Does anyone still wonder why no free agents want to play in Montreal?

Last night during the Sharks/Kings game I was checking headlines during a break in action, and ran across James Mirtle’s piece on the (at that time) breaking crisis in Montreal.

It got my attention, because it seemed to be a lot more than “gee, this kid likes to party”. Looking at the quotes from the French press, like Jaques Demers ” I swear to you, I thought about Mr. Beliveau tonight … and I just hope I’m dreaming.” or Michel Bergeron’s “it looks like the foundation is going to be shaken. Not just for the Quebecois but for anyone who wears the Canadiens sweater around the country” had me wondering just what was going down. (if you haven’t seen the details, Mirtle’s got a good overview, including how the information flowed out into the public eye, so you can get a sense of how this evolved over time).

My first speculation, honestly, was some kind of legal problem involving claims of non-consensual activities between the players and some “friends”. Maybe it’s unfair of me, but honestly, with the rumors of the partying and the history of complaints against pro athletes about unwanted companionship — whether it’s the players from Duke or Kobe Bryant or any number of quietly handled incidenents — it’s always something I worry is going to end up in the press.

Then word started to come out that a mobster was involved and the police were meeting the team at the airport. Invovled with drugs? Were the players playing mule with their gear bags? Oh, the mind wanders after a couple of coffee-and-Bailey’s… But I was expecting the worst here.

Silly me. I should have remembered that this was the Montreal French Press and stopped worrying. For all Quebec professes to love it’s Canadiens, there are far too many there who aren’t afraid to use them to grandstand and use as a target for their public rants (thereby making sure the journalists get plenty of attention, which they seem to crave). The press isn’t alone here — the police have been known to grandstand and time things to maximize the pain of the team, and let’s not forget the politicians that have been happy to jump on the Canadiens and hockey players when people aren’t paying enough attention to them (just ask Shane Doan).

So I guess I should have really expected that the real problem, the one that caused Bob Hartley to claim he was going back to Atlanta (he was kidding, but that’s the level of rhetoric here, folks) was that a couple of the Canadiens players liked to party and liked girls.

Oh, and one of their party pals happens to have organized crime connections, but there are no connections known by the police beyond partying, girls, and some bootleg vodka the guy brought in for them.

Oh, the horrors.

Yes, the French Press is at it again. We can all stand down and stop paying attention for now. Next time, we should maybe be smart enough to not pay attention to begin with.

Does anyone still wonder why the Canadiens have so much trouble keeping free agents or attracting them to the team? Who other than Saku Koivu is insane enough to want to play in a city with newspapers this hostile? And better, they’re hostile because they love the team. Ah, the irony. the bullshit, the insanity.

Now, am I saying that this is not an issue at all? No — there are some significant issues here. The players are associating with someone they should know better than be around. This kind of “not thinking clearly” seems endemic in Montreal — remember Jose Theodore? There’s a problem with players enjoying the joys of the city of Montreal a bit too much there.

That’s a tough nut to crack; you can only talk and lecture so much. Ultimately it comes down to knowing the personality of the players and only bringing in those that know how to handle the situation appropriately. Montreal has to find a way to help players learn to avoid these problems, but ultimately, this is up to the individual players themselves.

Especially in a town like Montreal, where the players not only live in a fishbowl, but one wher ethe fishbowl has a 24×7 webcam and paparazzi waiting for an unprotected moment, and writers and broadcasters who seem to want to make their names by putting these people up on pedestals and then using them for target practice.

In reality? There’s a whole lot of “nothing to see here”, other than a bunch of press and broadcasters taking a molehill and turning it into a ski resort. Here’s hoping that it stays a molehill and there aren’t more and dirtier details to be found out at the investigation continues, but right now, it seems like this whole “foundation is going to be shaken” disaster scenario is a figment of the overactive imaginations of the French Press (again) insisting on proving there’s nothing they can’t turn into front page headlines.

No wonder nobody wants to play in Montreal. With “friends” like these, would you want to?

Something I just realized about All-Star Weekend

I’m listening to XM radio, and they just led in with Paul kelly opening his press conference where they announced they weren’t re-opening the CBA (good move!). With him were six players, including Joe Thornton and Vincent Lecevallier.  Also with him were some other NHLPA officials including Glen Healy.

