Articles

[hockeygod]

Kevin Lowe: Vacant Oilers coaching job not discussed with Brent Sutter

SHAWINIGAN, Que. — The Canadian Press, Bill Beacon, May 22, 2012

One topic that did not come up when Oilers president Kevin Lowe was at the recently completed IIHF World Hockey Championship was whether Brent Sutter would like to be the new coach in Edmonton.

Sutter, who coached Canada at the tournament in Helsinki, is rumoured to be the front-runner to replace Tom Renney, who was fired last week after two years behind the Edmonton bench.

And while Sutter is most closely linked to the arch rival Calgary Flames, where he coached the last three seasons, Lowe sees no reason why he wouldn’t be a candidate for Edmonton.

But it wasn’t raised at the worlds

”Brent’s been a good coach,” Lowe said Tuesday at the Bionest Arena, where his son Keegan is playing for the Edmonton Oil Kings in the MasterCard Memorial Cup. ”We’ve seen him recently.

”He’s Albertan. He knows the Battle of Alberta well.”

But Lowe said he didn’t want to discuss it because ”technically, he’s still under contract with the Flames.

”But more importantly, with the sacredness of the world championships and everything it means, he didn’t need any distractions. He’d just come from the Flames, making the mutual decision that he wasn’t going to continue to work with them, and he had a new coaching staff and team to learn in a short time.”

But, he added ”I don’t see why he wouldn’t want to coach the Oilers.”

Many names have been put forward, including Oilers assistant Ralph Kruger, veteran coach Marc Crawford and Jon Cooper, who was named AHL coach of the year with Norfolk.

Lowe said he had no announcement to make, but said ideally a coach will be named before the NHL draft in June.

”That seems to be the start of the next season,” said Lowe. ”Hopefully that will work out, although I’m not sure if that’s going to be the case.

”We know we have a stable of very good, young NHLers, other than the obvious ones, and we’ve drafted well over a number of years. We just want to find a guy to steer them into that next stage.”

Some felt firing Renney after two seasons of working with that young talent was premature, and questioned why they waited until mid-May instead of giving him the chance to start looking for a new job when the season ended.

”I’m not going to get into the whys of what Tom didn’t do well,” Lowe said. ”The fact that we took as long as we did to me shows we gave it careful consideration and [were] respectful of Tom and the job he did.

”He’s a very good hockey man and he’s going to work in the game again. He can do anything in the game. He can be a manager. He can coach. A number of things led to the decision. And we felt we’re still in a transitional period, so we can make changes at this point and not really affect the team overall.”

That transition includes whoever the Oilers select with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, which they hold for a third straight year after taking gifted forwards Taylor Hall and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins the last two years.

Lowe said the scouting staff will be asked to pick who they feel will be the best player in the long run, rather than taking a player who suits the team’s needs, like a defenceman.

The Canadian team in Helsinki, which lost in the quarter-finals, included Ryan Murray, a draft-eligible defenceman who is expected to go in the top five or perhaps the top three. Lowe likes him.

”I’ve never been around such a young player who came in to play at such a high level and do it with such calmness,” he said. ”He’s everything he’s been billed as.

”His composure, his skating ability. I don’t know what he projects to be down the road. That’s the difficult job when you’re assessing young guys. But no doubt he will play in the NHL and in all likelihood he could play next season based on his skating and strength and understanding of the game. I was really impressed.”

Another standout blue-liner could be one on the Oil Kings, Griffin Reinhart, the son of former NHL defence star Paul Reinhart.

”I tell everyone Griffin is Paul at six foot four,” Lowe said. ”Paul was a heck of a player. Most teams are looking at Griffin as being a 22-to-25 minute a night guy for a lot of years. He’ll be a top pick as well.”

Lowe was also asked if Gerard Gallant, coach of the defending Memorial Cup champion Saint John Sea Dogs, may be a candidate for Edmonton. Lowe said he didn’t know Gallant much as a coach, but said a player like Gallant used to be with the Detroit Red Wings was exactly what the Oilers are looking for. A big, hard-nosed winger who scores a lot of goals.

Lowe said his attention will be split in Shawinigan between helping his scouts assess talent for the draft and cheering on his son. Keegan Lowe asked his father specifically not to draft him last June so he could make his own way in the game. He was taken by the Carolina Hurricanes.

”He’s a better skater than I was,” he said. ”He takes a lot of pride in defending and a perfect game for him is not giving up any goals. If he can add to the offence, it’s a bonus. That was my game. I haven’t told him to do that. I said there’s more money in scoring. But, like I did, he’s figured out what he needs to do to be able to play.”

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

[hockeygod]

Many obstacles remain in Coyotes deal

Globe and Mail Update, David Shoalts, May 22, 2012

As the Phoenix Coyotes’ remarkable playoff run ended in overtime against the Los Angeles Kings, the house of cards that is their franchise received another Band-Aid from the local politicians.

However, even though the city council of the suburban city of Glendale passed a tentative budget for the 2013 fiscal year Tuesday night that called for a payment of $17-million (all currency U.S.) to tentative (everything in this never-ending tale is tentative) owner Greg Jamison as an “arena-management fee,” the long-awaited sale of the Coyotes is far from complete. Many obstacles remain, including the question of just how Jamison will raise the $170-million purchase price, with the biggest one being the Goldwater Institute.

Phoenix Coyotes goalie Mike Smith (41) makes a stick save on Los Angeles Kings center Colin Fraser (24) in the 1st period during Game 5 of the NHL Western Conference hockey finals in Glendale, Arizona, May 22, 2012. REUTERS/Todd Korol
Photos
Coyotes' fail to stay alive in Game 5

The conservative watchdog group scuttled a previous attempt to sell the team because it raised the possibility of a lawsuit over excessive subsidies from the taxpayers for private enterprise. Such subsidies are in violation of what’s called the gift clause in the Arizona constitution.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman implied last week the deal with Jamison is different than the one with Chicago businessman Matthew Hulsizer that was torpedoed by Goldwater. “So if there is third-party interference,” Bettman said, “it won’t be something that shouldn’t stop us at the beginning. We should be able to proceed and hopefully prevail.”

The difference seems to be that unlike Hulsizer’s deal, Jamison’s purchase does not involve the city backing a bond issue that would produce a $100-million up-front payment to cover most of the sale price. However, Goldwater also objected to the enormous “arena-management fee” called for in the deal, a fee which saw Glendale commit $50-million to the current owner, the NHL, for the last two years.

Carrie Ann Sitren, a Goldwater staff attorney, could not say officially how the institute will respond to the latest sale attempt until it sees a lease in writing. Council discussed the lease agreement in-camera Tuesday and no details came out in the public meeting aside from the payment. But Sitren made it clear even though there is no bond issue in the Jamison deal, the size of the management fee remains clearly in Goldwater’s sights.

She pointed to recent comments from outgoing Glendale Mayor Elaine Scruggs, who is one of three councillors opposed to the $17-million payment to Jamison, that a more reasonable management fee, based on her research, is $11-million.

“The best indicator is look at people who might know what [the fee] includes, like the mayor, and at her comments that 17 million dollars is too much,” Sitren said. “If someone like her says it’s too much that’s a good indicator.”

One of Sitren’s Goldwater colleagues, Byron Schlomach, told Phoenix television station CBS5 that a more realistic management fee would be $8-million to $10-million. Anything more looks like a gift.

Scruggs, the architect of Glendale’s drive to build sports facilities for professional sports teams, said Tuesday when the city borrowed $180-million to build the arena in 2001 the idea was that Glendale would not be stuck with the operating costs. Not when the Coyotes get most of the operating revenue. The recession wiped out the anticipated revenue from sales taxes and development around the arena that was to service the debt on the building.

The mayor also said she believes Jobing.com Arena can be booked for enough dates to offset the city’s debt payments on it even if the Coyotes leave.

The fee is also too much for Glendale councillor Phil Lieberman, the most vocal opponent of large payments to the Coyotes. He said at Tuesday’s public meeting that the city is ready to increase its sales tax and property taxes to the highest in Arizona “to support a hockey team. We cannot afford this.”

Technically, what Glendale council approved Tuesday night was a maximum amount for its 2013 budget. The Coyotes payment is included in the draft budget but the vote to formally approve the budget is not expected until June 12.

The city is already in a tight spot financially. It has to deal with a $35-million gap between its spending and revenue in the 2013 budget, caused in part by the $25-million annual commitments to the NHL in the last two years.

