Trouble for the Oilers?

Sheldon Souray states that the organizations he played with during his career, New Jersey and Montreal, are “top shelf”, but he specifically excludes Edmonton.

http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/stars/post/_/id/11627/stars-hope-motivated-sheldon-souray-pays-dividends

First, the LA Kings's General Manager Dean Lombardi rants about their conduct during the Ryan Smyth trade, and now this. Is it a statistical blip, or is this something indicative of something broken in Edmonton?

I want the Canadian franchises to be healthy, and Edmonton has me worried. Sure they have young talent, but they are almost automatically excluded as a free agent or trade destination because they are a small-market, cold-climate destination. If their management team and organization is also viewed as bush league, what happens five years down the line when the Canadian dollar weakens and Taylor Hall et al all become free agents and leave?

The secret to a small-market team is for word-of-mouth between players to praise it as a place to work and live. Montreal doesn’t fit the label of small-market, but we suffered in the past with players refusing to come here, and that seems to no longer be the case. Players who are here want to stay here, and they tell their colleagues as much. Edmonton seems to be headed down the path to disaster.

Does anyone have any insights into the Oilers situation? Is this a Steve Tambellini problem? I remember his work with the Canucks, he was seen as a bright young executive and set to do some good work for whoever hired him.

The need for size at centre in the NHL

It’s the stuff hockey wet dreams are made of, the big skilled tough centre who will lead the team to the promised land. He wears the captain's 'C' on his chest and feeds deadly snipers on his wings a steady diet of soft saucer passes in the other team's slot. He wins faceoffs, is responsible in his zone and can drop the gloves and give an opponent an attitude adjustment.

We Canadiens fans have been whining of our need for a “gros joueur de centre” since the late 70′s, even while we were winning Cups. We had Peter Mahovlich, all 6'5" of him, but he wasn’t physical enough we said, and when he started to stickhandle he’d stop skating and lose the puck. We eventually traded him away, but that's another story.

It was such a big problem that we passed over magical Denis Savard for Doug Wickenheiser in the 1980 draft. Denis Savard had grown up and played junior hockey in the Canadiens backyard, in Verdun. Instead of drafting the hometown favourite, the Canadiens instead drafted Mr. Wickenheiser, himself a phenom out of Regina who had scored 89 goals the previous season. What cinched it was that Mr. Wickenheiser, at 6'1", was three inches taller than Mr. Savard. I remember as a kid reading in La Presse how Le Professeur Ronald Caron crowed about this selection and said Mr. Wickenheiser would soon centre Guy Lafleur and Steve Shutt for years.

It didn't turn out that way. While Mr. Savard was a perennial All-Star and possibly the most spectacular player in the NHL for a time, Mr. Wickenheiser played three uninspired seasons in Montreal, and was traded partway through the fourth, a denouement welcome by all parties.

We have had the big centre in Montreal occasionally but then we’d not appreciate them as much as they deserved. I think of Bobby Smith, who didn’t score enough we said, and Pierre Turgeon, who should have been more of a scrapper with his size we thought. His skill set was not enough, we wanted him mucking in the corners with Basil McRae and Dwight Foster.

The obsession with size doesn’t stop with centres though, and it’s not just the Canadiens. Nobody ever brags about how they just drafted a great small winger. Nobody trades for a small defenceman because he’s small. If you have an underperforming tall goaltender and an overachieving small goaltender, who do you keep?

I was looking at the 1987 draft last night, because that’s what I do on Friday nights, and again saw how Theoren Fleury lasted until the 8th round, the 166th pick, two picks after the Canadiens drafted Will Geist. He was coming off a season in the Western Hockey League during which he scored 61 goals, and 43 the previous one. Obviously production wasn’t a problem. If he had been 6’1″ 195 lbs he would have been drafted early in the first round. If he had been 6’4″ 225 lbs he would have bumped Pierre Turgeon for first overall.

Obviously the way the NHL is constituted now, how the game is played, and seeing how the Canucks were mugged of the Cup by the Bruins and the Head Office in New York, size will continue to be a deciding factor in how players are drafted and developed. Guys like Etienne Brodeur and Martin St-Louis will continue to go undrafted despite their production.

