The Two-Line Pass

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“Ah well,” people who believed Jay Feaster didn’t completely bungle the Jarome Iginla trade and totally embarrass himself and his organization in the process, “you can’t judge or blame him by this.”

Last week on Puck Daddy I broke down some of the many reasons you very much could blame Feaster for punting the Iginla deal, despite the player’s last-minute mind-change, but as I said then, those who would prop him up in this vague manner had half a point at the very least.

And hindsight being what it is, it’s now officially extremely easy to look back and giggle with schadenfreudian delight at the thing they often said next: “Let’s see how he handles the rest of this dismantling.”

Make no mistake about it: Iginla being traded signalled the long-awaited switch in managerial philosophy that no, this crap team wasn’t going to magically get good with the passage of time, and last night’s move of Jay Bouwmeester to St. Louis put an exclamation point behind that point. When or if they hopefully are able to unload Miikka Kiprusoff on anyone dumb enough to take him aboard it will also have been double-underlined and circled a few times, and have arrows drawn to it.

Those three have long been the standard bearers for the Flames’ appalling lack of intellectual honesty — that’s Feaster’s term, by the way, not mine — about the quality of their team, and to see two of them go now is no small miracle. The only hindrance to moving Kiprusoff, and this is on Feaster too, is that he’s now too old and bad to fetch much of a price, and also he doesn’t seem too amenable to going elsewhere given that his wife had a baby just a few weeks ago.

So okay, if we can’t judge Feaster on the return he pulled for Iginla, and we’re unlikely to get the chance to do so for a Kiprusoff deal, then the only lens through which we can view him with total clearheadedness is apparently the Bouwmeester trade. And he ate it hard, as Feaster is wont to do. (Ed. note: This was not originally intended as a fat joke, at least not consciously, but could certainly be viewed that way in hindsight.)

The return for what some see as a steady, 29-year-old defenseman with one year remaining on his contract (whose numbers might only look bad because he’s playing 30 minutes a night against the toughest competition the Flames see by far and is by the way on one of the worst teams in the league) was much the same as what Feaster pulled for a declining, 35-year-old forward who is a pure rental. Except for the fact that it was worse.

Where Iginla earned Feaster a return of two middling prospects with marginal chances to become NHL regulars as well as a late first-round pick, he didn’t even get that much out of St. Louis. Oh, the two middling prospects with marginal chances to become NHL regulars came, for sure. But that first-round pick? A bit muddier. They don’t get it if St. Louis misses the playoffs this season, and will instead have to settle for a fourth-rounder and whatever first-round position the Blues pull next year.

So yes, let’s judge Feaster by that: A far more desirable player than his captain, whom he could have moved to any team with the interest, couldn’t even fetch the same return. The reason for this is obvious, though. Other GMs know Feaster is horrible at his job and are looking to rob him blind at every turn. One of the pitfalls of being in open rebuild, I suppose, but when Douglas Murray and Robyn Regehr are fetching a pair of second-round picks, not even being able to get that much for someone who’s demonstrably better than both of them is a true sign of how bad this guy is at his job.

And of course, when considering just how dumb he is, one must also note that he actually said, perhaps in an attempt to save face, that this move frees up a lot of cap space for next season. Some people never learn, I guess.

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

Hi! I’m writing these posts to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

For whatever reason, it seems as if mediocre defensemen will dominate the trade market this year, and I don’t really know how much sense it makes. Jordan Leopold became the latest of these blueliners to get traded yesterday, moving to St. Louis for the absurdly high price of a second-round pick, just days after Douglas Murray got two out of Pittsburgh.

Is that the market? A mid-to-late second rounder for guys with little actual value and negative corsi relative numbers? Ridiculous. To put it another way, apparently the Blackhawks were in hot pursuit of Lubomir Visnovsky before the Islanders signed him to a big-money extension, and that’s because he has actually been good this year. But having been spurned, they will instead move onto other potential targets like Mark Streit (negative corsi), Robyn Regehr (negative corsi), Jay Bouwmeester (negative corsi), and Ryan Whitney (negative corsi).

It’s come to this, I guess. It seems unlikely that any of these players apart from Bouwmeester will actually help a team be good at hockey — this assumption is based on Bouwmeester largely enjoying a career offensive year despite an extremely low PDO, and playing heavy minutes against the toughest competition on the team for a mostly garbage club — but nonetheless, teams will be happy to pay extremely high prices for these guys. I can’t even begin to imagine what Bouwmeester fetches from whatever team is desperate enough to pay Calgary’s ransom, which will no doubt be boosted appreciably by the team trying to save face after getting robbed in the Iginla deal.

I have something going up on Puck Daddy tomorrow morning about how the market is largely going to be dead, and I believe that rather firmly. The only guys that are going to be moved are guys like Leopold and Murray, who are of little consequence, and whose former teams will be better for having moved them off their rosters. That’s even leaving aside whatever returns they fetch. Which again, seem to be considerable.

