7. The Sharks have always been an up and down franchise. A quick summary of their history shows a series of peaks and valleys. The Sharks finished with an NHL record 71 losses in 1993 and then went out and upset the Detroit Red Wings and Calgary Flames in the first round of the 1994 and 1995 playoffs. Now, this should have signalled the transformation of the franchise from expansion team to contenders, right? Nah, they finished last in their division for the next 2 seasons. After making the playoffs in 1998 and 1999, but not making it past the 1st round, they stunned the heavily favored St. Louis Blues in the 2000 playoffs by eliminating the President’s Trophy winners. Things were finally looking stable for the franchise after they finished in 1st place in their division in 2002, but keeping with the trend of highs and lows, they finished last in their division the following season. The roller-coaster ride continued in 2004, when they rebounded right back into 1st place in the Pacific Division and made it to the Western Conference Finals.

Now, this post wasn’t meant to be a history of the San Jose Sharks… Wikipedia has that covered. I’m only trying to point out an alarming trend of inconsistency with this team. The reason why I hate the Sharks is because even though it appears they’ve finally found some regular season stability after the lockout, averaging almost 108 points in four seasons since 2005, they have been the biggest chokers of the NHL in the playoffs during this stretch. The Sharks are just a Black or White franchise; Their is just no grey area with this team.

2005/06 – 99 points, best second-half of the regular season in the NHL, top-4 seeds in the Western Conference are upset in playoffs, and the Sharks lose to the Edmonton Oilers after having a 2-0 series lead. This season had Stanley Cup written all over it for the Sharks.
2006/07 – 107 points, lost in 2nd round again, this time to the Detroit Red Wings.
2007/08 – 108 points, 2nd best NHL record, but lose to the Dallas Stars in the second round AGAIN
2008/09 – 117 points, President’s Trophy. Lose in the first round of the playoffs to the 8th seeded Ducks.

Maybe the Sharks will get it all figured out one day and truly become a consistent and elite franchise. Until then, at least they can hang their hats on the fact that they can at least win “a” playoff series (unlike Calgary!)

One thing I can’t stand about expansion franchises from the past 20 years is all the retarded names they ended up with. Thrashers, Diamondbacks, Magic.. they’re franchise names born of the the PR era in sports. While I hate the name “Blue Jackets”, I guess I can understand where it comes from. Their team name kind of kills two birds ruth one stone: it pays homage to their civil war roots where soldiers in the area wore blue jackets and it gives them a marketable mascot in that stupid wasp. Forget all that, im a fan of nonsensical names that pay no homage to a location’s history or its wildlife or its industries. Take the Toronto Raptors, for instance. The franchise chose their name with a naming contest by the fans. Let’s consider the logic behind this: 8-year olds came up with the idea for the Raptors right around the time Jurassic Park came out. What the hell does a raptor have to do with Toronto? It’s ridiculous and I freaking love it! Or the Memphis Grizzlies keeping their team name after moving from Vancouver and not choosing something more ethnic to the region. If Kansas City ever gets a NHL franchise, I hope to hell they call themselves something absurd like “HC Kansas” instead of the more obvious “Tornadoes”.

Blue Jackets, screw you and your stupid name.

For a guy who had a reputation of being incredibly strong on his skates with the puck, he sure fell easily when a great scoring chance wasn’t in sight. Gutless. This is just one example of his many dives that I remember:

I’ve never understood this sense of entitlement in Canadian hockey fans that Hamilton deserves an NHL team and that the NHL would be better off with a seventh franchise in Canada? Probably it’s that Canadians haven’t forgotten 1995 and 1996 when the Nordiques and Jets left town for what were supposed to be greener pastures and poaching a US franchise back would be coldly justifying. The way I see it, a relocation to Hamilton isn’t beneficial for the league whatsoever and the only way Hamilton might make it into the NHL is through expansion; without Jim Balsillie, who has angered the governers in the old-boys club.

