Tag Archives: Minnesota Wild

More Hockey Talk As The NHL GMs Meet in Florida

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

There were nine NHL games on Tuesday night in the NHL, five more on Wednesday and 10 more on Thursday night. After 14 days at the Olympics, the NHL has a lot of catching up to do. It will be difficult to keep up.

In the meantime, from new rules regarding hits to the head, possible new shootout rules and a lawsuit against the former owner of the Phoenix Coyotes, this is just about the busiest March of the decade.

Let’s look a little deeper inside the NHL…

1) On Sunday, the 92-CITI-Sports Machine was in St. Paul, Minn., to watch the suddenly strong Calgary Flames drill the Minnesota Wild 5-2. So what suddenly changed in Calgary?

Simple, as we told you on Sunday, Flames head coach Brent Sutter put Jarome Iginla on a line with Rene Bourque And Matt Stajan and on Sunday, the line combined for 10 points as Iginla had his 10th career hat-trick.

Not bad, for only the second game together and they were pretty darn good on Tuesday night in their third game together. Bourque and Iginla each scored once and added an assist and the Flames won (4-2)  a rare one in Detroit.

2) If there was one team that would frighten me if I were the San Jose Sharks or Chicago Blackhawks, it would be the Detroit Red Wings.

The Wings have been banged up all season long. For months, they had at least three of their best players out of the lineup. They were half a hockey team for much of the season. But now they’re healthy, the playoffs are beckoning and if Jimmy Howard gets the job done, the Wings could be the sleeper of the playoffs.

But first, they have to play better than they did against Calgary on Tuesday night.

3) This weekend while I was in St. Paul, a number of hockey experts watched the newly formed Iginla-Stajan-Bourque line and wondered aloud which line was the best in the game today.

A couple suggested Alexander Ovechkin-Alexander Semin and anyone on the other side, but the consensus seemed to be that the best line in the NHL was New Jersey’s No. 1 line of Zach Parise, Jamie Langenbrunner and Winnipeg’s own Travis Zajac.

If nothing else, it’s one of the few lines in the NHL that has been together for most of the season and it provide salmost all of New Jersey’s scoring.

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The Mainstream Media Lunacy Just Gets Crazier. At this Rate, we’ll Never Run Out of Things to Write About.

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

MINNEAPOLIS — We have a crisis of intelligence in this world. It seems that the more you read a newspaper, the dumber you get.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said: “As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers,” and that has never been more evident than it has been this week.

And hey, it’s only Tuesday.

1) A headline in USA Today on Tuesday read: “NFL Replay: Fourth-Down call Stain on Belichick’s Record.”

Stain? What, are newspaper reporters doing now? Pouring tomato juice on people’s hoodies? A stain? It was a call late in a regular season game that ended up backfiring and costing the Patriots the game. A game. One game. Big effin’ deal. The Pats will still be no worse than 12-4 this season.

Stain? What kind of media-created bull-crap is that? A stain on Belichick’s record was the time he spent in Cleveland screwing up the Browns. Taking a chance on Tom Brady is not a stain. It’s not even a blip.

The Pats are 6-3 and still in first place. All that decision did was guarantee that when the two teams meet again in the AFC Championship game, the TV ratings will be right through the freakin’ roof.

2) The Ottawa Sun just cracks me up. This is the newspaper that either can’t get a trade rumour right or simply makes these rumours up.

I know that suggesting a newspaper makes things up is about the worst thing you can say, but goodness gracious, the trade rumours started in Ottawa would be comical if they weren’t so sad. These guys can’t even get a lie straight.

We’ve spent some time chronicling their errors, but let it go because it just got so silly. This week, however, we just couldn’t resist.

Now, for most of this season, the Ottawa Sun has been reporting – and I use the word reporting lightly – that the Chicago Blackhawks were on the verge of trading either Jonathan Toews or Patrick Kane or both. The Sun claimed the Hawks had a cap problem and needed  to move one of their stars. We’ve already called that rumour a crock.

Then, yesterday, word filtered out of Chicago that the Hawks were on the verge of signing both Toews and Kane  to new contracts. At least eight years each according to my source inside the Hawks.

Wow! How can one newspaper be so wrong so often and still sell copies of their newspaper? Are people that stupid? Or are they just looking for a good morning laugh?

