The Two-Line Pass

The Ducks have begun using an interesting strategy to save cap space: send down guys on two-way contracts every off-day.

In order to save $12,000 in salary-cap space, the Ducks on Monday assigned two rookies, left wing Bobby Ryan and defenseman Brett Festerling, to their ECHL affiliate, the Bakersfield Condors.

The Ducks, who did not practice Monday, will recall Ryan and Festerling in time for the two to practice with the team Tuesday morning at Honda Center.

It just seems so.. odd. What does the extra $12,000 in cap space mean to the Ducks at the end of the day? It’s almost nothing in terms of an NHL contract and means even less against the cap. But Dan Wood says that the pro-rated $50-60,000 Anaheim saves could help them land a “relatively high-priced” player at the deadline.

It kind of makes sense because the salaries of players acquired through trade are pro-rated but by sending these kids up and down all season doesn’t that mean that the value of their salaries (a pro-rated base of $850,000 with bonuses that could push it up to $1.539 million for Ryan and a pro-rated $379,000 for Festerling) mean that they can only get a guy whose pro-rated salary is that much?

For example, the Ducks want to trade a draft pick (just so there are no sticky numbers going the other way) for a “relatively high-priced” player. Can’t that player’s salary, at best, be the sum total of Ryan and Festerling’s? I don’t know when a player in the $1.1-1.9 range became “relatively high-priced” but okay, sure.

Why, then, doesn’t every team do this? Wouldn’t it make sense to just constantly send your young guys up and down? The Islanders, just as a for-instance, have roughly 43 guys on the 20-man roster on two-way deals. Why not send ALL OF THEM down to Bridgeport on off-days to save however much against the cap and, if they fancy themselves playoff contenders around deadline time (ha!), they could then trade for your Jason Spezzas and Ilya Kovalchuks because they’ve saved x amount against the cap through this silliness.

Maybe the Lightning can do this and get that free agent center they’ve had their eye on.

Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

So when I saw on Friday that Barry Melrose got fired, I was a little surprised and, frankly, disappointed. It obviously wasn’t because he didn’t have the credentials to be an NHL coach to begin with and not because the Lightning are a puddle of drizzling liquid shit. He doesn’t and they are. This piece of news had me upset because 16 games was four short of the 20 I had in the Barry Melrose Firing pool. Hell.

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If only there were talent in that bottle

The Lead

Another four goals against on 20 shots in one period of work tonight has me seriously wondering whether Miikka Kiprusoff is really finished.

He played the first period before getting the hook with a dreadful lack of anything resembling the goaltender he used to be. Curtis McElhinney played a little better in relief of Kipper but the Flames were just demolished by the San Jose Sharks, 6-1.

It’s been a long, painful fall from grace for Kipper. This is a guy that set the all-time goals-against average record with a 1.69 to go with a save percentage of .933 in 2003-04 and won a Vezina trophy the following year with a 2.07/.923. Then the spiral began in earnest as he posted lines of 2.46/.917 and 2.69/.906, which, while both approximately in the area of “respectable,” aren’t anywhere near Kiprusoff’s well-earned status of “elite.”

At least I thought it was well-earned. When the Flames traded for him for a second-round pick prior to the ‘03-04 season, some wondered why Darryl Sutter would drop a decent pick (which eventually ended up being 35th overall) on a little-used third-string goalie from San Jose. Kiprusoff, of course, proved the doubters wrong and made Sutter look like a genius. He had gotten a player that could be the best goalie in the world for what amounted to a song.

But after Sutter moved out from behind the Calgary bench and into the front office, things began to change. Jim Playfair proved ill-equipped to coach the team to its intended defensive style as envisioned by Sutter, as was Mike Keenan. Kipper’s numbers, said Flames apologists (like me), were the result of this.

But maybe that’s not the case. Maybe Kiprusoff did a more convincing job of making us think he was a Vezina-level goaltender than did Jim Carey and Jose Theodore. Maybe he just isn’t very good any more, for the same inexplicable reason some other hockey players just stop being good.

