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Our Picks for the NHL Awards

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Tonight in Las Vegas the National Hockey League will holds its annual awards show.

Here’s a look at the nominees and our choices as the most deserving winners:

Hart Trophy (Most Valuable Player)

Nominees: Corey Perry (Anaheim), Daniel Sedin (Vancouver) and Martin St. Louis (Tampa Bay).

Who we think should win: Daniel Sedin.

Vezina Trophy (outstanding goaltender)

Nominees: Roberto Luongo (Vancouver), Pekka Rinne (Nashville) and Tim Thomas (Boston).

Who should win: Tim Thomas.

Norris Trophy (outstanding all-around defenceman)

Nominees: Zdeno Chara (Boston), Nicklas Lidstrom (Detroit) and Shea Weber (Nashville).

Who should win: Zdeno Chara.

Calder Trophy (outstanding rookie)

Nominees: Logan Couture (San Jose), Michael Grabner (N.Y. Islanders) and Jeff Skinner (Carolina).

Who should win: Jeff Skinner.

Jack Adams (outstanding coach)

Nominees: Dan Bylsma (Pittsburgh), Barry Trotz (Nashville) and Alain Vigneault (Vancouver).

Who should win: Barry Trotz.

Selke Trophy (top defensive forward)

Nominees: Pavel Datsyuk (Detroit), Ryan Kesler (Vancouver) and Jonathan Toews (Chicago).

Who should win: Jonathan Toews.

Lady Byng (most gentlemanly player)

Nominees: Loui Eriksson (Dallas), Nicklas Lidstrom (Detroit) and Martin St. Louis (Tampa Bay).

Who should win: Nicklas Lidstrom.

Ted Lindsay Award (outstanding player as voted by his peers)

Nominees: Corey Perry (Anaheim), Daniel Sedin (Vancouver) and Steven Stamkos (Tampa Bay).

Who should win: Sedin.

 

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Busy Weekend, Lots to Know

Posted on May 7, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

When one wakes up on a Saturday morning in the sports business and knows he’ll go non-stop for the next 17 hours, he also knows there is nothing better in the world.

Let’s check the daytimer:

10 a.m. Winnipeg Goldeyes Open House, team practices from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

2 p.m. Radio in Ottawa with A.J. Jakubec on the TEAM 1200.

3 p.m. Assiniboia Downs, 137th running of the Kentucky Derby.

7 p.m. Induction Ceremony for the Manitoba Softball Hall of Fame.

In between all that we have to sneak around to watch the Canadian Football League draft,  the Nashville-Vancouver Stanley Cup playoff game, the Sugar Shane Mosley-Manny Pacquiao WBO Welterweight Title Fight, the Oklahoma City-Memphis and Miami-Boston NBA playoff games and a whole slate of Major League Baseball games that just can’t be missed.

It’s one of the days that when it ends, you say to yourself, “Thank the Lord I’m alive and someday, if things ever get quiet, I just might get to play golf.”

While we rush around from place-to-place, here’s what we need to know:

1. We like Dialed In in the Derby because ever since Big Brown, we have always bet the Florida Derby champion at Churchill. Haven’t always won, but in a 19-horse race that is as good a strategy as any.

2. The Canadian Football League draft, although billed as “a franchise-changing day” for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, is and, well, isn’t.

It IS because the Bombers finally have some draft picks. It ISN’T because players who are selected in the Canadian draft tend to a) fail miserably or b) play for every other team in the league at some point in their career, anyway. Perhaps the best player drafted No. 1 overall in the last 10 years was Steve Morley by Calgary and he now plays for the Bombers.

3. Vancouver can eliminate Nashville at home tonight and probably will. Despite the brilliance of Preds head coach Barry Trotz, the Canucks are just better at every aspect of the game.

4. Now that Dallas has the Lakers’ backs to the wall at 3-0, can Memphis take out Oklahoma City. Memphis hadn’t won a playoff game in franchise history until this year and now the Grizzlies have won a series. If they can win two games at home — starting tonight — they just could be the first NBA Cinderella team in a long, long time.

5. Pacquiao will take out Mosley in three rounds.

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This Should be Barry Trotz’s Year

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

Now that he has been nominated — again — for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s coach of the Year, maybe this is it.

After all, year-in and year-out, there is no better coach in the National Hockey League than Dauphin, Manitoba’s gift to the NHL, Nashville Predators bench boss, Barry Trotz.

