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 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 Corey Blauss (again!). 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!

No. 1 centers are very hard to come by in the NHL, and have been for rather a long time. While there are 30 guys currently filling the role of No. 1 center on NHL teams, probably only about half the teams in the league actually have one, and a few of them have two (Pittsburgh certainly among them).

One team that is rather fortunate to have a No. 1 center is also one that probably doesn’t get enough credit for doing so. The Boston Bruins’ top-line pivot is Patrice Bergeron, and if he’s not one of the top centers on the planet I’ll just about eat my damn hat. The interesting thing about Bergeron, and why he’s often not involved in such discussions the way Stamkos and Crosby and Malkin and Toews are is that Bergeron never puts up the numbers his counterparts do. He only has 5-13-18 in 19 games this season (including 1-2-3 in tonight’s loss to Montreal). That obviously isn’t a ton, but it’s more or less in line with what he’s done over the course of his career. The fact that his career best was 73 points in 81 games in 2005-06, when he was just 20 years old, is in some ways disappointing. But since that time, he’s also developed into perhaps the premier two-way center in the league.

Let’s put it another way: There are a lot of centers Canada can take to the Olympics every four years. Last time out, Bergeron happened to be one of them. Filling the nets isn’t his modus operandi; the most goals he’s ever scored in a season was 31, and that, too, was in 2005-06. But he’s so good that arguably the best hockey team ever assembled by an entity aside from USA hockey brought him on board nonetheless.

And then there’s obviously the faceoffs. Bergeron is currently fourth in the league at winning them. The year before, he was second. And prior to that, he was tied for eighth and fifth. You have to go all the way back to 2008-09 to find the last time Bergeron wasn’t top-10 in the league at the dot, and even then, he was only 12th at 54.5 percent. That, too, helps Claude Julien to trust him everywhere.

There’s not a more do-everything-right center in the league than Bergeron, who gets minutes in all situations against top competition in all three zones. He’s just so reliable, quietly excellent, and clean. He rarely gets sent off for committing penalties, with only 168 PIM in nine seasons. And that doesn’t mean he’s not a physical player, because as evidenced by last night’s game, he’s more than willing to take the body and play along the boards, even after suffering two concussions in the middle part of his career. Physical play without incurring too many penalties — never more than 28 in a season! — indicates clean, smart play. And having a player with this level of skill on the ice and never putting his team down a man is incredibly valuable.

While there are a few teams that wouldn’t swap their top-line centers straight-up for Bergeron, the vast majority would do so in a heartbeat and walk away laughing at Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli for his having been so dumb. Not every day you say that about someone who topped out at something like 22 goals 64 points over the last seven seasons.

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There is a lot of great hockey writing out there, probably. I mean, you hear about transcendent books like Ken Dryden’s “The Game,” or about Red Fisher’s legendary gamers for the Montreal Gazette, but I’ve never read them because I’m not 100 years old. This is the digital age, my dawgs and dawgettes, and as a result we need cutting-edge hot sports takes and we need ‘em 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365.25 days a year. That’s just how the game be.

Which is why we need writers like Craig Remsburg. “Who is Craig Remsburg?” you ask. How dare you. Remsburg is among the one or two greatest hockey writers and thinkers of our day (present company INcluded), and if you need evidence, I would direct you to the magnum opus penned for the Marquette, Michigan Mining Journal on Feb. 3, in the year of our Lord 2013.

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Yesterday was the first day in the KHL for a few NHL players, and as you might imagine, things over there are a little different.

For one thing, they all speak this weird language I can’t seem to understand. Don’t know what that’s about. More importantly, though, the way in which the sport is played is way, way different. Part of that is by virtue of the fact that they play on the larger, Olympic-sized rink over there, which changes almost all parts of the game. Angles are different, the speed is different, the approach is different.

But the other thing to keep in mind about the KHL is man oh man are the players in it ever bad. Like, really, truly not very good players. This is the example to which I always point when the subject of the KHL’s relative quality comes up, but man, Kevin Dallman is the best defenseman in that league by any standard year-in and year-out.

And as a consequence of the league’s players being not very good by comparison with those in the NHL or, now, the AHL too, the hockey is one hell of a lot more dangerous.

For more, let’s take a mind-journey to scenic Magnitogorsk, located just several hours’ drive from beautiful and glorious Kazakhstan, where NHL superstar and best-player-on-the-planet-last-year Evgeni Malkin played before a SOLD-OUT CROWD (of 7,500) in his first KHL game since that time he literally had to run away from his team overnight to join the Penguins.

The below video, which I got from Puck Daddy but was posted by the official KHL YouTube account, is entitled “Zubarev meets Malkin / Zubarev’s huge hit on Evgeni Geno Malkin.” The descript read, “Andrei Zubarev welcomes Evgeni Malkin in the CHL great power moves.”

I’ll put this in terms you can understand, Kontinental Hockey League: That hit ain’t huge or great, it’s низко. Or, for you English-only readers: Low. It was super-duper low. Dangerous as hell. The point of contact was Malkin’s knee. Imagine if, in his first game in the KHL, some crummy defenseman with four career NHL games to his name (and those in ATLANTA!) had blown out Evgeni friggin’ Malkin’s left knee? Fortunately, that’s not the one that’s had all the surgeries, because otherwise holy christ.

