Brendan Shanahan is a weather vane

Some of the harshest criticism on Brendan Shanahan’s performance as VP of Player Safety.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/brendan-shanahan-hockeys-man-of-the-moment/article2408302/

We often question or deride each others’ credentials as a fan based on a position taken in the past which proved to be wrong. So we often take a moment to present our bona fides when discussing issues or presenting an opinion, ie: “I hated the Gomez (Chelios, Roy, LeClair-Desjardins, …) trade from the moment it was announced.”

“I can’t believe the Canadiens drafted Fischer (Chouinard, Kostitsyn,…), I knew at the time they should instead have drafted ….”

“I loved the Erik Cole (Alexei Emelin, Jeff Halpern, …) signing from day one.”

Well, in this case, I need to come out and admit that I had full confidence in Brendan Shanahan when he was appointed. I snorted at others who pointed out, presciently, the he himself was a borderline thug who was suspended multiple times. I figured his track record on the competition committee ensured he would be a breath of fresh air, and that he couldn’t possibly be worse than the fatally-biased and under-equipped Colin Campbell. Right?

Well I admit now that I was wrong, and the naysayers were right. The naysayers were right when I and a few others got all excited in the pre-season when he doled out ‘record’ suspensions, and they cautioned us to wait until a ‘star’ had to account for an act of violence, and to wait until the games mattered. You were right, crusty curmudgeons and cynics. I was naive, I bought the Big Lie, I drank the Kool-Aid. It is business as usual. Jeremy Jacobs, Colin Campbell and Don Cherry are still steering the ship.

Mea maxima culpa.

Draft revisionism

An issue I have when we look at past drafts is how we'll wonder at what a great pick someone is who got plucked in the 6th or 8th round and who turned out to be a superstar (Andrei Markov, Theoren Fleury, Pavel Datsyuk...).  While some of these guys may have been someone the organization had a hunch on, it's not clear that there was conviction that this was a can't miss player that they must have, or else that player would have been drafted in the first or second round, right?

So how do we attribute credit?  Was such a homerun a good guess of what the pitcher was going to deliver, along with good technique from the batter resulting in good contact?  Or was the batter clueless and just 'taking a cut' and hit the sweet spot?  Was the player drafted in the fifth or sixth round being championed by a scout starting in the second round who grew ever more strident and convincing as the rounds passed, until he convinced the Director of Scouting to take a shot, or was he number 22 on their list of available goaltenders, someone who was ranked, practically, even with the guy at number 12 or 32, and was chosen because he was the next guy on the list?

I'll use the NFL as an example.  The draft plays a larger, more immediate role in a team's fortunes in the NFL, since they draft players in their twenties instead of teenage years, and their greater maturity usually means they're mostly ready to play that year, instead of having to spend a few years in junior and the AHL.  Another factor is that player careers are much shorter, it's very rare to have one play a decade with the same team, so you are constantly replenishing talent and bodies.  Finally, because the players are 'plug and play', you can draft for roster need, instead of taking the far-sighted view and just grabbing the best available player.  If you need a cornerback for example, you can plan on getting a starter in the first or second round of the draft and fill a hole in your roster that way.

The classic case of drafting wizardry is the New England Patriots grabbing Tom Brady in the 6th round of the 2000 draft.  While the Patriots were shrewd in eventually pulling the trigger on him, they were also 'lucky', and also just as blind as all the other teams in underestimating him.  While he was a successful quarterback at Michigan, he was also in a constant battle with Drew Henson for playing time.  The latter was a better physical specimen and athlete, and was a two-sport athlete, so the Michigan coaches were afraid he'd switch to baseball fulltime if they didn't give him playing time, while Tom Brady had already committed to football and given up playing baseball.

http://www.nesn.com/2011/04/bill-belichick-cites-red-flag-for-passing-on-tom-brady-in-fifth-round-of-2000-draft.html

As the linked article shows, New England coach Bill Belichick liked what he saw of Mr. Brady, but hesitated for various reasons, one of which being that they were secure at quarterback with Drew Bledsoe as their starter.  Even in the fifth round, when their turn came up, they couldn't believe he was still on the board, but rationalized it by thinking that the other teams must also be seeing the same red flags they were, and so Mr. Belichick went ahead and drafted two forgettable players ahead of their eventual choice in the sixth round.  So the Patriots do get some kudos for finally looking at the positives, but this is not an untarnished expression of organizational genius.

