Tomorrow afternoon the NHL is going to go ahead and make it official: the 2013 Winter Classic will be played between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs at the University of Michigan’s “Big House.” But that’s not all. There’s also going to be a second press conference from Comerica Park, which will also be involved in the festivities.

The only thing that will actually be at The Big House will be The Big Game (the actual Winter Classic), while Comerica Park will be host to a whole sackful of other games. More on Comerica in a bit.

To gain access to The Big House, the NHL had to clear a few hurdles – they needed the votes of the regents, they needed a liquor license (the University doesn’t serve alcohol at their football games), and they needed to come to financial terms.

The latter was no problem – the NHL is renting the football field for one day for a cool three million dollars, a price the University needed them to get to. The last University of Michigan football game is November 17th, so they needed a good number to make bringing a dormant facility back to life worth it to the school (apparently the NHL also offered to donate to the University’s scholarship fund to make things a touch more appealing too).

As a non-profit, the University apparently has 12 one-day liquor licenses at their disposal, so once all the paperwork for that was sorted out, another problem was taken care of. And, the regents approved everything unanimously, so…hello Winter Classic in Michigan.

Comerica’s role in the whole deal is actually a little bit more involved than all of that. Sean Leahy of Puck Daddy included a quote from Chuck Pleiness of the Macomb Daily detailing the Park’s role in the festivities:

Comerica Park will host an American Hockey League game between the Grand Rapids Griffins and Toronto Marlies, the minor league affiliates of the Wings and Leafs.

It will also be the site of the Great Lakes Invitational, along with two Ontario Hockey League games and numerous high school and youth games.

Michigan and Michigan State will be two of the GLI teams. Three OHL teams — the Plymouth Whalers, Saginaw Spirit and Windsor Spitfires — have already been confirmed.

Comerica could also host the alumni game between the Wings and Leafs.

This event has turned into one big, complicated money-printing machine for the NHL. It’s starting to span more days and make more money than I ever thought possible, and you know what? That’s a good thing.

For fans, it’s a great experience. For players, it’s a great experience. For the local region, it’s a huge financial plus. And of course, the whole deal is nothing but gravy for the League. There’s really nobody involved that loses, and that’s why it does so well.

So there you have it: the Detroit Red Wings vs. the Toronto Maple Leafs in the University of Michigan’s Big House.

What do you think – did the NHL do everything right for next year’s event?

Today on The Whiteboard we’ll look at the rotation teams use to kill off a 5-on-3 powerplay. The rotation is very simple on paper, but obviously gets a little harder on the ice. That whole “having less guys” thing means you have to do everything perfectly to get a stop.

For starters, let’s take a look at the most common offensive 5-on-3 formation teams use on the two-man advantage. This is where everyone starts:

The offense has skated in and set up, which is insanely easy to do on a 5-on-3. With the right d-man having the puck, the forward fronts the shot and stays in the shooting lane. Now, the rotation.

If the puck goes D-to-D across the top, the forward drops down, the defenseman on the (new) puck side moves up to front the shot, and the other defenseman slides over to take the open spot. Because the forward slides down to play the role of a defenseman, it’s not uncommon to see coaches use three d-men when killing a 5-on-3. So, pretty simple so far:

Now, when a defenseman drags the puck to the middle or all the way across the top (a common play to cause confusion – usually his partner will go behind him in a switch and load up for a shot), that defensive d-man will continue to front him all the way across, and not much changes. (The low d-man has to be ready to come out and block the shot if they do execute a one-timer, so he may cheat up a little more than what I’ve shown.)

Now let’s say he moves the puck low…

The low guy on the puck side has one job: that pass across to the backdoor CANNOT happen. Seriously, that “F” in our case should just lie down. With that pass being his job, that means the pass to the slot is the job of the weak-side d-man. The d-man who’s high here keeps a stick in the passing lane to the slot, but stands in the shooting lane of the defenseman he was previously fronting in case of a one-timer.

Obviously the d-man in the slot is aware of the danger of a backdoor pass, as is the goalie, so it’s not entirely on the one dude…but most of it is.

The majority of a powerplay from the offensive side is just trying to get those three guys moving, and trying to catch someone out of position. If not, there’s always someone to pass to – you do have extra humans and all.

By passing it back-and-forth up top, you make the guys on the outside of the pulley go up-and-back, up-and-back, and the d-man down low go over-and-back, over-and-back, and it’s usually somewhere during their transition where you can make a few one-touch passes like high-to-low-to-the-slot, or high-to-low-to-backdoor. As the killers get more tired, obviously there are more openings, and you’re basically stationary, so you feel pretty fresh.

If you can keep things nice and tight with good sticks in the passing lanes, killing a 5-on-3 isn’t an impossibility.

But when things start to break down – maybe a guy losses a puck battle in the corner, or someone blows a clearing attempt – an NHL team on offense will cash in every time.

After the recent chaos that Tim Thomas heaped on himself by choosing to not attend The White House with the rest of his Boston Bruins teammates, one assumed he’d be avoiding anything that would make him the center of attention for awhile.

He didn’t help his cause in the wake of the incident by not defending his decision to not attend (instead choosing to post a single Facebook status and act like it never happened), but still…the circus was starting slowly leaving town.

He’s been playing fantastic hockey since, and many of us were remembering why we liked him so much in the first place: he’s a really awesome goalie, and a blast to watch play the position.

But today, he made the circus put on its brakes and turn around.

He’s welcome to believe in whatever politics he wants. He has the right to free speech. He can be of whatever religion he chooses. You’d just think he’d keep the focus on hockey, at least publicly, given how people reacted to his White House snub.

Here’s his latest Facebook status update:

For those of you who can’t read that:

Whatever that means to you, you still have to ask – why complicate your every day life as a hockey player?

If it’s because these are messages he wants to get out there and he’s passionate about politics, okay, fine. That can be who you are and we’ll respect that…but then you have to actually talk about politics and religion, and get the message out there.

This Facebook poli-bombing is going to drive me crazy if he doesn’t stand and speak up for what he believes. You’re either behind the message or you’re not.

Something about it reminds me of a person who’d post “I had the craziest day today,” to get people to ask them about it…then not tell them. If you want attention, stuff like this will do the trick.

If Tim Thomas wants to talk politics and religion, it’s time he do so from out behind the keyboard too.

(Stick-tap to @_TyAnderson for passing that along.)

Welcome to a Wednesday edition of the Backhand Shelf Podcast!

Wednesday Wednesday means Pizzo and I discussed a little gambling, as well as…

* Should goalie interference calls be reviewable?

* Owen Nolan retired as a San Jose Shark yesterday  – did he meet the expectations of a #1 pick?

* We look at the next 20 years of #1 picks – who met expectations, who failed to?

* Claude Julien would not like to answer your reasonable questions.

* Does the NHL dole out second assists too easily?

* The Rangers could make history twice.

* Should the spinorama be illegal in shootouts?

* And as always, much more.

You can listen to it here:

Download it here, and subscribe on iTunes here. Also, follow Backhand Shelf on Facebook!

Alexei Cherepanov of KHL Omsk Avangard died suddenly during a game in 2008 at the age of nineteen.

A sadly familiar scene played out this week near Ottawa when 15-year-old Tyler Kerr collapsed during a hockey game and later died. He had just returned to the bench after a shift when he lost consciousness, and was quickly tended to by coaches and volunteer firefighters. They did CPR, used an AED (automated external defibrillator) to deliver shocks, and he was taken by ambulance to a local hospital. He lived long enough to be transferred to CHEO (the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario), but died some eight hours after his collapse. In this case everything went right, but the outcome was still wrong. For every sudden cardiac arrest that’s properly handled, how many more aren’t handled at all?

When’s the last time you took a CPR class? Never? Why not? No, no – don’t answer that. Your excuses are invalid. Survival rates from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are minimal – anywhere from a dismal 2% to a slightly less dismal 10% of patients will survive. EMS providers will tell you that “saves” are rare, and those that happen generally have early CPR and defibrillation in common. With CPR classes readily available and AEDs in almost every public location you can imagine, there’s no reason why a sudden cardiac arrest patient shouldn’t have every opportunity to walk out of the hospital, and why you shouldn’t be the one to step up and help that happen.

What is it?

Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is exactly what it sounds like – the heart stops suddenly, usually with no warning symptoms. It’s the leading cause of death in athletes under 25, and it has touched amateur and professional sports again and again. SCA is not a heart attack. A heart attack (or more properly a myocardial infarction) happens when a coronary artery becomes blocked by your poor diet and lifestyle choices, and a portion of heart muscle dies. By contrast, SCA is most often due to a structural heart problem that the victim may not have even known they had. The heart stops beating in a normal, organized manner and develops a dysrhythmia (irregular rhythm). A dysrhythmic heart can’t pump blood around the body, oxygen doesn’t go where it needs to go, and the victim dies.

Why does this happen?

There are several causes for SCA, but by far the most common in young adults in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). HCM is a genetic disorder in which the heart muscle thickens and muscle fibers aren’t arranged in the normal orderly fashion. HCM may or may not also involve an obstruction of the heart’s outflow tract – meaning blood may be impeded on its trip out of the heart to carry oxygen to the rest of the body. Many people with HCM may never know they have it – there may be a vague family history of fainting or exercise intolerance, or nothing at all. The thickened heart muscle pumps less efficiently, and can lead to eventual heart failure. The other problem with HCM is the possibility of dysrhythmia – that’s that whole thing where your heart stops pumping blood and just sits there beating erratically.

HCM is diagnosed by a thorough history and physical exam, an EKG, and an echocardiogram (an ultrasound of the heart that can detect the thickened muscle and outflow obstruction). This is one of the main things docs are looking for when they do a sports physical. The problem is there are several sets of guidelines for sports physicals, and nobody seems to be able to agree which ones to use. The American Heart Association puts heavy emphasis on history taking and physical exam, and actually recommends against routine use of EKG or echo as a screening tool. The NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL all screen their athletes annually, with the NBA being considerably ahead of the game – they require an annual echo and EKG on every player.

How do you treat it?

If you know you have HCM, you stop participating in sports. You take medications to reduce the workload on your heart, and you may need an AICD (automated implantable cardioverter-defibrillator) – an internal defibrillator that detects dysrhythmias and administers a shock to reset the heart’s electrical system.

Nerd moment: Defibrillation (shocking someone) doesn’t jump-start the heart. It interrupts the messed up electrical impulses that are causing the dysrhythmia, effectively resetting the heart so its own internal pacemaker can take back over. Yes, your heart has its own built-in natural pacemaker.

If you don’t know you have HCM and you collapse, you need CPR to keep the blood and oxygen going to (most importantly) your brain, and you need a shock to get your heart back on track. Studies have shown that bystanders using an AED to deliver shocks can increase survival rates of SCA victims to 15 to 30%. Survival rates when nobody does CPR or uses an AED? Zero. Obviously there’s no guarantee that every SCA victim can be saved, but if increase in survival with bystander CPR and AED use don’t convince you that you need to go take a class, then there’s something basically wrong with you.

Okay, so I want to take CPR.

Are you in the US? The American Red Cross and American Heart Association offer CPR classes all the time. For around $100 you can learn adult and child CPR, and how to use an AED, and the certification is good for two years. You can even take a hybrid classroom/online course (there go your “I don’t have time” excuses). You can have them put on a class for your co-workers, hockey team, or friends. In fact, if you’re a hockey coach, why haven’t you had your team take a class yet? Don’t want to come off the cash for a class? Google it. Lots of communities offer completely free CPR training. There go your “that’s too expensive” excuses.

Are you in Canada? St. John Ambulance offers CPR courses. So does the Canadian Red Cross. There’s the same range of costs you’ll find in the US – slightly more expensive options in the $100 range, and some completely free courses. The Ottawa Paramedic Service puts on free introductory CPR/AED courses from time to time. Did I mention that you can google it? You can. Google it. Go find yourself a free course and quit making excuses.

Stop making excuses. Take CPR. Save a life.

If they can finish first and they continue on this pace, they will accomplish two things we have never seen before.

The Rangers aren’t necessarily winning with fire wagon hockey lately. Since Christmas they have 12 wins, and in 8 of those wins they scored just 3 goals. So despite battling for the top spot in the league, they have the 13^th best offense in the NHL.

Since expansion in 1967, only one team has ever finished first in the NHL with an offense that wasn’t at least top-10 (The Bruins did it in 1990 when they finished 11th). In fact over 80 percent of those teams that took top spot finished at least top 3 in scoring.

Possible history maker #1: If the Rangers finish first in the NHL and do not move up to at least 11th in offense, they will have the worst offensive team to ever take top spot since expansion in 1967.

Alright, so let’s look at that offense. Their leading scorer is Marian Gaborik with 44 points in 50 games, he is the only player on the roster with at least 40 points, but he sits all the way down in 37^th overall in the NHL. We have seen teams have some success without a top notch scorer (Nashville, I’m looking in your direction), but competing for first overall? How is that possible?

Possible history maker #2 No team since expansion has ever finished first without at least one player in the top 30 in scoring

That’s right…none! The closest it came was way back in 1980 when the Flyers finished first and Ken Linseman was 26^th in the NHL in scoring. Other than that we have seen fourteen players win the Art Ross, eight players finish top-5, and five players finish top-10.

So to recap, the Rangers could finish first with the lowest offense and lowest leading scorer since expansion. Which leads us to one pretty solid conclusion, Henrik Lundqvist is awesome.

**********

Let’s head to the links

We will start with your  Elliotte Friedman 30 thoughts fix

The Kings need some scoring if they are going to make any kind of run in the playoffs (The Fourth Period)

Add another name to your “could be moved by the deadline” list (Pro hockey Talk)

Owen Nolan officially retired, and Puck Daddy counts down their top 10 Nolan moments (I think we all can agree with #1)

Pass it to Bulis counts down 10 former Canucks that could still help the team.

Could we see Jimmy Howard back in net for the Red Wings by this weekend? (Detroit Free Press)

The Good Point with an interesting piece on Patrice Bergeron

Want to be a bandwagon Bruins fan but don’t know where to start? Days of Y’Orr have you covered

and we will end today with Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Above: Not the save captured on video below

We’ve already profiled one epic save from earlier tonight, but I think this one may have it beat in a battle of goalies from Quebec. Roberto Luongo, getting the start in Nashville, came up with an absolute desperation gem and left Colin Wilson in a rather grumpy mood for his effort.

In this clip, a jam play by David Legwand leads to a scramble in the slot with Nashville on the power play. With the clock showing 9:40 in the second during a 3-3 tie, this is a pretty big sequence. When a loose puck comes to Roman Josi at the top of the faceoff circle to Luongo’s right, Josi makes the smart play and feed a wide open Colin Wilson – parked to Luongo’s left in the opposing faceoff circle – with all four Canucks below the hashmarks.

The end result was a sublime save from Luongo.

This turned out to be a game changer as Luongo kept the game tied, it eventually went into overtime and then a shootout and then the Canucks won – in that order.

There’s still nothing better than a game changing save for a professional hockey team.

Above: Really good goaltender

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and I’d have to think that Marc-Andre Fleury was a big Dominik Hasek fan growing up. Sure his Penguins bio says that he idolizes Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy, but this save is a good part Dominator in my estimation.

With the Penguins down by a goal in the second period, Fleury was quick enough to re-adjust his positioning after a huge looping rebound. Once the bouncing puck landed on the stick of Erik Cole, Fleury opted to (probably) take things a bit further than he needed to with a rolling glove save to keep the deficit to one. The Pens eventually brought it back to a tie game and a shootout.

The French commentary only adds to the awesomeness of the save. See/hear for yourselves.

Updates from said game: Penguins lost; Habs score in the eighth shootout round; Scott Gomez still doesn’t have a goal since February 5, 2011.

This is a pretty big game, no?

It’s been a while, and I may tattoo myself to remember to do this more often, but here are my picks for tonight’s NHL games – many of which will be crucial when we look back at how things shook out down the stretch come April. In two tweets, I relayed my score line predictions:

Today’s NHL Game predictions: NYR 3 – NJ 1; PHI 2 – NYI 1; FLA 4 – WAS 3; MIN 3 – CLB 2; PIT 3 – MTL 1; OTT 4 – STL 2; LA 3 – TB 2 …

— Chris Lund (@THEChrisLund) February 7, 2012

…The rest of the NHL predictions… VAN 3 – NSH 1; DAL 3 – PHX 2; WPG 3 – TOR 2; COL 3 – CHI 1.

