The Two-Line Pass

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Yesterday I wrote about teams deluding themselves into being buyers because they’re so close to a playoff spot, and probably paying too-high prices for too-bad players, and sure enough, not a minute before I opened the window to write this post, Darren Dreger tweeted maybe the dumbest thing I’ve read in two weeks:

“CBJ will be a buyer. Columbus would be willing to part with 1 of their 3 first rnd draft picks for a scoring forward.”

A lot of questions come to mind in reading this. Like, “What?” and “Huh?” and “Why would they do that?” and “Seriously?” and “This is an April Fool’s joke, right?” and “No seriously Dreger, is it?” and “What do you mean it’s not?” and “Can you believe how stupid the Blue Jackets are?” and “Wait Scott Howson isn’t their GM any more?”

Tough to answer any of those questions, except maybe the last one. This seems an incredibly foolish tack to take, but on some level it’s an understandable one. This is a new management group, with John Davidson having been brought in over the summer and Jarmo Kekalainen just a few months into the job, and maybe they want to make a bit of splash by acquiring whatever will pass for a “big name” at this deadline — 682-year-old Jaromir Jagr? — and show fans they’re serious about competing for the playoffs. Columbus is already holding onto eighth in the West, but is just a point up on St. Louis, and the Blues have three games in hand.

Therefore, going out and getting someone certainly bolsters their chances for making the postseason, but here’s another question you should feel free to ask JD or Jarmo if you happen to bump into them: “To what end?” The Blue Jackets are third-to-last in goals scored league-wide, which is why they want forward help, but any team gripping as tightly as they are to that spot with their minus-10 goal differential isn’t going to find anyone anywhere worth enough to make them competitive. Remember that Chicago’s goal differential is currently plus-52 better than theirs, and then tell me why this willingness to deal is even remotely existent.

There’s a middle ground between trading a first-round pick for a rental, and selling. That’s standing pat, which most teams would probably be wise to do over the next two days or so. The focus for Columbus should be trying to get the best return possible for their efforts to sell off their good players (Rick Nash, Jeff Cater, etc.) by getting as many high first-round picks as they can, and while the Rangers are doing their best to accommodate those needs by being tied with the Islanders, Los Angeles and the Blue Jackets themselves are doing Kekalainen no favors. Trading one of those — you’d think it’d be the Kings’, but then you also don’t know just how intent they are on securing said scoring forward — seems remarkably ill-advised.

Yeah, the Blue Jackets have made the playoffs once since they existed, and they got swept out of the first round. So here’s one last question: “Don’t you think that a team with 37 points in 36 games probably suffers a similar fate against Chicago, even with this new and exciting forward?” The answer is yes.

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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!

If Shane Doan didn’t score 50 points a year, and if he wasn’t such a good quote, people would see him for what he is: A dirty player who has little respect for his opponents, who dives to draw calls, and who if he were a lesser talent would regularly be run down in much the way Patrick Kaleta is today.

The long history of Doan intentionally trying to hurt his opponents is fairly well-documented. Just last March he was suspended three games for elbowing Jamie Benn in the face only a week after being fined for boarding Mark Giordano, both of which were less than 18 months after he threw a dirty, late, lateral headshot on Dan Sexton. No one really cares about any of that, though, because none of those guys were in any way injured on the plays, though they easily could have been.

When you talk about guys who don’t have respect for their opponents, it’s easy to excoriate the ones who suck at hockey, or the ones who do it without “backing it up.” But because Doan is willing to fight, and because he’s a captain, and because he’s seen as a good guy for sticking with Phoenix when he could have cashed in elsewhere with considerably more franchise stability this summer, no one really cares about that. Certainly, a Ryan Miller-type on the Coyotes would never say he has to get his act together.