And listening to it, I suddenly realized there was a big name missing.

Where’s Eric Lindros, NHLPA Ombudsman? There were rumors of friction between Kelly and Lindros a couple of months ago, but they quieted down, and since then, not much.

But — now that I think about it — I can’t think of any reference or sighting of Lindros at the All-Star Weekend. Anyone know if he was there?

Because it sure looks, given that he wasn’t included in a very important set of meetings at THE in-season get-together for the NHL and the NHLPA, that he’s been purged or exiled.

Anyone seen Eric Lindros recently?

The only reference I can find of him is his speaking at the Concussion symposium. Lindros simply isn’t talking about it. Kelly is merely saying “Lindros continues to work for the NHLPA”. But clearly, something is going on here, because Lindros really should have been at that press conference, and not only wasn’t, doesn’t seem to have been mentioned.

Hmm.

Fixing the All-star game (well, not really)

I can’t take credit for this idea, but I dig it and I’m going to tell you all about it anyway. I read this suggestion somewhere yesterday as I was browsing the various blogs where Wing haters were sobbing about this and this. I’ll try to track down who mentioned it yesterday and give credit where it’s due. Also, it’s been done before…back when hockey was hockey and Gary wasn’t in the picture.

Here’s the idea: Next year, when the Wings are defending their twelfth Stanley Cup title? Select an All Star team who will play the Cup Champs.

via KuklasKorner.

I have a couple of problems with this.

First, yes, the league did this before. Yes, All-star games back then were more intensely played games. The problem I have is that nobody can actually show that going back to this old format will actually bring back the old intensity. It just seems there’s this big “and magically, everything is fixed” box in the flowchart here. I don’t buy it, I don’t believe it. We shouldn’t make changes just because.

More important to me, though, is how a change like this can and will affect the real games. What was one of the major speculation points going into this season? Yes — how the Detroit Red Wings would cope with and overcome the “Stanely Cup Hangover” and how most of the recent teams have struggled with it (look at Pittsburgh this year; that hangover is at least part of their problem).

So what’s the plan here? Take the team what’s played the most hockey, the hardest hockey, and when the entire league gets a few days off to rest and get ready for the 2nd half of the season, make the entire team play a hockey game against the league all-stars. Of course, even though it’s an exhibition, we’re expecting them to play hard and physical, make it a “real” game, even though it’s an exhibition, because that’s the point of this change.

In other words, take the team likely most in need of rest across the break, and instead of having a couple of their players (well, this year, NONE, but I don’t blame the Wings for pulling that stunt) involved, have the entire team involved.

How is this good for the game of hockey? How is this remotely good for the team involved? Why do we even want to consider making it HARDER for a champion to repeat a second time — and that’s exactly what this idea would do. Heck, we get back to back cup winners so often, let’s throw another obstacle in their way.

This is simply a bad idea. It’s a “I remember the good parts of the 70′s, if we just do that, everything will be great” concept. The problem is, when you start looking at what the idea means in the larger context of the game today, it has a lot of negatives, and it’s a bad deal for the team and for the league. Fixing an exhibition by messing up the real season seems like a bad tradeoff to me. The players need this time off to rest up and heal; taking a player or two from each team to play in the All-Star is one thing. Taking the entire team and throwing away their downtime? I can’t see any team seriously going with that idea without a fight.

Especially since there’s no real reason to believe that it’d fix the problem people seem to be trying to fix, which is that this is an exhibition, and the players play like it is. Just swapping the players around won’t change that basic reality — just as moving to the North America vs. the World format didn’t a few years back. Honestly, does this really need fixing in the first place?

Is the NHL dying?

I guess it depends on who you prefer to believe…

For instance….

Attendance: Trending up or down? – A hockey journalist’s blog:

I take my monthly look at NHL attendance over at Globe on Hockey today, something that shows just how well hockey’s being received in St. Louis these days.

The news isn’t quite so rosy in Columbus, Detroit, Florida, Carolina, Phoenix, Colorado, Tampa Bay, Nashville, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

Let’s just say I don’t think we set any records by season’s end.

