The Two-Line Pass

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Whoever the strength and conditioning coach is in Winnipeg, he’s getting paid far, far too much. I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise to find that a team with Kyle Wellwood and Dustin Byfuglien on the roster would be one that wholly fails to keep tabs on the physical fitness of its players, but man, even Evander Kane?

I don’t know what about this story is the funniest. That a guy who scored 30 frickin’ goals in the NHL last year can’t get more than 11 minutes a night playing for Dinamo Minsk, or that it’s because he’s out of shape.

The line for Kane’s play through four games reads like he and two of his more rotund teammates standing next to each other — 0-0-0 — with 13 penalty minutes (presumably from putting opponents in Hulk Hogan-style rest holds when his shifts go longer than 20 seconds) and a minus-3 rating. And it’s not like this guy is competing for ice time with anyone particularly noteworthy. The best player on his team is Tim Stapleton, ferchrissakes.

His coach says he’s “Not in KHL shape,” which given the pace of the game over there (from what I’ve seen) means he can’t skate from one end of the rink to the other in less than three minutes. What did Kane do? Smoke a carton a day and go on the Supersize Me diet for the entire summer? Did he eat that whole fish Dustin Byfuglien caught? Come to think of it, because we haven’t heard anything about the guy in a while, did he eat Dustin Byfuglien?

Some more conspiratorial hockey writers will try to lump this in with the fact that the Jets waited until they were physically incapable of waiting any longer to re-sign him, as though they would give someone $31.5 million if they thought he was mainlining Thousand Island dressing instead of skating all summer.

Meanwhile, no one on Earth is talking about the fact that Ondrej Pavelec is giving up goals in the KHL at a greater rate than he did in the NHL last year, which you’ll recall was, umm, considerable. His line in the Czech league through six games, I swear to you, was 4.62/.863. Has he extended his drinking habits from “before driving” to “between periods?”

But hey, at least he’s not Kane, right? That fatso stinks and isn’t worth the ridiculous money Winnipeg gave him this summer.

Don’t forget to donate to 826 Boston. Thanks again.

Hi! I’m writing these posts as part of a Write-A-Thon to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

The Washington Capitals announced today that in addition to sending a number of their very good young prospects down to play in Hershey of the AHL — including Braden Holtby, Dmitry Orlov, Stanislav Galiev, and maybe one or two other guys I’m forgetting — they would also be sending their coach.

Yeah, I don’t know how or why, but Adam Oates will be the co-coach of the Hershey Bears for the duration of the lockout. Well, I guess the why part is easy enough to explain. Oates had been an NHL assistant for the last three seasons, including two in Tampa (where he worked a lot with Steven Stamkos and probably helped him become the player that’s going to be scoring 60 for a while) and last season in New Jersey. But he hasn’t been a head coach at any level.

Thus, this gives him a bit of experience where the stakes aren’t necessarily high to get on guys who half-ass it on the backcheck and generally learn a little bit more about being a head coach that he would sitting in his office fooling around with MSPaint all day. (I assume the Caps aren’t up on Macs.) Also helps the Caps players who will be playing for him to get a jump on learning his new systems, of which there will likely be many. Probably also doesn’t hurt to be running the same system at all levels of your organization.

But the how, I guess, is less clear. I mean I guess there’s nothing in the rules that says an NHL head coach can’t ride the bus if he so chooses. And what’s really crazy, and being reported considerably less is this whole thing:

Washington assistant coaches Calle Johansson, Tim Hunter, Blaine Forsythe, along with goaltending coaches Dave Prior and Olie Kolzig, will also be involved with Hershey to varying degrees while the NHL season is on hold. Some may assist with the organization’s ECHL affiliate, the Reading Royals, as well.

Man. That’s going to be very good for development of players throughout Washington’s system.

So maybe the real question is why every NHL team, especially those for which their farm team is a short drive away, isn’t doing exactly this. Imagine Danny Bylsma yelling at a ref in Wilkes-Barre? Or Claude Julien drawing up defensive schemes in Providence? Or John Tortorella swearing up a storm over questions he doesn’t like in Connecticut Whale pressers? That would be awesome.

