Tag Archives: winnipeg jets

Is Cheveldayoff Waiting for the Future? Or Should the Future Be Now?

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
Blake Wheeler 264x300 Is Cheveldayoff Waiting for the Future? Or Should the Future Be Now?

Blake Wheeler heads to the net.

TAMPA — Watching the Winnipeg Jets get shut out in Montreal on Sunday afternoon should have been the last straw for those Winnipeg Jets fans who would actually like to see their team in the playoffs this spring.

Patience is wonderful. All Jets fans understand that the plan from the start of this season was to build slowly and surely through the draft, develop the players in the system and see where the concept would lead.

Unfortunately, the Jets brass also said it expected to make the playoffs this year. That was the goal: Make the playoffs in 2012.

Sadly, if the Jets don’t get a scorer or two between now and the trade deadline on Feb. 27, it’s unlikely that part of the bargaining will be kept.

We’ll say it one more time: The Winnipeg Jets can’t score goals. Period. Sunday afternoon at the Bell Centre in Montreal, the Montreal Canadiens shut out the Jets 3-0. Winnipeg hard chances to score, they simply couldn’t finish.

As a result, the Jets finished a four-game post-all-star-break road trip by scoring three goals in regulation time in four games to finish the trip 2-2-0. Carey Price made 23 saves to get the shutout on Sunday while Thomas Plekanec led the Habs with a goal and an assist. It’s not like the Habs had been setting the NHL world on fire. They’d lost three straight going in and were dead last in the East.

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Captain Andrew Ladd has 16 goals, but he hasn't scored in his last seven games and has one in his last 10.

The 24-24-6 Jets are still in 10th place in the Eastern Conference, six points behind eighth-place Toronto and five back of the Florida Panthers, the first place team in the Southeast Division.

All is not lost. At least, not yet. But at some point, this Jets team will have to figure out a way to score some goals. Consider this:

1) The Jets are the lowest scoring team in the NHL’s Eastern Conference, averaging just 2.38 goals per game. The Islanders are averaging 2.43 goals per game while the Buffalo Sabres are averaging 2.41 goals per game.

2) Since the all-star break, the Jets have won 2-1 in a shootout (Philadelphia), 2-1 in overtime (Tampa), lost 2-1 in regulation (Florida) and lost 3-0 (Montreal). They have three goals in regulation and four if you add in 10 minutes of overtime.

3) The team;’s leading scorer, Blake Wheeler, has 10 goals and 35 points and is 77th in scoring in the NHL. The team’s leading goal-scorer, the concussed Evander Kane, has 18 goals and is tied for 39th in the NHL. Andrew Ladd has 16 goals, but he hasn’t scored one goal in the past seven and has only one in the last 10.

4) The Jets, as a team, are minus-21. That’s 24th in team plus-minus in the NHL.

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The Jets need Evander Kane to come back and score.

5) Since the New Year, the Jets are 5-10-1. They have scored 22 goals in regulation time in those 16 games. they have been shut out four times and are 3-3-0 in 2-1 games. All three of their wins have come in extra time.

Defensively the Jets have been solid. No one can argue that the Winnipegs play hard. Ondrej Pavelec and Chris Mason have both been outstanding in goal, as well. But unless this team can start to score more than one goal a game on a consistent basis, it won’t go anywhere this season — even with a stretch of eight straight games at home coming up at the end of this month.

It might be time for GM Kevin Cheveldayoff to think about doing something to find a scorer. If nothing else, maybe he could add a tough guy so Blake Wheeler, just about the only guy on the team who actually goes to the net, doesn’t have to drop his gloves with the likes of P.K. Subban and defend his team’s honor from the penalty box.

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Three Straight Games With a Single Goal in Regulation: Jets Need to Start Scoring Soon.

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
Ondrej Pavelec 4 259x300 Three Straight Games With a Single Goal in Regulation: Jets Need to Start Scoring Soon.

Ondrej Pavelec has been very good.

TAMPA — It might sound like a broken record, but the Winnipeg Jets need to start scoring some goals. Even with Dustin Byfuglien and Alexander Burmistrov back in the lineup, the Jets have continued to find goal scoring a difficult task. And heading into Montreal today, they might need to get their heads around this current scoring slump.

This past week the Jets played three road games. They beat Philadelphia 2-1 in a shootout, the beat Tampa 2-1 in overtime and they lost to Florida 2-1. In three games, the Jets scored three goals in regulation time. Total. If you were an NHL goalie, playing for the Winnipeg Jets and your goals against average was 2.00, you’d have lost three straight games.

Fortunately, Ondrej Pavelec was better than that and Winnipeg survived with a record of 2-1-0 (sadly, Chris Mason gave up two and didn’t survive it). However, despite the fact that Winnipeg’s defensive game has been terrific and the Jets have certainly had some chances to score, this team and its collective hands of stone have simply scored enough goals to win enough games to puncture that 8th-place playoff line. After all, in Sunrise on Friday night, the Jets had a chance to cut Florida’s lead in the Southeast Division to one point, but they lost 2-1 and now they find themselves five points back. That loss was a heartbreaker.

This weekend, some of the Jets suggested to a local newspaper that all the team needs to do is go to the net and “score some greasy goals.” Trouble is, they go to the net. Hard. They simply don’t have players with enough goal-scoring ability.

wheeler1 300x195 Three Straight Games With a Single Goal in Regulation: Jets Need to Start Scoring Soon.

Blake Wheeler: Nobody Goes to the Net Harder.

Nobody in the NHL goes to the net harder than Blake Wheeler, who has just been a monster up front this season, and yet he has 10 goals and 25 assists ad is 77th in scoring in the NHL. He’s the Jets leading scorer. That’s not good enough. The team’s leading goal-scorer, the concussed Evander Kane, has 18 goals and is tied for 36thin goal-scoring.

However, barring a sudden scoring streak (while a couple five-goal games would help, it might not matter), the fact remains that if the Jets can keep their collective heads about them for the next week, the team’s crazy schedule might be enough to get them into the playoffs.