— Chris Lund (@THEChrisLund) February 7, 2012

For what it’s worth, I’ve been better this year picking games straight up than the Over/Under or whatever else you may be throwing your money down on. In terms of official picks which have been posted on this blog/twitter I’m somewhere in the neighborhood of 17-11 (slow nights, eh?), though I should really make a spreadsheet or something to keep better track of these things. (*Opens Microsoft Excel)

Who you got tonight? Comment (below), tweet, e-mail, facebook.

With 11 games on tonight’s NHL schedule, all I can say is: Happy Tuesday!

I realize not everyone has DVR so they may not be able to catch all three of these games, and that’s all good. But if you’re going to watch a game, I suggest picking one of these.

When the all-star break ends, the playoff push begins. Because of that, the three games you should watch tonight are….

Who: The Florida Panthers vs. the Washington Capitals

Where: Washington DC (TV: FS-F, CSN-MA)

When: 7 PM EST

Why you should watch: If you’ve been following the Southeast standings at all, you should have a pretty good idea. One day the Caps are in third and the Panthers are in ninth, then the next they’ve traded places. Also, it’s about time we admit it to ourselves: Florida is legit this year.

The Caps will weasel into playoffs one way or another, I’m just not so sure they’ll overtake the Panthers (especially if they lose tonight). Florida has 59 points in 51 games, while Washington has 58 in 52. If you’re missing what I’m saying here, this should be clearer: this is a huge game for both teams. Home ice means drawing the six seed instead of one of the top two (Boston, New York or Philly) – if either team hopes to go remotely deep, they need to win that division.

***

Who: The Phoenix Coyotes at the Dallas Stars

Where: in Dallas (TV: FS-A PLUS, FS-SW)

When: 8:30 PM EST

Why: Dallas and Phoenix are both two points behind the Minnesota Wild for the eighth and final playoff spot in the West, and these head-to-head games are starting to feel more important.

To go with that: Phoenix is coming off back-to-back wins against the first place Detroit Red Wings and the third place San Jose Sharks, and are starting to make their push. Dallas is also coming off a big win, taking down the team they’re both chasing, the Minnesota Wild.

Points are huge right now, and with Phoenix playing their final 28 of 29 games against Western Conference opponents, the Stars can’t afford to let them sneak ahead in the standings.

***

Who: The Toronto Maple Leafs vs. the Winnipeg Jets

Where: Winnipeg (TV: SNET-O, TSN-JETS)

When: 8:30 PM EST

Why: As I mentioned earlier, things start getting a little more important after the all-star break, and these are two teams who need these points…just for different reasons.

The Jets sit 10th in the East, three up on the team behind them (Tampa), but seven points behind the 8th and final playoff spot with only one game in hand. That said, they’re only five out of the lead in the Southeast, and that might look to be the best route for them to make playoffs. All that is a bunch of words that mean one thing: it’s now or never for them. They can’t afford to fall farther behind now.

As for the Leafs, well, they’re on a bit of a roll, and while it’s not easy to win in Winnipeg, they’re still Winnipeg, not the Bruins. If you want to be an elite team (and they hope to be, only four points out of home ice advantage), you have to win these games.

It’s going to be a good night in front of the TV, friends, soak it all in. When football’s playoffs ended, it occured to me that it won’t be too long before ours are upon us.

If you’re someone who uses your weekend to, y’know, actually “do stuff,” then you may have missed some of the best highlights from the weekend that was.

And hey, if you’re someone who prefers to “do nothing” and stay in (which is fantastic in itself), then maybe you just want to see the best highlights over again.

Either way, here you go: the best hit, fight, save and goal from the weekend.

After getting the starting nod in six straight games, it’s become obvious that the Edmonton Oilers are giving Devan Dubnyk his chance to be an NHL starter.

Paul Brothers from theScore caught up with him to talk about his masks the other day, and he was kind enough to give us a tour of those and explain why he chose the looks he did.

With inspiration from Bill Ranford and Freddy Brathwaite, we present Face Paint with Devan Dubnyk.

I apologize for the amount of Systems Analyst posts that have been Leafs-or-Caps-centric, but hey, they just keep getting involved in goals with noticeable breakdowns.

Last night was another one of those times, as the Leafs poured in six on the hapless Oilers defense. We could’ve gone over a number of the goals from last night, but this one was the best example of defense gone wrong (and offense gone right).

First, take a look at the goal:

As you can see from the first screenshot, the Leafs have just dumped the puck in, and Oilers’ defenseman Jeff Petry is in a footrace with the Leafs forward Matthew Lombardi for it. Phil Kessel is providing east-west support, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is the first man back in the zone (and the centerman), so he’s going to be playing low.

We’re two on two.

Lombardi is going to get to the puck first (the puck is being wrapped, if you can’t tell by my awesome illustration). Since they’re two-on-two, what Petry should do when he sees Lombardi getting to it ahead of him is glaringly obvious – get body on Lombardi, and try to separate him from the puck. At least get in a puck battle. Instead, he sees Kessel and tries to outsmart Lombardi by taking away the place he would have gone with it – behind the net to his F2, Kessel.

That guess-read by Petry puts the Oil on their heels – Lombardi reads off Petry’s read, and curls back. This means he now has solid possession with time and space.

Nugent-Hopkins initial thought was that he had Kessel (seeing that Petry and Lombardi were in a footrace for the puck), but now the separation between Lombardi and Petry is too big (Petry came to a full stop), and somebody has to put pressure on the puck, so RNH switches – he’s going to head out to cover the puck carrier now.

Lombardi gets his head up, and sees his linemate Tim Connolly coming into the zone. Meanwhile, Edmonton’s Petry lets his new check after the switch, Kessel, skate by without any pressure.

Just take stock of how bad this attempt at defense is right now. As of this second, nobody is within a stick’s length of their (or any) guy. They’ve barely sorted out who has who – I’ll assume Petry is playing soft (?) on Kessel and waiting for him to come to him. Barker, on the other hand, defends ice this entire shift instead of players. When the third forward enters the play here, he doesn’t go through with him. All in all, it’s the exact type of non-physical defense six-foot skill guys drool to play against, and kill.

So as the arrows showed above, Lombardi is moving up the wall so he can become the high guy (he’s out of frame in the next shot), so Connolly pushes low and goes east-west. He grabs the puck, and Cam Barker still hasn’t decided who or what to cover, so he heads to the front of the net as most d-men do.

Take a moment to reflect on Petry’s shift so far. Passes up a hit. Make a wrong guess. Covered for by RNH. Beat by the Lombardi rim coming back. Still hasn’t really had a check. And now he’s….dogging it out of the corner while Kessel heads to the net.

Connolly takes the puck all the way back behind the net, and being that he has no pressure, he has time to carry on and get his head up. Lombardi does something I’ve talked about loving before – he basically leaves the zone entirely, gets lost, and comes back in. But we’ll get to that in a sec. Here’s where we’re at:

Barker is now going to head out to cover Connolly, but he’s given him too much space. Now Connolly gets to here, and sees Lombardi returning to the slot:

Between Hemsky, Petry, Barker and Smyth, they’ve left a comically big soft spot. You’ll notice where Nugent-Hopkins is looking – directly at the puck, and he forgets his guy for just a second. Please note the amount of contact that has been made, which is precisely none. These Leafs forwards might as well be at McDonald’s, cause they are LOVIN’ IT. Also note that Petry/Barker have taken turns defending the crease, despite there not being any Leafs there.

Lombardi gets the puck, and Petry tries to come out to front the shot. Dubnyk braces for the shot. But Lombardi’s vision here is insanely good. He sees the direction Kessel is moving (look where Kessel is when he makes this decision, wow), and sells the shot.

RNH realizes his guy is heading behind the net, but that the step he gave him with his momentary puck-stare lapse is going to double if he tries to chase him the long route, so he opts for the shortcut. Kessel essentially uses the net to run a pick.

Once everyone else has bitten hook, line and sinker, it’s just a matter of execution – he moves the puck to Kessel on the backdoor…

And Kessel’s a goal-scorer, man. That’s going in.

