KuklasKorner : The Puck Stops Here : Time For A Two Goalie System?:

The San Jose Sharks have been the best team in the NHL so far this year. Their 20-4 record (with one regulation tie point) gives them 41 points and first place in the NHL. However, all is not perfect in San Jose. Their number one goalie Evgeni Nabokov has yet to play particularly well. He is sporting a .896 saves percentage, which has a lot to be desired. His other numbers do not look so bad. He has a 2.57 GAA and a 13-2 record. This is a testament to how well the Sharks have played in front of him. Nevertheless, his goaltending will become an issue if he continues to play at that level. It is impossible to have prolonged success in the NHL without better goaltending.

No, it won’t. Unless, of course, they stop winning. Which is doubtful, the way they’re playing.

I have to say this: it’s rather silly to look at a goalie that’s 13-2 and a goals against of around 2.50 and say “hey, maybe we should play the other guy”. Are we that bored that we have to go create a goalie controversy? No offense, but I just don’t buy it. Sometimes we get too enamoured with stats — pick the one stat that looks bad so we can talk about it, but forget to put it in the larger context.

Here’s the larger context. Well, “Nabokov is 13-2 and the team has only had one game in the last five weeks where it didn’t get at least one point (and Boucher was in net for that loss)”. Nabokov’s last loss was October 24th. Since then, he’s merely 8-0, giving up 17 goals for a GAA of 2.12. His save percentage since coming back from the injury is 917.

To me, that ends any question on this, but let’s dig a bit deeper. One aspect of the Sharks playing style this year is they have a very aggressive defense and a very aggressive offensive style. That means that many fewer EASY shots make it to the net (the sharks have allowed < 20 shots for a game three times, and < 25 shots eleven times) -- but the aggressive play of the defenseman lends towards some turnovers and odd-man rushes. In other words, a goalie's goal's against is likely to suffer, because fewer shots happen, but a higher percentage of good scoring chances. That was especially true early in the season while the team was trying to figure out this new system and mistakes were being made. Lately? Not so.

But also look at it this way. If you take three games out of the stats:

Anaheim 4-0 Loss
Philly 5-4 OT Win
Philly 7-6 SO Win

then Nabby’s numbers change significantly. His save percentage for the other 12 games he’s played becomes .919, good enough for 14th in the league (he’s currently 34th counting all goalies with 1 or more games played) — 9th if you only count goalies with 10 or more games. His GAA would drop to 2.08, good enough for 6th in the league, 3rd if you only count goalies with 10 or more games played.

And those three games were all six weeks ago, at the tail end of a sequence where the team played six games in 10 days and included back to backs twice and three plane trips (LA, Anaheim and Philly). Oh — and the team won 2 of those three games, and it was arguably the worst play for both the team and Nabokov all year.

The solution is obvious. When Nabokov was injured, backup goaltender Brian Boucher played extremely well. Boucher has a .928 saves percentage and a 1.89 GAA. Since Boucher was the temporary number one goalie, his better numbers are not a function of playing against weaker competition.

San Jose would probably benefit by using a two goalie system right now. Boucher is the hot hand and has not played in a little over a week since Nabokov returned from injury. His last game was November 22nd vs. Washington.

If you watch the Sharks every game, it’d be clear that Boucher’s a good goalie, but Nabokov’s a great goalie. it really isn’t close. It isn’t even that Nabokov’s playing badly, or even so-so. Even looking into the stats a little bit ought to make it clear that Nabokov’s “bad stats” were a small abberation early in the season. And despite that, the team took four of the six points.

The solution’s obvious: we really shouldn’t be having this discussion. So why are we? Nabby is 13-2. Have we hit that point where people aren’t happy unless the team is beating everyone 5-0? Is a one game losing streak unacceptable?

Oh, boy…

San Jose has a very good team this year. They have put up a first place record despite mediocre goaltending from their starter Evgeni Nabokov. When Brian Boucher is playing well, it would make more sense to use a two goalie system in San Jose than to go back to Nabokov exclusively. If Nabokov continues his lackluster play, I expect San Jose will not continue their winning ways. They can be overtaken by other top teams.