3) Newspapers from coast-to-coast, desperate to write about some mundane NHL issue other than the copy to the headline: “The Leafs are Lousy Again,” have had a big month writing about head shots and all the horrible bodychecks being tossed out in the NHL.

NHL general managers are looking at the issue and might come down hard on the league’s headhunters. But there is one thing our newspaper-employed tall foreheads forgot. They forgot to ask an NHL GM who is an expert on the subject.

This week, before I did my radio hit with Eric Nelson on WCCO in Minneapolis, Eric’s guest was Minnesota Wild GM Chuck Fletcher. Fletcher said he didn’t much like checks to the head, but he also said the NHL will put the issue into perspective.

“During the course of the season there are about 46,000 bodychecks,” Fletcher pointed out. “In a bad year, 10 are head shots. We want them out of the game, but there isn’t a big panic over this. The numbers suggest there isn’t a problem at all.”

Of course, he’s right and the fearmongers with the truck loads of ink trying to make up stories where none exist are wrong. Again.

4) I just love Canada’s network TV weasels, don’t you?

According to Canadian Press:  “Canada’s largest private broadcaster laid out a scorched earth scenario Monday if it doesn’t get paid for its signals, suggesting more station closings and even yanking signals from cable.”

Wow! “Yanking signals from cable.” That means because nobody watches it now on cable, Canadians would be sure to watch it when the only way they can receive it is with rabbit ears.

“‘We are not going to be here operating conventional TV unless we can make a business of it,’ CTVglobemedia president Ivan Fecan told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.”

That makes sense. But why can’t you make a business of it? Is it because so few people actually watch it that selling overpriced commercial time is now damn near impossible?

I love listening to people like Fecan tell us that he’ll have to dump local television if he doesn’t get money from the cable companies. If Fecan gets money from the cable companies, this is how it will go: First he’ll line his owners pockets, then his pockets and then the pockets of his executive buddies. At that point, he’ll used what’s left over to go out and buy more shows from the United States that we already watch on U.S. stations.

How’s this for a response to that malarkey? Take your stupid signal off cable and let’s replace it with ESPN. I’d love to see ESPN HD on Channel 210 on my Shaw HD service.

I don’t know about most of you, but if CTV pulled the plug tomorrow, I wouldn’t miss it. In fact, just like CBC and its $1 billion per year in taxpayer-funded welfare, can’t say as I watch it now.

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Sitting In the Middle of a Full House in St. Paul is A Lot Different than Sitting in Florida, Tampa or Phoenix — Or Even Denver.

Posted on November 7, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

ST. PAUL, Minn. — It’s a gorgeous night in the Twin Towns and the “Team of 18,000″ is getting ready to sing State of Hockey here at the Xcel Energy Centre. It’s the Minnesota Wild, a day before Shane Hnidy’s 34th birthday, against the Dallas Stars, with Minnesota’s beloved Mike Modano, not only in the lineup but starting the game and playing on the No. 1 line, at age 39.

It’s been a shaky start to the 2009-2010 season for the Wild. Minnesota’s team heads into tonight’s game at 5-10-0 (1-7-0 on the road) and while the record hasn’t negatively affected the team’s attendance this season, it has been a grind on the staff.

“It’s tough,” said the Wild’s VP of communications Bill Robertson earlier tonight. “It’s a tough economy, it’s tough to sell tickets. We still sell every seat, but we’re not overflowing with standing room like we usually are and it’s tougher to sell corporate suites than it used to be.

“On the upside, merchandise sales are way up because of fans have really taken to our third jersey.”

It’s hard to listen to a guy — even a great guy like Billy Rob — worry about the fans in Minnesota after you’ve already seen games in Florida, Tampa and Nashville this season and have interviewed Doug Moss, the president of the Phoenix Coyotes (check out www.hotdoghockey.com for that interview). Those are markets with big trouble. There is no trouble at all in St. Paul.

However, no one ever would have believed that there could be trouble in Denver, the home of the Colorado Avalanche, and it appears now that there is.

