family. It’s personal.”

With seven brothers growing up in a tiny farmhouse, it’s certainly not the first time two of the lads have had their differences. Nor will it be the last.

But given how close the Sutter clan generally is and how curious it is to see a GM and coach who don’t talk — let alone brothers — their ongoing silence was legitimate news speaking to the dysfunction of the Flames organization before Darryl was let go.

“We’ve now had communication since then, and it has been good,” said Brent, who insists he has no idea what transpired management-wise leading up to Darryl’s departure.

“Any way you want to look at it, we’re still brothers. I care deeply about what happens with him and how he does.”

Pointing out how small the coaching community is, Brent said he wants Darryl to continue turning the Kings around as he has so far. Just not on Saturday night.

“I was happy to see him get back into coaching in the NHL, because I think he’s a good coach. But at the end of the day, I’m the head coach of the Flames and he’s the head coach of the Kings. We’re in the same conference, and we’re going to see each other four times before the end of the year. We both love to win, and we’re both competitive, and we both want to see our organizations do well.”

For those wondering, Saturday’s clash at the Dome will be anything but awkward for the two.

“Competing against one another is not something that’s really that big a deal, because we’ve done it our whole lives,” Brent said.

“We did it as kids, and as we grew up and played, we wanted to beat the crap out of each other when our teams played. I haven’t coached against a brother yet, but it’s no different. It’s got nothing to do with Darryl or I. As a matter of fact, until the media brings it up, I don’t even think about it.”

Or at least until the phone rang, that is

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

[hockeygod]

Life between the benches

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN, Globe and Mail, Jan. 11, 2012

It may be the most dangerous place in hockey. No, not in front of the net. We’re talking the tiny space between the team benches. As the madness in Saturday’s Bruins-Canucks revenge match showed, the photo booth/announce position is a lot like Luxembourg wedged between warring France and Germany.

Saturday it was Boston’s Scott Thornton and Vancouver’s Alex Burrows trading spears, slashes and punches between the team benches in what, by current standards, amounts to a line brawl. What the audience didn’t get was the verbal war going on between the benches. Sportsnet and NESN left the space between the benches empty, so posterity has lost the bon mots and ad hominems in Saturday’s tong war between the Stanley Cup finalists of last June.

But the recent 24/7 had a typical, devastating exchange as Flyers’ rookie Tom Sestito, looking to impress, threatens to knock out every player on the Rangers’ bench. A bemused Brad Richards destroys him with a sneering, “One day in the NHL for you… fantasy camp for you.”

“Man the stuff you hear,” says Ray Ferraro, who usually mans the space for TSN. “You hear everything ‘I’ll kill you.’ Life threats. Stuff about wives and girlfriends. Anything but stuff about kids. That’s off-limits. I have to press my cough button because I can’t let it get on air.”

Ferraro’s one of the few (along with CBC’s Glenn Healy and NBC’s Pierre McGuire) regularly assigned to the hot spot. As a former player — and a yappy one himself — he’s in a perfect position to hear the sniping and humour that pass amongst rivals. “The area around the bench like a bus stop,” he says. “Guys have to stop and talk. As a former player I find a lot of humour in it. Some of the guys are very funny.”

McGuire revolutionized the position when TSN first talked the NHL into allowing a broadcaster in the area that was meant for a single cameraman. Now you can have as many as three people jammed like sardines into the cramped space. “The league, the players and the coaches have really reached out to try and help make the position work,” McGuire tells Usual Suspects. “The buildings that only have glass on one side of the box are great. Pittsburgh does that a lot.”

Ferraro, too, likes buildings (such as Toronto) without glass partitions where he can converse with the backup goalie and get the full measure of the venom or strategy. “Last year in the playoffs. (Detroit’s) Johann Franzen jumped on the ice and the Red Wings got a too-many-men penalty. He got back to the bench for his next shift and when he got up to go on again I could hear (Detroit coach) Mike Babcock yell, ‘Mule, sit down’. The funny thing is that’s the game in which Franzen scored four goals.”

Sometimes being that close is difficult when you’re criticizing a player. “Last year I was talking to Chris Cuthbert about (Flyer) Jody Shelley in a game against Vancouver. I was being critical of him, and (then-Flyer) Mike Richards was just inches away. He gave me the real burn with his eyes.”

So which teams are the most entertaining? “Rivalry games are the best,” says McGuire. “Vancouver and anyone. The Flyers-Rangers or Flyers-Penguins. Detroit-Chicago. Bruins-Montreal. Atmosphere in the building is huge too.” His favourite buildings? “Pittsburgh, Philly, Washington, Toronto, Vancouver, Madison Square Garden (NYC), Boston, Chicago, Tampa, and Buffalo.”

It can be a dangerous place, too. McGuire’s been clipped by a stick. Ferraro got a stick in the chest. “The scariest time is when you see the guy go to shoot and the puck is wobbling and you know it could go anywhere. That’s when I get out of the way.”

Listening to the byplay has given Ferraro a profitable idea. “NHL X-rated,” he says. “Uncensored audio. Once a week and charge for it. People would love it. Of course, the coaches would hate it.” But then, coaches hate everything.

Divine Comedy: To those who thought they might escape The Church Of Tim Tebow, Sunday’s unlikely win by the devout Denver QB over heavily favoured Pittsburgh was bad news. You’re stuck with Tebow for a while. America loves him. As NBC’s Darren Rovell says, “54.3M people were watching Broncos-Steelers [on CBS] when game ended. That's 2M more viewers than the “Friends” finale had.” That’s the most for any NFL wild-card game since 1987.

Scarier? Tebow’s favourite Bible versus is John 3:16. His passing yardage Sunday was 316 yards for a 31.6 yard average. The TV rating for the brief OT? 31.6. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Run On Sentence: As we’ve said here before, a good question elicits a good answer. Then there’s former New Orleans Saint (now radio personality) Bobby Hebert, who may have set a world’s record with a 48-second question in the postgame presser for losing LSC coach Les Miles.

“Q. Coach, did you ever consider bringing in Jarrett Lee, considering that you weren't taking any chances on the field? Now, I know Alabama's defence is dominant. But, come on, that's ridiculous, five first downs. I mean, so it's almost an approach, I'll tell from you the fans' standpoint, that how can you not maybe push the ball down the field and bring in Jarrett Lee? So what if you get a pick six. It seems like the game plan that … not pushing the ball down the field, considering it's like a Rueben Randle or Odell Beckham, Jr. I know the pass rush of Alabama, but there's no reason why in five first downs … you have a great defence, LSU is a great defence, but that's ridiculous.”

MODERATOR: Do you have a question?

Footnote: Hebert’s son T-Bob lost his job as a starting O linesman on LSU earlier this season.

Sir Charles: Saturday Night Live is not what it once was. But occasionally – such as last Saturday’s appearance by host Charles Barkley– it gets off the floor and reminds us that it used to be f-u-n-n-y. Apparently Americans agreed, as the show garnered a 7.4 rating, just below the 7.8 rating from last January 8, 2011 with Jim Carrey and the Black Keys.

Perhaps the best skit had Barkley interpreting postgame comments. Sure enough, the first quote came from the ol’ rainmaker himself, LA Kings coach Darryl Sutter “I thought we played hard tonight.” Barkleyspeak: “We sucked tonight.” Also fun was Barkley destroying Shaquille O’Neal in a TNT show rip.

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

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