The trade deadline is almost by definition always a buyer’s market, and with so few sellers out there, the old adage about teams paying gallon prices for a quart of milk seem more likely to ring true now than not. But if the Blackhawks, or whoever, end up paying that for the defensemen being bandied about in the market these days, they’ll be getting closer to a pint.

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

Hi! I’m writing these posts to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

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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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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The Lead

Andy Murray knows a lot about hockey. You can go ahead and ask him about that sometime.

Maybe you haven’t heard about how Andy Murray gets things done. Getting a team with a ludicrous amount of injuries to key players into the playoffs last year? Yeah, that’s him.

Andy Murray is a brilliant coach. Know how he keeps his guys motivated? He tells them they suck. Really. He makes up brilliant sayings all the time, like, “Arrogance breeds complacency and complacency means you are going backwards.” Don’t want that, can’t have that. Not on this Blues team.

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The Lead

Okay sure they won in a shootout, but that was an embarrassing performance by the Detroit Red Wings.

In no single period did they crack a double-digit shot total, and had just two shots on goal in the first period. Two! They were 0 for 3 on the power play and only 4 for 7 on the penalty kill. They let a pretty middle-of-the-road, injury-riddled St. Louis team not only hang around but actually dictate most of the game. They were careless with the puck and the only reason they scored three goals was that Manny Legace gave them up on Detroit’s first eight shots, a total that Detroit took 31:21 to reach.

It was truly an appalling game to watch, and frankly the Wings don’t deserve to have snapped their five-game losing streak. They haven’t played like anything resembling one of the four best teams in hockey, and if tonight’s game wasn’t further evidence that Chris Osgood should be bundled off to Uzbekistan for a bag of third-hand pucks and a mule carcass, nothing is.

The Blues, by the way, rolled the formidable defensive unit of Barret Jackman, Carlo Colaiacovo, Jeff Woywitka, Mike Weaver, Steve Wagner, Tyson Strachan and Jay McKee. It’s a wonder that it took the Detroit freakin’ Red Wings an overtime period to get to 20 shots against that. You and your beer league team’s fourth line could put up 20 against them in 60 minutes. No problem.

What a joke.

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The Lead

Lately I’ve been trying to tone down the Jack Edwards bashing on this blog. It’s beyond going after the low-hanging fruit; it’s more like picking up the half-eaten fruit that’s already fallen on the ground and, frankly, looks a bit shabby.

But what he did today has to be considered inexcusable. With about eight seconds to go in a one-goal game and St. Louis’ goalie pulled, Carlo Colaiacovo picked up a dump-in and began to rush up ice in a last-ditch effort to salvage overtime.

“Eight seconds left,” said Edwards. “It’ll take a miracle now.”

Well David Backes swatted a puck out of midair and somehow kept his stick below the crossbar to level the game with 0.8 seconds remaining, so I guess that qualifies. St. Louis went on to win 5-4 in a shootout. Here’s a video of the frantic final seconds that includes the Bruins missing on two tries at the empty net:

But seriously, what kind of an idiot says something like that as the opposing team is carrying the puck with speed through the neutral zone? Knowing Edwards as I do, it’s not a stretch to say he is the most hilariously biased, repetitive, annoying, awkward play by play guys in hockey (maybe even professional sport), and as much as I would prefer the Bruins not give up points to any Western Conference team, I was filled with such glee that Edwards had seemingly jinxed his team that I couldn’t believe it.

And that final goal in regulation was just the cherry on top of probably the best single period of hockey this year. The Bruins entered the third trailing 2-1 and scored three goals in the space of 1:39 thanks to a 5-on-3 power play during which they scored twice and a goal just seconds later by Zdeno Chara right off a draw. The game looked well in hand. But then St. Louis scored on a power play of its own with 1:20 or so to play to cut the lead to one before that remarkable tying goal.

So as much as the Blues can thank David Backes’ ability to somehow not play that puck with a high stick, I think Andy Murray should be wrapping up a nice fruit basket for Edwards right about now.

And by the way, this game wasn’t even aired in St. Louis, which is at once sad and hilarious.

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The Lead

You may or may not have gotten the memo on this, but Jarome Iginla is a pretty decent hockey player.

Tonight he almost singlehandedly willed the Flames to a 6-3 win over the St. Louis Blues on the strength of a two-goal, two-assist performance. One goal was lucky, one goal was scary, one assist was beautiful and the other was heads-up. If there’s a more complete player in hockey, I’d like to know about him.

Iginla opened the scoring with what can only be described as a goalscorer’s goal, as a bouncing shot from Cory Sarich deflected off the inside of a falling Iginla’s glove and in just 4:14 into the game. His second goal, which came at 17:38 of the first, was one of those vintage Iginla plays where he finds himself in acres of space for some inexplicable reason and loads up a trillion-mile-an-hour snapshot off one foot. How does any team allow Iginla to find himself with a puck on his stick and no defenseman within 10 feet of him? Note to NHL defenses: Giving Iginla this kind of space is not conducive to winning hockey games.

