The Two-Line Pass

Know who’s getting screwed by this economic crisis, and not just financially? It’s you!

Well, not you, specifically. But hockey fans and the NHL itself. Everywhere across the country, the NHL beat is getting cut from major newspapers.

In Florida, the Palm Beach Post reassigned Panthers beat writer Brian Briggane to the Miami Dolphins and will no longer staff home or away games, instead relying on those always-interesting AP stories, or worse, dumping a short write-up of the games into the briefs on the agate page.

The Los Angeles Times, of all papers, will have just one hockey beatwriter to cover both the Kings and Ducks. Helene Elliott, a Hockey Hall of Famer, will stay on to do columns, but the Times likely felt it couldn’t let her go or reassign her only because she is in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and to do so would have been a travesty. The Times laid of 13 of its 135 employees off over the summer, and that included their Ducks guy.

But it’s not just the non-traditional hockey markets that are axing people. Even in Philadelphia, long-time writer at the Inquirer and a personal favorite of mine, Tim Panaccio, was strongarmed into accepting a buyout after being taken off the Flyers beat and put on the Eagles instead (which is just a despicable way to force someone out).

Panaccio says he was told by the newspaper’s sports editor, Jim Cohen, that hockey was “an irrelevant sport” and that in Philadelphia, the Eagles “far outweighed anything else.”

Panaccio was replaced on the Flyers beat by a former high school sports reporter who was the Philadelphia Phillies’ backup reporter.

A few other papers will see coverage reduced in word count or page space. What the smart papers, like the Washington Post, are doing is putting more coverage online (The Sports Bog and Tarik El Bashir’s Capitals Insider are also favorites of mine). This is a good idea and what every paper in the UNIVERSE should be doing.

And yeah, what the hell, this affects me too. I used to be the Bruins/pro hockey writer (closest thing they had anyway) for a medium-sized paper in Massachusetts and I got laid off a while ago too. Now, as I understand it, the paper will have minimal (if any) Bruins coverage until late in the season, save for the aforementioned AP stories. This blog was originally intended as a supplement to my coverage in that paper, but I saw the writing on the wall and went with anonymity for a few weeks while the paper slowly moved closer to axing a whole mess of people. I’ve debated continuing to keep my name out of all this, but I frankly don’t see the point any more. This whole industry’s a mess, and we as fans of the sport are just lucky the NHL has been so quick to embrace New Media.

So yeah, I’m Ryan Lambert and I used to be a hockey writer. What’s going on?

This is pretty much the only logical choice the Canucks could make. Vancouver needed a new guy to wear the C after seven-year captain Markus Naslund bolted for New York, and didn’t really have anyone left that could take over convincingly (read: Trevor Linden).

So the responsibility fell to Roberto Luongo, who can’t wear a letter on his jersey, as per NHL rules. Luongo is also only the fifth goalie in league history to receive the honor.

“I’m ready for that responsibility,” Luongo said. “I feel that last year, even though I didn’t have a letter, I was part of that leadership group.”

Because Luongo can’t have a letter on his jersey, Ryan Kesler, Mattias Ohlund and Willie Mitchell will all wear the A for games. If Luongo was smart, he’d stick a “C” on his helmet.

Here is a nice video about all this from the Canucks site. Mike Gillis credits Ryan Walter with getting this all squared away. It is also important to note, by the way, that this is certainly a move meant to discourage Luongo from hitting the market in two years when his Vancouver deal runs out. It worked on Naslund for as long as the Canucks found him useful.

Luongo is the first goalie to be team captain since 1947-48, when Bill Durnan of the Canadiens rocked the C proudly. Some might remember, and I think I am correct in saying this, that Durnan was the player that held the record for most consecutive shutout minutes before Brian Boucher broke it a few years ago. Durnan also wore two gloves that allowed him to catch the puck because he was ambidextrous. That’s all I know about Bill Durnan.