And frankly, “crazy” is the only way to describe what the National Hockey League’s schedule makers did to the Jets this season. This is a schedule that has not done the team any favors. They played seven of 11 games on the road in October, eight of 13 games on the road in November, then 12 of 14 at home in December, then nine of 13 on the road in January.

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Evander Kane: Jets Need Him Back.

That’s goofy. Based on the fact the Jets are 15-8-2 at home this season and 9-15-4 on the road, a more consistent schedule might have helped them. True, it might not have made any difference at all, but one suspects that when your schedule is consistent, there is a better chance you will play a more consistent brand of hockey. As good as the Jets have been in front of their seventh-man this season — and especially as good as goalie Ondrej Pavelec has been in his own building — they have been quite mediocre on the road. Long road swings will do that to a team.

In December, the Jets played 12 of 14 games at home and went 10-3-1 to get as high as sixth in the East. Then along came January with nine of 13 on the road and the Jets went 4-8-1. They also scored a meager 21 goals in 13-plus games. It didn’t help that Winnipeg lost a pair of home games — 2-0 to San Jose on Jan. 12, and 2-1 to New Jersey on Jan. 14 — this month, but head coach Claude Noel isn’t quite so worried about a small glitch at the MTS Centre. He has, however, made it clear: “We have to find a way to start winning on the road.”

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Dusrin Byfuglien: His Return Hasn't Changed the Jets Offensive Fortunes

For the next week, it doesn’t get a whole lot easier for the Jets. After playing in Montreal Sunday, they come home on Tuesday night to play the Leafs and then go back out onto the road meet Washington on Thursday and Pittsburgh on Saturday. Then, after playing the Islanders at home on the 14th, they go to Minnesota on the 16th. That’s four out of the next six on the road.

It’s a tough stretch, but if they can hover around .500 hockey through those road games, they’ll get a real treat in late February and early March: They play eight consecutive games at home from Feb. 17 to March 5.

600px Winnipeg Jets Logo 2011.svg 2 300x300 Three Straight Games With a Single Goal in Regulation: Jets Need to Start Scoring Soon.As of Sunday, the Jets find themselves 24-23-6, still 10th in the East. However, despite being 10th, they are only five points behind ninth-place Toronto and third-place, Southeast-leading Florida. They are not out of the playoff hunt by any stretch.

If they can stay within striking distance of the Leafs and Panthers over the next week, they will get a marvelous chance to make some noise at the end of February. In fact, if they can coax three wins out of the next six, Winnipeg’s Seventh Man might just have a say in who makes the playoffs in the East.

Of course, they’d better find a way to score some goals. No matter how good your checking lines and goaltenders are, you are going to lose more 2-1 games than you win. Even in the low-scoring NHL.

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It’s Official: For the NHL, the Jets are a Rousing Success!!!

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment
8420529e3ab735ca810247d1155004ef getty 135150807 300x205 Its Official: For the NHL, the Jets are a Rousing Success!!!

The fans deserve a salute.

TAMPA — While sitting in the press box between a group of NHL executives on Thursday night, an official-looking list from the National Hockey League was passed around.

It was a list of the NHL’s gate receipts, ticket sales and ticket prices through Jan. 31, 2012. It confirmed everything Jets fans have known since the season opener against Montreal back on Oct. 9.

The Jets are 13th overall in NHL receipts per game even though Winnipeg’s rink is the smallest in the NHL at 15,004. Winnipeg makes $1.24 million per game. According to the NHL, last year in Atlanta, the Thrashers made $331,000 per game.

The Jets also had the seventh most expensive ticket in the NHL in average price at $76.41 per seat.

Montreal is No. in gate receipts at $2.058 million per game ($1.965 per game last year). Toronto is No. 2 at $2.004 million per game ($1.981 million per game last year). Montreal’s average ticket price is $96.44 per seat while Toronto’s is $105.94 per ticket.

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Mark loved the move from Atlanta. Gary? Not so much. Until now, one guesses.

At the bottom of the list — at No. 30 — in game per game gate receipts is Phoenix (no surprise) at $387,364 per game. Last year, the Coyotes averaged a meagre $378,925 per game.

Those Coyotes numbers make it all the more unbelievable that Commissioner Gary Bettman has three buyers in Phoenix who are prepared to keep the team in the Arizona desert.

How come Gary Bettman has the ability to find stupid people with lots of money who are eager to piss it down a toilet? I keep looking for those guys and just can’t find them anywhere.

(Note: To the commenter below — from the Globe and Mail: “True North considered a number of different pricing plans before deciding on the one it unveiled. Tickets will range between $39 and $129.” On the secondary market, ticket prices are obviously high. The original market was $39-$129.”)

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Big Win Tuesday. Now, Will the Jets Make a Move?

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
138025484 slide 300x248 Big Win Tuesday. Now, Will the Jets Make a Move?

Ondrej Pavelec makes another huge save.

TAMPA — Tuesday night in Philadelphia, the Winnipeg Jets won a huge hockey game.

In fact, when Bryan Little scored the shootout winner, it was more than just a win in the 51st game of a long season. It might have been the most important win of 2012.

For 65 minutes on Tuesday, the Winnipeg Jets went toe-to-toe one more time with the Philadelphia Flyers at the Wells Fargo Centre and for the third time this season the Winnipegs emerged victorious. Chris Thorburn scored his first goal of the year in regulation time (and it was a goal scorer’s goal); Little fired the only goal of the shootout; Blake Wheeler played 23 minutes, had five shots on goal and was an absolute beast; and Ondrej Pavelec made 27 saves as the Jets beat the Flyers for the third consecutive time.

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Blake Wheeler playing like a beast.

“That was a big two points for us,” Jets head coach Claude Noel said after the game. “We were wearing down in the third period, but we found a way to win the game.”

It’s true. A Jets team without Dustin Byfuglien, Alexander Burmistov and Evander Kane did wear down in the third period, but they played well enough defensively to hang in long enough and get the bonus point in a shootout. For the first two periods, however, the Jets actually outplayed the Flyers in Philly and they definitely deserved that extra point.

However, they still can’t score. The Jets have scored only 21 goals in 13-plus (counting overtime) games in 2012, but if they continue to check as well as they did against the Flyers on Tuesday, they’ll win a lot more games than they lose.