Sorry, his play is far from mediocre. His numbers are far from mediocre, too; they’re pretty darn good. Unless you look for something to complain about, and take it out of context. Of the goalie stats, save percentage has to be the plus-minus of goalie stats; so much really depends on team play. Honestly, as long as he’s winning, and when you look at his goals against, that’s all you really need to see to know Nabby’s doing what they team is asking of him.

When they announced the Winter Classic was going to Wrigley, I knew I had to give this a shot. Laurie grew up in the Chicago area, is a huge Cubs fan, played goalie (footnote 1) in the boys leagues there before there were girls leagues to play in, and was (and is) a huge Hawks fan. I thought it would be just perfect to get her to Chicago for the Winter Classic if I could swing it.

So I started exploring contacts, and thankfully, I found some folks (who shall remain nameless) who agreed, and we now have a ticket, and Laurie’s headed to Chicago for New Years! She promises to blog and post photos.

Nope, I’m not going. This one’s for her. If they ever do a winter classic in Southern Callifornia and the Kings, I’m right on it (with sunscreen) — and I figured two tickets would be asking for more favors than I felt comfortable asking (in reality, I could have gotten a 2nd ticket, but with the cats and birds and holidays and etc, the logistics are just much easier if I stay home and pet-sit) — fortunately, this is only going to cost me six months of washing cars and mowing lawns.

So we now have the plane ticket settled, and the hotel, and I’m jazzed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Laurie quite so — speechless — as when I told her, since I hadn’t said that I was scheming until I got confirmation it’d actually happened.

And to the nice people (the ones with the really large lawns!) — thanks from both of us. I can’t say just how much this has made us happy; Laurie because she gets to go, me because I was able to send her and work this out without her catching on…

Laurie’s first comment on hearing about this: I am going to freeze my butt off.

My response: and you’ll love ever minute of it.

And she will.

YEAH! I love it when a plan comes together.

(footnote 1: Laurie’s commentary on her growing up: all the girls I grew up with wanted to sleep with Tony Esposito. I wanted to be Tony Esposito — in all honesty, one of the best goalie scouts I’ve seen, I really nag her to start doing her scouting reports again. One of these days I need to tell the Ian Boyce story from our days working with the Spiders…)

Tom Benjamin’s NHL Blog » Blog Archive » Slow Motion Killing:

Bob McKeown was on McCown yesterday promoting tonight’s episode of the EOWN Fifth Estate. He had news that Gary Bettman and Paul Kelly would be well advised to consider:

Recent research by neuroscientists now shows the link between on-the-field concussions and brain damage; a permanent injury that can lead to depression, suicide and severe aberrant behaviour. The damage is so profound, the researchers say, that post-mortem examinations of the brain tissue of five former professional football players can be compared only to the tissue found in the brain tissue of advanced Alzheimers cases.

Apparently professional football players have a life expectancy that is 20 years shorter than the average man. I’d like to know whether we’d see the the same kind of shocking result if someone ran the actuarial tables for hockey players.

Would the league eliminate head shots if someone was killed by one in a game? For sure. Does it really matter if the death is delayed by a few years? Should it? What kind of risks can we expect players to take to entertain us?

Its past time to take action.

Tom’s is dead right here on the need for action. Of course, the league IS taking action; note the memo circulated that intentional blows to the head aren’t going to be tolerated. A number of bloggers and media have pooh-poohed that, but ignore the underlying realities here: if you’re changing the standards of suspension, you have to formally notify the players and the player’s union so they can challenge and force negotiation if they want. Under a CBA environment, things like this are complicated by the legal logistics.

I know some want all blows outlaws; I could live with that, no argument. At the same time, I tend to think this is a good compromise point between taking too much physicality out of the game and tolerating the brutality. We’ll see what happens when the players don’t take the hint (they won’t) and the suspensions start ramping up, but I’m encouraged. I think a lot here needs to be done within equipment modification on elbow pads and shoulder pads, and the league is working with the players on that, too — hard caps and plastics on elbow pads need to go, folks.