If I’m running the Oilers video session on this, I’m losing it. You can handle breakdowns, but as I tweeted earlier today, that defense was listless, unfocused, and a whole bunch of other things that have nothing to do with your talent level. John Tortorella would give someone a Stone Cold Stunner in that dressing room to send a message.

Don’t get me wrong, when you see bad defense, you still have to convert - full credit to the creative Leafs forwards there, but overall, that was one poor d-zone showing (for more on the Oilers D showing those traits, watch what Corey Potter does on Lupul’s goal after the 2-on-1. You still have a guy, man.)

theScore’s video team was inspired by Ilya Kovalchuk knocking Brayden Schenn to his knees this weekend, and because of that, savages like myself were given a gift. For whatever reason, I find fights between offensive-minded point-getters endlessly entertaining.

This is the Top 10 NHL Non-Fighter Fights – Gretzky’s “fight” didn’t quite crack the list because, y’know, it was relatively awful. But the rest of these…not too shabby for guys whose hands are best used to do something else.

Starting at 10 and working our way down….enjoy.

Did I write about Kovalchuk just so I could use this picture of him with a silly expression on his face? Maybe.

When the New Jersey Devils traded for Ilya Kovalchuk in 2010, I must confess that I scoffed. I had an image in my head of who Kovalchuk was – an elite goalscorer with no concept of or interest in the defensive zone – that completely clashed with the ethos of the Devils, a team that has been built from the goal out ever since Martin Brodeur skated into Newark.

I admit, it was an image of Kovalchuk that was largely influenced by what I had heard rather than what I had seen. I didn’t make a habit of watching Atlanta Thrashers games so I had a very limited view of Kovalchuk as a player. But the consensus was that Kovalchuk was a one-dimensional scoring forward and I went with the consensus.

After putting up a point-per-game for the Devils after the trade, they signed him to a 15-year, $100 million contract (after the NHL rejected his 17-year, $102 million contract). He then proceeded to have the worst season offensively of his career, scoring fewer than 40 goals for the first time since 2002-03. He finished the year with 60 points and a dreadful minus-26 plus/minus (fifth worst in the league), which, combined with a devastating injury to Zach Parise, led to the Devils missing the playoffs.

Unsurprisingly, that led to a few questions: was the Russian sniper worth the long-term commitment? Though it is not a fair comparison, I have to admit that the first player that jumped into my mind was Alexei Yashin, who was traded to the New York Islanders, signed a massive, long-term contract, then sharply declined, leading to an expensive buyout that is still on the Islanders’ books. I was worried that the Devils might end up in a similar situation.

I was very, very wrong. Clearly, I didn’t really know Kovalchuk.

Kovalchuk’s knockout punch on Brayden Schenn might be hogging the spotlight at the moment, but what is grabbing my attention is how Kovalchuk is contributing in every other aspect of the game. His commitment to the defensive side of the puck is noteworthy, and he’s once again putting up the kind of offensive numbers that make him one of the elite forwards in the NHL.

Maybe it was not being named to the All-Star Game that did it. The Devils didn’t have a single representative at the festivities in Ottawa after rookies Adam Larsson and Adam Henrique bowed out with injuries and, since the break, Kovalchuk has 10 points in 4 games, catapulting him into the top 20 in goals and points. He is now ninth in the league in points-per-game and is third in the league in shorthanded points.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention: he plays a regular shift on the penalty kill now. Kovalchuk averages over a minute per game short-handed and has received effuse praise for his penalty killing from his coach.

Playing on the penalty kill hasn’t reduced his importance on the powerplay: Kovalchuk leads the NHL in powerplay ice time, averaging 5:09 per game as he plays on both powerplay units and essentially doesn’t leave the ice during the man advantage. It is, admittedly, not a perfect situation, but it is a necessary one. The Devils simply don’t have the personnel for two strong powerplay units, particularly on defence, so Kovalchuk fills the need.

Despite the massive minutes on special teams, Kovalchuk still leads all NHL forwards in even-strength ice time, as he frequently double shifts with the fourth line in New Jersey. Unsurprisingly, he also leads all forwards with 24:42 in total ice time per game and is 16th among all players.

A further sign that Kovalchuk is doing absolutely everything for the Devils? New Jersey currently has the best shootout record in the league at 9-1. Kovalchuk leads the league in shootout goals this season with 8 in 9 attempts. Those two facts are connected.

The only possible way that Kovalchuk could be contributing more to the Devils right now is if he strapped on goalie pads and spelled Martin Brodeur and Johan Hedberg for awhile. Actually, considering Brodeur’s brutal .895 save percentage, that might not be a bad idea.

Once again scoring at a better than point-per-game pace, Kovalchuk seems intent on reminding everyone that his hands, feet, and release are among the quickest in the NHL. But that’s just how it seems: the truth is that Kovalchuk doesn’t feel the need to prove anything individually. He’s completely committed to team success, which has completely changed my perception of him.

This quote from Kovalchuk after scoring his 750th career point on Sunday told me everything I need to know:

“I’ll trade all those points to be one day in the Stanley Cup final.”

Scoring

The Detroit Red Wings have the 6^th best offense overall in the league with 3.07 goals per game, at home that number jumps to 3.82, good for first in the league. They are tied for the least amount of home games played in the NHL, yet have the 3^rd most total goals. The Blues on the other hand don’t really score…well…anywhere. They average 2.83 goals per game in St Louis, which sits them in 17^th. Winner: Red Wings

Defense/Goaltending

There are 4 teams in the NHL that allow an average of under 2 goals per game, The Rangers, Kings and the two teams we are presently talking about. The St Louis Blues have the best home defense in the NHL and have had that “problem” of really not having a clear cut starting goaltender, and it seems to be working. Jaroslav Halak has 17 home starts, Brian Elliott has 12, which has equaled out to 1.65 goals allowed a game. Jimmy Howard has had a great season, but that tandem has been great at home. Winner: Blues

Leading Scorer

Pavel Datsyuk leads the Red Wings with 54 points, 28 at home and 26 on the road. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a good thing to see your best player producing almost the same numbers regardless of location. However, we are trying to figure out who is the better home team. David Backes has scored 25 of his 37 points on home ice, that’s 68 percent. Winner: Blues

Streaks

The Blues have had 5 difference home winning streaks of at least 3 games. The Red Wings have won 17 in a row at the Joe and are now 3 wins away from matching the NHL record. Winner: Red Wings

Winning

But it all comes down to “W”s. The Blues have 22 home wins (most in the NHL) , but they have played 29 games. The Red Wings have 2 less wins, but have done it in just 23 games for a winning percentage of 87 percent. That’s impressive and it gives the Red Wings the overall win in this discussion. However, as impressive as both teams have been this year, I don’t think the record books will be altered in any way. The ‘76 Flyers and ‘96 Red Wings had 36 wins at home. This year’s Red Wings would need 16 wins over the final 18 home games just to match it. So no record, but definitely impressive home seasons for both teams

Overall winner: Red Wings

********

Let’s head to the links

This is not the best way to get more power play time in Buffalo (Buffalo News)

The closer we get to trade deadline day, the more names get thrown on the “might get moved” list. Case in point: Rick Nash (Pro hockey Talk)

This is something I have complained about for a while. The NHL gives out assists way too easily and one was given out on a rather historic night (The Hockey News)

Turns out Maxime Lapierre’s hockey pants were totally on fire (Pass it to Bulis)

I’ve seen some bad hockey profile pics, but this one takes the cake (Dirty Dangle)

Hey ladies…want to go out on a date with Tyler Seguin? (Days of Y’Orr)

Anaheim Calling looks at Brian Burke vs. Bob Murray (no there is no barn fight involved)

One of my favourite things that The Royal Half does is Pundays. Mainly becasue it makes me happy and sad at the exact same time.

The Pens are in Montreal tonight, and the guys at The Pens Blog look at the top 5 Montreal Typical* moments in that match-ups history. (* Thank you Peter Laviolette for that gem)

Oh yeah…Sid skated with the Pens yesterday. Here is the scrum after he got off the ice

Lindy Ruff, after getting accidentally leg-swept by Leopold. Explanation within.