So here’s the deal with the trade deadline just three weeks away: as they head into Tampa tonight, the Jets are 23rd overall in goals scored at 2.47 per game. The team’s leading scorer, Blake Wheeler, has nine goals and 33 points. He is 87th in scoring in the NHL. The team’s leading goal scorer, Evander Kane, has 18 and is tied for 29th in the NHL but was in the midst of a 10-game goal scoring drought when he suffered a concussion and was lost indefinitely.

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Evander Kane's return will help.

The Jets have scored 126 goals in 51 games this season. Within the Eastern Conference, only the Islanders (120 in 49) and Sabres (120 in 51) have scored fewer. Of course, while the Jets have 126 total, they scored nine in one game against Philadelphia. The Jets are actually one game away from being the lowest-scoring team in the Eastern Conference. As a group the Jets are also a minus-18.

In the month of January, the Jets went 4-8-1. To date, the Jets are 23-22-6 on the season. Last season, as the Atlanta Thrashers, they were 23-19-9 after 51 games. In 13-plus games (counting two overtimes) this month, the Jets have scored a meagre 21 goals.

Now, to be fair, they played part of the month without Kane, Zach Bogosian and Alex Burmistrov and they played the entire month without their all-star, Dustin Byfuglien. At the start of the season, everyone knew this team was thin, but January has proven that little nugget beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Now it’s February and it starts tonight here in Tampa. It has become quite clear that the Jets need scoring help. This is not a team that takes nights off. It’s work ethic is pretty much beyond reproach. Still, the people who run this team know it can’t score. And it becomes especially weak up front when certain players — like Byfuglien, Kane and Burmistrov — go down with injuries.

So as the 2012 trade deadline looms (Feb. 27), what should Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff and his brain trust do? Does he move his veteran grinders and build for the future? Or does he deal prospects and draft picks, try to find a scorer and take a run at the playoffs?

Right now, the Jets could use three things:

1. A scorer, obviously, but that’s not an easy thing to acquire. For example, if Ryan Getzlaff or Bobby Ryan are actually available in Anaheim, who could the Jets trade to get them? Who would interest a team like the Ducks? Making trades are an art AND a science and big ones don’t just happen over a glass of cognac at the all-star break. We are not naive enough to believe these trades are made easily. You have to give to get and the asking price just might be too much.

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Designated Fighter Chris Thorburn.

2. A tough guy. The Jets don’t always open up enough space for the guys who can put the puck in the net. They’re also at a point where they need Chris Thorburn and Mark Stuart to fight for them. Yes, yes, we all want fighting eliminated from hockey, blah, blah, blah, but the fact is, fighting has not been eliminated and the Jets don’t have a guy who can stop a player like Shawn Thornton of the Bruins from running their goalies and pounding the crap out of defensemen they need in the lineup. They also need a guy who can drop the gloves on the road, win a fight without getting hurt, not hurt the team’s skill level by being in the box for five minutes and give the club a pick-me-up.

3. Depth. Two injuries and this team can’t recover. The Pittsburgh Penguins have the personnel to stay in the hunt without Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang. The Jets lose Dustin Byfuglien and Zach Bogosian and it’s downhill all the way.

When the team arrived in Winnipeg at the start of the 2011-12 season, Cheveldayoff and company made it clear that the new organization would be patient. They would not do anything rash and would build with youth and draft picks. After all, they have 3-5 years of sold-out buildings and they know their fans will also be patient and wait for them to build a legitimate contender.

Trouble is, they’ve talked all year about making the playoffs. The two aren’t necessarily exclusive, but…

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10 Things on My Mind After a Sunday on the Couch…

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

When you spend an afternoon watching football on television — oh, my gawd, I’ve just spent a month of them — you think about crazy stuff.

Like did CTV finally put the Olympic rings on its logo bug in the corner of the screen? Did it finally occur to them that this is and Olympic year? Or, how in hell can a referee come to the conclusion that Ahmad Bradshaw didn’t fumble with 2:21 to play on his own 20 yard line? I guess, a referee that blew his whistle w-a-a-a-a-y too soon.

Those are the things you think about when a game takes almost 4 1/2 hours to play.

In fact, I wrote down 10 of the things I was thinking about…

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Steven Tyler

1. How can Steven Tyler be a judge on American Idol when he can’t sing a lick? I guess the same way Mike Milbury can pass judgment on the job being done by an actual working NHL general manager after Milbury himself destroyed two franchises — and one, the Islanders, still hasn’t recovered. It has nothing to with his ability to sing. It has everything to do with the fact he passes judgment on other people.

2. Did I miss something? Did Joe Flacco not outplay Tom Brady by about a mile and a half? Damn, Flacco was good yesterday.

3. Was Brady hurt more than anyone would let on and while the Patriots said it was his non-throwing shoulder, when he missed a wide-open Rob Gronkowski by 20 feet, it looked as if he had bigger problems than that.

4. Boy is young Winnipeg Jets star Evander Kane getting beaten up this week. He really must have done something to piss off a city that is so madly in love with its Jets that, when you actually think about it, not one of them could possibly do anything wrong. I’m not sure Kane did anything at all, but suddenly people all over Winnipeg are convinced he did.

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Ahmad Bradshaw

5. Just watched the replay of the Bradshaw fumble again. It was a fumble. Sorry. In fact, that call was so bad it looked like the fix was in. I’m sure the officials can find a way to justify it with the old “quick whistle” excuse but I agree with Niners coach Jim Harbaugh: “It looked like a fumble,” Harbaugh told Comcast SportsNet Bay Area. “Every play that happened in the game except that one was played out to the conclusion of the play.” That call was just horrible. Maybe the officials just believed that after they screwed the Giants twice in Green Bay last week, it was time to make it up. There had to be some reason.

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Dwight Howard

6. Guess the Orlando Magic aren’t thinking about trading Dwight Howard anymore. At 11-4, the Magic are the No. 2 team in the East, a half a game ahead of Miami. Meanwhile, Howard is averaging 20.2 points and 16 rebounds a game. I wouldn’t trade him either.

