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The 10 Most Surprising Players of 2011-12

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
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Sid the Kid

Sidney Crosby is still out of the Pittsburgh Penguins lineup, nursing a concussion that has essentially kept him away from the NHL for an entire calendar year.

Sean Avery didn’t impress New York Rangers head coach John Tortorella in training camp so Tortorella decided to waive him through the league. Rangers fans screamed for Avery’s return and Tortorella gave hockey’s bad boy a second chance. Torotorella was correct in the first place. Avery came back, was dreadful and was waived through the league again.

Martin Brodeur was, for most of the 2000s, the best goalie in all of hockey. A Team Canada fixture and a stalwart in the net of the always-contending New Jersey Devils, Brodeur has started to show his age in recent years and this season, it looks as if the train has stopped at the station for the final time. Brodeur is now 35th in the NHL in goals against average (2.98) and 42nd in save percentage (.891). At 12-10-1 in 26 games, he’s just not the same goaltender.

These are just a few of the surprises that have been foisted upon National Hockey League fans and fantasy players in the first half of the 2011-12 season. But there have been more – many more!

While the fates of Crosby, Avery and Brodeur and might soon be decided, there is a whole slew of players who have surprised the experts this season – both in good and bad ways.

Here is a quick look at the 10 Most Surprising Players in the NHL this season. And, remember, they are not always surprising for the right reasons:

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Teemu

1. Teemu Selanne, Anaheim Ducks: While some players have long retired at the age of 41, the Finnish Flash is like fine wine. He improves with age. After 18 seasons in the NHL, Selanne is now 14th in scoring with 15 goals and 28 assists. He picked up two goals last weekend and then two assists on Tuesday night and a goal and an assist on Friday night. He’s well ahead of legitimate, young NHL scoring stars such as the Kings’ Anze Kopitar, the Islanders John Tavares, Chicago’s Patrick Kane, Washington’s Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom New Jersey’s Ilya Kovalchuk. No wonder Anaheim GM Bob Murray, a guy who says he’s ready to break up the Ducks and start over, called Selanne “an untouchable” this past week.

2. Jason Spezza, Ottawa Senators: OK, so from the day he entered the NHL, everyone had high hopes for Spezza. But for years he’s been a victim of his own potential. Playing for some marginal coaches on some horrendous lines, Spezza put up with a lot of baloney in Ottawa. He never reached that gigantic potential he was said to have but you can bet there was no coach ready to take responsibility for Spezza’s failures. Then along comes Paul MacLean and everything changes. Last year, Spezza had 21 goals and 36 assists. It was a decent season, but not as spectacular as his big year in 2007-08 when he had 34 goals and 58 assists. This year, however, the 28-year-old from Toronto who was the second overall pick in 2001, has a chance to record his best season as a pro. After 45 games, he has 18 goals and 28 assists and is seventh overall in NHL scoring. The arrival of MacLean, who put him on a line with Daniel Alfredsson and let him do what he does best, has made Spezza a star again – and a starter in the All-Star game.

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Claude Giroux

3. Claude Giroux, Philadelphia Flyers: In 2006, Giroux was the No. 1 draft pick of the Philadelphia Flyers, 22nd overall. This guy had enjoyed two straight 100-point-plus seasons with the Gatineau Olympiques of the Quebec League, had wonderful speed, great moves and soft hands and yet it took 21 selections before the Flyers could grab him because so many teams thought, that at 5-foot-11, 170 pounds, he was just a little undersized. Still, the Flyers were prepared to wait for him to reach his potential and it appears that the potential has been reached. Last year, Giroux had 25 goals and 51 assists. This year, he has 18 goals and 31 assists, is tied for second in scoring in the NHL and has missed four games with a head injury. Right now, 23-year-old Claude Giroux might be the best young player in the NHL.

4. Jason Pominville, Buffalo Sabres: Last year, Pominville had 22 goals and 30 assists in 73 games. It wasn’t his best season in the NHL and it even appeared as if his play was tailing off. The concussion he suffered early last season might have been a reason for his declining numbers — he had 80 points in 2007-08 and then 66 in 2008-09, 62 in 2009-10 and 52 last year. This year, however, with the captain’s C on his jersey, Pominville has suddenly awakened. After 43 games (he has played in every Sabres game this season), the former second-round draft pick (55th overall in 2001) has 15 goals and 29 assists and is 10th in scoring in the NHL. Most NHL followers expected Pominville to be a good player for the Sabres. No one expected him to be in the Top 10 in scoring, let alone a participant in the all-star game.

