The NHL has a way of setting itself up for failure that's charmingly all its own. In general, it dumbs down the sport of hockey, favouring plumbers and defensive play over its spectacular stars and fan-friendly wide-open end-to-end action. It has as its Commissioner a lawyer who grew up a basketball/NBA fan and has no passion for the sport he should cultivate. It operates in secrecy and opacity, and can be relied on to make baffling, inexplicable decisions on the short and long term.
All of this is exemplified by the John Scott saga. Mr. Scott is what's euphemistically known as an 'enforcer' in the NHL, a 'policeman', a strong man who will by his mere presence, by the implicit threat of his size and strength, enjoin opponents to play by the rules, and not cross any lines. While this should be accomplished by the referees who officiate games, and by the League office if anything extreme occurs, the NHL has evolved a role for a player or players to perform this disciplining of others.
There was a time when this might have made sense. Before the games were all televised, with a dozen HD cameras trained on the ice surface, it was common for players to wait until the (lone) referee had his back turned to commit acts of violence on an opponent. While the ref might miss the infraction, the victim's bench wouldn't, and his teammates would make sure to exact a price, and it wasn't a mere two or five minutes spent in a penalty box.
Nowadays though, with video available during and after the game of any and all transgressions alleviating any chance that something will be 'missed' by the two refs, and with inarguable evidence of the health risks associated with head trauma, it's transparently obvious that the 'price' is too great to bear. To allow a player who commits a slash or crosscheck to be subjected to a pugilistic interlude by an enforcer is no longer tolerable, if it ever was.
So John Scott's role in the League is disappearing. His breed are dying out. They ply their trade in the AHL if at all, and even then incidents such as the KO of Brian McGrattan occasion more revulsion in the average fan than used to occur.
John Scott always stuck out like a sore thumb, and not just because of his great stature. Seeing him play live, he looked completely out of place, a tanker among corvettes, routinely several strides behind the play. His presence on the ice was a joke, more so than oddities are in other sports.
Kickers and punters play an accepted role on football teams. The odd one-batter lefty reliever, or the corpulent designated hitter in baseball also raise some eyebrows and catcalls and chuckles, but again their contribution is central to the outcome of the game. The NBA has had some freakishly tall players who do nothing but block shots and play defence, whose athleticism is questionable, but they affect the final tally on the scoreboard.
NHL enforcers operate on the periphery, in the margins of the game. Their contribution is at best psychological, motivational. Studies have shown that the accepted wisdom, that they can give one side a change in momentum, that they can turn a tide with a bout against another, similar enforcer, is at least very difficult to demonstrate, to quantify. Because that's been what they've been relegated to: sideshow head-to-head tilts against the other team's enforcer. The policing function has largely disappeared.
To be impolite, enforcers have become a joke, and with the fan voting campaign to put him in the All-Star Game in Nashville, the NHL was punked, with Mr. Scott as the butt of the joke. Legions of hockey 'fans' ridiculed the league by voting in the worst hockey player they could find on a roster to its showcase event.
Because they could. Because after the Rory Fitzpatrick 'Vote for Rory' campaign, and the Zemgus Girgensons campaign, the NHL still didn't understand that the voting process was deeply flawed, that more deserving players were being left aside for joke candidates. Maybe the League reveled in it. Until the fans doubled down, and showed that it's not always true that any publicity is good publicity.
Gary Bettman could have stepped in and as the Commissioner invoked his powers to protect the interests of the League, nullified these votes and made the clear statement that the All-Star Game was for the Crosbys and the Ovechkins, not a freakshow. Instead, it tried to work in the shadows, by going against its usual practice and not publicizing fan vote tallies, by appealing to Mr. Scott to withdraw himself from consideration. Something which once cost Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg one-game suspensions, deciding not to attend an All-Star Game.
But the NHL kept bumbling and stumbling, with the way it kept silent when John Scott was demoted to the AHL by the irked Coyotes, and then traded to the Canadiens and immediately assigned to their AHL team. Until it, in the face of a social media firestorm, belatedly stepped forward and assured everyone that John Scott was in the All-Star Game all along, there was never any doubt, the fans had spoken. Why had there been this furor, for days on end, it wondered?
So now we're being fed an all's well that ends well storyline, of John Scott as the underdog and the people's champion, never mind his take on the Players' Tribune. While we didn't buy his good guy act, after years of seeing him be a bully on the ice, after the Phil Kessel incident, we've been mollified by the charm offensive from the player and the league.
Except we won't be watching. The saboteurs who spotlighted John Scott have done their job, shown the league and its 'showcase' event to be a farce, and while it was worth a few yuks, it won't be worth hours of our time this weekend.
[Further reading from Bruce Arthur.]
Saturday, 30 January 2016
Tuesday, 26 January 2016
Game 48: Canadiens 3, Leafs 2 (SO)
The powerhouse Canadiens defeated the milquetoast Leafs by a decisive 3-2 margin, which was never in doubt, and confidently decided in the shootout.
1) Mike Boone, in his "About Last Night":
2) More from Mike Boone:
He's on target when it comes to Mr. Kadri though. Although we both failed to hold him accountable for all the dives and pratfalls. And so did the refs. And so will Daddy Campbell.
3) "My grandmother, Big Mama, said to me repeatedly 'Tavis, baby, be careful of stoopin' so low that you can't get back up'."--Tavis Smiley
The Canadiens need to heed Tavis Smiley's grandma's advice.
4) I hope Marc Bergevin folds his hand and waits for the next deal. See what kind of assets he can amass by trading away vets as rentals.
I don’t dislike players like Brian Flynn or Tom Gilbert, I don’t want to ‘get rid’ of them, but if they’re attractive for teams looking to load up at the deadline, then by all means, let them go.