7. The best thing that happened this week to the rest of MLB’s American League? The Texas Rangers paid $52 million to negotiate with Yu Darvish and then $60 million over six years to sign him. Now they say they’ve pulled out of the Prince Fielder Sweepstakes. If I were the Tigers or the Yankees or the Angels, I’d fear Prince Fielder — especially in a lineup that already boasts Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz, Ian Kinzler, Adrian Beltre and Michael Young — a lot more than a Japanese pitcher who just might be the next Diasuke Matsuzaka, or maybe even Hideki Irabu.

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Tiger

8. Flipped over to watch the golf tournament from PGA West on Sunday and dozed off. Can’t wait for Tiger to show up at Pebble Beach on Feb. 6. At least there will be something to watch. Man golf is dull without Woods. Of course, we should be OK this week. The Golf Channel should have plenty of coverage from Abu Dhabi where Tiger opens his 2012 season.

9. Even though he said, “You don’t have to worry about me jumping off a ledge,” I still feel sorry for Baltimore Ravens kicker, Billy Cundiff. Missing a 32-yard field goal at the NFL level (whether it’s to send a game to overtime or was just pooched sometime in the first quarter) has to make you sick to your stomach. Not surprisingly, I got three Facebook messages which essentially read: “The Winnipeg Blue Bombers have announced the signing of kicker Billy Cundiff.”

10. Speaking of the Bombers, many Winnipeg football fans are upset that the Bombers haven’t done anything at all to get better this off-season. Why worry? They didn’t do anything at all last winter and they went to the Grey Cup.

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The 10 Biggest Stories of the Opening Half

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

sport 257 The 10 Biggest Stories of the Opening HalfIt’s halftime. Most of the National Hockey League’s 30 teams have played 41 of 82 games and for some of the teams, it’s been quite a ride. For a load of others, of course, it’s been a nightmare.

The Anaheim Ducks were fourth in the West last spring with 99 points. At the midway mark of 2011-12, the Ducks have only 11 wins and 28 points. Last year, the Atlanta Thrashers were in the midst of a downward spiral, set to miss the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season. This year, the Thrashers are now the Winnipeg Jets and after a win in their 41st game of the season on Saturday night, they sit in ninth place in the East, just a point below the post-season line.

Still, there was a lot more to the first half of this season’s NHL campaign than just the woes of the Ducks and the euphoria in Winnipeg. In fact, finding the 10 most important issues of the first half was so easy, we had to exclude a few for the first time in four seasons of making this list.

So without further adieu, here’s our First Half Top 10 NHL Issues for 2011-12:

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Teemu

10. The Collapse of the Anaheim Ducks: Last season, with 99 points, the Ducks made the playoffs easily. With stars such as Teemu Selanne, Saku Koivu, Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, Bobby Ryan and Cam Fowler, the Ducks were expected to challenge for the Stanley Cup. Uh, oh. The Ducks have 12 wins in their first 40 games and general manager Bob Murray told the Los Angeles Times last week that he’s just about ready to blow it up. Murray said Selanne and Koivu were “untouchable,” but everybody else was available. This is a very good team with very good players but something is wrong. Murray fired head coach Randy Carlyle and replaced him with Bruce Boudreau and nothing changed. One suspects that the Ducks will be a completely different team by the trade deadline. Oh yeah, and Teemu won’t be an untouchable by the Feb. 27 trade deadline. He’d look great in a Jets uniform.

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Claude Giroux

9. The Emergence of Claude Giroux: In 2006, Claude 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 a tad undersized. Before Giroux was taken, Florida took Michael Frolik, Tampa selected Riku Helenius, Anaheim took Mark Mitera and Montreal took David Fischer. Huh? Giroux was playing at the Habs doorstep and that organization didn’t even notice. Last year, Giroux had 25 goals and 51 assists. This year, at the midway point, he has 18 goals and 30 assists, is 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.

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Scott Arniel - gone.

8. Coach Firings: It started when the St. Louis Blues fired Davis Payne on Nov. 5 and replaced him with Ken Hitchcock. Now, nearly one-sixth of the entire league has fired its coach. Washington fired Bruce Boudreau and replaced him with Dale Hunter; Carolina fired Paul Maurice and replaced him with Kirk Muller; Anaheim fired Randy Carlyle and replaced him with Bruce Boudreau; Los Angeles fired Terry Murray and replaced him with Darryl Sutter; Montreal fired Jacques Martin and replaced him with Randy Cunneyworth and on Monday, the Columbus Blue Jackets fired Scott Arniel and replaced him with Todd Richards. St. Louis, Washington and L.A. have benefited from the changes. Not so much for Anaheim, Carolina and Montreal. We’ll wait on Columbus, but that’s an American Hockey League team. I wouldn’t expect a change in fortunes.

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Adam Larsson

7. The Game’s Great Teenagers: On Jan. 31, Tyler Seguin turns 20. Until then he is one of the league’s many outstanding teenaged stars. Seguin has 37 points in 37 games this season and is a plus-32, that’s the best in the entire NHL. Meanwhile, 19-year-old Jeff Skinner (down with a concussion), 18-year-old Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (35 points in 38 games) of the Oilers, 19-year-old Adam Larsson (24 minutes a game as a defenseman) of the Devils, 19-year-old Gabriel Landeskog (plus-10 on a minus team) of the Avalanche and 19-year-old Sean Couturier of the Flyers, are all playing regularly – and well – in the best league in the world.

6. Realignment: The league voted 26-4 to realign the league in 2012-13 from a two-conference, six-division operation in which 16 teams made it to the playoffs, to a four-conference league, separated by time zones. It was brilliant, but it didn’t even get off the ground.

5. The Rejection of Realignment: This was a bigger deal than realignment itself. In an effort to fire a salvo at the owners, the players rejected the league’s new realignment. NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr said it had something to do with travel and fairness (since when did the Agents Association give a crap about fairness?). Seems the players couldn’t get a clear feel about the travel issues, days off, etc. etc and they didn’t like the fact that there were seven teams in two conferences and eight teams in two others and the players thought it would be harder to make the playoffs in the West. Most people involved with the NHL believed that this was simply Fehr’s first shot at the owners in what everyone believes will be a long, ugly battle for a new collective bargaining agreement (the old one expires on Sept. 15, 2012). In fact, many people are convinced there will not be a hockey season in 2012-13.

