The Two-Line Pass

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You’ll recall that the Detroit Red Wings used to be considered the gold standard among NHL teams in terms of being well-run and also being exceptionally good at the sport of hockey. These days, uhh, not so much.

The first and most obvious fact here is that the Red Wings sit just sixth in the Western Conference as of this writing, just a point up on disappointing San Jose, three up on St. Louis, and four ahead of Dallas, all of which have a game in hand on the team that seems to have been completely thrown off by the loss of Nicklas Lidstrom. I guess it’s understandable that you’d not be quite so good when you lose the second-best defenseman of all time, no matter how old he is, and also Brad Stuart and probably a few other guys too, and replace them with Carlo Colaiacovo and a rookie.

On the other hand, with Lidstrom’s retirement seems also to have come this very bizarre and almost inexplicable loss of whatever mojo the Wings once had as well. Just yesterday, Ken Holland — long one of the most beloved and seen-as-brilliant GMs in the league for reasons that border on the inexplicable — was saying how he doesn’t know what’s going to happen with Pavel Datsyuk come the summer, alluding to the potential of his bolting for the KHL after his deal expires in 2014 because at 34 he’s older than almost all of us probably think of him as being. The Ken Holland of, say, three years ago would have had that extension agreed-to in principle three years before that, and everyone would be laughing and happy about it the whole time.

Then there’s the fact that he’s considering trading Valtteri Filppula, who, like Datsyuk, is older than anyone probably considers him to be. He just turned 29 despite everyone in the league checking their watches and wondering if this season, this one right here, is the one in which he finally at long last breaks out and becomes a Datsyukian or Zetterbergian talent, which he never will. Will the Red Wings trade him at the deadline? Tough to say, but the fact that it’s even up for discussion is, again, indicative of some rather deep problems inherent in the way the team is run.

However, Holland did make one move yesterday that could reinforce his singular genius among those who don’t need to be sold on his singular genius. He signed NHL-ready NCAA free agent Danny DeKeyser to an NHL deal, beating back a pack of ravening GMs for the honor. People want to play for Detroit. People want to play for a winner. People want to play for Mike Babcock. Well, yes and no. The Red Wings also told DeKeyser he could start playing for their NHL club straightaway, which is a position in which most pundits would probably figure they’d see, say, Edmonton or Columbus, and not the mighty Winged Wheels for whom everyone has only the most endless of praise.

What ever happened to that Red Wing mystique? Being a mediocre team this late in the season is something you might be able to write off as being a result of the shortened schedule and some weird luck. Not knowing what’s going on with Pavel Datsyuk’s chances of leaving the continent is something you might be able to write off as being just one of those things with guys wanting to go home and make a crazy amount of money tax-free. Considering trading Valtteri Filppula before the deadline is something you might be able to write off as shrewd GMing if Holland doesn’t think he can re-sign the winger, but might also be a sign that they just don’t think they’ll be competitive. Roping in a sought-after college free agent is something you might be able to say is the result of Detroit being one of the most desirable destinations in hockey, but could just be because they don’t have any better options on the blue line.

It’s all very confusing and weird.

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(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for Steve Dangle. 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!

Noted video blogger (”vlogger”) and dumb Canadian idiot Steve Dangle proposed perhaps the most interesting of the sponsored topics yet. It’s one I’ve subsequently been thinking about a lot.

“Maybe [write about] who the next Calgary Flames are going to be. And by that I mean the next team to be totally screwed.”

Damn, that’s one hell of a good thing to think about. The obvious answer would be the Buffalo Sabres, who seem hellbent on turning Thomas Vanek and Ryan Miller into the next Jarome Iginla and Miikka Kiprusoff circa 2008 or so, the only good players on a team, surrounded by detritus and with their own skills fading slowly at first, and then with alarming rapidity.

Another pretty good answer would probably be the San Jose Sharks, who tried as the Flames did to force their way back to Stanley Cup contention with greybearded veterans and in doing so not only missed the boat on that, but also cost themselves several years worth of good draft picks.

You might even be able to say it’s true of the Carolina Hurricanes, treading water in mediocrity forever after one totally shocking and perhaps undeserved Cup run (the difference being they won and Calgary didn’t). The ‘Canes have since drafted Jeff Skinner, and probably won’t be so foolish as to trade him as Calgary did with Dion Phaneuf, but otherwise have a relatively bare cupboard and an aging-but-not-good-enough core, led until only recently by a bad coach.