And just so we’re clear, the subtext of that KHL description (of a hit that, in the NHL, would be worthy of supplementary discipline), is that Malkin — again, the best player in the world this past year — was unprepared for the KHL. “WELCOME TO THE LEAGUE, GENO. Not just anyone can make it here, as evidenced by Brandon Bochenski having 104 career points in 89 games.” It’s all hubris, and certainly guys like Zubarev are looking to make a name for themselves by blowing up Malkin at every available opportunity.

What are the odds Sid Crosby saw that hit and decided maybe he’ll just stay the hell home? His first game against Vityaz Chekhov and they’d be taking him out of the rink on a stretcher.

But, okay, let’s give Zubarev the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe he didn’t want to try to low-bridge a countryman and international hockey superstar. Maybe he’s just too awful to have not done so.

In either case, let this be a lesson to all you NHL players out there: Some nobody is very likely to either try to end your career or do so inadvertently. Best to stay home and play pickup games with the boys.

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The Lead

For the Pittsburgh Penguins, this journey began on a Saturday, Oct. 4 at 2:30 in the afternoon. At least back in home in the Eastern time zone. But they were, instead, playing the Ottawa Senators at 8:30 p.m. Stockholm time, 4100 miles from home.

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The Lead

Forget all the dickpunching and whining and diving for which Sidney Crosby’s been called out lately. It’s become quite clear that the guy plays with a different rulebook than most other NHL players, and that’s just one of those things you have to accept as a fact of life. It’s the same reason elite pitchers get strike zones you could drive a truck through and NBA defenses couldn’t properly cover Michael Jordan.

So when Crosby reached out and poked at an Evgeni Malkin knuckleball that was dangerously close to being a high stick and scored the against Buffalo in overtime to win 4-3, was there any doubt whatsoever that the goal would stand?

It was a marginal call to be sure. One of those ones where Penguins fans would likely see it as close but clearly a legal play while Sabres fans broke down the footage like the Zapruder Film. It would, of course, be very difficult to make a proper judgment given the available angles. But because of the Crosby factor, what the hell, let’s call it a goal and hit the bar. The officials could huddle around monitors or get the war room in Toronto breaking everything down, but the eventual result, regardless of whether or not it was a high stick, was so plain. It’s not like this was Ryan Stone tipping a puck home. Crosby hadn’t scored in nine games and why not, right? The Pens needed the win anyways.

I’m not even saying it wasn’t a goal or, even if he had played it with a high stick, there was sufficient evidence to overrule the call on the ice. I like Crosby just fine and I have no love for either the Sabres or Penguins. But this is the kind of thing that stokes the ever-burning fires of deep-seated Crosby hatred among NHL fans, particularly those in the Eastern Conference. The calls always go the Kid’s way and they always will. Everyone just needs to accept that. We’ll all be better people for it.

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In one of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette stories about Sidney Crosby once again delivering season tickets by hand, it was mentioned that Sidney Crosby will be living with Mario Lemieux and his family. Again. For the fourth year in a row.

“I’ve been looking for a place for the last year, but I haven’t found anything I’m quite ready for yet,” Crosby said after spending time at the Mt. Lebanon home of David and Mary Disney, original Penguins season-ticket holders dating to 1967.

Come on, Sid. You’re a rich young man. It’s okay to move out on your own.

At some point, the Lemieuxseses are going to have to consider this creepy, right? Who wants a 21-year-old best hockey player in the world walking around their kitchen eating Captain Crunch with Crunchberries every morning in his pajama bottoms? Let’s face it, at this point Crosby is an unwelcome house guest. He laughs too loud at tivo’ed episodes of Two and a Half Men, drinks orange juice straight out of the bottle and leaves the seat up. He sings Motown songs offkey in the shower and calls Mr. and Mrs. Lemieux “mom and dad.” He also hangs around creepily when Lemieux’s teenage daughters have sleepovers, awkwardly injecting himself into the conversation with things like, “So uh, what’s goin on with you guys?”

The kid’s going to make $9 million this year in NHL salary alone, never mind endorsements and everything else. NINE MILLION! I doubt he can’t find the house he wants for that kind of money. Looks like someone’s got serious issues with letting go.

This picture is in the top drawer of every Pens executive's desk for massively inappropriate reasons.

The picture I have in my head of what goes on all day in the Penguins front office. It’s everyone just constantly reloading Sid Crosby’s Myspace and Facebook pages for updates. This is the stalker-level love the organization seems to have for him.

For further proof, witness this tidbit mentioned in passing by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pens breaking ground on their new rink:

With Mario Lemieux appropriately at the center of the line, officials from government and the Penguins ceremonially broke ground on a new hockey arena today, using shovels with shafts made from star Sidney Crosby’s sticks.

Creepers.

The sticks were probably also cut with his skates, and the dirt was composed of his infinite love. The arena’s ice will also be made from his sweat and the seats will be filled by his rugged good looks.