While Systems Analyst, The Whiteboard and Beerability have entrenched themselves as steady features on Backhand Shelf (on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday respectively), I’ve yet to lock down a fun Monday feature. Thus, a new one is born.

For those of you who weren’t able to catch all the news from the weekend that was, and want to get back on top of things for the week ahead (especially before the night’s games), I give you One-touch passes: your mid-Monday catch-up. We’ll share everything you need to know from around the NHL, and include all the best hockey stories from around the ’net in an old Bourne’s Blog format where we touch on a lot of things quickly, and pass you off somewhere else if you care to go in-depth.

And of course, I’ll be sure to include all the fun stuff that’s not-so-newsworthy, like our first item.

Let’s get to ‘er.

***

As you may have guess from 24/7, Brian Boyle is a Massachusetts kid. Thus, he’s a fan of the New England Patriots.

Well, he lost a bet on that game to a Giants fan, one Brandon Prust. From our friends over at Pro Hockey Talk, enjoy: 

***

Good news! Sidney Crosby is back skating with the team. Bad news! He says his status in unchanged.

Basically, he doesn’t like skating by himself, and the other injured guys were getting healthy enough to practice with the team, so he figured he’d join the party. This seems a little more logical to me than the common thought process “Oh, you’re concussed and kinda depressed? Try skating alone and shooting pucks into a sad, empty net.”

***

More from Pro Hockey Talk: Luca Sbisa of the Anaheim Ducks was talking on his cellphone while riding his beach cruiser bike in Newport Beach (why yes, I would like to play for the Anaheim Ducks, thank you for offering), hit a curb and double-bounced his face off the concrete. He’s okay, which leaves us morally clear to play the following clip:

***

Ilya Kovalchuk fought Braydon Schenn this weekend, which helped him complete the Gordie Howe Hatrick. Kovalchuk gets pigeon-holed into that “Euro” skill guy mold, but lets not forget he’s 6’2″ 230lbs. Here’s video of him landing a knee-buckling right on Schenn.

Kovalchuk also has 50 points in 47 games this year, 22 of which are goals. So y’know…he’s earning that paycheck right now. Well, as much as a guy feasibly can, anyway.

***

The Senators are free-falling. Their last win came seven games ago on January 19th, and on Saturday night the Leafs put the boots to them with a 5-0 beatdown. They’ve played two more games than everyone in the Conference but Carolina (who’s in last), and they’re down to 7th, three points up on the Washington Capitals, who will inevitably catch them (they’re also one point ahead of Toronto, who’s in eighth). Winning cures everything, and right now, they need some W’s like the cast of Jersey Shore needs Z-Packs.

***

Coaches are getting dinged-up all around the League in practice (okay, in two places), for some reason. At morning skate in Toronto, Oilers coach Tom Renney took a puck to the mind and needed stitches. And in Buffalo, Jordan Leopold accidentally pulled a leg-sweep on a backwards-skating Lindy Ruff (Leopold had been taken down during a drill), who’s status is still unknown. Sounds like he went down on his right arm pretty hard, but was fortunate enough to avoid hitting his head on the ice.

(Update: Ruff has three broken ribs. Guh that’s painful.)

And lastly…

***

Tonight in NHL action: Detroit is in Phoenix, Calgary is in Anaheim, and the Oilers are in Toronto. The Leafs need every point they can get their grubby little mitts on right now, as a win leap-frogs them over Ottawa into 7th, and you have to get ahead knowing the Capitals aren’t about to miss playoffs. The Battle of Ontario: she is relevant this year!

And with that, you’re allllll caught up.

College hockey fans are to hockey what hockey fans are to other sports.

They feel slighted, like some niche group that isn’t worthy.

They feel like people think all good NHL players come from major junior, and gosh darnit, if they’d just pay attention, they’d see how great their niche is. Because of that, they’re quick to bring up the alma mater of every NHL player who’s worth their salt.

After a Sabres’ goal: “That Tomas Vanek was a University of Minnesota Golden Gopher, don’tchaknow.”

Or maybe they’re more like Canadians – we can’t listen to a single awful song by one of our musical exports without telling our American friend “Did you know Bieber’s Canadian?”

Anyway, for those of you who fit into that college hockey niche, now you can be more informed than ever. Here’s your opportunity to find out every name with college hockey roots on every single NHL team, and more.

College Hockey Inc. launched this page today. You simply select the two team names that are playing that night (or any night) under the headings ”Team One and Team Two” and voila – you have the names of the players, staff, players in the minors and the college draft picks for each organization. On top of that, each name comes with a few tidbits of information about their college career and their transition to the bigs.

Now when you feel the need to heap college hockey knowledge on unintested listeners, you’ll have more ammo than you’ll ever need. “Did you know Mike Mottau went to Boston College?” (…Not only did I not know that, but I also didn’t know he won the Hobey Baker in 2000. See? It’s a great site.)

(Stick-tap to @twolinepass for linking me to the site.)

Today on the Backhand Shelf Podcast, Pizzo and I discussed the Ilya Kovalchuk/Braydon Schenn fight (and other superstar fights of the past), Scott Gomez and the one year anniversary of his last goal, the Philadelphia Flyers being unable to beat the New York Rangers, our favourite teams to watch play, our current NHL power rankings, and we catch up with Jackie Redmond for a few “off the beaten path” type stories.

You can listen to it here:

Download it here, and subscribe on iTunes here.

“But you let in Eddie Shore!”

“It says no Eddies. We’re allowed to have one.”

One of the common historiographic sayings is that, “History is written by the winners.” Now, this is often used as a bit of an analog to ‘might makes right’, as though it represents conquerors rushing into cities and inscribing their version of events in the blood of slaughtered children. Of course, sometimes it works exactly like that, but other times it’s a little more complicated. Sometimes what is being glossed over in the history the winners write is not the brutality or evil that brought the powerful to power, but rather the random, contingent, frankly silly accidents that underlie the foundations of venerable old institutions. For example, the NHL version of history doesn’t talk a lot about its origin story. This is not, as some say, because that origin is especially sordid or unscrupulous, but because it’s rather embarrassingly childish. Here it is.

***

The NHL was not the first professional hockey league in North America. That distinction belongs to the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association, which in 1908 kicked out its amateur teams, dropped the term from its name, and for one glorious season functioned as the all-pro Eastern Canada Hockey Association. A year later, in the course of a rather elaborate dispute which is not the subject of the present article, the ECHA disbanded and reformed, some four teams richer, as the National Hockey Association.

For the eight years the NHA survived, the core of the Association was comprised of four teams: the Ottawa Senators, the Montreal Wanderers, the Quebec Bulldogs (all survivors of the ECHA) and the newly-minted Montreal Canadiens. Now, the thing one must remember about the NHA was that this whole professional hockey thing was more or less completely new at the time. There had been professional players kicking around for years, but throughout the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th, the hockey ideal was the amateur sportsman, who played hockey only for the pure-hearted love of the game and earned his wages elsewhere. The pros who existed before the NHA were considered slightly shady characters, often taking their money under the table and frequently getting kicked off teams when the payments came to light. The NHA, along with its western counterpart the PCHA (Pacific Coast Hockey Association), were the first sustained attempts to make and market professional hockey as a spectator sport. It was an experiment. They were, in large part, making it up as they went along.

In any situation where everything is new and parties are competing with each other for tactical and financial edges, there are invariably conflicts. Lots of conflicts. The men of the NHA were bickering with each other constantly over every imaginable issue: salaries, contracts, gate receipts, travel schedules, playoff formats, player rights transfers, penalties, everything. Every facet of the game was up for debate at any time, and the debates were often heated.

What made the NHA work- the only thing that made it work, to the extent that it did- is the same thing that makes every nascent sports league work: the delicate balance between the all-out pursuit of personal advantage and self-interested cooperation. Everyone wants to win, everyone wants to make money, but no one can win or make money without the functional structure needed to put on a season. So there develops a kind of push-and-pull rhythm, each owner pushing for advantages when they think they can get them, but pulling their punches before becoming too destructive. They’ll fight on one issue, then compromise on another. They pick their battles, and although it’s always chaotic, it creates a tenuous balance of selfish behavior that serves to keep the league functional.