Gary Bettman has drawn the ire of the Canadian hockey fan by repeatedly stiffing Jim Balsillie’s attempts to move a struggling US franchise north of the border. Not that I am an enormous Bettman sympathizer, but I do commend his decision as the NHL’s commissioner to consistently stand behind floundering franchises and try turning things around. Now before anyone thinks that I’ve forgotten about Winnipeg and Quebec, I haven’t; those franchises failed in their markets because they couldn’t raise enough capital to fund new arenas that would allow them to compete during hockey’s “Great Push Forward” of the late 90’s. Bettman stood behind storied franchises like Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Edmonton when attendance was lagging and relocation seemed imminent. Ottawa had the full support of the commish’ during their financial struggles at the turn of the decade. Now all three of these franchises are among the strongest in the NHL. Same goes for the Carolina Hurricanes. That franchise couldn’t draw flies their first few seasons after relocating from Hartford. But they’ve been to two Stanley Cup Finals this decade and won in 2006 and now the fans “get it”. This is the perfect model for Phoenix, Atlanta and Florida. Success on the ice is the most important factor in fan interest. Build it and they will come. (note the exception to this rule is that gong show down in Tampa Bay)

Having said why I think hockey could work in Phoenix, here is why having NHL hockey in Hamilton won’t be of any benefit to the league. The hockey market in Canada is economically saturated, particularly in southern Ontario. There is just no more money to be made in this Maple Leaf-Mad market. Hockey fans in Hamilton will continue to love hockey whether it’s Toronto or Hamilton or Buffalo they cheer for. If they don’t get a franchise, they’ll continue to buy Leafs or Sabres jerseys. They will still tune in every Saturday night to watch the Leafs on Hockey Night In Canada on CBC. The league’s governors realize that there is little growth to be had by relocating an existing NHL team to this region. Doing everything possible to make hockey work in the struggling sun-belt markets is a fantastic way to greatly increase revenues. And considering that many of these franchises have hit rock bottom (Phoenix declaring bankruptcy, Florida not being able to GIVE tickets away, etc.), even a slow growth with a few playoff appearances would bring the league much needed interest in the Deep South. Obviously there’d be more butts in the seats if the Coyotes or Thrashers were in Copps Coliseum, but the future of the league won’t driven by gate revenues.

It’s through television deals that the economic state of the NHL is going to sustain itself. Think of it this way, if the NHL loses a US franchise in one of it’s largest markets it will have lost leverage in trying to negotiate a large dollar deal that will maximize exposure in the US. Hockey was at its peak in popularity when it was expanding and was on ESPN and FOX. These networks had incentive to market it through SportsCenter updates and syndicated programming. If the NHL wants Americans to get interested in hockey, they need to scrap that band-aid of a Versus TV deal and get some real coverage on a major sports network.

Moving a team to Hamilton isn’t going to right the slowly sinking ship that is the NHL, it’d probably have the same effect as bringing on heavy cargo. It’s time for Canadian hockey fans to let go of their anger towards the NHL for stealing two of their beloved franchises and stop hanging their laurels on that little slice of Canadiana that declares that “it’s our game”.

Canuck fans are a funny bunch. This peculiarity might come from being one of the oldest existing NHL franchises to have never won a championship, but they like to delude themselves that they are better than they are. Like the woman who is forever the bridesmaid, they reek of desperation.

Take, for example, after sweeping the just-happy-to-be-there St. Louis Blues in 2009, a Vancouver newspaper sponsored a contest for readers to plan the Stanley Cup parade route for their imminent and long-deserved championship. We all know now that they got bounced out quickly by the Blackhawks the next round. The Vancouver media should never have messed with karma by pulling such a shameless stunt. Or how about their rioting after losing game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals. I took a sadistic pleasure in watching this, but it screamed of an insecurity too long ignored.