Wednesday night, for a game against Phoenix, the Avalanche drew a franchise-low 11,012 (remember, that’s the announced crowd) ticket buyers. This season, the Avs have averaged just 14,759 through its first five home games and that once again means, “Who cares if MTS Centre has only 15,001 seats?” Not even the red-hot Colorado Avalanche average 15,000 per game these days.

(Oops, Cal Clutterbuck just scored a shorthanded goal from our pal Shane Hnidy.)

With an average of 14,759 per game, the Avalanche stand 25th in the NHL in per-game attendance ahead of only Florida, Tampa Bay, Nashville, the New York Islanders and Phoenix.

Meanwhile, after watching the Atlanta Thrashers play on TV this week,  in front of a crowd that appeared to include the players’ parents and no one else, it’s hard to imagine the Thrashers have the nerve to say they average more per game than the Avs or even the Winnipeg South Blues.

Meanwhile, there will soon be an ownership change in South Florida. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Alan Cohen’s days as majority owner of the Panthers are coming to an end, as two partners in his ownership group are expected to take control of the team.

Two Boca Raton businessmen, Panthers Vice-Chairman Cliff Viner and Managing Director Stu Siegel, will buy most of Cohen’s 43 per cent of the team and become co-managing partners.

According to the Sun-Sentinel, “Panthers fans are desperate for change. The team has not made the playoffs since 2000, the longest playoff drought in the NHL, and has undergone numerous coaching and general manager changes and traded away some of its best players, including Roberto Luongo, Olli Jokinen and Jay Bouwmeester.”

But here’s the kicker, the paper added: “The ownership change is not expected to resolve the team’s financial struggles. The team’s parent company, Sunrise Sports & Entertainment, is seeking Broward County’s help to restructure its debt on the county-owned BankAtlantic Center.”

It’s a mess on Long Island, Phoenix is a disaster (only 5,585 this past Monday at jobing.com Arena), Tampa Bay and Nashville are hurting, the Columbus Chamber of Commerce has conceded that the Blue Jackets don’t have much life left and now Florida needs government help from a government that isn’t flush.

We all know Gary Bettman doesn’t want to admit it, but the NHL is in big, big trouble.

* * *

KELLY SAYS “BULL-CACA.” THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DOESN’T RESPOND IN ANGER. WONDER WHY?

Friday morning, during an interview with Tom McGouran, Kathy Kennedy and The Coach, on 92-CITI-FM, Blue Bombers coach Mike Kelly poked the local mainstream media with a stick. Again.

Kelly, laughing all the way, said, “You guys have the only media outlet that isn’t bull-caca.”

He then added, “I don’t think I can be fined $2,000 by the league for saying ‘bull-caca.” Can I? ”

He was assured by McGouran that it was unlikely he’d be fined. In fact, McGouran agreed with him.

“Can’t be fined for telling the truth,” McGouran laughed.

That’s true to an extent. Kelly could still be fined because he told the truth the first time and was fined.

Then again, he had no bone to pick with CITI, a spot on the dial where the interviewers ask good, solid questions without being rude and obnoxious.

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A Definition of Insanity

Posted on August 8, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Here is, without fear of argument, a pure, unadulterated definition of insanity:

On Saturday, the National Hockey League asked Phonix bankruptcy judge Redfield T. Baum to throw out a bid to purchase the Phoenix Coyotes by RIM CEO and multi-billionaire Jim Balsillie because the league says he’s “untrustworthy” and doesn’t have the “integrity” to be an owner.

The motion was accompanied by declarations from Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs and Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold, which says the owners have all rejected Balsillie and that he “would be untrustworthy” and that the court has no right to overturn their July 29 vote. The owners say their opinion is based on Balsillie’s behaviour in earlier attempts to purchase the Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators.

Let us forget, shall we, that the NHL thought he was just fine when he approached the league about buying into the failing (at the time) Penguins and the failing (still) Predators. Let us forget, shall wee, that the NHL is a club for people who refuse to tell the truth, even when they’ve been caught in lies.

But it’s impossible to think for one minute that when the league says Balsillie is “untrustworthy” or doesn’t have the requisite “integrity” to be an owner, the league has fallen into group delusion. Or, at best, forgets the mere existence of these notorious NHL owners:

1) When he took over as commissioner, one of commissioner Gary Bettman’s closest friends and supporters inside the league was Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall. McNall went to jail for fraud.

