The Two-Line Pass

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I didn’t get a chance to write about this yesterday (Iginla trade, laughing at Phoenix, etc.) but it seems that Matt Cooke accidentally ripping through Erik Karlsson’s achilles tendon also had the added effect of separating Sens owner Eugene Melnyk from all reason or cognitive functions.

Melnyk is now in the midst of paying actual forensic investigators to prove definitively that Cooke ended Karlsson’s season intentionally. Which he certainly did not. Actual forensic doctors have already weighed in and said things about how there’s probably no way to judge intent in an injury like this. But to be fair, there’s no way the guys or gals who took Melnyk’s money to conduct such a study were going to pass up the likely-minimal-work-for-big-payday job this eccentric whose pharmaceutical company was once investigated by the SEC was all too eager to hand out in his righteous quest for satisfaction from the villain Matt Cooke who hasn’t done anything particularly villainous in a few years now.

And the rant in which he revealed this investigative intent sounded like someone reading a manifesto aloud. How much force would it take to have a skate blade go through a sock, a “sub-sock” (whatever that is), then skin, then muscle, then sheath, THEN tendon? Well yes, Eugene, that’s how cuts work. You didn’t need to hire anyone from the cast of CSI: Miami to tell you that. And as to actually answering the question, I would guess that the answer is something along the lines of “about as much force as is generated by a 200-pound man with little knives attached to his feet stepping downwards as he would normally.” That’s probably about approximately roughly more or less exactly the right amount. Unless Karlsson has about four inches of sheath over his tendon, in which case let’s throw Matt Cooke in jail forever.

As if Jeremy Jacobs spending more than half a million dollars on municipal elections in some craphole richboy town in Florida didn’t provide us with enough evidence that North America’s super-rich have too much time and money on their hands, as well as an almost uncanny ability to hold petty grudges and behave like spoiled children. You know who else was sad to see Erik Karlsson go down for the season? Hockey fans. It’s fun and great to watch him play, and the NHL is poorer for having lost him for the year. But this? It’s beyond stupid. Obviously. Goes without saying. That Melnyk would even deign to waste anyone’s time with this, let alone league officials, while his team is pretty comfortably in a playoff spot, shows just how far up his own ass this guy has his head stuck.

Just imagine the outcry if Mario Lemieux had done something similar with Sidney Crosby’s first concussion, opening a Jim Garrison-style investigation into David Steckel and highlighting how Crosby’s head moved back and to the left on impact. That would have added a crazy amount of fuel to the fire about how much the Penguins whine to the league when something doesn’t go their way, and for once, that fuel would have been rooted in truth and not jealous perception.

None of that for Melnyk though. Mainly because he’s already widely regarded as a joke.

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(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for Jo Innes. 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!

If there’s one thing the Senators need in their attempts to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the second year in a row, it’s… well obviously it’s for Erik Karlsson’s achilles to reassemble itself 100 percent and be ready to play tomorrow.

But if there’s two things the Senators need it’s… okay well I mean there’s Jason Spezza getting healthy too, but that’s going to come relatively soon, I’m pretty sure. But if there’s three things the Senators need, well, I could do this all day. The fact of the matter is that one thing the Senators definitely did not need is to acquire Matt Kassian from the Minnesota Wild for a 2014 sixth-round pick yesterday.

Here’s a real quote from general manager Bryan Murray on why the Senators went out and acquired a player who has nine games under his belt this season, all of them at the AHL level:

“He’s a big strong guy, he’s a very physical player, he’s a very willing combatant. With the number of young players and injuries we have on our roster, there has got to be a sense of comfort that they can go out and play without being pushed around, which has happened a couple times here so we just felt it was a need and an addition that, given the opportunity to get one, a guy like this, a big guy, he’s a young player and we’re hoping that he’ll work with our coaches and be a real contributor to our team.”

That’s an awful lot of words to say, “The other teams in the Northeast have some fighters and we don’t,” but that’s the general thrust of it. At 6-foot-4 and 232 pounds, Kassian is a big boy. He also sucks at hockey. And so the Senators’ decision to use him in the lineup (albeit “at the coach’s discretion,” according to Murray) seems like it would be not at all conducive to winning.

It’s true that the Senators didn’t have a true fighter in the lineup. Hit-and-run pukes like Chris Neil don’t count, because he at least has some amount of value to the team outside punching guys in the face. This reeks of remorse for letting Zenon Konopka walk, coincidentally to the Wild, and even then, at least Konopka wins draws pretty effectively. The list of hockey things outside of fighting that Kassian does pretty effectively begins and probably ends with skating without falling down most of the time.

