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[hockeygod]

Penner fires back after Pancake-gate

Postmedia News, January 12, 2012

Los Angeles Kings Dustin Penner during first period action at Rexall Place on March 29, 2011 in Edmonton.
Photograph by: Greg Southam, Edmonton Journal

Last week’s revelation that Los Angeles Kings forward Dustin Penner injured his back while eating pancakes conjured a good amount of ridicule.

Penner — not known for his drive or grit on the ice — suffered back spasms when he sat down to eat, what he called, his wife’s “delicious pancakes.”

This week, Penner fired off his view of things to the blog site, Mayorsmanor.com.

Here’s what he had to say: “ . . . they were vegetarian pancakes. The injury happened as I was sitting down to eat, not mid-bite. And yes, I did finish them. There has been some feedback from the media as a whole regarding the lack of transparency involving injuries. So, I decided to be candid.

“First and foremost, I think we can agree that having delicious pancakes that your wife made for breakfast, for a 1 p.m. game, is not out of the norm. Secondly, SOBS (sudden onset back spasms) can occur at any moment, doing just about anything you can think of, and is a very serious issue.

“Those who have experienced SOBS know it is no laughing matter. I’m a little hurt, to tell you the truth, that the plight of my people isn’t being taken seriously.

“Frankly, I don’t mind the attention and there’s no such thing as bad press, right? Apparently, I made it onto ESPN’s Around the Horn and joined Kings’ ATH alumnus Dustin Brown (see: water bottle incident) and have also became a Twitter sensation overnight (with hashtag #pennercakes). So, I’m hoping to get an endorsement from IHOP or Denny’s.’’

Penner also plans to hold a charity pancake fundraiser.

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

[hockeygod]

Flames acquire Cammalleri in swap with Habs

NHL.com, Thursday, 01.12.2012

One day after voicing his displeasure about his playing time in Montreal, Mike Cammalleri is headed back to Calgary.

The Flames acquired the 29-year-old forward from the Canadiens on Thursday night along with minor-league goaltender Karri Ramo and a fifth-round pick in the 2012 NHL Draft. In exchange, the Canadiens received forwards Rene Bourque and Patrick Holland, plus a second-rounder in the 2013 draft.

Michael Cammalleri
Left Wing – CGY
GOALS: 9 | ASST: 13 | PTS: 22
SOG: 111 | +/-: -6

Cammalleri played 9:02 during the first two periods of the Canadiens' 2-1 loss at Boston on Thursday, but was sent to the dressing room and did not play in the third period.

The Richmond Hill, Ont., native signed a five-year contract with the Canadiens in the summer of 2009 after scoring 39 goals and 82 points with the Flames in 2008-09. He scored 26 and 19 goals in his first two seasons in Montreal, but had just nine goals and 22 points in 38 games with the Canadiens this season.

"Mike Cammalleri is a dynamic player who enjoyed great success playing in Calgary," Flames GM Jay Feaster said in a statement.

"We believe Cammalleri will help our offensive production, solidify a second scoring line, bolster our power play, and bring another strong veteran voice to our room. We are confident that a return to Calgary will be good for Mike and good for our continued pursuit of a playoff berth."

Bourque, 30, has 13 goals and 16 points in 37 games for Calgary. He is sitting out a five-game suspension for elbowing Washington's Nicklas Backstrom in the head last week. Bourque had 27 goals in each of the last two seasons for the Flames.

Ramo, 25, was acquired by Montreal from Tampa Bay in August 2010. He was taken by Tampa Bay in the sixth round of the 2004 NHL Draft and was 11-21-10 in parts of two seasons with the Lightning before opting to play in the KHL with Omsk Avangard.

Holland, 20, was a seventh-round pick by the Flames in the 2010 draft and had 22 goals and 62 points last season with Tri-City of the Western Hockey League.

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

[hockeygod]

Bourque / Cammalleri Trade Perspectives

I find it interesting to hear (and see) the different perspectives from the media on this trade; from their viewpoint (Flames writers / Habs writers / those who report on the NHL as a whole) … and the 'feelings' purported by both people involved in the trade (Cammy and Bourque). From seeing how both people reacted on TV, to hearing their voices on the radio, to the statements attributed to them… funny how people interpret things differently based on the same exposure! Shows how everyone has an opinion… makes me wonder what makes someone with a degree in Journalism (or not!) 'right' or 'wrong'??!! Interesting….

Dean

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FEASTER: IGINLA NOT GOING ANYWHERE; FLAMES AIM FOR PLAYOFFS

TSN.CA STAFF, Jan 13 2012

Flames general manager Jay Feaster is sending a clear message to Calgary hockey fans.

After asserting all year long that the club has no intention of dealing captain Jarome Iginla and instigating a rebuild, Thursday night's acquisition of Michael Cammalleri from the Montreal Canadiens hammered the point home.

The Flames intend to compete for the playoffs this season.

"Iggy is going nowhere," he told TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun on ESPN.com. "And we are going for it."

Sitting three points out in a crowded battle for Western Conference playoff berths, the Flames brought Cammalleri in to bolster their scoring.

Feaster's declaration comes after the team has rattled off three straight wins, closing the playoff gap for the Flames.

Cammalleri, 30, has scored nine goals and 22 points this season.

In his lone previous season as a member of the Flames in 2008-09, Cammalleri posted career-highs in goals (39) and points (83).

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MCKENZIE: COMPELLING (AND CRAZY) DRAMA OF CAMMALLERI TRADE

BOB MCKENZIE, TSN.CA, Jan 13 2012

I know we are supposed to make instantaneous judgments on winners and losers in big NHL trades, and the Mike Cammalleri-Rene Bourque/Calgary-Montreal transaction certainly qualifies as a big deal.

At first blush, not a lot of people seem to like it from the Canadiens' end because, well, Cammalleri has a degree of star power that Rene Bourque will never have. That was certainly my first reaction.

And let's be honest, the way things have gone in Montreal this season, GM Pierre Gauthier isn't going to win any popularity contests either, which may cloud the judgmental equation more than a little.

And, hey, Cammalleri's 13 goals in 19 playoff games two years ago is still relatively fresh in our minds and Flames' fans will no doubt recall Cammalleri's NHL career high of 39 goals for Calgary in 2008-09. Suffice to say that the diminutive Cammalleri has a "potential" offensive ceiling Bourque will have difficult rivalling.

It's also difficult to separate the nuts and bolts of this transaction from the soap opera of the last 48 hours in Montreal, with Cammalleri sounding off one day and get traded DURING the Habs' game in Boston the next night.

Compelling stuff. Pretty crazy, too.

But it's always a good idea to try to separate the emotion and drama when doing analysis. Or at least make the effort.

And, therefore, some may be surprised to learn that Bourque's goal totals compare quite favorably to Cammalleri's.

In 38 games this season, Cammalleri has nine goals. In the same number of games, Bourque has 13 goals.

In two-plus seasons as a Canadien, Cammalleri has 54 goals in 169 regular season games. A goal-per-game average of .32.

In the exact same time period with the Flames, Bourque has 67 goals in 191 games. That's 13 more goals in 22 more games, or a goal-per-game average of .35, .03 better than Cammalleri.

Okay, but let's factor in Cammalleri's 39-goal zenith in 08-09. He is, after all, returning to the scene of the crime. In his last three-plus seasons, Cammalleri has 93 goals in 250 games for GPG average of .37. Not too shabby.

But Bourque's numbers in that time are still pretty good, too. He has 88 goals in 249 games, for a GPG average of .35. Or more simply put, in one extra game in that time, Cammalleri has just five more goals than Bourque.

As for recent playoffs, it's no contest. Cammalleri had 13 two seasons ago and three against Boston in the first round last year. Bourque hasn't been in the playoffs since Cammalleri was a Calgary teammate in 08-09.

The regular season numbers are surprising, though. Shocking actually. To me, anyway. Mostly because Bourque, who incidentally is a half year older than Cammalleri, has a league-wide reputation for being an enigmatic underachiever who runs really hot and really cold. If you caught analyst Kelly Hrudey on Hockey Night in Canada earlier this season, he absolutely savaged Bourque with pointed criticism that suggested in no uncertain terms Bourque's "give a damn meter" was broken. Hrudey doesn't often rip players to shreds but he did that night with Bourque. And there are few who would argue with Hrudey's assessment at the time.

Yet Bourque's goal output has been remarkably consistent. Back-to-back 27-goal seasons and right on course for that range this season. Those are really quite good numbers for an enigmatic in-and-outer.

Bourque, of course, is bigger and, when so moved, much more physical than Cammalleri (Bourque is currently serving his five-game suspension for elbowing Washington's Nicklas Backstrom). And Montreal could certainly use some size and edge.

Bourque also makes less money, about $3 million per year less, than Cammalleri.

So someone needs to ask the question: Is it conceivable Gauthier has replaced Cammalleri's goals in the Canadiens' lineup, got bigger and tougher and done so while freeing up an additional $3 million in cap space, giving the Habs the equivalent of more than $8 million worth of cap room (according to Capgeek) at the deadline?

Gauthier also got a second-round draft pick (which is not insignificant) and a decent prospect in WHL forward Patrick Holland while giving up a fifth-round pick and Finnish goalie Karri Ramo, who is currently playing in the KHL.

Amateur scouts I talked to said Holland is by no means a can't-miss prospect. None suggested he's a potential top six NHL forward but many said he does have a legitimate chance to play in the NHL as a solid third- or fourth-liner. It's hard to know if Ramo, a former Tampa Bay prospect, will ever be a factor in the NHL, but some believe he has No. 1 potential and may one day be the heir apparent to Miikka Kiprusoff in Calgary.

Pretty much everyone, it seems, is looking at this transaction through the Montreal prism and given how the NHL season has gone for the Habs and the dramatic developments of the last 48 hours, that's understandable.

But it's worth considering the Flames' angle on this.

Calgary GM Jay Feaster has been loathe to give up draft picks and/or prospects for immediate help now because he knows all too well Calgary's cupboard isn't exactly full of either. Until now, anyway.

He made an exception this time because he's getting a player he feels can be a dynamic difference maker, though it has to be said Cammalleri has been an enigmatic underachiever himself after his great playoff run of 2010.

Feaster has never suggested he's embracing a full rebuild/youth movement of Edmonton Oiler proportions but it is fair to ask whether it's wise to be giving up a significant draft pick and decent prospect for a soon-to-be thirtysomething scorer who's on hard times and bumping up the payroll by $3 million in the process.

It's a move that is not without risk for the Flames. Is it a shrewd investment or a return to a high-ratio mortgaging of the Flames' future? I suppose that depends on Cammalleri, how much he scores off the hop and whether his addition can push Calgary to the front of the seven-team bubble group competing for the final three playoff spots in the Western Conference.

Cammalleri's playoff track record and game-breaking ability is not to be overlooked but if Calgary doesn't make the playoffs and/or Cammalleri's offensive woes continue… well, you get the picture.

At the very least, the jury is out on this move from Calgary's end and it should be at least as interesting a discussion/debate in Cowtown as it is in Montreal.

Don't get the wrong impression here. I am not endorsing Gauthier's efforts in Montreal this season. There's an unseemly quality to the events there this year.

Firing assistant coach Perry Pearn hours before a game. Firing head coach Jacques Martin before a game-day skate. Trading Cammalleri during a game, 24 hours after the player spouted off, and then saying it's a deal that has been in the works since early December. Which may be true but Cammalleri's outburst clearly triggered the deal being done.

And I can tell you there are a number of NHL GMs who had no idea Montreal was prepared to trade Cammalleri. This was not a player who was shopped around the league. Could Gauthier have gotten more elsewhere or driven up the price? Maybe, but it's conceivable he didn't want anybody else and only had eyes for Bourque. Fine, because that's how he'll be judged and judged he will be.

For what it's worth, I think Gauthier's firing of Martin's was an act of pure desperation and ill-conceived from the get-go. I have no problem with Randy Cunneyworth getting an opportunity to coach — he's worked hard and deserves the chance on merit — but the most qualified man (based on experience and expertise) in the Montreal organization to turn around the Canadiens this season was clearly Martin.

If the Habs' downward spiral continues this season, I could easily see Gauthier being fired at season's end and not too many Canadien fans would shed a tear at that.

I have to admit, I seriously misjudged the Canadiens this season. At a time when most said they were on the verge of a precipitous decline, which has fully materialized, I really thought they could have been a lot better than expected. I was wrong. Dead wrong.

So there's a part of me — the rush to judgment/first blush part we all possess — that really wants to dislike this Cammalleri-Bourque deal for the Canadiens, signalling perhaps the end of the Canadiens' speed-skill era that was so enjoyable to watch in back-to-back playoff years.

But then I look at the cold, hard numbers of it all — the goals, the dollars, the future considerations — and I wonder if I'm maybe missing the mark yet again?

We'll find out soon enough, I suppose, but in the meantime, I would suggest there should be a whole lot of people in Montreal AND Calgary who are going to be under the intense glare of the spotlight on this deal.

Now let's see who steps up.

