The Two-Line Pass

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The Maple Leafs are, as I’ve said before, not a particularly great hockey team, nor are they a particularly well-managed or well-coached hockey team. But I did think they were good enough to get into the playoffs if their goaltending held up.

It largely has. And as a result, the Leafs are currently sitting sixth in the East, seven points up on the Islanders, who are just below the postseason cutoff, and they’re looking pretty comfortable, even if they have won just three of their last 10 games (yuck). How comfortable? James Mirtle tweeted this morning that by his count, because the Leafs currently have 40 points and the rest of the East sucks, that the Leafs can go just 5-7-2 in their remaining 14 games and be more or less assured a playoff spot.

Which is crazy. They’ve almost done everything in their power to not make the playoffs, including playing their worst players more minutes than one of the best point-producing and possession-driving centers in the league this season, leaving a high-quality offensive defenseman in the AHL in favor of Korbinian Holzer, and been absolute crap in the shootout. But it’s all been to no avail.

The Leafs are probably going to make the playoffs. They’d need to collapse way more significantly than they did last season, and in 14 games that doesn’t seem all that likely, especially given how soft their schedule is. In all, 10 of their remaining games are against teams below them in the standings, including the Hurricanes (bad), Flyers (worse), Devils twice (okayish I guess), Rangers twice (still underperforming), Islanders twice (dreadful), Capitals (woof), Lightning (crap), and Panthers (the worst).

I can’t be too sure whether lot of people will try to paint this as somehow being a result of their canning Brian Burke being the reason that the Leafs are actually good enough to make the playoffs finally, but I’m going to err on the side of caution and say they obviously will. Only a person like Burke saying that he set the table for the Leafs’ moderate success this likely playoff season — not coincidentally the only one in which James Reimer has been remotely healthy in the last three — would be viewed as being some sort of derogatory misrepresentation of fact. But what has Dave Nonis done this season? Anything of note besides strand Jake Gardiner in the minors for too long? The answer is nothing. That’s it.

So it seems like at long last Toronto is going to have its playoff team. Which is probably something it should or even would have done last season. But moreover it looks like people in the media up there might have to actually say moderately nice things about the things Brian Burke has done in constructing this team and maybe even setting it up for the future. Either that or it’ll take some serious logical acrobatics to avoid doing so. That’s the really mind-blowing thing about all this.

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

Hi! I’m writing these posts 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!

It’s easy to get caught up in the ongoing storylines of this abbreviated NHL season. The Blackhawks are unstoppable. The Rangers are garbage without Rick Nash (but really great with him). The entire Northwest is pretty bad. The Flyers keep losing and have negative-a-million games in hand on everyone. The Habs are a big surprise atop the East. The Ducks are the second-best team in hockey somehow.

But one thing that seems to have escaped notice, and perhaps understandably, is that the Florida Panthers are terrible. Like, extraordinarily so. Worse than Columbus. The Columbus Blue Jackets are worse than them at hockey despite the fact that the Panthers play in the worst division in hockey (teams in the Southeast average 22.2 points, and Carolina has the lowest point total among division leaders with just 27).

To make matters worse, you could probably put up a pretty decent argument that the Panthers are lucky — just as they were last year when they inexplicably made the playoffs thanks to all those dumb shootout wins — to be in the position they are. That’s because their goal differential this season is minus-30. In 24 games. By comparison, the next-worst negative goal differential belongs to both Columbus and Buffalo at minus-15. But perhaps the best way to illustrate how bad it is to be minus-30 in 24 games is to say that the Blackhawks are plus-32 in the same number; the Panthers are almost as bad this season as Chicago is good.

Now, to get under the hood a little bit, there are a lot of pretty decent reasons why the Panthers are so bad after making the playoffs, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that they shouldn’t have made them last year. This was a poorly constructed, incredibly lucky team whose current leading scorer is Tomas Fleischmann, with 17 points. Fleischmann is a fine enough hockey player overall, but if he’s your team’s best point producer, your team has problems. The thing is, though, he’s not their best player, because that honor goes to rookie Jonathan Huberdeau, who has 11 goals and is the only Panther with a double-digit total in that regard, and only Tomas Kopecky, at nine, is even close.