Torrey Mitchell is signed for two more years, so he might not necessarily work as a rental, and again I like the guy, but I have to wonder if Gabriel ‘Pitbull’ Dumont wouldn’t be able to give us the same kind of play. Right-handed shot, can play centre or wing, has some snarl, isn’t malhotrabad on offence. Maybe it’s not an either-or situation, maybe we can use both, Gabriel gets called up after the deadline as a swing-depth forward.
Tomas Fleischmann, Mark Barberio, Paul Byron, any expiring UFA contract, if they net a draft pick, they’re for sale. Come one come all to Marc’s Ka-Razy Rental Sale. Damaged, floor-model RFA’s on hand too, ready to go. We have a like-new Devo demo, barely used, still not broken in, can be had for a song.
5) http://nhllotterysimulator.com/
The Leafs won where it counted. It took two draws for them to get the #2. Three draws for us to get the #3.
The Sens got first overall on the first draw, Oilers third.
6) More Tavis Smiley: "I was on one of the Sunday morning shows, and within hours (Donald Trump) had tweeted about me, based on his not liking what I'd said about him on this show..."
"So you probably said some facts...", interjects Trevor Noah.
1) Mike Boone, in his "About Last Night":
That a collapse didn’t happen – and that Lars Eller, one of the team’s few recent bright lights, won the game in a Shootout – may have been a sign that perhaps the Canadiens have turned the corner.Anyone who accuses The Headmaster of being too negative and critical needs to reconsider. He can perform Maybelline magic on any old porcine varmint.
2) More from Mike Boone:
The Leafs had an 8-5 shot advantage in the middle period and got a goal from Nazem Kadri – the most dislikable Toronto player since Darcy Tucker.
He's on target when it comes to Mr. Kadri though. Although we both failed to hold him accountable for all the dives and pratfalls. And so did the refs. And so will Daddy Campbell.
Un Canadien errant JANUARY 23, 2016 AT 8:45 PM
Loathsome Nazem Kadri. I guess there wasn’t anyone in the vicinity to spear or slewfoot, he wasn’t otherwise engaged, so he found time to score a goal.
All that’s left is to compare it favourably to a John Tavares goal, and his night’s work is done.
3) "My grandmother, Big Mama, said to me repeatedly 'Tavis, baby, be careful of stoopin' so low that you can't get back up'."--Tavis Smiley
The Canadiens need to heed Tavis Smiley's grandma's advice.
4) I hope Marc Bergevin folds his hand and waits for the next deal. See what kind of assets he can amass by trading away vets as rentals.
I don’t dislike players like Brian Flynn or Tom Gilbert, I don’t want to ‘get rid’ of them, but if they’re attractive for teams looking to load up at the deadline, then by all means, let them go.
Torrey Mitchell is signed for two more years, so he might not necessarily work as a rental, and again I like the guy, but I have to wonder if Gabriel ‘Pitbull’ Dumont wouldn’t be able to give us the same kind of play. Right-handed shot, can play centre or wing, has some snarl, isn’t malhotrabad on offence. Maybe it’s not an either-or situation, maybe we can use both, Gabriel gets called up after the deadline as a swing-depth forward.
Tomas Fleischmann, Mark Barberio, Paul Byron, any expiring UFA contract, if they net a draft pick, they’re for sale. Come one come all to Marc’s Ka-Razy Rental Sale. Damaged, floor-model RFA’s on hand too, ready to go. We have a like-new Devo demo, barely used, still not broken in, can be had for a song.
5) http://nhllotterysimulator.com/
The Leafs won where it counted. It took two draws for them to get the #2. Three draws for us to get the #3.
The Sens got first overall on the first draw, Oilers third.
6) More Tavis Smiley: "I was on one of the Sunday morning shows, and within hours (Donald Trump) had tweeted about me, based on his not liking what I'd said about him on this show..."
"So you probably said some facts...", interjects Trevor Noah.
BREAKING NEWS: Milan Lucic says it wasn't his fault.
He tried his best to defend himself. He didn't do anything wrong, it was just a mean wefewee picking on poor wittle Miwan.
But the League didn't buy it, suspending him for a whopping one games. Take that, you out-of-control menace.
Not to make excuses for him, heaven forfend, but these kind of incidents result from the pervasive, continual slashing that happens in the NHL. Everyone's always slashing everyone else, it's meant to replace defence and positioning. If you're not slashing your guy, you're not covering him.
Playing along the boards, guys don't necessarily try to play the puck, or steal it away from someone else, they just slash and slash and hack at the other guy, the other guy's stick. You have to make a 'strong play', not stickhandle.
In the scramble in front of the net, there are crosschecks, slashes, a thicket of hockey sticks being used against one another.
So Kevin Connauton, in the process of doing his thing, conducting his business, matriculating the puck away from his goalie, hacked at the King standing there, and got him in a sensitive spot, probably his bony wrist, where the lightweight gloves they wear nowadays offer no protection.
Ape Milan goes apespit, but was the Kevin Connauton slash especially grave, or even noteworthy?
Not according to Daddy Campbell's rules (emphasis mine):
How are referees supposed to interpret this, control it, when Don Cherry blowhards that they should "let them play"? That they shouldn't 'inject themselves in the game'?
On the one hand, it wasn't particularly aggressive swinging of the stick. Certainly didn't seem exceptional, taken in context with all the other slashing. Was he trying to non-aggressively make contact with Milan's pants or shin pads and miss?
He did swing his stick at an opponent and make contact, but it certainly wasn't a forceful or powerful chop. Nazem Kadri wouldn't have bothered diving if he'd been slashed that softly, even he would think that wouldn't sell.