Hockey has fewer of these classic cases, since we don't often get the backstories on how a team selects its draft choices.  One famous story we can go back to and have discussed before is the New York Islanders' draft of Mike Bossy.  They were presumably working off a list of their preferred choices in the first round when their turn came up at #15.  

"Who's left?", Islanders General Manager Bill Torrey is reported to have asked of his chief scout.

"Mike Bossy, can score, can't check.  Dwight Foster, can check, can't score," was the reply.

"Get me the scorer, we'll teach him how to check," snapped Torrey.

Again, an inspired choice, and the Islanders look prophetic in drafting him, but would they have picked the Hall of Famer if somehow giant defenceman Barry Beck had still been available?  Probably not.  So how much credit do they get for picking the right player out of what they thought were two options left to them?

The Canadiens meanwhile had drafted Mark Napier ahead of the hometown phenom, with the rationale that he was just as good a scorer, but had played a year of pro hockey in the WHA and and survived it, so he was more likely to be a productive NHL'er than the reputedly fragile Mike Bossy.  The Canadiens, in this case, richly deserve the opprobrium for overthinking what should have been the natural choice.

Another draft that is often dissected by Canadiens fans is the 2006 draft.  The Canadiens skillfully manoeuvered and traded down from 16 to 20 in the first round, picking up an extra second-rounder in doing so, and still got their man in David Fischer.  While he was evaluated as a late first-rounder at best by prognosticators, the Canadiens had been following him since his early teenage years and were convinced he was a pillar of their future.

http://www.hockeysfuture.com/articles/8982/fischer_succeeds_in_usa_camp_at_defense/

Nowadays, revisionists look at this draft and rue that Montréal didn't grab francophone Claude Giroux instead, and see it as another example of institutional incompetence.  In fact, Mike Boone clearly shows in the article linked below that instead of faulting the Canadiens for picking David Fischer, it's the Flyers who should be lauded since they gambled and took an undersized skill player from the under-regarded LHJMQ higher than he was ranked, and they hit the jackpot.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/Canadiens+likely+high+draft+pick/6361132/story.html

Also instructive is the second round, where the Canadiens picked big scorer Ben Maxwell, the 49th player taken.  Immediately after, the Boston Bruins grabbed Milan Lucic from the Vancouver Giants.  This is another set of picks that now look idiotic/inspired depending on the evaluator's perspective, but again, at the time, Mr. Maxwell was more highly rated by most scouts than Mr. Lucic.  As I always like to point out, Ryan White was ranked even higher than both as the #7 prospect from the WHL, with Ben Maxwell at #12 and Milan Lucic at #14.

http://www.hockeysfuture.com/articles/8859/whl_top15_prospects_for_the2006_nhl_entry_draft/

This is where backstory might be helpful, and maybe Mr. Boone can come to our rescue with this question, but I have a hunch that if the Bruins had picked at #49 in front of the Canadiens, they still would have picked Mr. Lucic.  

While Ben Maxwell was a player with relatively low profile in his draft year, Milan Lucic was already seen as being a leader, impact player and difference-maker on the eventual Memorial Cup winners, despite his stats not being as impressive as Mr. Maxwell's.  It is reasonable to assume that his skillset would have fit in really well within the organizational philosophy of the Bruins and that he would have been more highly prized by them than by other teams.  So the Bruins do get extra credit for 'reaching' for Mr. Lucic, snapping him up ahead of where he was normally slated to be taken, and ahead of the higher rated Ryan White, who the Canadiens moved up in the third round to get when he kept 'sliding'.

I often wonder what if at the Canadiens' draft table, someone had piped up and asked if they should risk drafting Mr. Lucic just so as to avoid seeing the Bruins getting him and then having to face him eight times a year, would that have carried the day, or whether he was ever on their radar, especially that high in the draft.