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Colton Orr vs. Arron Asham

5. Colton Orr, Toronto Maple Leafs: On Jan. 5 of this year, Orr was waived through the league and sent to the Toronto Marlies of the AHL. While in Winnipeg two weeks ago, just before he was waived, Orr said to me,” The game is changing again. They don’t need guys like me like they used to.” Orr is an “enforcer.” Some might say, a “goon.” And yet, he was an integral part of the Leafs plans until head coach Ron Wilson decided he didn’t need a fighter who had only played five games. Leafs GM Brian Burke said sending Orr to the Marlies was one of the most difficult things he’s ever done. Even Burke knows that Orr’s demotion was an admission that fighting is being used on a very limited basis in the game these days.

6. Alex Ovechkin, Washington Capitals: Perhaps the most skilled player in the NHL, Ovechkin has 18 goals and 16 assists in 42 games this season and is 46th in league scoring. This is a 26-year-old hockey player – make that superstar – who had 32 goals and 53 assists last year, but 109 points in 2009-10 and 110 points in 2008-09. Something is either wrong with Ovechkin or wrong with the game when a player with this much skill is held to only 34 points in 42 games at the age of 26. Of course, most observers will tell you he’s being held back by his own coaches, coaches who are more interested in stopping the other team from scoring than scoring goals themselves.

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Erik Karlsson

7. Erik Karlsson, Ottawa Senators: Make no mistake, most hockey experts that Karlsson would be a good one when he arrived from Sweden as Ottawa’s first round pick (15th overall) in 2008. But like so many young defensemen, it’s taken him a few seasons to adapt to the speed and grit of the NHL. But this year, Karlsson has adapted. Last year, he had 13 goals and 45 points in 75 games and was a dreadful minus-30. This year, he already has six goals and 43 points and is a plus-eight on an Ottawa team that moved into fifth in the Eastern Conference after a 3-0 shut out of the New York Rangers on Thursday night. He’s a starter in the all-star game and when you’re the 15th leading scorer in the NHL and tops among defenseman, no one can argue.

8. Dwayne Roloson, Tampa Bay Lightning: Certainly, people thought Dwayne Roloson was just about done. But after the way he played last season at age 41 – 18-12-4 with a 2.56 goals against average and a .912 save percentage – many people, including Lightning GM Steve Yzerman, believed Roloson had something left in the tank. But this season has been a nightmare for the 16-year NHL veteran. He is 72nd in goals against with a 3.68 mark and 71st in save percentage at .880. The reflexes had just disappeared. At 6-10-2 in 23 appearances this season, Roloson does not even resemble an NHL-level goaltender. Yzerman gambled and kept Roloson one season too long.

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Jordan Eberle

9. Jordan Eberle, Edmonton Oilers: It’s his second full season in the NHL and this former first round draft pick (22nd overall in 2008) has matched his scoring output from last year. Last season, Eberle had 18 goals and 43 points. This year, after 41 games, Eberle has 17 goals and 43 points and he’s helped make Ryan Nugent-Hopkins the early favorite for rookie of the year (on a line with Nugent-Hopkins and young Taylor Hall, they are known as the “Diaper Snipers.”). Eberle is tied for 10th in NHL scoring. Not one rightwinger in the Western Conference has more points than he does and the rightwingers on the all-star team from the West are a pretty nice group — Jarome Iginla, Patrick Kane, Marian Hossa and Corey Perry. Right now, Eberle has a sprained knee and probably won’t play until after the all-star game, but when he does come back, he’ll no doubt take a run at a 70-point season.

