Articles

[hockeygod]

Canucks made their choice, and it’s not Roberto Luongo

Iain MacIntyre, Vancouver Sun, Apr 19, 2012

LOS ANGELES — With everything at stake, the Vancouver Canucks chose Wednesday to play the goalie who had the best chance of saving their NHL season.

Maybe you heard. It wasn’t the guy who has been the starter for six years, but the backup who should be the starter for the next six.

Cory Schneider had a spectacular first night to the rest of his National Hockey League career, making 43 saves and making the difference in the Canucks’ 3-1 win against the Los Angeles Kings.

But Schneider wasn’t chosen to start only Game 4 of the first-round playoff series. He was chosen to start, period. It’s his team now.

The toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube on this one. The Canucks will try to trade Roberto Luongo and his 12-year, US$64-million contract this summer. There is no other reasonable conclusion to draw from coach Alain Vigneault’s decision to go with his gut and leave Luongo on the bench against the Kings.

It really isn’t a tough call between Luongo and Schneider

It was Vigneault’s call, but the Canucks’ hockey operations department works by consensus and it seems everyone was in agreement to play Schneider. And since general manager Mike Gillis is no fool, the decision was made with full awareness of its implications and an acceptance of the ramifications.

From a strategic, competitive standpoint, it really isn’t a tough call between Luongo and Schneider for next season and beyond.

After matching Luongo’s performance numbers last season as a rookie, Schneider outplayed the starter this year. Schneider’s goals-against average of 1.96 was nearly a half-puck better than Luongo’s, and the tandem’s save percentages (.937 vs. .919) meant that for about every 50 shots, Schneider allowed one fewer goal.

Schneider just turned 26 and can be expected to get better. Luongo just turned 33 and there is at least a chance that his slight decline this season is the first faint glimpse of the twilight of his career.

So, remove emotions and Luongo’s huge contract from the equation, and it’s no wonder Schneider would be chosen if the Canucks could have only one of their goalies.

And that’s the thing: they have to choose.

Schneider is a restricted free agent this summer and ready to be a No. 1 goalkeeper. He was a first-round draft pick and has proved at every level that he is an elite player. He is already better, technically, than Luongo — wider in his butterfly and more upright when he moves laterally.

If the Canucks don’t make Schneider their starter, someone else will. And another team could do it with a predatory free-agent offer.

Gillis will try to re-sign Schneider before his contract expires on July 1. If he can’t, the Canucks almost certainly will arbitrate against Schneider — exercising the seldom-used contractual option that would remove the goalie from the free-agent market a few days after it opens.

The Nashville Predators did it last season with Shea Weber, but handled it clumsily by lowballing their star defenceman after quashing his free-agency options. Having seen how badly that went, the Canucks would work with Schneider to establish a salary above what he ordinarily might expect based on his NHL experience so far.

Of course, the risk is that Schneider, like innumerable goalies before him, fails to become a great starter immediately after being a great backup.

And say what you want about Luongo’s playoff failings, he has been one of the best at his position for a decade, earning three Vezina Trophy nominations and averaging 37 wins a season for the Canucks.

Despite arguments from Kirk McLean supporters, Luongo is the best goalie the franchise has had. But Schneider has the potential to be even better.

Luongo’s resume, and a salary-cap hit of US$5.33-million that is not an onerous as it seems, make him tradable despite having 10 years remaining on his deal. He is due $6.714 million each of the next six seasons before his salary plummets in anticipation of early retirement.

The fine print in this is that Luongo has a no-trade clause.

He could make things miserable for the Canucks if he flatly rejects the idea of a trade. But proud and driven to win, Luongo would be miserable, too, at even a 50/50 split of goaltending duties in Vancouver, let alone a full demotion to a backup role.

Luongo can name his teams, and chances are the Canucks will find one of them with which to trade. Vancouver may get little in return. Simply clearing the crease for Schneider while off-loading Luongo’s contract might have to be the payoff for the Canucks. Gillis may even have to take on someone else’s bad contract in return.

But a Luongo trade can happen and probably will.

Far more time was spent on Wednesday’s goaltending decision than the two days between Games 3 and 4. A year ago, when Luongo disintegrated in Boston in the Stanley Cup final, the organization still felt an obligation to their starter. Vigneault said as much.

Schneider should have started Game 4 in Boston but didn’t. He could have started Game 6 or even Game 7, but didn’t. Luongo was Vigneault’s guy.

Not anymore.

Excluding the season he tore his groin, Luongo’s 55 games this year were his fewest since his sophomore NHL season in 2000-01. In the last quarter of the regular season, Vigneault played Schneider as often as he did Luongo. Then he went to his backup in the third game of the playoffs, even though Luongo was solid the first two games and not responsible for the deficit to the Kings.

The Canucks have been thinking ahead, working toward something. And now we know what.

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

[hockeygod]

Red Wings need to figure out life after Nicklas Lidstrom

Michael Traikos, National Post, Apr 19, 2012

By now, you know the drill. Each year, the Detroit Red Wings get older, lose another piece of their dynasty and appear headed for a long and painful rebuild. And each year, like a teetering and tottering Jenga tower, they manage to keep adding pieces without causing the whole structure to collapse.

In the last six years, they have survived Steve Yzerman’s retirement, Dominik Hasek’s exodus to Europe, and the losses of key players such as Brendan Shanahan, Chris Chelios, Kirk Maltby, Kris Draper, Chris Osgood and Brian Rafalski.

But with the Red Wings down 3-1 to the Nashville Predators and facing possible elimination on Friday, a familiar question has re-surfaced: can the structure still remain standing when Nicklas Lidstrom is eventually removed from the foundation?

The Red Wings captain, who turns 42 next week, becomes an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season. And though he continues to be one of the top defencemen in the league, he has not yet decided if he will put his body through another year or call it quits.

Niklas Kronwall, who scored 15 goals and 36 points? Ian White, who logged nearly 23 minutes per game and had a plus-23 rating? Or does Detroit look to free agency, where Nashville’s Ryan Suter — a sort of up-and-coming Lidstrom — could be entering the market?

It is difficult to imagine anyone filling the skates of a seven-time Norris Trophy winner who has won four Stanley Cups and missed only 40 games during his 20-year career. But sooner or later, the Red Wings are going to have to contemplate life without Lidstrom or — at the very least — a day when his skills diminish to the point where he is just another defenceman.

“He’d probably tell you he doesn’t recover like he did when he was 20 or 25 or even 35,” Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock said earlier this week. “But he’s still a pretty good player and important to us.”

Indeed, Lidstrom was on the ice for a team-high 25 minutes and 47 seconds in Tuesday’s 3-1 loss to the Predators. That was more than four minutes more than the next-highest Detroit defenceman logged. But like 39-year-old Tomas Holmstrom, another soon-to-be free agent veteran who could also be done after this season, you have to wonder if the minutes are starting to add up.

Lidstrom has no goals and no assists in these playoffs. And aside from the strike-shortened 1994-95 season, his 34 points this year were the lowest of his career, although he did finish with a plus-21 rating. Part of the reduction in offence was having missed 11 games — another career high — because of a bone bruise on his ankle.

During that span, the Red Wings went 3-6-2, providing a glimpse of what the future might hold when Lidstrom finally decides to hang up the skates for good.

When asked for their thoughts on Lidstrom’s future, teammates shrugged their shoulders. No one knows, they said. Maybe not even Lidstrom, who for the past two years has signed one-year contracts with the Red Wings after contemplating retirement in the summer.

Aside from his health and his family, Lidstrom’s reason for returning has largely depended on the Red Wings’ chances of competing for a Stanley Cup. At this stage of his career, he does not seem interested in wanting to play for a team that is treading water in the standings. He wants the commitment from management that winning a championship is still high on the agenda.

That was the feeling around Detroit for most of this season, where the Red Wings set an NHL record for consecutive victories at home and had been one of the top teams in the Western Conference. But then the team ran into Pekka Rinne in the first-round of the playoffs.

If the Red Wings are eliminated, however, it will not be a total loss. Playing the Predators has allowed management to get a closer look at Suter, who logged almost 31 minutes in Tuesday’s 3-1 win.

A player like that might convince Lidstrom to come back for another kick at the can. At the very least, Suter would keep the tower from tumbling over.

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

[hockeygod]

Hard Times

Ellen Etchingham, Editorial, thescore.com, Apr 18, 2012

Being against this is easy. Figuring out how to prevent it is hard.

Now is a hard time to be a hockey fan. Granted, there have always been moral tensions surrounding the game. The sport has been full of brutal violence and crass exploitation for nearly a hundred years, and neither of those things have ever been easy to stomach. But this season, a creeping understanding of the long-term dangers of brain injuries that had been brewing beneath the surface of hockey for half a decade finally exploded into the mass consciousness. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that a lot of hockey people, at every level of the game, have suffered a crisis of conscience this season about what it means to love this sport. And the playoffs? Oh, honey, if you’re feeling traumatized by this postseason, get in line.

Understandably, there has been a lot of outrage. This is a good thing. It’s a necessary first step. The building outrage over the NHL’s inadequate concussion-prevention policies and concussion-treatment protocols has brought the issue to the forefront of hockey discourse. It’s forced a conversation that a lot of people in the League offices would prefer not to have. It’s shown that fan sentiment and media muckraking can indeed have an impact on the direction of the game.

But we have been outraged for a year now, many of us longer. Half the articles that are being written today about this brutal postseason have the same essential content as the articles written after the spate of possibly CTE-related deaths last summer, names and quotations changed. The argument is the same: something must be done, more must be done, this is intolerable, this is immoral, it is not enough, the NHL has blood on it’s hands, somebody is going to die, something must be done. The case-study varies but the reaction doesn’t. This year has been one long string of terrible incidents and one long howl of moral outrage.

The NHL needs to change, this is beyond questioning. But the response needs to change too. Because- and I am sorry to say this- outrage is cheap. Outrage is cheap and easy and, on some fundamental level, a little bit selfish. Outrage is a way of assuaging one’s own moral crisis at being a fan of something that is perhaps not ethically worthy of fanaticism. It’s a balm for the soul. It makes one feel better, to stand up on one’s soap box or milk crate or even just in the middle of the living room and delcare that I AM AGAINST HEAD HITS. It feels like taking a stand, doing the right thing. But in and of itself, being outraged is doing nothing.