Layoffs of city employees have already been announced and Glendale is also poised to raise its city sales tax to 10.2 per cent, which the local car dealers say will kill them in competition with Phoenix and other auto dealers, as well as jack up property taxes by 31 per cent.

If Jamison and Glendale city manager Ed Beasley settled on the kind of terms they were kicking around earlier, things will get even tighter for the city. One version of the 20-year lease called for the management fees to be front-loaded with Jamison getting $20-million in each of the first four years, which casts doubt on some councillors’ claims the $17-million payment in the draft budget is a “placeholder” and the city may not pay that much.

This kind of proposal also adds weight to those who wonder where Jamison is getting the money to buy the team, since he does not have the personal wealth to do it alone, and how he will cover the annual losses, which have been as much as $40-million. He declined to identify his partners last week when Bettman introduced him as the “tentative” owner.

No details of the purchase agreement between Jamison and the NHL were announced, but it is likely there is an escape clause as it was a feature of all previous deals. Those deals allowed the owner to ask the NHL to move the team after four or five years if the losses hit a certain figure. A four-year escape clause would match well with front-loaded arena-management fees in the first four years.

Those familiar with the cost of operating an NHL team say it takes about $80-million a season for a team with an average payroll to break even. The Coyotes payroll this season was about $55-million, which is 20th, about $5-million less than the middle group of teams.

Since the Coyotes consistently rank at or near the bottom in attendance (tickets were still available for Tuesday’s Game 5 of the Western Conference final on the afternoon of the game), they only bring in a little less than $20-million a year in ticket revenue. Add another $30-million from NHL revenue-sharing and other shared league money, such as television revenue, and the Coyotes are still a long way from breaking even.

That is why Jamison seems to be gambling that if he can get $20-million or even $17-million a year out of Glendale and hope to realize a payoff in season tickets and local sponsorship, not to mention local broadcast money thanks to the Coyotes’ long playoff run, he might get within $10-million or less of breaking even. Compared to the Coyotes’ losses in recent years, a $10-million loss would, in the words of one insider, “be spectacular.”

But it still isn’t self-sustaining, which is why, three years after the Coyotes wound up in bankruptcy court, the longest, most embarrassing ownership saga in NHL history is still running.

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

[hockeygod]

Doan goes off on referees – 'Are you freaking kidding me?'

CHRIS STEVENSON, QMI Agency, May 22 2012

GLENDALE, ARIZ. – When it ended, seconds after Dustin Penner’s shot from the slot ended the Phoenix Coyotes season and sent the Los Angeles Kings on to their second Stanley Cup final, all the frustration came out for Coyotes captain Shane Doan.

It was tough, he would say later, to see teammate Michal Rozsival helped off the ice moments before Penner’s winner in overtime, Roszival favouring his left knee after a controversial hit by Kings captain Dustin Brown.

The Coyotes were incensed there was no penalty on the play and when it ended, Doan sprinted across the ice in the direction of referee Brad Watson. He pulled up by the boards, raising his stick and smashing it against the boards.

For Doan, the non-call on the hit – Brown also caught Rozsival with his shoulder, though it did look late on an off-side call – was a tipping point in the battle with his frustration over the officiating in the series.

“I bit my tongue the whole playoffs. I bit my tongue the whole time this series. I look back in the last two games and I still haven’t found where I got my three penalties. I have absolutely no idea where they came from or what they were calling,” said Doan, whose club fell behind 3-0 in the series and couldn't recover despite winning Game 4. “It’s hard because you don’t want to take anything away from L.A. They played unbelieveable and give them all the credit.

“Uncle. Are you freaking kidding me? Uncle. I can’t understand how you miss that. You saw the game. It’s 5-on-3 and they give a penalty to even it up … the guy crosschecks Marty (Hanzal) twice in the back. He chips it over the boards, it goes over the boards and there’s no call? Marty gets a stick in the face and then the knee? I mean, come on. Like, come on.

“You don’t want to do it because … I don’t want to take anything away from L.A. They played unbelievable and they beat us. Thank goodness their power play didn’t score on all those power plays they were handed. It could have been really ugly. They beat us. There’s nothing else to say about it.”

Brown said he didn’t go out of his way to make contact with Roszival’s knee.

“I saw him cut in the middle. I changed my path to meet him in the middle. I haven’t seen a replay so I don’t know, but I felt like I made contact (with) my whole left side with his left side. My shoulder hit his shoulder for sure. I hit him from toe to shoulder on my left side, full contact. He’s trying to get out of the way and I’m trying to finish my check,” said Brown, who was a dynamic force for the Kings, especially in the early games of the Western final.

“I don’t think … my first thought is, I didn’t stick my knee out. He’s trying to get out of the way and I finish my check.’’

The league will review the play, but it will be surprising if there’s supplemental discipline because it wasn’t a blatant knee-on-knee hit, though you can understand the Coyotes’ frustration.

They had forward Raffi Torres suspended for 25 games for his hit on Chicago Blackhawks forward Marian Hossa in the second round.

“If Raffi Torres gets 25 games for a hit for a hit during the play,” said Coyotes goaltender Mike Smith, “then this guy (Brown) should be done forever.”

That is the frustration of the moment talking no doubt, the emotion of having their remarkable season ended.

It was an emotionally-charged ending to a hugely entertaining game.

The Glendale fans chanted “let’s go Coyotes” and gave the team a huge ovation after the post-series handshake.

At one point in the third period as the teams went end-to-end as power plays overlapped, both teams where on their feet on their respective benches watching the play.

You don’t see that often in the NHL.

In a fiercely fought game, the teams swapped the lead a couple of times, the Coyotes owning 1-0 and 2-1 leads, the Kings roaring back for a 3-2 edge before the Coyotes tied it on a goal by defenceman Keith Yandle with less than four minutes to go in the second.

It was great stuff, but for the Coyotes, it was a bitter end.

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

[hockeygod]

Brown hit on Rozsival was clean

DAVID SHOALTS, Globe and Mail, May 23, 2012

The emotion on the Phoenix Coyotes side of the Dustin Brown hit on their defenceman Michal Rozsival is understandable.

But that should not obscure the fact the Los Angeles Kings forward made a clean body check on Rozsival, even though it knocked him out of the game at a critical time with a leg injury. It was not a classic knee-on-knee hit, as the Coyotes charged, because although Brown had Rozsival lined up – in the trolley tracks in the hockey vernacular – he never stuck his knee out.

What might have led to some confusion is that Brown had his legs spread somewhat in a wide stance as he came at Rozsival. But he only altered his course slightly as Rozsival moved to the middle, nor did he change his stance to put his knee out farther as he came into contact with the Coyotes defenceman. The contact actually began at the shoulder before their legs collided violently.

There might have been some question about the lateness of the hit but it seemed to be within that half-second NHL referees gave players to make a hit on another player who just moved the puck.

Not that this means much to the Coyotes, of course. Not only did they miss a chance for a power play in overtime against the Kings, the goal that sent the visitors to the Stanley Cup final was scored seconds later.

Hence the raw emotion in the handshake line after the Kings won the Western Conference final. Coyotes captain Shane Doan and goaltender Mike Smith were still furious when the media closed in.

"All season long it seems like [the referees] did everything they could to not get us to this position," Smith said. He brought up the suspension teammate Raffi Torres received for an egregious hit earlier in the playoffs and said, "If Raffi Torres gets 25 games for a hit during the play, then this guy should be done forever."

Doan was equally unwilling to cut the referees any slack.

"I bit my tongue the whole playoffs," he said. "I bit my tongue the whole time this series. I look back in the last two games and I still haven’t found where I got my three penalties. I have absolutely no idea where they came from or what they were calling.

"It’s hard because you don’t want to take anything away from LA. They played unbelievable and give them all the credit. Uncle. Are you freaking kidding me? Uncle. I can’t understand how you miss that.

"Rosie’s knee is blown out. How do you miss that? How do you miss that when it’s after the whistle and it’s a knee? How do you possibly miss that? You know what? As player I get in trouble when I make a mistake. I get in big trouble. I get called out by you guys. I get called out by everybody. I get called out by my coaches. I have to be accountable to my teammates. I don’t know how you miss it. I don’t know how you miss it.

"I’m sure they’ll have a great explanation for it. I know that they try to do their best, I know they always try to do their best. They’re going to make mistakes. It’s just tough when you’re on the short end of it I don’t know how many times."