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MARINARO: THIRD BIG CHANGE FOR GAUTHIER AND HABS THIS YEAR

TONY MARINARO, TSN.CA, Jan 13 2012

Montreal Canadiens General Manager Pierre Gauthier has tried to jump start his team on more than one occasion this season. On October 26, he dismissed assistant coach Perry Pearn just hours before a game.

Strike one.

About eight weeks later, he fired head coach Jacques Martin and replaced him with interim coach Randy Cunneyworth.

Strike two.

Last night, Pierre Gauthier swung again. In an attempt to shake things up, the Habs GM traded winger Mike Cammalleri; destination Calgary. Also going to Calgary are the rights to goalie Karri Ramo and a fifth round pick in 2012. In exchange, the Habs received forward Rene Bourque, prospect Patrick Holland and a second round pick in 2013.

Cammalleri and Bourque are both 29-year-old wingers. Cammalleri has a cap hit of $6 million per year. His contract expires in 2014. Bourque's cap hit is $3.33 million per year until 2016.

These are two very different players. At six-foot-two, 215 pounds, Bourque is a bigger, more rugged option on the wing. Over the past two-and-a-half seasons he has produced more goals. Bourque has never, however, scored more than 27 goals in an NHL season.

As for Cammalleri, he scored 34 in Los Angeles. A couple of years later, he potted 39 with Calgary. Cammalleri's best as a Montreal Canadien was back in the 2009-10 season when he scored 26 goals in 65 games. He then led all scorers with 13 goals in 19 playoff games.

Gauthier says Cammalleri's alleged comments – that the Habs had a losing mentality – had no bearing on the timing of the trade. Interestingly, word around the NHL is that many GM's didn't know Cammalleri was on the trading block. If so, one needs to ask why the Canadiens didn't notify all the other teams in order to create a bidding war. Also, why now and why not closer to the trade deadline?

Last night, the Canadiens lost 2-1 in Boston, and trail eighth-place Washington, who have two games in hand, by seven points.

On the injury front, forward Scott Gomez, who has missed the last 21 games, is likely to return this weekend. Gomez will meet with team doctors prior to the Ottawa game to determine if he's been cleared to play.

Carey Price will be between the pipes tomorrow night against the Ottawa Senators. Rene Bourque will not be in the lineup. He will be serving the last game of a five-game suspension. Bourque makes his Canadiens debut Sunday, when the Habs host the New York Rangers. Backup goaltender Peter Budaj will get the start.

—–

Getting it wrong in Calgary
Is GM Jay Feaster chasing his tail in Calgary?

Mark Spector, Sportsnet.ca, January 13, 2012

The on-line headline in the Calgary Herald tells the entire story: "Cammalleri deal shows Flames taking run at playoffs."

The sub-head should have been: "Future? What future? Flames will deal with that when it gets here."

Another Band-Aid trade, another second-rounder out the door, another prospect given up on. And the Calgary Flames find themselves marginally better this morning.

Yeehaw.

Is there a fan in Calgary who can look in the mirror today, even after clearly getting the best player in their deal with the Montreal Canadiens, and say the Flames have a prayer of beating the Vancouver Canucks in a seven-game series in Round 1 of the playoffs?

Because that is the measuring stick here, folks. Sure, Calgary will beat the rebuilding Edmonton Oilers by two goals instead of one for a while longer, with a rejuvenated Michael Cammalleri in the lineup. But it's not about beating the Edmonton Oilers, folks.

The facts are, a Flames fan would trade rosters with the St. Louis Blues in a heartbeat, and the Blues are still a second-tier team in the West.

It's about winning a Stanley Cup. And when your goalie is your best player most nights at age 35, and your leading scorer is 34 and can no longer carry your team the way he once did, does this trade really bring a Stanley Cup any closer in Calgary?

Or are we stuck in the right now, a futile chase for a few playoff dates in April?

"Oh, absolutely. This isn't something that's done that's future-looking," Flames general manager Jay Feaster told reporters in Calgary during the first intermission of a 1-0 OT win on home ice over the 29th- place Anaheim Ducks.

"We want to win right now. We want to be a playoff team," Feaster said. "In terms of our playoff push, we think this is a real jump-start."

We're fans of Jay Feaster, honestly. He's sharp and honest, and he's always been very fair to me. But we can't put it any other way: he's chasing his tail now in Calgary.

Look: there is no question that Feaster got the best player in the Cammalleri-for-Rene Bourque trade. Cammalleri enjoyed the best year of his career during his previous one-year stop in Calgary, where he had 39-43-82 back in 2008-09, and hopefully he finds that level again. He's a quality player and a good man, with a fire in his belly that burns far, far brighter than Bourque's.

But Feaster also traded a second-round pick for a fifth-rounder, dealt away a kid named Patrick Holland who just turned 20 and has 57 points in 40 WHL games this season, and burned nearly $3 million more in cap space for the next two seasons.

It is the ultimate "right now" deal for a team that should be thinking seriously about its future. Calgary is one of only nine National Hockey League clubs with an average age of greater than 28 years, and its six leading scorers on the farm in Abbotsford — topped by 30-year-old Krys Kolanos — average over 27 years of age.

Feaster is officially caught up in the vortex of selling off tomorrow for today. Caught up in the futility of shooting for the Brad Richards' of the world, and when that doesn't work signing Alex Tanguay to a ridiculous five-year deal that pays him through age 36.

It's being reported that the second-round pick he dealt to Montreal leaves Calgary without a second-rounder in each of the next two years. In the post-lockout NHL, we are sorry to report that that approach has been proven not to work.

"If we're going to make a run here in the second half, we need the powerplay to be very good," Feaster said. "From our perspective, (Cammalleri) is a guy who needs a change of scenery right now."

But, really. If he plays lights out hockey from Saturday until the end of the season, and the Flames make the playoffs, what then?

Is Calgary in the same stratosphere as Vancouver? As Chicago? As San Jose? As Detroit?

Like, what's the goal here? To perhaps make the playoffs as a mega-long shot, then pray that everything comes up sevens in April and May?

Or to build something with longevity?

We know: There are some contracts up after this season. Some cap room will open up. That means Feaster can build a winner through free agency, that all-or-nothing process where you get to sign over-priced, long-term deals with older players. Like the one Tanguay got.

It doesn't work that way anymore, Calgary. When will someone in that organization figure it out?

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Agent: Cammalleri didn't want out

Sportsnet Staff, January 13, 2012

Following a whirlwind 24 hours that saw Michael Cammalleri vent his frustrations with the Montreal Canadiens and subsequently dealt to the Calgary Flames, the player's agent said the disgruntled forward was not looking for a trade.

Agent Ian Pulver joined Jeff Blair on Sportsnet 590 The Fan Friday morning to discuss his client's trade, claiming that Cammalleri wanted to remain with the struggling Canadiens and help them get back on track, despite his criticisms of the club the previous day.

"Mike did not want out of Montreal," Pulver said in the radio interview. "Mike wanted to win in Montreal. He wanted the team to do better and he made his comments and whether they were accepted or not, he's in Calgary today."

Cammalleri was dealt to the Flames on Thursday night along with Karri Ramo and a fifth-round draft pick in 2012 in exchange for Rene Bourque, Patrick Holland and a second-round pick in 2013.

On Wednesday, Cammalleri had sounded off about the mounting frustration in Montreal, suggesting the Canadiens were playing with a "losing mentality". Pulver agreed it has been a turbulent season for Cammalleri and the Habs, but his client is now focused on re-joining an organization where he has achieved success in the past.

"This season seems to have gone backwards for the entire organization and (Canadiens general manager) Mr. Gauthier decided to trade Mike," Pulver added. "To go back to Calgary with Jarome Iginla and the rest of the players, he knows the city, he knows the fans, he's excited."

While the trade may appear to be a knee-jerk reaction from a Habs club that has admittedly made mistakes this season, Flames GM Jay Feaster said the two clubs had been discussing a deal for a while. Cammalleri's agent said he didn’t think a trade was imminent, even though other teams had also shown interest in the 29-year-old forward.

"Whether it’s been in the works, I believe there were inquiries made but I don’t think anything was imminent for some time,” Pulver said. “There have been teams that made inquiries about Mike's availability throughout this year, through all the coaching changes Montreal has had.”

In 37 games for the Canadiens this season, Cammalleri had nine goals and 13 assists for 22 points. He now returns to the Flames, where he had career-highs in goals (39) and points (82) in the 2008-09 season.

—–

Habs lose again with trade
Will Pierre Gauthier be the GM in Montreal much longer?

Gare Joyce, Sportsnet.ca, January 13, 2012

Michael Cammalleri is out of Montreal because he wasn't on message.

And with the Canadiens this gawd-awful season, the message is always things as management would like them to be, not things as they truly are.

"We prepare for our games like losers," Cammalleri told the media in the Canadiens dressing room Wednesday. "We play like losers. So it's no wonder why we lose."

That was about as far from the required script as you could possibly stray and there was only one possible outcome: Cammalleri had to be traded.

And he was, to Calgary along with a goaltender Karri Ramo (who's in Russia) and a fifth-round pick in this year's draft. In return Montreal, winds up with forwards Rene Bourque and Patrick Holland along with a second-round draft pick in 2013.

Cammalleri is halfway through a five-year, $30-million contract that he signed as a free agent in 2009 and he was one of the Canadiens' best players during their run to the Eastern Conference final in 2010. Even if Cammalleri doesn't improve on his ordinary play so far this season, even if he doesn't make his way back to the 39-goal form of his contract year in his first turn in Calgary, the Flames come away with the best player (by far) in the trade.

This is to say that the Canadiens are losers again. In a delicious irony, the winner to emerge from the latest tempest in Montreal's gawd-awful season is Cammalleri, the one who waxed about losing.

There had to be a trade and Canadiens GM Pierre Gauthier kept the suspense going for as long as he could, which turned out to be about 40 minutes longer than most insiders expected. Gauthier had Cammalleri pulled off the ice at the end of the second period in Boston Thursday night. By the time his by-then former teammates got back to the dressing room after a 2-1 loss to the Bruins, Cammalleri had taken a last stick of gum off a table in the Canadiens' dressing room and had been bundled into a taxi for a safe house in advance of making his way to Calgary.

There's no knowing whether Cammalleri's name had been taken down from his stall in the visiting dressing room before the game's end. That would require a call to the Canadiens and if they deigned to provide an answer it would have to be an unlikely case of message intersecting with truth to deserve publication.

Cammalleri is insisting that he didn't want the Canadiens to trade him. His agent Ian Pulver is singing background to the same tune. And Gauthier did his best to seem dumbfounded at the mere suggestion that he would deal Cammalleri to Calgary because the veteran's dressing-room confessional had him on the wrong side of management.

"No, not at all," Gauthier said. "I didn't make a big deal about all that. There's emotion around the team, somebody says something, I'd rather see emotion than people that don't care … He never asked to be traded or anything. He's part of the team and he cares a lot. That's why he made those comments."

For our purposes, Gauthier's comments will constitute the NHL's laugh test the rest of the season — at least until Montreal's front office tries another damage-control gambit, which could be days or even hours away.

In the pages of Sportsnet magazine this week, I wrote about the Canadiens' descent from their former glories and suggested that they just don't matter anymore. Some readers will take issue with the screed and protest about my disparaging Les Glorieux. Maybe they'll be riled by my suggestion that the Canadiens have fallen from the once unchallenged No. 1 among the Original Six to No. 6 in terms of relevance. Maybe it will be my opinion that the franchise today is closer to Columbus than it is to Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Detroit or, horrors, Toronto. Or maybe it will be my argument that the Canadiens are more concerned with the packaging of history rather than dealing with the present and preparing for the future — that this is a franchise of appearances, not realities.

Your Honour, we'd like to call our next witness, Mr. Michael Cammalleri, formerly of Montreal.

Cammalleri's statements leave no doubt that the players have no confidence in management in the person of Pierre Gauthier. Randy Cunneyworth, who was promoted to the head coach's job when Gauthier fired the blameless Jacques Martin, hasn't lost the team — by Cammalleri's characterization, Cunneyworth never had the team to lose.

It's a season when what could go wrong has gone wrong: the team's best defenceman Andrei Markov looks like he won't play anytime soon, if ever, and captain Brian Gionta is shelved with a biceps tear until next fall.

Things going wrong happens. You can accept a black cloud hovering over a team for a patch. That's not the problem with the Canadiens circa 2012, though. No, it's the fact that management, Gauthier, has made a mess of everything he has picked up.

It's hard to imagine how he could have handled the challenges worse. He scape-goated assistant coach Perry Pearn and Martin. He installed a unilingual Anglophone, Cunneyworth, to work the bench and blew off questions from the French media, saying "languages can be learned." He over-committed and over-paid Markov in the off-season despite his history of injury. And now he traded Cammalleri for short change. The value in that trade is the second-round draft choice in 2013 coming over to Canadiens.

Montreal fans can take consolation that Gauthier won't be around to make that pick.