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Randy Cunneyworth, not the bad guy.

4. The Mess in Montreal: Here is the biggest problem facing the Montreal Canadiens: They don’t win enough games. At the midway point of the season, the Habs are 16-18-7 and in 12th place in the NHL’s Eastern Conference. However, many Quebeckers are not angry at the fact the Habs are a lousy team, but they’re incensed by the less-important fact (at least to a rational individual) that the Canadiens fired Jacques Martin and replaced him with Randy Cunneyworth, a coach from Etobicoke, Ont., who does not speak French. On Saturday night, Quebec Nationalists protested that the Canadiens, “aren’t French enough.”  What really pissed them off was the fact they found out the language of the locker room is English and that the team is made up of eight players from English Canada, five Americans, 10 Europeans (none from France) and only two Quebecois. In a roundabout way, the protesters have a right to be upset. How good and French would Montreal be today if they’d drafted PA Parenteau in 2001; Patrice Bergeron in 2003; Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Marc-Andre Gragnani in 2005; Claude Giroux, Brad Marchand and Mathieu Perrault in 2006; and hadn’t traded away Maxim Lapierre, Guillaume Latendresse and their first-round pick in 2008? Of course, have you noticed that after Giroux and maybe Vincent Lecavalier, there aren’t that many great French-Canadian players anymore? Maybe the problem in Quebec is at the minor hockey level, not the NHL level.

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Opening Night in Winnipeg

3. The Return of the Winnipeg Jets: It was one of the biggest stories in Canadian sport in 2011. On May 31, Mark Chipman and David Thompson announced that they had acquired the Atlanta Thrashers of the NHL and they were going to move the team to Winnipeg. They sold out the season tickets at the MTS Centre – for five years! – in just 17 minutes. Since then they have won 19 of their first 41 games (19-16-5) and remain a legitimate playoff threat. After 16 years without an NHL team, Winnipeg had its beloveds back again and Canada had a seventh franchise. The crowd at MTS Centre is so loud, enthusiastic, fun and intelligent that it has become an international story unto itself. Happy days are here again.

2. Concussions and The Shanahan Justice: This season, Brendan Shanahan took over from Colin Campbell as the NHL’s director of discipline and it’s clear he’s been told to do everything possible to lower the number of concussions being suffered by NHL players. The concussion “epidemic,” is indeed and epidemic, but there is one big problem: Many of the concussions suffered by the game’s top players came as a result of (a) contact with teammates, (b) inadvertent contact based on the speed and size of the players and (c) injuries that were a result of hard plastic equipment that is a dangerous weapon when it’s placed on large, fast hockey players. So far this season, Shanahan has suspended 30 players while another 14 players have been fined. Trouble is, in the big picture, none of this is making a dent in the problem.

sidney 300x225 The 10 Biggest Stories of the Opening Half

Will We See Him Again?

1. The Loss of Sidney Crosby: So far this year Chris Pronger (who signed a seven-year contract with Philadelphia in 2009) has been lost for the season with a concussion, young superstars Claude Giroux and Jeff Skinner missed time with concussions or concussion-like symptoms and even Ottawa forward Milan Michalek (20 goals already) has missed games due to head trauma. However, the loss of Sidney Crosby — the game’s best player – since last January because of a concussion is what makes this epidemic so tragic. When the face of the game is also the face of the game’s biggest problem, the NHL has trouble.

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For the Jets, It’s Time to Run the Month.

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
Ondrej Pavelec 2 239x300 For the Jets, Its Time to Run the Month.

Goalie Ondrej Pavelec

The Winnipeg Jets began the homestand on Nov. 29. They had 13 of 15 games at home and they needed to grab at least 20 of 26 possible points.

It was a simple assignment, but it come without a certain degree of difficulty.

This team needed to make some noise. After all, come January, the Jets will play 12 of 16 away from MTS Centre and if they don’t make some hay in December, they could end up a long way from the playoffs come the middle of February. In fact, from Jan. 4 until Feb. 14, the Jets play 15 of 21 on the road. It’s win now and then try to keep the ship together.

So far, so good. The Jets have played 10 games this month and the team is 7-2-1 (7-3-1 since Nov. 29), 7-1-1 at home. The only loss at MTS Centre was that 1-0 mystery against Washington.

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Captain Andrew Ladd

Otherwise, the Jets have played tremendously and now they have a chance to guarantee 20 points this month. They already have 15 of a possible 18 in December and tonight they get the Sidney-Crosby-less Pittsburgh Penguins at home.

So how did the Jets go from 9-11-4 to 16-13-5 so quickly? Five reasons:

1. Ondrej Pavelec: The Jets goaltender has had three tremendous games and two pretty good ones during the stretch. In a 3-2 shootout loss to the Islanders, Pavelec stole the point. Other than the ugly 7-1 loss in Detroit, which was nothing more than a blip on the screen, Pavelec has made the Jets a better team. It was Brian Burke who said, “We call it the Stanley Cup playoffs because we can’t call it goalie.” You could paraphrase that and say. “We call it the Winnipeg Jets 2011-12 season because we can’t call it goalie.” The Jets have moved from 12th to ninth because their goaltender has stolen at least three games and at least seven points.

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Evander Kans scores one of his 15

2. All hands on deck. The Jets leading scorer, Evander Kane, has 15 goals and 10 assists and is 54th in scoring in the NHL. However, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of the game, it seems that somebody always steps up. If it’s not Bryan Little, it’s Andrew Ladd or it’s Blake Wheeler. The Jets have a potential superstar in Kane, but he’s not there yet. Right now this team is scoring by committee and for the time being, at least, it’s working.

3. The Jets survived the loss of Tobias Enstrom. When he was injured, Enstrom was playing 25-32 minutes a game. He was not only a workhorse, he was the steadiest influence on the team. When he went down, the Jets were a 12th place team. When he came back they were 11th, but had gained three points on the teams in the Top 8. It could have been a lot worse and with him back, the Jets have a full compliment of NHL-level defensemen.