For the record, the other goalies to captain a team that were not Luongo or Durnan are John Ross Roach of the 1924-25 Toronto St. Pats, George Hainsworth of the 1932-33 Canadiens, and Charlie Gardiner of the 1933-34 Black Hawks.

We’re now something like five days out from the start of the NHL season, which means I have to kick these season previews into overdrive because I’m a lazy idiot. This is mainly for two reasons: 1) I am lazy and there’s no way I’ll do one of these every day, and 2) These started early enough that if I just stop doing them entirely you’ll have forgotten by October anyway. Oh and I guess also to show off my near-infinite knowledge of the National Hockey League. I’ll be previewing the teams in reverse order of finish in the 2007-08 season. Please note, though, that this is the opinion of one man, however smart and handsome he may be.

Buffalo Sabres, you’re on the clock.

I think this is probably the hardest team to get a read on in the NHL.

On the one hand, you’ve got loads and loads of talent. On the other, well, talent doesn’t always get you where it does on paper. Case in point, LAST year’s Buffalo Sabres, who despite losing just Chris Drury (meh), Dainus Zubrus (meh) and Dany Briere (actually damaging), saw their goal total drop from 298 in 2006-07 to 251 last season.

More after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now something like six days out from the start of the NHL season, which means I have to kick these season previews into overdrive because I’m a lazy idiot. This is mainly for two reasons: 1) I am lazy and there’s no way I’ll do one of these every day, and 2) These started early enough that if I just stop doing them entirely you’ll have forgotten by October anyway. Oh and I guess also to show off my near-infinite knowledge of the National Hockey League. I’ll be previewing the teams in reverse order of finish in the 2007-08 season. Please note, though, that this is the opinion of one man, however smart and handsome he may be.

Edmonton Oilers, you’re on the clock.

Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I am and have always been a Flames fan.

Here, then, is the most improved team in the NHL. Maybe not points-wise, but certainly personnel-wise.

Edmonton’s power play was just awful last year (16.6 percent) and as a consequence, it often relied upon its team’s incredible abilities to get to and then win the shootout over the last several years. It’s an often-repeated stat, but were it not for the shootout/overtime loss loser point, the team wouldn’t have even made the playoffs in 2005-06 when it went to the Stanley Cup Final.

More after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

RDS and Bob MacKenzie are reporting that Nikolai Khabulin is officially on waivers.

Frankly, I’m surprised. I could have SWORN the Blackhawks were going to drop $12.375 million on goaltending and leave promising young netminder Anti Niemi up in the press box to eat all the popcorn he wants. That made a lot more sense.

This flies in the face of everything the Blackhawks have been saying all summer. The link’s dead now, but earlier in the summer, I found an article where Chicago GM Dale Tallon said he had no plans to move either goalie (not that Huet, who just signed this year, was ever in danger of that). In fact, just the other day, the Chicago Tribune ran an article headed “NIKOLAI KHABIBULIN AND CRISTOBAL HUET IN BATTLE FOR BLACKHAWKS GOALIE JOB.”

“We have two great goalies here,” Savard said. “We’re very fortunate to have both of them. The best is going to play every night.”

So all that was a lie. What this means, of course, is that Chicago finally wised up and is now in the process of ridding itself of an albatross contract that it never should have signed in the first place. But no one’s going to want Khabibulin, at least not for $6.75 million. This has to be the first step in the buyout process. The only thing I can’t believe is how long it took to get to this point. They had to have known there was no way this was a tenable situation, right? I mean, almost SEVEN million for Nik Khabibulin? Really? Why would Chicago put it off this long, and lie to its fans in the process? It doesn’t make any sense.

Serious question: Is this the biggest non-surprise of the offseason?

Here is a live blog of the Bruins-Capitals preseason game in Boston at 4 p.m.

Want lines? Here are Washington’s, Boston’s are here.

All updates are below the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be live blogging the Bruins-Capitals game at 4 p.m.

Be there. Or don’t. Your call.

In a stunning move, the Thrashers have traded Ken Klee, Brad Larsen and a prospect of little consequence to Anaheim for Mathieu Schneider.