But then last night, I figured out the perfect candidate for which team will be the next one to be as hopeless as the Calgary Flames are currently. It’s the Calgary Flames. Yesterday was perhaps the most embarrassing day in that franchise’s history, which, given the quality of the franchise’s management in the last several years, is really saying something.

It all began bright and early on Thursday morning in Calgary, when Jay Feaster pulled the trigger on the trade the brought ex-Flame Brian McGrattan, who is awful, back to Calgary for a minor league prospect in an attempt to become “tougher to play against.” Normally, this would be fine. Except McGrattan was on waivers one day earlier and cleared because no one claimed him. Baffling stuff, except that adding McGrattan would have pushed Calgary up to the league’s 50-contract limit. I conjectured that this was a precursor to some other kind of move that would necessitate them taking on an additional deal, and well hey look at that I was right.

Jay Feaster, of all people, was finally the one GM in the league smart enough to give Colorado’s Ryan O’Reilly the $5 million a season he wanted and deserved, and he did so through an offer sheet after apparently trying in vain to pry O’Reilly away via trade (astronomical asking price for a division rival, and all that). This was something that wise fans of a number of teams league-wide had been clamoring for since the O’Reilly situation turned truly acrimonious in Denver, and that Feaster jumped on the grenade was a bit of a surprise given how judicious such a move — which would only have cost Calgary a first- and third-round pick — was. With that having been said, the way Feaster structured O’Reilly’s contract also allowed the center to get a massive qualifying offer when the two-year deal expired, but that was less of a concern, largely because everyone was still sitting somewhat agog at the fact that Feaster made a pretty shrewd managerial move, as is generally the opposite of his wont.

However, the CBA certainly allowed Feaster to sign O’Reilly to that offer sheet, just as it allowed Colorado to match that offer and get all mad, which GM Greg Sherman did within a few hours.

In fact, that decision to match came midway through the Avalanche’s game that night, which rather coincidentally was being played against Calgary at the Pepsi Center. But hey, at that point, things were going very well for the Flames, as they were up 3-0 and looking like they would cruise to a win that would catapult them to a tie for 12th in the West with Edmonton. Instead, they gave up five of the game’s next six goals and lost 5-4 in regulation because the Flames are an embarrassing conflagration of a disaster.

That capped a pretty ugly night for the franchise, which has had too many of those to count on a couple dozen hands in the last calendar year. And then it got worse.

What most people, including the Flames organization, didn’t realize (or at least forgot) is that Jay Feaster is constantly skirting the borderline between incompetence and outright negligence. This morning it came out that what Feaster apparently didn’t know was that it also stated that if he had to bring the center onto the roster, he would have to first put him through waivers, where someone would have almost certainly claimed him. (Colorado was under no such restriction because he was their own restricted free agent and therefore had no waiver requirements.) So Calgary would have lost both those two picks and Ryan O’Reilly in the space of a day, for no reason at all other than Jay Feaster not knowing how the CBA works. Which, I am to understand, is a pretty large part of his job.

Now, that this didn’t happen is entirely a function of Sherman also not being a very smart GM. Because while he would certainly love to have O’Reilly back on his team (though perhaps not at that price point) having the opportunity to not only get two free draft picks, which were likely to be quite high, while also completely screwing a division rival that you now had a pretty decent reason to dislike.

But at least he got something out of the deal, and that something is a very good young center. Calgary got nothing but another regulation loss, a player no one wanted on waivers, and a whole lot of derision.

No one’s knocking them off the perch as the NHL’s most miserably-run franchise any time soon.

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

(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.”)

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

(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for Corey Blauss. 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 may or may not know, I love college hockey. I like it more than I like NHL hockey. And I like NHL hockey a lot.

Over the course of the average college hockey season I usually get out to 20 or 30 games in person and watch a bunch more on TV, and so I tend to get a pretty good feel for the teams that play in and around Boston. And this season, I can say unequivocally that one of the finest and most consistent teams I’ve seen either on television or in person is the Northeastern University Huskies.