For the sake of full disclosure, I am the president of the Barry Trotz fan club. I have, without apology, been campaigning for Trotz since the early 2000s. There is no better coach in the game.

And already this spring, he has proven it. First with a six-game victory over the Anaheim Ducks and now with  a Round 2 Game 1 victory over the Vancouver Canucks IN Vancouver.

“I’m happy because I think of the resiliency of the group that worked so hard all year, and I’m relieved because there is a little bit of a cloud that we wanted to get to the next level,”  Trotz told reporters after his Preds dispatched Anaheim. ”And if we never got there in this series, I think there would be a little bit of a carry-over.”

“We got help from everybody. Everybody contributed. That’s sort of what we do. That’s our DNA. To win this series, we needed everybody and everybody contributed.”

Certainly the country’s hockey mavens  know the players who toil for Trotz. However, for the average hockey fan, the Preds are one of the game’s greatest collection of no-names. Nick Spaling, Marcel Goc, Matt Halischuk, Cal O’Reilly, Joel Ward, Colin Wilson, Kevin Klein (he’s an actor, isn’t he?), Shane O’Brien, Cody Franson, none of those guys conjures up thoughts of Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Alex Ovechkin or Joe Thornton. If the Preds have a “superstar” it’s Shea Weber and he’s a defenseman with 16 goals. The only forward with a “big” name, even in Nashville, is Martin Erat because he’s played his entire nine-year NHL career in Nashville. He had one more goal than Weber this season.

Call it odd, but the Nashville Predators didn’t realize what fame was until their general manager, David Poile (the only GM they’ve ever had), made a deal to acquire Mike Fisher. Fisher is a grinder who is only famous because he’s married to American Idol Carrie Underwood.

If there is a lunch bucket team in the NHL, it’s the Predators. And to their credit, they can all carry their lunch buckets into the second round of the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.

And the man who is truly responsible for this year’s success is a) the fiercest looking coach in the NHL and b) the nicest man in the game today.

Trotz is the only coach the Predators have ever had. He’s been in Nashville for the entire time the Preds have been the Preds. He has coached 985 consecutive games in Nashville. That’s the NHL record for most games coached from the start of a franchise’s history.

In fact, the 48-year-old Trotz, has been with the Predators since their inaugural season in 1998. His overall record is 455-398-60-71 and while that doesn’t sound like much, one must consider that the expansion Preds didn’t have a winning record until the 2003-04 season. However, since the 2004-05 lockout, Trotz’s Predators have gone 272-174-0-50 and on Sunday night, as the Preds reached the second round of the playoffs for the first time in history, it had become apparent that no coach in the NHL does as much with as little as Barry Trotz.

This past season, the best coach in the NHL coaxed his team to a 44-27-11 record, fifth in the West. He’s now taken out the No. 4 team in the conference and won’t know his team’s next opponent until, at least, tomorrow.

Trotz, who was born in Dauphin, spent three seasons with the Western Hockey League’s Regina Pats and then went to the University of Manitoba where he still believed he could make it to the NHL one day. Trouble was, he’d been injured in the off-season when he was 19 and the pain just wouldn’t go away.

“I hurt my back in the summer of 1982 and it just never got better,” Trotz told me in 1999. “It was my lower-back and I tried to play through the pain for a year at the U of M, but I just couldn’t do it. It got so bad that I could barely walk. With some rest, I tried to go out to training camp the next year, hoping I could get back by Christmas, but I had nothing. It wasn’t coming around and then one day, the head coach at the U of M, Wayne Fleming, asked me to become his assistant.”

The next season Trotz took over as coach and general manager of his hometown Manitoba Junior Hockey League club, the Dauphin Kings, but then moved back to the U of M as a 26-year-old head coach while Fleming went to Europe on a sabbatical. When Fleming returned, Trotz stayed on as his assistant and picked up a side job as a regional scout with the Washington Capitals.

In 1990, the Capitals asked him to join their farm team, the Baltimore Skipjacks of the AHL as an assistant and Trotz jumped at the chance. He eventually became the team’s head coach and when the Skipjacks folded, he took a job as head coach of the AHL franchise in Portland, Me. There, he won a Calder Cup, and when his old boss, former Caps GM Poile became the first GM of the Nashville Predators, he immediately hired Trotz as his first head coach.

They have seldom missed a day together since.