The Coyote defender tried to slash the stick of the Bruin so he couldn't control the puck. That's par for the course in hockey. We used to do that all the time when I was growing up, you just had to make sure it wasn't too hard, or else it would make too loud a sound and then the ref would penalize the decibels. Nowadays, guys stare at you murderously if you do that in garage league play, because there's a good chance you could have snapped their $200 stick. But in the NHL? Play ball!
No, the only thing that made this play anything but routine is that it gave Milan an ouchy, and he don't like ouchies. They smart.
Of course, Milan, in his worldview, is allowed to spear opponents in the crotch, willy-nilly, and then rely on the fact that they wear a cup to sleep good at night. It doesn't hurt since they wear pro'. But you caught me where my pro' didn't pro'tect me, so here's a right cross to the kisser from behind. Justice shan't be denied.
Did Milan get a penalty for attempt to injure though? Because that's definitely in the books. And that never gets applied.
The NHL is too busy getting 4K cameras mounted on the boards to ensure a player isn't a millimetre offside at the blue line. That's the big emergency that's plaguing the league. Ensuring a streaking talented player doesn't get a chance to score too easy. We have to give those defensive five man teams 'standing up at the blue line' a fair shake.
Gary Bettman is too busy trying to get John Scott out of the All-Star Game as a favour to his Coyote buddies, then backpedaling and covering his tracks and convincing us that there was never an issue, John Scott was an All-Star all along. He's not mad he and his garbage league got punk'd by the fans, not at all. And if you'd stop interrupting him and letting him finish, he'd evade and smarmily lecture the subject to something else, please and thank you.
But the League didn't buy it, suspending him for a whopping one games. Take that, you out-of-control menace.
Not to make excuses for him, heaven forfend, but these kind of incidents result from the pervasive, continual slashing that happens in the NHL. Everyone's always slashing everyone else, it's meant to replace defence and positioning. If you're not slashing your guy, you're not covering him.
Playing along the boards, guys don't necessarily try to play the puck, or steal it away from someone else, they just slash and slash and hack at the other guy, the other guy's stick. You have to make a 'strong play', not stickhandle.
In the scramble in front of the net, there are crosschecks, slashes, a thicket of hockey sticks being used against one another.
So Kevin Connauton, in the process of doing his thing, conducting his business, matriculating the puck away from his goalie, hacked at the King standing there, and got him in a sensitive spot, probably his bony wrist, where the lightweight gloves they wear nowadays offer no protection.
Ape Milan goes apespit, but was the Kevin Connauton slash especially grave, or even noteworthy?
Not according to Daddy Campbell's rules (emphasis mine):
Rule 61 – Slashing
61.1 Slashing - Slashing is the act of a player swinging his stick at an
opponent, whether contact is made or not. Non-aggressive stick
contact to the pant or front of the shin pads, should not be penalized
as slashing. Any forceful or powerful chop with the stick on an
opponent’s body, the opponent’s stick, or on or near the opponent’s
hands that, in the judgment of the Referee, is not an attempt to play
the puck, shall be penalized as slashing.
61.2 Minor Penalty - A minor penalty, at the discretion of the Referee
based on the severity of the contact, shall be imposed on a player
who slashes an opponent.
61.3 Major Penalty - A major penalty, at the discretion of the Referee
based on the severity of the contact, shall be imposed on a player
who slashes an opponent. When injury occurs, a major penalty must
be assessed under this rule (see 61.5).
61.4 Match Penalty – The Referee, at his discretion, may assess a match
penalty if, in his judgment, the player attempted to or deliberately
injured his opponent by slashing.
How are referees supposed to interpret this, control it, when Don Cherry blowhards that they should "let them play"? That they shouldn't 'inject themselves in the game'?
On the one hand, it wasn't particularly aggressive swinging of the stick. Certainly didn't seem exceptional, taken in context with all the other slashing. Was he trying to non-aggressively make contact with Milan's pants or shin pads and miss?
He did swing his stick at an opponent and make contact, but it certainly wasn't a forceful or powerful chop. Nazem Kadri wouldn't have bothered diving if he'd been slashed that softly, even he would think that wouldn't sell.
The Coyote defender tried to slash the stick of the Bruin so he couldn't control the puck. That's par for the course in hockey. We used to do that all the time when I was growing up, you just had to make sure it wasn't too hard, or else it would make too loud a sound and then the ref would penalize the decibels. Nowadays, guys stare at you murderously if you do that in garage league play, because there's a good chance you could have snapped their $200 stick. But in the NHL? Play ball!
No, the only thing that made this play anything but routine is that it gave Milan an ouchy, and he don't like ouchies. They smart.
Of course, Milan, in his worldview, is allowed to spear opponents in the crotch, willy-nilly, and then rely on the fact that they wear a cup to sleep good at night. It doesn't hurt since they wear pro'. But you caught me where my pro' didn't pro'tect me, so here's a right cross to the kisser from behind. Justice shan't be denied.
Did Milan get a penalty for attempt to injure though? Because that's definitely in the books. And that never gets applied.
The NHL is too busy getting 4K cameras mounted on the boards to ensure a player isn't a millimetre offside at the blue line. That's the big emergency that's plaguing the league. Ensuring a streaking talented player doesn't get a chance to score too easy. We have to give those defensive five man teams 'standing up at the blue line' a fair shake.
Gary Bettman is too busy trying to get John Scott out of the All-Star Game as a favour to his Coyote buddies, then backpedaling and covering his tracks and convincing us that there was never an issue, John Scott was an All-Star all along. He's not mad he and his garbage league got punk'd by the fans, not at all. And if you'd stop interrupting him and letting him finish, he'd evade and smarmily lecture the subject to something else, please and thank you.