There’s certainly no explaining these numbers. With a goals-against of 3.49 and a save percentage of .885 after this latest debacle, Kiprusoff is lurking near Marty Turco levels of unfathomably bad goaltending. While he has still won nine games behind Calgary this year — and notice the distinction between “behind” and “for,” which is the preposition more often used when the Flames had little offensive punch — Kipper’s play has done nothing to make fans remember that guy with the scary mask that used to be the best goaltender in the world. Just look at these goals-against totals by game: 6, 5 (in an OT loss), 4 (in a win), 4, 3, 1, 3, 1, 0, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6 (in a win), 6, 3 and another four-spot in 20 minutes tonight. Those look like freaking baseball scores, but they belong to a goaltender who THREE YEARS AGO was considered among the best in the world.

Granted, the Flames’ offense hasn’t been the best (hovering around the middle of the league just under three per game) but if you dropped a goaltender that was ACTUALLY elite behind a team scoring nearly three goals a night, they’d be a hell of a lot better than 9-7-1.

At this point, you have to question the logic of Sutter re-signing Kiprusoff to a six-year contract that costs the Flames $5.833 million per season against the cap. He was already in decline for two years before he signed the deal. I want to have faith in him and I want to believe that I won’t come to loathe both him and his gigantic albatross contract, but it’s tough to get behind a guy who’s given up the most goals in the league.

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The Lead

Bad news for the rest of the Southeast division regarding Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals: They’re heating up.

Ovie and the newly constituted Caps top line of he, Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Semin teamed with Mike Green to score all five Washington goals and pick up 13 combined points as the Capitals rolled over their only other competition for the division crown, the Carolina Hurricanes, 5-1.

Ovechkin, who had a goal and two assists, scored a vintage Ovie goal, breaking in on a 2-on-1 with Semin and performing a maneuver more commonly seen in the shootout at full speed to stake the Caps to a 1-0 lead they would not surrender. Semin and Green also scored in the first period to open up a 3-1 lead.

The game also saw Brent Johnson, who has been very good in the stead of should-have-been starter Jose Theodore, get absolutely pummeled by ‘Canes players while covering a puck and waiting in vain for a whistle to come. He left the game having given up a goal on 14 shots. Theodore performed admirably in his relief, stopping 13 shots over the last 40 minutes of the game.

Semin scored his second goal of the game in the second and Backstrom added his insult-to-injury strike in the third. When the game was over, Ovechkin and Green both had a goal and two assists, Backstrom had one of each, and Semin had two goals and three assists. Semin now leads the league in points (27) and goals (13). Those numbers will only increase now that Ovie, who has a ho-hum 13 points in 13 games but is 2-5-7 in his last four, has apparently found his touch again.

What this all adds up to, of course, is bad news for the ‘Canes, who at least made the Southeast interesting for the first month and a half or so of the season. With what’s seems like an unstoppable offensive troika of Ovechkin, Semin and whichever center gets dropped between them, plus Green providing offensive pop from the point, the Caps might now have the arsenal to win even the bloodiest of gunfights should their goaltending not hold up. Not that they’ll need that much help against teams like Atlanta (-.74 goal differential per game), Tampa (-.67), Florida (-.47) and Carolina (-.31), because Washington, despite the so-so offense from everyone BUT Semin is +.4. What will that climb to with Ovechkin actually playing well? It’s hard to peg down a number, obviously, but you know it could — and probably will — get ugly in a hurry.

So yeah, the race for the Southeast crown appears all but over save for a cataclysmic injury to one or two of Washington’s big guns. The Caps already lead the division by two points with a game in hand and have yet to lose in regulation at the Verizon Center. Unlike those punks at the network news outlets, I’m calling the race well before it’s official: the Washington Capitals are your 2008-09 Southeast Division Champions.

The days of Ovechkin going 0-0-0 or 0-1-1 for two weeks straight already seem like distant memory, and that’s not a good thing for anyone but his team. They could be putting up NBA Jam Tournament Edition scores on the Southeast by January.

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Brian Burke has been let go as general manager of the Anaheim Ducks for no readily apparent reason.

Details to follow at the afternoon press conference, or so they say.

Interesting to note, though, that in this week’s Hockey Notes from the Boston Globe, Kevin Paul Dupont pondered what was next for Burkie, whose contract was up after this season. In fact, Burke even said he had a substantial offer on the table to return as Ducks GM. His return was unlikely, however, since, “Family issues, related to his first marriage, would be eased greatly if he worked closer to Boston, where he lived and worked for years as a player agent before going into hockey management.”