2) After Steven Gluckstern nearly went broke owning the New York Islanders, Bettman brought in Charles Wang and Sanjay Kumar. Kumar is now serving a 12-year sentence for fraud.

3) Bettman also needed help after Buffalo Sabres owner Seymour Knox died in 1996, so he found cable TV magnate John Rigas. In 2002, while he was the Sabres owner, Rigas was convicted of, you guessed it, fraud. He’s still in prison.

4) On Jan. 28, 2000, former New York Islanders owner John Spano, who took over an NHL team with very little money, simply because the NHL forgot to do a background check, was sentenced to 71 months in federal prison for a bank and wire fraud conviction.

5) Later this month, former Anaheim Ducks owner Henry Samueli will be sentenced by a California court for lying to federal investigators for his role in Broadcom’s $2.2 billion stock options award scandal. He could get five years.

6) Then there was “Bootsie.” With the Nashville Predators in bankruptcy protection, Bettman refused to sell the team to Balsillie because Balsillie wanted to move it to Canada. So Bettman went out and found a wealthy venture capitalist named William (Bootsie) Del Biaggio III. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess, but it wasn’t long before Bootsie was facing fraud charges brought on by everybody from the SEC to Luc Robitaille to Joe Montana. Bootsie hasn’t gone to jail yet, but there are a lot of people who would like to see him in the crow bar hotel.

Gary Bettman does not want Jim Balsillie to own a team, but he’s happy having felons own teams.

Therefore, simply to suggest that Balsillie isn’t trustworthy is to demonstrate a level of delusional insanity that is usually reserved for people who see the baby Jesus in their morning coffee.

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Thompson says, “…there will be some dramatic events this week.”

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

On Wednesday, the National Hockey League’s free agent season will begin and according to Tom Thompson, the assistant general manager of the Minnesota Wild, “I’m sure there will be some dramatic events this week.”

Assuming they aren’t signed between now and Wednesday morning, the Sedin Twins, Marian Gaborik, Mattias Ohlund, Dwayne Roloson, Ales Kotalik, Marian Hossa, Chris Neil, Mike Comrie, Mike Cammalleri, Todd Bertuzzi, Mike Komisarek, Mathieu Schneider, Alex Kovalev, Alex Tanguay, Saku Koivu, Mark Recchi, Maxim Afinogenov, Ryan Bayda, Erik Cole, Patrice Brisebois, Tom Kostopoulos, Brian Gionta, John Madden, Johnny Oduya, Brendan Shanahan, Derek Morris, Nik Antropov, Martin Biron, Antero Nittymaki, Viktor Kozlov, Miroslav Satan, Petr Sykora, Rob Scuderi, Hal Gill, Todd Marchant, Jay Bouwmeester, Martin Havlat, Sami Pahlsson, Ian Laperriere, Joe Sakic, Jere Lehtinen, Jordan Leopold, Mikael Samuelsson, Marc-Andre Bergeron, Martin Skoula, Vernon Fiddler, Greg de Vries, Stephane Veilleux, Rob Blake, Mike Grier, Claude Lemieux, Travis Moen, Nolan Baumgartner, Jason Jaffray, Jason Krog and Mats Sundin, along with more than a hundred others will be unrestricted free agents..

Even some of our old friends — Shane Hnidy, Teppo Numminen, Tyler Arnason, Nikolai Khabibulin, Colton Orr and Phillipe Boucher — will be free on Wednesday. It’s going to hit the fan this week and you can bet as many teams as possible will be involved.

In fact, during the draft, Brian Burke made it clear he’ll be a buyer: “We’ll be involved on July 1,” Burke told reporters in Montreal. “The door is open for business at noon and that’s when we will start to get involved.”

He’s not alone.

“There will be moves that will get a lot of people talking,” said Thompson. “There is going to be a lot of interest in the hockey world all over North America that’s for sure.”

But why? Why so many UFAs?

“It’s partly because of the cap,” said Thompson, via telephone from his office in St. Paul. “The thing about the salary cap system is that it forces people to make choices. Because you’re restricted by how much you can spend, if you decide to do one thing, you can’t do another. It’s what makes great organizations or not-so-great organizations. You can’t have everything anymore.