Do not think this is something I am blaming others for. I’ve done it too. I’ve written those articles, I’ve screamed from my little milk crate about how something must be done. But then I had a dream, and in this dream Brendan Shanahan came to me and said, okay, yes, you are right, Ellen, you have the right of it. I will do what you want. What, tell me, exactly, should we do?

And I realized that I was not entirely sure. More, yes, but how much more? Exactly? And how? And why?

So long as we talk about nothing but how angry we are and how wrong the League is and what a joke/travesty/abomination all the decisions are, we can preserve an illusion of consensus and certainty, and we can pat each other on the back for having the right opinion. We create the illusion of a unified movement. But scratch the surface just a little, start asking questions about specifics, and the consensus evaporates instantly. People often blame the NHL’s character (too traditional) or greed (violence sells) for impairing the reformation of League justice, but if the League, today, agreed to completely and totally give ‘us’ change-minded people everything ‘we’ want, what exactly would that be? Take ten people who all think the League’s handling of supplementary discipline in these playoffs has been totally wrong, sit them down in a room and have them write out what they would do instead. No more vague calls for ‘more’ and ‘different’ and ‘change’. Specifics, written out in games and dollars, with a rationalizing logic for each.

You would get ten different plans, some of them so radically different they would provoke just as much anger as the NHL’s decisions. Perhaps even more.

We, the fans and media, have changed. Our tolerance for violence has shifted, our concern for player safety has grown, we are no longer comfortable with the NHL’s handling of the game’s violence. Good for us. Gold stars all around.

But all we had to do to change was to stop saying one thing and start saying another. It is very easy for a person to change their opinion. But the NHL is not a person. It is a vast institution comprised of a dozen different constituencies, each with many different concerns. The NHL is not just Shanahan, it’s not just Bettman. It’s players, managers, trainers, and doctors. It’s on-ice officials, off-ice officials, and administrators. It’s owners, sponsors, advertisers, and television networks. It’s developmental leagues and farm systems. It’s fans and media. And what this absolutely massive amalgamation of tens of thousands of people needs to change is nothing so simple as an opinion, but policy. To change the NHL is not simply a matter of will. It’s a matter of detailed, complex negotiation.

More suspensions? Okay, fine, great. How many more? For exactly what kind of contact? How many games per? Why? How many dollars in fines? To the players or the teams? Why? How much of punishment should be determined by intent? How much by injury? How much by repeat-offender status? Who should judge? How should they be appointed? Should mandatory suspension lengths be written into the rules? Does the victim have some responsibility for his own safety? How much? Why? Should consequences for the franchise be taken into consideration? Should there be separate policies for the postseason? How much of the power to deter should lie with the officials on the ice? How much with the Department of Player Safety? Should fighting be prohibited? With what kind of punishments?

Do not say consistency. Calls for consistency are a red herring, another thing that creates the illusion of consensus where none exists. There is not a single outraged person anywhere on the internet who would be happy with ‘consistent’ discipline if it was consistent according to the wrong standard. Before one insists on consistency one has to define what is right, otherwise the best one can hope for is consistently wrong.

Do not say whatever it takes. There is not one hockey fan who is willing to do whatever it takes in the name of player safety. If player safety is the most important thing and no other value matters, than call for the prohibition of all contact and ban anyone from the sport who violates that prohibition. Players would become dramatically safer immediately. But, of course, the game would be essentially different. Nobody actually wants whatever it takes, it just sounds virtuous to say it.

And please, please, do not say nothing will ever change. Cynicism is even cheaper than outrage. Yes, the NHL is a large and unwieldy and conservative institution, but there was never any institution in the history of the world so great and solid that it could not be moved. The NHL has changed dramatically through its history, and there were many forms of violence- stick violence, notably- that it once merrily tolerated that have now been almost wholly eradicated. The forces in the NHL that support concussive violence can be shifted. They can evolve, they can be persuaded, coerced or co-opted. You know how I know this? Because fans and play-by-play announcers and television commentators used to be one of those pro-head-hit constituencies. We used to be the people cheering the high elbows and the jumping charges and chuckling at the guy stumbling to get up after. We’ve changed, in huge numbers, and every day more and more of us are coming around. And if we can change, than advertisers and sponsors can change, and if they can change, than owners can change, and if owners can change, the League can change. Throwing up your hands and crying impossible is just absolving yourself of having to contemplate the difficult work of negotiation, persuasion, and slow, piece-by-piece transformation that real change requires.

The process has already begun. It is all around us. Shanahan has set out to create a more transparent, more consistent, more articulate process of supplementary discipline than ever before. No, it is not completely transparent or consistent or articulate, because- again- he has to work within a system that still has powerful interests that do not yet support him. He has not, by himself, been able to change the entire disciplinary structure of the League in one season. No one and nothing that actually exists could possibly have done so. But he has pushed in a direction no NHL disciplinarian has ever pushed before, and next year he will be able to push further.

Teams are beginning to take concussions seriously. They’re holding players with head injuries on the IR for longer stretches, opening up to the notion of ‘however long it takes’ for a guy to be ready. Their behavior reflects a far more accurate and compassionate understanding of brain trauma than hockey has ever had before. It’s not perfect- there are still teams who rush guys back, still coaches who talk about concussion symptoms like they’re psychosomatic excuses- but fewer than before, and now, rather than being blithely accepted, such decisions and assertions are widely challenged.

And players are beginning to understand the danger. More and more players are talking about hits to the head as something unnecessary and unacceptable, more and more are admitting to being scared and upset by the tales of CTE and the effects it can have on a man’s later life. Of course, some of them are still hiding concussions and playing when they should not be. Some of them are still defending obvious headhunting as good hockey plays. But now, playing through symptoms and shrugging off a shoulder to the skull are both controversial, not just in the papers but within dressing rooms.

Is it enough yet? No, of course not, absolutely not, but nothing at the beginning was ever the entirety of what it will be at the end, and this is no small transformation that we’re dealing with. Adapting hockey to reduce concussions and CTE is not some small, simple thing. It’s not just a matter of tossing out a few extra suspensions and be done with it. It will transform the game in a hundred interconnected ways that we cannot even yet begin to predict. It requires shifts not just in rules and punishments but in culture- the culture of on-ice officiating, the culture of playing, the culture of watching, the culture of coaching. It requires redefining fundamental values and archetypes- a new understanding of a clean hit, a new sensibility about the acceptable level of risk and danger, a new vision of the balance between on-ice punishments and off-ice ones. It will affect our understanding of what a hockey career is and how long it should last. It will affect the CBA. It will affect equipment. It will effect the outcomes of games and seasons and lifetimes.

Once, years ago, when I was young as a fan and the game was new, I sent up a prayer for a rule like a scalpel, that could “cut out all the ugly and terrifying moments but still leave all the rest of it, including the violence and the drama and the thrill, intact.” I am not the only hockey fan to send up that prayer. But despite all our wishing, that rule doesn’t exist- at least, not as one thing. If it can exist at all, it will be a series of changes, some very big and some very small, that only together, in the aggregate, will be able to create the new balance of safety and danger that we can live with. The process of finding these changes is going to be long, and it is going to be slow, and it is going to be frustrating, full of heated debates, mistakes, inconsistencies, and false starts. There are going to be bad decisions enthusiastically embraced and good decisions met with resistance. There’s going to be trouble, and sacrifice, and everyone who participates on any level is going to end up looking like an idiot or an asshole more than once.

So why do it at all? Because that’s how change happens, in the real world, in big institutions with lots of contending constituencies.

Keep your outrage, if it helps you commit to the process. Outrage that drives policy proposals, debate, concern, and interest in the mechanisms of transformation is a very good thing. Outrage that makes people follow the research and development camps, the CBA negotiations, that inspires active engagement with the League, is great and necessary and beautiful. But outrage that begins with self-righteousness and ends with despair? That’s useless. It doesn’t make players safer and it doesn’t make hockey better.

The game is trying to shift, lurching, from one consensus point to another, but the change can’t be completed until the new consensus is defined. And that can’t happen until the constituency that is pushing hardest for change- the fans and the media- stop using their outrage to feel good about themselves and start using it to push useful policy proposals. Getting angry is the easy part. But, like so many of Shanahan’s suspensions, it’s just not enough.

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

[hockeygod]

Hockey violence, viewers on rise + 30 Thoughts

Elliotte Friedman, CBC Sports, April 18, 2012

He played nine NFL seasons at linebacker for the Washington Redskins and New York Giants, winning one Super Bowl and going to the 2006 Pro Bowl. Not a bad career as an undrafted free agent for Antonio Pierce.

On Monday night, Pierce attended Game 3 of the Boston Bruins-Washington Capitals series and tweeted: "Had a blast at the NHL game last nite.. Hurts to say but more physical then the NFL…#sad."

These are strange days.

The NFL just negotiated a series of record-breaking TV deals. Yet frightened by a series of concussion lawsuits, it's trying to balance safety with pro football's inherent competitive brutality. Meanwhile, the NHL is seeing record television ratings and intense buzz as its playoff games swing between incredibly entertaining and completely out of control.

On Tuesday night, there was the potential for a worst-case scenario: Marian Hossa taken off the ice on a stretcher. Hours later, the Blackhawks announced they "anticipate a full recovery" — thankfully.

Here we are at Hockey Night in Canada, very happy with more than two million viewers for Monday's Game 3 in Ottawa. Game 3 between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia drew NBC the best U.S. television rating for any playoff game in a decade, excluding the Stanley Cup final. TSN opened that series with its best-ever number for a first-round game featuring two American teams.

Viewers weren't turning into the Penguin-Flyer games for intermission features about "The Pennsylvania Amish of Lancaster County." And yet, there was no NHL release trumpeting these numbers (Checked with Steve Lepore, who covers this stuff on his Puck The Media blog.).

The league is rarely shy about this kind of thing, proud to point out when its various platforms are breaking new ground. Last week, it announced another season of record revenues, even though a labour stoppage looms on the horizon.

If you're a fan paying $200 for a ticket, $150 for a jersey, $20 to park and about $3 billion to eat at a game, you have to love that the players care as much as you do. These guys desperately want to win. There were times I wanted to get away from hockey last weekend, but the games were too good.

