Make It Now Again

Oh, hello there, 2016. Didn't see you hiding behind that loudmouth with the stupid hair. Anyhoo, this is the post where I go on about all the great New Year's resolutions I'm not going to keep this year. I did it last year and I'm pretty sure I went 0-for the lot of them. There were reasons, of course. There are always reasons.

The year started off with a thud because I wasn't running. I took a few months off to take care of my sore heels. Instead of doing the usual physical therapy route, which hadn't worked the last few times, I went to an exercise physiologist recommended by some runner friends of mine. She determined that my glutes and hips were too tight, causing a lot of the issues with my feet, so she had me do a series of stretches to address them. And sure enough, it worked. I was running pain free by March. But then I stopped doing the stretching, and within a month or so, the pain returned. I eventually figured out I had to keep stretching; I couldn't stop even after I was running again. So after another visit in July, the physiologist got me back on the right track. It took a little while but I was able to get back to the point where I was pretty much running without pain by the late fall. The only problem was I was about 10 pounds heavier than I was a year ago, so the speed I had last year was gone. I tried to cut out some of the junk and actually got through November without eating so much as a single piece of candy. But then came the holidays and I started eating like crap again as well as drinking a lot of beer courtesy of the great Beer Advent calendar Deb gave me.

Thus, one goal (not a resolution) is to drop 15-20 pounds and get back to running at the pace I was in 2013-2014, when I was as fast as I ever was because I had dropped a bunch of weight at the end of 2012. Once again, I'm trying to cut out as much sugar as possible (no desserts, no candy, no soda), eat more fruits and vegetables and reduce the beer intake. I think it's an achievable goal.

Another resolution I made last year was to write more, especially here on this blog. I had mentioned the idea of posting in the morning, but I quickly discovered that my brain's not exactly firing on all cylinders first thing in the a.m. And once again the non show-related posts were few and far between. Although by year's end, I WAS writing more...just not here. Both were to be collaborative efforts where I was going to be pitching in along with other writers. One was the revival of the Cold As Ice hockey column that Stephen Mapes and I wrote for Popblerd a few years back; Stephen suggested we revive it as a blog for this NHL season and I agreed and built a WordPress blog for it. But after the first joint post we did, it's been all me (with some nice contributions from my buddy Phil Stacey), and unfortunately, I haven't done as much as I would have liked. But I'm hoping to pick up the pace a bit in the second half of the season. The other project was an idea that proposed on Facebook for the great Popdose site about Canadian AOR artists of the '70s and '80s. I was enthused and it appeared like it would be me and two other writers contributing to it. Then it was two of us. And now it's just me, but that's okay. The series is called EhOR and it's pretty fun to do; it's also very cool to be posting for Popdose, a site I've admired for years. I was hoping to do one post a week or even every other week, but there's a decent amount of research required, so it's more like once a month. I've done three posts so far (on April Wine, Coney Hatch and Max Webster) and am working on the next one (on Triumph). It's more of a nostalgia thing for me, looking back at old Canuck acts I used to dig when I was a kid (and eventually, I'll be getting into bands I know little about).

And there's still the other stuff: I recently passed the 400th episode of my podcast Completely Conspicuous. I'll admit that partway through last year, I was entertaining thoughts of ending the show. It was becoming a chore and I was starting to question the point of continuing. But I ended the year on a strong note and have been rejuvenated a bit. Not saying I won't change my mind, but I'm forging ahead for now. The radio show, Stuck In Thee Garage, probably requires the most work of anything of the extracurricular shizz I do, but dammit, I love doing it. It's also a blast to see BFF.fm doing so well; I'm proud to be a small part of it. And I'm still enjoying writing the running column for the Salem News. Plus, there's also the fact that it's the only of these things I do in my spare time for which I actually receive compensation. But as much as I'd love to do this stuff full time, I know full well that having a full-time gig is the only way I can do things like the podcast and radio show. If it was about the money, that would be one thing. These are fun things I can do while also being here for my family and doing thing like coaching soccer, running road races and playing hockey.

The other night, we were at a New Year's Eve party and a friend asked Deb what my actual job was, since I was so busy with all this other stuff. It's a valid question, but I guess the answer is I have a lot of interests and I'm not content to just come home and watch TV (I mean, I do that, too, but still...).

It should be an interesting year. Hannah's going to start high school in the fall (WHAT?) and I'm going to be a year away from the big 5-0, which is just too crazy to think about right now. But I'm healthy, my family's healthy and happy, work is going well and I don't have a whole lot to complain about. There's even hope for my usually hopeless sports teams: the Jays made the playoffs for the first time in 22 years last fall and should at least contend this year and the Leafs' endless rebuilding project is actually making progress (and the Pats won the Super Bowl last year; not sure about this year, though). Of course, the state of the world is another thing, but let's not get depressed right now.

MAKE IT NOW! (Again.)

Fight the Good Fight

Editor's note: This originally ran as this week's Cold As Ice column on Popblerd.

We’re barely a week into the 2013-14 NHL season and already a coach has been fired (the 0-3 Flyers canned Peter Laviolette), a player has been stuck in a Dallas bathroom and the debate over the role of fighting in hockey has once again been renewed.