In his own defence, Brown said his hit began at the shoulder. He said he did change his path but only because Rozsival did as well and he never stuck his knee out.

"Rozsival was cutting to the middle and I cut across and made contact," Brown said. "Obviously they thought it was kneeing. I felt I got him with my shoulder. My left side and his right side all made contact, from toe to shoulder.

"I saw him cut in the middle. I changed my path to meet him in the middle. I haven't seen a replay so I don't know, but I felt like I made contact [with] my whole left side with his left side. My shoulder hit his shoulder for sure. I hit him from toe to shoulder on my left side, full contact. He's trying to get out of the way and I'm trying to finish my check. My first thought is, I didn't stick my knee out. He's trying to get out of the way and I finish my check."

Doan and some other Coyotes were seen berating Brown in the handshake line after the game. Brown declined to relay any details of the conversations.

Coyotes head coach Dave Tippett told reporters to "just write what you saw." But he, too, gave the impression the referees were one of his team's problems.

"If you write what you saw, you’ll see why people get frustrated," he said. "You know, the players, I mean, there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears that go into this. There’s a lot of emotion in the game.

"Ultimately, the last two games, I thought were our best games, but they were too late. LA beat us. That’s what should be remembered, not the refereeing."

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

[hockeygod]

New Oilers coach will be in better spot to succeed
By DANIEL FUNG, Sports Network

Share on facebook Share on stumbleupon Share on live Share on fark More Sharing Services

Tom Renney was originally brought in to help the Oilers prior to their rebuild. With his departure, the team can bring in a head coach the expectation of developing their young players. (TOM BRAID/QMI Agency file photo)

VANCOUVER – There is no guarantee that whoever the new head coach of the Edmonton Oilers is will enjoy more success than his predecessor, but what's certain is he will be put in a much better position to be successful.

Edmonton, of course, became the latest NHL team to dive into the market for a new head coach after announcing last Thursday that it would not be renewing the contract of head coach Tom Renney after two years on a job that began with a sudden shift in organizational philosophy.

Although Renney was only the head coach for the Oilers for the past two seasons, many will recall he was brought in three years ago for the start of the 2009-10 season as an associate coach to work alongside Pat Quinn. What many won't likely remember, however, was that Quinn was brought in to guide a team that had underachieved and missed the playoffs for two seasons in a row following an appearance in the 2006 Stanley Cup final but was still expected to be a top contender. Renney, somewhere down the line, was earmarked to assume control of a club projected to be consistently in the playoff mix.

One year later, Quinn was unceremoniously removed from the bench and Renney left to pick up the pieces of a team that suddenly found itself in a full-scale rebuild mode.

When Renney, who finished his tenure as Oilers' head coach with a 57-85-22 record, first arrived in Edmonton the Oilers boasted a veteran-laden lineup that included names such as Shawn Horcoff, Ales Hemsky, Dustin Penner, Lubomir Visnovsky, Mike Comrie, Fernando Pisani, Ethan Mouray and Sheldon Souray. Among that list, only Horcoff and Hemsky are still with the team following Renney's departure.

In retrospect, one has to wonder if Renney would have been brought in at all had the Oilers known they would be headed down the rebuilding path three years ago.

Although Renney has had a history of success working with younger players (he guided the Canadian major junior hockey's Kamloops Blazers to consecutive WHL championships and one Memorial Cup title in the early 1990s), his most effective NHL stint to date has been with the New York Rangers, who he led to three straight playoff appearances coming out of the lockout year. The Rangers were a veteran-heavy team that featured the likes of Jaromir Jagr, Chris Drury, Brendan Shanahan, Michael Nylander, Scott Gomez and Martin Straka at various points during Renney's stint there.

Renney did an admirable job behind the Oilers bench in his brief time even though the team finished at or near the bottom of the league standings in back- to-back seasons. This season, the Oilers posted a seven-win improvement compared to Renney's first year behind the bench. Edmonton also has seen the likes of youngsters Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall and Devan Dubnyk develop into consistent NHL performers during Renney's stint.

But despite the positives of Renney's stint with the Oilers, it's clear they felt they needed a change in order for them to take the next step into turning the blue-chip prospects they've assembled into a core group of superstars who can lead the Oilers back to the Promise Land. The man to lead that charge could be former Calgary Flames head coach Brent Sutter or current Oklahoma City Barons head coach Todd Nelson, as has been rumored, but it certainly was not going to be Renney.

Whoever the new coach turns out to be, he'll have a clear idea of where the team is headed and what the expectations are moving forward. That's more than Renney ever got.

The Oilers are the fourth Canadian NHL team to make announce a head coaching change this calendar year. The Toronto Maple Leafs fired Ron Wilson in March and replaced him with Randy Carlyle, the Flames parted ways with the aforementioned Sutter back in April, while new Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin demoted interim head coach Randy Cunneyworth back to assistant coach earlier this month.

—–

Brent Sutter should go to Edmonton and Tom Renney should go to Calgary. Wouldn't that make for an interesting swap!

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

[hockeygod]

Failure at worlds serves Canada well for Sochi 2014

Wayne Scanlan, The Canadian Press, May 23, 2012

OTTAWA — The images were painfully familiar: Canadian players hanging their heads following a third straight quarter-final loss at the world hockey championship.

But what’s this? The end result is that Canada is grouped with Norway, Finland and a qualifier-to-be-named later at the 2014 Sochi Olympics?

Who says Canada lost to Slovakia in Helsinki? Looking at the relative strength of the men’s groups for the 2014 Olympic tournament, one might suppose the Canadians won gold at the recent worlds, such is the soft landing in Sochi.

Here are the three groups, and their international ranking:

• Group A: Russia (1), Slovakia (6), United States (7) and a qualifier;
• Group B: Finland (2), Canada (5), Norway (8) and a qualifier;
• Group C: Czech Republic (3), Sweden (4), Switzerland (9) and a qualifier

After the preliminary round, the top two teams from each group, plus the next two best teams, will advance to the quarter-finals.

Russia won the world title on Sunday, defeating those Canadian-slaying Slovaks in the final and retain their No. 1 world ranking. Their reward is to be lumped in with sixth-ranked Slovakia and No. 7 USA.

Hmmm.

Most Canadians would probably opt for the Finns and Norwegians as appetizers as opposed to having to contend with the fierce North American rivalry early in the tournament.

Group C is also as meaty as borsch kievsky, with the Czechs, the Swedes and Switzerland. Sure, the neutral Swiss are ranked ninth in the world but they have a history of giving Canada fits in these tournaments.

All in all, would Canada trade places with any of their rivals in the other groups? Likely not.

Canada entered the just-completed world tournament ranked fifth, the same position it finds itself today.

Until 2004, results from the world championship alone established the world rankings. That year the focus changed, to take a broader perspective. The International Ice Hockey Federation wanted to avoid wild swings in the rankings based on one flukey or uncharacterstic tournament — good or bad —by a particular nation or nations.

The current system reflects not only the current worlds results, but four consecutive world tournaments lumped together, along with the most recent Olympic tournament.

In other words, Canada’s gold-medal victory in Vancouver two years ago continues to prop up this country’s international status, even if the world championship outcomes have been disappointing, to say the absolute least.

From Finland, speaking after the loss to Slovakia, Canadian general manager Kevin Lowe told The Canadian Press that the story is similar for Canada, coming off a setback internationally.

“It probably sets everything up again,” Lowe said. “I think Torino [in 2006] set up Vancouver pretty well and I think these three losses set up Sochi in terms of the fact we’ve got a lot to prove.”

Three straight trips to the worlds without a medal to show for it is rare for Canada. It wasn’t that long ago when hockey scribes were writing home about the Canadian medal streak at this tournament.

From 2003 to 2009, Canadians only missed out on a medal once in seven years, in Riga in 2006. They won gold in 2003, 2004 and 2007, and silver in in 2005, 2008 and 2009.

The previous medal drought was palpable, hitting hard at about the time this nation was licking its wounds from the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Remember? Gretzky on the bench, while Canada used a defenceman in the shootout against the Czech Republic?

In the five world tournaments from 1998 to 2002, Canada was an also-ran, finally turning wringing hands into high-fives with a golden performance at the Olympics of Salt Lake City, 2002.

And that is the point here. World championship tournaments come and go, and hardly anyone cares if Canada slips up while fans are distracted by the Stanley Cup playoffs.