Another basic element though is what we as human beings feel when confronted with people of large size. It brings us back to when we were kids and had to crane our necks to look up to our cousin who was over six feet tall, even taller than dad, or that neighbour down the street who is a policeman who plays rugby and is so big he almost can’t fit in his Jetta. Large men catch our eye, and when a scout or GM sees a player of size, he will favour that player over the smaller one who is probably a little better. It’s a visceral reaction that is hard to ignore, and we’ll keep ascribing a disproportional value to it.

The incurable optimism of NHL fans

Interesting take by Mr. Stu Hackel of the Montreal Gazette and Sports Illustrated. Follow the link to his thoughts on which teams in the NHL Eastern Conference improved with this off-season's free agency period ebbing as the major talent has been signed to contract by various teams.

http://www.hockeyinsideout.com/news/how-the-east-has-changed

While I don’t think Mr. Hackel’s analyses are off-base, this exercise reveals the futility of trying to determine with accuracy which teams improved and which didn’t.

By my count, Mr. Hackel has 7 teams in the East improving, but just 4 holding steady and 3 regressing. Mathematically at least, that doesn’t sound plausible. I understand that we could have half the conference make a modest increase in points at the expense of 4 weak sisters who will be repeatedly trounced while four hold steady, but the law of averages would indicate that maybe five will improve, five would tread water and five would fall back. That might be a better starting point.

When we prognosticate, we are too ready to hold the play of veterans as givens. We also assume that promising rookies will improve over their previous season. We then take for granted that this player’s horrible season was an aberration, and that this year will be much improved, as we Montreal fans did with Mr. Gomez last summer. Finally, all these injuries which befell some players, which were completely unpredictable, will surely not plague it this coming season.

So to that core of a team that will improve by sheer unstoppable momentum, we then plug in skillful Jean-Guy Beauxbeauslaque and bruising Brock Granett, savant additions by a shrewd GM, and conclude that the team will no doubt be much improved.

We always fail to take into account the young Pouliots or Latendresses who fail to deliver on their promise and appear stalled in their development. We gloss over the potential travails of veteran Halperns or Hamrliks who while willing to give everything they have unfortunately don’t have much left to give. We don’t take into account that one or two players will be juggling an affair and a divorce at the same time during the season, and may be preoccupied. We forget that the player who just signed the long-term deal may ease off the gas pedal during dryland training over the summer. We are oblivious to the spoiling of team chemistry, of which player may have sexted another player, when all he really meant to do was sext that other player’s wife. And we refuse to be brutally realistic in these modern-NHL-times we live in, and look at the lineup and strike one Top 6 forward, one Bottom 6 and one D with a season-ender knee or shoulder, and then flip a coin to determine if our goalie will tear his groin and be out forty games, and be ineffectual the rest of the season.

It speaks to the mind of the fan, how we invest so much hope in our teams and how we see better days ahead. I think we fans, and really people in general, are inclined to see the future as a better place where problems are solved and happiness is gained, damn the tsunamis and earthquakes and global recessions.

Scott Gomez

Scott Gomez had a very poor season last season for the Montreal Canadiens, and he was the first to admit it in a post-mortem season interview. Much of the disappointment stems from his poor production, having only notched seven goals and adding 31 assists.

Fans have been criticizing Mr. Gomez for not shooting enough, while others say his shot is so weak he should never shoot and must pass instead. He also had a very poor faceoff win percentage.

I believe that Mr. Gomez can get back on track by rededicating himself to his physical fitness. Being in shape will take care of a lot of the shooting and faceoff problems Mr. Gomez was having.

To have a good shot you need to be able to bend your stick, you need upper body strength.

In the faceoff circle, hand-eye coordination and reflexes aren’t all you need. You need to have upper-body strength so your stick isn’t casually pushed aside or batted away. You need total body strength, and especially in the legs and core, if your sticks are locked up and now you need to push your opponent and kick the puck back with your skate.

You need cardio and muscular endurance so you’re not fading at the end of your shift, of the period, and of the game, as well as the second game in back-to-backs.

A report from Montreal radio station CKAC shows Mr. Gomez hard at work in the gym back home in Alaska, and explains that he paid for the Canadiens' strength and conditioning coach to fly over to ensure he is following his assigned program properly. Personally, I hope he’s not in Alaska all summer, that he takes a few weeks to go train with Mr. Cammalleri or Subban or Gionta, since it’s hard to stay motivated and really push yourself when you’re alone in the gym, but this is a noteworthy effort on his part.