The latest incident for which Doan completely escaped any sort of blame despite being hilariously antithetical to the general decorum of the sport was last night, when he and Kings rookie Jake Muzzin accidentally collided knee-to-knee because both were watching the play, and not each other. Admittedly, this is a scary kind of play under the best circumstances because you never want to see someone get their ACL blown out, but Doan was crouched on the ice in the fetal position for a few seconds before getting up and charging at Muzzin. In attempting to get to Muzzin who may have stuck his leg out on purpose for all Doan knew since he, like the defenseman, wasn’t paying attention. Only a linesman’s preemptive intervention stopped Doan from taking a few pops in on Muzzin before the kid even dropped his gloves, and despite the fact that he threw off his gloves while wearing a visor (a no-no in the NHL rulebook, you’ll remember), he was inexplicably not even assessed a penalty.

Doan and his teammates also spent the remainder of the game trying to fight Muzzin every time the kid came over the boards. Which was odd because, unlike Doan himself, his teammates no doubt had an actual look at what happened on the play and could likely see that it was innocent, but you have to stand up for your captain and so forth.

This is blatant reputationism from the officials and the people covering the game, who, had it been, say Brad Marchand or Raffi Torres doing the same, all we’d be hearing about today was how this is the kind of stuff that needs to be run out of the game immediately, and is yet another sign that NHL players don’t take safety seriously.

But because it was Shane Doan, and he was in The Heat of the Moment, and also playing his ass off in that game (he finished with both of Phoenix’s goals. on 11 shots and 13 hits in just under 19 minutes!), it barely warranted a tongue-clucking. I suppose I should get used to that. He’s way too honest a player to ever get called out by anyone.

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(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for @thebuck9. If you want me to write about any old thing in hockey, all you have to do is donate $50 below. It’s easy and fun. Bye.)

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!

As you all likely well know about me, I am very open to the opinions of others, even if they challenge my own, and so when the guy whose Twitter name is listed above said I should write this sponsored post about how the Leafs wouldn’t be in a playoff hunt if not for the work of Colton Orr, that gave me a lot of pause.

After all, if Randy Carlyle is playing the guy as many minutes as he has been in recent weeks, and the Leafs keep winning (if you ignore last night, which was clearly an outlier in expected results) doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know about the value guys like Orr provide? Carlyle, and every other NHL coach who routinely puts fighters in the lineup, have been around the game a lot longer than me and likely know a thing or three about what motivates professional hockey players, and makes teams win. Randy Carlyle has 555 NHL wins and one Stanley Cup more than I do, so it’s tough for me to sit in judgment.

Let’s think about it another way, on a more macro level: Remember that game a few Saturdays back when Toronto went into the Bell Centre and stomped Montreal’s guts and teeth into a fine, unrecognizable paste? Sure you do. Do you also remember how did they do it? With tough guys in the lineup, that’s how.

Here’s the box score. What do you see? Three fighting majors handed out, all of which the Leafs decidedly won thanks to the top-quality pugilistic efforts of Mark Fraser, Mike Kostka and Frasier McLaren. Colton Orr also played nearly five minutes that night, likely because the Habs were already so intimidated (as evidenced by Brendan Gallagher’s diving penalty early in the second period) that they didn’t need to put the big guns out there. Someone would have gotten killed.

Or how about the example of a young man on the Phoenix Coyotes run by the name of Paul Bissonnette, otherwise known as BizNasty? His team is technically ninth in the Western Conference, but tied with eighth-place San Jose at 21 points. But they just beat the Vancouver Canucks, and Bissonnette is a big reason why. He has three points in his last three games, tripling his total in 31 last season and 48 the year before.

In furtherance of this theory, I also took a look at HockeyFights.com to see the team leader board. The Leafs, a playoff team, have more fights than anyone else in the NHL. The Philadelphia Flyers, also a playoff team, are tied for second with 18. The Vancouver Canucks, also a playoff team, are fourth with 16. The Dallas Stars and Montreal Canadiens, playoff teams both, are tied for fifth with 12. The Los Angeles Kings, also a playoff team, are tied for eighth with 11.

So that’s six of the league’s top 10 fighting teams in the playoffs. And here’s another fun fact for all you punk pacifists out there: When the Bruins won the Stanley Cup two seasons ago, they were also second in the league in fights. That tells you everything you need to know, and stands as evidence enough that there’s a strong correlation between playing so-called “thugs” and winning hockey games with regularity.

Figure it out, and give Colton Orr 20 minutes a night.

