The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

Maybe Brian Burke was just what the Leafs needed.

I mean, obviously he’s not going to have to great an impact on the on-ice product and he just started Saturday, but it’s difficult to argue with results. Two days after beating up on the Flyers pretty bad, the Leafs went to California, possibly with an achin’ in their heart, and mounted an acceptably solid, hard-working comeback to win 3-1.

Obviously the Leafs have worked hard all year — they’ve been among the hardest workers I’ve seen so far this season — but they’ve had little to show for it, and, given the talent up and down that roster, they’ve probably gotten what they deserve from a personnel standpoint.

But it was interesting to me that during LeafsTV’s extensive interview with Brian Burke, he brought up an interesting concept while discussing his being in charge of Team USA’s 2010 Olympic roster. Herb Brooks, who of course was in charge of the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” team and all that, was a master motivator and got everything he could out of a group of college players. You know the story. But what Burke said was that Brooks didn’t have the best players. Far from it. But he had the best team, and Burke, by implication, seems committed to letting his current team take a whack at succeeding without any big player movements or shakeups. That’s certainly admirable.

But if Burke’s looking to fire up another miracle and somehow get this clattering hodgepodge of mediocre players anywhere near a playoff spot, his team is going to have to work just as hard as it did tonight to even have a chance. Maybe even harder.

Not giving up goals like the one Alex Frolov scored to open the scoring 57 seconds into the game is a good place to start. (Pro tip: You can’t let a guy like Frolov get behind your defense.) The Leafs are very lucky indeed that the Kings are still as young as they are and that Anze Kopitar hasn’t looked himself of late, because if you give up a goal that early to most NHL teams, especially those in the Western Conference, there’s a damn good chance that you never come back from it. The Leafs, to their credit, did immediately settle down and didn’t give up another goal for the rest of the night, though they did allow another couple breakaways that, had it not been for Vesa Toskala standing on his head, might’ve cost them.

On the other end, Jason LaBarbera, of all people, was also playing remarkably well. He stopped a couple Leafs rushes in the first period (one on Mikhail Grabovski and one on Matt Stajan and Nik Antropov) and kept the Kings up for two full periods, but the Leafs were working too hard and doing a surprising amount of little things right. Except, of course, for when Wayne Simmonds helped put both Tomas Kaberle and Pavel Kubina in the box at the same time for unsportsmanlike conduct (a penalty shared by Simmonds) and hooking, respectively. Ron Wilson had to have been a little perturbed that his top defensive pairing was sitting in the box because of something a fourth-line agitator did, especially when it results in a 4-on-3 power play for LA near the end of the second period. But the Leafs killed it, and used that to shift the momentum headed into the third.

It was Stajan that finally broke through the Los Angeles defense 10 seconds into a 5-on-3 that was the result of tripping calls to Sean O’Donnell and Dustin Brown. The goal came with three seconds remaining in O’Donnell’s infraction, and Brown could only watch from the box as Grabovski converted on the remainder of that power play. That was pretty much it. Jeff Finger, who had a shockingly great night, added an empty netter.

But this was the blue print for how the Leafs have to win hockey games, minus the whole giving-up-a-goal-less-than-a-minute-in thing. Work their asses off for 60 minutes and grind one out. Had this been an LA team that was playing a little better at the moment, or had Toskala not been outstanding in making 32 saves, it might’ve been a different result. But the Leafs, and Burke, have to be happy with four points from two games regardless of opponent or circumstance. Work hard and keep the game simple. Herbie would’ve liked that.

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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.

So yesterday the Habs’ Tom Kostopoulos was given a three-game suspension after he demolished Mike Van Ryn from behind along the endboards, which was a perfectly reasonable suspension.

But how is there no action being taken against the Canadiens for the way they treated former teammate Mikhail Grabovski?

I hate to be the one that is constantly calling for this player or that player to be suspended or fined or whatever and I’m not doing so here, but it’s pretty clearly a team directive to punish Grabovski for the crap he pulled with Montreal last year. Not that he helped his own cause by taunting various Habs players over the course of the night, but again, this strikes me as something that came down from the top.

Watch that video around 1:10 into it. Right before Koivu gets in his face about something, he makes a point to not pull up short of Grabovski even though he is clearly prone on the ice after having been drilled just after the whistle on an offside call.

For those that don’t know the full story here, Grabovski spent much of the season as a healthy scratch and one day, before a road game in Phoenix for which he was once again going to be watching from the press box, he flew to Los Angeles instead to meet with his agent. Neither the Habs players nor front office types took too kindly to that and now that Grabovski has been traded to the Leafs, even his lifelong friends the Kostitsyn brothers are lining up against him.

According to La Presse (click for moon language.. translation from HFBoards):

“He is not my friend anymore,” said Kostitsyn on Monday. “I do not have respect for him. He’s not even a team player.”