It seemed to me that the Senators were a just-okay hockey team last year, but one that wisely stepped out of the Northeast Arms Race that saw Montreal and Buffalo bulk up in order to better physically compete with the Bruins and Leafs. Somehow, their currently being fifth in the East despite being not-that-great and then suffering all those catastrophic injuries on top of it isn’t enough for Murray, and he has to try to make Paul MacLean waste a roster spot to put this bum into the lineup five minutes a night.

I’ll remind you again that Kassian only has nine games this season in the AHL. Obviously losing a sixth-round pick next year is almost the NHL equivalent of giving up nothing, but even that’s too much. The only thing I can think is maybe Murray thought he was getting a steal by acquiring Zack Kassian from the wrong team.

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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!

One thing I’ll never understand about hockey fans is how much cognitive dissonance it takes for them to get through their everyday lives.

Guys who try to cripple other players are the scourge of the league unless they happen to play for the team for which a fan roots. All stars are divers, except their stars. The All-Star Game doesn’t matter at all but if their favorite players don’t get in then it’s a total miscarriage of justice. The shootout is really stupid unless something cool or bad happens in it then it’s the best or worst, depending.

And that latter bit of stupidity arose once again last night when Ottawa’s Kaspars Daugavins tried to do some kind of wacky shootout move on Tuukka Rask and failed. His failure should, in and of itself, been enough to say that what he attempted was kind of dumb if not outright condemn it (though it could be argued that Rask could have just as easily stopped a wrist shot or traditional deke to the backhand and attempt to tuck it through the five-hole as he did this spin-o-rama puck-topper).

But that didn’t stop David Krejci from complaining about it to the media after the game — though that might have been the result of one of those direct “What did you think about that whole thing?” questions — saying, “I wouldn’t like it if someone on my team tried that move.” That’s obviously not true, or at least wouldn’t be if his Bruins teammate (say, Tyler Seguin) had actually scored on it. Even Daugavins admitted that the move’s failure to work made him look “like a fool.” And that, in the end, is enough to prove it was all stupid and a waste of time.

But somehow people used this incident to talk once again about how important it is to respect one’s opponents when entering into as sacred a competition as the NHL’s shootout, which has been a part of this grand sport lo these last seven and one-half years. Remember when Linus Omark did that spin-o-rama as he picked up the puck around center ice and then scored on Dan Ellis with a fake shot then soft wrister? The Bolts were pissed; Ryan Malone called it “a … joke”. Ellis said it’s “not a very classy thing.” Mattias Ohlund said it was “absolutely” disrespectful.

Ah yes, the sanctity of the shootout. How dare Daugavins and Omark — who, need I remind you, are both young guys from Europe!!! — be so disrespectful as to defame this gimmicky, ridiculous way to decide games for no reason other than ties are somehow bad? It’s disgusting. Why don’t they be more respectful of their opponents, like Chris Neil, who went knee-to-knee on Chris Kelly in this game, or Adam McQuaid, who ran Neil from behind in this game, and about whom their teammates had little in the way of criticism?

Those guys would never try to show up a goalie by using their high skill levels to try to score pretty shootout goals. They play the game the right way.

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(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for Sarah Barnett (Happy birthday!). 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!

In the NHL today there are many famous rivalries. Bruins and Canadiens always gets interesting because of how much those two teams seem to legitimately hate and want to seriously injure each other. Blackhawks and Red Wings will always have a place in the hearts of Original Six fans and those who currently like seeing Chicago beat up their ancient rival. The Battles of Ontario and Alberta have a certain colloquial charm even if those four teams have generally been unwatchable in the last several years.

But I think that the hockey world at large has largely seized on the somehow-still-burgeoning Battle of Pennsylvania between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and said that yes this is definitively the best rivalry in the league. Any arguments to the contrary seem rather silly.

Let’s put it this way: That insane series the two played last year, which only went six games but somehow contained 56 goals — a number I had to look up and then quadruple check because it doesn’t seem like it could be in any way correct — and featured suspensions and controversy and guys in bear suits and all that acrimony, was only in the first round. Hell, the Senators played in the first round. Who cares about the first round? Imagine if there was actually a lot on the line besides getting some tee times squared away before the beginning of May. If this series had been, say, the Eastern Conference Final instead of one of eight first-round matchups, someone might actually have died. I mean that. Zac Rinaldo or someone would have pulled a knife out of his sock and stabbed someone on a defensive zone faceoff.