4. Claude Noel. He is a journalist’s dream, an eccentric, insightful, talkative head coach who is NOT afraid to say what’s on his mind. His post-game stream-of-conscious news conferences are becoming the highlight of every game. He has

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Claude Noel

made, what appear to be some strange moves at times, but it’s impossible to criticize any of them. The Jets started the season as a 12th place team heading directly toward 12th place. Today they are a ninth place team on the verge of getting into a position to make the playoffs — provided they survive January. Noel has had a great deal to do with that.

5. The crowd at MTS Centre. No wonder these Jets don’t play as well on the road. The home crowd in Winnipeg is a phenomenon. The 15,004 who show up inside the tiny boutique arena in downtown Winnipeg (and make no mistake, every seat is taken) start screaming before the game and don’t stop until their beloved Jets salute from centre ice after the final buzzer. Long-time Alberta journalist Bruce Penton compared it to a British soccer crowd. “They don’t get tired,” he said. “It’s just relentless.” And despite that lousy little excuse after a 5-1 season–opening loss to the Montreal Canadiens, the Jets have warmed to the crowd. They love it. They live for it. If there can actually be a “seventh man” he/she lives in Winnipeg.

These Jets are by no means a playoff-bound team. But so far, they have grabbed a hold of this December homestand and skated with it. A win over the Penguins on Friday night and they could be locked into a playoff spot with two more home games next week.

Then, in January, we’ll really get to see what they have in the tank.

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Why Doesn’t Anyone Challenge the Forbes List?

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

ZForbesSportsMoney 300x300 Why Doesnt Anyone Challenge the Forbes List?What I love most about the annual Forbes Magazine “Values of NHL Franchises” list is how the international mainstream media covers it as if it’s legitimate.

Because google is my friend, I checked out 30 different international media outlets and found the reporting almost equal at every stop. Not one outlet looked at the numbers and said, “Really? You believe this number and this ranking? You really believe that? Really?”

Here is how the 2011 Forbes Hockey Franchise Values Lst was reported in the National Post. It is worth the read:

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Dustin Byfuglien a year ago.

“Moving the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg is paying off big time for the team’s new owners. According to Forbes, the Jets gained the most value of any of the 30 National Hockey League teams from last season to this season.

“A year ago, the Thrashers were valued at $135 million. The new rankings estimate the Jets are now valued at $164 million, which represents a 21per cent increase. The average year-over-year increase across the league was 5 per cent.

“The Jets are ranked 24th in the league and are worth more than the Nashville Predators, Florida Panthers, St. Louis Blues, Columbus Blue Jackets, New York Islanders and Phoenix Coyotes, according to Forbes. The Coyotes are owned and operated by the league, and are valued at just $134-million to finish last in the valuation ranking.

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Phil Kessel leads the Leafs.

“At the top of the list are the Toronto Maple Leafs, valued at $521-million. The Rangers are second at $507-million, while the Montreal Canadiens are third at $445-million.

“The majority owners of the Leafs, the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan, had considered selling part of the team earlier this year, but have since decided to retain ownership. The Leafs’ value increased by three per cent this season, according to Forbes. The Rangers are up 10 per cent and the Canadiens have seen their value rise nine per cent. The Vancouver Canucks are the next Canadian team on the list at No. 7. They’re worth an estimated $300-million, up 15 per cent a year after reaching the Stanley Cup final.”

Sounds convincing, doesn’t it? Trouble is, nobody bothered to ask anybody this question: “How did you come up with those numbers?”

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Dustin Byfuglien today

Let’s look at the Jets, as a for-instance. The team was purchased from the owners in Atlanta for $170 million — $110 million for the franchise and $60 million to the league for “relocation fees.”

Immediately upon the team’s arrival in Winnipeg, the building sold out – for at least three years and much of the building was sold out for five years. And it was sold out in less than half an hour.

When it moved from Atlanta to Winnipeg, the hockey team went from an arena in which it was treated like a tenant – even though there was one ownership group for hockey, basketball and the building –  to a rink in which the owners owned it all and were treating the hockey club as the featured anchor alongside one of the top concert destinations in North America.

Even if the team struggled in Winnipeg, which it wasn’t going to do, it’s finances would be covered by all the other activities in the building: Just as the teams are treated in larger venues such as Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver etc., etc. where the owners also own the buildings. Frankly, as we speak, this Jets franchise is almost priceless.

But here’s what I love about Forbes’ seemingly random valuations. In one breath, the writer and researcher, Michael Ozanian, makes a big issue out of the fact that the Carolina Hurricanes are a consistent money loser and yet, in the next breath, he rates the Hurricanes’ value significantly ahead of Winnipeg’s. It makes no sense.

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Gary Bettman

“Three years ago NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told me not a single NHL team was worth less than $200 million,” Ozanian wrote. “But money-losing teams are being sold for much less. In February, Forbes 400 member Terrence Pegula bought the Buffalo Sabres, who lost $5.6 million last season, for $165 million. The St. Louis Blues and Carolina Hurricanes, two other teams losing money, are being shopped at prices well below $200 million. And the New Jersey Devils, who sank 17 per cent in value to $181 million, are in such bad shape financially that there is speculation the team could be headed for bankruptcy and a court supervised sale like the Dallas Stars.”

And yet, Dallas, a team just purchased out of bankruptcy, which drew only 10,175 fans for a game with Florida on Nov. 15, only 11,779 for a game with Los Angeles on Nov. 23, and only 10,490 for a game with Ottawa last Thursday, is deemed by Forbes to be worth $230 million.

Now I won’t say the Stars, with that big beautiful American Airlines Arena in which to play, aren’t worth $230 million. Heck, it could very well be true. But here’s why it’s random and senseless: The Stars were purchased out of bankruptcy for $265 million and yet the team is a mere tenant in an arena owned by the City of Dallas and managed by the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.

Ozanian can’t explain that one, except perhaps to say that on some planet in some other universe, the Dallas Stars are worth more than the Winnipeg Jets.