Then there’s the goaltending situation. Suffice it to say that entering any two consecutive seasons with a two-man rotation of Jose Theodore and Scott Clemmensen will guarantee you one ghastly campaign at the least, and that’s certainly borne out by the results this year. Theodore leads the team with four wins in 14 games, thanks to his .893 save percentage and 3.29 GAA. Clemmensen’s stats are nearly a full goal and .041 worse, which is saying something. And just so you don’t think it’s entirely a function of those guys just being crap goalies (they are) Jacob Markstrom’s .913 save percentage in four games with Theodore on the shelf isn’t great, but it’s still only enough to keep his GAA barely lower than 3.

This is, and always was, a pieced-together team of mediocre veterans and too-young kids that was always going to be pretty bad team, made worse by Stephen Weiss nursing a wrist injury all year that recently ended his season (and by the way he’s going straight to the UFA market in July). It’s unlikely that anyone gets fired over how terribly things are going because last season was an aberration, and moreover no amount of silly free agent spending was going to patch over the fact that the team was clearly undergoing rebuilding work when Dale Tallon was brought aboard. If anything, last year hurt them in their efforts to achieve those ends.

This is more in line with what fans who actually want to see the team succeed long-term should be cheering for. Even if watching them is painful and sad.

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(Ed. note: I haven’t written a post like this in three years but now seems as good a time as any to do it again because of you-know-what.)

The entire purpose of my entire foray into the hockey blogging world was basically to highlight all the terrible and stupid things that happen in this great sport on a yearly basis. Much of that is driven by the sport’s greatest professional organization (for better or worse (worse)), the National Hockey League, so there was usually no shortage of fodder.

And for a little while (read: two years) after I started, I would compile a list of the dumbest things that happened in the previous calendar year and make fun of them all over again. Then I stopped for no good reason other than I got lazy. Frankly, I didn’t even remember I used to do it until like two days ago. So I decided to do it again. Here are Nos. 10-6 of the worst things to happen in hockey this year, as far as I’m concerned:

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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!

This is something I touched on in What We Learned this week but wanted to look at a little more in-depth here: The idea that Roberto Luongo shouldn’t waive his no-trade clause to go to Toronto because of how they treat goalies there is, in a word, extraordinary.

This was the opinion put forth by Jason Botchford in this Sunday’s Vancouver Province. That, because of all the disfunction surrounding the Maple Leafs’ goaltending position, it would be a miserable time for Luongo. I know, right?

The first thing to note is that the Leafs’ pool of prospects would likely be just as helpful to the Canucks as those coming from the other rumored Luongo destination in Sunrise, Florida. Both would give Vancouver a top-line offensive pick in Nick Bjugstad or Nazem Kadri, as well as some other bits and pieces that would likely prove palatable for Mike Gillis. But from Luongo’s point of view? Yeah, going to Toronto would be a nightmare.

I mean, why would he want to go play in a hockey-crazy market where his every save will be dissected ad nauseum by fans, the overly-picky media and an active and unforgiving blogosphere? Why would he want to be somewhere that constantly reminds anyone who will listen about the size of his cap hit and how his play hasn’t been commensurate with it? On what planet would Luongo allow himself to become the scapegoat of an entire team’s lack of performance the second things go wrong?

Oh, right.

The only difference between Toronto and Vancouver, and the way they treat goaltenders, is that in Toronto, there’s very little chance indeed of actually making the playoffs and then blowing it there. The guy has already been bullied out of the job thanks to repeated hatchet jobs from the press in Vancouver, who hung all the team’s failures not only in losing the Stanley Cup to Boston, but also last year as well, directly on Luongo as though he was the one who personally saw to it that the offense scored just eight goals in a seven-game series. Fans booed him for every goal he gave up, and cheered any time he was pulled in favor of Cory Schneider.