It didn’t take long for the season’s first shockingly violent moment to occur. Just 2:34 into the third period of last Tuesday’s Leafs-Canadiens game, enforcers Colton Orr and George Parros squared off for the second time that night. But as Toronto’s Orr slipped awkwardly, he pulled Parros down with him and the mustachioed tough guy hit the ice face first, knocking himself unconscious. Orr immediately signaled for the Montreal trainer to get out on the ice as Parros lay motionless. The Montreal crowd went from festive to silent as a bloodied Parros was treated and eventually taken off the ice on a stretcher. Ironically, a similar incident occurred two years ago in a fight between Orr and Parros, with Orr hitting the ice and suffering a season-ending concussion.  

The Parros injury was the catalyst for much discussion about whether fighting truly belonged in the game anymore. The NHL is the only major sport that condones fighting; yes, players are penalized but they’re also allowed to square off without interference until there’s a victor or the fight itself runs out of steam. The league has been trying to address the issue of concussions in the game in recent years by mandating stricter penalties for hits to the head, but obviously, a clear source of head injuries is still plentiful: the punches directed at an opponent’s skull in a fight. 

After the Parros incident (he was released from the hospital the next day, but is unlikely to play again anytime soon), general managers including Steve Yzerman of Tampa, Jim Rutherford of Carolina and Ray Shero of Pittsburgh (whose father Fred coached the Broad Street Bullies back in the day) all called for stricter penalties for fighting. Yzerman said players who fight should be ejected from games instead of simply given five-minute penalties. League officials, however, say no changes are planned at this time.

Defenders of fighting note that having a tough guy on a team provides protection to the more skilled players and often can provide a spark when a team is down. There’s no denying the fans in an arena get fired up when there’s a scrap on the ice. And of course, the NHL Players Association doesn’t want to see so-called enforcers lose their jobs if there’s a ban on fighting.

Certainly, these points have been brought up for decades now. As a kid in suburban Toronto in the 1970s, I remember the Philadelphia Flyers’ reign of terror as the Broad Street Bullies, pummeling their way to back-to-back Stanley Cups. The Flyers and Leafs met in the playoffs three straight years from ’75 to ’77, with bench-clearing brawls and strewn equipment as much a part of the play as goals and assists. I’m old school. I enjoy a good fight as much as the next guy. A fight that breaks out in the heat of a game is exciting. I love movies like “Slap Shot” and “Goon.” 

But I’m losing my patience with the dopey staged fights between goons like Orr and Parros who clearly are on the ice for one reason and one reason only. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, noted fighters like Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, Dave “Tiger” Williams and John Wensink all scored 20 or more goals at least once in their careers; they weren't limited to 3 or 4 minutes of ice time per night, basically wasting a roster spot for the occasional throwdown.

I don’t want to see the game robbed of its toughness and personality and turned into a figure skating competition with sticks. Hitting and, yes, the occasional fight, are as much a part of hockey as speed and skill. (And yes, I enjoy watching Olympic and college hockey, where fighting is not allowed.) 

But I want to see a return to the days when teams didn’t have to bring out some big stiff like Buffalo’s John Scott or Orr or Parros who brings nothing to the game. Teams like Detroit have been pretty successful for years without a designated enforcer in their lineup. Even teams who play enforcers rarely put them on the ice in important situations late in games or in the playoffs. What does that tell you?

If you’re going to have fighters in the league, let them be big players with skill like Milan Lucic of the Bruins or Evander Kane of the Jets; players who can fight if need be, but are more valuable contributing to their team’s offensive success. Of course, getting the skill level up and the goon quotient down isn’t going to be done via league rule changes. It’s going to take a change in mindset from certain GMs who currently choose to stock their teams with fighters. My favorite team, Toronto, is a prime example. GM Dave Nonis put the team in a serious salary cap crunch by insisting on signing two enforcers (Orr and Frazer McLaren) to two-year deals, which then compromised the Leafs’ ability to sign its talented young players whose contracts were up. Somehow, he managed to do it for this season, but the next offseason will be a difficult one for the Leafs.

Critics argue that the NHL will never have mass popularity while fighting is still allowed in the game. I honestly don’t care about that. Hockey’s ultimately a regional sport; you’re never going to get huge acceptance of it in warm weather areas where people never see ice and I’m okay with that. It’s not about that. The NHL should be the best hockey league in the world with the best players in the world. Goons don’t belong there; let them play in the low minors. Let’s keep the skilled players in the NHL and improve the game for everyone.

At Last

 Editor's note: This originally ran as the Cold As Ice column on Popblerd.

Nine years is a long time. We’ve seen a slew of revolutionary technological advancements since 2004: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the iPad, super-fast smartphones. My youngest daughter was born that March and is now 9. And next week, the Toronto Maple Leafs will play their first playoff game since May 4, 2004. For Leafs fans like me, nine years has felt like 90 (and fans up there are paying big bucks for playoff tickets).

