If I Were a Hockey Player

Jes Golbez is getting me back for the "5 Weird Things" meme from a while back with the latest craze to hit the Internets: If I Were a Hockey Player! Jes was able to use a custom player from NHL 2007 (or 2K7, I can't tell), but unfortunately I'm a console person and can't screencap or import my face. So the next best thing is my lame Yahoo Avatar. Yes, I am dorky enough that I actually took the time to do this and make it kinda look like me.


Note: That actually is the color of my guitar. See?

If I Were a Hockey Player:

Team: San Jose Sharks (hometown) or London Knights (my UK adopted hometown -- hey I used to be a bartender over there)
Uniform Number: 14
Position: Left Wing/Center
Nickname: My current beer league teammates offer the very uncreative "Chen!"
Dream Linemates: Wayne Gretzky at Center, Jeremy Roenick moved to RW
Rounding out the PP: Chris Chelios and Dan Boyle. Also, behind the bench would be Patrick Stewart because he coached Americans in soccer once.
Job: Getting open for Wayne and letting him bounce the puck off my skate to JR.
Signature Move: Covering for the pinching D, fanning on my shot
Strengths: Skating, defensive positioning, passing
Weaknessess: Shooting, being under 5'10"
Injury Problems? Wonky back
Equipment: Bauer Vapors from 5 years ago because I can't skate on anything that's rockered differently.
Nemesis: Shooting the puck, Chris Pronger, Sergei Zubov, Steve Yzerman
Scandal Involvement: Inviting JR, Dan Boyle, and Ben Clymer to my wedding (which I will do when we get them ready in a few months) and getting smashed with them
Who I'd face in the Stanley Cup Finals: New York Rangers, just so someone might actually watch the series on TV
What I'd do with the Stanley Cup after our victory: Freeze myself in carbonite with it
Would the media love me or hate me? They'd love me but only because my constant references to Morrissey and Star Wars would make it easy for everyone to laugh at me.

So now I have to tag someone into the insanity. Alanah, John, Earl Sleek -- you're up!

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A sneak peak at next year's jerseys

The results are in and people around the NHL are pretty satisfied with the new "uniform system" that had its debut at the All-Star Game. Every team will have a few tweaks to their jerseys next season and through my super-secret insider contacts, I've managed to get a few sneak peaks at the new look of certain teams.

First up is the Carolina Hurricanes. The reigning Cup champs regularly skate in to The Scorpions' Rock You Like A Hurricane. Well, their jersey designers must be inspired by awesome 80's rock because here's Cam Ward doing a kick save in their new jersey.

Good call on the leopard print sweaters to go with the new tassled socks.

Next we have Joe Sakic modeling the new Colorado Avalanche jersey:


Apparently, the Avs will have some new communication system where they hit the logo on their chest to whine directly to the NHL offices in Toronto. Also, it's good to see that they're maintaining how Starfleet designates their captains.

The Anaheim Ducks had a new color scheme and a simpler logo this season. However, they want to take things back to basics even further. Imagine the flexibility they'll have in this new uniform design -- no more pants to inhibit skating abilities! Here's Chris Pronger showing off the design. Check out the new minimalist logo they'll be sporting next season.


Finally, we've got Sidney Crosby modeling the new Penguins jersey. Note the sleek, armored design -- obviously someone in their front office is as stoked as I am about the new Robotech sequel coming out in a few weeks.
No word yet as to whether or not the new jerseys will have multiple transformable configurations, but apparently it will have built in jets to allow the young Penguins to skate even faster.

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Not quite GQ

Because I am a moron who still has a comatose Blackhawk fan on life support inside, I went by the official Hawks website today. Many teams have used a new format this season of a main window that scrolls between stories on the left and a picture of a player on the right. The player pictures, as logic would dictate, generally show a high-res action shot that sells the sport of hockey and gives a nice view of the player.

