Congrats to Ted and the Caps
On my list for this season:
* Qualify for the playoffs – check.
* Garner 100 points or more in the regular season – check.
* Win Division title – check.
* Break all-time attendance record – check.
* Sellout all games for future season – check
* Cross 12,000 full season tickets barrier – check.
There are many items on the list still to check off but it feels good to get a jump start on the list to date.
via Teds Take » Blog Archive » Cross Another One Off the List.
I just wanted to say “Congrats” to the Caps and Ted Leonsis. They’ve been one of the great stories this season, and it’s been a lot of fun watching that team play this year, not just because they’re good, but because it’s a team that seems to like being a team and enjoy playing the game. They’ve been one of my favorites to follow out east all season, and it’s awesome that the work and time put in to build the team is being rewarded, both by success on the ice and by the fans.
What’s wrong with the Sharks?
It’s that time of the year when fans start worrying. I’ve gotten a number of emails and IM’s asking me what I thought was wrong with the Sharks.
I knew the hot start wasn’t sustainable. Well, we’re into that “not sustainable” part. Teams that play “too well” can get into bad habits, and those can make life difficult when the wins stop. The Sharks got into some bad habits, but nothing too serious. The big problem I see with them is a tendency to play to the level of the other team — and they’ve pulled a lot of games out in the third period. right now, the bounces aren’t going their way, and they’re losing some of those.
When it works, we call it “pacing ourselves for the playoffs”, and it’s a mild annoyance. When it doesn’t, it’s called a lot of things, most of them unprintable, but “not being ready for the game” is a common one. Soft starts and digging holes early, and right now, they’re not digging out of them well enough.
the injuries on the third and fourth lines are tough; add in injuries to Blake (broken jaw), Lukowich (sports hernia) and Boyle (wrist) — which have all ben played through to some degree or another, but still affect their games — and the team’s depth has been tested. it’s held up quite well, actually (I am still seriously impressed by Semenov in his fole), but there’s little margin of error in the western conference.
All in all, though, this is the “mid season” blahs, accentuated by some injuries. It’s not like the team’s sucked, it’s merely moved to pretty good. They’ve lost a few, but I see that as a good thing, in that it’ll hopefully help the refocus on the details of the system that have slipped by — and even with the recent struggle, they’ve still taken 11 points in the last ten games. This “slump” is still better than many sharks seasons I’ve watched.
And if you look around the league, similar complaints are being lodged at the Red Wings (two 8 goal allowed losses!, Dallas , Chicago, Boston, Washington and Montreal. At the same time, teams that struggled early, like Toronto and Pittsburgh, vanvouver and Nashville, have come on and are making it a playoff fight.
This kind of adversity can help the sharks; it’s bad for a team to decide winning is “easy”, because in the playoffs, it won’t e, no matter who you play. They’ll figure it out; assuming they get healthy, they’ll be fine. I don’t want to see this go on for another two weeks (if it does, I’ll start worrying), but so far, this is about what you should expect over a season. Rough patches happen. you play well the other times, and it balances out. Playinb well going into the playoffs is huge, though, so I’m a lot happier with a team than finishes well than one that plays well in November, so it’s time to see the Sharks start that solid finish.
but the biggest issue with the Sharks is lack of scoring on the third and fourth line. the secondary contributions have dried up. Where are the injuries? On the third and fourth line. Will the injuries impact us in the playoffs? I sure hope not, and the additions at the trade deadline definitely help.
So I’m not worried. Well, not yet.
Gauthier gets two games — and some cheechoo chat
This just hitting the wires — Gauthier gets two games for his hit on Patrick Marleau. Jamie Baker covered the hit well, and I agree with him. Fair suspension for a cheap hit, the kind we want removed from the game.
We really enjoyed the Sharks/Kings game. The Kings played well — and hard — and clearly felt they needed to rattle the Sharks cage to have a chance to beat them. Emotions got strong, but the Sharks didn’t back down, which was a great response and encouraging to see.
In a bit, we’ll head to the tank where the Thrashers come into town. It’ll be interesting to see what plays down, but the Sharks are seeing some of the hurt players coming back; Marcel Goc and Torrey Mitchell continue to be out, but the rest are coming back. Perhaps this “slump” is starting to end, the team’s gameplay is getting back towards what we saw early in the season.