However, at this time of year, you move the line of what's acceptable one inch (Shea Weber) and they'll take a mile. Last weekend proved it. Unfortunately, Raffi Torres cemented it. I'm no puritan. I like a tough game and a good fight between those who can play. But the NHL has to be looking at its NFL brethren and worrying.

Hockey was actually first to start recording and analyzing concussion data, but football's taken the lead on radically changing the mindset of its players.

If you watch NFL telecasts, you'll hear plenty of people who share Antonio Pierce's opinion — that the game's gone soft.

As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: "Follow the money."

There is a website (nflconcussionlegislation.com) that tracks the status of retired player litigation against the NFL. It counts 59 different lawsuits filed against the league right now, involving more than 1,000 plaintiffs. (Estimates are at least three years before any go to trial).

Charles Robinson, a tremendous investigative reporter for Yahoo Sports, tweeted Monday that a "High ranking legal source w/strong ties 2 NFL owners says concussion litigation has grown into biggest financial threat in league history."

Could that happen to the NHL? If you think it can, ask yourself this question: If this is the kind of hockey your consumers want, can the league afford to be comfortable with it?

30 THOUGHTS

1. Raffi Torres is an easy suspension. Not a star. Repeat offender. He'll get hammered.

2. Joel Quenneville's in- and post-game meltdowns — although justified — will test Gary Bettman. Teams were warned not to criticize officiating during these playoffs. On the annual pre-playoff conference call, Bettman got on the line and warned of stiff fines if anyone lashed out at the zebras. One exec called it "The Tortorella Rule."

3. Thought Brendan Shanahan's three-game suspension for Andrew Shaw was fair (the league warned everyone about touching goalies), but the methodology showed why basing bans on injuries is a bad idea. You can't make a team wait two days for a ruling, especially when you're getting that close to game time. Concussions are unfortunately tricky. One minute, you think you can play, the next, you can't. Just ask David Perron.

4. Ottawa's doctors prevented Daniel Alfredsson from playing in Game 3, so he wrote "Do it for Family" on the greaseboard in the dressing room and went home. ("Family 2012" is the team's playoff motto.) It's easy to look from outside and say, "Alfredsson shouldn't risk it." But when you're 39 and you've never won, you don't know how long you have left and you're on a team with a chance, well, if you're honest with yourself, you know you'd want to play, too.

5. Didn't know teams that don't make the playoffs do not get access to press boxes during the post-season. Too much demand for seating. So it's much more difficult to scout potential free-agent or trade targets in person. "And this is the time of year you really want to see those players," said one scout. You can buy a ticket and try to do your work in the crowd, but that's not really efficient.

6. Barry Trotz to HNIC's Mark Lee before the playoffs began: "In the Western Conference, there will be no upsets. If the No. 8 seed [Los Angeles Kings] went to the Stanley Cup final, I wouldn't be surprised."

7. After the Vancouver Canucks went down 0-2 to the Kings, asked a player who'd been in that ditch — and came back to win — how his team did it. He said there are two things you can't do: wait for a lucky break (like, say, Nicklas Lidstrom scoring from centre); or expect someone else to make a difference. "Honestly, the thing I remember most is everyone thinking they were going to make the play that would change the series," he said.

8. Kept that quote in mind watching Game 3 of Canucks-Kings. How many Canucks looked like they wanted to positively change things? What stood out was Henrik Sedin coming back on the ice for a 3:21 shift, including a power-play, after Dustin Brown clobbered him (legally).

9. A person on Twitter (and I'm honestly apologetic, I didn't write down his name) pointed out that Sedin shift was not the longest of this post-season. When Shawn Matthias took a high-sticking double-minor in Game 1 between the Florida Panthers and New Jersey Devils, Ilya Kovalchuk was on the ice for the entire power play. We're talking 4:01 (!). So far, there are 16 players who haven't skated that much in an entire playoff game.

10. At one Toronto practice, Ron Wilson told his players to "get ready for 'Drill 237.'" They didn't know what it was, so he told them to skate until he blew the whistle. One of them stayed on the ice for 2:37 the previous game (also through a power play) and, to make a point, he had the whole team go that long. Needless to say, they were exhausted because — not knowing what Wilson was doing — they started hard. I'm guessing Alain Vigneault and Peter DeBoer were a little more forgiving.

11. Another theory on why Alain Vigneault removed goaltender Roberto Luongo for Game 3? To put the heat on his players. In some ways, Luongo's become a built-in excuse — he's the first one to get blamed, so it takes the spotlight off everyone else. If he's on the bench, the focus goes elsewhere.

12. Remember talking a year ago with Keith Yandle. He pointed out that you don't really realize how hard the NHL is until a good coach game-plans against you in a playoff series. For him, that was Mike Babcock. Brought that up to Babcock's former assistant, Paul MacLean, about Erik Karlsson. "Playoffs are about you against the other team … you against your man … for seven hard games. Who cracks first?" MacLean said. Win or lose, Karlsson will learn the same important lessons Yandle did.

13. Let's do some Pittsburgh/Philadelphia. Two weeks ago, an NHL general manager said that netminder Marc-Andre Fleury was the most important Penguin because he covered for a team that gave up a lot of chances. Boy, was that right. An NHL goalie coach: "He is lunging at the puck instead of letting it come to him," and "he is getting bothered by the Flyers' traffic in front and not tracking laterally." One player said he could tell Fleury lost confidence after Sean Couturier's tying goal in Game 2.

14. If you're the Penguins, you have to build Fleury up any way possible. Head coach Dan Bylsma backed him publicly. Privately, they should make him watch his save off Lidstrom at the end of the 2009 Stanley Cup final over and over and over again.

15. One scout: "Most teams have too much respect for Pittsburgh's talent and play safe. Philly is not in awe and is taking it to them. Forecheck, physical, no space, etc., which is exposing Pittsburgh's defensive shortcomings." He added that the Flyers are showing that defencemen Paul Martin and Kris Letang make mistakes under physical pressure.

16. One NHL coach: "All that talk [before the series] caused Pittsburgh to lose its focus … I'm going to try that."

17. Would've been very easy to shield Sidney Crosby from a late-Tuesday media availability in Philadelphia (He spoke in Pittsburgh in the morning). But he was there two days after his "I don't like any of the Flyers" rant. When you're the captain and your team is down 0-3, you don't hide.

18. Braden Holtby's been a lifesaver in net for the Capitals after struggling through much of his AHL season. One theory? He was bored. Guess it happens, sometimes, with prospects who've had a taste of the NHL and feel they have nothing more to learn at the minor-league level.

19. One scout said he thought Washington's biggest challenge would be dealing with Milan Lucic: "They really don't have anyone on their roster who can handle him," although he later added Joel Ward had some potential for it. Lucic was in a self-imposed slumber for the first two games, but was much more active on Monday (although he took a bad penalty late in regulation). Will the Capitals regret waking him?

20. In case you missed The Hotstove, Glenn Healy reported the Oilers will keep the No. 1 overall draft pick. Nail Yakupov told Terry Jones of the Edmonton Sun: "I definitely want to go to Edmonton and play for the Oilers, for sure."

21. Are the Oilers and Ryan Smyth headed into another disagreement? He was traded in 2007 as the two sides disagreed over $100,000 per season. There was a two-year offer from the team around the trade deadline — probably no higher than $5 million total — but went nowhere. Oilers GM Steve Tambellini said that,

as a free agent, Smyth "holds all the cards." Sounds like Edmonton isn't certain he's still a top-six forward. Does anyone really want to go down this road again?

22. In Calgary, Jarome Iginla's future obviously dominates the discussion, but Miikka Kiprusoff might be the real key to a retooling: no-move protection ends July 1; actual salary drops over next two years ($1.5 million in 2013-14); still playing at a high level, etc. Hotstove contributor Eric Francis says Calgary won't do it … but will get tempting offers. That guy can make a difference.

23. Biggest question other teams have about the Flames is "Who is really calling the shots here?" Is it GM Jay Feaster, who wants legitimate change? Or is it ownership/president, which has resisted?

24. No list of Calgary coaching candidates is complete without Rangers assistant Mike Sullivan. Feaster likes familiarity and Sullivan was on the Tampa bench when Feaster was GM there.

25. Here is the scoop on Maple Leafs goalie coach Francois Allaire: He is telling people he is fed up with being made a scapegoat in Toronto and is considering retiring from the league to concentrate on his goalie school. The "scapegoating" is not coming from inside the organization as GM Brian Burke took pains to publicly defend him. Prominent goalie coaches who could be interested are Eli Wilson (Carey Price) and Andy Nowicki, who coached James Reimer in Red Deer, Alta.

26. The Winnipeg Jets had a small brush fire this week when a "fan" called media members with details about a conversation he claimed he had with head coach Claude Noel. One newspaper printed the story, featuring critical comments about the likes of Nik Antropov, Alexander Burmistrov and Jason Jaffray. If you ever want to know why sometimes people are rude to fans, well, this is it.

27. As for the quotes, the players themselves will know if they are accurate or not based on what's been said to them in the past. Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff probably had to speak to a few agents. Asked one (clients not involved) what he would do. He said that in some of the worst cases, if he believed it to be true, he'd ask for a trade.

28. Montreal's coaches have one year left on their contracts and have been told no decision will be made about their future until the next GM is hired.

29. The Canadiens know they're not getting Jim Nill. But it's pretty smart to ask to talk to him, if only to pick his brain.

30. A lot of complaints in Buffalo that Sabres owner Terry Pegula kept both GM Darcy Regier and head coach Lindy Ruff. But while it maybe 15 years in Buffalo for them, it's only one full season with the new owner. To Pegula, the clock restarted when he bought the team.

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

[hockeygod]

Ice hockey-Soviet great Vasilyev dies age 62

Reuters, Apr 19, 2012

Valery Vasilyev, one of the top defencemen of his generation, won two Olympic and eight world titles as a member of the great Soviet Union team in the 1970s and 80s, and also took part in the 1972 series against Canada, has died at the age of 62, the Russian ice hockey federation (FHR) said on Thursday.

He was an eight-time all-star during a 13-year career in the Soviet league, playing mainly for Moscow Dynamo.

"Our hockey has suffered an irreplaceable loss," the FHR said on its website (www.fhr.ru) in a tribute to one of the most feared defenseman of his generation who spent most of his club career with Dynamo Moscow.

Vasilyev's widow Tatyana said he had died from heart and kidney failure.