The Hawks, though, know a thing or two about selling hockey to their fans. They decided to try something completely different and dress up their players in GQ-style fashion shots. Since there's only about six Blackhawks fans left on the planet, I'm probably hit #4 on their traffic counter, so I figured I'd give the Hawks a little more publicity. Here's Martin Havlat as you've never really cared to see him before:


Generally, action shots of hockey players make them look pretty badass. Here, Havlat just looks like a tourist slinking down to the downtown bar with his Euro-mullet ready to seduce the ladies. Also, note the skates that look completely Photoshopped in and the generally confused expression on his face. Nothing says hockey like an awkwardly posed guy in a black suit.

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We don't need no stinkin' TV ratings

Since I did my amateur statistician analysis of attendance, why not tackle the inevitable TV ratings issue? It's All-Star time, which means it's time for the annual Gary Bettman smoke-and-mirrors show when it comes to the state of the game. You know, the part where Bettman spins every number on the planet -- even the number of hockey tape rolls used per game -- into a positive indicator for the league.

The TV ratings question of doom always elicits an interesting answer from Bettman. As he told Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News:

"The answer is we're working very hard with our partners. Both of our partners tell us not to be concerned, that these things take time. We're committed to doing the right things over the long haul and we're confident over time our ratings will grow."

The media and blogosphere is having a field day with the NHL's TV ratings. Sure, it's true that you can't fully factor in the positive benefits of Slingbox, PVR, and YouTube -- technologies that weren't even around ten years ago -- but that's still an excuse. Until on-demand broadband becomes our everyday way of viewing live sporting events, TV ratings still mean a hell of a lot.

You know what, though? For all of the double-talk and spin Bettman always gives, he does have one truth in there that he always emphasizes: TV sports ratings for team sports across the board have taken a nosedive. The NFL is the leader that everyone wants to emulate but other than that, the evidence shows that the NBA and MLB TV ratings are dipping just like the NHL's.

NBA
All-Star Game
NBC 2001 5.1/8
NBC 2002 8.2/15
TNT 2003 6.6/12
TNT 2004 5.1/10
TNT 2005 4.9/8
TNT 2006 4.3/8
Total % drop from 2001: 16%

Other Broadcasts (Regular Season, Finals)
NBC 2001 3.0 12.1
NBC 2002 N/A 10.2
ABC 2003 2.6 6.5
ABC 2004 2.4 11.5
ABC 2005 2.2 8.2
ABC 2006 2.2 8.5
Total % drop from 2001: 26% (regular season), 30% (finals)

MLB
All-Star Game
2001 11.0
2002 9.5
2003 9.5
2004 8.8
2005 8.1
Total % drop from 2001: 26%

World Series
2001 15.7
2002 11.9
2003 13.9
2004 15.8 (BoSox win)
2005 11.1
Total % drop from 2001: 30%

NHL
All-Star Game
2000 ABC 2.7
2001 ABC 1.7
2002 ABC 1.8
2003 ABC 1.7
2004 ABC 1.8
Total % drop from 2000: 33%

Other Broadcasts (Regular Season, Cup Finals)
2000-01 ABC 1.1 3.3
2001-02 ABC 1.4 3.6
2002-03 ABC 1.1 2.9
2003-04 ABC 1.1 2.6
2005-06 NBC 1.0 2.3
Total % drop from 2000-2001: 30% (Finals)

Now I'm nowhere near an expert on these numbers so I'm sure there is some further information I am totally oblivious about, but in terms of pure rating numbers you can see where things are trending. Depending on how you look at it, you can say that the NHL is bleeding viewers as much as the other leagues. Is that good news or bad news? Which side of the spin do you want to believe? Of course there's always going to be an ebb and flow to TV ratings depending on what teams are involved and who's popular at the time. But as a whole, the entire TV sports landscape looks, well, pretty dismal.

Sure, you could say that the NHL is just following the trend of other TV sports. I suppose that's good news if saying "Everyone else is doing terrible so we're on par!" is positive. The realistic point of view is this: hockey on television, for whatever reason, has eroded down to its core audience. There was a bump in the mid-90s thanks to the publicity of the New York Rangers '94 Cup victory, the mid-90s Red Wings juggernaut, and the end of the Wayne Gretzky era. Then, as we entered the new millennium and other sports TV ratings slipped, the NHL shot itself in the foot even further by allowing the awful style of clutch-and-grab to take over.