(*This post tagged under “Arguments an idiot would make.”)

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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!

You knew it would come to this eventually. Owners, let’s say the ones in small markets where they have a tenuous grasp on a small and already-kind-of-disinterested fanbase, are starting to get a little edgy about the whole work stoppage thing lasting too much longer than it already has.

From Bruce Garrioch (I know, I know):

“My guess is you’ve got about 10 teams that are pretty nervous right now,” said a league insider. “But (Bettman) has the power of the executive committee behind him.”

That’s where the conversation begins and ends. The league has 30 owners, and one-third of them are “pretty nervous” about the lockout.

Again, it’s very easy to guess that those owners aren’t exactly the league’s money-making engines and therefore their opinion matters almost exactly squat. Now, Garrioch characterizes some owners whose teams very likely do manage to turn a profit as being among those who want this lockout ended, and I thought that was interesting. Geoffrey Molson, for instance, is termed a “dove,” and that’s kind of understandable. A Habs game is a license to print money. The same is true of Terry Pegula, who has all the money he could ever need (he’s the fourth-richest NHL owner, and soon to be the third since the Kings’ Phil Anschutz, who’s No. 1, is selling), and very legitimately seems to just love hockey.

But Garrioch also says that other owners who might be getting edgy are the Rangers’ James Dolan, who runs Madison Square Garden, and the Flyers’ Ed Snider, who runs Comcast. Now maybe his league insider told him that specifically, and Dolan has stated in the past that he doesn’t want a lockout but he’s also not exactly sweating the Rangers’ revenue given the number of other events he could host at MSG if he so desired. But really, we’re supposed to believe Ed Snider is so consumed of his desire to win a Stanley Cup that he’s willing to give the players what they want?

These guys have often been counted among the true hawks on the Board of Governors, alongside bloodthirsty warmongers like Boston’s Jeremy Jacobs, Calgary’s Murray Edwards and Washington’s Ted Leonsis, who would stop at nothing to fracture the union, put it back together, then shatter it again. I sincerely doubt that a missed preseason and two weeks of canceled dates — not even canceled games! — would be enough to move the needle for two of the league’s best-known, revenue-generatingest owners. Maybe you don’t think they’d have the power to pull one of their counterparts aside and say, “Let’s cut the crap or we’re gonna rain hell on you.” They’re not Nashville and they’re not Florida. They have clout, and they wouldn’t remotely be afraid to use it.

It’s far more likely that the guys nervously adjusting their ties and tugging at the collars are the ones whose teams lose money anyway, but you could have guessed that at the start.

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The Lead

In the past I have been dismissive of the Kings’ success. I’ve said that their offense doesn’t exactly fill me with wonder, that their defense is a mishmash of mediocre-at-best veterans and Drew Doughty, and that the goaltending provided by Jon Quick — ahem, “Olympian Jon Quick,” as the Kings broadcast was so eager to remind us tonight — hasn’t left me optimistic about The Future of American Goaltending.

It’s games like tonight that highlight why.

Oh yes, on the scoreboard the stomped the everliving crap out of the Sharks. No way to candycoat a 6-2 thrashing like that. Not from a Sharks point of view, at least. You could even go so far as to say that Quick was under heavy fire tonight, facing 47 shots and somehow standing up to all but two of them.

But you could also make the argument that the Kings, as they have so many other times this year, backed into what appears to be a convincing win that should have been anything but.

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The Los Angeles Kings announced today that they signed Anze Kopitar through the 2015-2016 season. No info on the money yet, but you’d assume it’s affordable.

Great job locking up one of the best young players in the league.

“This is really exciting and a little overwhelming to be honest,” Kopitar said Saturday morning in San Jose. “I am happy to be a part of this organization for the next eight years. I can focus now on hockey only and on doing what I want to do, which is to bring the Stanley Cup to L.A. I am also excited to remain with a great group of players who have gotten the same commitment from our organization. We are looking forward to growing together and to building something special here.”

With this signing, the Kings have most of their forward corps locked up for at least this and the next two seasons, with the notable exception being Alex Frolov, whose old deal runs out after next year. You really can’t go wrong locking up guys like Kopitar, Dustin Brown and Patrick O’Sullivan.

