The Two-Line Pass

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The Maple Leafs are, as I’ve said before, not a particularly great hockey team, nor are they a particularly well-managed or well-coached hockey team. But I did think they were good enough to get into the playoffs if their goaltending held up.

It largely has. And as a result, the Leafs are currently sitting sixth in the East, seven points up on the Islanders, who are just below the postseason cutoff, and they’re looking pretty comfortable, even if they have won just three of their last 10 games (yuck). How comfortable? James Mirtle tweeted this morning that by his count, because the Leafs currently have 40 points and the rest of the East sucks, that the Leafs can go just 5-7-2 in their remaining 14 games and be more or less assured a playoff spot.

Which is crazy. They’ve almost done everything in their power to not make the playoffs, including playing their worst players more minutes than one of the best point-producing and possession-driving centers in the league this season, leaving a high-quality offensive defenseman in the AHL in favor of Korbinian Holzer, and been absolute crap in the shootout. But it’s all been to no avail.

The Leafs are probably going to make the playoffs. They’d need to collapse way more significantly than they did last season, and in 14 games that doesn’t seem all that likely, especially given how soft their schedule is. In all, 10 of their remaining games are against teams below them in the standings, including the Hurricanes (bad), Flyers (worse), Devils twice (okayish I guess), Rangers twice (still underperforming), Islanders twice (dreadful), Capitals (woof), Lightning (crap), and Panthers (the worst).

I can’t be too sure whether lot of people will try to paint this as somehow being a result of their canning Brian Burke being the reason that the Leafs are actually good enough to make the playoffs finally, but I’m going to err on the side of caution and say they obviously will. Only a person like Burke saying that he set the table for the Leafs’ moderate success this likely playoff season — not coincidentally the only one in which James Reimer has been remotely healthy in the last three — would be viewed as being some sort of derogatory misrepresentation of fact. But what has Dave Nonis done this season? Anything of note besides strand Jake Gardiner in the minors for too long? The answer is nothing. That’s it.

So it seems like at long last Toronto is going to have its playoff team. Which is probably something it should or even would have done last season. But moreover it looks like people in the media up there might have to actually say moderately nice things about the things Brian Burke has done in constructing this team and maybe even setting it up for the future. Either that or it’ll take some serious logical acrobatics to avoid doing so. That’s the really mind-blowing thing about all this.

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!

One thing that’s definitely true about the Tampa Bay Lightning is that they’re a poorly-constructed team.

From the goal on out, there aren’t too many players in that lineup that you look at and say, “Yes, this is is a guy who can really contribute to a team that can contend for the postseason.”

I thought at the beginning of the year that they could do it just because of how bad the entire Southeast was going to be bad (and it has been; the Jets currently lead it), but obviously it didn’t work out. Maybe I, like Steve Yzerman, thought Anders Lindback would be a better goaltender than he ended up being, but then I’m not paid a couple million a year to make those determinations as Yzerman did, and certainly I had reservations about such a deal that the Bolts’ GM did not. Lindback’s stats are painfully subaverage, at 2.08/.903, and his backup is Mathieu Garon, so the safety net provided Guy Boucher before his firing this morning was essentially non-existent.

This is a goalie who never played without the benefit of a Ryan Suter/Shea Weber pairing eating up half the minutes in every game in which he appeared, and Yzerman gave up a pair of second-round picks last summer as well as a third in this upcoming draft.

This firing is down to roster mismanagement plain and simple, and there are probably very few coaches alive who could get more out of these sad nags he was given than Boucher got. Sami Salo is getting more than 21 minutes a night for the Lightning, in 2013, which is as inexcusable as it is sad for Lindback, who maybe also never had a chance to succeed.

It’s hard to guess what Yzerman expected from this team. Did he think they’d be solidly middle of the pack? I don’t know how many more goals he could have expected Steven Stamkos to score all by himself, but the drop-off from the 22-year-old supersniper to the next-closest goalscorer (rookie Cory Conacher) is 13. Stamkos has an absurd 21 in 31 games. Conacher has eight. Martin St. Louis, Teddy Purcell, and Vinny Lecavalier have seven each. This is a team that was not built in any way to score goals, or even prevent them particularly well, and because someone had to pay for it, it was Boucher, not his boss.

The reason is pretty simple. People think Yzerman is a good general manager. He hasn’t proven himself to be one, but that’s the perception. In part it’s based on how beloved he is for his decades as a player, and moreover it’s because in his first year, he hired Guy Boucher, traded for Dwayne Roloson, and went on a magical run to the Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Bruins, where they lost in Game 7, 1-0. Huh, no goalscoring there either.