“Barry is the fairest-minded, most honest coach in the game,” Poile once said. “His players love him and will do anything for him because there are no mind games, no favorites, no phoniness. Barry Trotz is a very good human being and as a result, an extremely good coach.”

Indeed. And now, maybe, just maybe, this year he’ll finally be recognized as the best coach in the National Hockey League.

(Portions of this updated post originally appeared at www.fantrax.com)

 

 

 

 

 

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Parity Makes this Year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs the Most Competitive in Decades.

Posted on April 20, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

In a pretty exciting hockey game on Monday night, the Boston Bruins held on to beat the Buffalo Sabres 2-1. Not that this game had anything particularly notable about it, it was simply another indication that this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs are probably the closest we’ve witnessed in a long, long time.

Before the playoffs began, I was on the FAN 960 in Calgary asking Mike Richards, “What constitutes an upset this year?” I suppose you could say a Nashville win over Chicago in the opening round, but don’t forget one thing. At the end of the regular season, the No. 2 Blackhawks had 112 points while the No. 7 Predators had 100. To have two teams separated by only 12 points after 82 games is hardly an uncompetitive situation.

If No. 8 Montreal beats No. 1 Washington in the East, that would definitely be an upset, but if No. 8 Colorado beats No. 1 San Jose in the West, no one would be too surprised. San Jose always chokes early in the post-season.

It’s impossible to deny. The NHL has parity. It’s why the final weeks of the regular season are exciting, it’s why teams that are eight games over .500 miss the playoffs and it’s why this year’s playoffs, for the first time in history, were all tied at 1-1.

On Monday night, Washington made a statement. The Caps went into Montreal and drilled the Habs 5-1. Winkler’s Eric Fehr had a goal and an assist while Alexander Ovechkin was terrific as the Caps let people know that they’ll be around late in the post-season.

Out on the other coast, Roberto Luongo was dreadful in the Vancouver goal as Los Angeles took a 2-1 lead over the Canucks with a 5-3 win.

Nothing is certain this year: Not Ryan Miller’s brilliance, not Detroit’s experience, not Pittsburgh’s defence. Great coaching (see: Barry Trotz), great goaltending (see: Tuukka Rask) and great checking (see: the Philadelphia Flyers) will all play a role as sixth seeds will upset three seeds and seventh seeds will chase down two seeds.

If the first week is any indication, this year’s post-season could very well be the best in decades.

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After a Week on the Road, Some Thoughts and Observations

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

TAMPA, Fla. — We’ve been out watching hockey, baseball and golf for a week.

Here are some things we’ve heard and a whole lot of things we’ve seen.

1) Sure, just about everyone you talk to in the NHL these days believes Phoenix Coyotes head coach Dave Tippett will easily win the Jack Adams Coach of the Year Award. But could it be that Tippett is merely the illustration we’ve been given to show that Wayne Gretzky was a horrible coach? Could it be that Tippett is a good coach (there are plenty of good coaches) who just happened to inherit a very good hockey team that got plenty of help at the trade deadline?

This past Saturday night, the Nashville Predators locked up a playoff berth with a brilliant 4-3 win over the Red Wings in Detroit. Tippet is worthy, but Barry Trotz is the best coach in hockey. Nashville — with a lineup of no-names, has-beens, never-weres and Shea Weber — is now 46-29-6 and will play either Vancouver or San Jose in the opening round of the playoffs.

For a guy who has never won a major coaching award and only coached our national team on one occasion, he’s the most outstanding coach that nobody really knows. And this year, frankly, he’s the Coach of the Year.

2) Watched Tiger in the opening round of the Masters on Thursday. What an incredible performance. Say what you will, Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer in history.

Considering that after all the crap he went through — some of it of his own making, most of it the media’s making (he didn’t do anything that hundreds who have gone before him didn’t do) — Woods went out and shot a first round 68 at the Masters. It was his finest opening ever at the Masters. The first time he ever had two eagles in the same round. It doesn’t matter what happens the rest of the way. Nobody plays the game better than Tiger Woods. Period.

And golf is better off now that it has him back.

3) See the Bombers lost $1.2 million in 2009. See the Winnipeg mainstream media wants to blame Mike Kelly for it.