As to life expectancy issues; just think about the number of old timers running around hockey games, the all-star game, heroes games, etc. Lots of them. Now, football? how many hang around? Not so. Football is a massively physical game, in a very different way than Hockey’s physicality. Hockey players have a lot more to worry about orthopedic issues (check out the number of artificial hips and knees at any heroes game); football has that TOO, but hockey’s a lot less brutal on a body over time. I’d expect hockey player’s life expectancies to much closer track “real” people. The Player’s association would actually have the data to figure this out from pension and membership info if they wanted.

Would the league eliminate head shots if someone was killed by one in a game? For sure. Does it really matter if the death is delayed by a few years? Should it? What kind of risks can we expect players to take to entertain us?

Yes, it really does matter if the death is delayed by a few years, if only because it becomes very difficult to pin the death on a single factor — and that’s a huge issue here. I mean, seriously; the data on smoking and lung cancer is pretty damn damning, and look how long it’s taken to get this far on solving that. Concussions vs. life expectancy is a lot less cut and dried, and even the football data is taking a few things and stringing them together; I happen to think they’re right — I don’t think the point is proven scientifically by any means.

As to Tom’s final point? He’s got it wrong. It’s what risk the players are willing to take to play the game. Our decision as fans is whether the game is too dangerous or risky for us to appreciate and enjoy it. If you think a game is too dangerous, you need to stop being a fan of it, because ultimately, the league will listen to people voting with their pocketbooks.

Down this road lies the slippery path of becoming TOO risk averse, folks. You can’t play a physical game without physicality. And that’s why I like the path the NHL is taking. They’re not over-reacting, and looking for that middle path that minimizes the risks without screwing up the game. And of course, in some corners they’re getting ripped for not being “serious” about fixing the problem, and in others, getting ripped for screwing up the game by even considering changing anything. Which mostly reminds us how easy it is to criticize, and how tough it is to actually do something useful…

My bottom line: the league needs to get more serious about kicking the butt of players that attempt to injure other players, and that includes hitting the head intentionally. But to take that the next step and presume you have to take hitting out of the game — I gotta problem with that. Now, if you remove the intentional hits to the head from the game and too many players are still being injured, then look at what else to do, but I don’t think that’s going to be necessary. And you can’t take the physical play out of hockey and still have hockey.

I just have to get this out while I’m thinking about it:

MY GOD, THIS IS A FUN TEAM TO WATCH.

Even when they lost to Nashville, it was an interesting game. Grump-inducing at times, but still fun to watch. That is never a bad thing.

And last night?

Well, if the Mike Keenan death watch wasn’t operating before, it is now. Iron Mike always has a short “use by” date on his lapel at the best of times and Calgary doesn’t look to be different.

The reality is, though, that because Calgary tends to put on a bit of a show in the playoffs, we tend to think they’re better than they really are. This is a team that always seems to BARELY make the playoffs, fights hard in the first round, and loses. Memorable, but that’s not a dominant team by any means.

And this year? As Laurie nicely put it last night, they aren’t getting better, they’re getting older. It’s the Kiprusoff, Phaneuff and Iginla show, featuring a cast of dozens. Replacing Owen Nolan with Todd Bertuzzi is, well, not an upgrade. And the rest of the team pretty much seems to be guys who never quite met their potential somewhere else and ended up here.

Last night, they came up against one of the top teams in the league, and it wasn’t really close. How dominant were the Sharks?

Jody Shelley — on the power play.

