The Two-Line Pass

I was in New York yesterday and passed a Gap store with Sean Avery’s glamour shots in the window. It was the first time I had seen them in real life and I kind of laughed about it. My friend, who is not a sports fan, obviously didn’t know who Sean Avery was, or why I found him so hilarious.

I explained the “fatso” comment he directed at Marty Brodeur. I explained about him going out with Elisha Cuthbert. I explained the Avery Rule. I even, at the risk of making hockey sound lame, explained the Vogue internship.

“Yeah,” said my friend, “he seems pretty cool I guess.”

If only I had this story to explain as well. The Most Hated Man in the NHL would have been a huge hit.

Avery went on George Stroumboulopoulous’ (I swear that’s his real name) CBC show “The Hour,” and the topic of Don Cherry saying last year that the new Dallas Stars shift-disturber needed to be “straightened out.” Video’s here.

Said Avery (and those sensitive to swear words should turn their monitors off and light their computers on fire, then throw it out the window):

He’s a staple as far as Canadian hockey goes, and I grew up watching Coach’s Corner, and he serves a purpose.

But he really doesn’t know shit about hockey.

Stroumboulopoulous tried to interject, saying that Cherry, who’s been around the game longer than Avery’s been alive, knows quite a bit. Avery had to admit that was true.

He knows, like, unnecessary facts about putting Sears catalogues on your shin pads.

To put it in context, this is like someone in the NFL taking a run at John Madden for comments he made almost a year ago, if Madden hated Europeans.

Avery talks about why he wanted an internship at Vogue, too. It’s partially, he said, because he regrets dropping out of school in ninth grade, and having not learned to play the piano or read Moby Dick, which is a genuine enough reason to do anything. He called what junior hockey players go through in Canada to make it, “Terrible.”

Other highlights:

He gets his underwear ironed, he would delete the Canadiens from the NHL, when asked if he had slept with Kate Moss he replied “Not yet,”he supports Obama, and calls most hockey players “very, very simple.”

Sean Avery, from this interview, is a terribly fascinating person.

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.

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?

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 was watcing bits and pieces of the Rangers game last night online (don’t narc me out!) and there was one name I kept hearing constantly.

“Petr Nedved.”

Apparently, the 37-year-old scored a goal and generally looked impressive (albeit against Senators bench that, sans Spezza, Heatley, Gerber and Fischer, was not exactly rife with talent) in a 2-1 Rangers win to open the preseason last night. PETR NEDVED!

“Surely when I left I wasn’t expecting to be coming back,” said Nedved, the game’s first star. “It is so nice to be back in the National Hockey League. It’s just an exhibition game, but I was nervous before the game to the point that I didn’t know what to expect.”

He also picked up the game’s first star, and the announcers on homeriffic MSG could not stop raving about him.

Still, though, he’d need turn far more heads than this to make the team. If the Rangers think they can get similar production from a 22-year-old for a similar price, Nedved is on the first plane full of chickens and pigs back to Liberec.

Doesn’t sound like anyone’s ready to annoint him the King of Comebacks just yet.

“That’s his first game so I’m not going to draw any conclusions,” Rangers coach Tom Renney said. “Like a lot of others, he’s involved in a process and we’re smack dab in the middle of it. We’ll give him credit for a good game and get ready for the next one.

“In the grand scheme of things, it’s something that has to be consistent - at least the chances - and playing a good two-way game and being an influential player for all the right reasons.”

If the announcers on MSG last night were to have been believed, Nedved is still a “great skater” with a “great shot,” so making the team isn’t going to be a big deal.

But seriously, Petr Nedved?

Jeremy Roenick is no spring chicken. At 38 years old, he was one of the oldest players in the NHL. So when 18-year-old Samuel Groulx caught him with an elbow during a training camp scrimmage, what was he supposed to do?

He tried to get the kid, who was born over two years after Roenick made his NHL debut, to fight.

The veteran got in Groulx’s grill, threw a few words at him and then a punch to the helmet. A few more words and a second punch earned Roenick a roughing penalty.

A veteran like you should know they always catch the retaliatory penalty, JR. Always.

Groulx, for his part, didn’t know if he should put Old Man Roenick on his ass (and at 6-foot-2, 165, he probably could have), so he just kind of stood there dumbfounded.

“The situation was, I don’t know what to do,” he said after the scrimmage. “It was, ‘OK, sorry about that. I’m just trying to make the team.’ I don’t know, it was a crazy situation.”

If he really wanted to make the team, he would’ve one-punched Roenick. That’s what Kevin Bieksa did that one time, and he’s been in the NHL ever since.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a hockey coach in any sense of the word. But in reading this Damian Cristodero article from the St. Pete Times about Barry Melrose’s plan for the Lightning, I feel like I’d do an okay job with an NHL job.

His big plan to right the Tampa Bay ship is pretty simple. Well, actually it’s shockingly simple.

Step one: Play your best players less.

Martin St. Louis averaged more than 24 minutes a game last year, and Lecavalier averaged just under 23. Melrose said they played anywhere from three to five minutes too much per night. In St. Louis’ case, I agree that almost 25 seems like a lot. In fact, it was the most of any forward by close to 30 seconds a night. Brad Richards, who played with St. Louis for most of his time in Tampa, was second at 23:27, followed by Alex Ovechkin at 23:06. A good four minutes too many for St. Louis, even if he did see time in all situations, and Tampa took a decent amount of penalties last year.

But getting Lecavalier’s minutes down to 20 or less is crazy. The team has no one besides Lecavalier to play in his place. Who picks up those minutes? Gary Roberts? Steven Stamkos? Ryan Malone? Eh, that’s not too good of a substitute.