Talk about a one trick pony. The Winnipeg mainstream media either hasn’t got the cojones or the intelligence to point the finger at the people responsible. Wonder how long this will last? In 2016, when the Bombers go 4-14, it won’t matter who’s coaching, it will be Mike Kelly’s fault. Nice deal for Paul LaPolice, though. If he goes 0-18 as head coach this season, the local media will blame Mike Kelly.

If  the coach is the guy who single-handedly lost $1.2 million, why wasn’t he fired a helluva lot sooner? In fact, why wasn’t the guy who hired him fired? And why weren’t the people who hired the guy who hired Mike Kelly all fired? When a football organization loses $1.2 million, the responsibility lands a lot higher up than the head coach. The local media in Winnipeg did a lot more to help the Bombers lose $1.2 million than Mike Kelly did. When you keep telling people to stop buying tickets, a lot of them will eventually stop buying tickets.

By the way, I see that the CFL sent $150,000 less than it did a year earlier to each of its eight teams. That means the CFL raised $1.2 million less in corporate sponsorships in 2009 than it did in 2010. How did that happen? How did the CFL lose $150,000 per team in revenue when the league’s popularity has never, ever been greater.

Wonder where Tom Wright went?

4) The Stanley Cup playoffs start next week. After this past week in Tampa, I can’t wait. Too bad Steven Stamkos doesn’t play in a city where people actually care about hockey.

Speaking of which, my people in Phoenix tell me that the chances of the league still owning the Phoenix Coyotes on Tuesday night after Glendale city council votes on that sweetheart rental deal for Jerry Reinsdorf at jobing.com Arena, is better than 50-50.

Winnipeg might not be dead yet.

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The Playoffs Are Coming. It’s Manitoba’s Best Year Ever.

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

This was a big week around the National Hockey League.

Jonathan Toews and the Chicago Blackhawks clinched a playoff berth, Travis Zajac continued to have the best year of his career as he leads the New Jersey Devils into the post-season and Barry Trotz, the head coach of the Nashville Predators, keeps the Preds winning even though they don’t have enough personnel or enough star personnel to be as good as they are.

Some notes from a week in the hockey trenches observing the brilliance of the Manitoba kids in the NHL…

1) This is as good a time as any to praise the Finnish Flash, Teemu Selanne. Last Sunday night, Selanne scored his 600th career goal to become only the 18th player in history to reach the 600-goal plateau.

Congratulations to a great guy, a guy who scored his first 147 with the Winnipeg Jets.

2) When he played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Winnipeg-born Alexander Steen appeared to be spinning his wheels, going nowhere fast. Now, as a member of the St. Louis, Steen is having a career year.

Through 60 games, Steen has 21 goals and 21 assists and is a plus-five on a minus team. He’s the Blues third leading scorer and is tied for the team lead in goals even though he’s played 10 and 11 fewer games than the two players ahead of him.

After struggling in Toronto and often being a healthy scratch, he has become a big time offensive player in St. Louis. At 26, he is developing into one of the two or three best players on the Blues.

3) If there was one player who could have played on Canada’s Olympic team and didn’t, it was Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos. Now, as the season winds down and Tampa misses the playoffs, Stamkos, who was a great friend of 92-CITI-FM and the old Cosmo Show, has a chance to show how good he really is.

Heading into the weekend, Stamkos was tied with Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin for the NHL goal-scoring lead with 45. Could Steven Stamkos win the Rocket Richard Trophy? You bet he could.

4) The Calgary Flames, and the red-hot Nigel Dawes of Winnipeg, have an uphill battle to make the Stanley Cup playoffs, but we will know by this coming Sunday whether the Flames have what it takes to reach the post-season.

The Flames started a five-games-in-seven-days stretch with a 4-3 loss at Minnesota on Sunday. They beat the Anaheim Ducks in Calgary on Tuesday night, but lost a big game to the Islanders, 3-2, on Thursday night. They play at Boston on Saturday and at Washington on Sunday and if they don’t win both of them, they’ll be pretty much done.

5) Manitoba’s top young players have had rock solid seasons in 2009-2010.

Winnipeg-born Duncan Keith, a Chicago Blackhawks defenseman, has 13 goals and 52 assists for 65 points, 31st overall in the NHL and second among defensemen. He’s also a plus-18.

New Jersey rightwinger/centre Travis Zajac has 23 goals and 38 assists for 61 points, 34th in scoring in the NHL. He’s also a plus-16.

Winnipeg-born Patrick Sharp (plus-22) of the Blackhawks has 22 goals and 39 assists and is also 34th in NHL scoring.