Mark Emmon’s did a nice piece on Cheechoo and his struggles today. My feeling on Cheechoo, pretty much the only player not living up to expectations this year, is that he really needs to be both healthy and confident to play well — his skating is marginal enough that if he isn’t working at it every shift he struggles to play at the NHL level, so when he’s banged up, or when he’s not confident about his health, his production fades.
He’s trying, working hard. I have no complaints with his work this year, but we have to remember that his talent level is a lot closer to Jeff Odgers than it is Joe Thornton — and Jeff Odgers stayed in the league as long as he did not through raw talent, but by skating his butt off every night and getting his nose dirty, not by scoring lots of goals. Cheechoo has hands Odgers could only dream of, but the core of his game has to be the same: skate hard, work hard, play in the hard areas, and find the seams where his shot can get through.
As long as he keeps working at it, you’ll get no complaints from me. The Sharks have enough depth there’s no need to worry about this much.
We were talking at the last game about trade deadline deals, and Cheechoo’s name came up. He’s basically the only roster player I could see moving from the Sharks, and it’s not a priority to me that it happen (but I wouldn’t be shocked if it did). There was some feeling that Cheechoo would be perfect on the wing with Sydney Crosby. If that happens, I’d love it for Cheechoo’s sake, and it’d probably be fun to watch, because ultimately Cheechoo is Brett Hull’s hands on Jeff Odger’s baby brother’s body. I’m not convinced he’d return to his Rocket production in that situation, but having a setup guy like Crosby couldn’t hurt.
Me, I think I’d just leave this team alone. Hard to argue it needs much fixing.
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?
So I guess the sharks are slumping…
I guess it’s official, the sharks are in a slump.
Of course, when we talk about slump, we’re talking about 5-1-4 in their last ten, or a mere (ahem) 14 points out of a possible 20.
Okay, in the playoffs, there are no shootouts, so should we really count those four shoot-out-loss points? Well, is it better or worse for the Sharks to continue overtime until someone scores? I’m betting that the Sharks are a better team if they go to sudden-death overtime, look at the third period onslaught tonight against buffalo. Sharks clearly would have momentum going in, last-minute goal by Buffalo or no.
So the worst possible case for the Sharks? 5-5. Best case? 9-1. split the difference? 7-3. heck, if 5-5 is a slump, I’ll be thrilled.
this is with Blake with the sore jaw, Boyle with his “upper body” injury (a wrist, I think, because he’s had little strength behind his shot, although it’s coming around). Tonight, both Boyle and Clowe were playing with the flu, also. And lukowich is out, Goc is out…
And a little glitch in the schedule is good, because it’l force them to focus and bear down on their play. If they continue with this into mid-March? I might worry. For now? this is just the dog days…
The Curious Case of Ray Whitney
Ray Whitney.
Okay, I knew that he still played in the league, so it wasn’t a surprise to see him score a goal, but every time he lights the lamp, I’m reminded of this talented player, who has been around the league since, well, it seems time immortal.
In reality, Whitney has been in the NHL since the San Jose Sharks took him in the second round of the 1991 Entry Draft. Their first selection had been Pat Falloon, and the two young guns were held up as the future of the young Sharks.
via XM204 » Blog Archive » The Curious Case of Ray Whitney.
Pat Falloon — great prospect, tore up his shoulder and was never quite the same after. Part of that was that the development environment within the Sharks wasn’t the best early on, part of it was that Falloon rode his talent instead of worked to improve it.
Whitney always had to work his butt off to succeed and never stopped. Even after the Sharks dumped him into the IHL after Al Sims declared him not an NHL player (and we all know how Al Sims was the key to the Sharks success!), he kept at it. After the NHL changed the rules to make smaller skill players more effective in the league, Whitney didn’t just survive in the NHL, he thrived.
Whitney was always one of my favorite early Sharks. And he has one quet thing he can be proud of: he is the last first-year Shark to still be playing in the NHL Long after everyone else who started out in San Jose and played in the Cow Palace years, he’s still proving himself a key cog in the NHL. congrats, Ray.