Jody Shelley played almost 11 minutes last night. He was getting regular shifts on the power play in the third, between Marleau and Thornton, while Brad Staubitz played between Michalek and Pavelski. A bit of that was the loss of Mike Grier in the first to an injury (unspecified, rumor has it he’s pregnant. hey, if the team won’t tell us, let’s just make up weird stuff and make fun of them). It was also partly giving the fourth line some “have fun” time to recognize the hard work they do. And nobody could remotely accuse the Sharks of trying to pile on the poor flames (which is still “against the code”, whatever that means, even though 3 and four goal leads are far from safe this season)

But it’s also an indication of what the Sharks think of a Sutter/Keenan team; a typical keenan team gets behind — and starts trying to beat people up. “Sending a message”, whatever that means, as if that somehow minimizes the fact that in the first period I thought the Flames missed their flight and the Sharks subbed in the San Jose State club team until the real players got there. No, wait, that is Iginla skating…

So the Sharks put out their policemen, and the Flames took notice and didn’t get stupid. Whether Keenan saw that as a good or bad thing, I dunno. I can guess, and “good” probably isn’t it; the Flames looked pretty “oh, let’s get on the damn plane and get out of here”.

In many ways, the game was the poster child for a big (positive) change going on in the NHL: the Sharks are at the forefront of this new “high talent, high speed, run and gun” NHL, while the Flames are still playing more of a gritty, “old school” game. They’re not a fast team, they’re not a big offense team, and in today’s NHL, they’re once again struggling to be playoff team. (quick quiz: compare the flames record under Jim Playfair, and then under Mike Keenan. Then ask yourself why Playfair was canned and whether Sutter really improved the team by bringing in Iron Mike. Then start wondering just how much longer Keenan will be coaching that team…)

(for the lazy ones out there, Playfair: 96 points, 3rd in division, first round out. Keenan, 94 points, 3rd in division, first round out. This year, on pace for… 86 points, third in conference, and….)

Even the media is recognizing that the NHL has changed and it’s increasingly fun to watch:

KuklasKorner : On the Forecheck : Don’t Touch That Dial!:

If you think you’ve seen an unusually high number of late-game comebacks already in this NHL season, this morning’s Tennessean validates your hunch:

A nice piece by John Glennon that also attempts to identify potential causes for this wild & wacky action.

Why? One reason is the change in faceoff location after a penalty. It’s a small thing, but it really helps offense generation.

Another? There were some seemingly minor changes to the goaltending gear this off-season, mostly in removal of a little padding here and there. Nothing drastic enough for most media types to pay attention to (it’s more fun to write articles bitching at the league about changing the size of the goal), but the changes are actually non-trivial — because goalies no longer can flop down and depend on the pads to completely block the five hole. It changes both the dynamics of the goaltending AND the mental aspects, because there are now places were pucks can squeeze through, so goalies have to protect the five hole, not just get into the butterfly.

Another? teams are figuring out how to take advantage of the rules and the changes since the lockout. Last year, you really saw team defense switch into “everyone blocks shots” mode, where something like 50% of shots attempted get stopped by players before it reaches the goalie. This year, teams have adapted to the “drop, sprawl and pray for your face” mode of defense by making the defense more mobile. If someone tries to go down to block a shot, teams are actively moving around them and turning them into boulders. That negates some of the strengths of the shotblocking defense, forcing them to stay on their feet more or causing them to fall out of the play and allowing for odd man attacks.

Also, instead of getting the puck down low and trying to go cross-crease to get the goalie moving (and hopefully open up a hole), teams have shifted to taking the puck to the D, letting the D find a lane and blast it, and simply crash for rebounds. That causes the defense to spread out, limiting the “collapse to the crease and let’s all stack up like firewood around our goalie” defense.

This is to some degree the end of the adaptions that have started since the red line came out. That change gave teams the ability to break the trap (if they’re good, and fast); now teams are figuring out how to break the crease clogging. Combine that with more offensive zone faceoffs and a small change that keeps goalies from feeling invincible and puts more of an onus on them STOPPING pucks instead of being hit by them, and suddenly, you see….

Well, you see some pretty interesting hockey. And yes, scoring is up, which is rarely bad — something like 3/4 of a goal a game or so. But what makes for interesting hockey isn’t JUST scoring, it’s offensive chances, and those are way up this year. Up and down action, lead changes, scoring chances, goals. Pick two, and you probably have fun hockey.

Today is Hall of Fame induction time for hockey, and it’s a great group being inducted.