Gary Bettman wants to say that the league is being patient and they're confident that with the right treatment, TV ratings will grow. The problem is that they've tried pretty much damn near everything. TV sports ratings are like a mudslide and the NHL is trying to fight its way upstream.

The question then remains: how do you grow the game? Obviously TV is not working. The future is HDTV, and if you've seen hockey on it, you know that it's almost as good as sitting in the lower bowl of an arena. For those who haven't seen it, no, I'm not exaggerating. HDTV will essentially eliminate the age-old argument that the puck is too hard to follow but will it make a difference? By the time HD is really integrated into the mainstream public maybe 3-4 years from now, who knows where broadband streaming will be?

In terms of pure exposure, the VS experiment is a failure on the long-term and the short-term. The short-term is out of sight, out of mind, and the game stalls. The long-term is that the longer the NHL stays out of the mainstream, the further it gets pushed back on the sports landscape. If games were on ESPN, don't you think they'd try marketing the league by showing highlights and commercials to much bigger than audiences than, say, Professional Bull Riding?

Ultimately, the best, most fail-safe way to grow the game is youth hockey. Trends and technologies will come and go but if you teach kids how to play hockey, they will grow to love the game and become long-term hockey nuts. That's much more valuable than a one-year ratings spike. Grass-roots programs have made youth hockey teams from California, Florida, and Texas winners in national tournaments. That's something that simply wouldn't happen a decade ago.

The NHL wants a national footprint. TV is a factor, but my guess is that the most dedicated hockey fan of tomorrow, the one who will buy season tickets and jerseys and random figurines and collectibles, is the kid in the non-traditional market learning how to skate today.

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More on the attendance issue

Several readers requested a different version of the table in the last post, this time with attendance numbers instead of percentage capacity, so here you go courtesy of Excel!
The logic in the last post of using percentage capacity vs. attendance numbers is that some arenas, like Anaheim and San Jose, only hold about 17,000 whereas Montreal and Tampa can do over 20,000. If a team is selling out but the arena can't hold as much, then it may come across like the team isn't doing as well. Buffalo Sabres fans can tell you how hard it is to get a ticket even though their arena isn't the largest in the league.


By the way, I don't want anyone to think that I'm actually advocating for movement. I think franchise instability puts the league in a really bad light. However, the numbers don't lie -- if you win consistently, you should be able to draw pretty good crowds wherever you are. Preds fans, don't feel picked on -- I've hammered the Devils about this several times on my blog over the past few years, but I am going to hold my judgments until they move into the new arena.

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If you build it, will they come?

With Nashville Predators owner Craig Leipold in the press this week talking about his team's soft attendance, all of the contraction-mongers are out and about talking about bad markets, bad attendance, bad everything. Thing is, a lot of those people have valid points...but a lot of those people are off the mark as well.

In my opinion, for whatever that's worth, attendance should be really driven by performance (with tradition and local economics factoring in too). Even teams with good traditions experience soft attendance when a team is terrible. So with that in mind, I looked at a team's percentage of capacity for this year (because pure attendance numbers are misleading) when compared to last year and I threw in three sidebars on my nifty Excel spreadsheet:

1) Conference leader: Any team above 60 points
2) Playoff hunt: Any team within at least 5 points of a playoff spot
3) Last season: Whether or not a team made the playoffs last season

I've color-coded the answers to those three issues as follows:

Green = Yes for all three
Yellow = Yes for two
Grey = Yes for one
Red = None

Also, I marked in red whether or not the team's differential from last season is negative.

So, what's the result? Check it out:


Looking at this, it's not really a surprise that the worst teams in percentage of capacity are teams that are currently out of the playoff picture and weren't involved last season. In terms of drop off, LA and Phoenix are the hardest hit; LA especially shouldn't be a surprise because of the disaster of last season and the fact that everyone knows they're in rebuilding mode. In addition, Florida's poor attendance can at least in part attributed to poor performance. Tampa Bay's drop-off isn't surprising considering that they were coming off a Cup championship last season and the team has middled around .500. Chicago has been poisoned by the Wirtz ownership disaster even though they are playing better this season and St. Louis has scared people off by going into full rebuilding mode.