Obviously there are the rumors that he’d be jumping to Toronto as soon as his deal with the Ducks was done, but as Dupont points out, there are a number of teams that could use Burke’s services in one fashion or another, including the Blackhawks, who appear to be in complete makeover mode, and Bruins, who are still without a president and have been since Harry Sinden was crowbarred out of the job a few summers ago.

One thing’s for sure: Burke won’t be out of work for too long.

Last night in a cross-town battle between Buffalo’s two college hockey teams, Niagara and Canisius, Derek Foam took a penalty with his Niagara team up 2-0.

When he got out of the box, Niagara’s lead was a more comfortable 5-0 after his teammates, Sam Goodwin, Egor Mironov and Dan Sullivan had scored three shorthanded goals in 1:09. Said ever-understated Purple Eagles coach Dave Burkholder: “Special teams were the difference tonight.”

Go vote for Tim Thomas, ya humps.

As of my vote, he was first among Eastern Conference goalies with 614 votes, 254 ahead of Carey Price and way in front of the rest of the field.

The Lead

Jordan Staal had five points in 14 games coming into tonight’s tilt with the Stanley Cup Champion Red Wings.

But tonight, Staal nearly doubled his season output by recording a third-period hat trick and assisting on the game-winner to help the Penguins to an improbable, wild 7-6 overtime win in Detroit. His three goals came within a space of 11:28, sandwiching a Jiri Hudler tally, to first cut the Detroit lead to 5-4, then cut it to 6-5 and level with just 23 seconds on the clock.

It was cuh-razy and it’s sweet redemption for Staal, if only for just tonight. After his stellar rookie season in which he scored 29 goals and a league-leading seven shorties, he was just terrible last year. Pittsburgh fans hated him, as much for getting their hopes up that they had three franchise centers (who can be content with just two?) as the actual poor play.

The goals came in a game, too, for which I had already chalked up a Detroit win. Even though Sid Crosby opened the scoring at just 4:34 of the first period, the Pens then went from 5:17 to 19:04 without a shot on goal, and meanwhile Detroit was buzzing around the offensive zone, attempting 17 shots in that span (three were blocked, two went wide) with Darren McCarty and Tomas Holmstrom scoring on two. That the Penguins escaped the period with only a one-goal deficit was a small miracle. Once Johan Franzen and Pavel Datsyuk scored in the second period, the game seemed all but academic despite Max Talbot’s goal to at least keep Pittsburgh within two.

Then Detroit just melted down completely, taking penalty after penalty and allowing the opponent free reign along the perimeter of the attacking zone. Henrik Zetterberg increased the lead to three early in the period but Evgeni Malkin and Staal brought their team back within one. Malkin’s was on a 5-on-3 power play, and Staal’s was immediately following it.

Once Staal squared away his hat trick and ensured overtime, Brian Rafalski took a foolish hooking penalty with four seconds left that effectively neutralized the Wings’ chance to attack for a good 40 percent of the extra period. Smart move, that.

Staal created the winning goal by picking Pavel Datsyuk’s pocket in the neutral zone (no small feat) and feeding the puck to Ruslan Fedotenko, who sent the pathetic Detroit crowd home unhappy. Well, unhappier. The opposition on-ice at the time of the Fedo goal? Datsyuk, Rafalski, Nicklas Lidstrom and Hossa. Not a bad group of guys to torch.

The win wasn’t all good for the Pens though, who saw Rob Scuderi, one of their few remaining defensemen who is both healthy and competent (sorry Kris Letang), take a slapper off the outside of the skate and head to the locker room around seven minutes into the game. Shots like that hurt and he could be out awhile unless things went perfectly for him.

As for Hossa’s performance against his former team? He didn’t do too, too badly. Two assists but he was a -2 for the night. Even after a night like this, I bet he isn’t questioning Detroit’s still-fantastic chances to win the Cup OR the move.

Neither are the Penguins. Who needs Hossa when you Jordan Freaking Staal?

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So yesterday the Habs’ Tom Kostopoulos was given a three-game suspension after he demolished Mike Van Ryn from behind along the endboards, which was a perfectly reasonable suspension.

But how is there no action being taken against the Canadiens for the way they treated former teammate Mikhail Grabovski?