Vasilyev won Olympic gold in 1972 and 1976 and was part of the Soviet team that won the 1981 Canada Cup.

He also played in the 1972 Summit Series, which pitted the Soviets against the best "professionals" from the National Hockey League (NHL) for the first time.

Vasilyev, voted the best defenseman at world championships three times, was inducted into the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in 1998.

Vasilyev was the father-in-law of former NHLer Aleksey Zhamnov.

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

[hockeygod]

Unplugged: Walter Gretzky on his health, Wayne, and the Leafs

Joe O'Connor, National Post, Apr 18, 2012

Walter Gretzky was sitting in the sunroom of his home in Brantford on a recent afternoon wearing a dark suit, dark socks and a tie with a red maple leaf on it. He tells me I can call him Walter, or Wally, or Doughhead. But what he really is, is the King of Hockey Dads, a gracious man with some stories — good and bad — to tell.

Over an hour, we spoke of many things: the Great One moving home to Canada, the Leafs’ playoff hopes and the brain aneurysm that has robbed Walter Gretzky of most of his memories from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Can you watch old footage of Wayne’s games and make new memories?

If you said to me, ‘Walter, what did you do yesterday?’ I have no idea. I have no memory of it. I could go to the mall and park my car and come out, and most of the time I have no idea where I parked. That’s from the aneurysm. Some things I remember, most things I don’t.

What do you remember?

My doctor and I did an exercise once. He told me to tell him what I could remember in that instance, right off the top of my head. And I remembered my Mom dying, in 1988. And all I remember is her church service, and going up for communion with my mentally challenged sister, Ellen. I had her by her right arm and my wife had her by her left. I remember my Dad dying, it was in the 1970s, and all I remember is the church service, in Paris, Ont. He died of pancreatic cancer, and I remember that. And I remember Wayne’s wedding. He was standing at the front of the church, hands behind his back, rocking back and forth on his feet. Janet was coming up the aisle. The music was Ode to Joy, I think, and everybody at the cathedral was facing toward the back — and I couldn’t believe it. If my mother had seen us, turning our backs to the altar, we would have got home and [smacks his hands together].

Do you remember his hockey career?

I remember the Canada Cup at Copps Coliseum. Second period, overtime, against the Russians. Wayne went over centre ice, over the Russian blueline, turned to the right in the left corner, passed it back to Mario Lemieux and Mario Lemieux one-timed it over Tretiak’s shoulder to win the Canada Cup. And I have the ring to prove it. That’s all I remember, from all those games. (On his right hand there is a modest ring, studded with four diamonds, with “W. Gretzky” inscribed on the inside of a silver band. He has me try it on, saying, ‘There, now you can say you have worn Gretzky’s ring.’)

Do you watch much hockey?

I go to the Air Canada Centre and watch the Leafs play. Isn’t that something, that rink is filled all the time? Do you know the difference between the Leafs and the Titanic? Nothing. They both go down as soon as they hit the ice. You know how you can tell it’s springtime in Toronto [laughing]? All the Leafs are out. You know the difference between the Leafs and my lawnmower? Nothing. They both spend the winter in the basement.

Do people ask you for autographs?

All the time, and I have never understood it. Little kids, at the rink, will come up to me and ask me to sign something. They ask: ‘Would you mind just signing W. Gretzky please?’ [laughing]. Isn’t that something?

They are much smarter than I was when I was a kid.

Me too.

Is Wayne ever moving back to Canada?

Never. He has got five American kids and an American wife. And you saw his one son, he signed with the Chicago Cubs. Listen to this: I remember phoning our family farm and saying, ‘Mama, it is Walter calling.’ Wayne broke his stick and I need to borrow ten dollars — five dollars for the stick and five dollars for me. Anyway, Wayne’s 18-year-old son — 18 — do you know what his signing bonus was? Half a million dollars. Isn’t it crazy how the world has changed? I remember having to borrow ten dollars from my mother for his father. Wayne has put it into an account where he can’t touch until he is 25. And that’s how things have changed.

What’s the most money you ever made in a year?

I’m not even sure. I know I started at Bell for $27 a week.

Stories bubble up, now and again, about Wayne getting involved in ownership somewhere, or becoming a team president — maybe even becoming president of the Leafs.

Ai-ya-ya: The Leafs? He would like to get involved in the NHL again, but there are no real opportunities. There was the bad situation with the Coyotes — and the NHL didn’t back Wayne at all. It is so sad. The major shareholders, when the NHL took the team over, they got their money. Wayne never got his. He had to take them to court and he won’t get any money until they are sold.

Wayne always had a bodyguard on the ice. Dave Semenko, Marty McSorley, he had tough guys watching his back. How do you feel about fighting in hockey?

It is stupid. You want to be a boxer, go and be a boxer.

I want to tell you something amazing.

What?

When Wayne was a little kid, seven or eight, he used to lie on his stomach in front of the TV watching Hockey Night in Canada. He would take a blank piece of paper and a pencil and he would follow the puck, tracing wherever it went on the ice on the page. And he said to me, and I remember this, but he said to me: ‘Dad, dad, don’t you see? Where the lines cross is where the puck is most.’ Isn’t that something? He was seven. He was always thinking about the game, even then.

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

[hockeygod]

Ovechkin understands why he was benched

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 20 2012

ARLINGTON, Va. — Flashing that gap-toothed grin of his, Alex Ovechkin said all the right things Friday about being benched by Capitals coach Dale Hunter for all but 15 seconds over the final 14 minutes of Washington's 2-1 victory against Boston in Game 4 of their first-round series.

A day after watching his teammates help playoff rookie goalie Braden Holtby protect a one-goal lead Thursday night, the two-time NHL MVP said: "It doesn't matter how many minutes I play. Of course I want to be there, but it's his decision."

Both Ovechkin and Hunter said the team's leading scorer and captain is healthy. But the coach said his game plan called for sitting Ovechkin when certain Bruins lines were out on the ice. What's more, the Russian who makes nearly $10 million a season isn't the player the Capitals want putting his body in harm's way at the defensive end.

"At the end of the game there, you've got your shot-blockers out there, and you want your best players blocking shots, but your offensive guys, but you don't want them breaking a foot, either," Hunter said.

Other Capitals players shrugged off the move, with some saying they didn't even notice Ovechkin was only on the ice for a total of 1 minute, 58 seconds in the third period of a playoff game.

"Just because he's not on the ice, doesn't mean he's not a big part of the team. He's paid to score goals. He's here to score goals, and make sure we're in games and giving ourselves a chance to win games," forward Troy Brouwer said. "If we were down a goal, he'd be the guy that would probably log the most amount of ice time. But being a game where you have a one-goal lead, they have a pretty good push, you want your defensive guys out, the guys who are usually on the penalty kill, the shutdown line — and he understands that."

The Capitals had a 26-16 edge in blocked shots, and they didn't allow Boston to get an official shot on goal over the final 7 minutes Thursday.

Hunter pointed to one block in particular: When forward Jay Beagle dropped down to get in the way of a shot by Boston defenceman Johnny Boychuck in the final 10 seconds.

"'Beags' has got the knack. You see at the end of the game, he slid at the right time? It takes timing," Hunter said.

"Ovie, he's a team guy. He's rooting for the guys on the bench," Hunter said. "When 'Beags' goes down there, he's the first one to jump up and yell. You appreciate what guys like that do, and that's why he's a real team guy."

The series is 2-2 heading into Game 5 at Boston on Saturday.

Ovechkin, for his part, said it doesn't matter how many minutes he plays, as long as Washington wins.

"Well, of course, I understand it. I accept it. … It doesn't matter if I'm going to play 10 seconds or 5 seconds. Most important thing is team result," Ovechkin said.

Asked how he thought he played Thursday, Ovechkin replied: "Well, like, we win."

Then he laughed a bit and added the punch line: "So I played good."

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

[hockeygod]

Stanley Cup playoffs known for bad blood

Sean McIndoe, REUTERS, Apr 21, 2012

The first round of the 2012 playoffs has been marked by wild brawls, questionable hits and an unprecedented string of suspensions. From Raffi Torres to Matt Carkner to Shea Weber to virtually the entire Penguins roster, it seems like each night of action brings another embarrassing incident to keep the referees and Brendan Shanahan busy.

But despite what some recent coverage might lead you to believe, playoff violence is hardly a new phenomenon in the NHL. In fact, the league has a long history of regrettable incidents in the post-season, many of which would put this year’s efforts to shame.

Let’s take a look back through the history books at some of the other black eyes, literal and figurative, that the NHL playoffs have provided over the years.

May 16, 1987 Montreal and Philadelphia engage in a wild pre-game brawl that all starts over the sight of opposing players shooting a puck into an open net, which come to think of it may also explain all the bad blood in this year’s Flyers/Penguins series.

April 26, 2002 New York Islanders star Michael Peca suffers significant ligament damage after being hit in the knee by Darcy Tucker. A defiant Tucker later will strenuously deny that the hit was low, while awkwardly refusing to answer reporters’ questions about the shovel and mining helmet he is holding behind his back.

June 6, 2011 Vancouver defenceman Aaron Rome knocks Boston’s Nathan Horton out of the Stanley Cup final with a late hit that the media at the time refers to “an unprecedented act of horrific violence,” and which the league head office now refers to as “the good old days.”

May 22, 1997 The Red Wings and Avalanche engage in a series of fights that only end when everyone gets sick of Detroit’s Brendan Shanahan constantly skating around and telling everyone that they owe him $2,500.

May 3, 2001 Tie Domi is suspended for the remainder of the playoffs after delivering a blindside elbow to Scott Niedermayer’s head. A tearful Domi later pleads with his fellow players to never repeat his mistake, and instead suggests they just wait until Niedermayer is not looking and then take a slapshot at his groin like a gentleman would.

April 28, 1993 Dale Hunter’s late hit from behind against Pierre Turgeon initially earns the Capitals forward a lifetime ban, although the league eventually agrees to reduce it to 21 games if he promises to also accept whatever terrible coaching job they want to stick him with over the next few decades.

June 19, 2006 As the final seconds tick down on Game 7 of the 2006 Stanley Cup final, the Edmonton Oilers do something really terrible that earns the franchise a lifetime ban from the NHL playoffs, apparently.

April 12, 1991 The St. Louis Blues and Detroit Red Wings combine for 298 penalty minutes, 18 fighting majors and multiple ejections in what historians will later refer to as “pretty much the most easy-going Norris Division game of all-time.”