The Leafs were a perennial playoff team at that point, finishing the regular season with 103 points, just one behind the Northeast Division winning Boston Bruins. Toronto had a veteran-laden squad, with captain Mats Sundin leading a team that featured the likes of Ed Belfour, Brian Leetch, Joe Nieuwendyk, Alex Mogilny and Gary Roberts. But they were knocked off in 6 games in the second round by the Philadelphia Flyers. Nobody in Toronto figured the Leafs would be out of the playoffs for one more year, let alone nine. But the 2004-2005 season was wiped out by a lockout, and when the NHL returned, a salary cap was in place that took away the Leafs’ deep-pocketed ability to sign free agents to big contracts. The pricey veterans from their last playoff either retired or weren’t re-signed, and Toronto entered into an era of mediocrity that was all too familiar to longtime fans such as myself who had witnessed the team’s awful 1980s decade.

In recent years, the Leafs have suffered through the many missteps of a few different general managers, including the outspoken Brian Burke, who was hired in 2008 but wasn’t able to deliver on the big promises of toughness and contention for a Stanley Cup. Burke was fired just before this abbreviated 48-game season (due to yet another lockout), and he no doubt was shaking his head as he watched the team he assembled finally securing a playoff spot. Led by goalie James Reimer and much maligned captain Dion Phaneuf and sniper Phil Kessel, the Leafs clinched a playoff spot last Saturday with a win over Ottawa. Much credit should be given to coach Randy Carlyle, who was hired last season after his predecessor Ron Wilson saw the team get off to a decent start but collapse in February and March.

Carlyle, who won a Cup with Anaheim in 2007, is a defensive-minded coach who is a big believer in line-matching and the need to put goons on the ice to maintain a sense of team toughness. Leafs fans have puzzled over some of his lineup decisions this season, but there’s no denying the results. Sure, it’s a short season, but who cares? I’m just happy they’re in the postseason once again. I don’t have high hopes, but it’ll provide good experience for the Leafs’ young players and if they win a round, great.

It’s still unclear who Toronto will play in the first round, but I’m hoping it’s Montreal instead of Boston. The Leafs match up better against the smaller Canadiens as opposed to the Bruins, who seem to have their number. Not to mention a Toronto-Montreal matchup would be HUGE in my native land Canada, which hasn’t seen a Leafs-Habs matchup since 1979. Montreal was the dominant team in the NHL at that point, steamrolling their way that year to their third of four consecutive Cups. They swept the Leafs in four games rather easily. This year, I’d say the Leafs at least have a shot of beating Montreal, which is all I can ask for. It’d be great if they could take a round or two; I’m not so foolish to think the Leafs could go all the way (although I sure would love to be proven wrong). But their goalie, Reimer, has been heating up, so who knows? A hot goalie can make a big difference in the playoffs, when games are much tighter.

NHL playoff hockey is the best thing going in professional sports, in my opinion. I love to watch the playoffs no matter who’s playing, but it’ll be great to see my team actually in the postseason for the first time in so damn long. And if Toronto actually experiences some success, so much the better. After so many years of disappointment, my expectations being kept low but my fingers are crossed.

City to City

This originally ran in Cold As Ice, the hockey column I co-write for Popblerd.
Even though they’re located just a few hours apart on opposite sides of the U.S.-Canada border, Buffalo and Toronto are very different cities. One’s a blue-collar burg known for heavy snowfall and chicken wings, the other’s the largest city in Canada known for its cosmopolitan image and gleaming skyline. And in the NHL, Buffalo and Toronto have been heading in opposite directions all season long.

On Feb. 6, the Toronto Maple Leafs were sitting two points out of fourth place in the NHL’s Eastern Conference and were seemingly a lock to make the playoffs for the first time since 2004. The Leafs had won three straight and five of their last six and all looked right in Toronto. And then…they hit the wall.

After that date, Toronto went on a 2-15 skid, a choke of monumental proportions. The team changed coaches in the middle of the losing streak, but it hasn’t made much of a difference and on Tuesday night, the Leafs were officially eliminated from the playoffs yet again.

Conversely, the Buffalo Sabres looked all but dead in mid-February, sitting firmly in 14^th place in the East. Since then, the Sabres have gone 14-2-4, shooting up to eighth place in the conference with a big win over Washington on Tuesday. With five games left in the regular season, the Sabres are trending upwards.

The same Sabres fans who were calling for the heads of GM Darcy Regier and coach Lindy Ruff in February are no doubt singing their praises now. Unlike their counterparts across Lake Ontario, who are facing yet another spring without playoff hockey. Toronto GM Brian Burke, one of the most brash and outspoken personalities in the league, is feeling the heat as the boos rain down night after night at the Air Canada Center, where the Leafs haven’t won since—you guessed it—Feb. 6.

The key to Buffalo’s resurgence has been the red-hot play of goalie Ryan Miller, who struggled for the first half of the season but has rediscovered his game. Earlier in the season, the Sabres suffered from a combination of poor play and injuries to key players. Now, the team’s benefiting from Miller’s return to form and unexpected offense from the trio of Drew Stafford, Tyler Ennis and Marcus Foligno, which has amassed 38 points in nine games.