What this speaks to is the organizational stability in Boston, with Harry Sinden having steered the ship for decades.  Love 'em or, more likely, hate 'em, the Bruins have played the same style since the seventies, and have scouted and drafted accordingly, and then developed their players to the same purpose.  This gives them a great advantage in that it restricts their focus and allows them to concentrate on fewer players who fit into their philosophy, it gives them more clarity of purpose and reduces the likelihood of too many options causing 'paralysis by analysis'.

The Canadiens have the opportunity with the current front office shakeup to re-instill the team's philosophy.  We had a nebulous sense recently that there was no such clear guiding principles, in that for example Mr. Gainey had obtained speedy smaller skaters at forward, while Coach Martin favoured a defence-first style that seemed ill-suited to his personnel.  It can be hoped that we in the future have a consistent vision of what the team should look like and how it should play, from the ownership on down, and that this will be promulgated by the GM, scouting, coaching, and player development staff.  We can hope that this philosophy will rely firmly on the team's history and legacy, and that the emphasis will be to build on some of the momentum which has been allowed to ebb since the glory years of the seventies and eighties.

As far as the best way to determine which team has been the best success in drafting, both the methods used by Ed Wiles of the Vancouver Province (http://www.theprovince.com/sports/entry+draft+more+than+science/6319829/story.html#ixzz1peUkmRy7) and Andrew Berkshire (http://www.habseyesontheprize.com/2012/4/13/2936786/evaluating-the-draft-a-new-methodolgy) have their merits, and show the Canadiens in a positive light, which goes to Trevor Timmins' and his staff's credit.

I contend, as Mr. Berkshire does, that it doesn't take a genius to draft a Sidney Crosby or a Evgeni Malkin once Alex Ovechkin has been removed as an option, or a Nail Yakupov.  The Canadiens will draft a player at #3 overall this June who will have lots of promise but some warts, and it will be hard to debate the merits of this pick with any certainty until three or four years from now.

I do think that the real test of an organization is how they do with the late first-round picks, as well as their second-rounders and third rounders.  The Canadiens have historically done well with these guys, often grabbing unheralded players from the Québec league who turn into stalwarts for years.  We have quite a few second-rounders coming up in the next couple years, and these will determine the team's future and give us an accurate read on how skilled we are at evaluating and then developing talent.

With all the draft talk going on in Montréal Canadiens fandom, there was some discussion about the poor quality of the players picked in the 1968 NHL draft, the last time the Canadiens got to pick 3rd overall.

http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/draft/nhl1968a.html

What we need to remember is these guys were the leftovers after most of the talented teens in Canada were already signed to contracts by NHL teams and playing in their farm system. For example, the Bruins signed Bobby Orr at the age of fourteen, winning out against the Maple Leafs and the Canadiens, among others.

The universal draft came later, at which point players played until they were twenty years old in junior before being drafted, with the oddball U.S. college guy or European player thrown in. This practice was a great advantage to owners, who with the advent of player agents, were having to pay ever higher signing bonuses to players and their parents to reserve their rights. With the draft, a player’s rights were owned by one team only, there no longer were any bidding wars.

Until the WHA came along, but that’s another story.

The Leafs, the Jets, the Canadiens, everyone wants to get bigger

Watching the Top Ten plays of the regular season on TSN, and once I was over the fact that #10 and #9 were two ex-Canadiens who left the team with no tangible return, I really enjoyed the spectacular plays.  Breathtaking save by Ondrej Pavelec, dazzling stickhandling, both Penguins supernovastars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin contributing....

One thing I didn't see in the Top Ten was a goalmouth scramble.  A goal scored from a 'dirty area'.  A player 'taking his man' at the faceoff.  A player being responsible without the puck.  Truculence.

Yet in today's wrap-up in both Toronto and Winnipeg, both GM's spoke about getting bigger.  Unequivocally.  As if more size is an unalloyed boon.

No one spoke about needing more skill or skating or putting on a better show for the fans who cough up more than $100 per seat.  No one said we need talent on this team.  Once Brian Burke was done blaming Brian Gionta for the underwhelming performance by his un-pedigreed, flash-in-the-pan out-of-nowhere goalie, he explained that his team wasn't big enough to play the way he wanted it to.  Again, not lacking in talent or scoring or defence or goaltending, but merely size.

I fear for the children.