April 24, 1996 Mario Lemieux is ejected from a game against the Capitals after slashing, cross-checking and repeatedly punching Todd Krygier, according to the videotape that has been thrown through Ed Snider’s front window every day this week with a note reading “You’re next, Flyer boy.”

May 27, 1993 In an unprovoked attack that horrifies onlookers and leaves the victim virtually unrecognizable, Kerry Fraser brutally assaults your childhood belief in the concepts of fairness and justice.

1995-2003 Scott Stevens delivers a series of increasingly flagrant playoff headshots that make him easily the dirtiest and most dangerous player in the entire league, according to that frantic time traveller from the year 2012 that we all decide to just ignore.

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

[hockeygod]

'Good ol' hockey game' on steroids

Steve Simmons, QMI Agency, April 21 2012

TORONTO – In the midst of the unending debate about the mayhem in the National Hockey League, I happened to turn on my television to Leafs TV and came across a 1963 Stanley Cup Final game between the Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings.

Those were, we have always been told, the good old days, when hockey was hockey and men were men and daily discussion didn’t centre around who would be suspended for how many games.

But what struck me — watching the heroes of my youth, watching a Leafs team which could actually win a Stanley Cup, seeing the game I grew up on — was how completely different the sport was back then from the game we try and mould daily to fit our own needs and theories.

Normally, I would contend there is something Canadian about the constant harping about the NHL. It’s what we do tend to do as a people. We want to fix things. We want to make them right.

We can’t accept the CFL or the NHL or anything close to us for what it is, so we tinker and we demand change and we create rules that are supposed to make things better.

But what’s going on in the NHL right now, this back and forth, isn’t Canadian. Hockey is getting the front page of USA Today, not because Americans care about Sidney Crosby and Claude Giroux. It’s getting big play on Pardon The Interruption on ESPN and in The New York Times and in places where noise is made when people die or are carried off the ice in stretchers, because of the sense the sport is out of control.

The first round of the playoffs, a contradictory cross-section of brilliant, intense hockey and singular acts of foolishness, has not gone unnoticed — and there’s never been a first round that got this kind of attention, both sides of the border, almost all of it for the wrong reasons. But for every bit of Raffi Torres or Shea Weber or Arron Asham, there has been another overtime game for Phoenix and Chicago, another save by Jonathan Quick, another hero emerging in Braden Holtby or more appreciation of just how far Alex Pietrangelo has come. Some terrible and some wonderful all mixed together — which only adds to the confusion.

But no matter what you might think of today’s hockey, when I sat in front of my television, when I stop the play, back it up, start it again, freeze it, the only similarity between the 1963 Stanley Cup Final and today’s first round of the playoffs is that the game is played on the ice. The technology has changed, making it easier to watch almost 50 years later. But the game we so enjoy today, with speed, with physical play, with finesse, with crazy intensity, wasn’t the game a lot of us grew up on.

For all you want to hear about Gordie Howe’s elbows, the calmness of the Cup game on my television was apparent. Some of the physical play in the game was almost accidental. There was little, if any, dumping the puck in, not a lot of forechecking, no smashing into boards, no neutral zone defensive play, limited stick work — there was some physical play along the wall, but nothing appearing close to violent.

Hockey looked more like a dance back then, a little fast, a little slow, with longer shifts and on the ice were men without helmets, seemingly more respectful. If anyone was trying to take anyone’s head off, it certainly wasn’t evident or apparent on my television screen.

On the ice was Dave Keon, all of 163 pounds; Dick Duff, who weighed the same; and Billy Harris, who was six pounds less than that. The big bruiser on the Leafs’ defence was Tim Horton: He was 5-foot-10, 180, in his playing days — 11 inches shorter than Zdeno Chara and 80 pounds lighter. The big Leaf, Frank (The Big M) Mahovlich, was 6-foot-1, 205 pounds. There weren’t a lot of Jaromir Jagrs in those days — 6-foot-3, 240 pounds, with Keon-like hands and Mahovlich’s touch.

The game has grown, the equipment has grown, the speed has elevated, with players bigger, faster, meaner, better-conditioned, more coached, playing in the same-sized cage. There are 28 inches more in height and about 480 more pounds of weight playing in every NHL shift. Over time, something had to give.

Spend a minute turning the clock back and what you’ll see is a stoppage in time. In its day, the game mattered and it wasn’t drawn and quartered on a regular basis the way hockey is now dissected daily.

The game of hockey is fabulous today.

The National Hockey League is not.

There is so much to appreciate and applaud in this Stanley Cup season and yet there has never been more concern. The league can’t go back to 1963, yet it can’t seem to go forward. And with all the noise around, it’s hard to focus and concentrate on what needs to be done first.

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

[hockeygod]

Why the Oilers should keep the No. 1 pick and take Nail Yakupov

Ken Campbell, The Hockey News, 2012-04-20

No team has ever held the No. 1 overall pick in the NHL draft four consecutive years, but don’t bet against the Edmonton Oilers doing just that in 2013. And who knows, perhaps they’ll match the Montreal Canadiens record for Stanley Cups with a string of five No. 1 picks in 2014.

This is not what the NHL could have ever had in mind. Giving the No. 1 overall pick to the worst team – and more recently giving the dregs of the NHL the best chance at winning the lottery – has always been about leveling the playing field. But if the Oilers can keep all the young talent they’ve stockpiled for no other reason than they’ve been bad, it will serve to tilt the ice ridiculously in their favor.

Yes, the Oilers could have an embarrassment of riches thanks to successive first overall picks by 2014, particularly if they stick to their “plan,” which appears to consist of nothing more than stockpiling their organization by being a bottom-three team in the NHL.

Which brings us to the question everyone has been asking since the Oilers won the draft lottery and the No. 1 overall pick for the third straight year: Do they trade the pick, thereby moving down in the draft so they can take a defenseman? The thinking is that with all the talent they have in their forward ranks they should start bolstering their blueline through the draft.

When you have the No. 1 overall pick, you take the best player available, simple as that. There are no sure things in a draft, but the consensus No. 1 prospect is Nail Yakupov, so if you have that pick, you take him. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, you can never, ever have an excess of offensive talent. Ever. The ability to make creative plays, keep possession of the puck and put it into the back of the net are the kinds of attributes of which you can never have too much.

Secondly, with the most rare of exceptions, you never address immediate needs at the draft table. In fact, with the crapshoot the draft is, you’re lucky if you can even hope to address the long-term voids in your roster. Any team that has ever had sustained success in the draft uses it to stockpile as much talent as possible regardless of position. In fact, had the Oilers taken this approach in the 2011 draft, they would have passed on Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and taken Adam Larsson, thereby depriving themselves of the probable rookie of the year in favor of a young rearguard who was a healthy scratch in the playoffs.

Now that doesn’t mean Larsson won’t one day prove to be Nugent-Hopkins’ equal as a player. He may very well do that, but the average gestation period for NHL talent to emerge from a defenseman is somewhere between three and five years. And with all due respect to kids such as Ryan Murray, Jacob Trouba, Matt Dumba and Morgan Rielly, there isn’t a defenseman in this year’s draft who will immediately provide the panacea for the Oilers blueline problems. Nobody in that group is any closer to helping the Oilers than top Edmonton prospects Oscar Klefbom or Martin Marincin.

The Oilers would be much better served by taking Yakupov and taking their chances with a group of unrestricted free agents this summer that includes the likes of Michal Roszival, Dennis Wideman, Pavel Kubina, Barret Jackman, Johnny Oduya, Carlo Colaiacovo and Jason Garrison. Of course, that’s easier said than done when you’re talking about the Oilers, but what they have going for them is that this summer is shaping up to be a plentiful one when it comes to defensemen, which means the prices should come down considerably. If that’s the case, all the Oilers will have to do is throw some ridiculous money at one or a couple of them and their chances of getting them will be greatly enhanced.

And there won’t be anything stopping the Oilers from trading some of that young talent to fill the holes in their roster if and when they become a serious contender. There will come a day when the likes of Taylor Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle and Yakupov, if they take him, will want to be paid commensurate with the top young players in the game. It will not be a matter of the Oilers not being able to afford them, particularly once they move into their new taxpayer-subsidized palace, but it might come down to whether they can keep all of them within the confines of the salary cap. By that time, their value as players might even be higher than it is now and trading one of them might yield a bounty far larger than trading the first overall pick now.

And remember, the last team that had three No. 1 overall picks was the Quebec Nordiques in 1989, ’90 and ’91. Many in the hockey world thought the Nordiques would be a shoo-in for the Stanley Cup with Mats Sundin, Owen Nolan and Eric Lindros in their lineup and they did win it all five years after taking Lindros. The interesting thing was none of the three players was there to hoist the Stanley Cup, but all three were dealt for significant pieces that led the franchise to its Stanley Cups in 1996 and 2001.

The significance that Yakupov has already expressed a desire to be taken first overall by the Oilers should not be discounted. With that kind of young talent, more established players who want the chance to play with those players are sure to follow. That’s how you build a team. You don’t do it by giving up the opportunity to take the best player available.

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

[hockeygod]

Southeast Prairie Thunder roll to Allan Cup title

LLYODMINSTER, Sask. — LARRY FISHER, The Canadian Press, Apr. 22, 2012

Terry Yake never won a Stanley Cup in his decade of NHL experience.

On Saturday night, he won an Allan Cup in his first attempt, helping the Southeast Prairie Thunder from Steinbach, Man., capture the senior AAA national championship.

“I had two minor-league championships and a nice championship over in Switzerland, but they never get old, no matter what level you're at,” Yake said after the Thunder scored three unanswered goals in the third period of Saturday's final to prevail 4-1 over the Rosetown, Sask., Redwings. “Considering this is as good a hockey as you can play for senior in Canada, it still feels great.”

Now 43 years old, Yake was asked whether this Allan Cup would be his swan song.

“I think I went out on top a long time ago, but this has just been a lot of fun,” he said with a laugh, having scored what stood up as the winner in Friday's 7-2 semifinal victory over the Grand Falls-Windsor, N.L., Cataracts for his only goal and point of the tournament.

“It was just an honour to be here, and we did exactly what we came for and that's to hoist that trophy. . . . If I can do it at 44, you never say never. We'll see, if they call next year, I might have to help defend the title.”