10. Ondrej Pavelec, Winnipeg Jets: At 24, he’s still a young NHL goalie, but Pavelec doesn’t appear, on the surface at least, to be a very good one. He’s 40th in the NHL among ALL goaltenders in save percentage with a .910 mark and 50th in goals against with a mark of 2.92. But he’s a fan-favorite in Winnipeg and a guy who has single-handedly won a half dozen of the 15 victories on his record (he’s an average 15-15-5 on the season). What makes Pavelec so surprising is his ability to play at home in the tiny MTS Centre in front of Winnipeg’s loud, proud fans but on the road, he’s a wonky goalie. Pavelec has a 3.50 goals against average and a .896 save percentage away from home, both well below average. At home, however, he has a 2.32 goals against average and a .925 save percentage. If he could play on the road as well as he does at home, he’d be one of the best goaltenders in the NHL. As it is, he’s in the bottom third of the league. Go figure.

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If the Rangers don’t come back, Tortorella needs to go

Posted on April 26, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Sunday afternoon, the New York Rangers didn’t even give it the old college try. After two periods, the Rangers trailed Washington 5-1 and were lucky it wasn’t 11-1.

Make no mistake, this was head coach John Tortorella’s fault. In fact, the Rangers’ collapse from a 3-1 series lead on Wednesday to a 3-3 tie heading to Washington on Tuesday is absolutely Tortorella’s fault.

Let’s go through the timeline:

1) On Wednesday night of last week, Tortorella was clearly upset with the craziness of Sean Avery, so even though the Rangers won 2-1, Tortorella benched Avery for Friday night’s game. The big-time coach was going to teach his nutbar a lesson.

2) So Avery doesn’t play on Friday and the Rangers get drilled 4-0. During the game, Tortorella gets into it with a fan and tosses a water bottle into the crowd. The league suspends Tortorella for one game. In other words, Tortorella does exactly what Avery does — acts like an idiot — only Tortorella gets his ass suspended.

3) Suspended, Tortorella makes a brain-dead move before Sunday’s game. After 190 consecutive appearances, Tortorella tells his tough guy, Colton Orr, to “sit this one out.” Without Orr in the lineup, the Caps can do whatever they want. And they do. Even Alexander Ovechkin starts pushing Rangers around. With no Orr, the Rangers have no heart or soul, fall behind 5-1 after 40 minutes and get whipped 5-3.

If the Rangers lose Tuesday night, Tortorella should not be invited back next season. He’s not only a hot-head, a guy just as crazy as Sean Avery, but he’s a  lousy hockey coach who knows nothing of team chemistry and courage.

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NHL GMs Spend Hours Talking About Fighting in the NHL. Newspapers dying faster than we thought.

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

TAMPA — I love all the angst over the National Hockey League’s fighting issue for a number of reasons. 

 

Those reasons include, but aren’t limited to, the old mainstream media’s attempt to deal with the issue on a “Letters to the Editor” basis. You know what that looks like: “Our readers have had it with fighting,” the headlines blare. 

 

Yeah, sure they have. The people who write letters to the editor are generally the people who haven’t paid for a hockey ticket in more than a decade. These are the people who haven’t watched a game and haven’t even looked at the standings since the Jets left Winnipeg. Of course they have an opinion on fighting.

 

It’s like that donkey host of The Reporters on ESPN (his name escapes me). He hasn’t paid any attention to hockey since the day Versus got the U.S. rights to live telecasts, but he sure had an opinion about fighting in the NHL on Sunday. He couldn’t tell the difference between a hockey puck and a curling stone but that didn’t deter him from telling the rest of us what’s best for the NHL. He’s a typical New York TV commentator and he’s the biggest problem the NHL has. That’s because he’s the guy the New York-based NHL is trying to tailor its game toward: A guy who has never been to an NHL game and will never go.

 

Fact: No hockey fan has ever left an arena when the fight started. 

 

Sure, it’s possible to find a way to get fighting out of the game, but why in heaven’s name would we want to do that?

 

One simply has to look at the numbers, to see why the general managers spent so much time discussing fighting at their winter meetings in Naples, Fla., last week. Coming out of the lockout, in 2005-06, there were fewer fights in the NHL than at any time in the previous 30 years. Then a year later, the Anaheim Ducks took part in the highest number of fights in the game and they won the Cup. Now, fights are growing at a pace not seen since the late 1980s when teams (in 1987-88) averaged 2.1 fights per game. 