Winnipeg’s Jonathan Toews, the captain of the Blackhawks, has 22 goals and 37 assists for 59 points and is a plus-20. He’s 43rd in scoring.

Winkler’s Dustin Penner has 27 goals and 28 assists and is a plus-5 on a very minus Edmonton Oilers team.

Meanwhile, Alexander Steen of Winnipeg and Eric Fehr of Winkler each have 21 goals while Nigel Dawes of Winnipeg has 13.

This might be Manitoba’s best year ever in the NHL.

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Things to Consider With Three Weeks to Go.

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

ST. PAUL, Minn. — While the general managers and the league’s other tall foreheads try to come to terms with illegal checks to the head (sorry, boys, but the rulebook is full of rules that would get headshots out of the game), the rest of the NHL is just playing hockey.

So with about three weeks to play before the Stanley Cup playoffs are upon us, let’s take a look at the league from a Winnipeg perspective:

1) Although he says he has not completely made up his mind, it appears that after 18 seasons, former Winnipeg Jets captain Keith Tkachuk is nearing the end of his brilliant career.

Saying his future in St. Louis is now, Tkachuk wouldn’t admit whether or not he was retiring at the end of the season, but he did say, “I often think about this being the end.” No doubt, the Hall of Fame awaits.

2) Remember when the San Jose Sharks had a very comfortable 12-point lead in the Pacific Division? Well, not anymore. That’s because the Phoenix Coyotes have won seven straight and have moved to within three points (at the beginning of the weekend) of the heavily favored and quite talented division leaders.

The 44-22-5 Coyotes have all but assured themselves of a spot in the post-season for the first time since 2002. Now, however, they are closing in on home ice advantage in the West. This should be a great finish.

3) By now, it has to be official. There is no better coach in the NHL than Dauphin’s Barry Trotz (OK, maybe Dave Tippett in Phoenix, but nobody else). Trotz, the only coach the Nashville Predators have ever had, has the no-name, star-less Predators in seventh place five points ahead up on eight-place Detroit (at the start of the weekend).

That shouldn’t happen. The Preds just don’t have the personnel. But Trotz has made them a playoff contender – they beat L.A. on the road this week and have won four straight — and that says more about his brilliance than anything else.

4) Calling it “a retaliatory hit to the head,” the National Hockey League suspended Anaheim Ducks defenseman James Wisniewski for eight games without pay for that terrible hit to the face and head of Brent Seabrook on Wednesday night.

Wisniewski definitely gave Seabrook a cheap shot, but an eight-game suspension after giving Alexander Ovechkin only two? The NHL justice department is completely nonsensical.

5) The Montreal Canadiens have looked very good at times this season. They’ve had two four-game winning streaks. But not until the Olympic break, have the Habs put together so many outstanding games in succession. In fact, with six straight wins heading into the weekend, Montreal has moved into the playoff driver’s seat in the East.

After Tuesday night’s game, a 3-1 win over the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, the Habs moved past Philly and into sixth place in the Eastern Conference (later in the week they fell back into seventh). The Bruins are eighth with 74 points, four points back, while ninth-place Atlanta and the Rangers are seven points back. With only 12 to play, the red-hot Habs are in control of their own playoff destiny.

6) Perhaps no one has noticed, but Winnipeg’s Travis Zajac is having a season to remember. Zajac, the 24-year-old rightwinger out of the University of North Dakota has moved into the Top 35 in NHL scoring with 21 goals and 38 assists.

Perhaps more importantly, the 6-foot-3, 200-pounder, is a terrific plus-14. By the time the next Olympics roll around, he’ll be one of the best players in the game, if he isn’t already.

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It’s Week 15 in the NFL and it’s Already Crazy.

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It was quite a Saturday night in the NFL.

After three quarters, the Dallas Cowboys held a 24-3 lead over the unbeaten New Orleans Saints, but when you’re trying to get to 14-0, there is usually no give-up in you.

So the Saints put up 14 unanswered in the fourth quarter and were driving for the tying touchdown when the Cowboys brilliant outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware stripped Drew Brees of the football, ending the Saints dream of 16-0.

It was a pretty good football game other than the NFL Network’s coverage of it. Technically, the telecast was weak (the Superdome P.A. announcer was louder than NFL Network play-by-play man Bob Papa) and the commentating was just annoying. In fact, it was another night of football with the mute button on.