In the Olympic spotlight, though, bowing out in the quarter-finals goes over like a stink bomb in church. It’s an outrage.

Can’t happen.

This was never more true than when Canada played host to the Olympic tournament in Vancouver two years, on that cozy and familiar North American ice.

In Sochi, Canada will not face the home-ice pressures, but neither will it have the smaller ice surface its NHL players use every day.

That is why Steve Yzerman, Canada’s returning executive director, is looking for skaters for Sochi.

Yzerman and his management team have already been scouting in preparation for Sochi, taking dead aim at a gold medal repeat.

Once the NHL and its players agree to a new collective bargaining agreement that includes NHL players in Sochi, Canadian hockey fans will also turn their thoughts to an Olympic tournament that is looming on the horizon — less than two years away.

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

[hockeygod]

McSorley tired of hearing about The Curse

Tony Gallagher, Postmedia News, May 22 2012

VANCOUVER — With the Los Angeles Kings pushing for a Stanley Cup and the city getting excited about hockey, it can’t be any surprise the papers are bringing up what they’re calling the ‘McSorley curse’ and how the team is trying to overcome said ‘curse.’

This is a reference to the last time the Kings were in the Cup final in ’93. Having won the first game in Montreal and leading 2-1 late in Game 2, desperate Canadiens coach Jacques Demers asked for a measurement of Marty McSorley’s stick, which was found to be illegal. The penalty was called, the Habs tied the game on that power play, won it in overtime and went on to win the series in five games, the last time the fabled Montreal franchise won a Cup.

Needless to say this is all pretty tiresome to McSorley, who lives in L.A. and, more often than not, people include just a snapshot of what happened, not the whole story.

While he freely admits he was in fact using an illegal stick, he also wants people to know the Canadiens had some help in making the crucial call. It’s now been well documented that Luc Robitaille, a member of the Kings at the time who still works for the team as head of business operations, was contacted a year later by a Montreal policeman who said his conscience was bothering him over the incident. Apparently the cop was told to leave his post for a few minutes between periods while the Habs examined the LA sticks so that they would know who was using an illegal one.

“Gary Leeman told the whole story about how they had our stick rack in their room,” says McSorley, recounting the situation in detail. “They knew who was using an illegal stick before they made the call because they’d measured our sticks. There must have been five of us who had them because it was never called by anybody. In fact, at the time it was illegal to ask for a stick measurement during overtime. They just picked me because I killed all the penalties. I’ve spoken to people who have video of the time the request for the measurement was made and they claim at least six to eight of the Montreal players can be seen handing their sticks back to the trainer at the Montreal bench. A lot of guys used them.

“Was I using an illegal stick. Yes, I was, but it’s not as if I took a torch to it. They came from the factory that way. I used the same stick in the next game and tied Game 4 with what might have been the same stick.

“Am I tired of hearing about it. I guess. I get called by people in the Montreal media every time Montreal does something in the playoffs and I say to them, ‘Call Luc and get the real story, then come back and we’ll talk,’ and none of them have ever called me back. What bothers you is that nobody ever talks about anything else that happened in that series. I mean, we didn’t win a home game. Nobody talks about how Dave Taylor, Gretz (Wayne Gretzky) and I had a three-on-two with eight minutes left and as Wayne passes the puck to me and I’m getting ready to shoot, Taylor gets called for interfering with the goalie.”

Nobody ever mentions Montreal had a player in the crease when the much talked about tying goal was scored either — something strictly enforced in those days — but what bothers McSorley most was the reaction of LA management at the time and how there wasn’t much support from the likes of president Rogie Vachon or general manager Nick Beverley, given how well he and the rest of the team had played getting to the final.

“None of us guys from Edmonton (who came in the Gretzky trade from the Oilers) were ever really accepted for some reason,” says McSorley, who currently works for Sportsnet as one of the most outspoken and frank analysts on television. “Maybe it was because (Kings owner) Bruce (McNall) had made the deal and it wasn’t really accepted by them or something. He was running things through them, but at the end of the season when my contract was up I got an offer from another team and all I ever heard from Beverley was a fax saying that they had matched the offer and traded me to Pittsburgh. No phone call from your own team after you’d been to the Cup final.”

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

[hockeygod]

How Professional Athletes Burn Out

Alan Bass, Hockeybuzz.com, May 16, 2012

One of the most shocking stories in professional hockey in the past five years was a top prospect, Stefan Legein, suddenly quitting his promising hockey career at the ripe, old age of 19. There was never a true explanation for this, and he’s since returned to professional hockey, albeit in a very diminished role. Since his return, he’s bounced between the American League and the East Coast League, and being traded from the Columbus Blue Jackets to the Philadelphia Flyers, and ultimately to the Los Angeles Kings, whose system he now fights through.

Arguably the only explanation as to why a professional athlete (and not just Legein – he is simply a convenient example) drops out of his sport suddenly is due to, in psychological terms, burnout. Burnout is a hot topic in the field of sport psychology, and it is defined as “physical, emotional, and social withdrawal from a formerly enjoyable sport activity. It has numerous causes, including overtraining, staleness of activity, or simply fatigue.

Many professional athletes are at risk of overtraining, because of the grinds of a professional schedule, specifically in hockey. Practices often occur every day, including on a game day, games are extremely physical, and even when the offseason comes around, players go through hours of physical training per day, be it in the gym or on the ice, trying to improve for the next season. It is very easy for some of them to train over their maximum capacity, which in turn, can result in burning out.

When an athlete is at the point of burning out, they have a reduced sense of accomplishment, usually stemming from low self-esteem, feelings of failure, and more importantly, depression. Numerous factors can cause these emotions, including stress (actual or perceived), artificially high expectations, lack of motivation, or major changes in life events.

However, one of the biggest causes of this loss of enjoyment, motivation, and passion to continue playing, stems from a lack of success, or a string of what I’ll call, “almost-success” – meaning an extremely successful campaign that ended prematurely, whether due to an injury or an early playoff exit.

If you take a look at Legein’s teams’ statistics from the time he entered the Ontario League until the time he quit in 2009, his teams never made it past the second round of the playoffs. From 2004 to 2008, his Mississauga/Niagra IceDogs won their division once and finished second in their division twice – including two 40-win seasons. However, never once was his team able to make it past the second round of the playoffs, despite Legein averaging over a point per game in his Major Junior playoff totals. In his only AHL season before quitting, his team missed the playoffs entirely.

Look at another example, from a non-player’s perspective. When Bob Clarke resigned from the General Manager position of the Philadelphia Flyers in 2007, he cited “burnout” as the reason. From 1997 to 2007, Clarke’s Flyers teams averaged 100 points in the standings and a .609 wining percentage – one of the best in the NHL. However, after the 1997 season in which they got swept in the final by Detroit, they never advanced past the third round and lost in the first round five times in eight seasons. This string of “almost-success” may have been a leading cause of burnout for him – as it is for many people in any field.

Burnout is still in need of a great deal of psychological research, but what is known is how to avoid this. If an athlete can monitor their stress levels, develop and achieve short-term goals, take time off when needed, and manage their post-competition emotions, they are much more likely to maintain the motivation that initially got them to the level of sport that they are at today.

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

[hockeygod]

Gretzky talks horse racing, hockey and about divided loyalties

LOS ANGELES— Eric Duhatschek, Globe and Mail, May. 23, 2012

So you were probably wondering, where was Wayne Gretzky during all this? After all, the NHL’s Western Conference final could have easily been played for the Wayne Gretzky trophy instead of the Clarence Campbell Bowl. It featured the Los Angeles Kings, the team Gretzky led to the 1993 Stanley Cup final and essentially put on the map, playing against the Phoenix Coyotes, the team he was associated with for close to a decade, first as the team’s managing partner and eventually as its head coach.

What was Gretzky thinking? Who was he cheering for? Did he take any satisfaction from seeing some of the young players that joined the Coyotes organization under his watch – the Martin Hanzals, the Mikkel Boedkers – show some glimmers of their potential?

Instead, Gretzky chose to stay silent, watching from afar, not taking sides, especially as the Coyotes’ ownership saga continues to percolate on, with no definitive end in sight.

But on the morning after the Kings dispatched the Coyotes in five games, Gretzky surfaced to talk about horse racing, about hockey in southern California and about the possibility of witnessing yet another series where his loyalties could be divided.