But it makes me think back a bit and ponder the history of the game, and that leads to a few thoughts.

First: some players I’d like to see in the Hall of Fame that currently aren’t:

Sergei Makarov — As worthy as Larionov, but without quite the NHL chops.

Pavel Bure — In his time, as dominant as anyone. but injuries cut it shore.

Adam Oates — look at his stats. Look at who he’s helped in already.

Doug Wilson — a falling out with the Hawks seems to have kept him out; maybe with Rocky in charge now? Between his play, his time at the NHLPA and now his time with the Sharks, sooner or later he’ll probably go in as a builder if not as a player, but he ought to go in as both eventually.

Rogie Vachon — best goalie not in the HOF.

Hayley Wickenheiser and Cammie Granato — the HHOF (not the NHL HOF!) needs to get over it; it’s a shame the women who helped turn the sport from a sport for the guys to a sport for everyone got inducted internationally before they got inducted by the HHOF. If you can’t handle the concept of inducting them for their hockey skills, name them as builders.

Dave Taylor — Okay, my Kings heritage is showing a bit, but before Gretzky put LA on the map, Taylor was there keeping the franchise competitive and interesting enough that it survived in LA to succeed.

* * *

Igor Larionov is the first Shark to be inducted into the Hall, and well-deserved. He’s not remembered primarily as a Shark, but he does need to be remembered as someone who helped turn San Jose from a fairly mediocre expansion team into a decent and competitive hockey team. His impact on the success of San Jose ought to be recognized. And so I do.

* * *

Some folks think too many are let into the Hall. Others think too few. Me? I think both sides are thinking too much. There is no right answer; I think on balance if both sides are complaining then the rules are probably balanced pretty well — I definitely prefer the hockey induction over how baseball does it.

But I DO think the league and teams are retiring too many jerseys right now; it’s a fine tradition and all that, but with some franchises (Toronto, Montreal) it’s basically impossible to do it right and not end up with current players in three digits.

The problem is there’s really little middle ground between “Hockey Hall of Famer” and “Franchise retired jersey”. I remember when Tie Domi retired listening to a talk show where someone called up and asked; in all seriousness, if he should go into the Hall of Fame. A Toronto fan, obviously, and the answer was equally obvious.

But the fan had a point: in Toronto, Tie is close to a god in some eyes; does he deserve recognition by the Leafs? Hell, yes. Does that mean HHOF? No. Retire his number? I wouldn’t. And there’s the rub.

So what I’d like to see is the league work with the teams to create a Hall of Fame roster for each team. Let each team recognize their key players; create a place in the HHOF where those players can be recognized and information/jerseys/etc displayed. Let teams do the same in their arenas, and raise the NAMES to the rafters if they want without having to retire numbers as well.

Make retiring a NUMBER something special again, something reserved for the very few, very special players in the franchise history — but also recognize the other key contributors to a team.

In San Jose, there isn’t a player yet that I feel deserves HHOF induction as a Shark. I think we may see that change with the current crop, but they need to prove out (I expect Joe Thornton is a hall of famer some day; I think the Patrick Marleau that arrived late last season could well be if this continues). I certainly don’t see any player to date that deserves a number retirement, either, although if Doug Wilson as GM wins a cup, I’d retire his number when he retires from the team for his contributions on and off ice.

But a Sharks Hall of Fame?

Definitely. And here’s my short list:

Doug Wilson
Kelly Kisio
Igor Larionov
Sergei Makarov
Arturs Irbe
Mike Rathje
Jeff Odgers

And when they retire:
Owen Nolan
Jeff Friesen
Joe Thornton
Patrick Marleau

And off ice honorees:

Dean Lombardi
Doug Wilson
Art Savage
Greg Jamison
Kevin Constantine

* * *

Congratulations to all of the inductees!

I honestly don’t know how Nabby made the save in that final shootout try. I really don’t.