I am, however, kind of surprised that Washington's numbers are down. Considering the Alexander Ovechkin hype and the fact that they're still in the playoff hunt, the Caps really should be doing on-par, if not better than last season.

One thing to consider is that these percentages are snapshots midway through the season. NHL attendance usually strengthens as we get closer to the playoff race and the NFL goes away. In those cases, I expect Atlanta and Anaheim to have an uptick in their overall attendance. In addition, the big test for Atlanta will be next season -- will they stall like Nashville did or will their attendance stay strong like Tampa Bay did after their 2003 playoff run? Based on what GM Don Waddell has told the press, things should be strong for Atlanta as the team has had stronger attendance as the year has gone on.

The fact that the Islanders are bleeding people despite a reasonable season is somewhat surprising. I thought that the team had hit rock bottom, but the fact that they aren't doing terrible and they are drawing less than last season has to be a disappointment for Charles Wang. Still, however, my gut tells me that if the Isles can sneak into the playoffs and regain some of their community reputation, things should stabilize.

To me, the biggest problems here are Nashville and New Jersey. Both are in the "green" category which means that if we were basing attendance on performance, both should at least be in the top half. Nashville is at least up slightly and they should get better the closer we get to the playoffs, but New Jersey's 3.5% drop off is definitely problematic. Both teams, however, simply shouldn't be playing to the levels they are at.

What does this all mean? Well, for one, critics of Nashville as a market have some substance to their argument. For the Panthers, it's hard to tell whether or not the team will ever return to the capacity-crowds of the rat-trick era. The fact that the South Florida lacks hockey tradition could make rebuilding very difficult. The problem isn't that they're out of the playoffs; the problem is that they've been out of the playoffs for so long and they traded one of their two franchise players while only getting seven games out of Todd Bertuzzi. As for New Jersey, the jury is out until the team moves into its new digs in Newark.

If I really, really, really wanted to get into the NHL market, buying and moving the Penguins would be my #1 choice. However, trying to relocate Nashville or Florida still seem to be pretty feasible. Next season really has to be a make-or-break year in Nashville; if they can be one of the best, most exciting teams in the league for two seasons straight and they STILL can't draw a decent crowd, well, Kansas City sure has a nice arena.

Update: Just to clarify, I'm not saying the Pens are the most likely to move. I'm saying that if I wanted to buy a team, they'd be my top pick because of Crosby, Malkin, Fleury. Sorry if anyone misunderstood that -- and from the emails I got, I'm guessing I need to be more clear on my choice of words!

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What to do with Theodore?

Last night's spectacular performance by Peter Budaj only showed the national Versus-watching audience (insert your own joke here) what Avs fans have known for some time -- Peter Budaj is Colorado's goaltending solution, not Jose Theodore. It's not just numbers, though Budaj's 2.58 GAA and .909 save percentage are considerably better than Theodore's. No, it's the sheer unpredictable nature of Theodore's performance, in addition to Budaj's positionally sound technique and clutch saves have given him starts in every game since December 30th. In fact, Theodore's only ice time since then was a mop-up job in 7-3 disaster against Calgary.

Budaj's recent run has produced reasonable results with a record of 4-3-1. In the meantime, Theodore and his monster contract sit.

Pierre Lacroix, the former Avalanche GM who pulled off many sparkling trades during his tenure, left new GM Francois Giguere with a huge monkey on his back. Theodore hasn't been a disaster of Dan Cloutier proportions, but he's hardly shown any of the form that won him the Vezina and Hart Trophies. By the way, those trophies were won in, um, 2002. Since then, here's Theodore actually played reasonably well until last season's disaster season.

What does that mean? Not a heck of a lot other than Theodore's career hasn't crashed and burned to a Jim Carey-level disaster...but it's still pretty crappy. That still doesn't solve the big issue at hand -- big, as in $6 million big.

The simple truth is that no one wants Theodore, and why should they?. His salary makes him next-to-impossible to move, even for teams with significant cap space. His contract lasts through the end of next year, meaning that there are several paths the Avs can follow:

-They can hold on to Theodore and hope against hope that getting squeezed out of the #1 position by Budaj can somehow motivate him to get better. If nothing else, they can rest assured knowing that he'll have plenty of money to buy all of the hair care products he needs.