 

Obviously, if games are called tightly and the officials stop allowing the weasels (not the goons, the weasels) to skate around elbowing people in the head (Todd Fedoruk, Darcy Tucker, Steve Ott, the old Sean Avery), then fights won’t be as necessary as they are today.

 

But because the media (and a few fans) whined about all the power-plays during that “New NHL” season (the one after the lockout), the league obviously told the officials to stop calling it so closely. With that, the weasels took over the game and the only way to stop the weasels is to send the goons out after ‘em.

 

The NHL could stop fighting with the same rule change instituted by college hockey: Fight and you’re suspended. But why take fighting out of the game when the fighters do more to maintain control than the officials? 

 

And also, despite all the stupid polls, dimwitted New York TV commentators and letter-writing campaigns, fighting sells tickets.

 

* * *

 

THE SLOW DEATH OF AN ICON 

 

ORLANDO — Along with the news that FP Newspapers Limited Partnership (publishers of the Winnipeg Free Press, the Brandon Sun and the Canstar papers) lost $500,000 in the fourth quarter of 2008 after making $4.6 million in 2007, comes word that more and more American newspapers are going under.

 

The San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer could go  down any day. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Chicago Tribune are in bankruptcy protection. The Rocky Mountain News has ceased to publish.

 

The death of printed newspapers will be a slow death, but it will still be a death. Sadly, the people who ran the business in the 90s and early 2000s didn’t see it coming. They were either dishonest (that would cover the ones I worked for), ignorant or just plain unaware. Newspapers have been treading water for years and now they’re about to sink. It’s sad, but inevitable. When the vast majority of your readers are over 60, death is as certain as taxes.

 

On Saturday in Lakeland, as the Detroit Tigers played host to the Toronto Blue Jays at Joker Marchant Stadium, the press box was about half full. There was a time when you couldn’t get a seat in the press box at Joker Marchant, especially if the Blue Jays were in town, but fewer and fewer sports journalists are traveling to spring training these days — mainly because there are fewer and fewer sports journalists around — so if you have a spring training media pass this year, you can sit anywhere you want. 

 

After Saturday’s game (a game that was pretty dull considering that the Blue Jays didn’t bring any big names to Lakeland while the five best Tigers are playing in the World Baseball Classic), we got back to the hotel in Orlando and as I stopped to get a coffee at the Starbucks in the lobby, I noticed that the old Orlando Sentinel racks were filled with scarves, on display with a hand-written note on top,  telling prospective buyers that the scarves were 30 per cent off. 

 

Like so many papers, the Sentinel no longer fills the hotel racks outside downtown Orlando. Way out here in Lake Buena Vista, the hotel gives away internet access, as well as about five different ESPNs, and as a result the newspaper has become obsolete.

 

There is simply no need to read the sports page anymore. Almost all the news in it has already been telecast on ESPN (TSN in Canada) — more than 12 hours earlier — and anything else a reader would need, is on the internet, often days in advance.

 

Daily newspapers got old, tired, dull and pretentious. News was replaced with inanity. A newspaper mob formed and that led to horrible journalistic decisions such as the U.S. rush to war in Iraq, the Duke lacrosse case and the Barry Bonds witch hunt. Most of the people who wrote about these issues had no first hand knowledge of any of it, but they kept plugging away at it anyway. 

 

Small, local magazines and weekly or bi-weekly niche newspapers will survive and prosper. Big dailies with huge buildings, hundreds of employees, fleets of cars and trucks and overpaid editors are just about toast.

 

It’s sad, but in recent years, all newspapers have been able to do well is hurt people. That’s another reason why there won’t be that many people missing newspaper when they go.  

 

In the meantime, someone still has to figure out a way to turn a profit off an internet information site. If that ever happens, the recession will be over.

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Random thoughts: Three things on my mind after a day of football and a week of hockey.

Posted on December 14, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Just some random activity in my grey matter…

No. 1…

 

As the Boston Bruins remain among the Top 3 teams in the National Hockey League, it’s been fun to watch the brilliant play of 33-year-old Shane Hnidy of Neepawa, Mb.