—–

Podcast
Dissecting the Flames – Canadiens trade

Globe and Mail, Jan. 13, 2012

Globe hockey columnist Eric Duhatschek and Montreal-based sports reporter Sean Gordon discuss the trade that sent Michael Cammalleri to Calgary and Rene Bourque to Montreal.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/dissecting-the-flames—canadiens-trade/article2301669/

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Flames offer mixed feelings after Bourque trade

Scott Cruickshank, Calgary Herald, January 13, 2012

With his first post-game sentence, Brent Sutter pounded the nail on the head.

“Well, it was certainly an eventful night.”

Not only did the Calgary Flames win their eighth straight home date — a dramatic (and sort of boring) 1-0 overtime victory over the Anaheim Ducks — they made in-game news with a swap of big-name but under-performing forwards.

Gone is Rene Bourque (and a second-round pick and prospect Patrick Holland).

Here, again, is Michael Cammalleri (and a fifth-round pick and KHL goalie Karri Ramo).

The timing, in particular, was odd.

The Flames made the news official DURING the game, meaning the shutout triumph ends up taking second billing and Bourque exited the premises before getting to say goodbye to his chums.

In fact, the Calgary players didn’t get formal word till after the game.

“He was my roommate on the road for the last four years, so he was a good friend,” Curtis Glencross said of Bourque. “So it’s one of them things you hate to do. But we’ve all been traded — it’s part of the business. I hope Bourquey does awesome in Montreal. He’s one of them guys who’s going to go there and enjoy it.

“To lose a guy like Bourquey, he’s one of those heart-and-soul guys. Hate to see him go, but it’s part of the business and it happens all the time.”

Jarome Iginla, too, mentioned the “bittersweet” aspect of the transaction. And Sutter made of point of discussing Bourque’s contributions before he’d even address the addition of Cammalleri.

“I’m going to mention Bourquey first because he’s a player that I have been coaching, someone that I’ve spent a lot of time with,” said Sutter. “I wish him nothing but all the best . . . to go there and have great success. It’s the tough part of the business, the trading part. You want it to work out well for everybody, that’s the main thing.”

The Flames captain agreed.

“I was surprised,” said Iginla. “Any trade, when they happen, are a surprise. Trades are always hard. Bourquey’s a very big part of this room. We’re all friends with him. He’s a big scoring winger. He’s going to do great. But Cammy, he’s played with a lot of us, too. A very good player, too. It’s different . . . friends going both ways. Hopefully, it’s one that’ll work very well for both teams. Both teams got very good players.

“But it’s always a surprise, even if you read rumours. You never know what’s true, what’s not.

“It’s different. On one hand, you’re excited. And on one hand, you haven’t had a chance to talk to Bourquey.”

Cammalleri, with the Flames in 2008-09, banged in 39 goals. Iginla, no coincidence, piled up 54 helpers.

Obvious chemistry there.

On opposite wings on the same line — Cammalleri being a lefty, Iginla being a righty — both could set up for their trademark one-timers.

“I enjoyed playing with him and has success with him,” said Iginla. “I don’t know where he’s going to play. But he’s a great power-play guy. He has the knack to always find ways to get open. His release is second to none. And he’s a very competitive guy. He gets fired up.

“I know he enjoyed playing here. And the fans liked him. And he liked Calgary.”

Yeah, what about that?

Olli Jokinen leaves, then returns.

Alex Tanguay leaves, then returns.

Now Cammalleri.

“It’s one of those things — they don’t really know till they get here,” said Iginla. “It’s a good city, we’re treated very well. Our organization treats us well and they want to win. Over all the years, there haven’t been many players — maybe one or two — that you hear that they didn’t enjoy it (in Calgary). It does speak volumes for the team and the organization that guys do leave and want to come back and try to win here.

“Sometimes different fits at different times.”

As fate would have it, earlier Thursday, Blair Jones had received a text from an old teammate, congratulating him on his recent trade from Tampa to Calgary.

The pal? Ramo, who, despite currently playing for KHL Omsk, was part of Thursday’s trade.

“I played with him in my rookie season in the minors (in AHL Springfield in 2006-07),” said Jones, who — oh yeah — happened to be the overtime hero. “He was a good goaltending prospect then, then I think he took a few years and played in Russia. A good guy, a good goalie. We’ll see what happens.”

—–

Campbell: Cammalleri, Bourque seek fresh starts after trade

Ken Campbell, The Hockey News, 2012-01-13

Something in Michael Cammalleri’s comments about the Canadiens being “losers” may or may not have been lost in translation, but the team could not have been more clear and unequivocal than it was by trading him 24 hours after they came out.

Which leads us to believe that either (a) a deal involving Cammalleri has been in the works for a time, or (b) this is the quickest and most dramatic rift between a player and management with the Canadiens since Patrick Roy was traded in 1995. Canadiens GM Pierre Gauthier insisted a deal has been in the works for months, but the timing is curious, no?

One source said Cammalleri had met with Gauthier earlier in the day and expressed a desire to go back to Calgary, where he had the best offensive season of his career prior to signing with the Canadiens as an unrestricted free agent in 2009. If that’s the case, it certainly didn’t take long for the two sides to cook up a deal, with Cammalleri, journeyman goaltender Karri Ramo and a fifth round pick in 2012 going to the Flames for Rene Bourque, prospect Patrick Holland and a second-rounder in 2013.

On the surface, it looks like a deal involving two wingers who have the potential to score 30 goals a season, but both of whom are performing at sub-par levels. And if all the reports are true, both were butting heads with their coaches. Things had become so frustrating for Cammalleri that he sounded off after practice Wednesday and was quoted as saying, among other things, “We prepare for games like losers. We play like losers. So it’s no wonder why we lose.”

It appears Cammalleri’s use of the word “losers” might not have been accurately quoted after being translated into French and back to English. But it’s clear those comments did not sit well with the Canadiens, who have had to deal with one disaster after another and managed somehow to create yet another one by informing Cammalleri he had been traded in the middle of a game.

The Canadiens, who have prided themselves on doing everything the right way, have long been considered the classiest organization in the NHL, if not all professional sports. But their behavior this season, starting with new owner Geoff Molson on down, gives one the impression they’re trying to become the newest expansion team in the Federal League.

If you’re judging which team got the best player in the deal, you’d probably have to tip your cap to the Flames, who pick up a player who will be motivated to redeem himself in a city and with an organization he loved in his one season there. Truth be told, aside from his brilliant play in the Canadiens run to the 2010 Eastern Conference final – and it was something to behold – Cammalleri accomplished almost nothing in Montreal. He was often hurt and when he wasn’t injured, he endured long spells of lacking productivity, so much so that there are those who think Jacques Martin’s insistence on playing Cammalleri and some of the other veterans so much might have cost him his coaching job.

The Canadiens will save short term as far as the salary cap hit goes. Cammalleri has the rest of this season and two more on a contract that pays him $6 million a season, while the Canadiens are on the hook to Bourque for the remainder of this season and another four at a cap hit of $3.33 million. Both players have a penchant for producing in spurts and have dealt with various injuries and with only six months between them – Bourque is older – are at about the same stages of their careers.

Calgary’s game against the Anaheim Ducks Thursday night was the fourth of Bourque’s five-game suspension for elbowing Nicklas Backstrom of the Washington Capitals in the head, meaning he’ll miss the Canadiens game Saturday night against the Ottawa Senators before making his way into the lineup. His physical game is much more robust than Cammalleri’s and he’s more of a two-way player.

Cammalleri and Jarome Iginla between Olli Jokinen on the Flames first line could certainly be a lethal combination if coach Brent Sutter chooses to play the three of them together. If not, you can be sure Cammalleri and Iginla will see lots of time together on the power play. If Cammalleri finds his form in Calgary, the Flames almost certainly win the trade, but that is a form that has been absent for some time now. And depending upon which scouts you speak to, Holland may or may not be a key factor in this deal. The Flames picked the right winger in the seventh round of the 2010 draft, but he has apparently filled out since then and has 17 goals and 57 points in 40 games for the Tri-City Americans of the Western League this season. He is in his last year of junior eligibility and turned 20 six days ago.

“Let’s put it this way: If I were making a trade with the Calgary Flames I would insist on (Holland) being part of the deal,” said an executive from another team. “Is it a gamble? Sure it’s a gamble. But this guy is a good player. He’s an enigma, but he has grown into his body and he can do things now that he couldn’t do two years ago.”

Another scout said Holland projects out to be a third-line player in the NHL at best, “and certainly not a slam-dunk. He’s more a prospect thrown into the deal than a key part of it.”

Reviews are mixed on Holland, but that hardly makes him an outcast in this deal. Like so many deals that happen in the NHL today, it involves two players who are struggling and whose new teams hope they can find their games in a fresh situation. And like so many deals in the NHL today, it is filled with tons of uncertainty.

—–

Cammalleri will have little time to adjust before being thrown into Flames' fire

The Canadian Press, 2012-01-13

CALGARY – Mike Cammalleri's last appearance with the Calgary Flames was in the 2009 playoffs.

The club hasn't been in the post-season since but hope to change that this year after Thursday night's trade with the Montreal Canadiens that saw the Flames reacquire Cammalleri for Rene Bourque.

With bad weather in the east delaying Cammalleri's arrival in Calgary until Friday evening, he'll have just Saturday's game-day skate to get reacquainted with the Flames before stepping right into game action Saturday night with the Los Angeles Kings at the Saddledome.

"He's going to be thrown right into the fire," says Flames coach Brent Sutter. "There isn't going to be any practice time or anything like that, but he's a smart player and he knows the game and he'll adjust very quickly."

Sutter, who has never coached Cammalleri before, has not yet made up his mind on who his newest acquisition will play with. Jarome Iginla and Cammalleri played well together three years ago when Cammalleri's career-high 39 goals led the team.

But the current Flames top unit of Olli Jokinen centring Iginla and Curtis Glencross are currently red-hot and it's doubtful he'll break up that trio.

Cammalleri's presence will give the Flames an injection of emotion on Saturday, and it comes after they got a boost Thursday with the return of steady defenceman Mark Giordano, who had missed 21 games with a hamstring injury.

"I know Cammy personally. I played with him before and know him from back home. The guy works exceptionally hard off ice and on ice and we all know what kind of damage he can do around the net with the puck," said Giordano. "Any time you see guys like that who take a lot of pride in off-ice stuff and commitment in the gym and carry it over onto the ice.

"Cammy, he's a very confident player and that rubs off on guys."

Cammalleri will be wearing jersey No. 93, a departure from his No. 13, currently worn by Jokinen. With Jokinen wearing No. 21, the two were teammates for the latter part of the 2009 season after Jokinen was acquired in a trade with Phoenix.

"He wants to win. He's a very outspoken guy. He demands a lot out of himself and out of his teammates as well. Maybe we'll get a little spark in the locker-room too," Jokinen said.

Perhaps no one on the Flames is yearning for playoff hockey more than defenceman Jay Bouwmeester. The league's reigning ironman with 551 consecutive games played in the regular season, the 28-year-old has yet to appear in a playoff game in his eight seasons.

"Whenever something like this happens, it shakes things up," says Bouwmeester. "We're playing a little better now with three wins in a row and hopefully this adds to that and we can keep rolling and keep moving up the standings."

Calgary is currently tied with Phoenix for 11th in the Western Conference, three points out of the final playoff spot.

"All you really have to do is get in, then it's a fresh start for everyone," said Bouwmeester. "It seems like every year there is at least one or two lower teams, whether it's the eighth seed or whatever, that end up going a long way. So, right now the focus is just to get there."

Dean
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Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
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YOUR! CALL: WOULD YOU WANT YOUR NHL TEAM TO REBUILD?

TSN.CA STAFF, Jan 13 2012

The trade that sent Michael Cammalleri to the Calgary Flames Thursday night came as a shock to the hockey world.

Not only was the timing conspicuous – a day after Cammalleri criticized the team – but it was surprising to see the Flames and Canadiens swing a talent-for-talent deal when both teams have spent the better part of the year outside the playoff picture in their respective conferences.

Jay Feaster confirmed his team's stance to TSN's Pierre Lebrun on Friday that he has no intentions of trading captain Jarome Iginla and that the team intends to make a run this season.

The Canadiens, too, signaled that they are not in a hurry yet to mount a full-scale rebuild by acquiring veteran Rene Bourque in the deal, despite sitting 12th in the Eastern Conference.

The stance taken by both sides raises an interesting question about the league's seven Canadian franchises and whether or not an NHL team can truly rebuild in a rabid Canadian market.

Certainly, the Edmonton Oilers have proven that it can happen. The team, having missed five consecutive postseasons, has preached patience to its fans and has shown flashes of a brilliant future thanks to early NHL success from elite prospects like Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jordan Eberle.

Aside from the Stanley Cup-contending Vancouver Canucks, the other teams seem to be a different story.