This is something Caps and Bears fans alike should be looking forward to. The former because it will give them and the team’s players a bit of a preview of how they can expect things to go. The latter because, until the NHL starts up again, the power play is going to run at about 40 percent.

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Ales Hemsky is likely the least-healthy non-Rick DiPietro in the league today, having played just 559 NHL games despite having been on the Oilers’ gameday roster since he was 19, in 2002-03. Nine seasons, 559 games. A little more than 62 a year if my math’s right, and it is, because I used a calculator.

The reason this history of being as brittle-boned as a particularly weak baby bird is important is not because Hemsky, might actually be able to play a full season when this one is shortened (not that I’d count on that), but rather because like most European-born NHLers, he’s looking for a deal to return to his home country and get regular paychecks while all this whatever-it-is gets sorted out Stateside. Instead, it’s important because it is part of a consideration might prevent him and others from signing overseas.

Two things are important to note first: One, there’s a team in Hemsky’s hometown in the Czech Republic, and his dad is its general manager, so it seems very likely that he’ll pull a contract out of it, but others might not be so lucky.

“I don’t think there will be a lot of open jobs,” Hemsky told QMI. “The KHL is only taking a few guys, Sweden isn’t taking anybody. The Czechs will just take Czech guys, and maybe a few others, because they don’t have the money for the insurance.”

Oooo, that last part. How much does it cost to insure Hemsky, you might be wondering? How about $25,000 per month? And that’s not even life insurance! That’s “Oh hell Hemsky’s shoulder fell off again” insurance. Granted, that’s not much considering what he’s earned in his career, or what his upcoming two-year, $10 million contract will pay him, but 25 grand? Gee whiz.

This is a very common thing: If NHLers, whether they’re typically ultra-durable or injury-prone, go overseas, they need to be covered by an insurance policy. Most teams provide them, but some don’t. Already, as many several dozen NHL agents, on behalf of the players they represent, have sought quotes on this kind of coverage. Basil McRae — yeah, what? — alone has advised between 50 and 100 NHL players on the matter. The kind of cost involved might lead a lot of players to just stay the hell home and work out with their buddies or something.

As for whether that kind of insurance covers having your being kidnapped in Magnitogorsk or the bail money needed when your KHL team plants drugs on you, I don’t know.

But this might be just what Hemsky needs. He played in 47 of Paradubice’s 52 games during the last lockout, and that’s only like 10 percent of the season missed, compared with his usual almost-20. So playing overseas might actually be an improvement.

Don’t forget to donate to 826 Boston. Thanks again.

Hi! I’m writing these posts as part of a Write-A-Thon to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

Not a good week to be Lubomir Visnovsky, now of the New York Islanders.

Okay sure, there’s that whole “The Owners Don’t Want to Pay Him to Play Hockey” thing but that’s an everybody problem (except the owners, I guess). But more importantly, an arbitrator ruled yesterday that yes, he really does have to play for the Islanders.

And what a long journey it has been for Visnovsky, who crossed all available fingers and toes that the issue surrounding his alleged no-trade clause would turn up in his favor. It didn’t. See the thing is this: He got one when he signed his five-year, $28 million deal with Edmonton back in 2008. But then he got traded to the Ducks. Under the current CBA (tick tick tick), a player who is traded loses whatever no-trade or no-movement clause he has on his deal, regardless of whether he invoked it.

Visnovsky did not invoke it when moved to Anaheim, and therefore lost it entirely. Bad news, because the Ducks traded him to the Islanders (who, even with Visnovsky now safely under contract, still have less than $50 million committed to the cap next season) for a 2013 second-round pick on June 22.

Immediately, and understandably, rumors began to surface that Visnovsky wanted nothing to do with such a trade, and would instead try to go to the KHL. That was on June 23.