…

”I have a good memory, we’ll see each other again,” when thinking about the next game between the two team on January 8th.

Other pertinent quotes followed.

Alex Kovalev: “No, don’t talk to me about him. He’s in Toronto and I am here. I’ve got nothing to say.”

Chris Higgins: “He’s not here anymore. I don’t care about him.”

Guy Carbonneau: “He’s playing a lot and he’s happy in Toronto. Good for him.”

Now I’m not saying Grabovski’s actions were justified because they weren’t, but they were taking run after run at him on Saturday with very little recourse from the Leafs and surprisingly no action from the league, especially in light of that second Kostitsyn quote. Even Grabovski seems to imply that he believes the orders came down from Carbonneau.

It will be interesting to see how everything shakes out on Jan. 8.

So Jason Blake is a healthy scratch for the Leafs’ game with the Bruins tonight.

In his place: Ryan Hollweg.

Hard to figure what Ron Wilson’s thinking here. He says Blake’s game lately has been flat, and that’s certainly true. But I don’t see how replacing him with Hollweg helps the fact that the Leafs can’t put the puck in the net.

“It’s a challenge for me,” he said. “I had a lot to think about [during the suspension]. I just have to be careful.”

Uh huh. You’ve had a lot of suspsensions to think about this though, so I don’t know that this talk of contrition exactly rings true. The good news is that, unlike the Blues (against whom Hollweg has gotten his last two suspensions), the Bruins have guys like Milan Lucic and Zdeno Chara who’ll actually, y’know, beat the piss out of Hollweg if he so much as looks at a star player the wrong way.

For the record, I have nine minutes of ice time before he really tries to run somebody.

I was working on a long, well thought-out, hilarious post on the NHL’s Board of Governors discussing the relocation of a current team to Toronto, to be the area’s backup Maple Leafs.

“Why shouldn’t we put another team in the best and biggest market in the world?” one of several NHL governors who spoke anonymously said of the Greater Toronto Area.

Makes sense to me. Hell, they sold out every seat in Hamilton and those guys didn’t even HAVE a team.

Ah the jokes I was making. “The CBC can finally live out its dream of an all-Toronto Hockey Night in Canada.” “I hope the new Toronto team wins a Cup the first year out of the box.” “For all those fans who think the Leafs are just too good.” You get the idea (and yes, I acknowledge that none of those could even begin to fit the average person’s definition of funny).

Well, turns out I had to delete the whole damn thing.

“The story is nonsense,” one highly placed NHL source told the Star. “Perhaps the musings of one team representative. Expansion to Toronto has never been discussed with the board, the executive committee or any other league committee.

“And its never been considered internally.”

So much for that. You’ll have to make TSN2 and Cliff Fletcher jokes for yourselves now.

So yesterday Ryan Hollweg was suspended another three games for boarding Alex Pietrangelo (this is in addition to the other games he was already suspsended for boarding someone else this year).

Thing is, Hollweg doesn’t feel like he’s in the wrong here. At all. Know whose fault it was? Pietrangelo, that’s who!

“I really don’t think the hit was worth a game misconduct to begin with, so for them to [add] any more games would have been a little bit over the line,” Hollweg said of his hit on Pietrangelo. “Now, they’re trying to make a point but like I said, the player was up on the power play the next shift. He wasn’t injured.

“It was a play where, if [Pietrangelo] continued to skate forward, it doesn’t even happen. So I think other players have to be accountable as well for putting themselves in vulnerable positions.”

That’s true, Ryan. If only Pietrangelo had been smart enough to not catch a stick in his back by a repeat offender and then be driven face-first into the glass. Pietrangelo’s only mistake was allowing himself to be on the ice while a TOTAL piece of garbage like Hollweg was also out there. If Hollweg had been, y’know, suspended for more than just the two games he had already faced, this never would’ve happened.

“With that kind of speed, with that momentum, it’s hard to change gears within a split second like that,” Hollweg said.

And that’s why Alex Pietrangelo had to have his head bounce off the glass like a ping pong ball. Makes total sense.

Earlier this morning I read an article about how Ryan Hollweg wanted to get back to his physical game in the Leafs’ Thanksgiving afternoon game with the Blues.

So I’m watching the Leafs/Blues game just now, and exactly four minutes of ice time after he returned from a two-game suspension for picking up three game misconduct penalties for boarding in his last 41 games, Hollweg got a five-minute major and a game misconduct for boarding.

He PASTED Alex Pietrangelo, St. Louis’ first-round pick in this past draft, well after the play. It was a revolting play from a revolting player. Incidentally, the boarding call that got him suspended last time also came against the Blues in an Oct. 1 exhibition game.

This will result in his third suspension since March 26 of last season, when he got three games for (you guessed it) boarding!

A couple things occur to me here.

1) Tom Renney is a saint for keeping this guy under control as long as he did. There is clearly something wrong with Ryan Hollweg if he’s offending this much. Like “Chris Simon” wrong. He has almost no control over his aggression, and he’s going to seriously hurt somebody one of these days.