The Ottawa Senators looked on their way to a full rebuilding effort last season, jettisoning veterans like Mike Fisher, Chris Kelly and Jarkko Ruutu for draft picks and picking three times in the first round of the draft. However, the team also locked veteran Chris Phillips into a long-term deal and re-signed 30-year-old goaltender Craig Anderson to a four-year contract. This year, the team parted with highly-touted defender David Rundblad and a second-round draft pick for Coyotes forward Kyle Turris. Perhaps more retooling than blowing it all up and starting over again.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are one of two NHL franchises to have missed the playoffs every year since the 2004-05 lockout. While the team has been able to significantly improve its young core under Brian Burke, any notion of a true rebuilding project went out the door when top draft picks were peddled for Phil Kessel. While the team has performed well this season, the team never showed an appetite for a full-blown tear-it-down-and-start-again model like the Pittsburgh Penguins or Chicago Blackhawks.

The Winnipeg Jets are something of an unknown quantity as they re-establish their identity in Winnipeg. The team sits 10th in the Eastern Conference, but sits just five points out of the Southeast Division lead. The team also inherited a young Thrashers roster with recent high draft picks like Evander Kane and Zach Bogosian.

This brings us back to Thursday's trade partners.

The Canadiens have struggled this season and may be looking at its highest draft pick since selecting Carey Price fifth overall in 2005. The team already witnessed a mass exodus of established talent in 2009 with then-captain Saku Koivu and fan favourites Alex Kovalev and Mike Komisarek leaving as free agents.
They could have chosen a rebuilding project at that time around young talents like Carey Price and P.K. Subban, but instead immediately sunk money into one of the league's heftiest contracts in Scott Gomez and unrestricted free agents like Cammalleri and Brian Gionta.

Now the team has dumped Cammalleri in a lateral move for a 30-year-old forward with four years remaining on his deal. A player who has not even met Cammalleri's sub-standard point totals this season with 13 goals and three assists through 38 games.

The Flames, meanwhile, are counting on Cammalleri can regain his form from 2008-09 where he was a point-per-game player for the Flames. But the problems in Calgary are much graver than a one-forward fix. The team's core is aging with Jarome Iginla, Miikka Kiprusoff, Olli Jokinen and Alex Tanguay all in their mid-30s. The team has missed the playoffs the past two seasons and has not won a playoff round since its run to the Final in 2004.

With the team sitting outside the playoffs once more this season, they could use some veteran players as trade pieces to bolster a prospect stable that boasts few elite names beyond Mikael Backlund Sven Baertschi.

For a team that almost single-handedly turned its fortunes in 1995 by dealing Joe Nieuwendyk to Dallas for a young Iginla, certainly the prospect of reaping a similar reward might eventually come to mind.

So what is it with Canadian NHL teams and the prospect of rebuilding?

Many have faced the prospect of starting from scratch, yet in recent history only one of the team's six (now seven) franchises has truly embraced the idea. Would you like to see your favourite Canadian team rebuild from the ground up? Or, is remaining competitive that important in the Canadian market?

As always, it's Your! Call.

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

[hockeygod]

Proteau: Why is Scott Howson still employed by Columbus?

Adam Proteau, The Hockey News, 2012-01-12

When Scott Arniel was made to walk the Blue Jackets’ plank Monday, some felt it was unfair GM Scott Howson didn’t join his now-former coach wearing the latest in sandwich board couture on the unemployment lines. After all, Howson has been running the show in Columbus since June of 2007 and to this day has delivered a thoroughly underwhelming 152-163-55 record along with four playoff games, all of them losses. If Arniel was held to account for a team buried at the bottom of the Western Conference with zero chance of making the post-season, why did the accountability stop there?

It stopped because, as your father quietly sighed to you as a kid as he wiped your seven-year-old snotty nose while simultaneously trying to get your younger sister to stop hugging the dog to death, life isn’t fair. Securing a GM job and holding on to it isn’t always a meritorious process. It’s why coaches intent on job security often fall upward into the highest echelon of hockey management (e.g. Pat Quinn in Toronto, or Darryl Sutter in Calgary). Any combination of calamities can strike you down when you answer to a hockey man above you, but when you only answer to the owner (or his business representative in the front office), you’ve got one fewer individual to keep convincing of your worth.

Of course, the most blatant current example of this is the czar-dom of Glen Sather in New York City. With the Rangers strutting on top of the Eastern Conference, it isn’t the most opportune time to convince you this is a man who has survived on the largesse of his past glories and connection to ownership, but that has indeed been the case in Manhattan since Sather became the Blueshirts’ GM in 2000.

After assuring himself of a spot in the Hockey Hall of Fame as Oilers coach and GM in the Wayne Gretzky Dynasty Era – and subsequently bitching about the advantages large-market teams had over small markets like Edmonton in fielding a competitive roster – Sather spent money like a teenage girl on the loose with her father’s platinum credit card, yet failed to get the Rangers to the playoffs during his first four seasons at the helm. His teams were good enough to make the playoffs in five of the next six seasons, but on three of those occasions they were bounced in the first round and on the other two, they won a combined three games in the conference semifinal.

How long do you suppose Sather would’ve lasted in Montreal with that type of performance? He could look like Audrey Tautou and speak French like Charles Aznavour and Canadiens fans still would’ve been burning him in effigy after three straight years of missing the playoffs. OK, maybe that’s unfair. Maybe two straight years.

Sather’s apparent blood-brothers-for-life pact with Rangers owner James Dolan is the only reason he’s lasted as long as he has. Sather is enjoying more success this season than at any other time in his New York career, but that is as much about his longevity – and the people underneath him in the organization – as anything he’s done.

A GM’s relationship with his owner is of paramount importance. It’s one of the reasons John Ferguson Jr. was ejected from his job as GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs after less than four full seasons in the position. Internecine squabbling within the upper echelons of the organization hampered Ferguson’s power – and let’s face it, when your owner is a faceless money-sucking monolith like Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, there’s not much opportunity for a Jerry Maguire moment to triumph over doubt and save your professional skin.

Howson works for a Blue Jackets team losing tens of millions of dollars, which may be one of the only reasons he’s still Columbus’ GM. As is the case for Pierre Gauthier and the increasingly out-of-the-playoff race Canadiens, Howson’s superior may simply be waiting for the season to play out before jettisoning him and giving someone else the reins. But who knows? He (or Gauthier) may be convincing enough to get himself one more season despite a frustrated fan base.

It happens all the time. Last season, Senators fans wanted GM Bryan Murray chloroformed and disappeared because of the team’s shambolic showing. He had enough support from owner Eugene Melnyk, survived the shift storm that pushed Cory Clouston out as coach, and this year the team and Murray’s future have been resuscitated. In Anaheim, Bob Murray’s plans haven’t exactly panned out well, but coach Randy Carlyle was the one who took the fall for it. Meanwhile, it looks as if owners Henry and Susan Samueli have full confidence in Murray and are giving him the right to possibly break up their young and talented core.

The shelf life of any particular GM is unique. How long will Steve Tambellini or Garth Snow last in Edmonton and Long Island if both the Oilers and Islanders languish at the bottom rungs of hockey’s best league? Impossible to say. Isles owner Charles Wang once hired and fired former Rangers GM Neil Smith in less time than it takes to get your driver’s licence renewed in many states and provinces, but appears to have forged a strong bond with Snow despite the team not having made a playoff appearance in the past four (and probably five after this spring) seasons. The patience and personality of Daryl Katz, meanwhile, is so far unknown early in his stint as an NHL owner. With a new building for the Oilers on the horizon, who knows what kind of pressures he feels to get that franchise back on the winning side of the ledger?

That’s the point: Only one guy on each team knows and that guy writes the checks. His is the only opinion that ultimately matters. In professional sports, fairness is in the eye of the team’s holder.

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

[hockeygod]

Coach calls out sloppy Wild

THE SPORTS XCHANGE, Jan 13 2012

Wild head coach Mike Yeo is unhappy with the way the team has played over the last month.

He has tried to stay the course as his team has struggled. He has remained calm throughout.

After Thursday's 5-2 loss in Chicago he decided to change things up a little bit. Yeo came out for the post-game interview testy, maybe even incensed, his eyes a fiery red.

"Everything we needed to do to win this game we didn't do," he said of a team that started well, gained a 1-0 lead, then descended into a succession of turnovers. "(Thursday) we didn't come close to playing the right way."

Yeo has clearly decided to take a different tack after his team has lost 12 times in 14 games. The Wild played shoddy after a strong start for the first seven minutes. Goaltender Josh Harding was pulled for Matt Hackett after giving up three goals on eight shots in the second period and four in 21 shots for the game.

The bedrock of the Wild's fast start has fallen apart. That bedrock? Strong play by the defencemen and good goaltending.

On Thursday, the Wild's defensive pairing of Greg Zanon and Clayton Stoner was on the ice for three goals. The forwards? "First 10 minutes we got pucks deep and did good things," said Devin Setoguchi. "Then we kind of sat back and we weren't urgent."

And Yeo is clearly tired of that. The Wild is 0-7-1 in its last eight road games. The next three games and seven of the next nine are on the road.

"Let's decide right now," Yeo said. "We all talk about the playoffs, and that's nice. But you don't talk your way into the playoffs. This is when playoff teams are made — right now, when it's hard. If we hope it's going to be easy, it's not going to happen. It's time we decide, 'Do we want to make this happen?' and start doing it."

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

[hockeygod]

The hockey injury that’s more than a footnote

ALLAN MAKI, Globe and Mail, Jan. 13, 2012

There are 26 bones in a human foot, and hockey players will tell you a puck travelling at the speed of pain is sure to find most of them at one time or another.

Just ask Jay Pandolfo of the New York Islanders or any one on a growing list of foot-stricken NHL players – Ville Leino of the Buffalo Sabres, Nik Antropov of the Winnipeg Jets, Tyler Bozak of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Devante Smith-Pelly of the Anaheim Ducks (hurt while playing for Canada at the 2012 world junior tournament), to name but a few.

While concussions have dominated the game’s attention – and rightly so – more and more players have taken a puck off a skate and found themselves hobbled for weeks. The exact number of foot fallen is hard to pin down since many teams classify their injuries by region – upper body, lower body – or by insisting it was a pre-existing condition complicated by a bone bruise, à la James Neal of the Pittsburgh Penguins. But more than a dozen players have been officially downed by a foot ailment and the wondering is, why exactly is that?

Is it because bigger, stronger players are using composite sticks and shooting harder than ever before? Is it because more players now measure their worth via shots blocked, welts received? Or are not enough players wearing some sort of guard to protect the instep and middle part of the foot?

The fact most players don’t wear any kind of foot protection (beyond defencemen using ankle guards) is a significant contributor as much as something of a mystery. Some players who have tried guards over the top of their skates don’t like the feel of them. Others say they hardly notice they’re wearing them. One thing is certain: Half the Montreal Canadiens’ lineup believes in them, especially defenceman P.K. Subban.

He took a screaming one-timer off the top of his foot from Washington Capital Alexander Semin last year and saw the puck fly “right up into the stands, probably 15 rows back. I was down on the ice. I couldn’t feel my foot.”

“When I went back into the room, all the bones on my foot were like this,” Subban said, making a steeple with his fingers. “I would have broken my foot for sure if I wasn’t wearing [a guard]. The pressure made the bones come up. They had to crunch my bones back into place. They told me if I hadn’t been wearing them I’d have been out six weeks.”

The Canadiens began equipping their players with protective foot guards in 2009 at the encouragement of Bob Gainey, then the general manager. An orthopedic/orthotics outfit in Saint-Laurent, Que., produces the custom-made shields, which are also used by several Montreal forwards. Other NHL teams are now calling and asking how to best protect their players.

“I can’t recall using extra protection when I played,” said Edmonton Oilers scout Frank Musil, a former NHL defenceman. “If you got hurt, the trainers would make you a custom brace and you’d wear it until you didn’t need it any more. Now I see guys in junior wearing covers on their skates in practice. The last thing you want to do is get hurt in practice.”

When Lawrence Parrott took a shot off his foot playing in a men’s recreational league in Minnedosa, Man., he had to walk on crutches for weeks. Suitably inspired, he came up with his own version of a guard called SPATS skate armour. The idea, he said, wasn’t for the big-money pros; it was meant to protect kids and people who play the game for fun and can’t afford to be off their feet for long.

“I’m involved in minor hockey and I see kids limping around,” said Parrott, whose protective cover can be removed if the skate laces need tightening. “It happens at all levels. People just disregard protection for the foot and they shouldn’t.”

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

[hockeygod]

The NHL and Sutter family values

ALLAN MAKI, Globe and Mail, Jan. 13, 2012

A large green tractor pulls up and down hops Brian Sutter dressed in a plaid shirt, coveralls, work boots and a blue tuque. He is taking a break in the middle of calving season to talk about two things he can never avoid – family and hockey.

“Let’s go inside,” he says, opening the door to his office. On the wall is a plaque that says Brian Sutter, 1,000 games. Included is a silhouette of a cowboy on horseback holding a hockey stick and watching over his herd. On the brink of Saturday’s celebrated Sutter versus Sutter Saddledome showdown – the vanquished Darryl returning to coach his Los Angeles Kings against Brent and his Calgary Flames – Brian Sutter has been watching over his brothers. He’s been where they are – in the NHL, competing against a sibling. He even coached the Flames for three seasons, experienced some good times and plowed head-long through the bad, the Sutter way.