NHL sets record attendance in November:

Yet…

The National Hockey League posted record attendance for the month of November, attracting 3,367,547 fans to 199 games for a per-game average of 16,922. The per-game figure eclipsed the previous November high of 16,818 set during the League’s successful re-launch season in 2005 and was 2.3% ahead of last season’s 16,538.

Season-to-date, the total NHL attendance of 6,603,908 and per-game average of 16,890 through 391 games are 1.9% ahead of the corresponding figures from the record-setting 2006-07 campaign.

Hmmm……

And a meme going out among some bloggers and hockey pundits is “it’s going back to the way it was”. Of course, the numbers don’t back that up (but then, the easy answer is to just claim the NHL is futzing the numbers. If you can’t prove them wrong, wave your hands a lot and yell loudly…):

globeandmail.com: Contrary to what Hockey Night preaches, scoring is up in NHL:

f you watch Hockey Night in Canada, you may assume there has been no increase in NHL goal scoring, despite the crackdown on restraining fouls.

And even if there has been a small improvement, you may believe it is attributable to the large number of power plays being called.

A big part of the Hockey Night message is: Zero tolerance has not helped improve the game offensively.

But the first assumption is wrong and the second is questionable.
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* No clear winner in battle over the airwaves

The Globe and Mail

After all, goal scoring is up 10 per cent from 2003-04, which was the last season of the “old” NHL, when obstruction fouls weren’t being called.

The argument that a massive increase in the number of power plays – Ron MacLean of Hockey Night used the figure 18,000 last Saturday – has inflated goal-scoring statistics doesn’t ring true either, because even-strength goal scoring is up 9 per cent from 2003-04.

The number of power plays has certainly increased, starting in 2005-06 with zero tolerance. But it hasn’t gone up as much as you might think.

In 2003-04, referees called 8.9 power plays a game (defined as a one-man advantage). In 2005-06, when coaches, players and referees were grappling with the new rule enforcement, the number rose to 12.5. Since then, the number of power plays has decreased. Last season at this point, there was an average of 10.6 a game. This season, it’s 9.1, a small increase, 2.2 per cent, from the 8.9 in 2003-04.

Let’s look at power-play goals. In 2005-06, the total jumped to 857 at this point in the season, compared with 573 in 2003-04. But last season, the number dropped to 695. This season, it stands at 631 before last night’s games, an increase of 10 per cent from 2003-04.

It’s wrong, therefore, to assume more power-play goals are being scored because of a proportional increase in the number of power-play opportunities.

Power-play goal scoring is up 10 per cent, while the number of power-play opportunities has increased only 2.2 per cent.

It’s the elimination of the traditional forms of obstruction that is allowing teams to enjoy more success with the man advantage.

It is true, however, that even-strength goal scoring has decreased from last season. At this point in 2006-07, 1,537 goals had been scored. This season, the number was down to 1,453 before last night, a drop of 5.4 per cent.

But, as we’ve noted, even-strength goal scoring is still up considerably from 2003-04, and the guess is it won’t decrease much more, because of measures planned that include the further reduction of goaltenders’ equipment. As well, Buffalo Sabres managing partner Larry Quinn is proposing that an independent committee look into ways to rid the game of the neutral zone trap.

One obvious way to do that, in the long term, is to increase the width of the ice by seven or eight feet. That would give the team with the puck more room to get around the checkers.

But the important point is this: 118 more even-strength goals have been scored this season than in 2003-04. That’s progress.

And of course, the league is in financial trouble, just ask some of the pundits. Of course, the NHL just announced revenue is trending up, and that the salary cap is expected to go up again next year. This, of course, is used as proof by some that the league is in trouble because salaries keep going up.

Unfortunately, some of the loudest and most influential voices out there are the ones that seem determined to convince the public that the league is in trouble. Does the league have issues? Sure. Name any operation of any size that doesn’t? But if you compare the league to where it was before the lockout, it sure seems like all of the arrows are moving in the right direction to me.

more importantly? the hockey is a damn sight more watchable than it was before, and games are generally more interesting and exciting on a night to night basis. This, of course, is somehow bad for the league’s longevity….