I hate to be the one that is constantly calling for this player or that player to be suspended or fined or whatever and I’m not doing so here, but it’s pretty clearly a team directive to punish Grabovski for the crap he pulled with Montreal last year. Not that he helped his own cause by taunting various Habs players over the course of the night, but again, this strikes me as something that came down from the top.

Watch that video around 1:10 into it. Right before Koivu gets in his face about something, he makes a point to not pull up short of Grabovski even though he is clearly prone on the ice after having been drilled just after the whistle on an offside call.

For those that don’t know the full story here, Grabovski spent much of the season as a healthy scratch and one day, before a road game in Phoenix for which he was once again going to be watching from the press box, he flew to Los Angeles instead to meet with his agent. Neither the Habs players nor front office types took too kindly to that and now that Grabovski has been traded to the Leafs, even his lifelong friends the Kostitsyn brothers are lining up against him.

According to La Presse (click for moon language.. translation from HFBoards):

“He is not my friend anymore,” said Kostitsyn on Monday. “I do not have respect for him. He’s not even a team player.”

…

”I have a good memory, we’ll see each other again,” when thinking about the next game between the two team on January 8th.

Other pertinent quotes followed.

Alex Kovalev: “No, don’t talk to me about him. He’s in Toronto and I am here. I’ve got nothing to say.”

Chris Higgins: “He’s not here anymore. I don’t care about him.”

Guy Carbonneau: “He’s playing a lot and he’s happy in Toronto. Good for him.”

Now I’m not saying Grabovski’s actions were justified because they weren’t, but they were taking run after run at him on Saturday with very little recourse from the Leafs and surprisingly no action from the league, especially in light of that second Kostitsyn quote. Even Grabovski seems to imply that he believes the orders came down from Carbonneau.

It will be interesting to see how everything shakes out on Jan. 8.

The Lead

The Washington Capitals called Olaf Kolzig their goalie for 16 years and they treated him well. When they call him their opponent, ehhh not so much.

Kolzig, who was greeted with chants of “Olie, Olie,” a long standing ovation and a video tribute, gave up goals on Washington’s first two shots by Tom Poti and Mike Green, respectively, and Eric Fehr added another before the first period was over. The Caps cruised from there to a 4-2 win over the still-hapless Tampa Bay Lightning.

The Capitals did all that despite really not playing very well. That first shot of the game, while it found the back of the net, also took 8:20 to materialize, which, against Tampa’s defense, is embarrassing.

More embarrassing though was the way Tampa played in front of Kolzig, who was hardly to blame for coughing up the four-spot. Newly-acquired Steve Eminger was just outstanding in being on the ice for all three first-period goals and did nothing to stop almost any Washington play from developing. All three, in fact, came on similar transitions where two forwards broke into the zone, collapsed coverage to the puckside and dumped it to the other wing for a trailer. Every time. It worked several additional times per period and the Lightning either never picked up on what’s a fairly simple break-in play or are simply too bad to do anything about it. In any event it created far more chances than Kolzig or Barry Melrose can have liked.

The Bolts at least started trying by the time the middle of the second period rolled around and the game was already a foregone conclusion. Gary Roberts scored a pair of power play goals, one late in the second and the other with 26 seconds to go in the game.

Oh and that last Washington goal? Kid you may have heard of, one Alex Ovechkin, scored it on a nice redirection of a pass from Alex Semin for his third of the year. It was Ovie’s first goal in almost exactly a month and was greeted with another standing ovation from the crowd at the Verizon for his troubles. He hadn’t gotten on the scoresheet since Oct. 11 when he netted a pair against Chicago. Ovie also had an assist on Greenie’s goal. The Semin helper boosted his point total to 22, tying him for the league lead with Evgeni Malkin, which I guess you’d call pretty good.

And across the ice from Kolzig was the real goaltending show. Longtime Kolzig backup and good buddy Brent Johnson made 34 saves to help Washington to the win, something Jose Theodore would not have come close to doing.

But for me, the real story is that the problems in Tampa deepen evermore. There’s no way a team with any pride allows its teammate to get punked out by his former club in his first game against them. Not that badly at least. The quote-unquote defensemen in front of him, most notably Eminger and Lukas Krajicek in the first period, should be ashamed of themselves for leaving Kolzig out to dry like that.

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