Tag Archives: thomas steen

The NHL Returns to Winnipeg.

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I spent lunch hour at the Forks yesterday and it was invigorating. Hundreds of people converged on Winnipeg’s meeting place to celebrate the return of the NHL to Winnipeg.

Perhaps I should make that a little clearer: “Return of the Jets.” Some kids who were barely out of diapers when the Jets played their last game in 1996 were sporting Jets jerseys at the Forks yesterday. Although it’s likely this team will not be the Jets — we’ve heard Manitoba Somethings, maybe Falcons or Polar Bears –it’s pretty definite now that 75-80 per cent of Winnipeg hockey fans WANT the team be the Winnipeg Jets.

But yesterday, the name argument took a back seat to the simple realization that the National Hockey League would once again have Winnipeg as a member.

Mark Chipman, David Thomson, Jim Ludlow and, yes, Gary Bettman (looking like a guy who just got punched him the stomach) made it official. The National Hockey League has indeed, returned to Winnipeg.

At a news conference yesterday at the MTS Centre, True North Sports and Entertainment announced that it had completed a deal to purchase the Atlanta Thrashers and the team would begin play this fall at Winnipeg’s downtown arena. Through it all you got the feeling Bettman did NOT want this to happen. His Southern U.S. experiment has started to crumble and his body language suggested he was pained by the fact he had to move a team out of the seventh-largest TV market in the United States and into a city of 700,000 on the Canadian prairie.

There was some talk that if Winnipeg’s owners didn’t sell 13,000 season tickets by June 21, there was a chance the NHL’s board of governors would not allow the team to move to Winnipeg, but that just seemed outrageous. Yesterday, Chipman said that True North had signed off on a deal to purchase the team from the Atlanta Spirit Group and while Winnipeggers were partying at the Forks, the rich guys who own ASG were doing cartwheels in their executive offices, having dumped the Thrashers, a team that has allegedly lost $130 million in five years. One suspects those guys aren’t about to take the team back so if True North doesn’t sell 13,000 season tickets, what’s the NHL going to do? Move the team to Portage? Winnipeg is the ONLY alternative to Atlanta and I’m sure that with the use of some brilliant legal term there was a “no give-backsies clause” in the final sales contract.

Meanwhile, it appears Moose GM Craig Heisinger will play an important role with Winnipeg’s new franchise and last night Atlanta’s president Don Waddell said he would not accompany the team to Winnipeg. Head coach Craig Ramsey was in Winnipeg yesterday and will likely keep his job.

And just to make everyone happy, Bettman said yesterday, if the new owners decide they want to use the Jets name, the NHL will give it to them.

The NHL is coming back to the ‘Peg. Just as we wrote last year, it was the Atlanta Thrashers, not the Phoenix Coyotes who wound up moving to River City.

It made for a very nice day. Of course, so did getting my picture taken with Ab McDonald, Bill Lesuk and Thomas Steen.

 

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Lots of Hockey News At Stanley Cup Time: Steen Back in Hockey, Hnidy Wants to Re-Sign in Boston, Wings Win Game 1.

Posted on May 30, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Three things that came up during telephone conversations this past week…

1) Our good friend, Thomas Steen got a job in hockey.

That’s just not good news, it’s great news.

Thomas has gone through some tough times in the past few years, but now he’s back in the game.

The one-time Winnipeg Jets captain and all-time Winnipeg Jets legend is going back to Sweden to work in both junior hockey and the Swedish Elite League.

“I’m going to work for Modo,” Thomas told us. “I’m going to be an assistant coach with the pro club and an assistant coach and scout with the junior team.

“I’m leaving the first of July and I’ll be gone nine months. I’ll get back to Winnipeg for my golf tournament in August, at Christmas and during the Olympic break. But that’s it. I’m going back home.”

He’s not quite going home. Farjestad is home. But close enough.

2) Another good friend, Neepawa’s Shane Hnidy, can become a free-agent on July 1 but what Shane would really like to do is re-sign with the Boston Bruins.

“Yeah, I’d really like to come back here,” he said. “I thought we were good enough to win it all this year, but I know we’ll be good enough to win it next year.”

Hnidy, 34, one of the great stories of heart and perseverance in the NHL, has been a pro for 13 seasons. He’s played nine of those years in the NHL with Ottawa, Nashville, Atlanta, Anaheim and Boston after being drafted (173rd overall) by Buffalo in 1994.

“Someday, I’d like to be a hockey commentator on TV or radio,” Hnidy said. “But right now, I still want to play and I hope that next year, I’m playing in Boston.”

3) We had Darren Helm’s mom, Karine, on 92-CITI-FM’s morning show this past week, the morning after he scored the OT winner against the Blackhawks. She was very proud, and one sensed, still crying after her son’s heroics on Wednesday.

That night, Helm set an NHL record with his fifth career playoff goal. He now has five playoff goals and has yet to score a single regular-season goal. No other NHL player has ever done that.

However, besides scoring goals, the young man from St. Andrews, Man., has one other talent: He can win faceoffs.

In the opener of the Stanley Cup final, a game won 3-1 by Detroit, Helm had won 10-of-12 faceoffs in the first two periods. He finsihed with 11 wins in 15 faceoffs.

One suspects Helm will be a full-time member of the Red Wings next season. It’s unlikely he’ll ever see Grand Rapids, Mich., again.

By the way, how good was Chris Osgood on Saturday night? First star? 29 saves? The best goalie in the playoffs, two years in a row.