“If there is one thing the cap has done, it’s put every team on an equal playing field and the smartest hockey people will be successful.”

The other thing it does, is forces team’s into last-minute decisions. It forces them to meet deadlines. It allows players to know exactly how much they’re worth. And it makes people like the Sedin Twins, who want long term deals worth at least $62 million each, worry about their decisions just as long and hard as Shane Hnidy or Jason Krog, who just might be out there looking for work.

I’d hate to suggest anything specific will happen on Wednesday. Nobody knows. But here are five things that might happen…

1) The Sedins don’t get the money they’re after in Vancouver. Mike Gillis re-signs Mattias Ohlund and signs Marian Gaborik.

2) The Sedins end up in Toronto with Brian Burke, the man who drafted them in the first place, and who will dump a pile of dull, old contracts to make sure he has the dough to sign them.

3) The Flames will sign Bouwmeester, let Cammalleri ($3.6 million) and Bertuzzi ($1.95 million) go and have plenty of money to sign the roll players he needs (he’s already dumped Jim Vandermeer and his $2.3 million deal).

4) Bob Gainey will go on an unprecedented signing frenzy and get Komisarek, Brisebois, Kostopoulos, Schneider and Tanguay signed. Saku Koivu will end up with his brother, Mikko, in Minnesota.

5) At least 50 players will change teams.

Unlike the dull-as-dishwater trade deadline television snooze, TSN, Rogers SportsNet and the Score will have an actual reason to telecast Free Agent Frenzy Shows. This should be nuts.

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Ex-Wild coach Lemaire takes parting shots at, wait for it, the Montreal media.

Posted on April 14, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Here’s something that I’ve known for decades: The Montreal media’s obsession over the Canadiens — not over hockey, but over the Canadiens — borders on the insane.

 

Evidently, Jacques Lemaire knows it, too.

 

Lemaire told Charlie Walters of the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Tuesday that he’s not sure if he’ll ever coach again, but if he does remain in the game, it won’t be in Montreal. Even though  he became a Hall of Famer with the Canadiens and still owns a home.

“I would not go there,” Lemaire told the Pi-Press. “You don’t want to spend (with media) 20 minutes on hockey and 40 minutes on what surrounds the game. Not as a coach.”

“The media want to know what kind of shorts I’m wearing before the game. I want no part of that.”

Can’t blame him. The Gazette isn’t so bad, but Le Journal de Montreal is crazy. For a guy like Lemaire, who didn’t hog the limelight in Minnesota, it’s obviously not worth the aggravation.

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The Stanley Cup Playoffs are Here: It’s prediction time.

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Minnesota Wild assistant general manager Tom Thompson has a theory about the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

It comes true most years, but somehow, this looks like a year in which it might come to pass in spades (although I don’t believe it). 

 

“The first round of the playoffs is always the most compelling round because you generally have two types of teams,” explained Thompson. 

 

“You have the teams that were successful all year and feel that if they don’t get to the final or win the Cup, their season was a failure. Then you have the teams that snuck into the playoffs and have nothing to lose. The top teams are often tight while the lesser teams have already done what they set out to do and by the opening round of the playoffs are as loose as can be. 

 

“That’s why there are so many great series and so many big upsets in the first round.”

 

He’s right, of course. The first round of the playoffs is always the most exciting. So without further adieu, let’s look at the 16 teams and eight matchups for the 2009 series which have already begun.

 

THE EASTERN CONFERENCE

 

No. 1 Boston Bruins (53-19-10) vs. No. 8 Montreal Canadiens (41-30-11).

The Habs and Bruins go at it again, a repeat of last year’s first round, in which the Canadiens outlasted Boston four games to three. But this year, things are different. Boston was the best team in the East and the second best team in the NHL and they are on a roll. It’s a team that allowed the fewest number of goals in the league (196) and has a wide-open offence to go with a stingy defence. The Habs were very fortunate to make the playoffs (they finished with the same number of points as Florida) and in six meetings this season, Boston won five of them, two in shootouts. Bruins in five.

 

No. 2 Washington Capitals (50-24-8) vs. No. 7 New York Rangers (43-30-9).