The Leafs have struggled with their goaltending all season, but seemed to be in good position after Jonas “The Monster” Gustavsson got on a roll in January and designated number one goalie James Reimer returned after missing 18 games with concussion-like symptoms and reeled off a couple of shutouts over Pittsburgh and Ottawa, the last one taking place on that key date, Feb. 6. Burke and then-coach Ron Wilson had put together a young, speedy run-and-gun team led by Phil Kessel and Joffrey Lupul that could put the puck in the net but struggled in the defensive end; the Leafs had the league’s worst penalty kill as of Jan. 1, but suddenly tightened up and went most of the month without giving up a power play goal. The team was far from perfect, but it looked like the playoffs were a reality. Until the Leafs found new and excruciating ways to lose games night after night. Defense-minded Randy Carlyle was brought in to replace Wilson on March 2, but he hasn’t been able to turn the team around—not this season, anyway.

For long-suffering Toronto fans such as myself, this wasn’t really anything new. The Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967 and in addition to that 45-year drought being the longest in the league, Toronto hasn’t even made the Cup finals in that span, which is a record. The closest the Leafs have gotten was the semi-finals, which they reached in 1978, 1993, 1994, 1999 and 2002, but of all those teams, it was the 1993 group led by Doug Gilmour that had the best shot at actually winning it all. Until they ran into some guy named Gretzky, who dominated the Leafs in game 7 to send the LA Kings to their first and only Cup final, where they lost to Montreal. Prior to the last lockout in 2004, the Leafs had been perennial playoff contenders for several years but never seemed to be able to get to the next level. Post-lockout, the Leafs came close to the playoffs a few times but since Mats Sundin left town in 2008, the team hasn’t been able to replace both his leadership and his superstar ability.

Buffalo has come much closer to the big prize since entering the league 1970-71, losing in the finals in 1975 and again in heartbreaking fashion in 1999, when Dallas’ Brett Hull scored the Cup-winning goal in overtime with his skate clearly in the goal crease (which at the time was against league rules). The Sabres have had an exciting collection of players over the last several years, including Miller, Thomas Vanek and Derek Roy, but when they’ve made the playoffs, they haven’t been able to get past the conference finals. This year, if Buffalo gets into the postseason, the team could pull off some upsets and shock a few higher-seeded teams.

Meanwhile, the biggest question in Toronto is whether Burke will keep his job and return for another season. The saddest part of the situation is there are generations of Leafs fans who haven’t seen their team even come close to winning the Cup; hell, the latest generation hasn’t seen so much as a single playoff game. In Toronto, there’s always next season…to get your heart broken all over again.

Hit It and Quit It

This originally ran in Cold as Ice, the column I co-write for Popblerd.

The current saga of Peyton Manning, the surefire Hall of Fame quarterback who’s planning to continue his playing career despite a serious neck injury, certainly resonates with fans of the NHL. Not so much the specific injury, but the situation. When is the right time for an athlete to retire?

The NHL has seen several versions of this scenario play out in recent years. Most notably, the case of Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, the league’s best player, who has been out of action for more than a year with concussion issues. He returned to action briefly in November and lasted eight games before taking a few more hits to the head and shutting it down again. Crosby has been biding his time until he feels right again and has been cleared to return as early as this weekend, but one wonders if the 24-year-old, who has already won a Stanley Cup and an Olympic gold medal, should just retire instead of risk another serious brain injury.

The NHL has lost many players who were forced to retire or take long absences over the last two decades because of concussion-related issues: Eric Lindros, Pat Lafontaine, Marc Savard, Chris Pronger, and Keith Primeau, among many others. Hockey is a full-contact sport played at high speed, and its players are faster and stronger than ever before, which can lead to intentional and unintentional collisions that result in concussions (and that’s not to mention the occasional fight). Sure, the players are clad head to toe in bulky helmets and pads, but a hard hit just ends up rattling a player’s brain around in his skull, regardless of the helmet.

In the last few years, the NHL has targeted so-called head shots, assessing penalties or suspensions for hits that are deemed to be directed at a player’s head. Awareness of the issue has been raised, even if the number of incidents has yet to decline. Some argue that the equipment itself is to blame; most players didn’t wear helmets until the ‘80s and anecdotal evidence suggests there were fewer concussions when players went helmetless. Of course, back then, players would play through concussion symptoms and not admit that anything was bothering them.

Even now, that bravado creeps into the game. The NHL has a set protocol that teams must follow if a player is suspected of having a concussion. But in December, Toronto’s Colby Armstrong waited nearly 48 hours before informing the team he was feeling nauseous from a collision. More than likely Armstrong, who has missed substantial amounts of the last two seasons because of various injuries, didn’t want to be sidelined again and kept his mouth shut, but it was obviously a foolish decision.

Another sad example is the story of Boston’s Marc Savard, a talented forward who in March 2010 was the victim of a nasty blindside hit by Pittsburgh’s Matt Cooke. Savard recovered in time for the playoffs a month later, but the following January, he sustained a second concussion in a game against Colorado and the team shut him down. More than a year later, Savard still has not played another game and likely won’t ever again, although he hasn’t retired yet.

The concussions sustained by Crosby, meanwhile, have placed renewed focus on the issue. Last season, the Pittsburgh captain was on his way to the best regular season in several years until he suffered hits to the head in games on January 1 and 5. The concussion symptoms he suffered drew even more scrutiny to the seeming preponderance of hits to the head in the league.