Andrei Markov does not comment on P.K. Subban's progress

The scene at the Brossard training complex yesterday as the Montréal Canadiens cleaned out their lockers and met the media for the last time in this difficult season was meant to be one of meekness and personal responsibility, as well as a profession of faith that the next one would be radically different, if only through strenuous, diligent effort over the summer from each individual.

Most players got the script and followed it.  Josh Gorges bravely answered questions and defended all his teammates by way of backing Scott Gomez.  Erik Cole was appropriately glum, describing how he didn't expect to lose so much when he signed his contract last summer.  Various players disclosed nagging injuries, and some announced whether they would be heading to the World Championships.

So in this relatively innocuous setting, Andrei Markov managed to provide enough grist for the mill to last us until next fall's harvest.  He was asked to comment on P.K. Subban's development over the season, to which he snapped: "Next question."  The journalist, more surprised than insistent, probed: "You don't want to comment?"  His succinct reply was delivered with a rictus that said more than his "No."

My first reaction to this new tempest in a teacup is to wonder why this question was asked at all.  It kind of made sense last season to ask Hal Gill about P.K. since they were on the same pairing and he played a widely-touted mentorship role.  It would also be appropriate if P.K. had had a stellar season and was in line for a Norris Trophy or some other honour, or even if at the other end of the spectrum, he had had a disastrous season which endangered his status with the team, à la Scott Gomez.  It would make sense for the members of the Two and a Half Men line to comment on each other's season.  It is understandable that the Calgary Flames were all asked about a potential future without Jarome Iginla, since that is a question central to the identity of that team, and no one shirked their duty to respond and add their contribution to the Iggy legend.  

Andrei reacted completely differently.  He according to the analysts on RDS allowed his frustration with the public's fascination and beguilement with the callow defenceman to get the better of him, and couldn't voice the rehearsed platitudes that every NHL'er is familiar with.  (As an aside, it's noteworthy that there are other unnamed players who reacted in the same way to the same question, with one stating that P.K. does pretty much what he wants both on and off the ice)  Andrei's response was expected to be that P.K. had come a long way and still had lots of room to improve and was promised to a bright future, but he couldn't spit the lines out.  

Which according to François Gagnon of La Presse and RDS, says more about Andrei than P.K.  Mr. Markov is a magician and leader on the ice, but a difficult person off it and somewhat lacking in leadership in the dressing room.  He is famously prickly with the media.  He has been coddled and insulated from the media his whole career, based on his lack of ability to communicate in English when he first came to North America.  He has been allowed to coast on this dispensation his whole career, and was taken to task by the panel on l'Antichambre for it.  

Michel Bergeron was irked when pointing out that Andrei has been drawing a full salary for two seasons which he largely spent on the injured list, and that the least the fans who pay his salary can expect is a proper response to questions asked by the press.  He referred to the quip Andrei had after his first game against Vancouver, when he was asked about his surgically-reconstructed knee and replied: "It's still there."  While this is acceptable if delivered truly as a joke, Mr. Bergeron suspects that it's more of a reflection of Mr. Markov's attitude that dealing with the media is a barely tolerable annoyance.  As Michel Bergeron put it, when he and his players had to face the media at the end of a season, he would steel himself by preparing as he would for a visit to the dentist, and would internally repeat his mantra: "Ça va prendre dix minutes....  It will take ten minutes..."  Apparently this is more than Mr. Markov can achieve.

More than anything, what this episode shows is the lack of leadership and direction on the team, one that is fraying at the edges after a long season of losing.  The Antichambre panel, which also included Mario Tremblay and Michel Thérrien, explained that there were no coaches available to monitor the proceedings, which led to a last day of class with no teacher in the classroom atmosphere.  They conjectured that team captain Brian Gionta got everyone to attend and face the music, but in this environment of flux team cohesion took a hit.  They went on to say that with Mr. Gionta injured and Hal Gill traded, there was little veteran presence on the team.  Scott Gomez has been neutered by his own impotence.  Mathieu Darche can be a good lieutenant but is not able to play a frontline role on the ice and in the dressing room.  Tomas Plekanec doesn't have the personality for it.  Which leaves Erik Cole, who is a first year player, and Josh Gorges, who is on the cusp of being a veteran, and is also a role player.  They concluded that the next GM will have a lot of work to do over the summer.