The Kings will face either the New York Rangers or the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup final beginning next Wednesday, trying to win their first championship in franchise history.

In 1993, Gretzky’s Kings came close, winning the first three rounds, all against Canadian-based teams (the Calgary Flames, the Vancouver Canucks and the Toronto Maple Leafs) before losing to the Montreal Canadiens in a five-game Stanley Cup final. The Kings were up by a game in the series and leading Game 2 at the Montreal Forum, when Canadiens’ coach Jacques Demers called for a stick measurement against L.A. defenceman Marty McSorley that gave Montreal a late power play. With Patrick Roy on the bench for a sixth attacker, the Canadiens tied the game in regulation and won in overtime. The Kings never recovered from that devastating setback; lost the series; and soon after, lost the tentative toehold they’d established for the NHL in southern California during that dramatic playoff run.

Looking back on that time, Gretzky says now: “No disrespect to our team in ’93, but we weren’t the best team. The best team won the Stanley Cup. We weren’t even the best team in the West that year, I didn’t think. But we got a lot out of our great players like Kelly Hrudey, Rob Blake and Luc Robitaille and had guys like Pat Conacher and Tony Granato come up big for us.

“It was a fun ride because everybody believed in each other.”

Gretzky remembers the seventh game of the semi-finals, in which the Kings eliminated the Maple Leafs as one of the seminal moments in his career, but says by the time they got to Montreal, they were “exhausted” by all the travel.

“If we’d won, maybe history would have been changed,” he said. “It was tough to take, but … every franchise has its lulls, even Edmonton and Calgary did for a while there; and Vancouver has had its share of ups and downs too. But they’ve been able to stabilize the franchise here and this is just great, what’s happening now.”

Gretzky’s SoCal playing adventure ended in February, 1996 when he was traded to the St. Louis Blues for Roman Vopat, Patrice Tardif, Craig Johnson and a first-round draft choice. Coach Barry Melrose had been fired the previous April; and eventually, Gretzky made his way to New York, where general manager Glen Sather was re-assembling all of his ex-Oilers in midtown Manhattan, which is where Gretzky finished out his playing career.

Sather is still running the show in New York and he and Gretzky occasionally cross paths. If the Rangers get to the final opposite the Kings, Gretzky says: “It’s going to be a hard one for me. I think of it this way: ‘I’m in a can’t-lose situation.’ I always root for Glen and Mark (Messier) is associated with the team too. I admire how hard the Kings play. If it gets to be a Rangers-Kings’ final, I’ll be a fan on the sidelines and may the best team win. If L.A. wins, it’ll be great for hockey in this market and for the organization. If New York wins, I’ll be happy for Glen and Mark.

“And don’t count out Jersey either. I said before the playoffs began that any team with Marty Brodeur in goal has a chance. And I just think (Devils’ assistant) Larry Robinson is like the English Jean Beliveau, always saying and doing the right thing.”

Gretzky has watched the Kings play a lot this season, mostly on television, although he’s been out at Staples Centre for three or four games and plans to attend Game 3 in person, his first appearance in the playoffs. His knowledge of the team borders on the encyclopedic. He begins a 17-minute conversation with a player-by-player breakdown of what everyone has contributed to the cause, and then shifts into Darryl Sutter’s contributions as a coach and even references the structured system Sutter inherited from his predecessor, Terry Murray. To top it all off, he then talked about Bernie Nicholls’ influence since catching on as an unofficial assistant coach, noting how the light-hearted Nicholls brings “a sense of relaxation to the team” and the knowledge that “it’s not the end of the world if you have a bad game.” It sounds as if Gretzky could immediately step in as an NHL player personnel director if that were his druthers; and that his fascination with the minutiae of hockey is still as great as ever.

Gretzky has been on the road a lot in these playoffs and he at the Kentucky Derby a few weeks back as a guest of Jerry Bruckheimer, the Hollywood film producer and uber hockey fan. Bruckheimer owns an estate in the area that also includes an indoor hockey rink and according to Gretzky, annually invites 14 to 18 guests the Derby festivities. As part of the weekend’s activities, a handful of local teenage players join Bruckheimer’s group for a three-on-three hockey game.

Typically, everybody is a handicapper and Gretzky has his own brief history there. He and former Kings’ owner Bruce McNall were successful thoroughbred owners for a time (they won the Prix de l’arc de Triomphe with Saumarez and in 1990, won both the Arlington Million and the Japan Cup with Golden Pheasant). So Gretzky was there, on Derby weekend, touting a relative long shot named I’ll Have Another. Gretzky liked him for two reasons. One, the owner, J. Paul Reddam, is from Windsor, Ont. and a member at the Sherwood Country Club, where Gretzky plays as well. The other is that I’ll Have Another won the Santa Anita Derby, which historically is an important stepping stone for the Derby, according to Gretzky’s intel.

“So I kept telling people ‘watch out for this horse’ and ‘put $50 on this horse,” said Gretzky. “I know a little about (handicapping), but I’d be stretching it if I said I knew a lot.”

But he knows a lot about hockey and calls the Kings’ 12-2 run through the first three rounds a “great story” and suggests “they’re not a fluke.

“If you were talking to people in September, it’d be no surprise. They’ve put together a team that could compete for the conference title. Unfortunately, when you go through the season, you always have challenges and hiccups along the way. But I believe if you do the homework for three to five years, as Dean (Lombardi, the team’s GM) has done, then you have the ammunition to go out and make the moves you need to make.

“No team starts out in training camp and wins a championship with those same 20 players.”

—–

Gretzky talks divided loyalty, Sutter's style

Chris Nichols, Sportsnet.ca, May 24, 2012

GRETZKY'S DIVIDED LOYALTIES

So you were probably wondering, The Globe and Mail believes, where was Wayne Gretzky during all this? After all, the NHL’s Western Conference final could have easily been played for the Wayne Gretzky trophy instead of the Clarence Campbell Bowl. It featured the Los Angeles Kings, the team Gretzky led to the 1993 Stanley Cup final and essentially put on the map, playing against the Phoenix Coyotes, the team he was associated with for close to a decade, first as the team’s managing partner and eventually as its head coach.

What was Gretzky thinking? Who was he cheering for? Did he take any satisfaction from seeing some of the young players that joined the Coyotes organization under his watch – the Martin Hanzals, the Mikkel Boedkers – show some glimmers of their potential?

Instead, Gretzky chose to stay silent, watching from afar, not taking sides, especially as the Coyotes’ ownership saga continues to percolate on, with no definitive end in sight.

But on the morning after the Kings dispatched the Coyotes in five games, Gretzky surfaced to talk about a number of subjects; including the possibility of witnessing yet another series where his loyalties could be divided.

The Kings will face either the New York Rangers or the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup final beginning next Wednesday, trying to win their first championship in franchise history.

Glen Sather is still running the show in New York and he and Gretzky occasionally cross paths. If the Rangers get to the final opposite the Kings, Gretzky says: “It’s going to be a hard one for me. I think of it this way: ‘I’m in a can’t-lose situation.’ I always root for Glen and Mark (Messier) is associated with the team too. I admire how hard the Kings play. If it gets to be a Rangers-Kings’ final, I’ll be a fan on the sidelines and may the best team win. If L.A. wins, it’ll be great for hockey in this market and for the organization. If New York wins, I’ll be happy for Glen and Mark.

“And don’t count out Jersey either. I said before the playoffs began that any team with Marty Brodeur in goal has a chance. And I just think (Devils’ assistant) Larry Robinson is like the English Jean Beliveau, always saying and doing the right thing.”

Gretzky has watched the Kings play a lot this season, mostly on television, although he’s been out at Staples Centre for three or four games and plans to attend Game 3 in person, his first appearance in the playoffs. His knowledge of the team borders on the encyclopedic. He begins a 17-minute conversation with a player-by-player breakdown of what everyone has contributed to the cause, and then shifts into Darryl Sutter’s contributions as a coach and even references the structured system Sutter inherited from his predecessor, Terry Murray. To top it all off, he then talked about Bernie Nicholls’ influence since catching on as an unofficial assistant coach, noting how the light-hearted Nicholls brings “a sense of relaxation to the team” and the knowledge that “it’s not the end of the world if you have a bad game.” It sounds as if Gretzky could immediately step in as an NHL player personnel director if that were his druthers; and that his fascination with the minutiae of hockey is still as great as ever.