But what he heard during the last days of Darryl’s run in Calgary, and what followed afterward, was too much. The Sutters, he says proudly, are about trust and respect and responsibility. They’ll take their share of the blame but not everyone with the Flames did the same, and that led to Darryl’s forced resignation in late 2010, which then led to a stony silence between the outgoing general manager and remaining head coach, brother Brent. (The two finally talked at length this past week when Darryl phoned Brent to chat about all things Sutter – family, ranching and hockey.)

“Fingers were all pointed at Darryl. Everyone in the NHL knew that was dead wrong,” Brian says straight off, addressing the criticism dumped on Darryl for poor drafts and bad contracts. “It started with the players. They weren’t playing well. Your leaders have to be the hardest-working players – and what went on for two, three years there, they weren’t. Darryl was painted the villain. Brent was caught in the middle. They’re both competitive guys. We’ve all got pride.”

The Sutters’ pride and competitiveness is as vast as the view from Brian’s Alberta ranch. This is, after all, a family that grew up in a modest Viking, Alta., farm house that had seven boys and just one bathroom. “That was competition,” Brian says. Their sibling scraps were every bit as intense as anything they showed on the ice. As Darryl explained: “As players, we could see each other the night before, but the day of, we never even looked at each other. Usually, we were captains. It was just too hard. … We learned in a hurry that you totally separated it out.”

Brian is more direct: “When we played, you wanted to beat the crap out of your brother to show your teammates you wanted to win.”

When Darryl guided the Flames to the 2004 Stanley Cup final, he was put on a pedestal. Everyone idolized him. Within six years, the mood changed dramatically. Darryl’s signings (Jay Bouwmeester) and trades (Dion Phaneuf) chipped away at his good standing. Callers to local sports radio shows suggested he be put out to pasture. Inside the team there were rumblings Darryl and Brent were at odds over players and who should get more ice time. Neither brother talked about it publicly. When Darryl resigned, he left without saying a word to Brent, the very man he had hired to coach the Flames. Now they meet for the first time as coaching rivals in a soldout game crackling with expectation – the resurgent Kings, 6-1-3 in 10 games under Darryl, against the rejuvenated Flames, unbeaten in their past eight home games.

It’s must-see viewing on the NHL schedule and another race for first dibs on the bathroom.

“Competing against one another is not something that’s really that big a deal,” Brent insisted this week. “We’ve done it our whole lives. We both want to win.”

Brian, who naturally followed the Sutter-against-Sutter drama from afar, wasn’t much impressed with how people blamed Darryl for everything.

“I think this was overblown, just like everything in Calgary gets cross-threaded. It becomes extremely magnified,” Brian says. “You know there isn’t a contract signed without an owner allowing it. That means when things go bad, everyone has to step up and accept their share of the responsibility. … That starts with the owners, too.”

Brian recalls his coaching days with the Flames, from 1997 to 2000, how when he was let go when his contract expired and the conversations he had with Darryl about Calgary.

“I told him we were in the bottom third [of the NHL] in payroll at $13-million [U.S.]. Darryl convinced the owners you’ve got to pay for some things – signing a draft pick or making a trade for guys. Darryl did that.”

As for Darryl and Brent not talking to one another for months on end, that was true. At one point last season, Brent acknowledged he hadn’t heard from Darryl and Brian admitted it was also hard on Duane and Ron Sutter, both of whom were part of the Flames’ front office.

“It’s not for a lack of respect [that Darryl and Brent didn’t talk]. It’s back to that old saying, ‘No problem is as great as it once was.’ The longer you go without talking, the more that problem grows,” Brian points out. “When you talk about it, you wonder why it was a problem in the first place.”

And so all is right again in the Sutter universe; Darryl and Brent have mended fences and are now eager to clobber the other guy and his team. Brian has his own hockey gig coaching the Bentley Generals, 2009 Allan Cup winners, and notes of Kings-Flames matchup, “I can be a fan now, and forget the last name.”

Mostly, though, Brian Sutter is happy to get back to work watching over his cattle. As a new-born calf tries to stand on wobbly legs, he smiles and says, “Now that’s what life is all about.”

With a report from Eric Duhatschek

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
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After trade, Habs ready to turn the page

SEAN GORDON, Globe and Mail, Jan. 13, 2012

It’s not possible for an inanimate object to look forlorn, but the Mike Cammalleri stuffed dolls stacked atop a display in the Montreal Canadiens’ team store do a passable impression.

At the Canadiens’ practice facility in suburban Montreal, it didn’t take long for the HabsZone shop’s clerks to slap a 50-per-cent discount on all T-shirts and jerseys featuring the team’s erstwhile No. 13.

How many days it will take to peel Cammalleri’s eight-storey likeness off the side of the Bell Centre is another question.

But the NHL’s big trading wheel keeps on turning, and so it was that the team got on with the business of moving on after its second-highest-salaried player was dealt to the Calgary Flames during Thursday’s game in Boston.

The Habs held a short practice on Friday, but it was too early for René Bourque, the man acquired in exchange for Cammalleri, to be in attendance.

Not that he’s an unknown quantity in the Habs’ room.

“I played with him in the minors during the lockout year, he’s a big, fast guy with a really hard shot … and he’s not afraid to mix it up,” said winger Travis Moen, who, like Bourque, got his start in the Chicago Blackhawks’ organization.

The 6-foot-2, 211-pound Bourque’s arrival also heralds a philosophical shift within the organization, whose 2009 off-season overhaul saw several under-sized skill players brought into the fold – Cammalleri among them.

Winger Mathieu Darche pointed out size wasn’t an impediment in the Habs’ 2010 conference final run – during which Cammalleri was a major contributor – but said of Bourque: “He’s a big man, he’s willing to pay the price, I know that from playing against him. … Now we move forward, I’m sure he’ll be able to help us.”

In the immediate aftermath of the trade, Montreal general manager Pierre Gauthier said he wants to make his team bigger up front to deal with the exigencies of today’s NHL where most goals are scored in tight, a seeming repudiation of the approach he and predecessor Bob Gainey used to build the current squad.

Interim Habs coach Randy Cunneyworth echoed that statement when asked if the NHL is a big man’s league first and foremost.

“I think it’s always been a tough game, with our group we want to play a more gritty style to balance our speed and two-way ability. … He’s a player who will be welcome among our group. We feel this is a deal that has helped our team immediately,” he said, adding he wants the team to be “tenacious on the puck.”

Cunneyworth, whose appointment drew fire because of his inability to speak French, grinned when asked about Bourque’s joking remark that, “I might be in trouble, too.”

“I saw that,” he said with a broad smile.

Though the 30-year-old Bourque has four years left on his six-year, $20-million (all currency U.S.) contract, it’s a far more cap-friendly deal than Cammalleri’s five-year, $30-million pact.

Bourque’s goal-scoring average is slightly higher than Cammalleri’s, whose offensive ceiling is admittedly higher, but both have struggled with consistency, although the cap room created by the deal gives Gauthier the freedom to add more bulk.

Given Bourque is serving a five-game suspension for elbowing, he’ll have to wait until Sunday to make his Habs debut – he will wear No. 27, and has been given Cammalleri’s old stall in the dressing room.

Cunneyworth said on Friday he didn’t learn of the decision to trade Cammalleri, a fan favourite whose form has dipped this season, until the second-period intermission of a game the Habs trailed 1-0.

He brushed aside suggestions that depriving the squad of an offensive-minded player, even a struggling one, in a close game hampered the Canadiens’ chances to come back.

“We have a lot of guys that can win us hockey games,” he said.

Cunneyworth also said the raging controversy surrounding Cammalleri’s allusions to the Habs having a “losing attitude” barely 24 hours before being moved has been “a little bit overblown.”

“He’s passionate about his game, he wanted to make a difference, and we commend him on that. That’s what we want, guys who care . . . everybody has a different way of coming out and expressing themselves, I don’t have a problem with that,” he said. “I don’t think he chose his words as carefully as maybe he could have, but I think there was more read into it.”

A teammate’s departure is apparently no reason for a settling of accounts, even if it has emerged Cammalleri’s personality was sometimes a difficult fit in the Habs’ room.

No player criticized the slumping winger publicly, and even privately, players were diplomatic – “one of that stuff matters anymore,” said one.

“He wasn’t a problem,” added another.

Winger Max Pacioretty, who like Cammalleri attended the University of Michigan, said he learned a lot from his fellow Wolverines alumnus.

“Mike was a really good guy . . . these things happen, it’s a business, people come and go, there’s a lot of good guys in here to make up for the loss, but he definitely will be missed,” Pacioretty said.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
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Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

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Cammalleri brings heavy financial baggage to Flames

ERIC DUHATSCHEK, Globe and Mail, Jan. 13, 2012

Lost in the first excitement of the trade that shook the NHL Thursday night was the steep financial price paid by the Calgary Flames to land Michael Cammalleri from the Montreal Canadiens, essentially for winger René Bourque.

Ever since Jay Feaster took over as Calgary general manager 13 months ago, he has painstakingly shed his payroll of unwanted contracts – Ales Kotalik, Niklas Hagman, Daymond Langkow and others. At the June entry draft, Feaster described this as salary-cap hell, which had clearly been upgraded to salary-cap purgatory by Thursday when he took on what remains of the five-year, $30-million (all currency U.S.) contract Cammalleri signed with Montreal on July 1, 2009. The annual salary-cap charge may be $6-million, but the contract is back loaded, so in terms of actual dollars paid to Cammalleri, Calgary is on the hook for $7-million in each of the next two seasons.

For $7-million, Cammalleri needs to be at least the player he was in his one and only previous season in Calgary, when he scored 39 goals, 19 on the power play, and developed a unique chemistry with Flames captain Jarome Iginla.

The 2008-09 season represented one of Iginla’s most effective as a playmaker, with 54 assists, second most in his career. Teams would overplay Iginla, especially on the power play, and Iginla would find Cammalleri open with precision passing. It was a formula that worked spectacularly well until the final month of the season, when Olli Jokinen’s acquisition from Phoenix shuffled the playing deck, scrambled the payroll and eventually meant there was no money left over to pay Cammalleri.

It meant that Flames fans were permitted to witness, from afar, the 2010 playoffs, where Cammalleri scored 13 goals in 19 games for Montreal, ably supporting Jaroslav Halak’s superb goaltending as the Canadiens advanced to the final four. What the Flames need from Cammalleri as he makes his debut Saturday night against the Los Angeles Kings is some combination of his one Calgary regular season and his first Montreal postseason.

Cammalleri’s return is about the only development that could overshadow Darryl Sutter’s homecoming, and that story plays out on multiple levels too. Cammalleri broke in with the Kings; Sutter was the GM in Calgary who acquired him for a first-round pick, and was also the GM who let him go to Montreal because of the team’s financial obligations to others.

Of course, fans are not obliged to worry about accounting matters. That is the GM’s job, and on Thursday night, as Feaster announced the trade, his press conference was simultaneously shown on the Scotiabank Saddledome Jumbotron, and was greeted with wild applause. The people have spoken; Cammalleri will get a warm welcome in his return. Now all he has to do to keep their affection is to get his slumping game back on the rails.

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

[hockeygod]

Hockey World: From enforcer to enforcement

By Jim Matheson, edmontonjournal.com, January 15, 2012

Who’s Hot: John Tavares has 14 points during his seven-game point streak for the New York Islanders.

Who’s Not: Detroit Red Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg hasn’t scored since Dec. 17.

Marquee Matchups:

Sunday: Dustin Penner is back in the Los Angeles Kings lineup. Penner and the Kings face the Edmonton Oilers on Sunday. Will anybody dare throw a pancake onto the ice?

Saturday: The San Jose Sharks are in Vancouver for afternoon game against the Canucks.

From enforcer to enforcement

NHL referee Dan O’Rourke, who worked three of the Stanley Cup final games last June, wore No. 9 at Rexall Place on Wednesday night when the New Jersey Devils were in town to take on the Edmonton Oilers.

But what number did he wear when he was at the Oilers training camp 20 years ago?

You didn’t know he was there in 1992?

Neither did I.

“My number then? Can’t remember?” said O’Rourke, laughing when it was suggested that Lyle (Sparky) Kulchisky, the former Oilers assistant equipment man, probably tossed him one of the cannon-fodder numbers, such as 62 or 84, that Kulchisky used to dispense to players unlikely to make the team.

Back in those days, O’Rourke, who was a defenceman-forward for Bob McCammon’s Tri-City Americans of the Western Hockey League, was the one sitting in the penalty box after some nefarious crime. He was not the one escorting the objecting player to the box as he is today. He was an aggressive kid back in 1992, a training camp invite.

“I always fought more out of principle than anger, standing up for people,” said O’Rourke, who never had a chance to make the Oilers, but was in the hunt for a spot in Cape Breton, the Oilers former American Hockey League affiliate.