2) The League has to do something more than a two- or three-game suspension here. Giving up two games and $5,000 in fines clearly means nothing to him, and the NHL has to take a much harder tack to send the message that this type of play is COMPLETELY unacceptable. Both of the first two suspensions of the NHL season will have been dealt to Hollweg, and both for the same offense. It’s ridiculous.

3) I retroactively support Chris Simon.

We’re now something like 29 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.

Toronto Maple Leafs, you’re on the clock.

For the record, I’m still laughing about that Jeff Finger contract.

Jeff Finger. For $3.5 million dollars. Holy hell.

And the best part, it might not even be the worst contract on the team. Jason Blake at $4 million’s right up there. And yeah, the Leafs fans out there are going to argue that he had 52 points last year and that’s no so terrible, which is true enough. But here’s the problem, and it points to a problem we’ve seen with a lot of these bottom-of-the-barrel teams I’ve previewed so far: no offense at all.

Last year, the Maple Leafs were paced by a 78-point season from Mats Sundin. Pretty solid. After that, the next closest guys are Nik Antropov, Tomas Kaberle and the aforementioned Mr. Blake. Point totals for those three: 56, 53, 52. What do they all have in common? Sundin was the player with whom they combined to score the most points. He and Antropov combined on 25 goals (45 percent of Antropov’s scoring), 22 for Kaberle (42 percent) and 16 with Blake (31 percent).

Now the Leafs might have to live with the idea of not having Sundin around any more. That’s a scary thought.

More after the jump.

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Shed not a tear, Bryan. Where you're going, no one will care how many goals you get torched for.

Bryan McCabe is finally done with the Maple Leafs, and it looks like he’s going to be traded to the Florida Panthers.

Reports started to trickle out last night that he would be traded to Florida within a few weeks. They’re just waiting for some $2 million bonus from the Leafs to clear.

A delay in the announcement is linked to the Leafs willingness to pick up a $2 million bonus McCabe is due on September 1st. After the payment is made only then will the transaction be accepted by the NHL.

Now this trade prompted a lot of speculation from the Toronto-based national media that still has obsession with the Leafs despite their, um, awfulness (witness 23 of next year’s 37 Hockey Night in Canada 7 p.m. games being Toronto-centric).

Who would the Leafs get in return? Promising young centerman Stephen Weiss? Outstanding winger Nate Horton? Embittered defensive standout Jay Bouwmeester? Toronto’s air pollution problem? A bag of Tim Horton’s coffee beans?

Well, because the aforementioned players are all young and all very good, the Leafs won’t even get autographed hockey cards of them. Not for McCabe, who is not young and not very good AND has a monster contract.

Instead, the scuttlebutt is that the Panthers, possibly the only organization in the NHL more inept than the Leafs, will for once do the right(ish) thing and send over oft-injured defenseman Mike Van Ryn. What they should send is a 137th round pick and possibly a Miami Dolphins bumper sticker, but at least the Panthers are unloading Van Ryn’s contract, which has two years remaining on it at $2.9 million per.

By the way, click on the above link to the Sportsnet story and look at the picture of McCabe they use. Just outstanding.

Wait what?

Nice of Bryan McCabe to finally accept that playing in Toronto isn’t going to work out.

After seeing just how badly the team is going to do this year, he has at long last finally agreed to waive his no-trade clause. Maybe.

“Bryan is starting to think about possibly getting his career started somewhere else,” said Fletcher. “We’ll leave him alone. He’s going to get back to us in a couple of weeks. There’s not going to be any issues. I’m really confidant it’s going to be resolved amicably before training camp.”

Put it this way, someone has to pay him the $5.75 million cap hit he’s owed per season for the next three seasons, or he’ll get bought out. Depending on what the Leafs get back in trade, they’d be nearing the cap floor of $40.3 million and would certainly be in the bottom half of the league’s payrolls.

This is simple economics. Even with a buyout, McCabe would be unlikely to get anywhere near the kind of shortsighted money he signed for in Toronto and accepting a trade, anywhere, would make sure he keeps pulling down that type of cash. A few teams could use a big contract like his to get up above the cap floor.

No word on whether or not the Leafs will simply ask McCabe to stay home when training camp opens.

“We will certainly not sit idly by if the Maple Leafs take a position which is unreasonable and unfair to Bryan McCabe,” said Kelly. “In our view, telling him not to show up and to stay home, we would view that as utterly unreasonable … we would undoubtedly file a grievance and pursue that aggressively for Bryan.”

Fletcher insisted it wouldn’t come to that. “It won’t get resolved until early September, but it will get resolved,” said Fletcher.

The article also notes that McCabe’s wife is from New York, so a trade to the Rangers or Islanders could be in the offing, as if McCabe’s what either team needs.