I was glad to hear them agree that a lot of this stuff is what happens when a team is losing, and that winning cures a lot of these ills.  I know that getting beaten regularly makes the game less fun, makes the group going for a beer after games smaller, and the mood more subdued.  When your flakey goalie lets in a couple of beach balls or your stubborn fly half insists on kicking the ball away in every situation instead of circulating it, it grates on you and wears you down and leads to you snapping at each other over little things.  When the team is playing well and winning, you forgive your teammates their little foibles and ruefully admit their strengths and value their contributions instead of focusing on their failings.

Earlier in the season, Carey Price was asked about P.K. in a different setting, and he jokingly said that P.K. is a giant idiot who does entirely too much talking on his own already, and that there was therefore no need to say anything about him or add to the discussion.  This was delivered with a wry smile, so most took it as a good joke with the merest sprinkle of truth, but it is now easy to see that Carey was trying to send a gentle message and hoping that it would sink in.  And we get a sense that it does, and then a day later it hasn't quite done so yet and the message must be delivered again.  It brings to mind the famous Magic Johnson quote about Vlade Divac, that: "He's a quick learner, but he forgets quick too."

P.K. is still young and has shown a lot of improvement over this season.  For a while, he seemed uncontrollable, but Randy Ladouceur's iron glove approach seemed to take effect when the necessarily more subdued approach of Hal Gill had gone as far as it could.  We discussed last season how veterans can only influence rookies so far, since they're still teammates and need to get along.  At one point, a coach has to step in and establish boundaries and expectations, and discipline players who fall astray of these.  We applauded Mr. Ladouceur's presence behind the bench and his constant communication with his charges, that was what we had been clamouring for, instead of Perry Pearn's and Jacques Martin's phlegmatic laissez-faire approach.  Michel Bergeron often says that a coach's job is to say something and then repeat it and repeat it, to constantly remind his players.  This approach will benefit P.K. and the other young defencemen in the long run.

We can understand that P.K. is still a work in progress, and for all his promise is still a diamond in the rough and needs a lot of polishing.  We should not be surprised at this, since it was the scouting report on him coming out of junior, that he had first-round talent but big question marks when it came to coachability and attitude.  Let's hope that the next coaching team finds the right formula to allow him to deliver on his physical tools and potential.

The Kaberle trade: shrewd deal or monumental gaffe?

We often talk at cross-purposes on the Tomas Kaberle deal. Supporters mention his points per game pace, and the low price paid to acquire his services. They mention how everyone wanted Jaroslav Spacek gone anyway, and how he would have walked away for free in July, or traded away for very little at the trade deadline.

Opponents don’t really care about these points. What ticks them off is the acquisition of an overpaid player who has two more years left on a contract while his skills are in steep decline. They mention the lack of defensive skill or involvement, his lack of strength which not only makes him lose puck battles, but avoid them altogether. Another big beef is the lack of energy, joy and passion demonstrated by him, how he floats seemingly unaffected through losses and scoreless streaks.

So we should almost table the subject. No camp is willing to acknowledge the other’s points. It’s as unproductive a discussion as some of those in the political arena where the positions are so hardened that the same bombs are lobbed at each other with no effect, since both sides have heard and ignored them for years.

Tomas Kaberle is a polarizing figure on the team and forces us to agree to disagree. It’s on the to-do list of the next GM. Let’s drop the baby in Solomon’s lap, as it were. Let’s agree to abide by his word.

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin dirty?

Great article by Cathal Kelly on the hatchet job being perpetrated against Sidney Crosby.

The Penguins have been identified as a threat to win it all by the ‘muck and grind posse’ in the media, which is seemingly dominated by former Flyers and Bruins. These guys have an agenda to maximize the chances of their former teams to win the Stanley Cup, and also to justify the ‘style’ of hockey that they played when they were active in the league. So the Penguins, led by players such as Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, skilled scorers and skaters who play a spectacular, fan-friendly brand of hockey, must be vilified as not playing the right way, like Terry O’Reilly or Moose Dupont used to. So now somehow, we’re supposed to believe that Mr. Malkin and Mr. Crosby are villains, instead of the league’s poster boys, as they rightfully should be.