Meanwhile, some have suggested Crosby not risk his health any further by playing. It’s a difficult position to be in. If you were Crosby and had the skills to be the best player in the game, would you walk away so easily? Putting aside the fact that Crosby is earning $9 million this season (his contract runs out in 2013), wouldn’t you want to exhaust every possibility of resuming your career before you called it quits? Then again, would you want to risk playing hockey when one hit could leave you incapacitated for the rest of your life? These are the questions Crosby is wrestling with on a daily basis, and it’s a position that nobody envies.

Got Me Under Pressure

This originally ran in Cold as Ice, the hockey column I co-write for Popblerd.
Hockey is a team sport, but more often than not, a team’s fortunes rest on the last line of defense: The goalie. You need more than just a good goalie to win, but things get much tougher for your team if your goalie can’t stop the puck.
As the NHL season moves into its stretch run and teams battle for playoff spots, every game is crucial and immense pressure is placed on goalies. Several goalies have had outstanding seasons and for the most part, that has resulted in strong seasons for their teams: Henrik Lundqvist (NY Rangers), Tim Thomas and Tuukka Rask (Boston), Pekka Rinne (Nashville), Jimmy Howard (Detroit), Roberto Luongo (Vancouver), Jaroslav Halak and Brian Elliott (St. Louis) and Marc-Andre Fleury (Pittsburgh). Others—such as Craig Anderson (Ottawa), Miikka Kiprusoff (Calgary), Martin Brodeur (NJ) and Mike Smith (Phoenix)—have kept their teams in the playoff hunt. And then there are goalies like Jonathan Quick of Los Angeles, who is having an excellent year but the Kings are still struggling.

And then there are the goalies who have underperformed this year, including Ilya Bryzgalov of Philadelphia, Ryan Miller of Buffalo and Corey Crawford of Chicago, as well as the goalies for the Toronto Maple Leafs, James Reimer and Jonas Gustavsson. The Leafs’ goalie woes have been particularly difficult to witness for this Leafs fan.

Reimer came out of nowhere last year to provide the Leafs with strong goaltending in the second half of the season and give them hope going into this season that they would make the playoffs for the first time since 2004. But after suffering a concussion early in the season, Reimer missed 18 games and Gustavsson stepped in to win some big games in January (after some initial struggles). Reimer returned and seemed to get his mojo back with a couple of shutouts in early February. But lately, both goalies have been leaky and the Leafs have found their grip on a playoff spot slipping away.

Things really came to a head Tuesday night again in New Jersey. Gustavsson gave up two weak goals through the five-hole during regulation, but the Leafs battled back and tied the game in the final minute to send it to overtime. To his credit, Gustavsson made some big saves in the third to keep the Leafs in the game. Toronto came out strong in the OT, with Jake Gardiner ringing a blast off the post and John-Michael Liles whiffing on the rebound in front of a wide-open net. At the other end, New Jersey’s Mark Fayne took a weak shot from the point that appeared to be going wide before bouncing off Gustavsson and dribbling into the net for the game-winner. It was about the most dispiriting way possible to lose a game.

Yesterday, in the wake of the loss and with his team in a 1-5-1 tailspin, Leafs GM Brian Burke finally acknowledged that he may need to acquire a new goalie at the trade deadline (which is next Monday, Feb. 27 at 3 p.m. Eastern). The rest of the team is far from perfect, but now they’re at the point where any weak shot thrown at the net has the potential to go in. Doesn’t exactly instill teammates with confidence. On the other hand, a strong goalie can keep a team in games against far better teams.

The goalie has the toughest job in team sports. Even more than a pitcher or a quarterback, the goalie must throw his body (however well-protected) in front of 220-pound players storming the net and 110 mph slap shots. Every mistake a goalie makes is magnified exponentially, especially at this time of year. Don’t think Jonas Gustavsson isn’t beating himself up over those horrible goals he gave up Tuesday night. Unfortunately for the man nicknamed Monster, that may be his last NHL game for a long time. Just as a great performance in net can bring glory, a poor outing can prove that life in the NHL is awfully unforgiving for a goalie.

Here and Gone

This originally ran in the Cold as Ice column I co-write for Popblerd.



Cynics love to complain about how the NHL regular season is meaningless, but for teams battling for a playoff spot, every game from now until the end of the season is huge. Every night, teams shuffle up and down the standings fighting to finish in the top eight in their respective conferences.

The season ends April 7, but a much more immediate date looms for many teams: the NHL trade deadline on Feb. 27. As a result, teams are busily assessing whether they’ll be buyers or sellers. Meaning teams that are Stanley Cup contenders are looking to pick up that last piece of the puzzle that will put them over the top, teams that think they could be Cup contenders are gambling that a big trade will make them contenders and teams that are rebuilding or out of the race entirely look to unload players with big contracts in exchange for prospects or draft picks.

Another factor is pending free agency; players who are unrestricted free agents are able to sign with another team with no compensation to the former team, so those teams often look to get something in return before it’s too late.