Who was the second to last first-year Shark to play in the NHL? it was Sandis Ozolinsh, which when he was drafted probably wouldn’t have surprised anyone, but he had his struggles as his career went on and some off-ice challenges, but he ended up with a long, successful career. We got to meet Sandis a couple of times, and he is an amazingly nice, shy, intelligent person.
But here’s a bit of trivia I doubt anyone will get. After Ray Whitney and Sandis, who was the next first-season Shark to be left standing in the NHL? you could possibly guess Whitney, and maybe ozolinsh, but #3 is off the charts and will be hard to figure out. it’s not an obvious one on the face of it.
It’s — Wade Flaherty — former Sharks goalie and a guy who made a long and successful career as a team’s 3rd goalie and usually found a way to be brought up for a few games every year. Flaherty finally hung them up and in 2008 worked with the Sharks on their Shanghai china sharks team, and this year was named by the Blackhawks ot be their goaltending coach. Well done, and it shows you that longevity in the league isn’t necessarily about talent, but about attitude and work ethic. (jeff jilson, take note. Oh, wait. sorry, too late).
Hockey takes backseat to tragedy in Buffalo
Several Sabres players live in Clarence Center, the suburban-rural area where the commuter flight from Newark crashed and they talked about the experience. Defenseman Teppo Numminen heard both the sound of the plane coming down and the noise from the impact. He and his wife opened the shade on the bedroom window and could see the flames and the red sky. Goalie Patrick Lalime lived even closer. Former Shark Craig Rivet lived nearby, but far enough away that he and his family weren’t aware of the 10:20 p.m. crash until they woke up this morning.
Some of the Sharks, too, reflected on their own flight difficulties in getting out of Pittsburgh, but they expressed confidence in their charter pilot, stating that the plane would not have taken off if conditions were a serious threat. The landing in Buffalo, while buffeted a little bit by high winds and with limited visibility, wasn’t that rough — though it came less than five hours ahead of the plane that crashed.
There’s a subset of fans that like to think that NHL players should be robots, simply because they get paid a lot of money. You know the time: “With the money they make, they better show up every night!” — which is nice in theory, but given these are humans (well paid or no) with human limitations and frailties, it’s going to happen.
and then once in a while something happens that reminds you how human they are. My thoughts go out to all of the Sabres players and staff and the communities they live in for what they’re going through now. The show does go on, and should — but I’ll bet it’s going to be a tough night for some of them.
If you lived close enough t the crash to realize than 10 seconds difference in how the plane came down could have landed it on your house, how would YOU feel at work the next few days?
Remember that the next time some thoughtless fan rips a player for not playing 82 “A” games because they don’t care that the guy is playing through a case of flu that’d have most of us in the hospital for a week….
Sharks looking at tampa’s Jeff Halpern?
According to Tampa Tribune beat writer Erik Erlendsson, San Jose’s John Ferguson has been scouting the Lightning for a few games and there is a rumored Sharks interest in center Jeff Halpern. The 9-year veteran and former Washington Capitals captain has 3 goals and 5 assists in 25 games played for Tampa Bay this season.
If this is true, and in ways it makes sense, it probably means that Torrey Mitchell’s setback is more serious than the sharks have admitted. Given that Mitchell hasn’t been skating since he tweaked things during his stint in Worcester, I’ve been expecting to hear he’s done for the year. this might be the indication that’s true.
Could Balsillie bring Gretzky home?
Balsillie could bring Gretzky home.
Now wouldn’t that be an ideal title on the front page of every single Canadian newspaper! I think so.
The NHL has admitted its involvement in helping a Phoenix Coyotes franchise deal with some financial difficulties as well as look for potential new backers/owners of the team. On a recent Phoenix telecast, league commissioner Gary Bettman mentioned that they are looking for new partners for Phoenix owner Jerry Moyes or even at a possible sale of the franchise.
The NHL hopes to resolve the situation in Phoenix by season’s end in order to be fair to the players, staff and fans.
So the question has to be asked: why-oh-why has a deal not been had with Research in Motion co-chief executive officer Jim Balsillie?