It’s great that every NFL game is on television. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t enough quality broadcasters to go around. Matt Millen? Simply grating. Like fingernails on a chalkboard. Why doesn’t the NFL just showcase the home radio crews. I’ll guarantee most of them are easier to listen to than the alleged “national” broadcasters.

More thoughts from a wild and woolly week:

1) On the afternoon that Lyle Bauer announced his resignation as CEO of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, CJOB radio’s Geoff Currier made the most insightful comment of the day.

“If you look at the record, the most successful Blue Bombers coach during the Lyle Bauer Era was Dave Ritchie,” Currier said. “And Dave Ritchie was the only coach Lyle didn’t hire.”

It’s true. Bauer inherited Ritchie and never much liked him. Bauer did hire Jim Daley, Doug Berry and Mike Kelly, all, in the end failures. Although Kelly has left the Bombers with the best team they’ve had since 2000.

2) CBS Sports is promoting its 2010 PGA Tour golf coverage without using any images of Tiger Woods. Wow! Can’t wait for that showdown in the final round of the FedEx-Accenture-Buick-Ford-Disney Invitational Open World Golf Classic between Jerry Kelly and Zach Johnson.

Thrilling? No, sleep inducing. Pass the remote.

3) Although Mike Babcock has done a terrific job as head coach of the beaten-to-a-pulp Detroit Red Wings this season, there is very little doubt that the coach of the year in the NHL right now, is Nashville Predators boss, Barry Trotz.

Trotz, who came out of Dauphin, Man., to start his coaching career as an assistant at the University of Manitoba, has made the no-name Predators one of the top teams in the NHL this season, In fact, after Saturday night’s 5-3 win over Calgary, the Preds are now 22-11-3, tied with power-house Chicago for first in the Central Division.

While Babcock, who will do a tremendous job as head coach of Canada’s 2010 Olympic team, has kept Detroit in the playoff hunt despite the fact the Wings are currently without top line players’ Dan Cleary, Johan Franzen, Valterri Flippula, Niklas Kronwall, Jason Williams, Jonathan Ericsson, Darren Helm, and now Henrik Zetterberg, what Trotz has done is nothing short of remarkable.

He’s taken a low-budget team of has-beens, never-weres and not-likelys and turned them into one of only six NHL teams with at least 22 wins. He is a brilliant coach and the man Winnipeg would need if the NHL ever returned.

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Babcock a Great Choice as Canada’s Olympic Coach

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

FULL DISCLOSURE: If you know me, you know I’m a fan of both Barry Trotz and Andy Murray.

I believe what Trotz has done with almost no money in Nashville has been remarkable and while I’ve always liked Murray (both personally and professionally), I believe what he did with the St. Louis Blues in the second half of the 2008-09 National Hockey League season was coach of the year worthy.

Both men are tremendous coaches, but more importantly, they are tremendous people and I have been on a personal crusade to get both of them named to the coaching staff of Team Canada.

Having said that, I would have no problem if they were both assistants, along with Boston’s Claude Julien.

That’s because I truly believe Mike Babcock would be an outstanding choice as head coach.

Babcock’s name has been floating around for awhile, but yesterday, it became clear that he was now the front-runner for the job. Today, it became apparent that the head coach of the Detroit Red Wings was going to be officially named the head coach of Team Canada at a news conference later this week.

Genius choice.

Babcock has all the skills, mainly because he’s become a successful NHL coach handling good hockey teams. He knows stars and can deal with egos. And despite the fact he’ll demand that all egos be checked at the locker room door, he’ll still have to deal with some of the biggest egos in Canadian hockey. It’s a pretty good guess to think he already knows that.

Babcock has a career NHL coaching record of 282-139-71 and has won 58 postseason games. He has coached Detroit to four consecutive seasons of 50-plus victories, won a Stanley Cup and reached a final, guided Canada to the 2004 world championship and won the 1997 world junior title. He’s perfect.

Word is Ken Hitchcock will be one of the assistants. I still like Trotz, Murray and Julien, but it will be up to Babcock to choose his own guys and make this thing work.

Canada should win gold in men’s ice hockey at the 2010 Games. After all, we’re at home.

Babcock’s hiring is just the first step toward making that happen.

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According to form. Game 1: Detroit 4, Dallas 1; Pittsburgh 4, Philadelphia 2.