He also handpicked Canada’s 2010 Olympic roster and was widely praised for his genius in doing so, because you can’t imagine how hard it is to choose the right mix of point-a-game superstars and Norris-caliber defensemen and world-class goaltenders that will ensure you get to overtime against a banged-up and not-very-good US roster.

And now the rumor is that it’ll be Lindy Ruff, a respected veteran coach, coming in to replace Boucher. Which, if true, will bring the number of sound managerial decisions Yzerman has made since trading for Roloson to… well, it’ll stay at zero.

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

One subject you hear brought up a lot in sports, for some terrible reason, is that such-and-such a team has the best fans or is the Mecca of hockey, or other such nonsense that matters approximately zero percent. It’s all pointless, specifically because the fans of the Philadelphia Flyers are clearly the greatest, and it’s not even close.

If you are a fan of, say, the Red Wings, or the Penguins, or the Canadiens, or even the Lightning, you might have a bit of a beef with this, but in reality you are dumb and wrong about it. Consider this: Would you still be a fan of a team that is this bad despite having a bunch of reasons not to be?

The Flyers spend money, which is good for fans, but they do it in a maddening and embarrassing way — the Ilya Bryzgalov contract, the Scott Hartnell extension, the Kimmo Timonen deal, etc. — which is bad for fans.

The Flyers routinely draft exciting young talent that are able to be incorporated into the NHL lineup, which is good for fans, but they then trade them away for seemingly no reason whatsoever — Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, James van Riemsdyk, etc. — which is bad for fans.

They routinely make the playoffs due to their traditional regular-season dominance of most of the Eastern Conference, which is good for fans, but then get crushed by vastly superior teams with actual defense and goaltending — the Devils, the Bruins, the Blackhawks, the Penguins, etc. — which is bad for fans.

They have many players on the roster who would do anything to win, which is good for fans, but a number of them are also extremely dirty and play only in an effort to hurt people, then get suspended — Zac Rinaldo, Harry Zolniercyzk, Tom Sestito, etc. — which is bad for fans.

They have an owner who wants to win at all costs, which is good for fans, but in doing so he routinely meddles in the affairs of the men he pays a lot of money to operate the team, and in doing so generally just messes everything up — acquiring Ilya Bryzgalov, making a run at Shea Weber, etc. — which is bad for fans.

They also never give up on their goals of being the best in the league, which is good for fans, but end up falling short in the most hilarious ways possible — the Patrick Kane overtime game-winner, the defense completely melting down last season, getting swept by the Bruins, etc. — which is bad for fans.

It’s not easy, is what I’m saying. But despite all that, no one else in the NHL cares enough about their dumb teams to slash the tires of any car in the parking lot with Quebec plates or beat a Rangers fan half to death. Except Flyers fans. They are truly the greatest.

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!

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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The Lead

Rick Tocchet had had just about enough of the crap outta his team. He benched Jeff Halpern. He benched Alex Tanguay. He was going to dress eight defensemen against the Predators. He was sending a message.

The message, from what I could glean from their allowing Nashville to pop in seven tonight, was that Rick Tocchet is coaching a team that has managed itself into such a terrible situation that they couldn’t beat anyone no matter who he benched or how many defensemen he dressed. Even with eight freaking defensemen on the line chart tonight, the problem was that these were eight defensemen that play for the Tampa Bay Lightning, which immediately puts anyone behind the eight ball.

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Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

So when I saw on Friday that Barry Melrose got fired, I was a little surprised and, frankly, disappointed. It obviously wasn’t because he didn’t have the credentials to be an NHL coach to begin with and not because the Lightning are a puddle of drizzling liquid shit. He doesn’t and they are. This piece of news had me upset because 16 games was four short of the 20 I had in the Barry Melrose Firing pool. Hell.

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The Lead

Here is an ice-time comparison for a few Tampa Bay forwards as of the end of the second period.

Martin St. Louis: 13:00
Vinny Prospal: 12:48
Jussi Jokinen: 11:58
Vincent Lecavalier: 11:32
Mark Recchi: 11:06
Steven Stamkos: 8:31

Try to guess which of these forwards, at this point, had two picturesque goals in the hockey game.

Hint: It was Lecavalier.

How does this happen? How is it that Vincent Lecavalier is keeping the bench warm for ANYONE on the team? The answer, obviously, is Barry Melrose.