The arena lease in Phoenix pretty much dictates that the Coyotes will remain in Phoenix for quite some time unless a substantial amount of money is paid to the region. The NHL is currently attempting to renegotiate the lease for Jobing.com Arena with the city of Glendale, Ariz., to make it more attractive for potential buyers. However, the time needed to renegotiate such a deal may be attractive to Balsillie. It would give him time to build an arena (Western Ontario) or upgrade a current facility (Hamilton) for his new team.
via CBCSports.ca – Blogs – Could Balsillie bring Gretzky home?.
Well, for now, Balsillie can’t.
Jim Balsillie, the co-founder of Research In Motion, and two other executives will pay $77-million to “make the company whole” as part of a record settlement with the Ontario Securities Commission over improper options backdating to compensate executives.
[....]
Mr. Balsillie, who also agreed to step down from the board of directors of Waterloo-based RIM for at least 12 months as part of yesterday’s OSC settlement, told reporters after a hearing in Toronto that “mistakes were made.” He added that the firm is “very, very happy to put this behind us.”
Part of the settlement over the RIM backdating problems is that Balsillie can not hold an officer position or serve on a board of a company for at least a year. That precludes him investing in a company in any way that gives him operational control in any way. If he were to invest in a hockey team, that investment would have to be a passive one through the terms of his probation — it’s unclear if he could actually own a majority stake, but he definitely couldn’t be the managing partner, couldn’t attend meetings or serve on the board, and would probably have to be completely hands-off until this restriction ends. Any company he invests in would probably be watched to make sure he really was staying hands off. This would be a tough sell on any number of levels for the league, other investors, the temporary managing partners, etc. Even assuming Balsillie would be willing to passively invest in something, even a hockey team.Which I wonder if he’d be willing to do.
So I think he’s on the shelf for a year or two, until this options problem clears out. Lots of potential traps here he could fall into if he’s not careful.
The Phoenix arena issue is an interesting problem (as in “interesting times” interesting). Personally, I can’t believe the Coyotes signed a lease deal that ugly, but that’s just me. That was the best they could do? But since Glendale financed all but about $20 million of the arena, one could argue that most of the arena revenue should go to them. In retrospect, I think if the team and the NHL were being purely honest about things, they ought to admit they should have looked at relocation BEFORE moving into Glendale, because the lease terms in my view were never going to allow the team to be viable. In this case, the “moving is a last resort” policy hurt the team and the league because it forced the team to sign a lease it never should have signed, and probably removed a negotiating tool the team could have used for better terms. Oh well. The Coyotes were likely headed down this path even before the economy went south, it just went south faster.
So, now what?
Short answer: the league can look for new capital infusions all it wants, but I can’t see a situation where any sane person invests in the Coyotes unless there’s a new, viable lease. So either the lease is revised, or the Coyotes will ultimately go into Chapter 11 and bankruptcy can be used to void the lease.
Glendale has this huge, new, expensive arena with hundreds of millions of dollars of debt. They can’t really afford to have the Coyotes fail or move, because an empty building will cost them even more. So sanity implies that the two sides will find a middle ground and a new lease, one where the Coyotes have a better revenue stream and Glendale still have a tenant to help pay the bills.
It was a tough road in Nashville — but the Predators actually are predicting to make a tiny bit of money this year. Some of the pundits have smirked at that, but they forget that in that city, they ultimately DID get new owners and a new lease, and the changes were enough to make things viable in Nashville. That’s the model the NHL is pursuing in Arizona. Based on what we saw in Nashville, it’s going to take some time, it’s going to be occasionally painful, but as long as all sides involved keep a focus on getting the job done, it will get done.
Of course, with sports franchises and arenas, politics and emotions can create chaos, and scuttle deals that make sense from a business standpoint. So we’ll have to wait and see. but my guess is that the league and the Coyotes and the City of Glendale will get this worked out, and as soon as the new lease is in place, some new investors will step in and take the Coyotes over. Just as happened in Nashville.
It won’t be Balsillie. Why? Because under this scenario, the Coyotes will be staying in Arizona, and it’s very clear he’s not interested unless he can move the team into Ontario. So Balsillie will stay away from Phoenix unless it becomes clear the team has to move.