Game 49: Canadiens 2, Blue Jackets 5
I'm Canadiens Expressing it on RDS, since the full broadcast was blacked out for the good of "our game". Thank you Gary Bettman. Actually saved me some aggravation, got through this 5-2 loss to the Blue Jackets much more expediently, mercifully.
16:30 -- Great play by Andrei Markov, staying at the offensive blue line and derailing a zone exit by the Blue Jackets, intercepting a pass as he so often does, baiting an opponent to try sliding the puck past him, then striking with his stick like a cobra.
It's been tough watching him lately, not sure what's been the matter, but I think too many are writing him off too soon. Andrei has many gifts, and one of his greatest, his sense of the game, his hockey I.Q., his anticipation, his dekes and feinting, his passing, those won't fade. His brain is still able to process the game at an elite level. All we need to do is manage his minutes, the situations he's put in, so that he's 100% when we need him, like on the powerplay.
16:15 -- Great backcheck by Daniel Carr. David Desharnais had a good one early on too, foiled a 3-on-2, intercepted a pass and put a stop an incipient threat.
11:15--Brian Flynn, Torrey Mitchell and Devante Smith-Pelly, three righties on one line. Not more than a couple seasons ago, we didn't have enough righties up front or on the blue line. Now it's almost the reverse.
10:45--Knee-on-knee by René Bourque on Torrey Mitchell, on a classic attempt at a face-on bodycheck. Those never work, the intended victim sees the hit coming, veers aside, and then the defender often feels like he can't let his opponent go by him unimpeded, so the knee comes out.
That play should be an automatic major. And I guess if it was, the refs would never call it, the consequences being too great, likely to attract the wrath of Don Cherry. I love the NHL.
And René, ease off buddy. Keep those assaults directed at Torts.
9:21--Brendan Gallagher, on a 5-on-3, banks one in off Gregory 'Sonny Boy' Campbell. Couldn't happen to a nicer worthless plug.
7:40--Lars Eller rips a shot, pings it off the post. Someone check it for a dent.
I'll ask again: was he sulking the entire start of the season? He looks transformed, goes towards the net with the puck. Awesome.
5:20--On the Blue Jackets' tying goal, you could play the classic circus music, or "Yakkety Sax", with all the Canadiens running around. #1 line didn't look great, with that puck pinballing around until it was fired in Mike Condon's net.
16:30 -- Great play by Andrei Markov, staying at the offensive blue line and derailing a zone exit by the Blue Jackets, intercepting a pass as he so often does, baiting an opponent to try sliding the puck past him, then striking with his stick like a cobra.
It's been tough watching him lately, not sure what's been the matter, but I think too many are writing him off too soon. Andrei has many gifts, and one of his greatest, his sense of the game, his hockey I.Q., his anticipation, his dekes and feinting, his passing, those won't fade. His brain is still able to process the game at an elite level. All we need to do is manage his minutes, the situations he's put in, so that he's 100% when we need him, like on the powerplay.
16:15 -- Great backcheck by Daniel Carr. David Desharnais had a good one early on too, foiled a 3-on-2, intercepted a pass and put a stop an incipient threat.
11:15--Brian Flynn, Torrey Mitchell and Devante Smith-Pelly, three righties on one line. Not more than a couple seasons ago, we didn't have enough righties up front or on the blue line. Now it's almost the reverse.
10:45--Knee-on-knee by René Bourque on Torrey Mitchell, on a classic attempt at a face-on bodycheck. Those never work, the intended victim sees the hit coming, veers aside, and then the defender often feels like he can't let his opponent go by him unimpeded, so the knee comes out.
That play should be an automatic major. And I guess if it was, the refs would never call it, the consequences being too great, likely to attract the wrath of Don Cherry. I love the NHL.
And René, ease off buddy. Keep those assaults directed at Torts.
9:21--Brendan Gallagher, on a 5-on-3, banks one in off Gregory 'Sonny Boy' Campbell. Couldn't happen to a nicer worthless plug.
7:40--Lars Eller rips a shot, pings it off the post. Someone check it for a dent.
I'll ask again: was he sulking the entire start of the season? He looks transformed, goes towards the net with the puck. Awesome.
5:20--On the Blue Jackets' tying goal, you could play the classic circus music, or "Yakkety Sax", with all the Canadiens running around. #1 line didn't look great, with that puck pinballing around until it was fired in Mike Condon's net.
Second Period
17:15--I have to agree with Pierre Houde and Marc Denis, Torrey Mitchell doesn't look completely recovered from that shot he took off his foot.
11:24--P.K. ties the game with a blast from the red line that fools Columbus' rookie goalie. And then takes an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for a shove at an oncoming Brandon Dubinsky.
And Gally has to be the more mature one here, who tries to calm down P.K., talk him down, get him under control.
I'd be really mad, and go off on a rant about P.K. normally, except that it's frigging Brandon Dubinsky, a player who makes a living elbowing Sidney Crosby in the head. And getting slurped by play-by-play guys as being "tough to play against". Unless the refs called the penalties, then he'd be really easy to play against.
I'll say it again: so much of this nonsense occurs because the NHL insists that player benches be on the same side of the ice. At every stoppage, every line change, a Brad Marchand or Chris Neil or Steve Ott or Brandon Dubinsky gets to 'instigate' with a push or a slash or shove or whatever. And it's not hockey. It gives the goons and the rats more of an opportunity to ply their trade.
Every arena that comes on line should separate the benches, have them be on opposite sides of the rink.
But 'Daddy Campbell' is in the business of selling hate, so...
Third period
10:54--I've seen Jeff Petry shrug and look up at the sky/ceiling in frustration after a goal a little too often for my liking lately. Blue Jackets, the worst team in the league, with their valiant coach unavailable, along with both of their goalies, take a 3-2 lead.