-They can waive him and hope that someone takes him for free. Unfortunately, he's not even worth that at this point.

-They can offer an asset, such as a 1st round pick, to a team that is willing to take the hit with cap space. This would be similar to the Vladimir Malakhov to San Jose trade.

-They can waive him, send him to the minors, and bring him back up through re-entry waivers. At that point, his contract will only cost a team picking him up $3 million for the 07-08 season with $3 million absorbed by the Avs.

Now, the new CBA is filled with all sorts of really strange loopholes and legal speak, so if anyone out there's actually read AND understood the CBA, feel free to chime in on the comments. There may be one other option, but I'm not 100% clear on whether this is doable. When John Leclair was sent to the minors, he refused to report and the Penguins gave him his unconditional release. However, the Pens were still on board for his cap hit. I believe if the Avs just want his butt out of there (even though they'd have to take the cap hit), they could force him to go to the minors and if he refuses, the contract could be null and void. Is there a CBA expert in the house?

The biggest problem is that there are plenty of other goaltending options for teams that are much more attractive than Theodore. Buffalo, San Jose, and Anaheim still have tradeable depth in goal, and even problem goalies such as Martin Gerber, Dan Cloutier, and Marc Denis could all be grabbed for less of a cap hit, especially if the teams put them through the waiver process. At this point, is the upside for Martin Gerber really much less than Theodore? I'm guessing no.

The ugly truth at this point is that Pierre Lacroix gambled and lost big time. The goaltending duo of David Aebischer and Peter Budaj would be just as good and probably better and the team would have significantly more cap space. In fact, maybe they could have actually kept Alex Tanguay or tried to resign Rob Blake.

Instead, Avs fans are stuck with a big hunk of useless cap space on the bench. Hey, at least they can say that they have the only NHL player to make out with Paris Hilton (at least publicly).

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Thoughts on the NBC broadcast

While Canadian fans were busy with Hockey Day in Canada, us Americans got the first week of the NHL on NBC: v2.0 featuring Brett Hull. I watched the Penguins/Flyers games and here are some random thoughts on the broadcast:

-Make no mistake about it, the broadcast was all Sidney Crosby, all the time. The league probably figured out that they needed to sell their stars, so mentioning Crosby's name every sentence was kind of annoying but effective for getting the message across to casual fans. They went so nuts that I was sure that Pierre Maguire was going to propose to Crosby between the benches.

-The much ballyhooed debut of Brett Hull was a total success. Hull's brashness came through right away, and it injected some life into Ray "Chicken Parm" Ferraro who is usually duller than Jacque Lemaire power play. Some highlights of Hull's comments:

On Jarko Ruutu: "Here's a typical play by a typical player in the NHL. Jarko Ruutu refuses to drop his gloves...he's got one goal in 40 games. It's players like that we have to weed out of the league."

On making the nets bigger: "That's one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in an awful long time."

On Evgeni Malkin and Crosby: "They're not playing nearly enough...the more I played, the better I got."

On Paul Mara: "Not one of the toughest guys I've ever played with...or against."

On Jaromir Jagr: "(Mara) sticks Jags like I wish I would have done a few times."

On Martin Brodeur: "I guarantee he's averaged less than 20 shots (against) a game in his whole career."

On the Buffalo Sabres: "(I'm) not really popular in Buffalo, no. And I don't like their uniforms either."

-Ferraro and Hull had a face-to-face segment on different topics (I forget what it was called) but it was pretty funny watching how animated Ferraro got when arguing with Hull. It was also pretty funny watching Hull deflect questions about the infamous "No Goal" incident.

-The new ticker at the top was cleaner than last year's. Subtle change, but it just wasn't as prominent, plus the shift tracker wasn't nearly as distracting as it was before.

-Pierre Maguire had one pretty cool report from the bench when he talked about Peter Forsberg talking crap to Colby Armstrong after Armstrong ran a Flyer. You wouldn't get that stuff from guys in the booth.