Second-place Washington with all that firepower – Alex Ovechkin and Mike Green are a good start — will face the seventh-place Rangers. The Caps have been very good this season and won the Southeast Division by 11 points over Carolina. They also won three of their four meetings with the Rangers. Capitals in five.

 

No. 3 New Jersey Devils (51-27-4) vs. No. 6 Carolina Hurricanes (45-30-7).

New Jersey, which won the Atlantic Division, will play sixth-place Carolina after beating the Hurricanes in the season finale last week. However, Carolina won its first three meetings with the Devils this season and played much better hockey down the stretch than New Jersey. Hurricanes in seven.

 

No. 4 Pittsburgh Penguins (45-28-9) vs. No. 5 Philadelphia Flyers (44-27-11).

Pittsburgh won four of the six meetings between the two teams this season, one in overtime and another in a shootout. However, all Philadelp[hia had to do to earn home ice advantage throughout this series was to win the final game of the season at home against the Rangers and they couldn’t pull it off. Pittsburgh has too much offence and is just playing better hockey at this time. Penguins in six.

 

THE WESTERN CONFERENCE

 

No. 1 San Jose Sharks (53-18-11) vs. No. 8 Anaheim Ducks (42-33-7).

Although it’s No. 1 vs. No. 8, this is a matchup that features two of the most successful teams in the NHL since the lockout. Since the start of the 2005-06 season, the Ducks have gone 180-107-41 with four playoff appearances while the Sharks have posted a 197-94-37 mark with three consecutive 100+ point seasons, four playoff appearances and two Pacific Division titles (2008 & 2009). However, the Sharks were the President’s Trophy winners as the best team in the NHL during the regular season while Randy Carlyle’s Ducks were fortunate to make the playoffs. The Sharks also won the season series, 4-2. Sharks in five.

No. 2 Detroit Red Wings (51-21-10) vs. No. 7 Columbus Blue Jackets (41-31-10).

A tale of two cities: The Red Wings are the defending Stanley Cup champions while the Blue Jackets are in the playoffs for the first time in their eight seasons of existence. During the regular season, the teams split. Detroit won the first two meetings, Columbus won the next three (including an 8-2 win at Detroit on March 7) and Detroit geat the Jackets 4-0 in a statement game on March 17. I like Ken Hitchcock as a head coach, but Detroit has way too much of everything. Red Wings in five.

 

No. 3 Vancouver Canucks (45-27-10) vs. No. 6 St. Louis Blues (41-31-10).

The remarkable, red-hot Blues clinched the No. 6 seed in the final game of the year and put a cap on an amazing finish. From Feb. 15 to the end of the season, head coach Andy Murray’s Blues went 18-6-3. It was significant because on Feb. 15, the Blues were dead last in the West. This team finished the regular season by going 9-1-1 over its last 11 games and 5-1-1 on the road. Had the Blues lost their final game, they would have finished eighth — which would have meant a series with the top-seeded San Jose Sharks. Instead, they finished with the best second-half record in the League at 25-9-7. However, they have only four players who have ever won a playoff game. Vancouver, meanwhile, came back to claim the Northwest Division title by winning their last three games and going 6-3-1 down the stretch behind the tremendous goaltending of Roberto Luongo. This will be a match-up of two of the hottest teams in the game and two red-hot goalies – Luongo and Chris Mason.. Canucks in seven.

 

No. 4 Chicago Blackhawks (46-24-12) vs. No. 5 Calgary Flames (46-30-6). 

This series screams “Blackhawks!” Chicago swept the four-game season series with the Flames, winning 6-1 and 5-2 at the United Center and 3-2 in overtime and 5-2 at the Saddledome. Add it up. Chicago has more firepower and probably equal goaltending (Huet/Khabibulin vs. Kiprusoff). Chicago oputscored Calgary 19-7 during its four wins and really, the Hawks dominated the season. In fairness to Calgary, the two teams haven’t faced each other since the Hawks’ second win at Calgary on Feb. 5, but still, Hawks in six. 

 

* * *

 

THE 2008-09 NHL TROPHY WINNERS

 

Pittsburgh center Evgeni Malkin captured his first career Art Ross Trophy as the League’s leading scorer with 113 points while Washington Capitals leftwinger Alexander Ovechkin won his second consecutive Maurice Richard Trophy for being the League’s top goal scorer with 56. 