Brad Purdie scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period and the Thunder held on for the franchise's first Allan Cup championship.

Purdie took a drop pass on a 3-on-2 rush from linemate Devon Leblanc and snapped a shot through Rosetown goaltender Jeff Harvey at 8:48. Southeast's stifling defence made that lead stand up to complete an undefeated tournament that also included a 2-1 round-robin win over Rosetown on Monday.

In Saturday's rematch, Anders Strome added an insurance marker with just over three minutes left in regulation. Leblanc, the tournament MVP, sealed Southeast's win with an empty-net goal to spoil Rosetown's Allan Cup debut.

Tim Plett had opened the scoring for Southeast in the first period, and goaltender Justin Harris was solid throughout, finishing with 32 saves.

“We just kept reassuring the guys, get back to our game plan,” said Thunder coach Jamie Leach. “In the end, they put it together and we had a solid third period. We knew Rosetown was going to get tired (playing its fourth game in as many days) and that our guys still had some juice left in them, and we took advantage of it.”

This was Leach's third Allan Cup championship, but his first as a coach. He previously won two titles as a player — in 2003 with the Ile-des-Chenes, Man., North Stars, and in 2006 with the Powell River, B.C., Regals.

Leach was also a former teammate of Yake's with the Hartford Whalers in 1992-93, and helped recruit the veteran for this championship run.

For some Thunder players, though, the fourth time was a charm. Southeast was making its fourth straight Allan Cup appearance, and erased painful memories of losing the 2009 final as tournament hosts, falling 4-3 in double overtime to the Bentley, Alta., Generals.

J.J. Hunter replied for Rosetown, scoring the only goal of the second period, while Harvey stopped 25 of 28 shots in defeat. The Redwings, making the jump to AAA provincials this season from their tier-II league, advanced to the final by beating the host Lloydminster Border Kings 5-1 in Friday's other semifinal.

“There's a lot that you can take from an experience like this,” Hunter said. “You dream of coming to play for a national championship and that's pretty special.

“We battled hard all tournament long, but we came up against a great team. They play a stingy defensive game and don't give you a whole lot, and, at the end of the day, it's a mistake on one side or the other that ends up costing or winning you a championship. Unfortunately, tonight we were on the wrong end of that.”

—–

Watched some of this game today in between all the other NHL playoff games. Funny to see it side-by-each… the Allan Cup game was so slow and scrambly in comparison (but not surprisingly!)

I coached Jamie with Team Canada back in the mid-1990's. I think he is Reggie "The Rifle" Leach's son (former Philly Flyer). This kid could sure shoot the puck!

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

[hockeygod]

Hockey legend Jerry Toppazzini passes away

Sudbury Star Staff, April 22 2012

Sudbury hockey legend Jerome (Jerry) Toppazzini died early Saturday following a short illness. He was in his 81st year.

"Topper," as he was known throughout his long and storied career, was born in Copper Cliff on July 27, 1931. Though he spent almost all of his playing and coaching days away from Sudbury, he was quick to return to the community and leave his mark, always synonymous with his beloved Boston Bruins.

Toppazzini left Copper Cliff in 1948 to play in St. Catharines of the Ontario Hockey Association. Two years later, he won the Memorial Cup with the Barrie Flyers.

He spent the better part of the next 12 years with the Bruins, with stops in Chicago and Detroit. Toppazzini was known as a hard-nosed winger who could kill penalties and chip in some goals.

Though he never won the Stanley Cup, he played in three all-star games while with the Bruins in the 1950s. In 1957-58, he set a then-NHL record by scoring seven short-handed goals in one season.

He also holds the distinction of being the last position player to play goalie in a regulation NHL game in Chicago in 1960, shortly before league rules were changed requiring all teams to dress backups.

He retired as a player in 1968 and went into coaching. In 1975, he returned to Sudbury to coach the Sudbury Wolves. In his first season, while coaching the likes of Mike Foligno, Randy Carlyle, Rod Schutt and Ron Duguay, he posted the winningest record in club history and won OHL coach of the year. That year, the Wolves lost in the league final to Dale McCourt's Hamilton Fincups.

In 1977, Toppazzini bought the Belvedere Hotel on Lorne Street and converted it into the iconic Boston Bruins-themed sports bar and family restaurant known as the Beef 'n Bird. Over the past 25 years, the Beef 'n Bird became renowned for pioneering Porketta Bingo on Saturday afternoons. Among other things, that tradition became a successful fundraiser for Copper Cliff Minor Hockey, an organization that was never far from his heart.

Jerry Toppazzini was inducted into the inaugural Sudbury Kinsmen/House of Kin Sports Celebrity Dinner and Awards Hall of Fame on May 4, 1960. He was later named Sudbury's Sportsman of the Year following the Wolves playoff run in 1976.

"It was a great award for me personally coming home," he said at the time. "I don't think that I won it. Hockey won it. I wasn't expecting it."

Toppazzini is survived by his second wife Rosemarie, sisters Norma and Delphy and brother Ted. Ted and brother Zellio were also professional hockey players.

He also leaves behind four children and several grandchildren and step-grandchildren.

A celebration of Jerry Toppazzini's life, as per his request, will be held at the Beef 'n Bird on April 29, from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

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

[hockeygod]

Hockey World April 22: Luongo puts Canucks in a bind

Jim Matheson, edmontonjournal.com, April 21, 2012

Here’s what we know about Vancouver Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo:

He is proud he’s won 339 career games, 19th most in history, and could win 460 which would put him in the top four all-time if he can stay healthy, and there are 47-million reasons over the next 10 years why he’s not going to be easy to trade.

But, I don’t see him digging in his heels, even with that no-trade clause, and telling the Canucks to stuff it now that they’ve pretty much decided that Corey Schneider is their guy for now and next year.

Luongo’s a cheerleader today — gimme a C, gimme an O, gimme an R — but he’s a player more so and if that means it’s in Tampa Bay, Toronto, Columbus, Chicago or even back in south Florida next year, so be it.

Trading the 33-year-old is an awkward situation, but it’s doable. The questions, of course, are two-fold: who wants that big-gulp contract which doesn’t run out until 2022 and how much do you give up for a goalie who’s won an Olympic gold, but not a Stanley Cup?

Luongo’s cap hit is a middle range $5.333 million, but here’s the salary left on that 12-year deal.

2012-13 to 2017-18, $6.714 million

2018-19—$3.382 million.

2019-20—$1.618 million.

2020-2022—$1 million.

So six years at $6.714 million which runs him to 39 years old.

That’s a mouthful for an owner, but most GM’s aren’t looking that far down the road. They might not be working for their teams in 10 years anyway. All they see is a guy who, if he can get to 460 wins in the next five years, or more, will only be behind Martin Brodeur, Patrick Roy and Eddie Belfour. That’s pretty good company.

The Canucks aren’t going to hold up anybody to move Luongo’s contract, although they might be forced to eat a high contract along with a serviceable or young player or draft picks to move him.

The contenders:

1. Tampa Bay Lightning. They would rather have Schneider because he’s seven years younger and the length of Luongo’s contract scares them, but GM Steve Yzerman was the man running the Olympic team in Vancouver and Luongo was the goalie in the gold-medal game. If they can’t get Schneider they would be looking at the Los Angeles Kings’ Jonathan Bernier or Nashville Predators’ Anders Lindback, most likely. They have two first-rounders and the possibility of four second-rounders to dangle for a young goalie. They also need another top-six forward, so there are other holes to fill.

2. Toronto Maple Leafs. Brian Burke missed the playoffs because James Reimer and Jonas (I’m Not Such a Monster) Gustafsson weren’t nearly good enough in net. If he wanted Schneider, the Canucks would want Jake Gardiner on defence, which could be a stumbling block. Luongo could get them into the playoffs for the first time since 2004, and Burke, in the fifth year of his contract, needs some ­positive energy in the centre of the universe.

3. Columbus Blue Jackets. The Jackets will be parting with Calder Trophy winner Steve Mason and probably will be dealing captain Rick Nash for forward help. They were going to use Nash to get a goalie, but their fan base is eroding badly and they need a No. 1 goalie. Ian Clark, the Jackets goalie coach, used to be Luongo’s goalie coach in Vancouver and they’re friends, but it’s a long shot they would take him with the time left on his contract. They will be trying for Bernier, too, and maybe Lindback.

4. Florida Panthers. This is where Luongo had a huge fan following before he was dealt to the Canucks for Todd Bertuzzi and Bryan Allen six years ago. Luongo married a woman from Florida and he lives there in the summer months. This would be his first choice and the Panthers aren’t sold on Jose Theodore, although they do have a really good farm team prospect in Jakub Markstrom. The Canucks would like two of their kids, Nick Bjugstad and Quinton Howden, for sure.

5. Chicago Blackhawks. OK, the Hawks lit up Luongo in the playoffs, but do you really think they’re comfortable with Corey Crawford and Ray Emery? They would have to divest themselves of a contract, though. Say Niklas Hjalmarsson on defence, who is overpriced at $3.75 million because he gives them no offence.

The Canucks could buy out Luongo at two-thirds of that $47.2 million left which is $31.5 million spread over 20 years (or double what’s left on his contract), but that’s unlikely.

Would Luongo, who has about the same goals-against average (2.50) in regular-season as playoffs, want to play in Toronto, where there’s huge pressure, as much as in Vancouver, only different microscope?

Who’s Hot: Rostislav Klesla has four points in the first four playoff games on the Phoenix blue-line after just 13 in 65 league games.

Who’s Not: Patrick Marleau. The Sharks all-time playoff points leader, didn’t have a single point in the first four games against St. Louis.

Marquee Matchups:

Sunday: Kings are in Vancouver to see if they can put away the Canucks after a stumble in Game 4 in Los Angeles.

Sunday: Can the Capitals knock off the defending Stanley Cup Bruins to win this series in six?

Larionov guides young Russians

Hall of Famer Igor Larionov has always taken players under his wing — Pavel Bure in Vancouver, Sergei Fedorov in Detroit. Now that he’s the agent for Nail Yakupov, who could be playing here, and Alex Galchenyuk, another Russian-born forward who could go in the top eight in this June’s draft, it’s more of the same. If they’ve got questions, he’s got answers.

“So is Yakupov really like Bure?” Larionov, the player agent, is asked?

“Well, that’s what he says,” Larionov said.