But then, by June 24, it turned out that the interview in his native Slovakia from which the KHL rumors were culled was, as so many actually-honest foreign-language interviews are, refuted as being not entirely true or taken out of context. Newsday’s Arthur Stape spoke with him on the phone and Visnovsky confirmed that playing for the Islanders was his “first choice.” Which seems insane from where I sit — surely there are at least 50 places around the world that would be any hockey player’s choice ahead of Nassau Coliseum — but then they’re not slated to pay me $3 million next season.

And certainly, that was refuted almost exactly a month later, when Visnovsky filed a grievance with the NHLPA being all like, “Please don’t make me play for the Islanders. I have a no-trade clause man!” This is the kind of Step-3-On-the-Seven-Stages-Of-Grief bargaining you’d expect from a guy in whose rink a piece of ceiling tile might fall and kill him at any time.

Well tough noogies, Luby. But look on the bright side: Your defensive partner on Long Island can’t possibly be as bad as Luca Sbisa was last season. Wait the Islanders have Ty Wishart. Never mind.

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Even though his team lost 5-4 to the Blues last night, Johan Franzen was not jokin’ around. Yeah, he scored a goal while being legchecked by MIke Weaver, but look at the velocity he gets on on the shot despite being in midair.

My god.

Maybe Detroit will also try to sign him to a $6 million dollar contract that hamstrings the team for when the cap goes down to the mid-40s in two years. Marian Hossa, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg simply wouldn’t be enough in terms of high-skill talent up front.

Ron Wilson has taken a few. shots at the Toronto media over the course of the season, but this is his first major blow-up, the one we’ve all been waiting for.

Granted, it’s because Howard Berger asks him a dumb-ass question (”ARE YOU ANNOYED WHEN YOUR TEAM TAKES PENALTIES?”), but it’s hilarious because Wilson, who has always had a contentious relationship with the media, was bothered by a question Berger had asked him the night before.

By the way, if you ever wondered just who Ron Wilson considers the smartest person in the room, this video proves that he has two thumbs and coaches the Maple Leafs.

So not only did the Oilers drop a 10-2 decision to Buffalo the other night, but they also would prefer it if you didn’t write songs that make this point repeatedly.

After that hilarious eight-goal loss, Calgary’s radio station, the FAN960 produced a parody version of The Kinks’ “Lola” (it appears to have been yanked, for some reason) that interspersed clips of Craig MacTavish talking about what an unmitigated the game was, refering to the amount of times the puck got past an Edmonton goalie, and, as a finale, simply repeating the word “losers” over and over. Obviously, laughs all around.

But, according to my buddies over at OilersNation (p.s. FlamesNation starts Sunday, a day that people surely will not have their minds on a sport other than hockey!), this song didn’t sit so well with some of the Oilers front office folk.

According to Robin Brownlee, a longtime member of the Edmonton press and OilersNation contributor, Oilers VP of communications and broadcast Allan Watt got all upset when Brownlee and host Jason Gregor had a good chuckle over the song on Edmonton’s TEAM 1260.

Not long after, we got a call from producer Will Fraser at TEAM 1260 and he told us Allan Watt, the Oilers vice-president of communications and broadcast, had phoned to complain and that he’d also contacted several other stations demanding they not play it.
Last time I checked, the Oilers didn’t have a rightsholder agreement with Astral Media and have no right to try to dictate what goes on the air at TEAM 1260 and other Astral stations.

Which, of course, proves that not only are the Oilers an horrendously bad team, they also can’t take a joke. What a bunch of clowns.

Why should the Oilers not be subject to criticism and mockery JUST BECAUSE they lost a game 10-2?

Hoo boy did Eric Duhatshek go a little overboard this morning in the Globe and Mail.

Separated at birth?: IGINLA: HOCKEY PLAYER, OBAMA: PRESIDENT

The Calgary Flames captain has a lot in common with the new U.S. commander-in-chief, including leadership abilities, respect and never backing away from a fight

Uhhhhh.. okay? One plays hockey (and hasn’t scored in seven games god dammit), one could blow up the entire world with the push of a button. Makes perfect, borderline-racist sense. You see, both Jarome Iginla and Barack Obama are half-black(!).