There are plenty of big names rumored to be switching teams on deadline day (or before it): Jeff Carter of Columbus, Ryan Getzlaf of Anaheim, Shea Weber of Nashville, Jarome Iginla of Calgary, Ryan Miller of Buffalo and many others. Whether any or all of these players actually get traded is another story altogether, but it makes for great speculation.

Deadline day is practically a national holiday in Canada, where interest in the NHL is naturally through the proverbial roof. The big sports networks in Canada—TSN (which is owned by ESPN), Sportsnet, Score—will all have nonstop trade coverage on Feb. 27 until 3 p.m., which is when the deadline officially hits. Although many trades aren’t announced until after the deadline.

Historically, the vast majority of deadline deals turn out to be busts or insignificant. But there have been some key trades over the years that have directly contributed to a team winning the Stanley Cup:
• 1991: Pittsburgh acquires Ron Francis, Ulf Samuelsson and Grant Jennings from Hartford for John Cullen, Jeff Parker and Zarley Zalapski. Cullen was a gifted young scorer, but Ronnie Franchise was the piece that the Penguins needed alongside Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and Tom Barrasso to propel them to their first of two straight Cups.
• 1980: The New York Islanders acquire Butch Goring from Los Angeles for Billy Harris and Dave Lewis. The Isles were stocked with young talent but had suffered early playoff exits for a few years until grizzled vet Goring provided the clutch scoring and leadership that was missing. That spring, the Islanders won their first of four consecutive Cups and Goring even won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP in 1981.
• 1988: Edmonton traded goalie Andy Moog to Boston for Geoff Courtnall, Bill Ranford and a draft pick. The trade helped both teams, as Moog gave the Bruins a solid goalie tandem alongside Reggie Lemelin, but the Oilers won their fourth straight Cup in ’88 over the Bruins with Ranford as backup, and then would defeat Boston again two years later with Ranford as the starter.
• 2003: New Jersey trades Jason Arnott and Randy McKay to Dallas for Jamie Langenbrunner and Joe Nieuwendyk. The deal paid immediate dividends for the Devils, who won the Cup that year.

There are plenty of other deals that have paid off down the line as draft picks turned into future stars. And of course, there were trades that did absolutely nothing for the teams involved. Such is the risk and the allure of the NHL trade deadline.

Play the Game

This post originally ran in Cold As Ice, the column I write for Popblerd.

The NHL is in the annual mid-season lull known as the All-Star break. It’s a time for the league to celebrate itself with a skills competition, fan festival and of course, the All-Star Game itself. There’s just one problem: The NHL All-Star Game sucks.

The game is designed to highlight the best players in the NHL, but it inevitably looks nothing like an NHL game and more like a game of pond hockey. There’s no defense, no hitting and the final score is usually something like 10-9, which is unheard of in a regular season or playoff game. It’s essentially an exhibition game with even less on the line.

In recent years, the All-Star Game has been overshadowed by other events: The Winter Classic, the skills competition and the latest innovation, the players’ draft. This was a great idea from Brendan Shanahan that started with last year’s game; the fans vote in the starting lineup (don’t get me started on how dumb THAT is—the hometown fans in Ottawa this year stuffed the ballot box and voted in four Senators to the team) and the players draft the 36 remaining players (plus 12 rookies, who will participate in the skills competition).

Last year’s draft was highlighted by the drama of who would be picked last. “Mr. Irrelevant” ended up being Toronto’s Phil Kessel, whose embarrassment was compounded when Alex Ovechkin took a cellphone photo of him sitting all alone waiting to be picked and gleefully Tweeted it. Of course, Kessel gets the last laugh this year, because he’s having a career year (and will likely be picked early since teammate Joffrey Lupul is an assistant captain) and Ovechkin just announced he’s not playing because he’s suspended.

The players’ fantasy draft takes place tonight (Thursday), the Skills Competition is Saturday night and the game itself (ahem, the 2012 Tim Hortons NHL All-Star Game) is on Sunday at 4 p.m. (all games on NBC Sports, the channel formerly known as Versus).
Of course, this problem isn’t exclusive to the NHL. As a rule, all-star games suck. Baseball tried to make its game meaningful by putting World Series home advantage on the line, but that’s unfair to teams that earned it in regular season. The NFL’s Pro Bowl is so meaningless that it’s now held the week before the Super Bowl (aka, also this Sunday), so the seven New England Patriots playing the following Sunday won’t be there. But nobody cares, anyway.

I actually attended the NHL All-Star Game in 2000 in Toronto and without a doubt, the surrounding activities were more interesting and fun than the game itself. So what’s to be done about it? All-star games exist because they’re a way for league sponsors to make a little more scratch, as well as a way for the league to throw a bone to its member cities by generating some revenue for the local economy every year.

I’d like to see the NHL combine the All-Star festivities with the Winter Classic, so that game is the spotlight and the All-Stars still compete in the Skills Competition in the same weekend. Another way to go could be to return to the old pre-expansion pastime of having the defending Stanley Cup champions play against a team of all stars. Either way, the game would be more interesting than the one the NHL is putting on now.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for any radical changes to the All-Star format, though. Just enjoy the exhibition of scoring and wait for the season to resume next week.

Language City

This piece originally ran in Cold as Ice, the hockey column I write for Popblerd.