If Mr. Gomez trains hard , I believe he will have more zip on his shot, he will trust it more and will surprise goalies instead of lofting wobbly creampuffs at them. This will make him a much more complete, less predictable player who is harder to defend. He might feel more confident along the boards and he won’t be manhandled in the faceoff circle either.

Mr. Gomez returning to form would bode well for the Canadiens' prospects this season. As the #2 centre and a player assigned lots of icetime by coach Jacques Martin, his production is critical to the team's success.

Jaromir Jagr doesn't understand the need for an apology

One of the more delicious plot twists in the NHL free-agency period which began on July 1 was Jaromir Jagr’s decision to sign a contract with the Philadelphia Flyers, the arch-villain rivals of his former team the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and its readers are having an aneurysm over it.

Mr. Jagr had stated two years ago, while playing in the Russian KHL, that he, for the honour of rejoining his original team and out of respect for his idol, mentor, and current Penguin owner Mario Lemieux, would go so far as to sign a Collective Bargaining Agreement one-year minimum contract. In this last month, while Mr. Jagr was hard to pin down or even locate, his whereabouts being as uncertain as Schrödinger’s cat, Mr. Svoboda did profer that his heart was in Pittsburgh. After all, he still owned a home there.

On June 30^th, various rumours surfaced from Pittsburgh that there already was a deal with the Penguins in place, that Mr. Lemieux and Mr. Jagr had spoken and the contract only needed to be signed.

Fast-forward to yesterday, with Mr. Jagr unable or unwilling to face cameras and deciding instead to take part in a conference call. He variously states that it’s difficult to explain his joining the Flyers, because his English is rusty, and he would have an easier time in Czech or even Russian (there is no word as to whether an interpreter was offered by a dogged Pittsburgh media scrum), and also that he had a good conversation with Chris Pronger, the now undisputed top dog in the Philadelphia kennel, after abrasive pups Mike Richards and Jeff Carter were shipped out. That heart-to-heart chat with noted wit and confidant Mr. Pronger, and murky existential leanings too tenuous to grasp with his rudimentary English, a language he only started picking up twenty years ago, are the only reasons we are provided.

Of course, the Flyers will pay Mr. Jagr $3.3 million this season, as opposed to reported offers from the Penguins and other teams in the $2 million range. This detail was not mentioned as a contributing factor to his decision, despite Mr. Jagr’s well-known gambling issues and problems with the U.S. Revenue Service. There were many other offers from many other teams for more money, he claims.

He is not made of stone however, and is foggily aware that this turn of events may not play well in Pittsburgh. For this he made the quarter-hearted faux-apology that transgressors make nowadays, seemingly baffled that their conduct wasn’t appropriate. They ask pardon not for their actions, but for the fact that these, however impenetrably, ‘may have offended others’.

The Montreal Canadiens were reportedly ‘in the race’ for Mr. Jagr’s services, although General Manager Pierre Gauthier flatly denied that he was interested. He is to be congratulated for not getting sucked in to this charade, only to be used to spur the bidding war.

Mr. Jagr was seen in sober circles to be an interesting acquisition this off-season. He was thought to be more mature, and be motivated to add to his legacy before retiring. It is obvious however that he is still the same unpredictable person who is solely concerned with his material well-being and that concepts such as ‘team’ and ‘honour’ are as foreign to him as he claims English is.

Jaromir Jagr credibility at an all-time low

Link to a great article on the reaction in Pittsburgh on International Man of Mystery Jaromir Jagr up and signing with the Philadelphia Flyers, their hated in-state rival.

Mr. Gauthier, the Montreal General Manager, said all along that the Canadiens had no interest, yet there were 'rumours' that they were in the race to sign him. Of course, this process once again taught us to not believe anything coming from Mr. Jagr, and that his agent Petr Svoboda is a carny barker. The interest from the Canadiens might have been a smokescreen by Mr. Svoboda, or just Mr. Gauthier doing his due diligence, but once again he garners points right off the bat by stating we were not interested, and not letting himself get distracted by the sideshow.

Once again, well done Mr. Gauthier.

Now please go sign Shane O'Brien, and fast forward the calendar to September for us. Summer is overrated.