Now, you might look at their 9-17-3 schedule and say to yourself that they’ve been struggling a bit, and that’s certainly true, especially considering they’ve only won four games out of 15 at home this season. I don’t think anyone thought they would be this bad. But the reason for that is that on paper the Huskies are pretty damn good, and occasionally they’ve shown it this season.

They’re led by Anaheim draft pick Kevin Roy (pictured above), who’s inarguably the best rookie forward in the conference in a runaway. He has 34 points in 29 games this season, 10 more than his nearest teammate (Winnipeg pick Vinny Saponari, who’s very good in his own right) and has seven more goals than Sharks choice Cody Ferriero. They’re also without sophomore Ludwig Karlsson, who was one of the best freshmen in the league last season, but who has played just one game since the new year. Braden Pimm and Garrett Vermeersch, who round out the team’s top five scorers are now slouches either. But overall I’d say the Huskies have two very good lines, and can go shot for shot with most teams in Hockey East, one of the best top-to-bottom conferences in the nation every single year.

This is evidenced by the team’s ability to actually show up for games every once in a while and rip the arms off opponents generally considered far better. This year they’ve beaten Merrimack (tied for first in Hockey East), Boston College (reigning national champions and a point back of first in the conference), twice put traditional power BU down in convincing fashion, and played UNH (currently tied with Merrimack) to a scoreless draw.

Those are good, solid wins, of which most teams nationwide would be envious, and a sign that Northeastern has, like, one thing slightly wrong with it. That thing is goaltending, and it’s in no way Northeastern’s fault. Going into the season I would have told you that any sort of reliance on apparent No. 1 Chris Rawlings would be reason enough to start waving the white flag in October, and the fact that his backup is Bryan Mountain, who isn’t even good enough to start ahead of Chris Rawlings, doesn’t really help at all. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

The conventional thinking was that Rawlings was going to go pro after his junior season, at which point a Northeastern recruit by the name of Jon Gillies was supposed to come in and be the No. 1 on his first day on campus. But for some reason, Rawlings didn’t go pro, and Gillies withdrew his commitment to Northeastern. He then briefly considered playing in the QMJHL but in the end opted to go to NU league rival Providence, where he has been the best goaltender in the conference as a rookie. So if you’re looking to point the finger at anyone for Northeastern’s lack of success this season, you can aim ‘er straight at Rawlings for two reasons: He didn’t go pro, and he stinks.

The good news is he’s gone after this season, at which point Roy and whomever gets the starting job can lead this team back to being good. Unless Roy goes pro, I guess. Which I bet he will.

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

Don’t forget about the prizes!!! It’s the last day you can win them. Winners will be notified around noon so if you aren’t notified then be funnier next time I have hundreds of dollars worth of prizes to give away, which will be never.

The Lead

Man the Sharks have been drizzling cat turds lately, huh? Oh the laughs we’ve shared.

An overtime loss to the Panthers. They put 39 shots on net and lost 3-2. Hahaha! A 4-2 loss to the Ducks. Dany Heatley goes minus-3. Oh ho ho! An 8-2 loss to Dallas. Evgeni Nabokov and Thomas Greiss stop 23 of 31 shots. Tee hee! A 3-2 loss to Vancouver. Ryan Johnson scores the game-winner for the Canucks. Haw haw! A 4-3 loss to Calgary. Doug Murray finishes minus-4. Loff loff loff! A 5-1 loss to Edmonton. Devan Dubnyk actually gets a win. That’s just pathetic!

And then, for an encore tonight, the Sharks… oh they beat the absolute piss outta Dallas.

Well, it had to happen sometime.

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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 Lead

Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

The Blackhawks came into tonight’s game in San Jose having lost in regulation just once since Oct. 30, going an absurd 8-1-1 in their last 10 and outscoring opponents — get this — 36 to 19. And the last three games of that stretch, in which they went 3-0-0 and outscored Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver 13 to 3, were on the road and in the space of four days.

And it still hadn’t gotten ridiculous. Not by a long shot.

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The Lead

John Tortorella must’ve been feelin’ strong. And why not?

The Rangers came into the game with one loss this season, that in their first game, and winners of seven in a row. So hey, the San Jose Sharks are coming to town, and while they did win the Presidents’ Trophy last year, they’re not exactly playing top-quality hockey.