 

Here’s a guy who has bounced around the NHL for about eight seasons. He made it to the big time after toiling in the East Coast League and the American League. He’s been in Detroit (although he never actually played in Detroit), Ottawa, Nashville, Atlanta, Anaheim and Boston and now, he’s finally found a home — on the Bruins defence. 

 

And now that he’s averaging 20 minutes a game on a terrific team, it’s a good home, too.

 

No. 2…

 

Sean Avery is no longer a member of the Dallas Stars. The tough guy with the crazy mouth who made disparaging public comments about two ex-girlfriends has been dumped by Dallas.

 

Most hockey fans figured it was coming, but there is something just a tad disturbing about it. 

 

Frankly, it makes Dallas GM Brett Hull look really bad. In fact, it makes you wonder if Hull and the people around him have paid any attention to anything at all. Did they not know what they were getting when they signed Avery?

 

And No. 3…

 

I wonder how these big time mainstream media folks in Winnipeg, the one or two who clearly suggested the Minnesota Vikings were on the right track — and a better team — when Gus Frerotte took over as the team’s quarterback, feel about their ridiculous statements today?

 

Yesterday in Glendale, Arizona, Tarvaris Jackson pitched an almost perfect game for the Vikes – 11-for-17 for 163 yards four touchdowns, no interceptions and a 135.5 passer’s rating. He also turned and handed the ball to Adrian Peterson enough times so that Peterson could run for 165 yards on 28 carries.

 

That’s how the Vikings win (they won 35-14 in Arizona yesterday)  and that’s why T-Jack is the Vikings one and only quarterback. At least he’s the one and only quarterback if the Vikings expect to win in the post-season.

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“Is Avery nuts?”

Posted on December 2, 2008 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

Tuesday night, about 7:30, I got a call from Doug Orr, the father of New York Rangers’ enforcer, Colton Orr.

“Is Avery nuts.” asked Orr. “Why would you say something that stupid.”

 

Whoa, Tuesday was a crazy day — Mike Kelly was finally named head coach of the Blue Bombers, Plaxico Burress and the Williams’ boys were suspended and Sean Avery had a brain fart.

 

Early Tuesday morning, the folks who listen to the FAN 960′s Mike Richards Show were dying to see Avery and the Dallas Stars simply arrive at the Pengrowth Saddledome last night to face Dion Phaneuf and the Flames. That’s because — of course — Phaneuf’s girlfriend, actress Elisha Cuthbert, is Avery’s old girlfriend. A lot of Flames fans figured there might be a real donnybrook if the exceptionally lippy Avery and the big,  strong, younger Phaneuf got nose-to-nose.

 

Now, first of all, you have to understand that Avery gets around. Not only is Cuthbert an ex saliva-swapper but the girlfriend of L.A. Kings’ centre Jarrett Stoll is also a former girlfriend of Avery’s – yeah, that’s  Rod Stewart’s ex, 39-year-old model Rachel Hunter.

 

Suffice it to say that in calgary yesterday, there was plenty of breathless anticipation.

 

Sadly, Avery and Phaneuf never had a chance to exchange pleasantries. Instead, Avery made the following comment: “I just want to comment on how it’s become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I don’t know what that’s about. Enjoy the game tonight.”

 

Avery didn’t. He was suspended indefinitely for making “inappropriate public comments,” and will have to meet with commissioner Gary Bettman before he’s reinstated. 

 

To quote Dougie Orr, “Is Avery nuts?”

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Is this the end result of the lockout? There could be more than 200 unrestricted free agents by next Tuesday.

Posted on June 25, 2008 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

By next Tuesday, July 1, the National Hockey League could very well have more than 200 unrestricted free agents. 

Included on the list are Buffalo defenceman Teppo Numminen, Anaheim forward Teemu Selanne, Calgary forwards Kristian Huselius, Craig Conroy, Owen Nolan, Daymond Langkow and Stephane Yelle, Calgary goalie Curtis Joseph, Colorado veterans Peter Forsberg, John-Michael Liles, Jose Theodore, Andrew Brunette, Adam Foote and Joe Sakic, Detroit defencemen Andreas Lilja and Brad Stuart, L.A. Kings defenceman Rob Blake, Rangers veterans Sean Avery and Jaromir Jagr, Ottawa defenceman Wade Redden, Pittbsurgh’s Marian Hossa and Gary Roberts and two Manitobans from the New Jersey Devils, Arron Asham and Bryce Salvador.