The owner/operators of the Senators, Wanderers, Bulldogs, and Canadiens had this balance. They were the best of frenemies, jovially poaching each other players and returning them, refusing to pay fines and then paying them, demanding rule changes and then conceding them. Every year was a new negotiation, but for three years, from 1910 to 1913, they were able to work things out more or less smoothly.

Then, in 1914, they decided to bring in Toronto, and everything went to hell.

It wasn’t a bad idea. It made a lot of sense, in theory. Toronto was Canada’s ‘Second City’ and had just recently constructed its first proper indoor rink. Initially, the NHA members were uniformly and justifiably enthusiastic about opening up this new market. To help mitigate the travel expenses and foment local rivalries, they started up two Toronto franchises at once: the Toronto Hockey Club, run by Frank Robinson, and the Toronto Ontarios, run by a one Eddie Livingstone.

The authors of the primary source I used for this piece, a 2002 tome called Deceptions and Doublecross: How the NHL Conquered Hockey, takes such a hagiographic view of old Eddie that they might as well canonize him. It portrays him as a beacon of honesty and moral principle in a dark age, the one man fighting for what was Right against the corruption and venality of the other NHA owners. But despite the authors’ best efforts to make him look like a hero, it becomes pretty obvious that Eddie Livingstone was nothing more or less than a gigantic pain in the ass.

The thing about Eddie is that his commitment to his ‘principles’- which often aligned rather neatly with his own self-interest- was so intense, so noisy, and so vindictive as to make the man impossible to work with. A week after joining the NHA, he tried to steal a player the PCHA already controlled the rights to, thereby jeopardizing the transfer agreement between the two leagues and inspiring the Patrick brothers to threaten an all-out raid on Eastern talent. Mid-season, he abruptly changed the name of his team from the Ontarios to the Shamrocks and correspondingly redesigned their uniforms from orange to green. When the NHA arranged some exhibition games in New York and Boston to test the American hockey market, he demanded that his team be sent despite their last-place record; when the Association refused, he set up his own competing exhibition series in Cleveland. When the Toronto Hockey Club was going to fold and its players redistributed to other teams, Eddie abruptly came out and said that he had sold the Shamrocks to another unnamed buyer and bought the THC, then set about quietly transferring all his talent. When the NHA finally pressed him to finalize the sale, it turned out that there was no buyer for the Shamrocks and Eddie couldn’t afford to either run or staff both teams, and at the last minute the Association was forced to dissolve the team, eat the cost, and shorten the schedule to accommodate a five-team season rather than a six-team one. He fought with the owner of the only arena in Toronto over gate receipts, got his team locked out, and petitioned the NHA to relocate his franchise to Boston, forcing the Association president to intervene in order to keep the game in Toronto. He bribed players from the PCHA to transfer to his team just before the playoffs, despite the fact that he didn’t own their rights. Thinking that the attrition of players due to injury made whole-season records an ‘unfair’ evaluation of a team, he demanded a playoff format wherein the winner of the first half of the season plays the winner of the second half. And when World War I came around and the Canadian military allowed all the hockey players who had joined up to play half a season in the NHA as military team, Eddie was the only owner who insisted that nobody who he owned the rights to could play with the 228th Battalion squad. In short, if there was any way at all a given situation might be twisted so as to piss everyone off, Eddie would find it.

But there is one particular incident that shows, more clearly than any other, what a tremendous, exhausting headache it was to share a hockey league with Eddie Livingstone. In 1916, Eddie’s Shamrocks employed three brothers on the team, the McNamaras of Sault Ste. Marie. Their father fell ill, and the boys, being dutiful sons, put aside hockey and made their way up north to be on hand for the family should the worst happen. Now, despite the fact that Livingstone apparently had multiple weeks notice that his players would not be able to make one of their games, he petitioned the NHA that the game be cancelled and the schedule rewritten accordingly. The NHA refused, as there was no such provision in their rules, and insisted the game go ahead as planned. Eddie whined that he would have only six of his nine players, and it wasn’t fair to expect him to play with a reduced squad. The Association helpfully pointed out that the rules allowed him to find replacements, but Eddie refused, on the grounds that he didn’t have enough time to find anyone good enough. Instead, he went to the papers and called the NHA ‘absurd and inhuman’ for failing to rearrange the schedule to accommodate the McNamara family crisis. The Association held firm and said he can either play the game with the players he can find or it’s a forfeit. Fine, said Eddie, I’ll forfeit, I’ll forfeit this game and ALL MY GAMES FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON. So they held an emergency meeting, and Eddie demanded a make-up game at the end of the season, to count in the standings in addition to the forfeited game, and also that he shouldn’t have to pay the standard $300 forfeiture fee to the opposing team.

It is said if you go to the hotel where this meeting was held, and you go to the exact same room on the exact same hour of the exact same day, you can still here Frank Calder’s exasperated sighs. In the end, the Association ended up paying Eddie $300 just to shut him up.

You see the problem? Eddie does not pick his battles. Eddie does not fight on this hill and cede that one. Eddie fights about everything. With everyone. He fights with his players, he fights with the other owners, he fights with the Association officials, he fights with other leagues, he fights with his arena. This is a man who would start a fight with the Canadian military during WWI. When he doesn’t get his way, he lies; when his lies are found out, the threatens to quit. When they try to accommodate him, he makes insane demands; when they don’t accommodate him, he sues. The problem with Eddie is not really that he’s wrong, it’s that he can’t keep the balance. He’s always pushing and never pulling, and it’s forcing the League from crisis into crisis.

By 1917, a mere three years after they brought Eddie into the NHA, the association is trying everything they can to get him out. They try to bribe him, and he refuses. They try to eject him, and he sues. They bring him back, he demands that they expel the Wanderers and furthermore that each team involved in the attempted expulsion pay him $5000. The NHA, unable to resolve the troubles, is forced to suspend the season.

Now the owners have a problem. According to their own rules, they cannot forcibly eject a member team, but Eddie is so committed to his vendettas that he’s willing to scuttle whole seasons because of it. There’s no legal way to have the NHA without him, and no practical way to have it with him. And so, in November of 1917, the four owners of Senators, Wanderers, Bulldogs and Canadiens meet very quietly in Montreal, in another hotel room, and very quietly decide that they are all going to withdraw their teams from the National Hockey Association,  and enter them into an entirely new and separate entity, the National Hockey League.

Or, as I like to think of it, the No-Eddies Hockey League.

 ***

Sources:  As mentioned in the post, the material in this article was taken largely from Deceptions and Doublecross: How the NHL Conquered Hockey, by Morey Holzman and Joseph Nieforth.

Left to right: Kevin Bieksa, Roberto Luongo, Mason Raymond, all members of the Vancouver Canucks' "scapegoat trio". (Credit to Canucks blogger @ArtemChubarov for that term)

Something funny happened in Denver Saturday afternoon. Vancouver’s Kevin Bieksa, after playing one of his worst games of the season against the Colorado Avalanche, made a diving save off an empty net attempt with his team down 2-1 with under a minute to go before recovering a curious bounce from an Erik Johnson clearing attempt that hit the stanchion and scoring the tying goal with 34 seconds on the clock.

Then, as the game head to a shootout, Vancouver fans online (at least the ones I have the pleasure of following on Twitter) seemed to be irate that Roberto Luongo had been left in for the shootout and that Mason Raymond would be the Canucks’ second shooter.

I discussed the frivolities of the shootout last week in this space and there’s some of evidence to suggest that the shootout is little more than a glorified coin flip. Perhaps there’s seven or eight guys at each end of the “good or bad” spectrum that can really make a difference in a team’s fortunes. As far as I’m concerned, Roberto Luongo isn’t one of them.

Roberto Luongo's recent play is the only thing keeping the Canucks in games.

Two days earlier in a game against Detroit, the Canucks were heavily out-shot early and Luongo had kept the team in it, making 40 saves en route to a 3-3 tie that ended up with the Canucks’ money goalie looking like a bit of a fool on shootout attempts from Pavel Datsyuk and Jiri Hudler.

As for Mason Raymond, he’s drawn a lot of criticism for his play on the local airwaves for being a perimeter player and a floater, or something to that effect. Raymond for the last two years has played below his potential and not as the second-line scoring winger a lot of media and fans in this town (occasionally, I call Vancouver home) expect him to be. He had just 15 goals last season (albeit in 70 games, therefore an 82-game pace of just below 18) and has just 6 in 27 games so far this season.