It happened right in front of us, of course, since our seats are in the zone Nabby defends twice. Ross McKeon speculates it may be his knee:

Sharks bitten on game’s final play – NHL – Yahoo! Sports:

Evgeni Nabokov appeared to sustain a left knee injury on the final play of Thursday night’s shootout, a 5-4 win over the very game St. Louis Blues. After remaining face down on the ice as teammates started to celebrate around him, the goalie eventually got to his feet with assistance and hobbled off the ice, finally walking alone down the narrow hallway to the locker room with a noticeable limp.

but from my view and a look at the replay it seems he pushed off and his right skate may have caught a rut or something, because it kicked out and he more or less somehow still flung himself at the net and twisted while falling to the ice (hard). From my view, it looks like the hip hyperextended (or at least bent in a direction it’s not supposed to bend), sort of like doing the splits with the help of a couple of angry horses running in opposite directions.

So it could be the hip, it could be the flexor (aka “groin”. And because it was so bloody awkward and the landing so ugly, for all I know he could have tweaked his back. it seemed to me when he was being helped off he was holding the hip, not the knee.

We’ll see. With some luck, he’s stiff and sort and wrapped in ice. With some bad luck…

Oh, hey, Boucher has two shutouts this season. I won’t worry yet. But I’m hoping Nabby just tweaked things.

A few notes on the game last night. It was one of those games I had on my list as a worry game. The blues are an intriguing and hard working team, but they’re also the kind of team that the Sharks “ought to beat” handily. They’re also a team that plays a really slow, grinding, dink it in and chase it, dink it out and forecheck kinda game, and I was wondering how the Sharks would handle that.

Handle it they did, although to be honest, the final score is representative of the game and the Blues effort. The Blues did a good job of dictating game tempo, something the Sharks need to look at, because grinding isn’t their forte — but no big surprise Clowe and his linemates had the big game, because that’s really their game.

The Blake goal was a thing of beau — oh, hell. no it wasn’t.

Blake wound up and unleashed a slapshot. Bishop put up his glove and caught it, and the puck kept going and came close to taking the glove with it into the net. Rob Blake got that “WTF, that went in?” look on his face, a big smile, and went back to the bench smiling and trying his damnedest not to show up Bishop. Bishop did that “huh?” look at his glove, and went off into the corner to focus. I turned to Laurie and said “NHL slapshot. AHL glove hand”. Bishop GOT the shot, and the strength of Blake’s shot just overpowered the goalie.

Overall, though, Bishop impressed me. So did the Blues, not the most talented team, but their work ethic is solid, and they were motivated and fought the Sharks all game. Early on the Sharks spotted them two goals by getting into penalty problems (good calls; Blake isn’t as spry as he used to be, and he WILL take hooking and holding penalties when pressured enough — and he did); the second goal was even strength, but came at the end of the penalty with tired players and good play by the Blues. Once the Sharks stopped taking penalties, it got a lot harder for the Blues, but they did a good job of minimizing the sharks good chances.

And then late, both teams for reasons I don’t understand — maybe just damn tired and frustrated — started taking that long string of penalties. Some of the calls were iffy, but overall the reffing was decent. Give them a B-, maybe. The last few minutes of the game I kinda felt like the refs decided rather than swallow the whistle (an act I hate) that they weren’t going to let a marginal play decide the game, where early in the game they were more or less letting the boys play. I think they made a couple of calls that were somewhat marginal, and once that started, they felt obligated to stick to that standard into overtime. I can live with that, actually kinda like it, but it confused the players a bit after 50 minutes of the refs mostly staying out of the way.

And so the Sharks are unbeaten at home — still. Barely. But it’s two points. And they proved to me they aren’t last year’s team — they didn’t take a “lesser” team lightly, they rose to the occasion and played the gritty game when the other team forced them to, they hung in, ground out the game and came away with two points. All good signs that this team is willing to do what it needs to do to win and can play pretty much any style of hockey if it needs to. and even going down 2-0 early, all that did was wake them up and cause them to push back harder.

So in some ways, this was more of a litmus test than the Detroit game — and the Sharks passed. Maybe not pretty, but pretty doesn’t earn more than 2 points. I’m happy to see the Sharks can and will play ugly, too, and win.