It’s a smear job similar to that against the Canucks last year, when they were dubbed ‘The Most Hated Team in Hockey’ and also branded as divers and whiners. This enabled the Bruins to spear and crosscheck and mug them down to their level and eke out a win, and the refs to overlook even more infractions from the dark-jerseyed and black-hearted Bruins than they normally would have. The table had been set for an institutionally-condoned bias against the Canucks, epitomized by the disparity in punishment received by Aaron Rome and Johnny Boychuk for the season-ending hits they delivered. Mr. Rome knocked Nathan Horton out of the series with an almost borderline late but clean hit, one that was reminiscent of the hits that put Scott Stevens in the Hall of Fame, but which resulted in a suspension for the rest of the playoffs for the perpetrator. Meanwhile, Johnny Boychuk interfered with Mason Raymond and drove him bent over into the boards, breaking his back, with all this occurring with the puck nowhere near and Mr. Raymond never having possession of it. Mr. Boychuk skated away scot-free, and Mason Raymond was helped off the ice to the jeers of the Boston crowd, and wasn’t ready to return to action until midway through this season.

We see the hypocrisy in the criticism directed at Sidney Crosby for attempting to give as good as he gets, with Neanderthals like Don Cherry trumpeting that this justifies the treatment he is getting and will surely receive during the playoffs. So really Sidney should turn the other cheek and be a pacifist, like Daniel Sedin did in last year’s playoffs when he was being bolo-punched by the reprehensible creep Brad Marchand. We all remember how the media lionized Daniel Sedin for his patience and courage and strength of character, and how the league and its officials rushed to the aid of an NHL scoring champion, pillar of a community and true gentleman.

I’ll empower myself to speak on behalf of Mr. Malkin and Crosby, and make a deal with Flyer assistant coach Craig Berube, he of the 1000 game, 60 goal, 3000 penalty minute career: if his guys don’t crosscheck or facewash or rabbit punch or spear or headlock or slash or chirp them constantly after the whistle sounds, neither will the Penguins stars. How’s that for a deal? Let’s really ‘let them play’, as in, let the talented players play, instead of letting the no-talent pluggers hang on for dear life to the stars and clutch and slash them down to their level, as that expression has come to mean. Let’s let Evgeni Malkin swoop into the opposition zone without a Flyer trailing a full stride behind, slashing away just below the ridiculous threshold that needs to be met before a ref finds the whistle in his zippered pocket, knocks the cobwebs and lint off it and actually calls a penalty. Let’s let the stars play, as the NFL and the NBA and Rugby Union do, by allowing the stars who bring us out of our seats to flourish, instead of favouring the Mike Houghs and the Dwight Fosters of this world.

Somehow I suspect Mr. Berube won't agree to my deal.

Mathieu Darche, Yannick Weber, Raphaël Diaz

The post-mortem has begun, and fans are already clamouring for some heads to roll, and players to be shipped out of town, almost out of spite.

Some of these assessments are unfair, especially when it comes to Mathieu Darche. He's a consummate pro who works hard at everything he does. He's certainly cost-effective. People who focus on him as a problem don’t seem to grasp that there isn’t an NHL-ready youngster in Hamilton being denied an opportunity to move up to the big leagues. While most of us agreed that he was miscast on the powerplay by Coach Martin, Mathieu has a spot on this roster next season unless the Canadiens manage to sign three or four NHL forwards in free agency. This is unlikely to happen, so let’s have Mathieu hold down the fort next season while Louis Leblanc, Blake Geoffrion and Brendan Gallagher play heavy minutes in Hamilton.

I was hoping for more from Yannick Weber and Raphaël Diaz to a lesser extent this season. We need to sign a cheap defensive defenceman for a couple of seasons while we wait for the cavalry to arrive from Hamilton in 2013. Mr. Diaz gets sent down to Hamilton and plays a lot of minutes, since he’s not waiver eligible, and is one of the first callups. Mr. Weber gets another chance to show what he can do, hopefully with fewer injuries and being asked to only fill a #6/Powerplay role, he can come back more mature and effective. He needs to go train with P.K. and develop some strength over the summer.