1:12--Cue up "Yakety Sax" again on that extra-skater goal.
0:25--Cam Atkinson completes his hat trick to make it 5-2.
Monsieur Bergevin, please fold your hand on this season, monetize some of our expiring contracts/assets, swap them for picks and prospects.
I don't like this team anyway, that is a soft touch and an inviting target for bullies. It was fun when they raced out to a 9-0 start and were roadrunnering every other team, but it certainly feels like that was the blip, and this anemically-scoring squad is the true identity.
I'd point out that our rookie goalie posted a .833 SV%, while their rookie chipped in a .941, but I'm starting to feel it's no use.
Monday, 25 January 2016
Grammar Minute 4
Grammar rant: The Albany Devils play-by-play dude used the phrase “answer back”, which I loathe, it makes me shudder.
It’s such a redundancy, like ‘free gift’, or ‘good goal’, in hockey parlance. Either it’s a goal or it isn’t a goal, Mr. Referee.
And a team, after being scored on, can be said to need to ‘answer’ with a goal of their own, to reply with a goal, or score right back. But not ‘answer back’. For that usage to be correct, maybe, you’d need one team to score, then the other to answer, at which point you could say the first team now needs to answer back.
It’s like ‘re-aggravate’. It’s such a sportscaster move, to add syllables to a word and assume that makes it more cromulent. A player gets hurt, and then makes the injury worse a while later. He has aggravated the injury, made it more grave, or re-injured it. If he then re-injured it again, maybe you could say he re-aggravated it, but it would be just as correct to say he aggravated it, again made it worse.
There, all done now. Don’t we all feel more better?
It’s such a redundancy, like ‘free gift’, or ‘good goal’, in hockey parlance. Either it’s a goal or it isn’t a goal, Mr. Referee.
And a team, after being scored on, can be said to need to ‘answer’ with a goal of their own, to reply with a goal, or score right back. But not ‘answer back’. For that usage to be correct, maybe, you’d need one team to score, then the other to answer, at which point you could say the first team now needs to answer back.
It’s like ‘re-aggravate’. It’s such a sportscaster move, to add syllables to a word and assume that makes it more cromulent. A player gets hurt, and then makes the injury worse a while later. He has aggravated the injury, made it more grave, or re-injured it. If he then re-injured it again, maybe you could say he re-aggravated it, but it would be just as correct to say he aggravated it, again made it worse.
There, all done now. Don’t we all feel more better?
Still more Jarred Tinordi recriminations.
(23 January 2016)
I’m still stewing over this.
Let’s say you have a fleet of taxis out on the road, 24-7-365. You’re making good revenue, but there are good and bad days, rainy days where you get a sales spike, Christmas time when you can barely keep up, summertime when everyone’s on vacation. But you keep hitting your numbers, and skillfully making a little extra so that everyone nets a bonus, year after year.
Except that your fleet maintenance manager is ragging you to pull cars off the road for a couple of days apiece, he needs to check and replace some ball joints here and there, he’s noticed a few shocks leaking and sagging, other things are cropping up he wants to stay on top of. He says it’ll save money in the long run.
You reply with a classic P.J. O’Rourke line you use often: “Save money in the long run!? Why don’t you save us some money right now?!” You can’t have cars not cruising around out there, not bringing in revenue, you can’t take the hit, it’ll make it really hard to hit the numbers, to make budget. The best you can do for him is to bring in units when you absolutely have to, to do a quick oil change, and if he can get around to a couple things then, great, but otherwise you direct him to put the cabs back out on the street A.S.A.P.
So you’ll eke out another year or two of marginally better revenue, because every cab will be out there 364 days a year or thereabouts, you’re missing a couple of half days for the necessary maintenance, but otherwise you’re really squeezing that lemon.
Until you start having your cabs blow gaskets and throw rods, and have to redo the whole front end or some you have to junk because the rust got in there, and you now have a fleet of unreliable cabs that are breaking down on you and are regularly out of service and customer aren’t happy and neither are drivers, and you’re now facing an earlier than anticipated requirement to replace your fleet.
My tortured analogy is what I think the Canadiens mishandled with respect to Jarred Tinordi. When push came to shove this year, we didn’t ease him in the rotation. We didn’t accept that by doing so, even if we weren’t icing the very best, most-markoved D-corps possible, and even if we were marginally less likely to bring back two points, we’d be better off in the long run. We kept riding P.K. and Andrei, we avoided taking the small hit to give the big lug games, icetime, and get him going. We were strictly short-term oriented, vs. the more reasonable, successful long-term. We kept putting the cabs out there, squeezing the lemon.
NHL abashes into the only decision it corner-painted itself into.
(January 21, 2016)
That sound you heard just now, that was the NHL backpedaling out of the edifice of lying it was trying to erect.
There's lots of blame to go around, everyone and everything got sprayed by a Glendale skunk on this one.
Marc Bergevin made a poor decision by trading Jarred Tinordi for a handful of beans. He shouldn’t have touched John Scott, involved himself in any manner with that clown of a terrible player, with that whole gong show.
That Gary Bettman didn’t have the cojones to come out and invoke his power as a Commissioner to negate the trolling/voting campaign for John Scott, for the good of the game, that’s another instance to add to the sorry legacy he’s left, like the goo a slug tracks on the ground. He chose to go for the underhanded backroom double-dealing approach instance, as is his scurrilous habit.
That Don Maloney wanted to be rid of this embarrassment, wanted his moribund franchise to be represented by someone else than one of his mistakes as a GM at the All Star Game, that was his issue, we didn’t need to get dragged into it. We didn’t have to get involved in his efforts to get Shane Doan off on his farewell tour.