Seeing as how their team is more or less 40 years old, its fair to say the franchise and its fans are going through a mid-life crisis. Hung up on an unfulfilled youth with unaccomplishmed goals, they fill their empty souls with expensive sports cars like Mats Sundin and buoy their sinking egos with planned parade routes. All this while fast becoming a fat and balding eyesore to their brethren of the NHL.

Vancouver, your time has gone and your chance has passed. Accept it.

The Yellow Bear Third Jersey. The Boston Bruins actually wore this jersey in the late nineties! This jersey looks like my son’s diaper after sweet potato night!

You’d figure that after all the catastrophic hurricanes the southern states have faced the past few years that the Hurricanes would be sensitive enough to consider a name change. Hey, the Washington Bullets cared enough ten years ago when kids were getting shot up and senseless litigation was being threatened their way to make the switch. Their choice? The PTA-friendly (and in-the-bum-gay) Washington Wizards; which happens to have as much in common with gang warfare as former Hurricane Sean Burke has with not beating his wife up. By this logic maybe the Carolina Mermaids would be a good switch to distance themselves from horrible memories of people struggling in the surging waves from Hurricane Katrina.

They employed the most overrated GM in the recent history of the NHL, Brian Burke. The amount of hot air he spewed during his tenure as General Manager of the Ducks could have lifted a blimp.

There are folks out there that want to say he resurrected the Ducks’ franchise, and while it is true that he turned the Canucks from a laughing stock in the late 90’s to a dominant franchise in the early part of this decade, Burke had little to do with the Ducks Stanley Cup. The foundation of the franchise had already been laid by Brian Murray. Ryan Getzlaf, Cory Perry, Joffrey Lupul and Dustin Penner were all brought into the Ducks organization during Murray’s tenure and J.S. Giguere came even before Murray. But the most important player that Murray brought into Anaheim was Rob Niedermayer. There’s no way the Ducks would have signed his brother Scott if Rob was not with the Ducks. And Scott Niedermayer was the one guy responsible for the Ducks’ turnaround after the lockout, not Brian Burke. Sure Burke was able to fleece the Oilers for Chris Pronger but that positive can be negated by the awful signing of Todd Bertuzzi to a 2-year $8 million dollar contract in 2007. That put the Ducks in serious cap trouble and the Edmonton Oilers pounced on one of his forgotten free agents, Dustin Penner. Now, in hindsight, poaching Penner from the Ducks hasn’t really worked out for the Oilers, but the tantrum Burke threw in the media for the next year was legendary. It’s a fact that if he had managed his salary cap better, he wouldn’t have lost Dustin Penner and been forced to trade a young and valuable Andy McDonald to the Blues for an aging Doug Weight.

The Ducks are such a sad franchise that only a little over a year after winning the Cup, Burke still left town with one of the most talented nuclei (that he barely assembled) in the NHL. If he truly wanted to be closer to his family I’d be willing cut him some slack but the true reason he moved onto Toronto was that it was the only market with an ego larger than his.

The Habs are a storied franchise? Hardly. The Habs won a large number of their championships when there were only six teams in the NHL and they had a monopoly on all the best French Canadian juniors. There’d be reason for the city these days to feel entitled to a championship if the Habs had won more than 2 cups in the past quarter century. And both of those cups were won only because they had to play the Flames and Kings in the Stanley Cup Final. The Oilers (1986) and Penguins (1993) were both at their best but were upset in heartbreaking game 7 losses in the second round and there is almost no chance the Canadiens would have beaten those two-time defending champs if they’d had to face them. As far as I’m concerned the only teams of recent that are allowed to have high expectations are:

• Edmonton – 5 Cups, 7 Cup Finals
• Detroit – 4 Cups, 6 Cup Finals
• New Jersey – 3 Cups, 4 Cup Finals
• Pittsburgh – 3 Cups, 4 Cup Finals

Montreal, you no longer matter.. and you shouldn’t have mattered when you did. Accept it.