Frédéric St-Denis has convinced me that he deserves a shot. I’m underwhelmed by his size and pedigree, but he seems to be smarter and more mature than our fringe, smaller defencemen. Let’s give him an opportunity next season as the #7 D and see what he can do.

Game 82: Montréal 4, Toronto 1

I didn't really watch the game tonight, it was more as if I had it on as background mood music. I spent my time online at HockeyInsideOut.com, chin wagging with other regulars through the magic of a clunky site. I should have paid more attention, seeing as it was the last Canadiens game for a long long time, but couldn't muster up the discipline. It was like the last day of school, or this one time when I got laid off and spent a day organizing files and getting them ready for handoff and cleaning out my desk. My mind was elsewhere.

Precisely, it's stuck on the draft, and free agency on July 1, and on the news conference(s) which will announce our new management and coaching teams, and training camp, and the Bulldogs training camp and drooling over the raft of new prospects. So it's not like I was cheating, I was thinking of my true love the whole time.

Erik Cole, Max Pacioretty, Brad Staubitz in the empty net for his first goal as a Habitant, Tomas Plekanec on a 5 on 3 penalty kill, yada yada, great game. The Leafs suck. I wouldn't trade my team for three of theirs.

The win was a good way to end the season, and since the Oilers couldn't muster up a win, didn't cost us a steep 4 points on the draft lottery. Seeing the fans receiving jerseys from the players was great, although CBC cut away to the Jets' game too quick, I had to do some lightning quick PVR work to tune in the festivities on RDS.

Speaking of Don Cherry sucks, the knee on knee collisions are not a result of the clampdown on headshots, as he moronically asserts, but rather the result of the 'finish your check' mentality prevalent in the NHL, which allows players to hit others long after they've had possession of the puck, and the resulting mania of GM's to amass on their rosters goons and lunks who can't skate. These guys either extend a knee or reach out with an elbow as they're missing their target, as Brooks Orpik did and Darcy Hordichuk demonstrated in trying to decapitate Ryan Kesler in retaliation for Maxime Lapierre having had the audacity to bodycheck him.

After the game I watched the Canucks win the President Trophy, and I think I'll make it my new job to follow these guys through the playoffs, call it a civic duty as a transplanted British Columbian. Let's all hope for a good final involving the Canucks at full strength against the Penguins, a final with no villains, and skating and scoring and entertaining hockey instead of thuggery.

The NHL's ridiculous system of discipline

I've addressed in the past how the NHL has a bizarre system of on-ice discipline. It is accepted that the referees will not catch every infraction, despite the relatively recent addition of a second referee and extra set of eyes, due to the pace of the game, so two current practices were evolved.

One is that the players will police the game themselves, in order to keep a lid on dirty plays committed out of the officials' sight. This creates a league where intimidation, thuggery and outright assaults are tolerated to a great degree as a necessary or even noble product of the game. So that a big, tough player is prized more highly by General Managers than a smaller more talented player.

Another is that the referees will 'manage' the game, chatting constantly with the players on the ice, directing them as to what is expected, telling to stop hooking or freezing the puck or cross-checking or else they'd have to whistle them for a penalty. Often, an infraction isn't really an infraction unless the referee has had a chance to enjoin the guilty party to cease and desist. You hear them all the time: "Let go! Let go!"

"Keep it moving! Keep it moving!"

"Easy with the stick... Next one I'm going to have to call it."

It brings us to ridiculous situations like today's announcements that Brooks Orpik will not receive extra discipline for his potentially career-ending knee-on-knee check delivered to Derek Stepan. Mr. Orpik is the exact type of rugged, hard-nosed player with limited skill and mobility who is perennially chosen over the more talented Martin St. Louis of this game.

The play itself is unremarkable in that it happens routinely in the NHL. A player lines up an opponent for a big open ice hit, invariably coming straight at him. The other player notices this, sometimes at the last minute, and veers to one side or the other. The would-be bodychecker will then be at a disadvantage if he misses him, since he will be out of position with the puck carrier behind him and with a clear path to the net. So the bodychecker, who cannot allow this to happen, out of a partial reflex and competitive spirit, reaches out to at least put some kind of a hit on him and slow him down, and this unfailingly results in the knee-on-knee collision.