Roberts and Hossa have already made it clear they won’t be re-signing with the Penguins, a team that must get long-term deals done in the next couple of years with Sidney Crosby, Marc-Andre Fleury, Jordan Staal and Evgeni Malkin.

Sakic won’t make a decision — and neither will the Avs — until Sakic becomes a free agent.

Jagr will probably sign with the Rangers, but Avery is headed to free-agency.

Calgary could be a completely different team season. 

This coming season, the salary cap will rise to $57 million. That’s quite a significant number and proves that having salaries tied to league revenue is a concept that makes incredible sense (too bad that dummy Bob Goodenow didn’t understand it and we lost an entire NHL season). In fact, when the NHL gassed a season to get a collective bargaining agreement, the league paid out $1.2 billion in player salaries. In 2008-09, it will, potentially, pay out $1.71 billion in salaries. And Goodenow didn’t like this idea? One gets the sense that if Goodenow wasn’t a lawyer, he’d qualify for Special Olympics.

Still, with $57 million to work with (and, granted, not all teams will use all $57 million in available salary cap money), many teams are watching closely how they spend their cash. Some teams want to get younger. They’ll let high-priced veterans go elsewhere. Some teams feel they are on the verge of a Cup run, they might chase a Selanne, Sakic or Hossa.

Regardless, there are more than 200 free agents because teams are counting their dollars before they make offers and those 29 teams that didn’t win the Cup are figuring that the players they had weren’t good enough so it might be time to look at somebody else.

This week, the Toronto Maple Leafs allowed Mats Sundin to negotiate with Montreal, released goalie Andrew Raycroft and forward Kyle Wellwood and bought out veteran winger Darcy Tucker. The Leafs are breaking down before they re-build and the one thing Cliff Fletcher said he would do, is find the money necessary to take a serious look at what’s available on hockey’s version of e-Bay.

This year, there will be plenty of free-agent action. In fact, it will be more fun than the draft. But the reason so many players have come free is that so many teams want to make sure they have the cap money available to get better.

On Tuesday, we start the NHL’s second season and it might be more interesting the the first. We’ve come to this point because the league now has a salary cap and the salary cap, at least one tied to revenues, is good, not only for competitive hockey, but for the players wallets.

Now all the league needs to do is get some of those financially weak U.S. teams to re-locate to Canada and then everybody will be better off. 

 

 

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Hossa scores winner as Pittsburgh advances to All-Pennsylvania Eastern final. Game 5: Pittsburgh 3, NY Rangers 2 (OT).

Posted on May 4, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

Marian Hossa, the trade-deadline acquisition who made good, fired the winning goal at the 7:10 mark of the first overtime as the Pittsburgh Penguins put the New York Rangers out of their collective misery on Sunday afternoon.

 

The Pens won Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinal, 3-2, but the score was not indicative of the play. Pittsburgh outshot the Rangers 40-22 and outhit them 41-22 as the Rangers carried a game to overtime that should have been all over by the end of the second period.

 

OK, at this point we’ll give the Rangers a little credit. They did score two unanswered in the third period as Lauri Korpikoski and Winnipeg’s Nigel Dawes tallied for the Rangers to send the game into overtime, but if it hadn’t ben for the brilliance of Rangers’ goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, this game might have been 6-0 before the Rangers woke up.

 

Pittsburgh was clearly the better team in this series. When you win a series in five games, you’ve pretty much made a statement. But in this case, the Rangers foubnd a way to comeback and then abandoned the strategy in Game 5.

 

In order to win Game 4, 3-0, Rangers head coach Tom Renney dressed Colton Orr and, essentially, gooned it up. OK, he didn’t send his guys out to fight, but he did send them out to hit and face-wash and bodycheck and elbow and stab and just wreak general havoc.

 

The strategy worked as the Rangers outhit Pittsburgh 40-35, outshot Pittsburgh 34-29 and kept the Pens on their heels for 60 minutes.

