The Two-Line Pass

The Edmonton Journal’s David Staples had an interesting blog post on Ales Hemsky’s contract, and why it is one of the best pieces of business Kevin Lowe did during his tenure as the Oilers’ general manager.

Here, he says, is a guy that’s scored close to a point a night when he’s been healthy over the last three years, and he’s locked up for another two seasons at an affordable $4.1 million dollars. That’s pretty good. Several fantasy hockey guides are also expecting him to have a breakout offensive year, which would only help the much-improved Oilers.

But here’s what Staples worries about: the team’s ability to protect Hemsky.

But when Pronger left, so did much of team’s edge.

Since then, in the past two years, Hemsky has taken a number of savage hits, many of them illegal late hits, partly because of his propensity to overhandle the puck, which gives time for various thugs to line him up, but also because other teams have feared no retribution.

Thus, Staples posits, Hemsky’s going to play like 50 games before someone drills him badly. It’s already happened a lot of times. A Youtube search for “Hemsky hit” bears that out. “Nasty hit on Ales Hemsky by Robyn Regehr,” “Boogaard vs. Edmonton, Hemsky,” “Ott hits Hemsky,” “Ohlund hit on Hemsky,” Beachemin hit on Hemsky.” That’s Hemmer getting roughed up by some big, mean boys.

It might be a little unfair to put Edmonton’s offensive hopes all on Hemsky, but if he goes down (and should he keep taking hits like that, he will), the Oilers aren’t exactly going to be overflowing with offensively gifted players. Zach Stortini isn’t a good enough thug to be a deterrent.

An article in Sweden’s Aftonbladet sports section (there’s some moon language there) on Henrik Lundqvist’s upcoming campaign with the New York Rangers led with the revelation that he’s taking weekly cortisone shots to deal with pain in his knees, and then spent the rest of the article saying, “No, no! I’m fine! Really!”

(As always, forgive my clumsy translation).

Henrik Lundqvist’s sore knees started at the end of last NHL season — and during the finals was growing in pain. The damage, in the ligaments, also gave him major problems during the World Cup in Canada this spring. The hope was that a long, quiet summer holidays would eliminate the problems.

But apparently, it has not been.

“It has not healed well as I had hoped,” revealed “Henke” when we met only three weeks before the season at the New York Rangers’ training facility north of Manhattan.

That’s bad news, especially because he’s taking cortisone to get over it rather than missing any time. The problem’s only going to get worse down the road. Lundqvist, though, says the knee always gives him trouble around this time (in the preseason!?).

A doctor named Björn Waldebäck treated Lundqvist during the World Cup. He told Aftonbladet that he believe’s Hank’s butterfly style is part of the problem here.

“Goalies now often go up and down several thousand times in one season. Of course, it is stressful for ligaments in the knees. A thought I have is that long-time goalkeepers can have more problems with the knees because the angles and thus burden is greater, but there is nothing I have for evidence,” says Björn Waldebäck.

If Lundqvist’s knee doesn’t hold up as well as he’d hoped, or if he gets injured, the Rangers are in a LOT of trouble and have no backup plan. They traded Al Montoya to the Coyotes at the deadline and their only other backup of note is Steve Valiquette. How fast can Miikka Wiikman get to the U.S.?

The article makes an interesting note, too. Lundqvist is one of only five Rangers remaining from the 2005-06 team. The others are Petr Prucha, Michal Roszival, Blair Betts and Marek Malik. That’s a LOT of turnover in just three seasons. They are also paying $20.1 million dollars to the trio of Scott Gomez, Chris Drury and Markus Naslund this year.

Yeah, turns out it gets weirder.

The guy that represented him in his trial, Howard Kieffer, saw him get convicted to a 7 1/2 year sentence back in 2004.

Well there might be an explanation for how little fight Danton put up. His lawyer isn’t actually a lawyer.

A man who once represented former NHLer Michael Danton in a murder conspiracy case has been accused of impersonating a lawyer in at least 10 U.S. states.