Mr. Orpiks received a five minute penalty and a game misconduct for his hit, but no further suspension, even though these are the kind of hits that rupture ACL and cartilage in players' knees and ends careers. This hit is seen as a by-product of the physical game, regrettable but unavoidable.

Meanwhile, adding to the ridiculousness, Wild defenceman Nate Prosser received a one game suspension for a head butt to Jamal Mayers. This incident occured during a tedious, meaningless scrum in front of the net, hard on the heels of players 'rushing the net' when the goaltender obviously had the puck frozen under his glove. During the scrum, Mr. Mayers, who is precisely the kind of untalented mugger the NHL favours, swatted at Nate Prosser's head and face with his right hand. For a moment both players stood face to face with their sticks and hands tangled in front of them, at which point Mr. Prosser reached out with his head and headbutted Mr. Mayers in the face. Mr. Mayers suffered a cut lip in this exchange, but the intensity of the headbutt would have been described by apologists as nothing more than a 'love tap' if contact had been made with the glove of Mr. Prosser instead. If he had crosschecked/gloved Mr. Mayers in the face with more energy and purpose, and if Mr. Mayers had retaliated in kind, this would have been seen as good spirited competition by two warriors trying to send a message. At most they would have received cancelling two-minute minors.

Again, the message is clear. Players like Mr. Orpik and Mr. Mayers will be celebrated by the league and their thuggery will be tolerated and explained in the context of murky concepts like honour and toughness. If Mr. Orpik almost ends a player's career due to his need to play physically to continue to have a career in the NHL, that's the cost of doing business. You can't have an omelet without breaking a few eggs. If Mr. Mayers heads to the net and mugs it up after the play when the whistle has blown, that's just spirited play and par for the course, he's making sure the goalie isn't too comfortable. Elbows, punches, facewashes, crosschecks, these are just tactics. But if a headbutt is delivered, that's outside The Code, and will be punished. One type of violence is cool, another is beyond the pale.

The NHL can't seem to get out of its own way. It promised us that it would favour a more open, spectacular product as an apologia after the lockout, that offence and skill and speed would be championed, as the NFL had done, and the NBA, and Rugby Union, among other sports. We bought it. Bob Gainey bought it.

Instead, the inmates are running the asylum, with the Bruins family having taken over the Board of Governors and the Ministry of Information like the Borgias with the Holy See. The goon is ascendent in the house of the NHL. The Flyers and Rangers have put the Penguins and the league on notice as to what will happen during the playoffs.

It would be so simple to avoid two incidents like these. Make each offence a strict liability, where the player's intent or the resultant damage or injury doesn't factor into whether a suspension will be imposed. The responsibility for preventing a knee on knee collision rests with the bodychecker. If he lines up an opponent and connects like Scott Stevens or Alexei Emelin, fair game. If however his target observes him and ducks, the bodychecker must let him go, and can't reach out with an elbow or knee. If he does connect with an elbow or knee on knee, a minimum sentence is incurred, regardless of the situation, or that the opponent wasn't stretchered off the ice. Punish transgressors harshly, to change the mindset. The players must know that there's no tolerance, no margin for error with these moves, to change the culture.

Same thing with blows to the head. No matter that it's delivered by an elbow or gloved hand or bare hand or stick or whatever, they're not allowed. A glancing blow, a love tap, a vigourous shove, a hard gloved punch à la Milan Lucic on Mike Komisarek, they're all no gos. No facewashes. No contact with the face or head of the opponent is tolerated. Period. Nate Prosser can't headbutt Jamal Mayers, but neither can Jamal Mayers swat his head. After the whistle when the play is dead. No excuses, no deviation. Game misconducts and game suspensions are automatic, with escalators for repeat offenders. Problem solved.

These issues are too intractable for Gary Bettman and Bill Daly and the feckless Colin Campbell to solve, however, occupied as they are trying to convince the authorities in Phoenix that they have three, no four! interested parties to purchase the Coyotes, just dying to, right around the corner. But it really isn't that complicated. The lawsuits are just about the corner boys, how about you at least put up a sham front of proactiveness.