Actually, there’s one scenario that Balsillie gets involved: as a passive bridge investor while the lease is negoiated and the new owners are readied. He might fund the transition — but if does, it’ll only be because the league promised him a team for Ontario later. That might be the easiest way through this mess for the NHL, actually, although I doubt they’d admit to the move-the-team part of the deal until it actually happens. The NHL could do worse than have Balsillie fund the Coyotes for a year (or two) while they work with Glendale on fixing this for real, and if it falls apart, let him move the Coyotes (that would be a nice negotiating tactic); and if they do work it out in Arizona, have him sell his shares to the new owners, at which point either the Lighthouse project on Long Island will have finally died and he can buy and move the Islanders, or the owners of the Thrashers will finally be out of court and ready to sell and give up on the Atlanta experiment. Either way, a team for Kingston could well be available 2-3 years down the road.
The other scenario in Arizona gets nasty. Glendale doesn’t work out a new deal. Long-term lease or no, the league has the option of going into bankruptcy court — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, although the anti-Bettman press will make hay about it. It was part of the process that allowed both Ottawa and Buffalo to get things worked out and move forward. In Arizona, taking the team into bankrupcty would allow the team and league to push to void the lease, removing the requirement to pay the relocation fees in the current lease. THAT attempt will hopefully force Glendale’s hand to renegotiate the lease and avoid bankruptcy where they lose a lot of their negotiating stance. But if it gets there, the league also has the option of revoking the franchise — make the Coyotes go away. That would also void the lease, but also would void the player contracts, leading to everyone being declared free agents (most likely). Even if the league resells the franchise to a new owner, it’d likely be treated as an expansion team.
And down this road, only the lawyers win. Everyone could end up suing everyone for years waiting to sort this out. But the end result would be the team moving out of Arizona without paying the lease-breaking fees.
So the league has options here; if Glendale won’t renegotiate the lease (and from what I’ve read, there seems to be a willingness rather than risk having zero light dates — it’s going to come down to what the numbers look like — but if it can be done in Nashville, it can be done in Glendale).
But the most likely scenarios — and the timing, given the backdating problem — exclude Balsillie.
Was the Sharks/Bruins game a statement game?
So was the Sharks/Bruins game last night a statement game?
I think it was, sort of. But not as much as some are making it out to be. I think San Jose made a statement because both teams brought their “A” game, and as the game went along it was clear San Jose took the upper hand and ran with it. They won and deserved to win. What means more to me in some ways, though, is that they did it on the road. I’d be a lot less impressed with the Sharks game if that game had been played in San Jose — note that San Jose and Detroit have won their home games, but are yet to “break serve” in the other’s building.
But a second look at the Bruins game showed the two teams to be pretty close in skills and capabilities. I certainly don’t think that the win last night means that San Jose would win a series against the Bruins — in fact I think that’d be a pretty darn good and close series if (or when) it happens. I’d choose San Jose to win it today, but heck, that could well change.
But in reality, any combination of San Jose, Detroit and Boston would be some pretty great hockey, and honestly, San Jose would likely have to get through Detroit to get to Boston, and I think it’s a lot harder for whatever team comes out of the West to win that final round than it will be for the eastern team. If (as I expect/hope) the western Final is Detroit/San Jose, I expect that may be the best series in the playoffs — and good luck to the survivor.
Right now, it really looks like the Cup runs through these three teams. The team I’d put in fourth would be Washington, and I’d expect one of those four to win the Cup this year, at least based on the season so far. Below them? In the west, I still like Dallas and Chicago, with Minnesota up there as well. In the east, Montreal, Philly and New Jersey.
For the west, I’m rooting for 6-7-8 to include Calgary, Columbus and Nashville. I’m still unconvinced about Vancouver (but Sundin is waking up, so I can finally end my “no-sundin” embargo here) and Los Angeles are in the mix. I expect Edmonton to fade, Colorado is packing it in, and St. Louis is working their butt off, but simply had too many injuries to overcome. Damn shame, too. My christmas gift to hockey for 2009: that the Blues stay healthy next season.
For the west, honestly, I don’t think 6-7-8 matter. Where there are 10 teams that have a chance to make noise in the west, I’m just not enthused by more than the top five in the east. Good teams, but first round outs. The west is such that there can (and probably will be) significant upsets along the way; I just hope they don’t happen to Detroit or San Jose.
And so on to Pittsburgh, which just hasn’t gotten back in the groove after last year. Sharks better watch out, I expect the pens to see this as a chance to fix things.
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