NHL should observe Canada Day

Why is July 1st the date that the NHL chooses as the end date of contracts and thus the start of free agency? I know it makes sense to have it after the draft, and July 1 is kind of easy to remember, but doesn’t it make sense that a League that employs hundreds of Canadians, has seven franchises in Canada, and is home to millions of fans in Canada, should observe its national holiday? Would the American franchises even tolerate such guff, if we tried to make July 4 the beginning of the free agency period?

It was kind of ridiculous that the teams making presentations to Brad Richards and his agents yesterday would get to the office building and hit their nose on a locked door, due to the holiday.

Am I the only one who thinks that’s odd? Wouldn’t it be just as easy, and much more respectful, to make the date the first Monday after July 4? Or the first Saturday if they want fans to have the opportunity to tune in?

Improvement #2: Video Referees

A Modestly Proposed Plan to Save Hockey From the NHL (and to save the NHL from itself)

The National Hockey League is an organization in crisis. The league owners have a tremendous product that they seemingly are trying to suffocate out of existence, implausibly following the examples of Major League Baseball and boxing.

We will explore in the coming days various ways in which the NHL can reinvigorate its game and boldly march into the 21^st Century.

DISCLAIMER: the author is a forward-thinking genius and is not looking for incremental change, like the current tinkering with Rule 48 which governs illegal hits to the head. Instead, he proposes to dramatically alter the game to make it safer and more enjoyable for the players and more spectacular for the fans.

CAVEAT: when the cash registers of the League are swollen from skyrocketing revenues due to these changes being adopted, the author will be enjoining the League to provide him with a mutually-acceptable percentage of said revenues.

Proposal #2: INSTITUTE A VIDEO REFEREE SYSTEM

The speed of the game has grown to the point where the on-ice officials have trouble keeping up with the flow of the game. Also, the level of nastiness and cheap-shottery has grown to an intolerable level.

Talented players like Daniel Sedin are being encouraged by hockey experts to commit infractions such as slashing and spearing to ‘stand up for themselves. Other talented players like Brad Marchand are finding it advantageous to commit infractions, knowing they will not suffer any consequences, and thus cheapen the quality of their game.

The on-ice referees too often miss serious infractions, due to the speed of the game or their vantage point. Sometimes they hesitate to call an infraction because they are not sure if what they observed was a well-deserved retaliation.

By any analysis, the referees need help. Be it hereby resolved that:

1) Linesmen can now whistle the play dead and call a penalty when they see an infraction.

2) Another referee will be located in the press box or similar location, with access to the video feed. This referee will be able to review the play on video and determine if an infraction has been committed and a penalty is warranted. He can either whistle the play dead, by communicating with an on-ice official, or review a particular play during stoppages. He can also act as a resource to confer with on-ice officials who have called penalties.

There will be many objections to this proposal, most by those who believe that hockey is fine as it is, the Don Cherrys and Mike Milburys of the world, but these changes are being made to propel hockey forward and make it the most spectacular spectator sport in the world. As such, these objections should not outweigh the benefit of showcasing the Ovechkins and the Crosbys.

One objection will be that we’ve already made a change in that direction with the introduction of the second on-ice referee, and that there will now be too many refs who may contradict each other on calls. We might want to remove one of these referee from the ice, and it might serve to make the ice less crowded. The over-riding concern, however, would be to ensure that the officials get the vast majority of calls right, and liven the pace and flow of the game, and the officials would be encouraged to work together instead of protecting their turf.

Another concern will be that it will slow down the game, with constant whistles and penalties being called. Also, the time spent on video review will also prolong the game. In fact, the game will speed up, because all the scrums and scuffles after the whistle will stop since there will now be repercussions to illegal acts. The tiresome pushing and crosschecking in front of the net once the play is dead will no longer occur. While there may be a slew of penalties called once this change is made, the players, coaches and GM’s would quickly adapt and this situation would resolve itself quickly, as we saw when in 2005 with the crackdown on obstruction.

An advantage of instituting video referees is that it will eliminate ‘diving’ immediately. While it can be difficult to call live, diving is painfully apparent in slow-mo, and the culprits will be caught every time. Furthermore, the need to dive will disappear, since the refs will be on top of the slashing and cross-checking and tripping and whatever else.