 

Yesterday, however, for reasons known only to Renney, Orr didn’t dress (Renney dressed Korpikoski “on a hunch”) and so the Rangers coach left himself with a lineup that failed to include it’s toughest fighter (Orr) and its nastiest pest (the injured Sean Avery). The Rangers can’t skate with the Pens, but they can play tougher. Yesterday, in Pittsburgh they did neither.

 

As a result, they’re calling the country club for starting times this morning.

 

Renney had a good chance to come back in this series, even without Avery, but he decided he’d go out a wimp instead of trying to stay in as a goon. Reggie Dunlop would be mighty pissed off today.

 

In the meantime, how about Penguins GM Ray Shero? He’s the guy who went and got Hossa at the trade deadline and yesterday, that decision paid big dividends. Hossa was terrific yesterday and not only scored the game’s opening goal, but added the winner in OT. He now has five goals in the playoffs and is responsible for eliminating the Rangers in five games.

 

Well, OK, he and Renney are responsible. 

 

Now, the only question remaining is: Which Pennsylvania team will face the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup final?

 

Pittsburgh is certainly favoured, but if the Flyers goon it up, they can win it.

 

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Sean Avery is funny (and yeah, he probably deserves a misconduct)

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

SeanAveryAndElishaCuthbert Sean Avery is funny (and yeah, he probably deserves a misconduct)As reported in the last blog, I didn’t watch the Rangers-Devils game on Sunday, preferring to watch the Habs and Bruins, instead. As a result, I didn’t see Sean Avery’s shenanigans until well into the evening.

Wasn’t that a piece of work?  

CHICKS DIG HIM - Sean Avery with former squeeze, Canadian actress Elisha Cuthbert

On 92-CITI-FM on Monday morning, Tom, Joe and I had a good laugh over Avery’s face-to-face "screening" of Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur, but that didn’t seem to be the feeling of the hockey experts on TSN. Those boys wanted the NHL to change its rules to allow the officials to call a misconduct penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Well, talk about the power of TSN. By last night’s pre-game show, the NHL had changed its rules and told its officials to call a two-minute minor on any player who does what Avery did to Brodeur. Have a look…

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=j1GW7hcpnoE]

When you watch the replay, it’s more fun to watch referee Don Van Massenhoven than Avery. To his credit, Van Massenhoven thought Avery’s actions were low-class, but nowhere in the rule book (on Sunday night, at least), did it say there should be a penalty called on Avery for being a goof. So Van Massenhoven essentially allowed Brodeur to do whatever he wanted to the Rangers’ super pest and it was kind of fun watching Avery flinch when Brodeur caught him in the nuts with his stick.

Frankly, I still don’t understand why a Devils defenceman didn’t drill Avery into the second row, but I guess they figured Brodeur could handle things himself.

Last night, TSN interviewed a number of NHL players and asked them what they thought of Avery’s screening methods. Most laughed.

"I thought it was great," said San Jose’s Joe Thornton, almost in tears with laughter. "It was innovative."

Give Thornton credit. He got the joke.

Sidney Crosby took it so seriously he got kind of whiney. Marc-Andre Fleury was so shocked, he had trouble coming up with the correct English phrases. Mike Komarisek essentially said, "Consider the source."

Indeed. My good friend, Doug Orr (Colton’s dad), laughs every time the conversation turns to "What do you think of Sean Avery?"

"Personally, I like him," Doug said, "but he’s crazy."

Indeed. Sean Avery is crazy. Oh yeah, and his history would suggest that chicks dig him.

However, as low end as his little screening adventure was, it was also funny. And hockey can’t be hurt by the occasional bit of "funny."

Yeah, it should be a penalty. And yeah, I suppose it’s not particularly good for the game, but it was as entertaining as hell and in the United States, hockey could really use a good dose of entertaining every now and again.

Not everybody in the U.S. who buys a hockey ticket understands the subtlety of that great pass by Dennis Wideman in Boston on Sunday or appreciates the beauty of one of those Red Wings’ Euro-rushes we saw last night in Nashville.

Until they do, the clown prince of hockey, Sean Avery, always seems to put on a pretty interesting show. Frankly, for the good of the game, he’s probably better off out of the penalty box than in it.

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