He calls the Kings’ 12-2 run through the first three rounds a “great story” and suggests “they’re not a fluke.

“If you were talking to people in September, it’d be no surprise. They’ve put together a team that could compete for the conference title. Unfortunately, when you go through the season, you always have challenges and hiccups along the way. But I believe if you do the homework for three to five years, as Dean (Lombardi, the team’s GM) has done, then you have the ammunition to go out and make the moves you need to make.

“No team starts out in training camp and wins a championship with those same 20 players.”

GRETZKY, PART DEUX: ON FUTURE, KINGS

The Los Angeles Times also caught up with The Great One and he happily reaffirmed that although he loves being a fan he's not looking to become affiliated with a team or the NHL.

"Oh, no, not at all. I don't even think about it right now," Wayne Gretzky, who plans to attend the Kings' first home Cup Final game on June 4, said. "My enjoyment is just watching a game right now, truly. I've got a lot of friends in hockey that I talk to and sort of stay in touch with and talk about the game.

"Everything I have in my life is because of hockey, but I just really haven't gone down that road right now. I'm just enjoying what I'm doing. I watch as much hockey as anybody, but I watch in a different way now. I don't critique each individual player or system or style.

"Right now it's not sort of in my cards, I guess. But that's OK. The game has been great to me and has always been good to me in that sense. I just enjoy myself as a fan."

A rather knowledgeable fan, and the only one who owns 60 NHL records.

Based on that knowledge, he praised Kings General Manager Dean Lombardi's vision in building the team through the draft and leveraging surplus assets in trades for Mike Richards, Jeff Carter and Dustin Penner.

"Over the last five years they made some really good, quiet deals on the side as far as stockpiling draft picks and being patient with players," Gretzky said. "And when you're able to draft a guy like Anze Kopitar or Drew Doughty and you're able to trade a couple of really good, young players like Brayden Schenn and Jack Johnson to fill voids that you need on your hockey club."

He also said Coach Darryl Sutter brought the right intensity and strategy to lift the team to a higher level.

"He played hard every game whether it was in October or whether it was in May and I think that's what he instilled in this hockey club," Gretzky said. "I think the previous coach, Terry Murray, did a tremendous job in establishing the team system and I think from my point of view that Darryl tweaked it a little bit and that he's much more aggressive and [emphasizes] much more forechecking and on the puck, a lot like the way he coached in Chicago and Calgary.

"He took nothing away from their team defense, which is as strong as any team in the National Hockey League, and yet they pursue the puck, and create turnovers offensively to give them more time in the offensive zone, which creates less time in the defensive zone."

He also said there should be a way to reward Sutter's performance at the league level.

"I'd never fool with anything, because I have so much respect for the tradition and history of the game, but it's amazing," Gretzky said. "You look at changing the coach of the year award and picking it after the Stanley Cup playoffs and not before the playoffs start, I think he'd win in a landslide."

—–

GRETZKY SAYS HE'LL BE IN ATTENDANCE AT STANLEY CUP FINAL

TSN.CA staff, May 24 2012

Wayne Gretzky stayed out of the spotlight during the Western Conference Final, but the Great One will certainly be in attendance when his former team, the Los Angeles Kings, make their second-ever appearance in the Stanley Cup Final.

"For sure, I'll be at Game 3 (at the Staples Center)," Gretzky told TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun in an interview for ESPN.com on Wednesday.

Gretzky, 51, played eight seasons with the Kings from 1988 to 1996 and also coached the Phoenix Coyotes from 2005 to 2009.

"The biggest thing of all is that those two teams both earned the right to get there and both had worked so hard,” said Gretzky. "I just really felt it wasn't my place to sort of steal some of the attention away from the players and the organizations that worked so hard to get there. I thought it was just best to stay on the sidelines that series.

"The Kings have been playing unreal. The Coyotes had an unreal year. Wow. I don't know if anybody picked L.A.-Phoenix for the Western final, but they both earned the right to be there, that's for sure."

The Stanley Cup Final may yet feature another Gretzky tie-in if another of his former teams – the New York Rangers – defeat the New Jersey Devils in seven games to challenge for the Cup for the first time since 1994.

"I have nothing but great memories of being in New York, and of course there's Glen (Sather) there and Mark (Messier) part of the team," said Gretzky. "It's a great city, a great place. Obviously the Devils still have a lot to say about things."

During his time with the Kings, Gretzky helped lead the club to a deep postseason run in 1993, ultimately falling shor with a 4-1 series loss in the final to the Montreal Canadiens. Many have called Game 7 of the Kings' Campbell Conference Final against the Toronto Maple Leafs – where he scored a hat trick in a 5-4 win – his greatest postseason game.

But The Great One isn't making comparisons between his 1993 club and the one that starts the final next Wednesday.

"What made that team so special is that we weren't the best team," Gretzky told LeBrun. "It was very similar to this team in the sense that we started every series on the road. We had to win a really tough Game 7 in the semifinals in Toronto. We were a team that really believed in the coach and the system…It just was a team that came together. The reality, though, is that this L.A. team today has more depth than we had. I don't mean this as any disrespect to our team in '93 – because it was a great run – but this team is a legitimate contender that deserves to be where they're at right now. When we lost in '93, the best team won the Stanley Cup (Montreal). Going into the finals this year, whether it's the Devils or the Rangers, I would tell you that L.A. is a good team and they'll be ready to play. They're firing on all cylinders."

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

[hockeygod]

Renney: Oilers on road to become champs

DEREK VAN DIEST, QMI AGENCY, May 24 2012

A class act to the end, Tom Renney is leaving the Edmonton Oilers organization with his head held high.

The former Oilers coach addressed the local media for a final time Wednesday, less than a week after the organization announced they would not be renewing his contract.

“My reaction to not coming back was obviously one of real disappointment to say the least,” said Renney. “When you’re in the front end of a building process you don’t like to be the guy that’s leaving before you even get to the middle. The fact of the matter is, that’s where I think they are.”

Renney was brought on three seasons ago as an associate to Pat Quinn. He took over the head coaching reins a year later as the organization decided to clean house and begin a rebuilding phase.

In his two years as head coach during that phase, the Oilers finished 30th and 29th in the league standings.

“I think this is the process to becoming a champion,” Renney said. “It’s just very disappointing not be here to continue to execute that plan and be here to support people in order to make that happen.

“But I’m not here to throw daggers, I’m here to support this organization all the way to the Stanley Cup. If that’s from a distance, having been a former coach, I’m good with that too. As they say, a clear conscience is a soft pillow.”

In his two seasons as head coach, Renney amassed a 57-85-22 record with the Oilers. He was able to win seven more games this season than he did in his first year behind the bench, yet the club fell short of its initial goal of challenging for a playoff spot.

“I’m not going to stand up here and tell you I thought I did a bad job,” Renney said. “We were one or two injuries away from being competitive every night.

“That also is part of this process. I know ownership and management are working hard to shore up that end of the business. I know Oklahoma City has had a terrific year, let’s hope it continues. We have some great, young players, playing amateur hockey that will play for the Oilers that will bring it along even further.”

Unfortunately for Renney, he inherited a club that had hit rock bottom under Quinn and began to sell off what few assets they had to start building through the draft. It’s similar position to those taking over expansion teams.

Those coaches do not last long either.

“I feel a little bit like that,” Renney said. “I felt like I coached with actually tomorrow in mind as opposed to today and that might have hurt me. I really had a vision for the team, and I felt at the expense of my opportunity or existence, I made some decisions that suggest you have to do certain things that will help you down the road. Some could argue whether that’s right, but that was the mandate for me.”

Looking back on his tenure with the Oilers, there are few things Renney would change had he an opportunity to do it again.

He was brought in to see the team through the initial stages of the rebuilding process and guide their young talents.

“I would have liked not to have gotten that puck in the head in Toronto,” Renney smiled. “I would have liked not to have fallen on the grass at the lake last summer and destroyed my knee.

“But in retrospect, I have been everything I am — this is it. If it works for you great, if it doesn’t fine, I’ll be respectful and move out of the way.”

Despite being under contract until the end of June, Renney is free to pursue other coaching opportunities.

He has had initial conversations with NHL clubs currently in the market for a head coach.

“I look forward to coaching again, I look forward to coaching in the playoffs, I look forward to winning a Stanley Cup because I like winning as much as the next guy,” Renney said. “I look forward to the next opportunity to take a team into the playoffs and do some special things in them based on experiences such as this.”