That became a permanent thing in the playoffs. Which, by the way, saw the Canucks get bounced in five games anyway, before the media explained away all that as not being Schneider’s fault in a way they neeeeeever would have for Luongo.

So no, I don’t know if he’d be more miserable with the Leafs. At least in Toronto, if someone comes up to Luongo after the game and tries to tell him how to do his job, there’s like a 60-40 chance it’s someone who’s actually on the team’s payroll.

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The Lead

Excuse me, excuse me. What in the world are you thinking? Keith Ballard, I’ve been with you for a lot of years and to see you join up with the likes of these men absolutely makes me sick to my stomach.

The Thrashers may have scored a goal to go up a goal early in what would end up as a 4-3 win over the Florida Panthers, but that wasn’t the big story. The big story was Keith Ballard being the Thrashers’ third man and committing the biggest heel turn in the history of professional hockey here tonight.

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The Lead

When you watch as much hockey as I do (I’ll ballpark it at 20 games a week), it’s kind of easy to get jaded. Almost every goal, with a few notable exceptions, has been done before. That goal Drew Stafford scored last night was gorgeous, but we’ve seen Rick Nash and Alex Ovechkin and Jon Toews do it better. Mike Legg’s famous goal in the NCAA tournament has to have been one of the first of its kind, but every once in a while some cheeky junior player (like Sid Crosby) will try it again.

Every highlight reel goal you’ve ever seen has been attempted and many have been scored. It takes a very rare confluence of perfect speed, positioning, and line combinations for any number of players and both teams for the circumstances surrounding all-time classic goals (like Ovechkin’s against the Coyotes) to even be created.

But this goal by Richard Zednick tonight.. I’ve never seen anything even a little like it. I mean, just look at that. The fact that it ended up as the game-winner too, that’s awesome.

So many little things on that goal are very, very pretty. The chip-around on Radek Martinek, the presence of mind to pull it back around Brendan Witt, the ability to clear Witt at full speed, the ability to corral the puck while still in midair and somehow put it on net.

Stop the fight. This one’s over. Who could possibly top that? How?

Richard Zednik, congratulations on scoring the Goal of the Year.

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No one cares about the Florida Panthers. Hell, only like three guys that play for the team probably do. But times are tough, economy-wise, so the Panthers organization has a solution: go to a game for free.

The Panthers, apparently courtesy of president and COO Michael Yormark, will give out 500 free tickets per game to anyone with a Florida driver’s license. All you have to do is register on the site, print out the e-mail they send you, and bring the e-mail to the game. Free tickets!

Want TWO free tickets? That’s fine too! And it’s not like these are even bad games. Look at some of the teams you can see. The Sharks, Sens, Bolts, Red Wings, ‘Canes, Devils or Rangers will all be in town before the end of November, and you can see them all for zero dollars. Pretty sweet.

But wait, illegal aliens, the Panthers thought of you too! Even if you DON’T have a Florida license, if you leave your information and answer a few questions, someone from the Panthers will call you about getting you down to Sunrise for a game too.

The fine print is great too. “Program will remain in effect until everyone in Florida experiences the excitement of a Panthers game at least once.” Ambitious.

Oh and speaking of the Panthers, Bryan McCabe may have broken his back. That didn’t take long.

We’re now something like 26 days out from the start of the NHL season so I figure this is as good a time as any to start doing the 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) This is 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.

Florida Panthers, you’re on the clock.

Oh man is this going to be a bad team.

Bryan McCabe is the big offseason pickup is proof enough of that. The Panthers franchise is one with a complete lack of direction right now. It just traded its best player, malcontent though he was, and replaced his offensive production with almost literally nothing.

Not that being bad is an unknown situation in Florida, or anything, but this is going to get ugly even by Florida Panthers standards.

On offense, there’s.. well, there’s Nathan Horton and Stephen Weiss who are pretty good and after that.. umm.. I guess David Booth. After that, there’s a bunch of guys who scored less than 40 points. Repeat: less than 40.

More after the jump.