It’s insane, too, because they spent a lot of the early coverage of the game on TSN talking about how Lecavalier was unhappy that he hadn’t played more than 20 minutes in his previous two games. Even with Lecavalier’s point that he deserves to be on the ice for as much of the game as he feels like playing in being made emphatically, he still ended with just 17:49, third among Lightning forwards.

I know Melrose is scouting, scouting, always scouting, but maybe he should have taken a peek at this game and seen that big No. 4 was DOMINANTING the Maple Leafs. He had a gorgeous breakaway dangler on his backhand to put the Bolts up 2-1, then extended the lead on a power play early in the second with another pretty backhander off a draw. Somehow, this did not warrant his getting more ice time than Prospal.

Meanwhile, Stamkos ended with just 12:58 of ice time despite picking up his first career point (an assist on Lecavalier’s second goal).

But Melrose and his boys, who didn’t play especially well but benefited from three separate puck-over-the-glass D.O.G. penalties by Toronto (Lecavalier’s power play goal came five seconds into one of these), will take the two points mainly because of the incredible play of Mike Smith, who made 37 saves, with a number of those being just jaw-dropping. Smith pulled several that got past him back from the line. Toronto may have had two power play goals, but both were on second chances, and with the first goal, you can make a credible argument that the play should have been whistled dead.

Not that the Leafs played badly or anything. They were thoroughly mediocre on everything but the aforementioned power play. When up a man, they put 10 shots on net in six opportunities and had it not been for the play of Smith, could have probably had four or five. It was very impressive despite the so-so results. The same can’t be said for the rest of the Leafs’ night, which was so-so with less than impressive results. But you expect that going in, right?

So it turns out that incompetent coaching doesn’t always cost your team. You just need your Top-Five-In-The-League superstar player to score twice despite a relative paucity of ice time and have your goalie make almost 40 saves.

That Barry Melrose. What a genius.

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I am not, nor have I ever been, a hockey coach in any sense of the word. But in reading this Damian Cristodero article from the St. Pete Times about Barry Melrose’s plan for the Lightning, I feel like I’d do an okay job with an NHL job.

His big plan to right the Tampa Bay ship is pretty simple. Well, actually it’s shockingly simple.

Step one: Play your best players less.

Martin St. Louis averaged more than 24 minutes a game last year, and Lecavalier averaged just under 23. Melrose said they played anywhere from three to five minutes too much per night. In St. Louis’ case, I agree that almost 25 seems like a lot. In fact, it was the most of any forward by close to 30 seconds a night. Brad Richards, who played with St. Louis for most of his time in Tampa, was second at 23:27, followed by Alex Ovechkin at 23:06. A good four minutes too many for St. Louis, even if he did see time in all situations, and Tampa took a decent amount of penalties last year.

But getting Lecavalier’s minutes down to 20 or less is crazy. The team has no one besides Lecavalier to play in his place. Who picks up those minutes? Gary Roberts? Steven Stamkos? Ryan Malone? Eh, that’s not too good of a substitute.

Both will see their shorthanded minutes drop considerably to cover this, which would be fine except St. Louis averaged 1:46 shorthanded a night, and Lecavalier only had 1:33. Even if those numbers dropped to nil, they’re still losing 2ish minutes a night at even strength or (if Melrose is actually as stupid enough) on the power play.

Melrose calls this “resting,” I ask, “For what?” This isn’t a playoff-bound team, or anything like one. Too many holes, too many projects. Playing your best players as much as they can possibly play doesn’t strike me as a bad thing. It’s not like they slowed down or had the ice time affect them too greatly. Both Lecavalier and St. Louis had better than a point a game.

Step two: Don’t dump and chase.

Again, just brilliant coaching here. The only teams that can get away with the dump and chase are teams with good defenses. Tampa doesn’t have one. Tortorella’s insistence on using it was none too bright, Melrose’s correction of that practice shouldn’t be hailed as anything less than correction of an obvious.

So instead, the plan is (wait for it) puck possession! It’s just so clever.

Here’s Melrose, the master analyzer, on why it will work: “If we have the puck, they can’t score.”

Step three: Play defense.

But what happens when they DO have the puck?

“I’m not going to accept bad pinches,” Melrose said. “I’m not going to accept two-on-ones against. I’m not going to accept bad judgment on defense.”

Saying it is one thing, executing it is another. The fact is that Tampa’s defense features five 23-year-olds and they’re going to make mistakes. Lots of them. That means bad pinches, bad giveaways, and odd-man rushes coming back the other way. Even if they’re encouraged not to jump into the play (and boy won’t Tampa be fun to watch this year if that’s the case?), they’ll still see a lot of forwards busting ass up-ice toward them.