George Burnett, who later coached the Oilers for half a season before Ron Low took over, was behind the Cape Breton bench in those days. Dave Andrews, who later would become the AHL commissioner, was the team’s general manager.

“I’d had shoulder surgery that summer, then Tri-City had their junior camp in Edmonton. I got into a fight at the junior camp, cut my hand and got an infection and ended up in the hospital for four or five days right before Edmonton’s camp,” said O’Rourke, who also worked the Oilers game against the Blues in St. Louis on Jan. 5.

“It was a split camp back in those days (NHL in one group and AHL or lower prospects in another). We had Scott Thornton, Kirk Maltby was there, Shaun Van Allen, Steven Rice, Dan Currie, Brad Werenka. Brad was my defence partner in camp.”

“I did go to Cape Breton and played some exhibitions, but they’d won the Calder Cup the year before and there was no room for me. So after camp Dave offered me a three-year contract (two-way in Cape Breton versus Wheeling, W.Va., of the East Coast Hockey League).

“The money? It wasn’t pretty. It was $28,000 or $30,000 if I stayed in Cape Breton and $8,800 Canadian to play in a U.S. market in Wheeling. Sixty-five cents on the dollar at the time, and they were talking three years. I decided to go back to junior in Tri-City, then I got traded to Moose Jaw and played for Mike Babcock,” said O’Rourke.

To this day, Babcock remembers O’Rourke’s sandpaper game. They shared a similar memory a while back.

“I had a deep charleyhorse one night and a guy named Clayton Norris was running around. His teammates all got about three inches taller. Next time we played them, Mike showed us the video and I said, ‘Mike, shut it off. You won’t have to worry about that guy. If he’s starting, I’m starting.’ I hammered him up pretty good and we won 11-2.

“All those guys who were running around on their team before, were saying, ‘Hey what are you doing in the summer? They were all buddies, now,” chuckled O’Rourke.

O’Rourke, 39, had a vagabond minor-pro career in Erie, Pa., Louisiana, Tulsa, the Detroit Vipers. He did score 28 one year in Louisiana. But he also had 296 penalty minutes one season and 257 for the Ice Gators of Louisiana in just 40 games in another campaign.

O’Rourke was no stranger to a penalty box.

“I had a stack of fricking fines (from the league) in my locker one year and our owner/coach Ron Hansis said, ‘Hey, we’re not paying those anymore.’ I said, ‘OK, I’m not playing anymore.’ About a week later, the fines all disappeared,’ ” said O’Rourke.

“I never really yelled at officials or anything. I was pretty honest. Every now and then I’d have a drive-by and say, ‘Geez, come on,’ ” he said.

O’Rourke had worked as a referee when he was a kid, working the national under 17s, however, in Summerland, B.C. so he had a feel for a whistle and a striped jersey.

Then one day, when he was playing in the East Coast Hockey League for about $450 a week, Andy VanHellemond, who was running that league then, asked if he’d ever considered being an official.

VanHellemond, maybe the best NHL referee of all time, had actually suspended O’Rourke for the last game of the final that year.

“I’d been tossed out with a game misconduct and late in the game, a scrum started, and the other team’s captain skated by. I reached out and I, uh, left him in a pile. Nobody saw it, none of the players or the officials, but Andy was upstairs and he saw it,” he said.

VanHellemond liked him, however. The feeling was mutual, but the pay wasn’t good.

“My tax return as an official that first year in the East Coast Hockey League was $12,000 and I had to work 120 games to get that,” said O’Rourke. “You had to look after your own expenses, too, not like a player where they’d get you an apartment, at least.”

He graduated to the AHL where Andrews, his old general manager, was now the league’s boss. He was there for four years and worked three finals.

He has done two Cup finals in the NHL (2007 and ’11).

It’s a long way from being a bit player at Oilers camp.

Western Conference:

OK, who won the Mike Cammalleri for Rene Bourque trade?

A real player-for-player deal in today’s NHL? Imagine that. Two forwards who’ve been around the block.

In our rush to judgment, I’d say the Calgary Flames did. Cammalleri is a good player who was having a crappy season in Montreal. He’s kept in contact with Jarome Iginla since he left Calgary, almost always getting together for dinner the night before games since he signed with the Montreal Canadiens as a free agent. Iginla assisted on 20 of Cammalleri’s 39 goals three years ago. He’s a one-shot scorer, and this will be like re-reading a good book for his friend Iginla.

Bourque is a big body with nice hands and very good speed, but the pilot light to his furnace isn’t always on. The feeling in Calgary was he would play 15 to 20 games a year where he’d be the best player on the ice, absolutely unstoppable and get 30 to 40 points in those games, but in the other 60 or so games, you would be scratching your head. He’s what the smurf-forward Habs need, a guy who can replace Guillaume Latendresse, who never should have been traded (to the Minnesota Wild for Benoit Pouliot, now playing for the Boston Bruins), but again, he leaves many people wanting more.

Cammalleri’s salary is going up. Six million dollars this year, $7 million next year and the year after, but then his deal is over. Bourque’s salary is $3 million this year, then $4 million, then down to $2.5 million for two years, running out in 2015-16. He has more time left on his deal. The Habs clear up some much-needed cap room by moving Cammalleri.

Bourque doesn’t speak French, having grown up in Lac La Biche, but that’s a story for another day. It is odd that the Habs have just traded for a guy named Bourque and they drafted a kid named Nathan Beaulieu in the first round last June, and he doesn’t speak French either. I don’t imagine the fans there will care if the players aren’t really fluent in French, but they still want their coaches that way.

One thing that shouldn’t be overlooked: Montreal is also getting a Western Hockey League forward Patrick Holland, who was at Canada’s world junior evaluation camp at Rexall Place this past August. Edmonton Oil Kings general manager Bob Green thinks Holland has second- or third-line NHL potential.

The Habs are accumulating a reasonable stable of good prospects: Louis Leblanc, Michael Bournival, Brendan Gallagher, Beaulieu, Jarred Tinordi and now Holland, who has 59 points in 41 games for the Tri City Americans, the No. 1 rated WHL club. Bournival, Gallagher and Beaulieu were on Team Canada at the world junior championship and Tinordi was on the American team.

The Flames are also getting goalie Karri Ramo, who was once drafted by the Tampa Bay Lightning by current Flames GM Jay Feaster. Ramo is only 25 and he is lighting it up for Omsk in the Kontinental Hockey League. There are almost no bad Finnish goalies, and Miikka Kiprusoff isn’t going to play forever.

One last word on things from the Habs’ end. Already this season, GM Pierre Gauthier has fired assistant coach Perry Pearn a couple of hours before a game, Jacques Martin before a game-day, morning skate and now he yanks Cammalleri out of the game after two periods for a trade. What’s left?

This ’n’ that:

To see Jarome Iginla on any list of All-Overrated Players is laughable as the good folks at Sports Illustrated must have deduced when they were getting their list together. NHL players voted, and some of their membership cards should be revoked. “I was actually pretty impressed with the players on the list. That would be a pretty good team. It’s not like we’re all … dogs,” laughed Iginla. Dion Phaneuf, Ryan Kesler, Roberto Luongo, Olli Jokinen and Alex Ovechkin were on the list.

Awesome Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks game Saturday and Todd Bertuzzi looked like he’d turned back the hands of time to his Vancouver Canucks days to score two pretty goals on Corey Crawford. The Red Wings were all over Chicago in overtime, and deserved to run their home record to 14 straight wins.

Interesting that Logan Couture was the NHL head office’s San Jose Sharks’ pick for the all-star game. He wasn’t on the all-star ballot, but Joe Thornton, Joe Pavelski, Patrick Marleau, Dan Boyle and Brent Burns were. Couture played junior for the Ottawa 67s.

If Brad Stuart is an unrestricted free agent this summer and wants to play for a California team, you have to think the Sharks will take another run at their former first-round draft pick. The Anaheim Ducks, too. Stuart’s family has been living in California while he’s been playing for the Red Wings.

Gilbert Brule and Raffi Torres, who were once traded for one another, are on the same Phoenix Coyotes team right now. Brule has played two games for the Desert Dogs, averaging 13-1/2 minutes of ice time, with four shots and no points. “Brule has to compute the game better. He’s got so much energy, he tries so hard, but he has to slow down sometimes,” said one pro scout. Ryane Clowe is wearing a face shield for the first time since he was 15 after he got plowed into glass in the loss to the Minnesota Wild this week. He says his nose isn’t broken but he was leaking blood on the bench later in the game.

The St. Louis Blues are anxious to get centre Andy McDonald (concussion) back. “He’s our most talented player,” said coach Ken Hitchcock.

Eastern Conference:

The Philadelphia Flyers definitely want a defenceman with Chris Pronger done for the season and like, everybody else, they’re monitoring Ryan Suter. They love him. They want him if the Nashville Predators can’t sign the unrestricted free agent before the trade deadline. They’ve got winger James van Riemsdyk for sure to move, but his confirmed concussion puts everything on hold. If you’re a team in the hunt for van Riemsdyk, you also have to know his hip is sore enough he’ll likely need surgery in the off-season and he’s also had an abdominal muscle tear this season. He’s also got 5-1/2 years left on a $25.5-million deal.

Would the Flyers trade centre Brayden Schenn because they are playing another rookie Sean Couturier much more? They obviously have their first-round draft pick in play, and maybe a young prospect defender like Marc-Andre Bourdon. All this is conditional, of course, on Suter and his agent, former Calgary Flames meanie Neil Sheehy, wanting to sign a long-term deal before July 1. If a Suter trade doesn’t come off, they like Luke Schenn of the Toronto Maple Leafs for van Riemsdyk, who hasn’t yet shown he can be more than a 45-50 point player, although this year he’s been hit hard by medical problems. With the concussion (maybe after being hit by the Ottawa Senators’ Bobby Butler), all trade bets are off for the time being with his unsure status.

This ‘n that:

Are the Washington Capitals thinking Mike Green might have the same groin problems that derailed teammate Tom Poti’s career? Is there no surgery to fix Green’s ongoing situation? Green only played 49 games last year. This year, he has played 10 out of 42. His contract is up July 1. Do they re-sign him at another $5 million a year? Offensive D-men don’t grow on trees (he has 250 points in 376 games), but his position now is IR (injured reserve), not DEF

The papers in New York and Long Island must have a standing headline: DiPietro on Shelf-Again. The Islanders goalie is only 30 but he has the body of a 50-year-old. He’s now having surgery to fix a sports hernia after hip and knee and broken bones in his face the last few years. He’s played 47 games the last 3-1/2 years. “He’s a hall monitor,” said one NHL scout. Indeed, he’s walked by a lot of dressing rooms, but, unfortunately, is seldom in them with all his hurts. And how many years left on that 15-year, $67.5-million deal? Nine and a half.

Tampa Bay Lightning winger Martin St. Louis, who took a puck in the face on Dec. 8, is playing with a visor but there is a fuzzy spot in his left eye where blood filled the eye after teammate Dominic Moore’s shot hit him. It hasn’t hurt his stats (he has 14 points in 12 games since he’s been back) but his vision isn’t 20/20.

Philadelphia Flyers winger Scott Hartnell, having a career year, didn’t get picked for the all-star game, but he’s the first player called if anybody pulls out due to injury. If he has plane tickets to Vegas or the Caribbean, he’ll eat them to be in Ottawa. “I’ll be there in a heartbeat,” he said. Good for him; that’s the right attitude.

If New Jersey Devils centre Adam Henrique, who is battling the Edmonton Oilers’ Ryan Nugent-Hopkins for the rookie of the year award, looked fairly ordinary against the Oilers Wednesday, it’s because he pulled his groin in the game. The Devils had their rookie dinner in Edmonton after beating the Oilers.

How did David Steckel get seven goals? When did that happen? The Toronto Maple Leafs forward has seven goals, no assists, and is fifth in the league (57.5 per cent) on faceoffs, just ahead of the Oilers’ Eric Belanger’s 57.4.

Bet you didn’t know that Capitals goalie Tomas Vokoun has the same number of career shutouts (46) as Ken Dryden rang up with the Montreal Canadiens. I don’t imagine Vokoun’s making the Hockey Hall of Fame, but it’s impressive.

The Lightning won’t be buyers at the trade deadline but they’ll be open for business on UFAs like Moore. There are no plans to get a goalie now. I’m thinking GM Steve Yzerman will look at Jonathan Bernier or Josh Harding, or if he’s got enough pieces to a trade puzzle, Cory Schneider, this summer.

By the numbers:

210: Number of coaching games for Brent Sutter in Calgary, coincidentally, the same number as his brother Darryl.

1. Capitals winger Troy Brouwer had his first hat-trick in his 281st game, popping three against the Lightning.

1. Capitals defenceman Karl Alzner fought Tampa’s Steve Downie, Alzner’s first fight in four years, going back to junior in Calgary.

“I’m kind of retired from the skills competition. Let the young guys do it.”

Alex Ovechkin, who is all of 26, saying he’s tired of the all-star contests.