Fifty-three-year-old Howard Kieffer has pleaded not guilty to two felony charges in the case - mail fraud and making false statements. Kieffer is director of Federal Defense Associates, of Santa Ana, Calif., which promises clients “specialized, creative and tenacious criminal defense, post-conviction representation and zealous Bureau of Prisons advocacy.”

As it turns out, the Denver Post broke the story back in early July. The Post says Kieffer did not go to Antioch School of Law, has a few felony convictions related to tax fraud and grand theft, is not licensed to practice law in the U.S.A., and has twice been ordered to show proof of his standing in the legal community. Nice.

The trial is being held in North Dakota because that’s where he is currently liscensed to represent people in federal court. While he didn’t actually do so, he used that “good standing” to practice elsewhere. He was ordered disbarred last month, which is a problem, because he’s not actually a member of the American Bar Association.

Another case he tried, the one that caused the Denver Post to break the story, is being considered for retrial, though prosecutors are unsurprisingly resistant to the idea.

What this means for Danton, I have no idea. Like Kieffer, I’m not a lawyer.

Darryl Sutter once put forth the theory that there are maybe 15 actual top-line centers in the National Hockey League at any time. He offered no further definition of what makes or doesn’t make a player a No. 1 pivot.

But assuming that he’s right (the number might be slightly higher than that but the theory’s more or less correct), that leaves at least 15 without a true No. 1 center. This year, Atlanta is absolutely one of those teams. Why?

Meet “No. 1 center” Erik Christensen.

It’s more than 2,300 miles from his home in Edmonton to his job in Atlanta, but Erik Christensen drove it gladly, and not just because he sat behind the wheel of a BMW while Slayer songs blasted from the speakers.

Christensen was driving toward opportunity, the kind of opportunity he has waited for all his life. The Thrashers plan to make him their first-line center.

ERIK CHRISTENSEN? The 25-year-old third-round pick who has never played a full NHL season in his life, was injured three different times last season, who has a career points-per-game total of .46 and averages 12:52 of ice time a night? THAT Erik Christensen is who you want centering Ilya Kovalchuk?

Yes, as it turns out. How does a local paper spin that to sound positive?

With Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin skating on the top two lines, the Penguins didn’t know what to do with Christensen. His playing time varied between low and very low, about 12-1/2 minutes per game.

…

“We certainly are going to give him that opportunity,” general manager Don Waddell said. “He’s got the skill level and the skill set to play with guys like that.”

“He’s got a really good shot. He’s got quick hands. He’s a good skater. He’s a strong skater,” Thrashers coach John Anderson said.

Except none of that is especially factual, and nothing Waddell says can qualify as truth. This is such fact that, in my quest to find any NHL highlights of Christensen as a means of vindicating him, I a) found none, and b) stumbled upon a post at the Pensblog that said “Even Erik Christensen would have scored” in the 82-0 Bulgaria game. Great site though the Pensblog is, I’m sure even they would admit to blind homerism in most cases. When they’re not backing up a well-thought-of former Pen, that player must have been quite bad.

But the best part of the article — the most laugh-out-loud, fall-down hysterical paragraph — started like this…:

Christensen has proven he can score when given the chance.

…And ended like this:

His 54-goal, 54-assist season for Kamloops six years ago gave him the Western Hockey League scoring title.

SIX YEARS AGO! IN JUNIORS! Just put him down for the Art Ross now then.

Poor Kovalchuk. He must just pick up the AJC every day and sob into his Cheerios. How can any team play this as a good thing? One imagines Kovy and his wife will begin boxing up their belongings around late December, when the Thrashers are already out of the playoffs. Hopefully the Thashers can at least offload him for another future top-line guy like Stefan Ruzicka.

So today the NHL announced that it had rejected the Carolina Hurricanes’ extension of Eric Staal’s contract for the low, low price of $57.75 million over the next seven years.

“It was just too stupid to tolerate, even for us” sai…

Wait that’s NOT why?

The issue with the contract pertains to the wording of the clause. The contract that was rejected by the league specified that his no-trade clause kicked in on July 1, 2010, when he is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent.