Both will see their shorthanded minutes drop considerably to cover this, which would be fine except St. Louis averaged 1:46 shorthanded a night, and Lecavalier only had 1:33. Even if those numbers dropped to nil, they’re still losing 2ish minutes a night at even strength or (if Melrose is actually as stupid enough) on the power play.

Melrose calls this “resting,” I ask, “For what?” This isn’t a playoff-bound team, or anything like one. Too many holes, too many projects. Playing your best players as much as they can possibly play doesn’t strike me as a bad thing. It’s not like they slowed down or had the ice time affect them too greatly. Both Lecavalier and St. Louis had better than a point a game.

Step two: Don’t dump and chase.

Again, just brilliant coaching here. The only teams that can get away with the dump and chase are teams with good defenses. Tampa doesn’t have one. Tortorella’s insistence on using it was none too bright, Melrose’s correction of that practice shouldn’t be hailed as anything less than correction of an obvious.

So instead, the plan is (wait for it) puck possession! It’s just so clever.

Here’s Melrose, the master analyzer, on why it will work: “If we have the puck, they can’t score.”

Step three: Play defense.

But what happens when they DO have the puck?

“I’m not going to accept bad pinches,” Melrose said. “I’m not going to accept two-on-ones against. I’m not going to accept bad judgment on defense.”

Saying it is one thing, executing it is another. The fact is that Tampa’s defense features five 23-year-olds and they’re going to make mistakes. Lots of them. That means bad pinches, bad giveaways, and odd-man rushes coming back the other way. Even if they’re encouraged not to jump into the play (and boy won’t Tampa be fun to watch this year if that’s the case?), they’ll still see a lot of forwards busting ass up-ice toward them.

So this is Barry Melrose’s three-part plan. Really.

Doesn’t it make you feel like all you need to do to coach is stand behind the bench in a suit?

When you’re around NHL players a lot, you find out that there are indeed cities, teams and individual players that they just don’t like. The perception that fans can get is sometimes overblown (most guys in the NHL don’t really mind Sean Avery, for example), and sometimes it’s spot-on.

And if you ever considered that Chris Pronger might have really, really hated his time in Edmonton, but never had confirmation, don’t worry. Pronger has now confirmed that he really, really hated his time in Edmonton.

In an otherwise bland Q&A with the Orange County Register (even their website suffers from “The OC” disorder), Pronger offered this gem.

Q: Are there teams you can’t stand to play?

A: You mean, like, I want to puke when I see their players? There’s quite a few of those in the league … there’s a number of cities you want to get in and out. Edmonton’s one of them.

I guarantee that the much-heralded Oilogosphere will be positively seething after this one. Ingrates, all of them. Think about it like this: GETTING Pronger cost almost nothing. Jeff Woywitka, Eric Brewer and Doug Lynch isn’t too bad a price. WITH Pronger, Edmonton was within a Dwayne Roloson injury of winning the Cup. And OFFLOADING Pronger yielded a very good young defenseman in Ladislav Smid, Joffrey Lupul, a first-round pick in 2007 and 2008, and a 2008 second-round pick (which later went to the Islanders in the Ryan Smyth trade).

Lupul plus an aging Jason Smith were eventually traded to Philadelphia for Geoff Sanderson, Joni Pitkanen, and a third-round pick. Pitkanen, in turn, was flipped to Carolina for Erik Cole.

This was the net result of all those trades.

Out:

• Anaheim’s 2007 first-round pick (Nick Ross to Phoenix)
• Edmonton’s 2007 second-round pick (Joel Gistedt)
• Jeff Woywitka, Eric Brewer, Doug Lynch (to St. Louis)
• Jason Smith

In:

• Dallas’ 2007 first-round pick, from Phoenix (Riley Nash)
• Ladislav Smid
• Erik Cole
• Anaheim’s 2008 first-round pick (Jordan Eberle)
• A Cup run

Believe me, you guys made out okay there, so just shut up already about Chris Pronger.

One thing of which Ryan Kesler can’t be accused is being unambitious. As an example, Mr. 81-points-in-238-games says he doesn’t want to be considered just a checking-line player.

“I want to be that guy, the guy the coach looks to put on the ice at the end of a game to win it. That’s what I’m striving for. I’m striving to be a marquee player on this team, a guy who can score 70-80 points a year. I think I’m on the right track. I had a good stepping stone last year.”

EIGHTY points a year? Ryan Kesler? Sure, you scored 21 last season. Great. Know how many the average 70-80-point guy scored last year? 30. So just increase your scoring by 43 percent next year and you’re golden, buddy!

For reference, by the way, there are only six players of the 39 that scored 70 points or more last year and had fewer than or as many goals as Kesler’s 21: Nicklas Lidstrom (10), Scott Gomez (16), Ales Hemsky (20), Patrick Kane (21), Henrik Sedin and Marc Savard (both 15). Several of them missed at least 10 games. But y’know what they do instead? Distribute the puck to the tune of slightly better than Kesler’s 16 assists.

So where does Kesler get off saying he deserves it just because he scored 21 goals on his o…

He had power play opportunities last year with the Sedin twins and was given a brief shot to centre a second line, flanked by linemates Ryan Shannon and Markus Naslund.

But there’s an explanation.

“It had to do with chemistry. I didn’t play with the right guys. With some guys you have it and with some guys you don’t,” Kesler said.

Okay well you’re right about that. It’s not like the Sedins could have chemistry with just about anyone on the ice.

“I’m not saying I’m going to go out there and score 30 goals this year, but I really believe I can be that kind of player,” Kesler said.

Why not focus on believing more realistic things though? Try saying, “I believe I’ll have a sandwich.” That’s the kind of thinking anyone can get behind.