It should be noted, before continuing, that were it not for the play of Chris Mason during that first period, things could have been a LOT worse for St. Louis than 2-0. He made 13 first-period saves and a great many of them were of very high quality. He certainly prevented Iginla from having a hat trick in the opening 20, that’s for sure. And for a while, Miikka Kiprusoff, who had far less work to do than did Mason in making eight saves in the first, made it seem like this game would end up being a goaltending battle. But once Iginla got that second goal, the Flames were off to the races.

Matt Lombardi scored his third of the year early in the second before the Flames defense decided to take 10 minutes off and let the Blues cut it to 3-2 — and Adrian Aucoin’s giveaway on the Patrick Berglund goal was so good he should’ve gotten an assist — before Iginla hefted the Flames onto his back again, setting up consecutive goals from Mike Cammalleri (and what a beauty this feed was) and Aucoin, via an ahead pass to Lombardi that sprang them for the 2-on-1.

From there, the game was academic and Iginla had career points Nos. 796, 797, 798 and 799. To give you an idea of just how important Iginla is to the Flames, he has scored at least one goal in 12 games this year and the Flames are 11-1-0 in them. That’s a .917 winning percentage! When he doesn’t score, they’re 6-10-3 for a winning percentage of .395. That’s an awful big swing, obviously, and it points to both the Flames’ frustrating inconsistency and Iginla’s inherent value to the team. He may be on pace for “only” 44 goals and 98 points now, but if he shows up, the Flames are nearly unstoppable.

As a Flames fan, I wish he’d shown up to more than just 12 of 31 games this year.

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The Lead

Despite having his busiest night of the year, Chris Mason was untouchable tonight.

In his first game back in Nashville since the Preds traded him in favor of Dan Ellis, Mason made 47 saves, a number of them very impressive, and two more in the shootout to record an extremely unlikely but completely deserved clean sheet and 1-0 win.

It was a hell of a homecoming for Mason, but not so much the rest of his team, which was held to just 17 shots and was incredibly lucky to escape with two points. The attack was listless and the transition game was ineffective. The defense? Non-existent, as you’d expect in a 47-shot game in which Nashville only had five power play opportunities. Shots by period for the Preds were 15 in the first, 12 in the second, 11 in the third and NINE in OT. The fact that Mason not only shut them out but didn’t allow six is amazing.

Go have a look at the highlights. There are at least four shots that would have gone in had Mason not been playing out of his mind. After the game, Mason made sure to credit his defense for blocking “a ton of shots” but in reality they blocked two fewer than Nashville (16-14). In all, the Predators attempted 70 shots (six more either went wide and THREE hit the post), so you can’t exactly say the Blues’ D did too good of a job in the “limiting chances” department.

They say a goalie has to take his defense out to dinner when he gets a shutout. The entire team should take Mason out for this one. The amount of work he had to do was ridiculous.

Think the Preds let the wrong goalie go? Even though Ellis is younger by far and led the league in goals-against average last year, his numbers this year have been pretty bad. Even with tonight’s “shutout” (not that he’ll get credit for it), he’s got a .898 save percentage and a 2.90 goals-against that’s up 56 points from last year’s total that paced the league. The fact that he’s 8-9-2 is a small miracle considering he’s given up four or more goals seven times and got the hook after giving up three on 19 against Calgary a couple weeks ago in another.

Mason, who has an awful record at 2-5-0, looks much better by comparison with a GAA of 2.33 (ninth in the league) and a save percentage of .927 (sixth) in limited action. He started out badly with 14 goals allowed in his first four games, but since then he has allowed two in three starts, and he got the loss in one of those.

Maybe it’s a salary issue. Mason makes $3 million against the cap compared to Ellis’ $1.75 million, but I have to imagine the upgrade in stats would be worth that much.

Also, and as an aside, those new Blues jerseys are pure class.

Also also, how awesome is this picture?

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In the first semi-major trade of the season that will actually have a significant impact on both teams, the Maple Leafs acquired the white-hot Lee Stempniak from the St. Louis Blues for Alex Steen and Carlo Colaiacovo.

As mentioned in this week’s WWL, Ron Wilson was disenchanted of Colaiacovo’s lack of fitness, and the Leafs in general had to be unhappy with Steen’s 2-2-4 line through 20 games. Steen’s never scored less than 15 goals in his career and right now he’s on pace for about eight. Colaiacovo has one point in 10 games and is currently injured. Both are signed for next year.

It was also a good move by Toronto to get Stempniak, who has 13 points in 14 games this year and 12 in his last seven, for almost nothing. St. Louis made the deal, I suspect, simply because it needed warm bodies to fill out the lineup every night. There’s no other reason to trade a player as good as Stempniak, who scored 27-25-52 two years ago and is playing at almost a point-a-game pace. The move also clears up about half a million in cap space for the Leafs.

Phenomenal move for Toronto on all fronts, and an understandable one for St. Louis.