Overall, the broadcast was really about Sidney Crosby and Brett Hull. Crosby only had an ok game, but he was filmed enough that Doc Emrick, Ed Olzyck, and Maguire could break down his abilities in slow motion. The whole broadcast was centered around him, and rightfully so from a marketing standpoint. As for Hull, I hope he keeps this level of brashness up because he actually made the intermission pretty entertaining.

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How to spark a winning streak

I've figured it out. Wayne Gretzky and company must read what I write. After all, I've provided them plenty of bulletin board material, and since I've started making fun of the Coyotes, they've gone on a tear. Just to recap:

-I assembled the best photos of Wayne showing his awesome coaching/anger face
-I mocked Jeremy Roenick for being an idiot
-I threw the Coyote in my "left for dead" list

So what happened in the desert besides me ripping on them left and right? Well, it's a funny thing about those Yotes -- they finally started to play to their potential.

On paper, I've often thought that the Coyotes had one of the strongest top-to-bottom defensive lineups in the league. While Derek Morris and Nick Boynton are having off years, they are still in theory capable of filling #2 and #3 spots, and Ed Jovanovski is at his best a true #1 defenseman. Then you have three up-and-comers with sophomores Keith Ballard and Zbynek Michalek and rookie Travis Roche.

Up front, the Yotes still aren't impressive, though the awakening of Owen Nolan and the addition of Yanic Perrault certainly helped. Acquiring veteran Kevyn Adams will give the team some presence up the middle, but the trio of Steve Reinprecht, Perrault, and Adams isn't going to strike fear in many teams.

So, how did the Coyotes wake up and become a team? Was it acquiring Perrault and goalie Mikael Tellqvist?Was it recovering from injuries? Was it the fear of Wayne Gretzky bursting a blood vessel and keeling over while yelling at the refs?

The answer is a little bit of everything, including fear of Gretzky keeling over. Looking at the Coyotes goalie stats, Tellqvist certainly has provided a level of stability in the crease with a not-too-shabby 7-3-2 record. More importantly, he's the only Phoenix goalie with a goals-against under 3.00 and a save percentage over .900 (Mike Morrison takes the cake with a goals-against of 6.13 and a save percentage of .790). Cujo's actually playing like he did last season, with two shutouts and only one game where he gave up more than two goals.

Defensively, the team has come together, and it probably was a combination of chemistry (getting Roche into the lineup, having Jovanovski acclimate) and getting healthy (the return of Keith Ballard).

Most importantly, players like Shane Doan and Ladislav Nagy are finally realizing that they are playing in contract years and will miss out on the cash if they have subpar seasons. Doan's stats in particular are pretty awful, but he has been hot lately with half of his 24 points coming during the big win streak. Nagy's output hasn't been as impressive, but he's still got six points in his last eight games. Even creaky ol' Owen Nolan has been putting up some points lately, though he's just one good hit away from having his chronic back/groin/knee/everything else problems come back.

So for the Coyotes, it looks like a little bit of synchronicity -- everything's coming together at the right time. And like all good chemistry experiements, things are very delicate. If another injury hits or if Doan slows down or if Tellqvist comes back down to earth, it will be very tricky for the Coyotes to maintain their juggling act.

The real dilemma facing fans in the desert is whether or not to be really happy about this. If you're a Phoenix Coyote fan, you know that your team has some great young defense but doesn't have much in the cupboard other than that. Would you rather tank it now, sell off your assets, and enter a Pittsburgh-esque rebuilding mode (the kind that was supposed to happen when Keith Tkachuk was traded for Nagy)? Or would you rather claw above .500 and hope that things keep surging in hopes for the 7th/8th playoff spot?

The third option is for me to continue to mock the team and see if that somehow stirs the sports mojo and spur the team to greater heights. But I'm not a Coyotes fan, so there's that whole conflict of interest thing going on. I can, however, accept donations if your team is struggling and needs some bulletin board material from the hockey blogosphere.

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Unintentionally funny headline of the day

I don't know if Sportsnet's standards and practices team called in sick this morning or if their copy editor just totally missed it, but you gotta love this headline about the Blue Jackets:


Tell us, Anson, how do you feel about aching BJs?

"I liked the way it felt," Carter said. "We’ll see how it is in the morning. I know one thing, it stinks being out."

That's good to know.