So, naturally, Raymond and Luongo were the heroes in the shootout in Denver, with Raymond scoring the only goal of the contest and Luongo making saves off Ryan O’Reilly and Gabriel Landeskog, and being fortunate enough to see Milan Hejduk wire one over the net.

None of this should be particularly surprising to fans of math, naturally. As badly as Vancouver fans like to think that Luongo is in the shootout, the truth is that he’s 25th out of 47 active goalies who have faced 50 or more shots in the shootout, better than Niklas Backstrom, Cam Ward, Miikka Kiprusoff or Ilya Bryzgalov.

A few more losses than deserved in the gimmick, and Luongo is forever thought of as a weak goalie when it comes to the shootout. Never mind the fact that Luongo dragged the Canucks into the shootout against Detroit by the skin of his teeth. Against Colorado, he was largely relied upon against as the Canucks have played some absolutely brutal hockey of late (Remember the November the Minnesota Wild had?) and was still ripped going into the extra period.

Just food for thought since I threw some football talk into this post: Is Chris Osgood hockey's Trent Dilfer?

There’s this belief in sports that one player, be it some sort of leader, usually the player who makes the most money and sells all the jerseys, has it within him to win or lose games individually. While that certainly isn’t the case with Mason Raymond in Vancouver, it is with Luongo. Regardless of his fantastic playoff run last season with a .931 even strength save percentage and earning a quality start rate of 58%, it turns out that a lot of media are still questioning his ability to win “when it counts” and the speculation on TV desks has grown rampant with what the Canucks will do in regards to their backup goaltender.

Shifting gears, the best example of the scapegoat, or the one player being able to win or lose a game singlehandedly comes in football. With Eli Manning’s Superbowl MVP yesterday, 25 of 46 players to receive that honour have been the quarterback of the winning team. 14 of 21 Grey Cup MVPs have also been of the same position, with the most recent recipient being BC’s Travis Lulay.

Boston.com’s Eric Wilbur took it a little far when he mocked the potential critics of losing quarterback Tom Brady:

But especially for you, boy wonder. It was one thing when you led the game off with a safety, which surely put plenty of faith into the heart of Patriot Nation, but just when you have the game, just when you might be able to run off the clock, you huck the thing downfield. Yes, if Wes Welker catches that thing, you’re in the clear, and fans will place the blame either way, but what happened to being safe in that situation?

That column made the rounds last night (as Deadspin’s Jack Dickey put it, the “column is satire, but it’s not clear until the last line, which most people [for obvious reasons] won’t ever reach.”) and already had at least one blog of prominence deliver a rebuttal which makes the satire very poorly-executed. Eric Wilbur isn’t particularly known for understanding comedic conventions.

You could scrub out Brady’s name in that paragraph and essentially re-write it for last season’s Stanley Cup Finals:

But especially for you, Bobby Lu. It was one thing when you led the series off with a shutout, which surely put plenty of faith into the heart of Canucks Army, but just when you have the Cup, just when you might be able to just win games at home, you give up a four-spot in Game Six. Yes, if the powerplay clicks better than 2-for-35, you’re in the clear, and fans will place the blame either way, but what happened to being solid in every situation?

In British Columbia, what to do with the scapegoats who afflict their Canucks team and have caused it so much obvious grief over the last year and a half is a constant source of chatter. The Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch threw some shit at the wall in December that picked up the Luongo trade rumours and it shouldn’t be surprising that when you type “Mason Raymond” into Google that the instant auto-search option is “trade”. People have it set in stone that the Canucks need to do something with those two players since they can’t survive with all of them for some reason.

But if either of them leave, there will just be somebody else to pick on. Such is sports.

Giants become first team to win Super Bowl with under 10 wins in regular season (9-7)

That’s a 56 percent winning percentage. Since there is now the shootout in the NHL to break ties, we have to go back to 1997 to find the last comparable champion . The Red Wings won just 38 games that season, that’s a winning percentage of 46 percent. Luckily they picked up 18 ties as well to help them finish 3^rd in the West.

Giants win 2 Super Bowls in 5 years

In a time where we are always looking for a dynasty, this might be the closest we have in the NFL right now (and no I’m NOT calling the Giants a dynasty). Again we need to go back to the Red Wings. Three Cups in 6 years between 1997-2002. Since then, we have seen 8 different champions.

Tom Coughlin becomes oldest coach to win Super Bowl

Tom Coughlin: 65 years old, Scotty Bowman: 68 years old. Yup, for the 3^rd time I have to bring up the Red Wings. Bowman won that cup in 2002, threw on skates to celebrate, and promptly retired right after. It was the 9th cup for Bowman as a coach.

Little Manning: 2 rings . Older Manning: 1 ring.

First off, everyone needs to relax with the whole “Is Eli better than Peyton?” discussion, just needed to get that out of my system. I compare this to the Staals. Eric was the first to win the cup as he did it with Carolina in ’06. Jordan followed that up with a win in ’09. They were tied at one and comparisons started. Could Marc get in on the conversation this year?

Giants beat the Pats in the Super Bowl….again!

The word “revenge” was uttered quite a few times over the last 2 weeks, but Brady and the Pats couldn’t do it. The last time an NHL team beat the same team in 2 straight finals match-ups…The Oilers over the Bruins. Edmonton  beat Boston in 1988 in a sweep, then again in 1990 (the famous “see, we CAN win without Wayne” Cup).

Bill Belichick looses last two trips to the Super Bowl

I know, it’s hard to feel bad for a coach who has multiple rings and is often called a genius. The last NHL coach to lose multiple trips to the finals without a win in between was Mike Keenen. He lost with the Flyers in ‘85 AND in ‘87, then the Blackhawks in ’92. He finally got over the hump with the Rangers in 1994.

Madonna lip syncs at halftime

This one was tough to find an actual parallel, but I did find a 6-degrees connection. Mark Messier won the Cup in 1994 with the Rangers, Messier dated Madonna, and the lips part…well that is between them.

******

Let’s head to the links

Selanne goes into his match-up tonight one goal away from matching…..(Pro Hockey Talk)

PLEASE NHL adopt this camera angle (Puck Daddy)

Does Rick Nash want out of Columbus? I know I would!  (Dirty Dangle)

When an underachieving team starts actually winning in February, the question becomes….buyers or sellers? (The fourth period)

Ilya Kovalchuk is doing…well…everything (The Sporting News)

Anaheim Calling takes a look at what should be on Bob Murrays deadline to-do list

The Flyers just cannot be at the Rangers! (Blueshirt banter)

This may sound weird, but there is a bright spot in Buffalo (Buffalo News)

and this was from Saturday, but deserves a Monday replay!

Except for being massively attractive, rich, and elegant, we beer league goalie know how you feel there, Henrik.

I’m getting my goalie mask painted soon, and for a beer league goalie, that’s a pretty big deal.

Unlike pro players, you generally only get one or two shots at making your paint special because it may be the only paint job you ever get. Not because it’s crazy expensive, but it isn’t cheap either, and it’s absolutely the least necessary thing you could ever pay for in terms of goalie gear.

But because of the anonymity of the position (guys I’ve played with for 2 years, and who get an email every game day saying who’s in net, still call me “goalie”), your gear is your identification, your mask paint especially.

It’s almost like a tattoo. Sure, it’s not embedded in my skin forever, but it creates the same powerful urge to make sure the design is relevant to me and my identity as a goalie, and also a reminder of what’s important to me.

As such, my mask design will be (drum roll) a picture of a blind squirrel carrying an upside down goal stick in one hand, glove and puck in the other hand. And a pile of acorns (nuts) on the other side.

Fierce, right? Yeah, yeah, I know. Totally not fierce.

If you’ve seen me play though, sadly, this IS representative of my identity as a goalie. I’m below average-to-bad most nights, but I get REALLY excited about glove saves. And my bottom line is all about having fun, so I think that design pretty much nails it.

I wish I were the kind of goalie who warranted a paint job with the jagged, gaping maw of some hell beast or wild animal, but I look at those and think I’d feel like a fool in them.

So, naturally, I go for the self-deprecation. Make fun of yourself before they can make fun of you.