This series, and this rivalry, takes on such import that it led Peter Laviolette, who when he isn’t blindly defending the borderline criminal acts of his team’s dirtiest players seems like a fairly rational fellow, to proclaim that after a single series in which he had 6-8-14 against the Penguins’ defense that Claude Giroux was the best player in the world, usurping the crown held by Sidney Crosby, who himself had a paltry 3-5-8 in the same stretch. Much was made of this proclamation, which a short time later was brushed under the rather lumpy-looking rug under which all embarrassing things related to embarrassingly wrong statements from members of the Flyers organization are banished once Giroux went 2-1-3 in a four-game sweep by New Jersey in the next round.

And now these two teams face each other once again tonight in a game that probably won’t feature between 10 and 13 goals, but then again it looks like Marc-Andre Fleury and Ilya Bryzgalov get the go tonight, so I also wouldn’t want to totally rule out that exact thing happening. Giroux, after a dreadful start, has 19 points in his last 16 games, and Jake Voracek has a team-leading 27 in 24. Meanwhile, Crosby leads the league with 36 points in 23 games (no fair) and Evgeni Malkin is on 23 points in just 19 games. James Neal is at 22 in 23, including 14 goals, and somehow Chris Kunitz has 12-16-28 in 23 as well.

These are teams that can score, and do it a lot. And they can also beat each other up. After a kind of disappointing opening game of the season, their last matchup, on Feb. 20, featured 11 goals and 48 penalty minutes. So, you know, something entertaining is probably going to happen.

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(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for Michael Morse. 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!

We have obviously seen a lot of really bad hits in the NHL this season, and one problem that seems to consistently emerge in the immediate aftermath of these checks is team personnel — from announcers to players to coaches — falling down in their hurry to defend these hits as being totally clean and within the rules.

The most recent two example of this come from Philadelphia (where else?). The Flyers have long had in their employ some seriously dangerous thugs whose sole job seems to be trying to injure opposing players. And moreover, when one of those players crosses the line, from the gray area where legality and illegality come together so brackishly in this league, into obvious suspension-worthy play, this is an organization that tries very hard to make apologies for it at best, and outright defend it at worst.

That was the case when Harry Zolniercyzk leapt shoulderfirst into the Ottawa Senators’ Mike Lundin as he came across the blue line, and in doing so earned a five-minute charging major and game misconduct. Michael Jordan never thought leave his feet with as much fervor as Zolniercyzk did in trying to separate Lundin, who admittedly came across the middle of the ice with his head down (not that this is any sort of justification for trying to hospitalize him), but that didn’t stop blockhead announcer Keith Jones from saying that it was only the momentum of the ferocious hit that made Zolniercyzk leave his feet, not the obvious crouch-and-explode motion that immediately preceded contact. Jones further noted that jeez if he did make contact with Lundin’s head (and did he ever!), it was incidental, and not targeted. “That’s as close as it can get,” he said without a hint of irony.

Laughable stuff, but expected from the kind of dullard who also supported the Flyers’ crybaby decision to sit on the puck for 45 seconds against the Lightning because they didn’t like the defensive schemes with which they were being presented. That he did so on national TV, and not in his capacity as Flyers’ color man, without disclosing that he is a team employee, shows the kind of intellectual honesty with which we’re dealing.

Other defenses of Zolniercyzk came from equally-embarrassing hockey player Zac Rinaldo (”From my eyes, I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was a great hit, but I only saw it for a split second.”) and coach Peter Laviolette (”When you look at it, Harry didn’t really do anything wrong.”), but that’s to be expected, at least to some extent. If the Flyers went around decrying every dirty hit thrown by someone on their payroll, that’s all they’d do morning, noon, and night. No one has time for that.

Remember a couple years back when everyone made such a big thing about Andrew Ference coming out and saying teammate Dan Paille’s hit on Raymond Sawada had no place in the game? That’s because it was a big deal. Guys should feel free to call out teammates for dirty hits, because if we’re going to sit here and talk about “respecting opponents” and “respecting the game,” there needs to be some accountability.

The same is true in Buffalo, where Patrick Kaleta just got his second multiple-game suspension and third bit of supplemental discipline from the league in the last 18 months or so. Ryan Miller has been a pretty vocal advocate of getting garbage plays like the kind Kaleta throws around on the regular out of the game, but whenever his teammate reoffends, he’s quieter than the Sabres offense. You don’t hear him calling Kaleta a “piece of [poop]” like he did when Milan Lucic ran him, and that’s a shame, because teammates and coaches and GMs saying guys need to cut it out or get the hell off the goddamn team seems to work a whole lot better than the occasional five-gamer. It worked with Matt Cooke, and it can happen with pieces of garbage like Zolniercyzk and Kaleta, who very clearly need someone to constantly remind them, “Don’t try to kill anyone out there.”