I'm sure there are various causes for people to experience aching BJs, but is Anson Carter really the answer for that? For me personally, the answer might be more along the lines of Natalie Portman. But to each his or her own...I'll just be scared of a headline that says "Mike Ricci adds relief to aching BJs."

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Crosby vs. Ovechkin vs. Malkin -- YOU make the call

Last night, Sidney Crosby had a ridiculous sliding-on-one-leg goal from a beautiful feed by Mark Recchi. Crosby had his Montreal shootout goal on his highlight reel before, but this has to be his flashiest regular season goal. But really, would it hold a candle to Alexander Ovechkin's "The Goal"?

Well, I've got them both right here. And for posterity's sake, i've also got Evgeni Malkin's sweet spin move goal against Martin Brodeur. So there you go, the three brightest young stars in the game and their three best goals. Which one kicks ass the most? YOU make the call (said like the old NFL commercial guy).

Sidney Crosby vs. Johan Holmqvist


Alexander Ovechkin vs. Brian Boucher


Evgeni Malkin vs. Martin Brodeur


I will say this -- Malkin's goal, however impressive it is, isn't visually as impressive as Ovechkin's and Crosby's. Ovechkin uses a pretty sweet move before going on his back, then has the instinct to figure out where he is and what angle to put it at. Watching the Crosby goal in slow motion, you can actually see Crosby goes down on his knees as the pass leaves Recchi's tape, meaning that he somehow figured out in that split second that that was the best way to put the puck in the net.

(notice how I'm diplomatically not picking one or the other)

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Lindros shills for a free iPod

You know those annoying web ads that pose as stupid interactive mini-games like whack-a-mole? Well, I came across this randomly surfing the other day:


These things are usually some sort of click-through pyramid scheme (I once read an article about getting a free XBOX360 on one of these; the writer documented that he went through several levels of creating dozens fake email addresses to sign up for stuff and pass things along -- in all, he did get his free XBOX360 but he wasted 8 hours of his life, so it's all about time or money, whatever's more important to you), but I thought it was funny that of all the things to feature, why Eric Lindros shooting on generic Columbus Blue Jackets goalie?

I'm guessing this isn't officially sponsored by the NHL or NHLPA. They talk about growing the game and I suppose in a really roundabout way, this could be considered a sign of progress. After all, it's not Kobe Bryant shooting for the free iPod, right?

Either that, or maybe the guy who works for the advertising company is a Dallas Stars fan.

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Christy's coverage of Stevie Y Night

Christy from Behind The Jersey thoroughly documented Steve Yzerman night at the Joe. Check out her summary and her kick-ass photos.

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Top 10 Lessons Learned In 2006

(Cue David Letterman's Top 10 List intro graphics and music)

From the Home Office (as in my home office where my fax machine and filing cabinet are, along with my 2-foot tall Gretzky MacFarlane figure) in Palo Alto, California, here are the Top 10 NHL Lessons Learned in 2006:

#10 JR is Employee of the Month: When Jeremy Roenick says he has rededicated himself to the game of hockey, he means it. That is, if rededicating himself means finding the best place in Vancouver to have a beer and eat dinner while your teammates are working hard doing, you know, what they're getting paid to do.

#9 Dan Cloutier really does suck: Vancouver Canucks fans, rejoice. It's not a mirage -- Dan Cloutier really does suck. Letting up soft goals at inopportune times made Cloutier the bane of many Canucks fans' existance. Now that Cloutier has the league's worst goalie stats for Marc Crawford's Kings team, Vancouver fans can finally laugh and say, "See, we told you so!"

#8 Jose Theodore's goaltending abilities match his taste in women: So, um, everyone remember the famous French-Canadien goalie who decided to put his long-term relationship in jeopardy to make out with Paris "Walking Venereal Disease" Hilton? How about the famous French-Canadien goalie who was booed out of Montreal several years after winning the Hart Trophy? How about the famous French-Canadien goalie who lost the starting job on his new team to Peter Budaj? Oh, it's one and the same person? And it happened all in 2006? Dang, talk about a bad year!