Posted on May 10, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

Nashville Predators head coach Barry Trotz was a guest of the Tom & Joe Show on 92-CITI-FM on Thursday morning. One of the best interviews in all of professional hockey, Trotz told Tom McGouran and The Coach that while he loved Dallas and thought the Stars had a great team, he felt Detroit had way too much firepower.

 

Like many of us, Trotz expects an extremely short series in the Western Conference final.

 

As for the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh Eastern Conference final, Trotz believes that if the Flyers bang and crash, they might have a chance against a Pittsburgh team that Trotz also says has “far too much firepower.”

 

“If Philadelphia plays the same type of intimidating game they did against Montreal, they could make the series a long one,” Trotz said. “But that Pittsburgh team has a lot of talent and toughness. When you can throw Malkin, Crosby, Hossa and Staal out there, when you have two tremendously talented offensive-type lines, and they won’t back down, you can be a pretty formidable team.

 

“Philadelphia works very hard, but Pittsburgh keeps coming at you all the time. I won’t say Philadelphia can’t win the series, it’s just going to be very difficult.”

 

After the opening games of the two series, it was pretty obvious that Trotz’s assessment was dead on.

 

On Thursday night, the Red Wings just dominated Dallas. The Wings scored three power-play goals, built a 4-0 lead and coasted (as they often do) to a 4-1 victory. Big Tomas Holmstrom, who found himself a nice comfortable spot in front of Dallas goalie Marty Turco, led the way for the Wings with a goal and an assist. It was Detroit’s seventh straight playoff victory and set up a do-or-die situation for Dallas on Saturday.

 

That’s right, do-or-die.

 

Already down 1-0, if Dallas loses on Saturday, they’ll fall behind 2-0 and no matter how well they play the rest of the way, they will NOT win four out of five against the Red Wings. 

 

Trouble is, what can Dallas possibly do to beat Detroit if Chris Osgood plays well in goal? Osgood is, after all, the only weak link on this Red Wings team, and if he shuts you down (Detroit outshot Dallas 31-21 in Game 1), it’s pretty much hopeless. Dallas isn’t big enough, Dallas isn’t fast enough, Dallas can’t match up and Dallas can’t shut down the Wings power-play. 

 

Game 1 was not only a statement by Detroit, it was a sign of things to come.

 

Over in the East, Philadelphia got a couple of quick goals by Kenora’s Mike Richards and took a 2-1 lead on the Pens, but before the second period ended, Pittsburgh was up 4-2 and in the third, Malkin and Co. just shut down the Flyers.

 

What we found out in Game 1 of this series, is that Pittsburgh is just as tough and maybe tougher than the Flyers and if the bangin’ and crashin’ doesn’t work, Philly could go down quickly.

 

We still figure the Flyers will have some jam at home, but after Malkin got drilled a couple of times and still got up to score two goals and dish out an assist, the writing was on the wall. Unlike Montreal, Pittsburgh isn’t going to back down and that will spell doom for Philadelphia.

 

We selected Pittsburgh in seven. The Pens are now 9-1 in the playoffs and we might have underestimated their toughness. 

 

* * *

 

A couple of coaches were fired this week.

 

On Wednesday, to no one’s surprise, the dysfunctional Toronto Maple Leafs fired head coach Paul Maurice, the only good thing the Leafs had going for them the last two years. That franchise is in worse shape than we thought.

 

Two days later, ex-Maple Leaf Joel Quenneville was let go by the Colorado Avalanche. Quenneville was 131-92-23 in three seasons with Colorado, coaching a team that was old and on the slide after a decade near the top of the NHL. It was probably a blessing that Quenneville was given a chance to look for work elsewhere. The Avs are going nowhere but downhill.

 

The Leafs, meanwhile, are a mess. Currently being run by an old coot named Cliff Fletcher who destroyed the club with some dreadful trades in the late 90s (and the Leafs haven’t recovered) then went on to collect a million dollar paycheque to screw up the Phoenix Coyotes, Toronto is now without a head coach, a real general manager and probably a captain. Maurice, who had one year left on his contract, compiled a 76-66-22 record in two seasons as Toronto’s coach but failed to make the playoffs in both years.

 

Maurice and Quenneville are both class acts and relatively young and will find work. Both franchises, however, are in big, big trouble. Colorado is getting older by the minute while Toronto is just bad news.

 

In fact, the next coach in either city had better not buy a house. 

  

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