Larionov played with the mercurial Bure twice, actually — in Larionov’s final season in Vancouver, and when he had a brief stay in Florida. In Igor’s mind, there’s only one Bure, who should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame (HHOF) too, but so far hasn’t got a key to the door. Nobody was faster running on his skates than Bure, few players more hungry to score goals.

“So does Yakupov get as many breakaways,” Larionov is asked.

“No,” Larionov said with a laugh. “They do play similar styles. I would say Nail has his own identity, though.”

Larionov has always been an interesting fellow from the time he refused to bend under the tyrannical weight of Viktor Tikhonov’s Soviet regime. He came to the NHL at 29, squeezed in 921 games, won three Stanley Cup rings, became a wine merchant, was elected to the HHOF in 2008 and is now a hockey agent living outside Detroit. His daughter, Alyonka, has worked for TSN. His son, Igor II, is 13 and while the Hall of Famer was one of the game’s greatest playmaking centres, his son has been playing left wing for the hugely successful Detroit Honeybaked rep team that former NHLers Kevin Hatcher and Pat Peake coach.

“I wanted to get him used to playing along the boards,” Larionov said of the powerhouse Honeybaked club.

“Best team in the U.S. Paul Coffey’s team in Toronto is the best in Canada.”

Larionov steadfastly says we shouldn’t be concerned that Yakupov, who played junior in Sarnia, would decide he’d rather play in the Kontinental League, even if the money’s better.

“It’s a good question, but I don’t think it’ll happen. He’s been in the locker-room in Detroit (seeing the Red Wings), seeing the (NHL) atmosphere. He’s learning the (English) language. At this point, I can tell you all his thoughts are to play in the NHL,” said Larionov.

“I just had a call from (Oilers GM) Steve Tambellini (scouting the world under-18 championship) and we will sit down at the NHL Combine.”

Tambellini worked for the Canucks when Larionov was there, so there is a connection.

Larionov had the estimable Don Baizley as his NHL agent and has been working with Ian Pulver, Sam Gagner’s agent. Most people thought he’d be joining an NHL club in upper management or some team’s coaching staff, but that hasn’t happened for the 51-year-old.

Lidstrom nears finish

I don’t know if this is it for Detroit Red Wings veteran defenceman Nick Lidstrom, but the great ones want to go out with a bang, not a whimper if they’ve still got some game left. He’s not going to win an eighth Norris Trophy this year (it’ll be Erik Karlsson or Zdeno Chara, most likely), but he’ll likely still finish in the top five in voting with his 42nd birthday on April 28.

It was eye-opening to see the Red Wings captain with no points in the five-game ouster to the Nashville Predators, though. When has that ever happened?

Of course, he was having his ankle shot up with painkiller just so he could jam his foot into a skate and play those 20-plus minutes after suffering a bad bone bruise late in the season.

Lidstrom’s mantra has been the same for years now — he’ll think about it and give GM Ken Holland a call before the draft — but there are disquieting signs that this might be it.

His best buddy, Tomas Holmstrom, the guy he’s driven to Joe Louis Arena with for years and years, is probably retiring because he has little left in his tank. He can also see some definite erosion with the Wings who have now been bounced in the first or second round the last three years. There’s some old legs on this team, and not just Lidstrom’s.

If he quits, he’ll leave as one of the two nicest guys in hockey — Lidstrom and Teemu Selanne. No media guy has ever got the cold shoulder from Lidstrom. If he quits, he’s also going down as the best defenceman since Bobby Orr.

“Why would he quit when he’s still good?” said coach Mike Babcock, joking that his wife wouldn’t want him hanging around the house.

We’ve all seen some great ones hang on too long, so we’re watching them struggle. I don’t see that with Lidstrom, who will leave before any of us say “how could that guy go around Nick?”

Torres’s future now in question

Brendan Shanahan didn’t just throw the book at Raffi Torres, he threw the entire library at him with that 25-game suspension.

At first I wondered what would happen if Torres only had a one-year contract with the Coyotes—like who would sign him again knowing he’d have to sit for a long stretch? But he has another year with the Desert Dogs at $1.75 million. The question though, as Larry Brooks so aptly tweeted, was (Joel) Quenneville’s ($10,000) fine rescinded? Coach Q said it was a disgrace that the zebras all missed Torres’ hit on Marian Hossa. He was right, but freedom of speech doesn’t count when you have an opinion about the officials. Never understood why.

This ’n’ That:

• Jordin Tootoo hasn’t taken his inactivity in the playoffs (four games sitting) very well, even though there’s a surplus of forwards in Nashville. He wants his team to win, and they did knock off the Wings, but wants to be part of it. In his one game, he played just six minutes. “I’ve been here in every playoff game in the past. Then at the beginning of this series, you’re told you’re not playing and it’s what the (expletive),” said the frustrated Tootoo, whose spot has been taken by waiver pickup Brandon Yip. Colin Wilson, their top pick in 2008, hasn’t played a single game. He’s prime trade bait this summer.

• One of the reasons Teemu Selanne keeps coming back to play: he’s got three sons 15, 14 and 11, who go to the games and want to talk hockey. It keeps him young. Selanne’s 66 points would have led a third of the teams in scoring. Selanne doesn’t know if he will be at Ducks camp in the fall. Betting is he’ll be there because the Ducks aren’t in a rebuild.

• Lost in Nashville’s strong opening-round series with Detroit: no Hal Gill on their defence. They got him as a shutdown guy, but he’s either got a bad bone bruise or a small break because he hasn’t played yet in the playoffs.

• Every time I watch little Andy McDonald competing and putting up points (seven going into Saturday’s play), battling back from a series of concussions, I think of Ducks assistant GM David McNab, the ace college bird-dog. It was McNab who convinced his employers to sign the five-foot-11, 185-pound centre out of Colgate in 2000. The school in central New York state touts alumni like Andy Rooney.

• So do we put Phoenix goalie Mike Smith in the Canadian Olympic team mix for 2014 now? Or do we need a larger sample than this season when he got the Coyotes to the playoffs under the tutelage of Sean Burke? Maybe we need to see him do it again next year, but the Kingston, Ont.-born Smith, who just turned 30, is a battler.

• Player to definitely keep an eye on: the Ducks have a little Finnish defenceman Sami Vatanen (five-foot-10, 163 pounds) that some observers say is the best offensive blueliner since Rexi Ruotsalainen. He had 42 points in 49 games last year in the Finnish top league, playing for JyP Ht Jyvaskyla.

• This was probably Brad Stuart’s last game as a Red Wing. Bet on him signing as a free-agent in San Jose, where his family has been living for a few years while he played in Detroit. The Wings have lots of kids coming—Brendan Smith on defence and Gustav Nyqvist, Jan Mursak, Calle Jarnkrok, Riley Sheahan and Teemu Pulkkinen up front—but they might move Jiri Hudler, never one of Mike Babcock’s favourites. The Wings missed Darren Helm (skate slash on forearm) the most because they had no third line presence without him. This is GM Ken Holland’s challenge now: rebuild, on the fly, and either trade or sign some role players with more bite. They could use a Cal Clutterbuck on their team and he might be available.

• So if goalie Braden Holtby is the real deal, what do the Caps do in the off-season? Do they let veteran Tomas Vokoun walk after signing him to that one-year $1.5 million contract or do they see if a team wants Michal Neuvirth as Colorado did with Semyon Varlamov last summer and they got a first-rounder out of the Avs? I suspect, they’ll let Vokoun, 36 in July, leave even if he won more games (25) and played more (48) than any goalie this season, with a 2.51 avg. Wonder if the Kings would like Vokoun as a strong backup to Jon Quick next year if they deal Jonathan Bernier? … Who knew that Holtby would be outplaying Timmy Thomas in the Bruins’ series. Thomas is a joy for media guys looking to fill a notebook but he doesn’t look good on Troy Brouwer’s winner after the game before saying his forwards have to get more traffic in front of Holtby—not exactly throwing them under the bus, but showing them the door to the bus.

• Every time the Danny Briere Flyers’ line with Brayden Schenn and Wayne Simmonds steps on the ice the last two games, they’re getting scored on by the Penguins. They’re minus 16 as group. Simmonds, in particular, hasn’t been nearly as good in the playoffs as he was in regular season.

• Marty Brodeur has 11 career playoff points, which is one more than Marek Malik had in 65 games, if you remember the defensive D-man.

One disturbing thing for the Flyers. They haven’t scored an even-strength goal in almost 140 minutes in the Penguins’ series, only power plays and how long can they go to that well?

• Who knew we’d be talking more about Gabriel Bourque than Rene Bourque in the playoffs? Maybe the scouts didn’t blow Gabriel’s horn because his skating was suspect in their eyes but he had three goals for the Predators against Detroit. He’s no relation to Ray, by the way. The Preds scouts were just as lukewarm as everybody else, though. He was their ninth pick in 2009. I don’t imagine they brought a sweater and namebar BOURQUE to the draft at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

Matty’s Short Shifts:

• The Wings lack of offensive pop against Nashville hammered home their need to sign Zach Parise this summer as an unrestricted free agent. He’s their No. 1 target, with Preds’ defenceman Ryan Suter No. 2 on their list, especially if Lidstrom decides to quit. One disquieting thing for the Wings: they just resigned Todd Bertuzzi for two more years but people were only talking about him when he fought Shea Weber in Game 2 to avenge Weber’s rude handling of Henrik Zetterberg and when Bert reportedly told security people some Preds’ players couldn’t play on Detroit’s ping-pong table before one game.

• Derek Laxdal loves working with the Oil Kings and has done a fantastic job with the kids but with every win in the playoffs you wonder whether pro people outside of Edmonton are noticing. The Dallas Stars are looking for an AHL farm coach in Austin and the New York Islanders just let two assistants go, including former Swift Current Broncos coach-GM Dean Chynoweth. Laxdal used to coach the Stars’ ECHL club in Idaho. He was drafted by the Leafs the same year (1984) as Isles’ head coach Jack Capuano and they played together in Newmarket (Ont.) and Springfield.

• Is Quebec Remparts centre Mikhail Grigorenko, who was badly outplayed by 16-year-old Halifax centre Nathan MacKinnon in the Mooseheads playoff rally, this June’s Sean Couturier, dropping in the eyes of the scouts, and still there at No. 8? Grigorenko was the acknowledged No. 2 behind Yakupov for months, but his stock has dropped with scouts wondering about his compete level.