#7 GMs are still stupid: The most exciting day in the NHL isn't the last day of the Stanley Cup playoffs, it's the first day of free agency. The number of bad signings and ridiculous dollars was a telltale sign that many GMs still didn't understand the long-term consequences of bad contracts. Hal Gill? Apparently, $2 million is the new standard for slow-footed mistake-prone defensemen. Pavel Kubina? Surely he deserves to make way more than Dan Boyle, Brian Rafalski, and Mattias Ohlund, right? It's not as if GMs were signing players to reasonable contracts and they underperformed; instead, some GMs got fix-it happy and outbid themselves on players whose track record showed that there was no logical way that they should earn what they got. Hey, I'm not blaming the players -- I wouldn't turn down the money if someone offered me 20-30% more than I deserved!

#6 Bobby Clarke will never, ever leave: "Resigning" from his GM post on October 22nd (coincidentally the same day as Ken Hitchcock gets fired), Bobby Clarke is back in a position of power within the Flyers organization as Senior Vice President just about six weeks later. Don't worry Flyers fans, Clarke's hold on the organization will be influencing decisions for a long, long time.

#5 Lou isn't perfect: It's true -- Lou Lamoriello can actually make mistakes. Stuck with a number of really bad contracts tied to even worse players (or in some cases, injured), the once-infallible Lou had to resort to praying for debilitating injuries (see: Alexander Mogilny) that offered cap relief or bribing other teams to take contracts off his hands (see: Vladimir Malakhov/1st round pick to San Jose for a Russian league player and a borderline NHLer). Devils fans, do you feel like someone just told you Santa isn't real?

#4 You can blame the cap: John Muckler sure wishes he could have kept Zdeno Chara and Martin Havlat, but the big bad ol' salary cap destroyed the Ottawa Senators, punishing the Sens for great drafting. Darcy Regier would have loved to keep JP Dumont, but the evil salary cap made Dumont's arbitration award simply impossible. Suddenly, everyone blames the salary cap -- what happened to the good ol' days of just blaming the Red Wings? The Sens had a self-imposed budget prior to the new CBA, as did the Sabres, meaning that their respective GMs would have probably made similar decisions regardless of a cap or no cap. Having a salary cap just makes it easier to have a scapegoat, even for so-called small market teams giving up big name players.

#3 How NOT to have a clean break-up: Fear the wrath of a hockey fan scorned. Chris Pronger's betrayal of Edmonton Oiler fans was probably the best thing that could ever happen to the Anaheim Ducks, but it made him a villain to most of western Canada. What was even more infuriating for most fans was how Pronger bottled up about the move, merely citing personal reasons in a maddening Bartleby the Scrivener-esque mantra. Perhaps if he opened up just a tad, fans might have been a little more understanding, but by taking the theoretical high road, he just managed to piss off an entire country. From a hockey sense, it doesn't make a difference, but it certainly teaches us the wrong way to break up and stay friends.

#2 Evgeni Malkin was worth the wait: We saw hints of it at the World Junior Championships. There was even more hype from an outstanding Olympic performance. Then after a series of cloak-and-dagger escapades and an IMF-style escape from Europe, Malkin arrived with a ton of hype. With the emotional toll of leaving his family and country, many observers thought that Malkin couldn't live up to they hype and withstand top-level NHL competition. They were wrong. Starting off a month later than other rookies, Malkin has rocketed to the rookie scoring lead, and barring a disaster, he's got the Calder Trophy locked up even before the All-Star break.

#1 Sidney Crosby is the real deal: In the calendar year of 2006, Sidney Crosby had 118 points (60 from the 2005-2006 season, 58 from the 2006-2007 season). Just to compare, Joe Thornton had 117 points, Jaromir Jagr had 114 points, and Alexander Ovechkin had 112 points. What's even more amazing is that Crosby's league-leading total so far this season has come on the heels of a groin injury, giving Crosby the lowest games-played compared to any player in the top 10. Crosby may not ever break Wayne Gretzky's ridiculous records, but there's no denying that Sid the Kid has lived up to the hype -- and the scary thing is that he's only getting better. We've got something special here, and barring any Lindros-like injuries, Sidney Crosby's special talent will be something to watch for the next 15 or so years, so be sure to appreciate it.

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