Hockey’s a dangerous enough game without guys intentionally trying to injure opponents. So let’s start acting like this stuff is actually unacceptable, instead of letting it all slide.

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The Lead

I remember like two weeks ago or something the Sens fired Eli Wilson, their goalie coach for the previous two seasons. The Sens had just lost five straight and allowed 26 goals in their previous six games, which is of course a crazy-ass number. But people still snickered.

“Fire the goalie coach?!” they scoffed. “Fire the goalies!”

The move was most often compared to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic in such a way that they are all precariously stacked on top of each other before being dropped directly off the back of the ship. A real who-cares move from a floundering franchise desperate to scapegoat someone in no real position of authority.

I get that sentiment.

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Daniel Alfredsson re-signed with Ottawa today to a cap-friendly deal worth $5.5 million a year over the next four. When the contract expires, he will be 39 years old.

As reported first by Sun Media this morning, the Senators have called a 12:30 p.m. press conference today at the BankAtlantic Center to announce the club’s captain has signed a four-year, $22 million deal.

Senators owner Eugene Melnyk is flying in front his ranch in Ocala, Fla. to participate in the press conference with GM Bryan Murray and Alfredsson. Getting him signed is a huge relief for the club because he had the ability to go to unrestricted free agency next season.

This is a very good thing for the Senators in theory. They get to keep their franchise player for below market value (if you think Alfie couldn’t get $6.5 from someone, you’re crazy) in favor of keeping the band together. Whether or not said band is capable of winning anything is up for debate, but it at least puts the Sens in a position to re-sign some guys like Mike Fisher and Antoine Vermette or the entire Sens D corps save for Chris Phillips, whose contracts are up in the next two years, if they’re so inclined.

But the contract will also allegedly contain the dreaded “no-movement clause” which, ehh, it’s not so good for the team. Now, regardless of whether or not he’s earning his $5.5 million in three years, he’s going to be making it in Ottawa until he’s 39. Even if they could move him for something that helps the team long-term, Alfie probably wouldn’t want to go, which isn’t helping anyone but Alfie.

The Lead

All it took for Buffalo to lose in regulation was a healthy dose of irresponsibility with the puck and Jason Spezza.

Spezza had two goals and an assist, all in the second period, as the Sens pounded Buffalo 5-2 and handed the Sabres their first regulation loss of the year. And what a fine mess the Sabres were the entire night. They were bad at pretty much everything for the entirety of the first two periods and really they just didn’t show that resiliency I’ve seen in them the first few games.

Ottawa went at them hard early and it really seemed to rattle the banged-up Sabres who were playing without either Craig Rivet or Henrik Tallinder. Without the defensive stalwarts that helped Buffalo to a best-in-the-league 1.6 goals against per game, the Senators were free to shoot from where they wanted and pass it around the zone with impunity, and what really killed the Sabres were giveaways. A TERRIBLE clearance attempt on the penalty kill led to Christoph Schubert’s goal to open the scoring and things got little better from there.

Dany Heatley’s goal, set up by Spezza and also on the power play, was the result of no one on the Buffalo defense even noticing that he was streaking into the slot. How in the hell do you not cover 15? Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t he have close to 150 goals in the last three seasons? Might wanna keep an eye on him on the PK especially. Just a thought.

Spezza’s two goals, like Schubert’s, were both the end result of giveaways. First Jarkko Ruutu dispossessed a Sabre in the attacking zone to spring Spezza for a breakaway goal, and then a failed clearance attempt led to a scrum out front that Spezza was Johnny On the Spot for. Even Sean Donovan’s goal was an embarrassment for the Sabres. How do you leave ANYONE that open in the slot for a redirect. This is Sean freaking Donovan for Christ’s sake! He got stopped on a breakaway by a HIGH SCHOOL KID! You have to get a stick in that passing lane instead of having two guys standing around in it.

Buffalo deserved to lose this game. They played like crap even if they did score a pair of late goals. And yeah, Sabres fans will whine about injuries but the fact is they only went 2 for 10 on the power play. If you get 10 cracks at going a man up, you gotta pop in more than two when the game is well out of hand. It’s really that simple.

Patrick Lalime, of course, didn’t help his cause with the number of big, fat rebounds he gave up tonight, though. He made 23 saves on 28 shots, and that’s never going to win you a hockey game. Alex Auld, meanwhile, was perfectly alright at the other end.