• Tom Gilbert went from being a top 4 D-men here to No. 1 dog in Minnesota, playing 27 minutes on average in his 20 games there after the trade deadline deal for Nick Schultz. “Gilbert’s the reason they didn’t get a draft lottery pick,” said a source close to the Wild. “He was incredibly good. They won some games down the stretch because of him.” The Wild will pick seventh in June.

• Hawks’ president John McDonough is a hands-on guy, also likes results, and with the Hawks struggling badly will he have anything to say about coach Joel Quenneville? The Hawks win the Cup in 2010, but go out in round one in 2011 and struggle against the Coyotes this year. Somebody’s going to pay for this, even if they’re making bundles of money (22,000 and change for Game 4 vs. the Coyotes). It shouldn’t be Coach Q, but he might take the fall even though the problem with the Hawks pretty much all year has been very ordinary goaltending.

• Is it possible that Tim Thomas could be available next summer too if the Bruins go out in round one and they don’t want to pay his $5 million. They do have Tuukka Rask waiting in the wings. Who would you rather have? Thomas at $5 mil for one year or Luongo at $5.33 mil cap hit for 10 more years?

• Would you rather Should be interesting to see if defenceman Seth Jones, son of the former NBAer Popeye Jones, goes to Everett next year. Jones, who could go in the top three in the 2013 draft, has had a sparkling world under 18 tournament in the Czech Republic.

• Paul Kariya is 36 and while doctors have given him a clean bill of health after his concussion issues, they’ve also told him “why put yourself through the possibility of another one?” He’s retired, has a new house in southern California and is trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. If he wants to get into NHL management, there will be a lineup for his services. He’s a very sharp guy.

• Unless you’re a major junior junkie (or the ace guys Dean Millard and Guy Flaming on The Pipeline Show, the best information you’ll find on junior and college), nobody pays a ton of attention to the WHL bantam draft. But with Derrick Pouliot (Portland), Morgan Rielly (Moose Jaw), Griffin Reinhart (Oil Kings) and Matthew Dumba (Red Deer) going 1 through 4 in 2009, and all four D-men possibly going in the top 12 in this June’s NHL draft, maybe we should give the bantam draft a closer gander. This year, Matthew Barzal and Frank Musil’s boy Adam, who both play at Burnaby Winter Club where RNH got his start, could go 1-2. Both forwards. Barzal sounds like the second coming of RNH; Adam a winger unlike his brother David and dad who like defence, sounds like a Gabriel Landeskog type. “I know Barzal a bit. My brother’s a trainer for his bantam team. Not the biggest player (159 pounds) but he’s very shifty,” said RNH.

• Josh Harding’s stock as a free-agent July 1 is only middling because he’s hurt so often and with Niklas Backstrom’s 35-year-old body starting to break down, they will be looking for a veteran backup this summer. They’re not likely to bring up Matt Hackett from the farm yet. In fact, they may like former Red Deer Rebels’ goalie Darcy Kuemper, who’s had shoulder surgery, as much as Hackett. Wouldn’t it be interesting if they brought back Dwayne Roloson? He’d love it, and his play in the last month in Tampa shows he’s still got some game left, even turning 43 in October.

By the numbers:

11: Jordan Staal has been deadly, connecting six times on 11 shots.

11: The Predators outscored the Wings 11-4 even-strength in their playoff series win.

He Said It:

“Was my dad keeping track of the stats?”

Zach Parise on hearing he led the Devils with five hits against Florida in Game 4.

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

[hockeygod]

Red Wings on brink of roster shakeup

Dave Waddell, Postmedia News, Apr 23, 2012

DETROIT — After being dumped out of the National Hockey League playoffs in the first round for the first time in six years and failing to make it past the second round for the third straight season, it’s clear the life cycle of the Detroit Red Wings’ 2008 Stanley Cup team has passed.

There’s still some solid pieces to build around, but the Wings need significant help after their lack of depth was exposed by the Nashville Predators in a five-game exit from the playoffs.

“We’ve won a ton of playoff games, we’ve been in it every year,” Detroit coach Mike Babcock said. “But when you look at our group now, we’ve had a second-round knockout, a second-round knockout and a first-round knockout, so to me that doesn’t look like you’re going in the right direction.

“One thing about it is we’re going to have lots of time and we’ll be able to get it figured out what we need to do because I don’t think we’re very interested in scratching and clawing to make the playoffs.

“That’s never been the approach we’ve had. We like to win.”

The question to be answered is how will general manager Ken Holland approach the task?

The blueprint may be similar to the one he used after the Wings flamed out in six games to the Los Angeles Kings in the first round of the 2001 playoffs. Detroit went big into free agency getting Luc Robitaille and Brett Hull and trading for Dominik Hasek. They also began to introduce some youngsters in the form of Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg.

The similarities to the situations are startling. Detroit looks the same stale team that couldn’t score enough after enjoying years of success. With an owner like Mike Ilitch, who likes some sizzle to keep his teams in the headlines and whose of an age where winning now is of paramount importance, it’s not likely Detroit will have nearly $6 million US of unused cap space at the end of next season.

The Wings have 16 players signed for next season worth a total of $42.3 million. The salary cap this season was $64.3 million. With youngsters Brendan Smith and Gustav Nyquist almost assuredly on the roster next fall, along with their entry-level salaries below $1 million apiece, the Wings will have plenty of cash to fill out their 23-man NHL roster.

“It’s hard to predict what they’re thinking,” said Detroit captain Nick Lidstrom, whose future will be at the centre of how significant the change will be in Detroit this summer. “We have some guys whose contracts are up. You’re always going to see some changes, whether they’re major or minor, we’ll have to wait and see.”

Whether Lidstrom packs it in now or next season, the Wings have two glaring needs. Detroit has to find a goal scorer and someone to help fill the vacuum left by Lidstrom’s eventual departure.

After the difficulty scoring goals in the past two playoffs, the Wings will certainly go hard after New Jersey’s Zach Parise.

Other potential forwards who could be free agents are Washington’s Alex Semin, Ryan Smyth, Shane Doan and Teemu Selanne, but it would seem unlikely the final three would leave their longtime homes in Edmonton, Phoenix and Anaheim, respectively

Beyond that you have Calgary’s Olli Jokinen, Florida’s Mikael Samuelsson and Philadelphia’s Jaromir Jagr.

Among defenceman, Nashville’s Ryan Suter is clearly the potential prize catch. Other defenders scheduled to enter the market are Ottawa’s Filip Kuba, Florida’s Jason Garrison, Washington’s Dennis Wideman, St. Louis’s Barrett Jackman, Dallas’ Sheldon Souray and Phoenix’s Michal Rozsival.

However, the key to this summer’s free-agent market are Parise and Suter. If they don’t re-sign with their respective teams, it wouldn’t be a shock to see them both land on the same team. The two are very tight friends and it’s well known in league circles they’d love to play together.

The third area of improvement needing attention involves adding more size and sand paper to the lineup. The Montreal Canadiens’ Travis Moen, whom the Wings inquired about several times the trade deadline, would fill that need nicely and he’s also less than 30 years of age.

Depending on the state of Joey MacDonald’s sore back, the Wings might also have to add a backup netminder.

There are plenty of those available including Florida’s Scott Clemmensen, the New York Rangers’ Marty Biron, Winnipeg’s Chris Mason, Minnesota’s Josh Harding and Columbus’s Curtis Sanford.

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

[hockeygod]

BABCOCK HOPES TEAM MAKES SPLASH IN FREE AGENCY

ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/22/2012

DETROIT — The Detroit Red Wings have slipped from being regarded as an elite NHL team, getting knocked out of the playoffs in the first round after consecutive second-round exits.

Just three years ago, the team was a win away from repeating as Stanley Cup champions and seemed set up to sustain the success it and its fans have gotten used to for a couple decades.

Detroit coach Mike Babcock believes a splash-making summer could restore the franchise's glory.

"We have tons of money and if we can use our cap space to get high-end free agents, we have a shot to get right back on top," Babcock said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, two days after Nashville eliminated Detroit. "If we're fortunate in free agency, we won't have to look at going in another direction.

"The standard here has always been to chase the Stanley Cup, so as a coach, I'm hoping the free-agent market helps us continue to have those goals."

The Red Wings led the NHL in points a couple months ago, but injuries to several players led to them slipping enough to be the fifth-seeded team in the Western Conference playoffs with a tough matchup against the fourth-seeded Predators.

"We never recovered," Babcock said. "We never really got Darren Helm back and that hurt the balance we had on our third and fourth lines. Teams could check Z (Henrik Zetterberg) and Pav (Pavel Datsyuk) like crazy and get away with it."

Detroit didn't have enough depth up front and had too many miscues on the back end against the Predators.

"When you make defensive mistakes and you don't score your problems are magnified," Babcock said.

—–

It's neat to see people progress in the coaching careers. I went through the first NCCP / Hockey Canada 'new' Level 4 & 5 certification as a member of ten coaches. It started back in 1992 or 1994 (my memory gets challenged the older I get!) We were dubbed, "The 10-4 Group." Mike was part of this cohort. I roomed with him in Kamloops and helped deliver a couple of the Level 4 tasks on exercise physiology and planning back in the mid 1990's (when Kamloops hosted the M Cup.)

Fast forward to the early 2000's. Mike came to present to a new group of HP 2 coaches (replacing the Level 4 / 5 program) in Calgary. He told everyone a story about how he hated it when cell phones went off during team meetings; so much so that he fined (NHL) guys $500 if it happened. Coaches in the room look around, and turn off their phones. So he starts into his presentation and a cell phone starts ringing. Mike gets pissed off, stops talking and looks out at the group. Everybody dives for their phones to make sure it isn't theirs… it becomes obvious that it is coming from the front of the room… from Mike's jacket!!!! OOPS! Mike sheepishly apologized and said, "Drinks are on me tonight boys. My fault I didn't turn off my phone."

So we were having a beer with Mike and a few other coaches at a local pub that night (taking advantage of his offer to cover the tab!) – It was while he was coaching Anaheim – and free agency had just opened. He received a phone call, jumped up and said"Gotta go!" and he paid the tab on his way out. We found out a day later it was his GM calling to let him know about a a big signing. Can't remember who it was now but it was a significant move at the time.

Funny stuff!

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

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