It’s hard out here for a pimp. It’s even harder if you’re the new coach of the Montreal Canadiens and you can’t speak French.

The Habs (aka “Les Habitants”) are the NY Yankees of hockey, with more Stanley Cup championships (24) than any other team by far (Toronto is next with 13). The franchise’s storied history is peppered with the exploits of legendary players like Rocket Richard, Bill Durnan, Boom Boom Geoffrion, Guy Lafleur, Jean Beliveau, Ken Dryden and Howie Morenz, among many others.

But the team got off to a lousy start to this season, currently eight points out of a playoff spot and only two points ahead of the last place team in the Eastern conference. Montreal fired coach Jacques Martin and replaced him with assistant coach Randy Cunneyworth on Dec. 17. The move hasn’t worked out great, as the Habs are 1-6 under Cunneyworth going into last night’s game. But that’s not the big concern in Montreal; rather, it’s the fact that Cunneyworth speaks only English in a city fiercely proud of its Francophone roots.

It’s not that he needs to speak French to communicate properly to his players. The Canadiens had a claim on pretty much all Quebec-born players in the pre-expansion era (i.e., before 1967), but now the roster is peppered with Quebecois as well as Russians, Americans, Czechs, Swiss and even a Dane. Even when players come over from Europe as rookies unable to speak a word of English, they manage to get by and pick up enough words to communicate with their teammates.

No, Cunneyworth’s crime is not being able to speak and understand the pre-eminent language of Montreal. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but there were protests outside Habs games after the announcement was made. To his credit, Cunneyworth has said he plans to learn French, but it hasn’t helped that team management has come out since the announcement and apologized for hiring a coach who isn’t bilingual and stressed that Cunneyworth is only an interim coach. Way to back up your coach, guys.

Cunneyworth certainly has the resume to be an NHL coach, having had a lengthy (800+ games) NHL career and serving as a head coach for several seasons in the minors and as an NHL assistant for the last few seasons. But in such a fiercely proud city like Montreal, he doesn’t stand a chance. The city, and the province of Quebec, has resisted the incursion of the English-speaking culture of the rest of Canada. It’s surprising that Canadiens’ management so miscalculated this coaching move, given the fact that pretty much every Montreal coach has been bilingual. Maybe they figured it wouldn’t be a big deal, but obviously, they figured wrong.

The media spotlight has been white-hot since Cunneyworth’s promotion, with speculation that former Habs great Patrick Roy may step in next season as coach. Quebec Culture Minister Christine St. Pierre proclaimed that the team needed to correct the problem in the interest of the common good. I have no doubt that Celine Dion is up in arms.

It’s a really crappy way for Cunneyworth to kick off his NHL coaching career. Although I suspect if Montreal went 7-0 after he took over, the outrage wouldn’t be quite so loud.

Shooting to Thrill

This piece originally ran in Cold as Ice, the hockey column I write for Popblerd.

In any pro sports league, you’ve got debates brewing over rule changes and inconsistencies. In baseball, the American League’s adoption of the designated hitter rule in 1973 is STILL hotly contested by purists. The NFL changed its kickoff rule this season to increase the number of touchbacks (in the name of player safety), but it also angered players who in previous years served solely as kick returners because they were essentially losing their jobs. In the NHL, a perennial argument has waged since the advent of the shootout in 2005-06: Is it a valid way to decide games or a cheap gimmick?

For decades, the NHL had regular season ties. If a game was tied 3-3 after 60 minutes of play, that was that. Each team received a point and moved on. (Playoff games, however, that are tied after regulation were and are played until one team scores to win.) The league added a regular-season overtime period in the early ‘80s to reduce the number of ties and then adopted the shootout after testing it out in the minor leagues. As things stand now, if a game goes to overtime, both teams automatically get a point. If things are still tied after the OT, the teams move on to a shootout round. Each team picks three shooters to take penalty shots on the opposing goalie; whichever team scores the most goals in that initial round wins the game. If the game is still tied after three shooters each, the shootout moves to sudden death mode, with each team getting one shot until a winner is decided. The winning team gets an extra point in the standings.

I was never a fan of ties. They always struck me as an inconclusive way for a game to end. But the shootout, which had been used for years in international soccer tournaments and playoffs, just cheapens the regular season to me. That’s not to say it isn’t exciting. A penalty shot in the middle of a game gets the crowd to its feet and can be electrifying, and the shootout can be similarly thrilling.

When I was a kid growing up in Canada, I used to love a program called “Showdown” that would air between periods of games. It was sort of the hockey equivalent of the old “Home Run Derby” show, filmed in the offseason and pitting NHLers against each other in several skills competitions, but the highlight was the one-on-one. I would spend endless hours emulating it in my driveway with me as Buffalo’s Gilbert Perreault (one of the flashiest players in the league in the ‘70s) and my brother as goalie Ken Dryden. It made for great TV and great street hockey, but it’s not a great way to end a team game. You have two teams that battle it out for 60 minutes and then the game is decided by a one-on-one skills competition. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

The gimmicky aspect has also been extended to the 5-minute overtime period preceding the shootout, with each team going 4-on-4 (instead of the customary 5-on-5) to create more space and offensive chances.