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

[hockeygod]

Between the benches under the microscope

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN, Globe and Mail, May. 24, 2012

Ah, the law of unintended (hockey) consequences.

The position of reporter between the NHL benches has largely been a success since it first was introduced in 2006. But the clandestine perch now is becoming a victim of its own success as some critics demand the filters be taken off the hot audio.

Pioneered by Pierre McGuire at NBC and now used by others (including Hockey Night in Canada), the fly-on-the-wall perch can take the temperature of a game from ice level. Nothing speaks to that proximity better than the image of New York Rangers head coach John Tortorella and New Jersey Devils counterpart Peter DeBoer jawing at each other late in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference final, with McGuire (NBC) and Glenn Healy (CBC) caught in between like flies in amber.
More related to this story

IOC still looking for a Canadian buyer for Sochi, Rio Games

(For the record, the feisty McGuire is the one standing up front in the photographers’ booth while Healy is standing back from the fray.)

Neither coach wanted to elaborate on what was said. Neither would McGuire or Healy.

“Working inside the glass is a privileged position,” McGuire told Usual Suspects via e-mail. “I respect the spirit of co-operation between the coaches, players, and the league. I would never want to compromise that relationship. Over the last seven years, I believe we have been allowed to grow the position due to a trust that has been created.”

McGuire says he has a straightforward policy: “The standard is simple. I will report that a player is hurt, but I will not say what body part is injured. With the coaches verbal jousting, whether it be Pitt and Philly or NYR and NJD, I will say there is a confrontation but not say what they are saying towards one another.”

“I am still a player,” said Healy, who muted his microphone during Wednesday’s confrontation, too. “What’s said there, stays there. That stuff has no bearing on the game. I can promise you there were no complete sentences in there. We don’t need to turn hockey into [celebrity gossip website] TMZ or whatever.”

The two reporters are backed up by the people in the production truck.

“We are guests at the dinner table,” TSN vice-president and executive producer of live events Paul Graham said. “We are granted permission to access between the benches by the NHL and the teams, so we go in there knowing we have to respect certain situations we are privy to based on our location. We leave it to our analysts to judge what pertinent information goes to air.

“As you know, the majority of heated conversations between players and coaches contains too much profanity.”

Rogers Sportsnet producer Larry Isaac has been doing NHL games for three decades, and while his network does not employ a between-the-benches reporter, he sees both sides of the argument.

“The announcers, who usually are ex-players or ex-coaches, who now are privy to these conversations, have to weigh whether it’s journalistically prudent to repeat ‘word for word’ the heated conversations, or any other teammate-to-teammate conversation, or time-out strategy discussion,” he said.

“Because they feel, and sometimes justifiably, that if they do this, it will hamper getting some inside information from their key player/coach contacts when TV announcers get their 1-on-1 private meetings with coaches on the game-day mornings.”

If this sounds a little “inside baseball,” then you’re not alone.

Should reporters owe their loyalty to the audience, not their ex-colleagues?

The DeBoer-Tortorella spat was a top story after the game and featured on the HNIC highlights and promos. Does the public deserve to know more?

Healy believes he’s a fair arbiter of what gets on. “Almost all of it is putdowns and insults and swearing that has no impact on the game whatsoever,” he said. “They’re not missing anything important.”

Perhaps not. But the DeBoer-Tortorella confrontation, while profane, had news value. Conveying that in some fashion surely should not break the covenant between reporter and league.

Maybe the solution in the future is to allow a special all-access audio version of games as a premium package for viewers. Pay extra, hear Peter DeBoer tell John Tortorella that he’s vertically challenged.

WOMEN’S WORLD

The collective hockey culture is having a cow over HNIC doing an alternative commentary for the Stanley Cup final, with a blog titled “While the men Watch” (sample: Making love like Lundqvist). The two women behind the project, Julie Mancuso and Lena Sutherland, made the rounds this week to promote the concept.

Creating new audiences is not a bad thing for the stodgy hockey crowd, but it seems Mancuso and Sutherland will have to be very clever to make this work. But Usual Suspects was once trapped in a locker by the Hanson Brothers on live TV, so we’ll wait to judge this concept when it debuts next Wednesday.

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

[hockeygod]

Recruitment, retention, ’rithmetic: Player numbers Hockey Canada’s main concern

ALLAN MAKI, Globe and Mail, May. 24 2012

The theme for Hockey Canada’s 93rd annual general meeting is R and R, only it has nothing to do with rest and relaxation and everything to do with recruitment and retention – how to get kids into hockey and how to keep them there.

As hundreds of hockey delegates from across the country gather in Halifax this weekend, Hockey Canada will review its 2011-2012 season with an eye toward making the game more appealing. While exact numbers will be discussed in meetings, it has been estimated that overall registration dropped by 8,000 last year. That count, said Hockey Canada chief operating officer Scott Smith, doesn’t include adult recreational hockey, which experienced an increase.

“What we’re asking ourselves is: How can we provide a more positive experience in the game?” Smith said. “We’re trying to raise more attention to attract and retain players.”

One of the potential ways to do so is through a loyalty card program that has been in the planning for more than a year. The card, which will be presented to some 600,000 people this September, can be used for discounts with Hockey Canada partners, and also includes a fundraising component. The concept is that parents can use the loyalty card to offset costs for hockey equipment and other needs.

Many are hoping this expands interest.

“The challenge is getting new ethnic [minority] players into the game,” said Phillip McKee, executive director of the Ontario Hockey Federation, which oversees 220,000 children and 50,000 volunteers and coaches. “We need to attract other ethnicities because they’re playing other sports – soccer, basketball, cricket. As a sports body, we’ve done a great job creating opportunities for kids to play. We need to learn from the experts how to attract kids to the game.”

The other issue confronting the game is player safety. Last year, Hockey Canada implemented a rule making any contact with a player’s head illegal. McKee described the rule as a positive, one that needs additional time to develop and take hold.

“Generally, we saw a year of transition [to the new rule and on-ice penalties],” he said. “There was growth and learning both for the teams and officials. There might have been a little bit of hesitation to call a four minute [penalty] or a game because of the suspension behind it, but we’re saying, ‘You have to call it.’ ”

The Canadian Junior Hockey League will make a pitch to Hockey Canada asking for a two-year extension on the pilot study it began in 2010. Using stronger supplementary discipline to curtail violence, five associations across Canada saw the number of fights decrease 35 to 40 per cent, down to an average of 0.60 fights per game.

As part of the extension, the CJHL is looking to tighten things up even further in areas involving blows to the head, dangerous hits, accumulated majors and fighting. For example: In 2010-2011, when a player had his seventh fight of the season, he automatically received a one-game suspension; when he had his eighth fight, he drew a two-game suspension and so on. The CJHL wants to see a one-game suspension take place after a fifth fight.

“What we’re taking out of the game are the gratuitous fights – the staged fights, goalie fights, guys coming over the boards,” said CJHL chairman Kirk Lamb. “This is about violence in hockey and one part of that is fighting. We’d like to continue that discussion with a two-year [project] extension to examine the data.”

Lamb outlined the CJHL’s pilot project to an interested outside party three months ago. USA Hockey dissected the information as part of its efforts to reduce fighting and violence at its junior levels.

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

[hockeygod]

Worst Stanley Cup in 20 years?

Kirk Penton, QMI Agency, May 24 2012

Congratulations, everybody! We have the worst Stanley Cup final in more than 20 years!

That’s only technically speaking, of course, as New Jersey and Los Angeles should be solid entertainment.

But when the Devils beat the New York Rangers 3-2 in overtime on Friday night to set up a date with the Kings, it meant the ninth and 13th overall teams from the regular season will battle it out for the right to hoist Lord Stanley’s mug.

New Jersey was ninth overall and the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference, while the Kings were 13th overall and eighth in the Western Conference. Their regular-season placings total 22. The only higher sum was in 1991, when the No. 7 Pittsburgh Penguins beat the No. 16 Minnesota North Stars.

In fact, not since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1980 has the better seed among the finalists been as low as No. 9 overall.

Parity has never been more prevalent. Two years ago it was No. 3 Chicago vs. No. 18 Philadelphia. In other words, once the Devils and Kings are done battling, your favourite team will have a chance to be there next year at this time.