Apparently the problem is that, if Staal doesn’t play those two seasons, which he will unless something goes terribly awry, he won’t be eligible for unrestricted free agency. So they have to change it to “as soon as he’s eligible for unrestricted free agency.”

Come on, NHL. Someone needs to let the Hurricanes know that what they did was flat-out wrong, for both the franchise and the league. Though one supposes that if the Jeff Finger contract is allowed to stand, this one looks like a stroke of frugal genius in comparison. Ah well.

Here’s a live blog of the Minnesota-St. Louis prospects game at the NHL’s Traverse City rookie tournament.

Want rosters? Okay. Minnesota’s are here, St. Louis’ are here.

All updates below the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

What the hell, I’ll live blog the St. Louis vs. Minnesota prospects game tonight. I’ve never done that before and I haven’t watched live (tape delayed) hockey in a few months.

Puck drops at 8 p.m. on the NHL Network if you’re interested. If not, get lost.

We’re now something like 23 days out from the start of the NHL season, which means I have to get a move on  with these season previews. 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.

Vancouver Canucks, you’re on the clock.

This is the Sedins’ show now.

Before, they were kind of in that nebulous group of players that seem good enough for the first line, but are largely unregarded as such throughout the league. It has often been my contention that, were they not twins but remained the exact same players they are, no one outside of the Northwest Conference would really think about them too much one way or the other.

But the league is going to have to start thinking about them, and hard. Daniel and Henrik are two of the best players in the league that get very little credit for what they bring to the rink every night. I mean, LOOK at these guys (and enjoy the sounds of Molly Hatchet while you’re at it), and then think about how Vancouver fans continue to say they aren’t true first-line players.

More after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Mr. Paukovich, please get out of hockey.

That hit last night on Kyle Greentree of the Calgary Flames was, by all accounts, disgusting. I’ve read most of the writeups of that Edmonton vs. Calgary prospects game, and the one thing that seems universally mentioned is that Paukovich got drilled and came up looking to crush the first guy he saw. That first guy was Kyle Greentree, who had his back to the ice behind the net.

So Paukovich obviously put him into the boards headfirst, and Greentree had to be taken out on a stretcher. When not even the Edmonton media is rushing to your defense, you must have done something that’s indefensible.

“Things happen pretty fast, I was just trying to be physical down low which is what I have to do to be successful,” Paukovich said. “I have to make guys not want to play in their defensive zone.

“All I can say is I hope he’s OK and he can come back and have a good camp with Calgary. There was no intent, I don’t play the game trying to hurt people. I was just trying to play physical and it was just something that happened.”

Which would all be fine, things happen in hockey and I understand that. But this isn’t the first time Paukovich has drilled someone headfirst into the boards.

Three years ago, when Paukovich was playing for the University of Denver, he dropped North Dakota’s Robbie Bina on a similar play, and broke his neck. Bina missed the entirety of the season, Paukovich was suspended by the league for a game, and by his coach for another.

Both players, ironically, are in the Edmonton system now.

I’m not saying Paukovich is out there trying to hurt people, but he’s certainly not thinking about the safety of his opponents.

“That was three years ago, that was a different situation, a different set of circumstances and a different place,” Paukovich said. “I know Rob and I have both put it behind us.”

I would like to know why, exactly, this is a different situation? It seems pretty similar to me. Guy’s got his head down along the boards, and Paukovich lines him up and just crushes him. Greentree, like Bina, is going to be fine, but there’s no place in hockey for crap like this.

Before you read this post, you should be warned that the footage contained within it is both graphic and disturbing.

That’s right, it’s video from the Bulgaria/Slovakia tilt that ended 82-0 for Slovakia and made headlines worldwide last week, and it’s about as grim as you’d expect it to be.

Further warning: there’s a lot of standing around while Slovakia lazily shoots on net for most of these goals. Completely uninspired game by the Bulgarian side.

And to make matters worse, there’s actually one guy in the stands waving a Bulgarian flag around. That must have been the worst day of his life.

In the third video, there’s almost a fight!

Fantabulous work by Colonel_Korn to find these.