Now for both of these guys to pretend that it was a hockey trade, that there were no other considerations, that the League didn’t have its finger in the air checking which way the wind was blowing before making an arbitrary decision on whether the allow John Scott to appear in the game, it’s a bunch of baloney.
And I don’t buy John Scott as the regular Joe good-guy who’s a victim in all this. He’s a target, a pawn of this Punk’d campaign because he’s a terrible player, a joke that shines a spotlight on how poorly the NHL is run. And contrary to many other enforcers, he has a tinge of nasty, he’s a bully who does pick on players who have no interest in tangling with him. It’s not just the Phil Kessel incident, it’s every time he’s on the ice he’s slashing and crosschecking in a scrum, with an adversary he towers over and who did nothing to attract that attention.
To believe Don Maloney when he says he had no ulterior motive beyond strict hockey reasons for trading John Scott is to be credulous. The Phoenix GM wanted to wash his hands of this mess, fine, but he wears this one, he shouldn’t micturate on my leg and tell me it’s a bracing spring shower.
Marc Bergevin should have held on the Jarred Tinordi instead of giving up on him. And he should have clamped and duct-taped several ten-foot poles together and stayed clear of the John Scott mess.
That sound you heard just now, that was the NHL backpedaling out of the edifice of lying it was trying to erect.
NEW YORK – John Scott will captain the Pacific Division team at the 2016 Honda NHL All-Star Weekend in Nashville, the National Hockey League announced today.Scott, elected to the Pacific Division captaincy in fan voting while a member of the Arizona Coyotes, was traded Friday to the Montreal Canadiens of the Atlantic Division. The resultant change in division, and Scott's subsequent assignment to the American Hockey League, created a unique circumstance that required review – the result of which was a determination to maintain the status quo for the All-Star weekend in order to preserve all parties' pre-existing expectations, including Scott’s desire to participate.
There's lots of blame to go around, everyone and everything got sprayed by a Glendale skunk on this one.
Marc Bergevin made a poor decision by trading Jarred Tinordi for a handful of beans. He shouldn’t have touched John Scott, involved himself in any manner with that clown of a terrible player, with that whole gong show.
That Gary Bettman didn’t have the cojones to come out and invoke his power as a Commissioner to negate the trolling/voting campaign for John Scott, for the good of the game, that’s another instance to add to the sorry legacy he’s left, like the goo a slug tracks on the ground. He chose to go for the underhanded backroom double-dealing approach instance, as is his scurrilous habit.
That Don Maloney wanted to be rid of this embarrassment, wanted his moribund franchise to be represented by someone else than one of his mistakes as a GM at the All Star Game, that was his issue, we didn’t need to get dragged into it. We didn’t have to get involved in his efforts to get Shane Doan off on his farewell tour.
Now for both of these guys to pretend that it was a hockey trade, that there were no other considerations, that the League didn’t have its finger in the air checking which way the wind was blowing before making an arbitrary decision on whether the allow John Scott to appear in the game, it’s a bunch of baloney.
And I don’t buy John Scott as the regular Joe good-guy who’s a victim in all this. He’s a target, a pawn of this Punk’d campaign because he’s a terrible player, a joke that shines a spotlight on how poorly the NHL is run. And contrary to many other enforcers, he has a tinge of nasty, he’s a bully who does pick on players who have no interest in tangling with him. It’s not just the Phil Kessel incident, it’s every time he’s on the ice he’s slashing and crosschecking in a scrum, with an adversary he towers over and who did nothing to attract that attention.
To believe Don Maloney when he says he had no ulterior motive beyond strict hockey reasons for trading John Scott is to be credulous. The Phoenix GM wanted to wash his hands of this mess, fine, but he wears this one, he shouldn’t micturate on my leg and tell me it’s a bracing spring shower.
Marc Bergevin should have held on the Jarred Tinordi instead of giving up on him. And he should have clamped and duct-taped several ten-foot poles together and stayed clear of the John Scott mess.
Should the Canadiens draft a centre over any other position next June?
The Canadiens' precipitous drop in the standings has shone a harsh glare on the shortcomings of the roster. As always, it highlights the lack of a #1 centre, preferably of a large-ish size. To the point that some fans are beating the drum for le bleu-blanc-rouge to draft centres, almost exclusively, in the next draft. Which leads me to ask, do you remember the 1998 draft?
Apparently when our turn came up in the first round of that auction, the choice came down to Simon Gagné or Éric Chouinard, teammates on les Remparts. The deciding factor caused us to go for Mr. Chouinard over the smaller winger, to the fill the need for “un gros joueur de centre”, that elusive beast we’ve been tracking since we traded away Peter Mahovlich. Ever since then, we’ve never not tried to obtain him, despite Doug Wickenheiser and Bobby Smith.
We then compounded our mistake by taking Mike Ribeiro (gag!) in the second round, when Brad Richards was still on the board, if we wanted a local boy centre. The latter was apparently undervalued, everyone thought he was riding the coattails of Vincent Lecavalier, getting easy assignments while other teams keyed on the eventual first overall pick. Apparently, the Tampa scouts who spent a lot of time on Rimouski that year were asking each other “Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Is that Richards kid really that good?”
So anyway, forget about drafting centres, just grab the best player available.
But of course, in 2003, the Canadiens grabbed the best pure talent still available, Andrei Kostitsyn, who we were tickled was still available at #10. And we overlooked centres Jeff Carter, Ryan Getzlaf, Ryan Kesler, Mike Richards, Bryan Boyle, and Patrice Bergeron. So forget what I just said…
Apparently when our turn came up in the first round of that auction, the choice came down to Simon Gagné or Éric Chouinard, teammates on les Remparts. The deciding factor caused us to go for Mr. Chouinard over the smaller winger, to the fill the need for “un gros joueur de centre”, that elusive beast we’ve been tracking since we traded away Peter Mahovlich. Ever since then, we’ve never not tried to obtain him, despite Doug Wickenheiser and Bobby Smith.