At the dawn of the 20^th century, it made sense to imbue the referee with an unquestioned authority to call penalties, as it was the only practical solution at the time. All other sports adopted this practice, but as times change sports must evolve. Rugby, for example, used to have only one referee on the pitch to control a violent game played by two teams of fifteen. Eventually, the touch judges were given the responsibility to bring grave fouls to the referee’s attention. This change was reasonable and allowed for a safer game for all players, since cheap shots out of the ref’s field of view were more likely to be called.

Hockey is an even faster game, and the NHL has the technical capacity to institute video referees. To do so will improve the product and protect the players.

A Modestly Proposed Plan to Save Hockey From the NHL (and to save the NHL from itself)

The National Hockey League is an organization in crisis. The league owners have a tremendous product that they seemingly are trying to suffocate out of existence, implausibly following the examples of Major League Baseball and boxing.

We will explore in the coming days various ways in which the NHL can reinvigorate its game and boldly march into the 21^st Century.

DISCLAIMER: the author is a forward-thinking genius and is not looking for incremental change, like the current tinkering with Rule 48 which governs illegal hits to the head. Instead, he proposes to dramatically alter the game to make it safer and more enjoyable for the players and more spectacular for the fans.

CAVEAT: when the cash registers of the League are swollen from skyrocketing revenues due to these changes being adopted, the author will be enjoining the League to provide him with a mutually-acceptable percentage of said revenues.

#1: INSTITUTE A NEW POINTS SYSTEM: 3 for a win, 2 for an OT win, 1 for an OT loss.

Let’s start with an easy one. Last summer, some General Managers were up at arms about the Overtime and Shootout rules, claiming that some teams when tied in the third period were coasting to reach OT and thus collect the guaranteed point. They further claimed that some teams would play defensive hockey during OT to make it to the shootout, which in their view is more a crapshoot than real hockey. Cumulatively, they believed, this led to boring hockey as opposed to the excitement the OT and SO were supposed to generate.

This problem, if it exists, is easily solved by granting three points for a regulation-time win, but only two for an OT or SO win, with the losing team picking up the single. This would allay any fears that teams aren’t giving their all at the end of the game to win now. This also does away with the nonsense that some games are worth two points, some are worth two points and another point.

Now that this problem is solved, let’s look at OT. Some GM’s proposed that after the 5 minutes of 4 on 4 OT, 3 on 3 should be played instead of going to the shootout. I say let’s do 3 minutes of 3 on 3, and if it’s still tied then, we now go to the Shootout. In the Shootout, let’s increase the number of shooters from three per side to five.

These changes will, primarily, give the fans more bang for their buck. The games will be more hotly contested and any OT would be more spectacular.

Another way this will improve the game is the way it would affect rosters. GM’s and coaches would have to retool their rosters and lineups, favouring players with skating and offensive skills instead of muckers and grinders who plug up the middle of the ice at 5 on 5. The Canadiens, for example, would be more inclined toward players like Desharnais and Pouliot rather than Moen and Halpern, knowing they need to have the horses for 3 on 3, and at least five danglers and snipers for any Shootouts.

The Riot Kissers Are Idiots

I've had it with the Riot Kissers. You've seen them, lying on the ground between lines of riot police and amidst clouds of pepper spray and tear gas. Their story is supposed to be one of tenderness, an island of humanity in an ocean of rage and violence. In reality, they are in their own small moronic way partially culpable of the events that occurred on the night of June 15.

There has been lots of analysis on whether the rioters were 'hockey fans' or not. The received wisdom has been that a small corps of anarchists and troublemakers were the cause of the riot, and the vast majority of the rest of the crowd didn't participate.

In reality, the imbeciles who took pictures and milled around and cheered and went from one hotspot to another gave the troublemakers cover for their actions and impeded police response. If all the "good people" had given their head a shake and left for home, the rioters would have been isolated and rounded up, or at least forced to relent and scram.

The Kissers explained how they 'suddenly' found themselves in front of the police lines, were overrun and thrown to the ground. We're supposed to feel sorry for them a little, yet they were participating in an unlawful assembly, and had been read the riot act (literally) over Vancouver Police Department loudspeakers. They had been told to go home and chose to enjoy the spectacle. They aren't victims, they're not romantic, they just insisted on remaining in the wrong place at the wrong time.