 

Meanwhile, Boston Bruins goaltenders Tim Thomas and Manny Fernandez earned the William Jennings Trophy as the goaltenders on the club that allowed the fewest number of goals — 196.

 

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Winnipeggers fill up the Dome and the Excel Energy Centre. Drive home happy.

Posted on December 29, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I was with thousands of Winnipeggers in the Xcel Energy Centre in St. Paul, Minn. on Sunday night and I had a chance to watch one of the best teams in the National Hockey League.

The Chicago Blackhawks, with captain Jonathan Toews of Winnipeg and all-stars Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp and Brian Campbell, just waxed the outclassed Minnesota Wild 4-1. Dustin Byfuglien from Roseau, via the Brandon Wheat Kings, had two goals and two assists while Toews had two assists as the Hawks dominated the Wild in every possible way to win their franchise-record ninth straight game. 

 

The Hawks are now 20-6-7 on the season and with talent at every position, they clearly have a shot at the Detroit Red Wings and San Jose Sharks in the West.

 

GM Dale Tallon deserves a lot of credit for building this winner.

 

Meanwhile, a Minnesota Wild executive told me on Sunday that he believed both the Phoenix Coyotes and the Nashville Predators are essentially bankrupt and are being carried by the league — that’s all of their expenses, including payroll. You’d have to think that at some point commissioner Gary Bettman is going to have to bury his pride and allow these teams to move to Canada where people actually care about hockey.

 

Meanwhile, as both D&J’s and All Season Tours dropped off thousands of ‘Peggers at the Dome yesterday afternoon, it became clear that folks around these parts are in love with the Vikings. Most of them sat right below me in the auxiliary press box and they all cheered loudly as Ryan Longwell hit the 50-yard field goal to win the game, the NFC North and a spot in the playoffs for the Vikes.

 

It’s also nice to see that after a tough few years, the Winnipeg sports tour companies had a good weekend. Maybe they’ll fare well for the Wild-Red Wings/Vikings-Eagles this coming Saturday and Sunday.

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Even Bettman is starting to admit the truth about the NHL’s place in the Recession

Posted on December 6, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It’s taken a while, but even NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has reached the point where he’ll now hint that the NHL could have some financial problems if the current recessions deepens.

 

As much as Bettman loves to say (and he did on his XM Radio Program on Thursday) “the NHL is not being impacted as deeply as the other major professional sports leagues in America are,” the fact is, the league is being hammered by this recession. It’s just that nobody inside the league really wants to talk all that much about it.

 

However, hockey people must face facts. The NHL has no significant U.S. television contract and it has teams in non-traditional markets that have been money-losers since they opened the doors. Now the league is faced with a falling Canadian dollar that, according to Minnesota Wild assistant general manager Tom Thompson, will “substantially impact the ability of the Canadian teams to turn profits,” and it’s been the Canadian teams’ revenues that have driven up the salary cap and put more money in the league’s bank accounts.

When Bettman claims the other major sports leagues will be “impacted” on a larger scale, he’s probably right, simply because the other leagues have more to lose. You can already see the sections of empty seats at NBA games on TV and the NFL has stopped selling out all their stadiums, all the time.

But those close to the business of professional sport seem to agree that the NFL will emerge from the downturn relatively unscathed. It’s just too big and too popular to take a long-lasting hit. Of course, it doesn’t hurt hat the NFL’s TV deal with four major networks is worth $2.2 billion (all figures U.S.). The NHL, on the other hand, is dependent of gate receipts and those receipts can vary wildly as the economy moves up and down. According to Forbes Magazine, the NFL generates an estimated $6.5 billion in annual revenue, Major League Baseball is next $6 billion, the NBA is third at $3.6 billion and the NHL at fourth at $2.5 billion.

However, more than one third of that $2.5 billion is generated by the six Canadian-based franchises. But now that the dollar is hovering around 70 cents US, that number could fall by as much as 30 per cent. If Canadian teams start to struggle, the teams in lousy U.S. hockey markets (not lousy sports markets, but lousy hockey markets) – Phoenix, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta, South Florida, Carolina, Long Island and Washington, D.C. — could start to shutter or consider moving their operations. Right now, most U.S. owners are deeply in debt — one is already in bankruptcy protection — and all of them desperately need a strong credit industry, an industry now under siege, to survive.