The parallels in their personal histories are startling, remarkable even.

They are both products of an interracial marriage. Their fathers, black, hailed from Africa, one from Kenya, the other from Nigeria. Their mothers, white, hailed from the hinterland, one from Kansas in the American Midwest, the other from Edmonton in Canada’s frozen north.

STARTLING! But there a number of other hockey players that remind Duhatshek of Barack Obama, including but not limited to: Dustin Byfuglien, Kevin Weekes, Kyle Okposo, Grant Fuhr, Mike Grier, Manny Malhotra, Anson Carter and, of course, Manute Bol.

If there wasn’t a 16-year gap in their respective ages - Obama is 47, Iginla 31 - you could almost argue they were separated at birth.

No, you really, really couldn’t.

I just imagine Duhatshek meandering around the dressing room at the Flames’ practice rink yesterday going, “So that Barack Obama, huh?” until finally Craig Conroy, who will talk to anyone about anything for any length of time they like, said, “YEAH! I’M FROM AMERICA!” and talked at a rapid pace for 45 minutes straight. Kudos to Duhatshek for pulling any type of story out of this, I guess, but it has to be the most asinine piece of front-page news ever.

So yesterday, NHL COO John Collins was interviewed by Bloomberg News about the possibile locations of future Winter Classics. He threw out the usual, standard-fare options that would be great (Fenway, Yankee Stadium, Penn State). Everyone would love to see outdoor games in those cities. It would be awesome.

But then the interview headed to Weirdsville in a goddamn hurry.

NHL representatives recently visited Las Vegas in part to gauge the feasibility of staging a Jan. 1 game on Las Vegas Boulevard South, the area known as “the Strip,” Collins said.

“Logistically, it could happen,” he said.

Could it? Could it really? When I read this, I phoned a friend of mine who lives in Las Vegas. Midday temps in Vegas on New Years Day: 45 degrees. Midday temps in Vegas right this second: 70. So what logistical circumstances, outside the construction of a super villain-type weather machine (surely to be built in Gary Bettman’s Lab for Desecration of the Sport that I’m convinced exists), would allow for the game to be played in these conditions?

I’m pretty sure I remember people in Chicago flipping the hell out when it was like 50 out and they were worried about that affecting ice quality. Imagine Shane Doan taking a header into the boards because he hit a puddle caused by a week of 65-degree days in the lead-up to the game. Ridiculous, stupid idea.

Oh but you wanted to hear a worse one? Take it away, Collins:

A Jan. 1 date would likely make for better playing conditions. Prior to this year’s game, the NHL also spent more than $1 million on a custom-made refrigeration truck and other equipment, allowing for better control of the ice surface.

“The new rink opens up a lot of opportunities,” Collins said. “We might even be able to have a night game out at the Rose Bowl.”

Yeah it was 70 in L.A. on New Years’ Day. And I’m pretty sure the Rose Bowl is all booked up on Jan. 1 anyways. I believe they’ve played something called THE F’N ROSE BOWL on it every New Years’ Day for the past 95 years. Collins has to be talking out of his ass.

What is with the NHL’s obsession with taking something special and widely regarded as “good” (Outdoor games! Big crowds! Record ratings!) and changing it for no goddamn reason whatsoever?

But because the Rose Bowl might not be feasible, I have come up with several places that will serve as suitable substitutes for an upcoming Winter Classic:

Read the rest of this entry »

Flyers prospect James van Riemsdyk closed the USA’s World Juniors tournament with a pretty awesome goal to give the Americans a 3-2 overtime win against the Czech Republic in the fifth-place game. If you remember the move Marek Malik used to win that long shootout against Washington in 2005-06, it’s like that, only during real game action rather than a silly skills competition.

Video quality right now isn’t the best (it’s just of the replay on the jumbotron), but the goal was disgusting. Sadly, it’s still only the second-best goal of the tournament.