The only King to ever get a deal longer than Kopitar’s, by the way? Wayne Gretzky.

UPDATE: He’s gonna get $6.8 million a year.

Based on the findings of the report, my conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious.

Lately, the situation between the KHL and NHL has been a bit tense.

The armies of general managers, agents, league officials and lawyers have been holed up in their Cold War-era situation rooms for the weeks following the KHL’s July 15 moratorium on signing players under NHL contracts. The begrudging “respect” was borne of the mutually-assured destruction that would take place were one side to openly attack the other.

What the Kings just did is the equivalent of dropping a neutron bomb on Leningrad, then sent a teletype to Kruschev making light of his mother’s weight problem, indicating that, were she to sit around the Kremlin, she would sit AROUND the Kremlin.

It’s on now (click for moon language-y goodness, but good on the Ruskies for using WordPress).

“The Continental Hockey League strictly adhered to the unilaterally declared moratorium on signing players who had existing contracts with the National Hockey League clubs. The NHL violated the earlier agreement in Zurich on August 28 and formally announced the signing of contracts by the Los Angeles Kings club with players Andrei Loktionovym and Vyacheslav Voynovym. These players have existing contracts with KHL clubs “Lokomotiv” (Yaroslavl) and “Tractor” (Chelyabinsk), respectively.

“In connection with this, the KHL considers itself free from any obligations to comply with the previously announced moratorium on transferring players. On September 6 at the headquarters of the International Hockey Federation in Zurich, there will be a meeting on this topic, after which the Continental Hockey League will determine further action regarding the National Hockey League.”

Whether or not their KHL contracts were actually valid is a point I’m sure the Kings would deny profusely, but regardless, why pry open this can of worms right now? It’s not as though the Kings didn’t retain their rights, and it’s not as though these kids are likely to make the big club this year. Lombardi had previously said they’re open to playing in North America regardless of it being the NHL or in juniors, and certainly they wanted to get them signed before they put pen to paper on a long-term KHL deal, but I would have to think someone at the NHL’s head office would say to Dean Lombardi (and I’m sure he consulted them on this), “Uhh, Dean, this seems like a pretty bad idea right now.”

Who’s to say that a transfer agreement of some kind couldn’t have been reached before next year’s draft? Who’s to say these kids would have signed a KHL contract for five years and a lot more than the Kings can give them, as is Lombardi’s fear? If they’re so committed to North America, then getting them to sign at any point would have been simple enough.

I understand that this might all be posturing from KHL officials like the Filatov situation. The NHL says Russian Super League contracts never carried over to the KHL, the KHL says they did. That’s for the IIHF to decide.

But why would Lombardi stir the pot to begin with? There’s nothing to be gained by this aside from two mid-level prospects. Doesn’t seem worth it to me.

We’re now something like 48 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.

Los Angeles Kings, you’re on the clock.

These guys are good. The rest.. ehhhhhh.

It’s been a tough few years to be a Kings fan.

The team hasn’t made the playoffs since 2002, but unlike the Penguins, whose success has been built upon years of lucky ping pong ball bounces and on-ice ineptitude, has usually finished high enough to get draft picks outside the top 5. Never mind the bad free agent signings (HOW much for a 37-year-old Rob Blake?) and years without a passable goaltending situation (Garon, Burke, Cloutier, LaBarbera, Cechmanek, etc.), the team has been stuck between rebuilding and trying to win for the last several years. At least, I hope so for their sake.

But that’s different now. The GM Dean Lombardi has probably gambled his job on new coach Terry Murray, who has to make Los Angeles actually care about hockey again the way the Ducks almost did when they won the Cup if the team is going to compete.

Not this year. The Kings are going to be an awful, awful team in 2008-09. Like, real bad. The team finished second-to-last in the NHL last season and got worse. A truly great quartet of forwards in Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown, Alex Frolov and Patrick O’Sullivan return for the Kings, but they’ve also lost sure-thing 30-goal guy Mike Cammaleri.