This was more the Buffalo I expected to see this season, but depending upon how quickly Tallinder and Rivet get back, things could unravel quickly in Buffalo. Too many soft forwards that try to make fancy plays instead of doing the straightforward thing in getting the puck to the net, too many bad penalties, and no sense of composure or leadership in their own zone. Just stupid play after stupid play. I know it’s only one loss, but this was a total 180 from the Sabres of this weekend.

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Uh ohs.

Adam Proteau of the Hockey News says Sens defenseman Andrej Meszaros has signed an offer sheet with an unidentified team just two days after TSN said he and the Senators were “not close” to a new deal.

Hours after Ottawa GM Bryan Murray held a news conference to announce the team was at a contractual impasse with restricted free agent defenseman Andrej Meszaros, The Hockey News has learned from an NHL source that Meszaros has agreed to a multi-year offer sheet with an average salary in excess of $5 million per season.

The team that has agreed to terms with the 22-year-old has yet to be confirmed.

When contacted by The Hockey News, Murray denied the report.

“I’ve heard rumors that that’s happening, but there’s no confirmation of that at this point,” said Murray.

Initially, the reports were that it was Tampa Bay that signed Meszaros, and that made enough sense. The Bolts’ defense is suspect and Meszaros would help them as they rebuild the entire blue line down there. But then came the revelations of the obvious: 1) Tampa is only about $3 million short of the salary cap (NHLNumbers.com says they’re at $53.445m), and 2) The compensation for an offer sheet in the neighborhood of and under $5,231,249 is a first-, second- and third-round pick in the ensuing year’s draft. Tampa traded their third-rounder to Pittsburgh for the rights to negotiate with Ryan Malone (success!).

So who signed Meszaros? The following is a list of teams that have all the picks necessary to sign him:

• Pittsburgh
• New Jersey
• New York Rangers
• New York Islanders
• Carolina
• Washington
• Atlanta
• Florida
• Detroit
• Columbus
• St. Louis
• Nashville
• Edmonton
• Vancouver
• Colorado
• Dallas
• Phoenix

Of those, only the Islanders, Caps, Panthers, Blue Jackets, Blues, Canucks, Avs and Coyotes have the cap space or room on their self-imposed spending limits to have signed Meszaros to a deal of this kind.

This part is me throwing crap at the wall, but I really think this is a move Phoenix would and probably should make. Their blue line is thin at the top (Ed Jovanovski, Derek Morris, Kurt Sauer and Zbynek Michalek make up the top four) and Morris is coming off the books after this season. Phoenix could also make a big step forward in the West this year and maybe, if they perform to their massive potential and things break as expected in the depths of the East’s basement, even have the pick fall lower than the 10-12 range.

The Coyotes also need to get someone to run the point on the power play and find a suitable replacement for traded-away Keith Ballard (not that I wouldn’t do that Jokinen deal again in a heartbeat).

Plus, the Coyotes are still below the cap floor of $40.3 million (at $39.067 million). Would it surprise me that it was someone other than the Coyotes? No. Most of the listed teams could use him (that Avs’ second pairing is hurting), but I think it’s the best fit.

AND ANOTHER THING:

“I think Mez is a potentially good young defenseman who had a bit of an off-year this past year, and we’ve asked their camp to entertain that in what we’re trying to do with him,” Murray said.

So that’s worth exploring. It would be tough to match the lofty expectations Meszaros set for himself with his 10-29-39 rookie campaign that featured him finishing +34(!) and certainly Murray is right to point out that the 2007-08 season wasn’t at that standard.

However, Meszaros was still the Sens’ best blue line threat with the man advantage (16 points was tied for the team lead with the likewise departed Wade Redden). A quick peak at a few stats sites show that Meszaros’ point totals have gone 39, 35, 36 with goal totals of 10, 7, 9. Pretty consistent there, no? So maybe it was his hits and blocked shots that declined? Not especially. His 101 hits and 100 blocked shots were both down from 124 and 143, respectively, in 2006-07, and 128 and 124 in his rookie season. Not a huge dropoff. Turnover ratios, you say? In 2005-06: -22, 2006-07: -47, 2007-08: -15. And while I don’t put much stock in plus-minus, he went from -15 last season to +5.

Basically, I don’t see Murray’s argument. From the look of things he seems to have become a smarter hockey player if nothing else, while holding more or less the same stat lines across the board. If Jeff Finger’s worth $3.5 million and Ron Hainsey’s worth $4.5 million, Meszaros is worth $5 million. Maybe not to the Sens, but to someone, and it’s disingenuous of Murray to say otherwise.

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.