We then compounded our mistake by taking Mike Ribeiro (gag!) in the second round, when Brad Richards was still on the board, if we wanted a local boy centre. The latter was apparently undervalued, everyone thought he was riding the coattails of Vincent Lecavalier, getting easy assignments while other teams keyed on the eventual first overall pick. Apparently, the Tampa scouts who spent a lot of time on Rimouski that year were asking each other “Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Is that Richards kid really that good?”
So anyway, forget about drafting centres, just grab the best player available.
But of course, in 2003, the Canadiens grabbed the best pure talent still available, Andrei Kostitsyn, who we were tickled was still available at #10. And we overlooked centres Jeff Carter, Ryan Getzlaf, Ryan Kesler, Mike Richards, Bryan Boyle, and Patrice Bergeron. So forget what I just said…
Canucks get Emerson Etem for Nicklas Jensen, we get John Scott for Jarred Tinordi.
Ryan Miller stopped 46 of 49 shots last night and earned the Canucks a point they didn’t quite deserve in a 3-2 OT loss to the Rangers. Jacob Markstrom has been playing well (.922 Save % for the season, even better lately), and Ryan Miller has been on fire since he came back from injury, withstanding 50 shot barrages against the Caps and Rangers to get 3 out of 4 points.
I still rue that the Canadiens didn’t snap up Jacob Markstrom when the Canucks waived him out of the 2014 camp, one-way contract and all. I figured all that potential and 6’6″ frame could be run through the stephanewaiteificator and realized.
And while I’m ruing, I still am having indigestion over the Jarred Tinordi trade. The Canucks’ Jim Benning managed to convert one of his first rounders who’s been lagging in his development, Nicklas Jensen, another great Dane, who’s passed through waivers already, plus a seventh-round pick, into Emerson Etem, a big speedy winger who also isn’t setting the world on fire, but has a chance to play bigger minutes and ‘fit’ better on their roster than the Rangers’, replete as it is with Hayeses and Kreiderses.
Emerson Etem is exactly the kind of player who I’d be okay with as a return for Jarred Tinordi. I know the Rangers wouldn’t have made that deal, they already are dealing with Dylan McIlrath on their blueline, but this kind of dealing surplus for a need. Instead of surplus for Wat(ley)?
Last year, there was a lot of angst over the Jiri Sekac trade, and I was sorry to see the guy go, I thought he was exactly the kind of piece we needed on our roster, but I understood the trade. We flipped a LW for a bigger RW, surplus for a need. I was on board.
If we were going to get such pitiful return for Jarred, and be saddled with the joke that John Scott is, we should have kept him, stashed on our roster, and used him when we, um, I don’t know, needed to spell Andrei when he faltered, maybe, or when Nathan was banged up and needed a break.
Think of it this way.
You have a ’63 Corvette, the one with the split rear window, in really good shape all in all, on blocks in your backyard driveway. You purchased it at what you thought was a price you couldn’t pass up. You knew it would take some work, some time, but it would pay off in the end.
Turns out it’s going to take a little more work than you thought, but in the meantime your attention has been on other matters, stuff that always comes up. Best intentions and all. But you know that when you get around to it, it will all have been worthwhile.
Except that the wife has been giving you the look, pushing you to either get down to business, or sell it, clear it off the property. You kind of don’t want to sell, but you get what she’s saying, don’t really resent her for making that case.
So you put it on the market, and get few nibbles, some jokers come around and offer risible amounts. They think they have you over a barrel. You want to chase them out of your yard with an axe handle.
So you sit down with your wife, explain the situation, and come to an agreement, a timetable. You don’t need to get rid of the ‘Vette. You’d have sold to the right buyer. But in the current situation, you’re much better off holding on to it and seeing the project through.
And a year down the road, while riding in style on Sunday drive, after many swear jar incidents, bashed knuckles, and extra little investments, your wife agrees that it was the right decision to not fire-sale it.
I thought when Marc Bergevin took over, and we worked all the Bob Gainey and Pierre Gauthier mistakes out of the system, that we’d slow and steady our way to perennial contender status.
The way we mishandled Jarred feels a lot like Sisyphus’ boulder rolling over top of us all the way back down the hill, to my estimation.
I still rue that the Canadiens didn’t snap up Jacob Markstrom when the Canucks waived him out of the 2014 camp, one-way contract and all. I figured all that potential and 6’6″ frame could be run through the stephanewaiteificator and realized.
And while I’m ruing, I still am having indigestion over the Jarred Tinordi trade. The Canucks’ Jim Benning managed to convert one of his first rounders who’s been lagging in his development, Nicklas Jensen, another great Dane, who’s passed through waivers already, plus a seventh-round pick, into Emerson Etem, a big speedy winger who also isn’t setting the world on fire, but has a chance to play bigger minutes and ‘fit’ better on their roster than the Rangers’, replete as it is with Hayeses and Kreiderses.
Emerson Etem is exactly the kind of player who I’d be okay with as a return for Jarred Tinordi. I know the Rangers wouldn’t have made that deal, they already are dealing with Dylan McIlrath on their blueline, but this kind of dealing surplus for a need. Instead of surplus for Wat(ley)?
Last year, there was a lot of angst over the Jiri Sekac trade, and I was sorry to see the guy go, I thought he was exactly the kind of piece we needed on our roster, but I understood the trade. We flipped a LW for a bigger RW, surplus for a need. I was on board.
If we were going to get such pitiful return for Jarred, and be saddled with the joke that John Scott is, we should have kept him, stashed on our roster, and used him when we, um, I don’t know, needed to spell Andrei when he faltered, maybe, or when Nathan was banged up and needed a break.