Nor can he explain his take on the New Jersey Devils. The Devils, as he reports himself, could be headed toward bankruptcy. Their announced crowds this season average around 14,800 per game in a 17,625-seat rink. Many of those fans, especially on weekends, are Quebec hockey fans who go to the Devils and Islanders games wearing old Nordiques jerseys – a message to Bettman that Quebec City’s fans are ready even though the arena is not.

Ozanian says the Devils are worth $181 million and yet they don’t own their arena, don’t fill their arena and are nearly bankrupt? Huh?

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Michael Ozanian

According to Ozanian, the Jets aren’t worth as much as Carolina, New Jersey, Colorado (which seldom, if ever, sells out the Pepsi Centre) or Dallas and are worth only a million more than Nashville, another team that doesn’t own its own arena.

Hate to say this, but this stuff reads as if is all made up.

Now, to his credit, Ozanian does know this: “… margins are getting squeezed. During the 2010-11 season the league posted operating income (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $126 million, 21 per cent lower than the previous year. Main reason: Player costs increased 11 per cent, to $59 million. Last season 18 of the league’s 30 teams lost money even before they had to pay bank loans or write down assets, compared with 16 the prior year.

“The league’s salary cap, set at 57 per cent of revenue, is too high for some teams to be profitable,” Ozanian continued. “As a result, expect the National Hockey League to undergo a cantankerous labor negotiations when the owners and players union begin to hammer our a new collective bargaining agreement to replace the current six-year deal that expires in September. The NHL must move much closer to the 48 per cent model the NFL agreed to before this season or the 50-50 revenue split National Basketball Association’s owners and players recently agreed to.”

All that means the Jets are doing just fine and have one of the strongest organizations in all of major professional sports. And while I’m not as smart as some MBA at Forbes Magazine, I can tell you this: It will take a helluva lot more than $164 million to buy the Winnipeg Jets today.

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Buying A Ticket on the Kane Train

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment
Evander Kane scores one of his eight goals 272x300 Buying A Ticket on the Kane Train

Evander Kane Scores Again

Even Winnipeg Jets head coach Claude Noel admitted that Evander Kane’s 2011-12 National Hockey League season didn’t start very well.

“Look at the way he’s playing now as opposed to the way he played at the beginning for the year,” said Noel shortly after Kane scored a pair of goals in Saturday night’s 4-2 Jets’ win over New Jersey. “He’s really playing well and he’s playing well with his linemates (Little and Wellwood). This is a guy who is improving all the time and it’s nice to see. He’s doing a lot of things well right now.”

Evander Kane – and yes, he was named after former World Heavyweight boxing champ Evander Holyfield – is turning into one of the most feared scorers in the NHL.

The 6-foot-2, 200-pound, 20-year-old is in the midst of a five-game points streak (seven points in those five games) and has 12 points in his last nine games.

With two goals on Saturday night, Kane scored his 13th and 14th of the year. He’s now sixth in goal scoring in the NHL, tied with Pittsburgh’s James Neal, one behind Jonathan Toews and Claude Giroux and just two back of league-leaders Phil Kessel, Steven Stamkos and Milan Michalek. Suddenly, a prospect just out of his teens is now among the game’s greatest scorers.

But it’s not like it wasn’t expected. When the new owners of the Atlanta Thrashers sat down to decide who they would keep and who they would let go, Kane was at the top of the keep list. He was going into the final year of his rookie contract and would make $900,000 this season. But next year, he’d be looking for a big number and the Jets brass has already swallowed and decided to do whatever they can to keep him. Good thing, too. He’s not only playing tremendous hockey, he’s become a huge fan-favorite.

Evander+Kane+Winnipeg+Jets+v+Philadelphia+GKt2yOt1 n l 300x248 Buying A Ticket on the Kane Train

Kane Scores Against the Flyers

However, two months ago, Kane wasn’t so certain he wanted to be in Winnipeg. There were conversations with his close friends that he was going to ask for a trade. He was unhappy with his ice time – he averaged only 11 minutes a game through the first six of the season and he was scoreless. He didn’t like Noel and wasn’t afraid to tell people about it. He didn’t score a goal until the seventh game of the season (that means he actually has 14 goals in the last 18 games) and really didn’t start to play much until the ninth game of the year.

But his dad, an old amateur boxer and hockey player at St. Francis Xavier University and his mom, a former basketball and volleyball player, had always told to him to hang in there, work hard and good things will come.

And it doesn’t hurt that he comes from a family of pro athletes, a list that includes his cousin Dwayne Provo, who played in both the CFL and NFL, and another cousin, Kirk Johnson, who competed for Canada in boxing at the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona. If Evander doesn’t understand something, he has plenty of people around him who can fill him in.

Still, even though he was an outstanding junior who had 48 goals and 96 points in 61 games with his hometown Vancouver Giants in 2008-09 and was also a member of Canada’s national world junior championship team in 2009, the can’t-miss Kane missed early in his NHL career.

In his rookie year in Atlanta in 2009-10, Kane had 14 goals in 66 games. In his sophomore year last season with the Thrashers, Kane had 19 goals in 73 games. This year, he has 14 goals in 25 games and is on pace to score 44 this season. If he can possibly keep up this pace, he could emerge as one of the greatest scorers in the game today.

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Kane Scores Against Florida

“He’s playing really well especially when he comes down the wing and drives to the net,” Noel said of Kane “He’s using his speed and size and he’s shooting the puck. He’s not doing anything a lot different. He’s just getting a lot of opportunities. He’s gotta shoot the puck. And with his shot, why wouldn’t he?”

In training camp, Kane knew what this season meant. Not just because he was playing in a new hockey-mad city, but because if he could finally have that big year, the year the scouts believed he could produce, he could turn it into a large, long-term paycheque.

“This is my third year in the league and, obviously, it’s a big year for me,” Kane said during camp. “I know I have to have to play well. I have to come in here and make a statement.”

The first statement he made was calling and asking Winnipeg Jets great, Bobby Hull, if he could wear Hull’s No. 9. The fans loved him for that.