So hey, let’s give one of the best goalies in the world the night off because this exciting new-look defense that hasn’t even allowed two goals a game can totally keep that up against a team with Devin Setoguchi, Danny Boyle, Patrick Marleau, Joe Thornton and some fellow called Dany Heatley, even with Steve Valiquette between the pipes.

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The Lead

So.

Your team pretty much never wins playoff series and never lives up to the hype it always gets. Your best player by far has a reputation for being more or less Casper the Friendly Ghost come April. You have a rookie coach.

And you thought winning the President’s Trophy was going to help?

Nope, it didn’t. You’re still the San Jose Sharks. And you always will be.

Because in an era of massive roster turnover, the Sharks have remained shockingly static. Of the 19 players wearing a San Jose uniform tonight, nine appeared for them the 2005-06 season, and another three matriculated into the NHL with the franchise.

This is a Sharks team with an identity. And that identity is “lovable losers.” Because no matter how well they did in the regular season and how many morons (including myself) had them going deep in the playoffs, there was always that doubt that, well, they were still gonna crap all over themselves. I just didn’t think it would be this early.

The aforementioned best player, Joe Thornton? Yeah, he was exactly who you expect Joe Thornton to be in the playoffs: one shot, no points. Same goes for team captain Patrick Marleau. And Evgeni Nabokov never put the team in a position to win.

Know whose fault this is? Doug Wilson’s. He thought all he needed to make his team not-suck in the postseason was firing Ronnie Wilson? Sorry, that’s not enough to scrub five postseasons’ worth of Loser Stink™ off Marleau and Nabby. Blow it up, buddy. This ain’t workin’.

So that’ll do it for the President’s Trophy-winning San Jose Sharks, the Chicago Cubs of the National Hockey League.

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The Lead

Admittedly, I thought the Bruins would walk in this game.

But the Sharks, who took an alarming amount of penalties (and inexplicably got away with a few others), had a plan. And in a battle of the league’s two best teams, they took an alarmingly easy 5-2 win.

The San Jose penalty kill, which went 5 for 5 and barely let the Bruins set up their 5-on-4 attack, was unstoppable. It controlled the boards, it controlled the center of the ice, it controlled the high-traffic areas near the faceoff dots. Boston had eight shots on the power play, but most were from the perimeter and Evgeni Nabokov, the game’s undisputed No. 1 star who collected 28 saves on 30 shots against a Boston attack which was among the best in the league and had a home power play running around 30 percent, had little problem with the few shots he faced from the perimeter.

Milan Lucic might have scored a pair of first-period goals to stake Boston to a 2-1 lead after the opening 20 minutes, but the Bruins had little answer for the Sharks’ defense, which blocked 12 shots and outhit Boston 39-25. Simply put, San Jose wanted this game more.

Garbage goals from Rob Blake, Patrick Marleau, and Milan Michalek, all of which came either on rebounds or deflections, allowed the Sharks to jump out to the lead they never surrendered, and insurance goals from Joe Thornton (who exorcised whichever demons you’d like to bring up regarding his Boston days) and Mike Grier (into an empty net) locked the game up late.

San Jose never looked like “The Team To Beat” in the NHL, but certainly in handing Boston its first loss of the seaosn by more than two goals, it made an emphatic statement as to the legitimacy of its claim that it would not go quietly into the night once it had met the second round of the playoffs.

If it could make Boston look this bad on the power play (and the Bruins had trouble even gaining the red line on its five man-up chances, putting just eight shots on net during its five power plays), and beat it by three goals, then surely the Sharks are a for-real, legitimate, no-joking-around contender for the Stanley Cup in a way that it had never been considered before. This wasn’t just a good regular-season team. This was a good all-the-time team.

It handled the best team in the league no problem. Winning on the road, on a Tuesday night, when they were in the midst of a three-game losing streak? Please. The Sharks could handle it. And win by three. What more qualification could need?

In maybe the most entertaining hockey game of the NHL schedule so far this season, the Sharks were not only winners, they were emphatic winners. Those fears about a second-round exit? Stop it. No.

The Sharks are legit. And that was all the evidence anyone should’ve needed. Beating the Bruins in the biggest regular-season game since the lockout? Yeah, that’ll square that away.

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