I bring this up because, having learned to skate and play hockey starting at the ripe old age of 32, people regularly ask me how to get into playing goalie as an adult.

My gut reaction is something like: “Just don’t.” Then, “No really, it’s hard,” on to, “okay, but you better REALLY want it. Like, lifetime-of-regret-if-you-don’t-try kind of want it. Otherwise, the ‘getting started’ part is pretty heinous.”

Because really, it’s hard, physically and mentally. Okay, maybe if you’re athletic already and you’re one of those people who goes fearlessly, shamelessly balls first into everything you do, then you’ll be fine.

But I was in marching band. I’m a writer. I played softball for one day as a kid and quit because I didn’t like balls being thrown at me (and I’m talking outfield—no way would they put me on a base or behind the plate).

My biggest athletic accomplishment heretofore was walking the Portland Marathon in 7.5 hours. So, as far as athleticism, that’s about a 2 on a scale of 10, right behind “vigorous cooking” and “dog washing.” One foot in front of the other is all that was. Tenacity and stubbornness and a high tolerance for foot blisters and painful boredom.

So, when that wasn’t fun anymore (was it ever?), instead of doing something reasonable like Jazzercize, I decided to take up the Hardest and Most Important Position in Sports. Why the hell not?

Luckily, that marathon-walking tenacity and stubbornness are probably the only reason I survived the embarrassment, pain, and failure of my first year in goal. There were lots of fun bits, but it was mostly a lesson in deep, deep humility.

The biggest hurdles I’ve run across thus far:

Sportsmanship

I underestimated the fact that sportsmanship actually has to be learned. I got away with trash talking as a fullback in girls’ soccer when I was a kid because the adults weren’t within the proximity to say, “Jesus, child, that’s inappropriate.”

Now, as an adult, you’re expected to know how to be competitive while also being pleasant. The concept was totally lost on me. In fact, I still struggle with it. I’ve learned to fake it but really, if you’re not on my team, my feelings for you come from a very dark place until the final buzzer.

Then it’s beer time and we can be friends again. Especially if my team won. Still kinda hate you if your team won.

Goalie Thighs

Those pro goalie thighs I’m so eager to eye-molest aren’t come by easily, but I never really appreciated them until I became a goalie myself.

Goalie gear can weigh 30-40 lbs, so imagine holding two 20 lb weights and climbing stairs two at a time while wearing stilettos (which is sort of the dry-land balance equivalent of wearing skates on ice) for an hour. Oh, and the temperature is about eleventybillion degrees because that’s how hot it is in goalie gear.

Beyond that, most of goaltending is about going side-to-side, which apart from maybe playing tennis, isn’t something most adults are prepared to do, muscle-wise. The kind of lateral movement goalies do, especially from a down position, is the. Most. Unnatural. Thing. Ever.

Hips and knees aren’t meant to do what a butterfly style asks them to do, but eventually your body adapts (or falls apart. It’s a gamble.)

Learning to Skate

It’s easy to underestimate how good a skater you need to be to be a good goalie. It is without a doubt the biggest barrier to entry for a newbie to the position.

And it’s one thing to be able to skate, but really, goaltending is about stopping. Short bursts — forward, backward, and side-to-side — and then stopping.  Over and over and over.  And anybody who’s learned to skate will tell you, learning to stop, especially on your weak side, is one of the biggest challenges.

Mainly because you end up falling a lot and falling is way scarier as an adult, and especially because you’re probably learning to do it without gear on, so it really does hurt like a mofo to crash and burn.

It’s often said that goaltending is 90% mental and 10% physical, but this only applies once you have the base physical strength.

I remember my first stick-and-puck in the net, I was WILDLY unprepared physically. It was and hopefully always will be the most exhausting, frustrating hour of my life. It was, without question, 1000000% physical.

But 3 years later, every Monday and Tuesday night, I strap on the pads, pretend to not violently loathe my opponent, and take whatever abuse comes my way and it rarely almost kills me anymore.

In exchange, the blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut – a sexy glove save and an “awwww, F**K” from a disappointed shooter – and that keeps me coming back for more, despite the fact that all it’s really doing… is making me nutty.

Older brother Schenn probably would have fared better

Every so often a fight will happen that makes you wonder “how the heck did that happen?” Seriously, peruse the archives of hockeyfights.com and you’ll find some seriously bizarre fights.

Today we had one of those as Brayden Schenn duked it out with Ilya Kovalchuk. To the surprise of many, Kovalchuk threw down and more or less knocked Schenn out, but more on that in a moment. As I indicated in the caption, I can’t help but think Luke would have made out a little better against Kovalchuk.

In the world of regular tough customers, Brian McGrattan (now of the Predators, for those who lost track after Ottawa) took on Ryan Reaves of the St. Louis Blues in a massive heavyweight tilt. Sure it was the scripted kind that is more or less no fun from a hockey perspective, but it was entertaining.

Let’s take a look at the scraps.

First up is Ilya/Brayden:

Now for your consideration is McGrattan/Reaves:

I’m going to give the edge here to Kovalchuk/Schenn because it is more novel than the McGrattan/Reaves scrap and Kovie actually landed a pretty good shot there. Some folks were STUNNED that Kovalchuk could land a KO blow on Schenn, but let’s not forget that Kovalchuk is actually a very big and strong dude. This size and strength leads to him scoring a lot of goals. It also translates into big punches when fighting people who were, up until recently, teenagers.

What do you think Backhand Shelfers? The finesse fight or the heavyweight tilt? Comment, tweet, e-mail, facebook.

Best Broomball team ever?

The Detroit Red Wings are really good at hockey to the point where things have gotten out of hand. Every year is the year we expect them to finally have their age catch up with them and it never ends up happening. Rather, they just dominate and win and wow you with their general excellence. Is this leading to complacency in the dressing room? Probably not, but they didn’t feel the urge to practice ahead of their game against the Edmonton Oilers.

Rather, the Red Wings decided to have an in-house Broomball tournament as a team bonding exercise in Edmonton. This led to many player personnel revelations. As it turns out, Brad Stuart might actually be a pretty good goaltender and with Jimmy Howard out for an extended period of time and a Ty Conklin/Joey MacDonald tandem being relied upon to keep their season afloat, that may be good information to have.

On the game, Stuart had the following thoughts:

“I was just diving around, flopping around,” said Stuart, who played broomball once in gym class when he was 12 or 13. “The ball hit me a few times. My defense was great. I had assistant coach Bill Peters in front of me, clearing the ball away.

“When you get the chance to do something that normally you probably wouldn’t do on your own, and you have everybody involved, it’s fun.”

Pavel Datsyuk was equally impressed with the game in question:

Datsyuk said he never heard of the game before, but he used adjectives like “awesome” and “unbelievable” to describe it.

“I played lots outside with no skates, with hockey stick and tennis ball, but broomball is kind of different, it’s fun,” Datsyuk said.

As far as people who let the Wings down today:

“I was a little disappointed in Hank (Zetterberg), his effort level wasn’t so high,” Stuart said.

It’s cool to see teams do stuff like this, if for no other reason, to make themselves look a little less robotic. A team like Detroit with a ton of big name players (Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Lidstrom, etc.) doesn’t really have any notable personalities associated with them. That’s not to say they’re boring or anything, just that they’re behind a curtain to an extent.

Hockey fans who follow the top media outlets covering the game noticed that Datsyuk was opened up a bit by The Hockey News (mentor cap tip) earlier this summer by way of a fantastic series put together by Rory Boylen who had the opportunity to follow Datsyuk around at his hockey camps in Ekaterinburg, Russia in July. Highly recommend that you give it a read and get to know the man behind some of the world’s greatest dangles.

In my humble opinion, the more we hear about hockey players actually, you know, living the way human beings do, the better the game will do. That’s part of the allure of a series like 24/7 which is obviously a huge hit with hockey and non-hockey fans alike – I find a high proportion of hockey fan girlfriends enjoy 24/7, for example.

Part of the reason the NFL is such a force in sports is because of their ability to trump up drama and storylines that appeal to a bigger fanbase. You may not care about team X or Y but when you tie it to a regional rivalry or family duel, it becomes interesting for more people. The NHL could take a lesson from their football cousins and do a lot for their brand by making sure that something as simple as a team’s Broomball tournament hits media outlets.