Think of it this way.
You have a ’63 Corvette, the one with the split rear window, in really good shape all in all, on blocks in your backyard driveway. You purchased it at what you thought was a price you couldn’t pass up. You knew it would take some work, some time, but it would pay off in the end.
Turns out it’s going to take a little more work than you thought, but in the meantime your attention has been on other matters, stuff that always comes up. Best intentions and all. But you know that when you get around to it, it will all have been worthwhile.
Except that the wife has been giving you the look, pushing you to either get down to business, or sell it, clear it off the property. You kind of don’t want to sell, but you get what she’s saying, don’t really resent her for making that case.
So you put it on the market, and get few nibbles, some jokers come around and offer risible amounts. They think they have you over a barrel. You want to chase them out of your yard with an axe handle.
So you sit down with your wife, explain the situation, and come to an agreement, a timetable. You don’t need to get rid of the ‘Vette. You’d have sold to the right buyer. But in the current situation, you’re much better off holding on to it and seeing the project through.
And a year down the road, while riding in style on Sunday drive, after many swear jar incidents, bashed knuckles, and extra little investments, your wife agrees that it was the right decision to not fire-sale it.
I thought when Marc Bergevin took over, and we worked all the Bob Gainey and Pierre Gauthier mistakes out of the system, that we’d slow and steady our way to perennial contender status.
The way we mishandled Jarred feels a lot like Sisyphus’ boulder rolling over top of us all the way back down the hill, to my estimation.
Fundaments of a losing streak, Part 3.
(January 19, 2016)
Bruce Arthur explained today that the Canadiens really aren’t playing that badly.
A lot of their woes can be attributed to the fact that since Carey was re-injured, Mike Condon and Dustin Tokarski went into a prolonged swoon (to be kind), out of which the goalies are just pulling out of. Mike had four or five games recently where he pitched a combined .950 or thereabouts, before another blip the last three games.
At the same time, their shooting percentage during the same interval has been at the bottom of the league too. This is one of the stats that is flaky, tends to be luck-driven, in that it’s not reliable from game to game or year to year. Stats-heads warned us about this after Patrick Roy’s triumphant first season as head coach, or the Leafs in 2013-14, how their high shooting percentage were unsustainable, and that they were poised for a(n 18-wheeler going over a cliff) fall.
So again, if we had had even average goaltending during this losing streak, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Remember how after the hot start people were saying all we needed to do was play .500 hockey for the rest of the season? That’s where we’d be, if we had had a decent, reliable backup goalie.
Now, I don’t “blame” the goalies and rest this streak solely on not having Carey Price. ‘Blame’ is too strong a word.
I don’t think we should blame Mike Condon and Dustin Tokarski, and now Ben Scrivens, since they are trying hard, doing the best they can. I think that’s what Michel Therrien was getting at when he said his goalies lacked experience, he wasn’t so much pointing the finger as much as he was trying to explain, to protect them.
If anyone should be blamed, it would be Marc Bergevin, and I wouldn’t go that far also. I think the GM took a calculated risk, figuring that a young goalie could spell Carey very well for 12-15 games this season, that it would be a waste of cap space to get a more proven, experienced, and expensive backup goalie. He decided to allocated his resources elsewhere, which is defensible. It just didn’t work out for him.
But it’s inarguable that our backup goalies haven’t, on the whole, done the job. I’d be okay with adequate goaltending, and we haven’t gotten that by and large, it’s been well below average.
Bruce Arthur explained today that the Canadiens really aren’t playing that badly.
Bruce Arthur
Funny thing for Montreal: They won with bad possession numbers last year. Last 25 games this year: ANA, 55.4CF%. LAK, 55.4%. MTL: 54.65%.
Over that 25-game span, Montreal's also 28th in 5 on 5 save percentage, 29th in 5 on 5 shooting percentage, 30th in the ol' PDO.
A lot of their woes can be attributed to the fact that since Carey was re-injured, Mike Condon and Dustin Tokarski went into a prolonged swoon (to be kind), out of which the goalies are just pulling out of. Mike had four or five games recently where he pitched a combined .950 or thereabouts, before another blip the last three games.
At the same time, their shooting percentage during the same interval has been at the bottom of the league too. This is one of the stats that is flaky, tends to be luck-driven, in that it’s not reliable from game to game or year to year. Stats-heads warned us about this after Patrick Roy’s triumphant first season as head coach, or the Leafs in 2013-14, how their high shooting percentage were unsustainable, and that they were poised for a(n 18-wheeler going over a cliff) fall.
So again, if we had had even average goaltending during this losing streak, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Remember how after the hot start people were saying all we needed to do was play .500 hockey for the rest of the season? That’s where we’d be, if we had had a decent, reliable backup goalie.
Now, I don’t “blame” the goalies and rest this streak solely on not having Carey Price. ‘Blame’ is too strong a word.
I don’t think we should blame Mike Condon and Dustin Tokarski, and now Ben Scrivens, since they are trying hard, doing the best they can. I think that’s what Michel Therrien was getting at when he said his goalies lacked experience, he wasn’t so much pointing the finger as much as he was trying to explain, to protect them.
If anyone should be blamed, it would be Marc Bergevin, and I wouldn’t go that far also. I think the GM took a calculated risk, figuring that a young goalie could spell Carey very well for 12-15 games this season, that it would be a waste of cap space to get a more proven, experienced, and expensive backup goalie. He decided to allocated his resources elsewhere, which is defensible. It just didn’t work out for him.
But it’s inarguable that our backup goalies haven’t, on the whole, done the job. I’d be okay with adequate goaltending, and we haven’t gotten that by and large, it’s been well below average.
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