And here’s hoping Nabby’s not seriously hurt.

The Calgary Sun – PA boss likes two for T.O.:

All the half-empty buildings across the NHL aren’t hard to miss.

Funny how they chose to lead with that, ignoring that the League had the best average attendance in October ever.

Funny how the good data gets ignored, while the negatives get put in the lead.

Yes, there are cities where things are tougher. And there are cities where things have gotten better. Welcome to the reality of a large industry. Ten years ago, it was the canadian cities struggling, remember? These things cycle.

“There isn’t any question that Toronto could support a second team,” said Kelly, who was in Calgary yesterday. “They could support two more teams. That said, I think it’s a no-brainer for us to put another team in Southern Ontario. Whether we put it in Kitchener, Waterloo, Hamilton … there isn’t any doubt it would succeed. It would do famously well, and I don’t think it would impact the Leafs or the Buffalo Sabres.

“We have a building in Kansas City that’s … NHL ready. My view is the NHL would probably lean towards Kansas City first if it has to relocate a team, but I’m not a big fan of that idea. Kansas City has had a NHL team in the past — it didn’t work out real well. I would be much more in favour of a Canadian franchise if you were gonna move one.

The problem, of course, is that a team needs a building to relocate to. Kansas City has a building, and ownership willing to commit to a team, and active interest. And as to the “didn’t work our real well” part, well, heck. That was true of San Jose and the Seals, and pretty much the same timeframe. It’s a bit disingenuous to play that meme — even if it may well be true.

But the reality is that a team relocating needs a building, and on a shorter timeframe than an expansion team would, so relocation makes it a more complicated issue.

I happen to think a second team in Ontario makes a lot of sense; the Kitchener area seems the best option, but there’s no building. So what do you do? Put them in a sub-standard building in Hamilton until it gets built? Hope “someone” (read: balsillie *cough*) builds a building on spec and hopes a team fills it? That’s basically what Carolina did; it’s what the Sharks did for two years in the Cow Palace while the San Jose Arena got built. it’s a legitimate option, but it has its own problems.

Bottom line: you can’t relocate without a building. Kansas City has everything — except a team and a proven track record. The latter is something you simply have to evaluate and decide if the market can be made to work; Toronto/Ontario is a better market, but not if you are living in a 12,000 seat arena for five years getting a real building built.

“That said, we’d like to see all the franchises succeed. We are a bit concerned when we see drop-off in places like Atlanta, in places like Florida, Phoenix … I’ve been to those buildings — the people who follow the sport are passionate about it. We just need more of them.”

The two teams that worry me are the Islanders and the Thrashers. Laurie and I have been worried about the Island for a while because of the ownership financial ties to CA and those problems. More and more, it looks like that building won’t get built, and honestly, I’m just not convinced that’s a three team media market — it’s the #1 team on my “crisis waiting to happen” list. Atlanta simply hasn’t seemed to taken off, and I’m not sure what they can do to fix that.

There are challenges elsewhere, but none of them seem critical yet. we’ll see.

“I tell (the players), ‘Keep playing an exciting brand of hockey. Give people a reason to spend that discretionary income to come to the games,’” Kelly said. “That said, based upon the numbers I’ve seen, I think we’re going to be OK.”

More immediate for the players is the pressing issue of safety, especially with the number of concussion suffered because of hits to the head.

Kelly said the issue is “probably the top issue on our list for discussion next time the competition committee meets” but said the association is starting to take steps.

He said they’d like equipment manufacturers to reconsider how shoulder pads are constructed — mainly make them softer and improve helmet technology.

He added players are being shown video of hits and how to show more respect.

And that’s why I think Kelly is one of the best additions to the game in years. And it’s a lot of fun to watch him build an interested and committed player group, a strong partnership with the ownership groups so everyone is working to make the game better (and more lucrative) instead of fighting — while still making sure that the owners know they can’t NOT involve him and the PA in decisions.

(hat tip: kukla)