“It’s almost like asking a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage,” Kane told the Vancouver Province. “I’ve read somewhere on Twitter that he had done an interview and said that he wanted me to wear it proudly. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to speak to him soon. If he doesn’t have an issue with me wearing it, I’ll do my best on and off (the ice) to live up to wearing that number. If I have to change, I’ll change.”

Interestingly, he would never have had to change anyway because Jets 2.0 does not own the history of Jets 1.0. This incarnation of the Jets owns Atlanta’s history. Phoenix owns the history of the last incarnation of the Jets. Confusing perhaps, but true.

As well, Kane isn’t wearing No. 9 because of Hull. He’s wearing it because of the man who owns part of his junior team, Gordie Howe. Confusing perhaps, but true.

Regardless, he’s becoming the great offensive player every one knew he could be and both Hull and Howe would be proud.

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Barresi’s Firing and Other Observations

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It didn’t take long for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to find someone to blame for their 34-23 loss in the 2011 Grey Cup game.

Barresis Firing and Other Observations

Jamie Barresi

It seems as if only moments after Bombers GM Joe Mack came back from Vancouver and railed about his offense, he fired offensive coordinator Jamie Barresi.

To be fair, it was a move that most Bomber fans expected. After all, while the Bombers defense was, for most of the season, quite worthy of its self-imposed nickname/state-of-being “Swaggerville,” the offense should have been called “Anemia City.” It was short blood, guts and, in the end, glory.

And when the team arrived back in Winnipeg, Mack made it clear that the offense would change (sure he was cryptic, but what else could the following comments have meant?)

“And there will be probably some changes made because they have to be made to get where we need to go,” Mack said. “I’m aware of what I want to do in that regard, and hopefully we’ll be able to execute that in the off-season.

“But we will never be complacent as long as I’m here. We’re always going to be on the razor’s edge trying to get better, because if not you’re going backwards.”

I remember when Doug Brown said that a couple of years ago. It was after another off-season in which the Bombers did little or nothing, just like the most recent off-season. Now in their favor in 2011, some good young defensive players improved dramatically and Winnipeg won, what turned out to be, and extremely weak CFL East — the Montreal defense was brutal, Kevin Glenn was 8-10 and the Argos were an embarrassment to the league (even though they beat the Bombers twice).

Now I won’t criticize the firing of Barresi. Mack was NOT going to fire Paul LaPolice who turned a 4-14 team into a 10-8 team and got to the Grey Cup by beating a horrid Hamilton team (that had beaten a horrid Montreal defense in the Eastern semi) in the Eastern final. But even when Winnipeg won the Eastern final, they only put up 19 points at home. The offense was bad this year and it wasn’t bad because Buck Pierce was occasionally out of the lineup.

It was bad because the offensive line, which was eaten alive in the Grey Cup game, wasn’t very good and because the play-calling was often vomit-inducing. How do you come off a 190-yard rushing game by Chris Garrett in the Eastern final and then don’t even try to establish a running game in the Grey Cup? Anyone with a brain knew somebody was going to get fired for that — al by itself.

It will be interesting to see what Mack does this winter because, as he says himself: “We’re always going to be on the razor’s edge trying to get better.”

Bet that hurts.

Here are a couple of questions I had this week…

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Browns-Bengals

1. Is the NFL fixed?

Watching the Cleveland-Cincinnati game on Sunday and the officials made a half-a-dozen questionable calls in favor of the Bengals. The game didn’t matter, except for the players’ pride and their jobs, but it still looked fishy.

I know, I get all obsessive about officiating, but goodness, gracious, it’s awful. Don’t these sports have rules? Did you watch the Grey Cup? Brutal. They can’t even get replay right.

Just sayin’.

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Victoria's Secret Ad

2. Why hasn’t in-store advertising kept up with our multi-racial community?

My wife’s a mall-walker and I joined her on Sunday. Didn’t realize ‘till that moment how hard she walks and for how long. Heck of a workout.

Anyway, mall walking for more than an hour can get boring so we both started counting those big advertising pictures in department, clothing, make-up, shoe and accessory stores. There are hundreds of them in the windows of high-end mall shops and there was one aspect of them that was unmistakable.

The women in the photos are almost all Caucasian. In fact, there was one Asian model in a photo in the window of an accessory store, but every other female model was white.

We counted four African-American men  and three Asian men, but there were dozens of female models and all but one of them was white.

Just an observation, but considering there were as many Asian mall-walkers as there were Caucasian mall walkers and that many of the stores’ employees are First Nation, Asian or African-American (or would Caribbean-Canadian be more appropriate?)  it just seems reasonable to think that the advertising community might want to take notice.

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Dustin Byfuglien

3. Why is Dustin Byfuglien a defenseman?

OK, OK, I know why. It’s because Craig Ramsay, the coach in Atlanta, decided last year that he was going to move Byfuglien from a forward position (where he helped Chicago win the 2009 Stanley Cup) back to defense because he was big, tough, skilled, fast and Ramsay wanted him on the ice 25 minutes a game. And what the hell? If it’s good enough for the guy True North wouldn’t keep on as head coach, it’s gotta be good enough for the guy they hired.

But that still doesn’t make it a good idea.

Tuesday night, Byfuglien had 12 shots on goal, the most in a single game by an NHL defenseman since Sergei Gonchar — another guy no one would call a pillar of defensive hockey — took 12 shots in a game in 2006. He also played 25 minutes and 53 seconds and, of course, Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff wants him to be on the at least 25 minutes a game.

But he was also a minus-one despite dishing out an assist and while he has five goals and 12 assists so far this season — sixth among NHL defensemen in scoring — he’s also a minus-10, the worst plus-minus in the league for the top 29 scorers among defensemen in the NHL (Anaheim’s shaky, young Cam Fowler, No. 30 in scoring, is minus-13).

Dustin Byfuglien turns over the puck too often and makes too many mistakes in the neutral and attacking zones, simply because he’s more interested in scoring than stopping the opposition from scoring and, to be fair, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For a forward.

And at 6-foot-5, 265 pounds, Dustin Byfuglien would make a GREAT forward.

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