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Three things rattling around in my cranium…

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Yet again, after a hard day at the radio/internet/selling/consulting/newspaper grind, here are three things banging inside my gray matter…

 

(1) In the end, the Minnesota Vikings just didn’t have enough offence on Sunday. Defensively, the Vikings were not embarrassed in that 26-14 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, but on offence, quarterback Tarvaris Jackson just couldn’t get it done. 

 

However, in fairness, his receivers didn’t do much to get open, and that’s probably because Jackson had virtually no time to throw. On Sunday, the Vikings mediocre offensive line didn’t even reach mediocrity. Jackson went 15-for-35 For 164 yards, no touchdowns and an interception. On Monday and Tuesday, all the pundits in the Twin Cities were calling for his head.

 

And that’s fine, but if the Vikings don’t fix the right side of the offensive line and don’t find a better left tackle than Bryant (Where’d he go?) McKinnie, it won’t matter if the Vikings make a trade to get Peyton Frickin’ Manning next season. Before poor Jackson got set on Sunday, his pocket had already collapsed. That offensive line was embarrassing.

 

Still, overall, it was a good season for the Vikes. Brad Childress isn’t much of a coach and while his offensive line is terrible and his defensive secondary is thin, it’s apparent you can build an offence around Adrian Peterson and Chester Taylor. There might be a future yet.

 

(2) Happy to see Canada beat Sweden 5-1 in the gold medal final at the 2009 IIHF World Junior Men’s Hockey Championship. Somewhat disturbed to see the Swedes live up to every Don Cherry stereotype.

 

I really thought, after Thomas Steen, Nick Lidstrom, Johan Franzen, Tomas Holmstrom, Mats Sundin and Peter Forsberg, that whole “Chicken Swede” thing had gone the way of the dinosaurs. After Monday night’s Canada-Sweden junior final, however, Cherry’s jingoistic rants about “Euro-hockey” might have been true.

 

If your goalie dives whenever someone comes within three strides of his crease and when your players spend every stoppage of play checking for blood, you’ve regressed back to the days when Swedish hockey players were so frightened of Canadians they almost always seemed on the verge of filing assault charges.

 

Sadly, the real gold medal final at the World Junior was Saturday night’s Canada-Russia semi. That was a great game featuring the two best teams in the tournament.

 

(3) Why is it, whenever I turn on a hockey game on Canadian television, I get Mike Milbury? Milbury is a Yank who singlehandedly destroyed the New York Islanders franchise, now he’s telling Canadians how the game should be played. Thank gawd for the mute button.

 

To make matters worse this week, former Detroit Lions president and franchise destroyer Matt Millen is now a TV football analyst and on Monday, he told the New York Times that he liked his new job. He also told the Times, he didn’t regret one thing about his eight seasons ruining the Detroit Lions and if he had to do it over again, he’d do it exactly the same way. That’s a moronic statement.

 

Sadly, that’s what passes for a TV football analyst these days.

 

Again, thank gawd for the mute button. 

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The Grey Cup is over. Canadian teams about average at quarter pole, Steen goes to St. Louis and the Bruins a pleasant surprise.

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Congratulations to the Calgary Stampeders, certainly a deserving Canadian Football League champion after that 22-14 victory over the Montreal Alouettes on Sunday.

In one of the great snoozers in Grey Cup history, Sandro DeAngelis kicked five field goals while most outstanding player Henry Burris hit Brett Ralph for a touchdown as Calgary played just well enough to beat a Montreal team that put up 0 points in the second half.

 

So now that we’ve laid the CFL to rest for another season (at least until Mike Kelly is named Blue Bombers’ head coach later this week or early next week), it’s tim to catch up with the NHL.

 

We’ll do that by giving you an update on th things we’ve nattering about on the 92-CITI-FM morning show this week…

 

1) We’re just about a quarter of the way into the 2008-09 National Hockey League season and if the playoffs started tomorrow, only three of the six Canadian-based teams would be participating.

 

In the West, Vancouver is third, Calgary is seventh and Edmonton is 10th. In the East, Montreal is fifth but Toronto is 11th and Ottawa is 12th. Both the Leafs and Senators have a combined total of 14 wins, fewer than the first-pace Rangers.

 

Seeing Toronto out of the playoffs is no surprise, but nobody thought that, at the quarter pole, Ottawa would have seven wins in 20 games.

 

2) We’ve been talking quite a lot about the deal that sent talented Lee Stempniak to the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for defenceman Carlo Colaiacovo and centre Alexander Steen. A lot of Toronto fans have said good riddance to Steen, a young guy they felt was underachieving.

 

But while Steen always said he loved playing in Toronto, this trade is the best thing that ever happened to his career. In St. Louis, he’ll not only get some much-needed ice time (the Blues have three centres — T.J. Oshie, Paul Kariya and Andy McDonald — on the shelf), but he’ll play for a guy who adored his dad, Blues head coach and former Jets assistant, Andy Murray.

 

Stempniak is a worker who should help the Leafs, but Steen is a legitimate talent who will get ice time and support in St. Louis and in all likelihood will develop into an outstanding player.

 

3) Since we have just passed the quarter pole in this ‘08-09 NHL season, it’s probably time to look up, w-a-a-a-a-y up. To the top of the NHL’s Eastern Conference. 

 

See who’s on top? that’s right, the Boston Bruins.

 

Who would have thought? The 14-3-4 Bruins have 32 points and while they’re tied with the Rangers overall, they’ve played three fewer games. 

 

So how does it happen? Well, it would be nice to say the offensive brilliance of Marc Savard is the reason, but in fact, it’s not. It’s  defence and goaltending. From Zdeno Chara to Shane Hnidy to Tim Thomas, the Bruins are No. 1 defensively in the NHL and as a result, they are the No. 1 in the East.

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