Well, okay, it’s not all that stunning. The Thrashers are now on the hook for Schneider’s $5.75 million contract but have the No. 1 defenseman they desperately needed, and the Ducks just saved themselves $3.7 million against the cap. That’s some Teemu Selanne money right there.

By adding Schneider, the Thrashers have essentially achieved their objective of dramatically changing their defense.

It is important to note, however, that “changing” and “improving” have two entirely separate definitions.

A top four of Schneider, Ron Hainsey, newly re-signed Tobias Enstrom, and (maybe) rookie Zach Bogosian isn’t bad by any means, but the Thrashers seem, at least by USA Today’s Kevin Allen’s reckoning, to be operating under the impression that they’ll have the remotest chance of making the playoffs. A clue: No. This is still a team with no forward depth and a very questionable goaltending situation, and having three puckrushing defensemen who range from good (Schneider) to iffy (Hainsey) in their own zone isn’t exactly the recipe for success that’s going to get the Thrashers out of the basement.

I hate to disagree with Kevin Allen, but even with this trade, the Thrashers are still the absolute worst team in the NHL and they’ll still score only about 150 more goals than Ilya Kovalchuk’s total. Call me when Atlanta trades for a center.

What this is for the Thrashers, really, is smart asset management. Come deadline time, they’ll be able to get a lot more for a few months of Mathieu Schneider, in his declining years though he is, than Ken Klee and Brad Larsen. If this is the best deal Burke could get, the five or six we heard about the other day had to have been just atrocious HFBoards-type proposals.

You’re probably going to hear a lot tomorrow about the hit Detroit’s Tomas Kopecky laid on Montreal defenseman Mathieu Carle (not to be confused with Tampa’s Matt Carle, though they play the same position. Someone pass that info to the Detroit color commentator).

Just five minutes into the Habs’ exhibition game, Carle carried the puck through the neutral zone down the right wing, dumped the puck in and less than a second later got demolished by a totally clean hit from Kopecky that he never saw coming. He was knocked unconcious and came back around about 15 minutes later while they were still working on him on the ice. He was taken off on a stretcher and brought to a Detroit hospital for further testing.

Watch the video for yourselves.

Some (namely Habs fans) will find the hit to be egregiously dirty. Others (namely objective observers who understand the sport) will say that it was perfectly clean, and that’s why players are taught to keep their friggin’ heads up in the neutral zone.

Anything that’s made of this is a total non-story. Even if the term “headhunting” is thrown around, it’s crazy talk. Don’t wanna get drilled, don’t put your head down. It’s that simple. Really.

Later in the game, Nicklas Lidstrom took a puck in the face and was also brought to the hospital. Yeesh. That could be bad, bad news for Detroit.

I remember how much I hated the last NHL.com redesign. I found it to be oddly laid out, clunky and at times difficult to navigate.

Not so with the new one. Everything looks great, and it’s more intuitive, especially (especially!) the stats page.

But what’s going to make NHL.com the ultimate official sports league website — and that’s not in any way hyperbolic — is the new GameCenter Live feature. This is literally going to be the worst thing that ever happened to my social life. Way worse than the way I acted and dressed in junior high.

Live video feeds with live stats, replay videos of hits, saves and goals appearing on an overview of the ice as they happen, full replays of what seems to be an extensive library of classic games, the ability to watch up to four games at once, in-game chat with other fans (won’t that be unbearable?), and best of all, the ability to view the same game from multiple camera angles. I don’t even know how they’re going to do that.

Yeah, it’s going to cost money, and it’s probably not going to be the same as Center Ice, but if this means I can watch five games at once (six with picture-in-picture!), I’m all for it. I don’t care what it costs, I’m buying this. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to purchase it yet, or even see how much it costs, but this can’t possibly be a bad thing. I am completely pumped for this.

The NHL gets criticized a lot in the blogosphere, and rightly so most of the time, but this is unquestionably awesome. Bravo.