And as I mentioned earlier, the NHL has kept the gimmicks out of the playoffs. Tie games go to OT and are played 5-on-5 until somebody scores, whether it’s in the first minute or in the 6th OT period. The stakes are obviously higher in the playoffs and teams play with urgency throughout regulation, and even more so if it’s a sudden death situation in OT.

So what’s the solution for the regular season? Going back to ties is out of the question, and teams won’t agree to just playing until there’s a winner; there are too many games and owners want them concluded in a reasonable fashion (most games are concluded in approximately 2 hours and 35 minutes). Sure, baseball games are played until a team wins, but they can drag on into the night. Hell, even nine-inning games can take forever to play.

Some NHL general managers, including Detroit’s Ken Holland and Toronto’s Brian Burke, have criticized the shootout. Holland has even proposed adding another OT period with 3-on-3 play to hopefully reduce the number of shootouts. Such a format has been used for years in the British Columbia Hockey League. Holland’s proposal hasn’t been adopted, but it’s out there and with any luck, it’ll gain traction. Sure, 3-on-3 play is gimmicky, but at least it’s still a team game instead of a skills competition.

However, if it comes down to the lesser of two evils, I’ll still take a skills competition over a sister-kisser any day.

You and I are a Gang of Losers

This piece originally ran in Cold as Ice, the hockey column I write for Popblerd.

These are strange days for Toronto Maple Leafs fans. A quarter of the way through the season, the Leafs are near the top of their division and boast the NHL’s leading scorer in Phil Kessel. And most of this was done with top goalie James Reimer out with “concussion-like symptoms.”

Still, if you’re a long-suffering Leaf fan like I am, you’re not getting overly excited just yet. After all, this is a team that hasn’t made the playoffs since the league came back after losing the entire 2004-05 season to a lockout. The team is among the youngest in the league, as GM Brian Burke has turned over the roster a few times since taking over the reins in 2008. There are still plenty of holes, and as dominant as Toronto looked in recent 7-1 victories over Washington and Tampa Bay, the team looked equally pathetic in two crushing losses to division rival Boston.

It hasn’t been easy, this lifelong relationship with the Leafs. I was born in Toronto in 1967, a few months after the team won its last Stanley Cup in the last season of the Original Six. My first memories of watching the Leafs were at age 4 with my dad, and I was quickly hooked. The team looked to be on the verge of something good in the late ‘70s led by the likes of Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald and Borje Salming, but a batshit crazy owner named Harold Ballard tore the team apart after a few years and sent it into a near-death spiral in the ‘80s.

We moved to the U.S. in late 1981 and it became harder to follow the Leafs, especially the two years I lived in Washington. There was no Internet and no summaries in the local paper, but eventually I discovered this new channel called ESPN that would show nightly hockey highlights. I didn’t get to watch any Leafs games on TV until we moved to New England in ’83 and the Leafs would play the Bruins. It wasn’t much fun watching them then, because despite the presence of some good young players like Wendel Clark, Russ Courtnall and Vincent Damphousse, Toronto was just plain bad.

Despite all that losing, I never considered switching allegiances to another team. I could have easily adopted the Bruins, a team whose games I watched religiously because they were always on, or maybe the Hartford Whalers. But that wasn’t an option for me.

Things started looking up in 1991 when the team acquired Doug Gilmour from Calgary and caught fire. Led by Gilmour (who was recently inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame) and coach Pat Burns, the Leafs were a win away from reaching the finals in the spring of ’93 before falling to Wayne Gretzky and the Kings. They lost in the third round again the following year and didn’t return again until ’99, led this time by the great Mats Sundin. Alas, despite being a perennial playoff team and winning a few playoff series each year, they couldn’t get over the hump. After the lockout, they barely missed the playoffs a few times before sinking to new lows in recent seasons.

So here we sit in 2011, with the Leafs finally seeming to field a competitive team on most nights. Whether they’ll make the playoffs is still a big concern. After Kessel and Joffrey Lupul on the top line, the team doesn’t have a lot of proven scoring depth. Of late, younger players have been stepping up, so maybe that won’t be an issue. The defense is led by captain Dion Phaneuf and is young but improving. After Reimer went down on Oct. 22, the Leafs went through some harrowing games with subpar goaltending from backups Jonas Gustavsson and Ben Scrivens, but both seem to have stabilized in the last week. Reimer is expected back soon, which will help.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but be pessimistic about this team. It’s just in my nature. I compare being a Leafs fan to the lot in life that Chicago Cubs fans endure as each season without a championship drags on. We don’t abandon our teams, we just sadly watch them lose year after year. I have the Center Ice satellite package so I can watch every Leafs game, so those losses sting even more. I’ve watched fans of teams like the Bruins, Blackhawks and Rangers win Cups after excruciatingly long droughts and I’ve felt happy for them. Should the Leafs ever manage to win a championship in my lifetime, I’m not sure what I’d do, but I’m pretty sure I’d be the only guy in my town hooting and hollering with joy. Years of mediocrity have tempered my expectations, though. Right now, I’ll be happy if they just make the damn playoffs. Such is the mindset of the Maple Leafs fan.