Since 1999, 20 NHL teams have either changed owners or significantly altered their ownership structure, It’s no secret that some franchises have changed ownership two or three times (Islanders, Coyotes, Predators, Lightning). And what’s going to happen in Detroit if the Big 3 automakers go under? The Red Wings, one of the two or three best teams in the NHL and a team that is already in a tremendous hockey market, are already selling some tickets for $9 a game.

According to the Toronto Star, “The Florida Panthers have laid off staff, the Tampa Bay Lightning are said to be a financial basket case, the Phoenix Coyotes are believed to be hanging on by a thread.” Meanwhile, the Atlanta Thrashers owners are in a court battle, the New York Islanders desperately need a new arena that might not be built and the Nashville Predators are still trying to do something with co-owner Bootsie Del Biaggio’s 24 per cent stake.

It is becoming clear that with this recession, hockey is on its death bed in Gary Bettman’s “southern footprint.” He’s the man who took hockey away from Canada and gave it to non-traditional markets and while those non-traditional markets have always struggled, they are now in need of a financial I.V.

Of course, there is a problem. With such a lousy Canadian dollar, why would anyone want to move another franchise to Canada? 

That’s why Winnipeg is caught between a rock and a hard place. We have a small arena, only 700,000 citizens, a team that already folded up shop and moved south and a fading Canadian dollar. As much as I believe an NHL team in Winnipeg would draw large numbers of fans, I wonder if that’s enough anymore. 

 

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Ongoing Perfection. Game 2: Detroit 3 Pittsburgh 0.

Posted on May 26, 2008 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

Hard to imagine the Detroit Red Wings could be better in Game 2 of the 2008 Stanley Cup final than they were in Game 1, but it seems that just when you think you have the Wings figured out, they shift into another gear.

 

Monday night at Joe Louis Arena, the Wings made the Pittsburgh Penguins look as silly as, ohh, penguins.

 

In fact, Pittsburgh was so out of this one that even though they managed to get more shots on net in Game 2 than they did in Game 1, most of the shots were unscreened dump-ins from the blueline.

 

Meanwhile, Detroit plays the game the way Minnesota Wild assistant general manager Tom Thompson always wanted his hockey team to play.

 

“It’s like the difference between European hockey and Canadian hockey in the 70s,” Thompson once said. “In Canada, we always wanted to shoot the puck into the opposing zone. Our theory was, if it’s in your zone, you can’t score. In Russia, their theory was, it doesn’t matter what zone it’s in, if we have the puck you can’t score. That’s the way Detroit plays. They always have the puck.” 

 

Last night, playing that frustrating puck-possession style, the Red Wings took 34 shots at Marc-Andre Fleury while holding Pittsburgh to 22, mostly weak ones. There were times when Chris Osgood must have thought he was sitting on his porch having a lemonade as he watched the traffic go by. 

 

Ozzie now has two straight shutouts to start this year’s final. That’s only happened on three other occasions — Clint Benedict of the Montreal Maroons in 1926, Frank McCool of the Leafs in 1945 and Martin Brodeur of the Devils in 2003. That’s pretty good company.

 

Of course, to give credit where it’s due, the Red Wings shutout heroics start with a defence that has been all but impenetrable. Nicklas Lidstrom, Brad Stuart, Brian Rafalski and Niklas Kronwall have been particularly good and the relentless checking of Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Tomas Holmstrom, Kris Draper, Dan Cleary and Johan Franzen has certainly given the Wings control of the neutral zone.

 

Meanwhile, the Penguins have spent more time marching to the penalty box than they have toward the Red Wings net. This March of the Penguins is not what Pittsburgh fans had in mind.

 

Of course, Pittsburgh fans probably thought Evgeni Malkin was going to show up (he was minus-2 with no shots on goal last night).

 

If the Penguins didn’t have Sidney Crosby, the outcome would be worse than a 2-0 deficit, two straight shutout losses and two straight embarrassments.   

 

Game 3 is Wednesday night in Pittsburgh. The Pens will have to win one of the next two to force a return to Detroit. They should get at least a split at home.

But then again, based on the first two games of this series, there is no guarantee. 

 

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