Matty’s Short Shifts:

*As much as the Detroit Red Wings covet Ryan Suter as an unrestricted free agent to help their defence, the guy they absolutely would love to sign this summer is the New Jersey Devils’ unrestricted free agent captain Zach Parise. Can you imagine Parise and Pavel Datsyuk on the same line? That shouldn’t be too tough a sell job for GM Ken Holland, who can probably offer five years at an average of $8.25 million. The Devils need Parise to get to the playoffs and make some money for even one round for the fractured ownership, so sources say they won’t trade him at the deadline. Parise is loyal, but money talks. “That is true,” said Parise. The Devils don’t have any. Things are shaky enough with the Devils’ ownership they’re not always staying in the five-star hotels on the road like before.

There will be an interesting dynamic with the next Winter Classic in Michigan (likely the Red Wings versus the Toronto Maple Leafs), which will almost surely be held at the University of Michigan’s “Big House” football stadium, with 110,000 seats. But they are tossing a bone to one of the game’s best owners, Mike Ilitch, who owns the baseball Comerica Park where the Tigers play. They could be having another outdoor rink there for other events, like an old-timers game or a college game. It’s not the same as the Winter Classic though. I can’t imagine Ilitch being totally on-board with this. Ann Arbor, Mich., is about 45 miles from Detroit, and they may have to shuttle people in and out. Parking around the football stadium isn’t great in the winter. No alcohol sales are allowed for college games, but, that will be waived for the Winter Classic.

I know the Philadelphia Flyers aren’t thrilled with Ilya Bryzgalov — they think he talks too much, and his stats are certainly far from $10 million a year worthy (3.07 goals-against average, .891 save percentage) — but did they not do their due diligence. Bryzgalov is off-the-wall; he’s a character. He is who he is (he was one of the stars on the 24-7 HBO show), and now the Flyers want to limit him to two-minute sound bites with the media. He is not worth that kind of dough (who is?), but he’s a good goalie. He has only played four games since Christmas. Ride him, like the Coyotes did, even if one New York Rangers player said “it looks like he’s fighting every shot, a sure sign of a guy with no confidence.” You can’t decide now you like backup Sergei Bobrovsky more.

If there’s no realignment next year, the Winnipeg Jets will miss out on playing against the Minnesota Wild, St. Louis Blues, Dallas Stars, etc. with central time zones in a new conference, but they’ll live with it. They’ve had their road games spaced closely together. The teams it hurts are the southeast division (the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Wash, Carolina) having to make three trips to Winnipeg.

You can put Tuomo Ruutu at the top of most general managers’ lists as a rental at the trade deadline. He’s hard on the puck and he’d be a solid second to third liner on a contender. The Pittsburgh Penguins could use him. Heck, Pittsburgh could use just about anybody now with their falling bodies. He’d look good with the Nashville Predators, too.

Most scouts feel New Jersey goalie Martin Brodeur still has the requisite compete to play another year even though he is turning 40 in May, but they feel his style in the net is hurting him now. “If he was a pure butterfly goalie like all the rest of them, covering the bottom of the net, lots of those shots would be hitting him off the wing, instead of squeezing through like a couple Calgary scored the other night,” said one longtime pro scout. Brodeur plays a hybrid style; part standup, part butterfly.

The Edmonton Oilers would love to get defenceman Ryan Ellis out of Nashville because he has the bones to one day run an NHL power play, but it’s pretty clear the young defenceman the Preds would trade is Jonathan Blum, who has fallen out of favour there. Blum doesn’t have the offensive punch the Oilers need, though, and the Preds are concerned about his play when he doesn’t have the puck. He’s also been passed by Swiss-born Roman Josi on their depth chart.

In a way, isn’t the struggling Drew Stafford of the Buffalo Sabres like Joffrey Lupul in his early days with the Anaheim Ducks? A big talent, but somebody who needs to play with the right guy. Lupul has found him in Phil Kessel in Toronto. Stafford needs the same thing. Nobody ever says Stafford doesn’t care enough. They do say he gets into trouble when he has to think too much on the ice, reacting rather than acting.

The Washington Capitals are looking to move Jeff Schultz, a sturdy blue-liner but with semi-slow feet. Schultz has been a healthy scratch pretty much since Dale Hunter went behind the Washington bench (14 scratches out of 20), and they like Russian Dimitry Orlov better. The six-foot-six Schultz has two years left at $2.75 million per season, hardly a mouthful. He’s only 25. He’s a gentle giant; hardly any penalty minutes, like a Hal Gill.

The league looked at Andy Sutton’s wallop on Dallas Stars winger Loui Eriksson eight days ago which caught him in the head but after watching the tape they felt Eriksson had stumbled a bit behind the net and that changed the angle of the Sutton hit. So, no disciplinary action. Is it possible that Sutton, whom the Oilers should sign again, if you’re asking me, can play more like Hal Gill in Montreal? He has a huge frame, gets in the way and blocks shots, but isn’t so much hitter as protector of the net and its neighbouring area.

Now that Cam Barker is only a short time from playing after surgery on his foot, one thing jumps out. Are Barker and Corey Potter not the same player? Is there room for both? Potter can shoot, he’s 210 pounds, not the greatest skater but able defensively. Barker can shoot, he’s 220 pounds, not the greatest skater (he likes to slow it down to his speed) but a heavy body in his end. Barker’s contract ends July 1.

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

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Marc-Andre Gragnani: Before I Made It

With Kevin Kennedy, The Hockey News, 2012-01-14

I don’t have any memory of this, but my parents told me that when I was very little I used to love watching hockey on television. I would go really close to the screen and they figured out I obviously liked it and when I got old enough I asked if I could play and they signed me up.

My favourite player as a kid was Wayne Gretzky, no doubt about it. It was only Gretzky and Peter Forsberg for me. I was a forward back then and I used to think Forsberg was the perfect player. He was strong, he worked hard, he was smart and he competed more than anyone on the ice.

I didn’t actually switch to playing defense until midget AAA. Guy Boucher, the coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning, was actually my coach at the time. I was a forward until the playoffs when I was in bantam and our team had a ton of injuries so I went back to defense. Guy was actually in the stands watching our game and my coach came up to me after and said the midget AAA coach was at the game and he said that if I wanted to try out for his team he’d like me to play defense. He must have liked how I moved the puck because it definitely wasn’t my defensive play – I didn’t know what “gap” was or how to play one-on-ones – I didn’t know what I was doing. Next thing I knew, I got drafted into the Q as a defenseman.

There was one tournament I remember very well when I was in atom AA. It was in Val D’or and I had seven points in one of the games. I had four goals and three assists and it’s probably still the best game I’ve played in my life. Most of the guys in the NHL were all-stars on their teams growing up, but I was just another guy and never really dominated so to have a game like that really stayed in my memory.

When the junior draft was approaching, Guy told me to go to it, which made me think I had a good chance of getting drafted. So I went with my family and got drafted by P.E.I. and somehow I made the team. I was lucky there as well because I had another coach who’s now in the NHL, Alain Vigneault. That was only my second year playing defense in my life and it was a challenge because our team already had three overage and one European defenseman, but Alain was not really a guy who cared about politics and that kind of stuff. He just looks at how good you are playing. Having Boucher and Vigneault as coaches was really a huge break for me and I owe them a lot.

I think playing forward for most of my life gave me different puck-handling and skating skills I can use on defense. At the same time, I still feel like I’m playing catch up on some of the fundamentals of playing defense.

After junior I didn’t have a draft to go to because it was the year of the lockout so I was just sitting at home watching on the Internet and Buffalo picked me up in the third round. I found out I was going to play my first NHL game during my first year in professional hockey. We had an AHL game on a Thursday night in Rochester and I showed up as usual at around 5:00 p.m. and the coach, Randy Cunneyworth, asked to speak to me in the his office and he said ‘you’re not playing tonight.’ At the time I was playing really well so I was so confused and upset. I was also back to playing forward and jumping back and forth from defense a bit. Finally I asked why and he said, ‘you’re just not playing, we’re going to rest you.’ I remember feeling so bad and my heart was pounding. Eventually, after what felt like a really long time, he finally told me that I’d been called up to the Sabres.

The next day I drove to Buffalo and played against the New York Rangers. Walking in the room wasn’t that nerve-wracking because I knew the guys from training camp, but once I got on the ice and looked over and saw Jaromir Jagr and Henrik Lundqvist, I got pretty nervous. I kept asking myself, ‘what am I doing here?’ I was really awe struck. My first two games in the NHL I played forward. I played with Paul Gaustad and Patrick Kaleta on the fourth line line. I didn’t play a lot, but I was just happy to be there.

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

[hockeygod]

Getting To Know: Doug Shedden
Doug Shedden had 139 goals and 325 points in 416 NHL games

Mark Malinowski, The Hockey News, 2012-01-15

Status: NHL center from 1982-1991 for Pittsburgh, Detroit, Quebec and Toronto. Currently serves as head coach for EVZ hockey team in Swiss Nationalliga A. Coached Team Finland to bronze medal at 2008 World Championship.

DOB: April 26, 1961 In: Wallaceburg, Ont.

First Hockey Memory: "Watching George Armstrong scoring into the open net for the Toronto Maple Leafs – last Stanley Cup on a black and white TV."

Hockey Inspirations: "Dave Keon, Bobby Clarke."

Last Book Read: "Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand. It's a World War II story, a must read."

Current Car: "BMW X3, from a sponsor here in Switzerland."

Favorite Movie: "Once Upon A Time In The West."

Greatest Sports Moment: "Calling my parents when I made the NHL."

Most Painful Moment: "The worst moment was blowing out my knee in my first game as a Toronto Maple Leaf in Maple Leaf Gardens."

Favorite Uniforms: "Chicago Blackhawks – red jersey."

Favorite Arena: "Any Original Six."

Closest Hockey Friends: "Jari Kurri, Randy Carlyle, Ron Flockhart, Dave Ellett."

Funniest Players Encountered: "Gary Rissling, Mike Bullard."

Toughest Competitors Encountered: "Bob Probert, Wendel Clark."

Most Memorable Goal: "Scoring on Tony Esposito. He was a big name back then. It was in the old Chicago Stadium. It was special. Plus I knocked him out one night with a shot between the eyes."

Strangest Game: "Beating USA when I coached Team Finland. We scored…the puck still hasn't gone in. But they counted it after video replays and all. Strange situation."

Favorite Sport Outside Hockey: "Is wine tasting a sport (smiles)? If not, golf and fishing."

Funny Hockey Memory: "Gary Rissling had so many stitches in his face, it was like rubber. So ‘Riz’ could make so many funny faces. We had a Christmas party at Denis Herron's one night. And he made those Christmas soldier's faces and he had everybody crying just because of the movements from his face."

Musical Tastes: "Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Elvis, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Tina Turner, Patsy Cline."

Favorite Player(s) To Watch: "Sidney Crosby. Ex-Pens stay together."

Personality Qualities Most Admired: "Honesty. Fun-loving. People who believe pain is power. People who always have time for a talk about hockey."

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

[hockeygod]

Is low goal scoring becoming a problem again?

Matt Larkin, The Hockey News, 2012-01-14

In the Jan. 16 issue of The Hockey News, a stat page revealed NHL-wide scoring was trending downward in the post-lockout era. Consequently, goalie save percentages trended upward over that span, from .901 in 2005-2006 to .913 in 2010-11. But shots per game generally rose during the same period, indicating chances aren’t the problem. Goalies are. They’re just too darned good.

Is equipment to blame? The league reduced goalie pads from 12 to 11 inches in ’05-06, but is it time to reassess?

“Nothing is imminent,” said NHL goaltending consultant Kay Whitmore. “We keep an eye on the goals-for. As soon as it goes below a certain level, people start to say scoring is going down. You start to look at ways to decrease the size of the equipment to increase scoring.”

Whitmore suggested shrinking equipment can’t happen overnight. The NHL has to experiment to ensure any tweaks don’t sacrifice safety for an offensive free-for-all.

“It’s always been a goal to find a way to get rid of the big catch glove without having sprained thumbs, torn ligaments and wrist injuries,” he said. “We don’t look for things to change, but if there’s a way to do so and still adequately protect the guys, working in conjunction with the NHLPA, that’s our goal.”

He doesn’t buy that goalies are necessarily better. Coaching and shot blocking impact scoring just as much, he said, and “team defenses are so much better than they’ve ever been.”

Watching giants such as Nashville’s Pekka Rinne dominate games today, perhaps bigger, not better, more appropriately describes today’s puck-stoppers.

“How come the net looks so small? The average goalie is 6-foot-1, 200 pounds,” Whitmore said. “That’s a far cry from 5-foot-8, 160 not that long ago.”

The league can’t shrink the goalies themselves, so the next avenue to spike scoring may be to change other facets of the game.

“We talked about bigger nets a few years ago and came up with some crazy-shaped ones,” Whitmore said. “We had the shallower net that’s been approved where maybe you could get a wrap-around off a little quicker and have more space behind the net to create chances.”