So this is Barry Melrose’s three-part plan. Really.

Doesn’t it make you feel like all you need to do to coach is stand behind the bench in a suit?

We’re now something like 50 days out from the start of the NHL season so I figure this is as good a time as any to start doing the season previews. This is mainly for two reasons: 1) I am lazy and there’s no way I’ll do one of these every day, and 2) This is early enough that if I just stop doing them entirely you’ll have forgotten by October anyway. Oh and I guess also to show off my near-infinite knowledge of the National Hockey League. I’ll be previewing the teams in reverse order of finish in the 2007-08 season. Please note, though, that this is the opinion of one man, however smart and handsome he may be.

Tampa Bay Lightning, you’re on the clock.

This happened FOUR years ago!

It’s a rare thing indeed to see so much upheaval for a team in a single offseason. New owners, new GM, new coach, completely new second line, new contract for the franchise player, and a new rookie sensation. It’s an exciting time to be a Bolts fan, right?

Well, not so fast. Because one thing that hasn’t been improved is the team defense and goaltending, at least not appreciably, or for the present. Trading Dan Boyle, a very good do-it-all defenseman may have yielded a pair of promising blueliners in Matt Carle and Ty Wishart, but neither is ready to be Dan Boyle on Oct. 5. Not even close. The goaltending situation isn’t much better, as obviously-bad Marc Denis has been replaced by obviously-aging Olaf Kolzig, who, at 38, is ancient even by NHL goalie standards. He was the oldest goalie in the league to start more than 50 games and fourth-oldest overall.

Kolzig, like every one of the Bolts’ goalies last year, posted a save percentage under .900 and a GAA around 3 (Mike Smith was 2.46/.906 in Dallas but those numbers dropped to 2.79/.893 in Tampa). Kolzig also had the luxury of playing behind a Washington blue line that allowed 36 fewer goals than did Tampa last year.

The offense, though admittedly upgraded from last year, is still pretty mediocre. Its 223 goals was tied for 17th in the entire league last season, with offensive powerhouse Minnesota (yes, really). All but one team that scored fewer than the Bolts (the lowly Atlanta Thrashers) actually allowed more goals. Some of the “promising” new additions are a trio of Penguins in Ryan Malone (27 goals with Evgeni Malkin sliding him the puck), Adam Hall (2) and The NHL’s Oldest Man, 42-year-old Gary Roberts (3).

Then there’s obviously Steven Stamkos, the big-time rookie who will likely center the second line. Yeah he was picked first overall, and yeah he’s very good, but he won’t make the impact the Lightning need him to make to get to the postseason in his rookie year. It’s very rare that anyone’s that good. Sid Crosby and Alex Ovechkin couldn’t do it, and even though Stamkos has the benefit of having Vinny Lecavalier on his team, that’s still not enough.

More after the jump.

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Actual Barry Melrose quote: "HE'D BE A MALE MODEL." (yes, I pictured him yelling this and possibly pounding his fist on the table.)

If he had been allowed to ramble on for another few sentences, Dateline’s Chris Hansen would have asked Barry Melrose what he was doing in the interview.

See, Melrose sat down with the St. Pete Times’ Damian Cristodero to talk all about a young man you may have seen named Steven Stamkos. The Bolts’ new coach heaped praise upon the 18-year-old center, saying the way he skates is “beautiful” and raving about his quick-release wrister.

If calling anything about Stamkos “beautiful” and bringing up his quick release wasn’t borderline-odd enough for you, the interview takes a turn for the truly bizarre a few more paragraphs down.

“He’s cut,” Melrose said. “He’d be a male model if he wasn’t a hockey player. But he’s slim. He’s 18 years old. He’s not a man yet. Vinny (Lecavalier) looked like a beanpole with shoulder pads on, too. Matter of fact, Stamkos is thicker than Vinny when Vinny came in.”

Uhhhhhhhhhh…?

Melrose went on to say that Stamkos is the type of player that plays better when he has better players around him (now you see why he got that coaching job), and namedropped Radim Vrbata and Ryan Malone as potential linemates. Both were 27-goal scorers last year, but Malone couldn’t pop in 30 playing with Geno Malkin, and Vrbata scored 27 after having never scored more than 18 in his previous five NHL seasons. So I don’t know about how good those two would be as linemates if you want Stamkos kickstarting the second-line offense.