ICE CHIPS

You knew if Henrik Lundqvist was going to be beaten in overtime, it wasn’t going to be a pretty goal. And you were right … But, hey, Adam Henrique will take it. Ah, to be 22 again and scoring overtime goals that send your team to the Stanley Cup … If you were wondering what that booing was midway through the first period, it was the Prudential Center crowd giving it to Donald Trump when he was shown on the video scoreboard. Hey, why doesn’t The Donald buy the Devils? He could use The Apprentice to pick his coach … CBC interviewed Trump between the second and third. It was a good chat, and Elliotte Friedman even asked him if he wanted to buy the Devils. He didn’t say no … The poor Rangers defence is going to take a beating this summer for its performance in this series. Michael Del Zotto’s game went south, and his affliction appeared to have spread to his teammates on Friday. They were having trouble simply passing the puck early on, and then Marc Staal pinched at the wrong time, leading to Carter’s opening goal.

AROUND THE GLASS

This is awesome: When the last Devil left the ice after the pre-game warmup, they turned the lights off at the Prudential Center. There were at least five Rangers still on the ice. That’s hilarious … In case you missed the stat on the CBC broadcast, the Devils have outscored opponents 23-9 in the first period this post-season. The way the Devils started the second period on Friday night, they no doubt wished the first period was 40 minutes long and there was no second … It’s too bad, but no one in today’s day and age of boring quotes would ever guarantee a victory like Mark Messier did in Game 6 of the 1994 Eastern Conference final against New Jersey. They don’t make ’em like Mess anymore.

MAKES YOU GO HMMM

I wonder how many media members are feeling bad that John Tortorella isn’t going to the final … If you missed the poor Fox sportscaster in Los Angeles doing the highlights from one of the games between the Kings and Coyotes, Google it. Search for “?Anze Kopidor and Brad Doty?,” and prepare to cringe … Martin Brodeur proves how valuable experience is this time of year … Something tells me the Devils are going to really want to sign Zach Parise before he becomes an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

OVERTIME

How much of a break are members of the Phoenix Coyotes going to get since they freaked out on the referees after the game in which their season ended? If that was the regular season, they would be sitting for quite a while. It’ll be interesting to see if that holds true in this case … The only reason for the bitterness from Shane Doan and Co. was because the winning goal was scored about 12 seconds after Dustin Brown’s nasty hit on Michal Roszival. If the game had continued for another two minutes, the reaction wouldn’t have been so severe … Commercial review: I’m not sure which part of the MiO commercial I like the best. I like it all … First, Pierre McGuire won’t tell us what the coaches are yelling about on the bench. Then, on Friday night he’s leaning over the boards in the third period and the puck hits him, stopping play. Time to send him up to the booth.

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

[hockeygod]

Alberta's world junior hockey tournament makes at least $22 million

The Canadian Press, May 25, 2012

CALGARY – The 2012 world junior hockey championship in Alberta was a major money-maker for both hockey and the tourism industry.

Hockey Canada says the tournament made a profit of at least $22 million, which will go into hockey programs and facilities.

The Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance assessed the economic impact of the tournament at $86.2 million when factoring in visitor expenditures and tax revenue generated from it.

Calgary and Edmonton were host cities of the world under-20 men's championship from Dec. 26 to Jan. 5. The tournament drew over 440,000 spectators.

The organizing committees had guaranteed an $18-million profit in their bid for the tournament.

By comparison, the 2010 world junior tournament in Saskatoon and Regina generated a $15-million surplus, according to Hockey Canada records.

Hockey Canada says exact financial figures have yet to be finalized. The governing body of hockey in Canada said in a statement released Friday that it plans to divert $9 million of the expected $22 million into its own programs.

The Canadian Hockey League, who supplies the majority of players to the Canadian team and dozens to other countries, gets a $6-million piece of the pie.

Another $3 million will be set aside for future international tournaments in Canada, which hosts the world junior championship again in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021.

The International Ice Hockey Federation gets $1.5 million and another $450,000 goes to the countries who participated in the tournament. That arrangement with the IIHF is new as of this year and part of the deal Hockey Canada made to host the tournament four times over a seven-year period.

The host committees, minor hockey associations in Calgary and Edmonton, as well as Hockey Alberta will receive more than $950,000 for projects including upgrades to arena dressing rooms and Hockey Alberta's programs and provincial training centre.

Another $165,000 goes to Hockey Canada's dozen member branches.

"In seeing the legacy of this event and the economic impact that it has had on the two host communities, the host province and grassroots hockey in Canada, we will continue to work together with our partners to bring major international events to Canada on a regular basis,” Hockey Canada chief operating officer Scott Smith said in the release.

The Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance estimates the tournament brought over 30,000 visitors to Alberta.

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

[hockeygod]

Driven DeBoer, fired by Panthers, delivers Devils back to the land of elite in just one year

The Canadian Press, 2012-05-27

NEWARK, N.J. – Peter DeBoer, in the eyes of many, was a surprise choice as the next coach of the New Jersey Devils. Fresh off the franchise's worst season in recent memory, Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello last summer turned to DeBoer to rescue a team that was low on morale, lower on scoring punch and desperate for a new identity.

But why DeBoer? In three seasons with Florida, he could not push the Panthers into the post-season once.

"You have to go through ups and downs," Lamoriello said on July 19, 2011, after introducing DeBoer. "I think what he went through (in Florida) just made him a better coach. And I felt that in the conversations we had—because of the questions that were asked—the answers that were given were open, down to earth and honest."

Some 10 months later, DeBoer has more than answers. He has results. After leading New Jersey to 102 points in the regular season and placing the Devils back in the playoffs after missing the tournament last year for the first time since 1996, DeBoer calmly quarterbacked the organization's fifth run to the Stanley Cup finals.

And the path taken is what will be a lasting memory not only within this proud organization, but for the fans as well. Win or lose against Los Angeles in the finals, which open with Game 1 here on Wednesday night, DeBoer's first three playoff series victories will be etched in minds for a long time.

"These moments you enjoy," said DeBoer, whose team will have home-ice advantage for the first time this post-season against the Kings. "It doesn't matter whether it's your first year or your fifth year. So, you don't get picky when these opportunities come along. You enjoy every minute of it, as much as you can, because it's awful tough to get here."

No one knows that more than DeBoer. In Round 1, he had to defeat the Panthers, a team that fired him less than a year before. It took seven games, and New Jersey had to rally from 3-2 down to do so, but the Devils did indeed outlast the Panthers.

In the second round, all New Jersey had to do was defeat Philadelphia, a rival who had won the last two series against the Devils and one that was coming off a convincing six-game victory over Pittsburgh in Round 1. New Jersey dropped Game 1, but never looked back. Four games later, the Devils were shaking hands with the rival Flyers, and were off to the conference finals.

And then in Round 3, DeBoer battled Rangers coach John Tortorella across the benches and in the media. New Jersey again lost Game 1, and was shut out twice, but dominated for long stretches of play and capped off a proud series victory over its biggest rival with an overtime win in Game 6 on Friday night.

Three series. Three wins. None of which came with the home-ice edge.

"Honored," DeBoer said simply after that Game 6 win, when asked his feelings after being offered the job by Lamoriello. "I mean, I was out of work last June. And July, I got a call from a Hall of Fame general manager who recognized some of the work I had done in Florida, and gave me a chance to work with a group of guys that have a great blend of veteran presence. They know how to win and they had a lot of great young players coming through.

"So I'm fortunate to be sitting here. It could have been a number of different candidates that he talked to, and I'm thankful that I got the opportunity."

He's made the most of it. The Devils landed the No. 6 seed in the East after scoring 228 goals. He saw three forwards—Ilya Kovalchuk (37), Zach Parise (31) and David Clarkson (30)—reach 30 tallies. He turned centre Adam Henrique, who has two overtime winners this post-season, into a finalist for the Calder Trophy, given to the league's top rookie. And he delicately balanced the veteran goaltending tandem of Martin Brodeur and Johan Hedberg.

Brodeur, 40, a career Devil who is seeking his fourth Stanley Cup title, has played in every playoff game and has been sharp, partly due to the fact that he had rest during the season. Hedberg appeared in 27 regular-season games, in fact. He started 23 of them and won 17.

"You know, this is a resilient group," DeBoer said. "We've just been getting better and better. Just like our season, we talked about a slow build. So, we're trending in the right direction, and I think we're playing our best hockey right now."

Just the way Lamoriello drew it up.

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

[Author]

Posts