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Shed not a tear, Bryan. Where you're going, no one will care how many goals you get torched for.

Bryan McCabe is finally done with the Maple Leafs, and it looks like he’s going to be traded to the Florida Panthers.

Reports started to trickle out last night that he would be traded to Florida within a few weeks. They’re just waiting for some $2 million bonus from the Leafs to clear.

A delay in the announcement is linked to the Leafs willingness to pick up a $2 million bonus McCabe is due on September 1st. After the payment is made only then will the transaction be accepted by the NHL.

Now this trade prompted a lot of speculation from the Toronto-based national media that still has obsession with the Leafs despite their, um, awfulness (witness 23 of next year’s 37 Hockey Night in Canada 7 p.m. games being Toronto-centric).

Who would the Leafs get in return? Promising young centerman Stephen Weiss? Outstanding winger Nate Horton? Embittered defensive standout Jay Bouwmeester? Toronto’s air pollution problem? A bag of Tim Horton’s coffee beans?

Well, because the aforementioned players are all young and all very good, the Leafs won’t even get autographed hockey cards of them. Not for McCabe, who is not young and not very good AND has a monster contract.

Instead, the scuttlebutt is that the Panthers, possibly the only organization in the NHL more inept than the Leafs, will for once do the right(ish) thing and send over oft-injured defenseman Mike Van Ryn. What they should send is a 137th round pick and possibly a Miami Dolphins bumper sticker, but at least the Panthers are unloading Van Ryn’s contract, which has two years remaining on it at $2.9 million per.

By the way, click on the above link to the Sportsnet story and look at the picture of McCabe they use. Just outstanding.

Sweet footwork, J-Bo!

Jay Bouwmeester just became the hottest name on the trade market.

After rejecting a multi-year deal last week that would have severely underpaid him for his services in Florida, J-Bo has instead signed a one-year deal worth $4.8 million.

SUNRISE, Fla. – Florida Panthers General Manager Jacques Martin announced today that club has agreed to terms on a one year deal with defenseman Jay Bouwmeester.

Bouwmeester, 24, played in all 82 games with the Panthers last season recording a career high 15 goals, while ranking first in the National Hockey League with 27:28 of ice time per game. The 6-foot-4, 215-pound blueliner has played in all 82 games for the Cats in each of his last three seasons. For his NHL career, he has played in 389 games, all with Florida, scoring 38 goals with 123 assists and 261 PIM.

The Edmonton, Alberta native represented the Panthers in the 2006-07 NHL All-Star Game and played for Team Canada at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. He has also represented Team Canada three times in the World Championships (2003, 2004 & 2008), while also playing on Team Canada’s gold medal winning World Cup of hockey squad in 2004.

Bouwmeester, whom rumormongers have already linked to about 15 different teams regardless of their ability to trade for him, will almost certainly be dealt before the trade deadline this year, and likely earlier. As I said last week, the line to just negotiate for such a trade will surely be around the block.

However, given that Martin has everyone in the league over a barrel with this bargaining chip, and given that he might be one of the worst general managers in the NHL, it’s tough to imagine that a Luongo-type trade is not in the works.

A certain rumor maker-upper has him going to at least half the Eastern Conference:

Toronto (15%) Ottawa (5%) Boston (10%) Edmonton (5%) San Jose (10%) Dallas (15%) Colorado (15%) St Louis (15%) Pittsburgh (10%)

This also ignores the fact that hardly any of these teams have the juice (read: high draft picks and top prospects) or the desire to deal said juice to acquire Bouwmeester. It also ignores that this blogger/Sportsnet employee (which tells you everything you need to know about Sportsnet) has in the past two weeks also linked J-Bo to Calgary, Washington, Buffalo, the Rangers, and St. Louis. Being that St. Louis is the only team to make both lists, I assume that’s where Bouwmeester is headed.

To St. Louis: Jay Bouwmeester
To Florida: Dan Hinote, Andy Wosniewksi, 4th round pick.

For the sake of our hockey sanity over the next six months, please make it happen, J.D.