The Two-Line Pass

Because this blog is quickly becoming the clearinghouse for all sick college hockey videos, here is a goal from Denver’s Joe Colborne that was set up by an audacious little pass from Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick Tyler Ruegsegger on Friday against Minnesota State.

That was more than a little disgusting by Mr. Ruegsegger, and if the related videos are to be believed, he does this ALL THE TIME. Somehow he only has 8-4-12 in 19 games this year though.

This is what caused Jason Arnott to beat the hell out of Alex Burrows last night.

That might be a charge. Actual quote from the Sportsnet color guy at about 1:18 of the video: “The question the Predators are gonna ask as we take a look at the hit here is, ‘Did Burrows leave his feet?’ Ehhhh, it… I don’t THINK so. Well, maybe.”

Yeah, maybe.

Dr. Carolyn Emery at the University of Calgary has been doing some important research on youth hockey in Alberta and Quebec. In just year one of a three-year study, the team has already found significant evidence to back up their theory.

That theory, of course, is that more kids get hurt in checking leagues than in no-contact leagues. Shock and horror surely abounded when the preliminary results of the study were released yesterday.

In Alberta, you see, they introduce checking at the peewee level (ages 11 and 12), whereas Quebec has checking only at the bantam level (13 and 14) and only at the highest levels of bantam competition.

What they found was that peewee players in Alberta were 2.5 times more likely to get hurt and 3.5 times more likely to suffer a concussion than the peewee players they tracked in Quebec. Albertans playing peewee hockey were also three times more likely to sustain injuries that kept them off the ice for more than a week.

You don’t say! Checking leads to injuries. The news didn’t come as a shock to Hockey Calgary president Perry Cavanagh, nor to anyone else that has ever watched any contact sport in the history of athletic competition.

“That’s the expectation we would have seen — there’s nothing shocking or revealing in the outcome,” he said. “The reality is, you put a bunch of kids together in a playing area, odds are the group that [hits] is going to have a higher injury rate.”

But doesn’t this kind of draw a basis of comparison for why hockey fans tend to view Albertan hockey players as tough sons of bitches and Quebecois players as sissies? Maybe it’s because the big boys out of the prairie towns are learning to keep their heads up and absorb hits at an earlier age, where these parlezin’ pretty boys aren’t getting steamrolled until they’re almost ready for junior.

This groundbreaking study, in its final two years, intends to prove that ice is cold, pucks are black, and Sean Avery is kind of a dick.

(Just for fun, here is a peewee hockey player getting drilled for not paying attention to the play.)

I am trying to compile a list of things that the NHL has deemed less-bad than Sean Avery’s words. If you can find videos of other suspension-worthy clips, send them along. Six games for words. Unbelievable.

He’d have been better off calling Phaneuf the N word.

Other notable NHL suspensions, all with video, after the jump. Be sure to drop some I may have missed in the comments.

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In the first semi-major trade of the season that will actually have a significant impact on both teams, the Maple Leafs acquired the white-hot Lee Stempniak from the St. Louis Blues for Alex Steen and Carlo Colaiacovo.

As mentioned in this week’s WWL, Ron Wilson was disenchanted of Colaiacovo’s lack of fitness, and the Leafs in general had to be unhappy with Steen’s 2-2-4 line through 20 games. Steen’s never scored less than 15 goals in his career and right now he’s on pace for about eight. Colaiacovo has one point in 10 games and is currently injured. Both are signed for next year.

It was also a good move by Toronto to get Stempniak, who has 13 points in 14 games this year and 12 in his last seven, for almost nothing. St. Louis made the deal, I suspect, simply because it needed warm bodies to fill out the lineup every night. There’s no other reason to trade a player as good as Stempniak, who scored 27-25-52 two years ago and is playing at almost a point-a-game pace. The move also clears up about half a million in cap space for the Leafs.

Phenomenal move for Toronto on all fronts, and an understandable one for St. Louis.

In the Globe and Mail today, it was reported that because of the relative lack of strength of the Canadian dollar and decreased revenues, the salary cap is likely to take a serious dive next season. Well, kind of.

As I understand it (and being a hockey fan with an internet connection instantly qualifies me as an expert in both the economy and the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement), the actual salary cap itself will only drop about $1.5 million, but because revenues will decrease as the season goes on and the global economic crisis deepens, the players will have about $9 million in salary per team placed in escrow to make up the difference in revenues.

The amount of money the players put in escrow is determined at the start of every season by the NHLPA. In October, given the worsening state of the economy, the union decided every player should put 13.5 per cent of his salary in escrow, the largest amount yet. The amount is re-evaluated three more times before the end of the season, so the final percentage could be higher or lower.

On a few message boards, people are already tapdancing over their rival teams’ bad contracts and fretting about their own, but the reality is that this isn’t really that huge of a deal. The actual cap drops by between one and two million dollars, it’s what the players actually receive that will be taking the hit. No one’s going to have to offload two of their major stars, those stars will just see less money while their salaries remain the same because a higher percentage of their paycheck is put into said escrow funds.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong by the way. Econ wasn’t my thing in school. If I’m right, however, feel free to lavish me with praise and gifts.

So Boston.com has named Aaron Ward one of the 25 most stylish Bostonians of 2008, which, while well-earned (Wardo is indeed a very fashionable gentleman; the first time I ever met him he was wearing an immaculate charcoal suit and his grandfather’s fur coat), is a little odd.

When reading the occupations of the other people on the list — jewelry designer, anchorwoman for Channel 7, PR coordinator for Saks Fifth Avenue, chairwoman of the fashion council at the Museum of Fine Arts, musician, artists/jewelry makers, director of sales for Montage furniture, co-owners of various “nerd bars” in the city, interior design business consultant, musician (again), musician (once more), curators of an art gallery, general manager of a hip restaurant in the Back Bay, editor-in-chief of a women’s fashion website, manager at a hipster restaurant, co-owners of an urban style shop, the dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, VP of business development for an architecture firm, founder of a comm company, owner of a women’s clothing shop, an architecture professor at MIT, an Olympic swimmer/anesthesiologist, electrical engineer/fashion blogger, and consultant for international businesses and nonprofits — you don’t really expect to see “rugged NHL defenseman” alongside them.

Last year, though, Celtics guard Ray Allen and Pats defensive back Ellis Hobbs were named to the list despite the fact that the latter just rips off Kanye West’s style and Tom Brady dresses far better than both of them anyway.

One highlight, in which Ward almost comes across as Patrick Bateman from the book version of American Psycho:

So what are you wearing in this picture? It’s a gray suit by Zegna, shoes from Barneys New York, a shirt by Faconnable, a Burberry belt, and the tie’s Armani.

He works with a tailor out of New York because he doesn’t fit into off-the-rack suits, and the tailor also makes golf shorts for Marc Savard (who can’t fit into normal golf shorts?). He also lists his main fashion influences as the show “Boston Legal” (for real) and his father, who would go to Ward’s youth hockey games in a tie and sweater vest. Classy.

Ward’s one piece of fashion advice for you hockey blog-reading cretins in your Hartford Whaler sweatshirts with Cheeto dust on the front: “You can’t go wrong with a Ted Baker tie.”

The difference between why people will call Sean Avery gay for being into fashion but not Aaron Ward, by the way, is that Aaron Ward will literally beat you to death.

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.

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.”