Not that offense was ever the problem for L.A. to begin with. The problem is, and has always been, defense and goaltending. So when Blake and Lubomir Visnovsky, the two biggest minutes-eaters on defense, left by free agency and trade, respectively, things got appreciably worse. Offensive defenseman Jack Johnson, he of the 11-point, minus-19 2007-08 campaign, and Tom Preissing, who is actually good, is now the No. 1 pairing in L.A. Preissing, though, has only averaged 20 minutes in a season once in his four-year career.

However, they are buttressed by such blueline luminaries as Matt Greene (career 0.09 points per game and minus-31), Denis Gauthier (four points and a minus-11 in 43 games and no playoff appearances with Philly last year), and Peter Harrold (a veteran of 37 NHL games). That’s it. Five NHL defensemen on the roster. And yes, the Kings are way, way below the cap floor so they’ll have to sign someone, but the list of remaining free agent defensemen is, uh, slim. Big Joey DiPenta, maybe? Marek Malik could be yours for the right price. One supposes that the biggest blueline question centers around whether or not 2007 pick Thomas Hickey or 2008 pick Drew Doughty (both as yet unsigned) are ready. If both are, the Kings might not have too big of a problem keeping the puck out of the n…

Oh wait, the goalie situation. Right. Jason LaBarbera is the No. 1 guy right now (by default more than anything else, like merit), with three rookies vying for the backup role that will likely be won by 26-year-old Erik Ersberg. Ersberg was outstanding in his few games last year, posting 2.48/.927 in 15 games, in which the Kings went 6-5-3. But whether or not he’s ready to play 40, 50, or even 60 games (with those numbers, he’s certainly deserving) remains to be seen. The Kings also have promising 20-year-old QMJHLer Jonathan Bernier who was not-so-good in four games for L.A. last year, and Jon Quick, a UMass product who was impressive in Manchester.

Still, there are too many questions, especially on the blue line, to really give this team any sort of credit this year.

More after the jump.

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In the lead-up to the new NHL season, more and more of the logos from the NHL’s new line of third jerseys are starting to leak to the public in dribs and drabs.

A few weeks ago, we saw the new third jersey concepts for the Bruins, Coyotes, Thrashers, Sabres, Penguins, Sharks, Lightning and Leafs and today, we get black and white drawings of the Senators’ (maybe) and Kings’ new logos.

They both stink.

The Sens’ is just their regular ol’ Senator, slightly meaner looking, and now they’ve added a cape, possibly because they’d like to capitalize on this Batman craze that’s going around right now.

The Kings’ though? Yeesh.

Not good, guys. Why is the font vaguely Japanese? It looks like someone just saw it on the front of an Akira Kurosawa DVD box set and said, “Yes, this is the font for us.”

I don’t know why teams seem to miss the whole concept that simpler is better.

How I stop puck? (ow my hip)

Poor Dan Cloutier can’t catch a break.

First, and most obviously, he has spent the last two seasons posting hockey stats that would only make baseball players envious. His last two single-season goals-against averages (3.71) more closely resemble above-average baseball ERAs and his save percentages (.874) would be good OPSes for second basemen.

Then he got hurt and spent much of the year nursing knee and hip injuries. It was no surprise, then, that the Kings eventually put him on waivers with the intention of buying him out once he cleared. But there was a problem: Cloutier was still hurt. Under the newish CBA, you can’t buy out or waive an injured player.

The Kings bought him out anyway.

But Cloutier contended that he was still hurt, so the league was brought in to settle the dispute, and they unsurprisingly ruled that Cloutier was indeed bought out.

An independent arbitrator will hear this case — at some point in the indeterminate and assumedly semi-far-off future. I’m assuming Cloutier’s S.O.L. on this one, which is really too bad. He seems like a nice enough guy, awful goalie or not, and the Kings front office was the one that gave him his contract, truly one of the first big head-scratchers in the New NHL. The Kings should have to pay double his salary against the cap, just because of how stupid the deal was in the first place.

Shady dealings like this don’t bode well for the players down the road, that’s fore sure. Watch as Jeff Finger is mysteriously injured and bought out by this time next year.