Making nets six inches higher was also toyed with, Whitmore said, but the league must consider more than thrilling fans with 6-5 scores. Taller nets would mean higher shots and possibly more goalie injuries. Purists would also cry foul over altered stats, though Whitmore was quick to point out hockey fans have accepted record-book-changers like power play time amendments and shootout goalie wins over the years.

While the NHL will always strive to improve its product, lower scoring doesn’t have to mean lower-quality action, Whitmore said.

“The other night I watched a 1-1 game with 82 total shots go to overtime. It was a great game. Then I watched a 9-0 game. It was terrible.”

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

[hockeygod]

Jarome Iginla and the Perils of Staying Loyal
Plus the Bruins/Canucks debacle, and the rest of the week in the NHL

By Katie Baker, Grantland.com, JANUARY 13, 2012

This past Saturday night was a good one for the good guys. During the third period of the Calgary Flames' 3-1 win over the Minnesota Wild, Jarome Iginla became the 42nd player in NHL history to score 500 goals after he attempted a centering pass that caromed off several Wild players and into the back of the net. That same evening, the Phoenix Coyotes' Shane Doan — who reached an offensive plateau of his own earlier this season when he netted his 300th — recorded the very first hat trick of his 15-year career, scoring his third goal of the game juuuust as the final buzzer sounded on a Coyotes 5-1 win over the New York Islanders.

Both were satisfying moments and milestones for the veterans, and both were made even more memorable by virtue of where they went down: in front of adoring home crowds that have cheered the two players for the entirety of their immensely respectable NHL careers.

Doan and Iginla were both part of the 1995 NHL draft class, with Doan going seventh overall to the Winnipeg Jets and Iginla being taken shortly thereafter by Dallas, picked at no. 11. (The Stars traded the young prospect to Calgary several months later as part of a deal for Joe Nieuwendyk.) Since then, they have grown from teenagers to team leaders — both were named captain during the 2003-04 season and have held the role since — and have done so while remaining monogamous to their franchises, like high school sweethearts still holding hands years down the road. Productive but physical, friendly but fierce, they've done all the right things with their play on the ice and passed up the opportunity to go play the field.

The group of active 1,000-plus game veterans who have spent their entire careers with one team is a rarefied club; only Nicklas Lidstrom and Martin Brodeur, who have seven Stanley Cup rings between them, have clocked more time in one place than Doan and Iginla. (Ottawa's Daniel Alfredsson, who scored his 400th goal on December 30 in overtime against Iginla's Flames and was recently voted into the All-Star Game, is also waaay up there, as is San Jose's Patrick Marleau.) It's a seductive narrative and an admirable endeavor. But as feel-good as it is, nothing feels better than winning it all — just ask Ray Bourque, who at age 39 and after 21 years with the Bruins requested and was granted a trade to the Colorado Avalanche for a final Cup push.

"This was a selfish move in terms of my career," he told Sports Illustrated's Michael Farber shortly after the trade. "I know it's a shocker, that I made a move like this, because everything I've ever done in my life has been safe, safe, safe."

It paid off the next season, as the famous scene of Joe Sakic presenting a tearful Bourque with the Cup can attest. While it was a little bit strange to see the man in the uniform of another — those colors! is that … purple? — it was also one of the great moments in the league's history. And ultimately, Bourque's number was retired with both teams.

Bourque's story, as unlikely as it may be, has become almost an archetype, brought up in comparison with the current crop of lifetime franchise guys like Iginla, Doan, and Alfredsson. And in turn, the situations of these players (Iginla in particular) are often referenced when discussing one player who appears to be on a similar path, the Columbus Blue Jackets' Rick Nash.

Nash is about four seasons away from entering that 1,000-games-played club. He may be only 27, but he's been with the Blue Jackets for nearly a decade, having been drafted first overall in 2002 at the age of 18. (He would tie Iginla and Ilya Kovalchuk for tops in the league in goal scoring just a year later.) He was named team captain in 2008 and splashed on the cover of NHL 2K9. The Blue Jackets made the playoffs for the first time in their history the following season. He signed an eight-year, $62.4 million contract extension with Columbus — cornerstone-of-the-team dollars — and will turn 34 the year it expires, the same age that Iginla is now.

Since then, practically nothing has gone right for the Blue Jackets. Their goaltending has dissolved, their aggressive summer of offseason moving and shaking yielded one player who was given an eight-game suspension to kick off the season and is currently out with a broken ankle until February, and another who has been both unhappy and injured on-and-off since October. The team has had numerous busted draft picks, and has botched the development of several other young players. On Monday, the Blue Jackets fired head coach Scott Arniel, a move that many felt came about two months too late. Fans of the teams are now caught between wanting GM Scott Howson to do something drastic, wanting him to be fired, or being terrified that he'll somehow do both.

It stands to reason that next year will be better for Columbus, that this year is a freakish anomaly, that at some point Rick Nash will indeed become part of some cohesive whole. "I've put all my trust and loyalty into this organization," he told the Columbus Dispatch. "I'd have to trust them 100 percent, whatever their decisions are." He called it the most frustrating year of his career. "But you can't look back. You have to look forward."

It feels a little like sitting in traffic, or looking for an apartment, or hailing a cab. Do you move around restlessly, or just stay put and be patient?

"I feel I've grown up in Calgary," Iginla recently told Yahoo's Sean Leahy. "From 18 and a half, 19 on, I've been there for a lot of years. I want to win and we have a good team and fortunately now we're starting to play that way and climbing the standings, so I want to win there."

Between them, Doan, Iginla, and Alfredsson have won gold medals at the World Championships and Olympics, made numerous All-Star appearances, and amassed a whole trophy case worth of season-end NHL accolades. They're the kind of stand-up and down-to-earth guys who have earned some of hockey's highest distinctions: those curt nods of approval and "he's all class" estimations from even the most reticent of rival fans.

But despite all their leadership, and in large part because of their loyalty, none of these players has lifted the Stanley Cup, and it's becoming less likely that they ever will. Iginla has come closest — tantalizingly so, falling 2-1 to the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7 of the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals on the heels of a controversial 3-2 double overtime home loss in Game 6. The Flames have not made it past the first round of the playoffs in four attempts since. Alfredsson's Senators lost in five to the Ducks in the 2007 finals. The Coyotes, meanwhile, have reached the playoffs seven times over Doan's career but have yet to win a series.

"You think you can," Doan told ESPN The Magazine's Eric Adelson when asked if it's possible to turn the young franchise around. "Maybe that's the definition of insanity, to keep trying when nothing changes. But it's starting to come."

Should any of these guys be traded over the next month? Will they be? Every situation is a little bit different, and at this point Nash is the only one who is definitely out of playoff contention. He has insisted he wants to be part of the solution in Ohio, but recently gave a diplomatic response when asked whether he'd waive his no-movement clause, which set off a new round of speculation.

Iginla, who like Doan and Nash has a no-movement clause, has for years been so frequently assailed with talk of a trade that last month Flames GM Jay Feaster got a little bit testy about the situation. (The phrases "blogger in the basement in his underwear" and "there is nobody on the grassy knoll" were used.)

Alfredsson, at age 39 and with just one season remaining on his contract (and the Senators shocking everyone, him included, with their fifth-place standing this season), recently compared himself to Ray Bourque — though not quite the Ray Bourque who went off and wore purple in Colorado. Alfredsson's vision is more hometown in nature, having to do with the Ottawa-hosted All-Star game that he was voted into by his local fans, the ones who went totally bonkers when he netted goal no. 400 in front of them.

"It is definitely going to be an experience, to represent your team in the All-Star game, in your city," he said. "In my first All-Star game in '96, when Ray Bourque played in Boston, I saw the reception he got and the other Boston guys. It was pretty special."

Taking It Coast to Coast: A Lap Around the League

Remember the winners and losers of NHL realignment? Well, strike and reverse them. On Friday night — which, as any PR professional knows, is the best time to bury bad news — the NHL tersely announced that the Players Association had failed to agree to the terms of the deal, and that the planned realignment will not be taking place next season as had been expected. The move prompted much speculation over the reasons behind the abrupt U-turn, with some questioning whether it was a strategic move by the Don Fehr-led players union in advance of this coming offseason's CBA renegotiations, some insisting things aren't nearly that contentious, and others wondering out loud if perhaps the league itself was happy to stall on its own plan. But one thing is certain: The Winnipeg Jets will for the time being remain, however awkwardly, a "Southeastern" team. (It's like the faux-geographic March Madness brackets.)

The league announced the full All-Star rosters this morning. Notable Snubs: Patrice Bergeron, Thomas Vanek. Notable Snubs Who Apparently Politely Declined Because They're Old Men: Teemu Selanne, Nicklas Lidstrom. Pleasant Surprises: Brian Elliott, Mikko Koivu, Dan Girardi. I'm Kind of Confused: Dennis Wideman.

The news that brothers Brent and Darryl Sutter have tentatively begun speaking to each other again is a nice story and all, but I still got a kick out of what one jaded Calgary Sun commenter had to say: "I can only imagine that a transcript of that conversation would show no fewer than 164 'um's' and 318 'uhhh's.'"

Oh, Dustin Penner, please don't ever change.9 The L.A. Kings left wing, who has been maligned by fans and his own GM alike for his subpar conditioning and lack of offensive prowess, recently explained that he suffered back spasms while, in his own words, "I just leaned over to dip into some delicious pancakes that my wife made." This led to headlines like "Kings' Penner battered by 'delicious pancakes'; one prankster even took to AllRecipes.com with instructions on whipping up "Mrs. Penner's Pancakes." Late Wednesday night, Penner responded to the gleeful ribbing in masterful fashion, writing an "open letter" on Kings blog MayorsManor that concluded with his plans to set up a charity raffle whose winner will be treated to a "Pancakes With Penner" breakfast. No word on whether his wife will be the one catering.

Here's a pretty crazy article on life in Russia's KHL: "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 … 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."

http://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/international/article/1111783–khl-gun-slinging-owners-drug-planting-and-dodgy-air-travel-all-part-of-the-game?bn=1\

The NHL's Central Scouting Bureau released its midterm rankings for NHL prospects, and Nail Yakupov remained at the top of the heap, meaning that basement teams like the Blue Jackets and Oilers won't have to rename their "Fail for Nail" campaigns.10 (Oh, and in case you're wondering, no. 13 on the list IS related.)

Local papers are the best because they bring us things like this: "The first of a two-part series on Wayne Gretzky's kindergarten teacher, Cambridge's Marilyn Smith." Literally, this is the lede: "With a firm voice and soft sound, kindergarten teacher Marilyn Smith told Wayne Gretzky to pick up his building blocks and put them away." I want to hug this article, serve it Goldfish and Juicy Juice, and teach it to scrawl its name.

http://www.cambridgetimes.ca/opinion/columns/article/1277338–gretzky-was-model-student

Ron Caron, an assistant GM with the Montreal Canadiens and the GM of the St. Louis Blues from 1983 to 1993, passed away at age 82 this week. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had a funny and warm tribute to the man known as "The Professor," while the Globe and Mail's David Shoalts reprinted his 1990 piece on Caron.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/globe-on-hockey/remembering-ron-caron/article2297399/

Chirping Like a Champ: The Best Mouthing Off

When Brian Burke was named GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2008, he set out a clear agenda, explaining that he would be requiring "proper levels of pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence." Turns out he was talking about himself.

Burke has had quite the outspoken week. Last Thursday, he called a special press conference that was ostensibly to discuss the demotion of Leafs enforcer Colton Orr to the minor leagues but which spiraled into … well, let's just say that the key line from Burke's ensuing rant, in which he used Orr as a springboard to opine about the decline of dedicated enforcers in today's NHL,11 was a remark that I'm pretty sure he had to have stolen from some discarded draft of a JFK Cold War-era speech.

"The only lament I have on this," he said, "is the fear that if we don't have guys looking after each other, that the rats will take this game over."

In the aftermath, The Sporting News' Sean Gentille really summed it up best:

That has to be one of the definitive Burke soliloquies, right? Taken on its own, it's a perfect example of why I find the guy fascinating and frustrating. It was kind of oddly timed, almost completely unnecessary, strangely heartwarming and — in true Burke fashion, at least based on my feelings about him — perched wholly on the fence between old-guard insanity and history-conscious, future-forward pragmatism.

Yep, pretty much. But that didn't even turn out to be the best Burke soundbite from the past week. Nope, that came yesterday, after Sports Illustrated released the results of a highly suspect poll of 161 NHL players12 that ranked the most overrated among them. No. 1 on the list: Toronto captain Dion Phaneuf.

Burke appeared on Fan 590 radio and scoffed at the notion in the only way he knows how. "Yes, players dumb enough to participate in polls designed to crap on fellow NHLPA members are not very bright," he said. "They can all go defecate in their chapeaus."

Now that right there is some truculence. (Though with language like that, you just have to wonder if he's auditioning for a position in Montreal.)

Hockey Haiku

Snitches get stitches
But the NHL's future?
We'll call them sutures.

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

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