New location for blog

For anyone who stumbles upon this, the new location for the WordPress-powered blog is www.mikechenwriting.com/blog/index.php. Please update your links!

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Time to upgrade

I'll be migrating (hopefully) from Blogger to WordPress, so I won't be doing any updates until I get it properly configured. Should just be a day, but it might be more if problems arise.

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Battle of the bluelines

If I've got it right (and even TSN's Bob McKenzie's confused on this whole issue), the Anaheim Ducks DON'T need to get rid of Mathieu Schneider's contract, meaning that they can create the most fear-inducing blueline in the NHL. However, is it the best defense we've seen in recent years? Here's some food for thought:

2000-2001 Colorado Avalanche
Ray Bourque (age 40): In Ray Bourque's final season, he wasn't playing to the quality of his prime but he was still in the top tier of NHL defensemen, and he had the point totals to back it up. Most notably, Bourque, like Nicklas Lidstrom today, was a total package that allowed his game to adapt as his body changed. Even at 40, he was still capable of being most team's #1 defenseman.

Rob Blake (age 31): By this time, Rob Blake was always considered "one of" the best defensemen in the league, but he was never "the best" of the best. Still, that's nothing to knock, considering that at the time, he was a true #1 defenseman with a monster shot, superb power play instincts, and a good hard hipcheck that not enough people did. It's hard to believe how bad young Blake was in the early NHL video games (dear lord, he was slow).

Adam Foote (age 29): Adam Foote never put up the numbers the way that some of his contemporaries did, but back in the pre-lockout era, Foote in his prime was a fierce shutdown defenseman who could kick the crap out of you as easily as he could stick check you. His play was never vaunted on a Scott Stevens-type level, which meant that Foote was never really a Norris candidate, but if you asked any coach today if they could go to war with Foote in his prime, they'd make it an emphatic yes.

2007-08 Anaheim Ducks
Chris Pronger (age 33): Big, mean, talented, and a little temperamental, Chris Pronger continues to show why he's the complete package on the blueline. He can make tape-to-tape outlet passes, his long reach can make impossible poke checks feasible, and his defensive instincts can stifle even the most talented individuals. Sure, his temper gets the better of him, and you can say that he should be suspended more often, but there's no doubt that he's been a worthy Norris candidate for each season in his prime.

Scott Niedermayer (age 34): In my opinion, with all due respect to Lidstrom, no blueliner can control a game like Scott Niedermayer. It starts with the skating -- or the fact that pretty much no one can skate like him. It's speed, swiftness, and grace, combined with immense stick skills and hockey sense, and with that, Niedermayer can basically create a play all by himself or he can single-handedly bail his team out of a bad break.

Mathieu Schneider (age 38): Schneider may never make it to the Hockey Hall of Fame, but he definitely will make it into the USA Hockey Hall of Fame. He's still got his offensive instincts and is a worthy power play contributor, but even in his prime, Schneider was never the most feared defenseman out there. Still, at 38, he's a better #2 defenseman than a lot of team's #1's.

If we could time travel back to 2001 and you told any hockey fan that the Avs HOF defense wouldn't be as good as the 2007 Anaheim Ducks, they'd probably scoff at you (after first correcting you with "Mighty Ducks of Anaheim"). However, when you line it up like this, the two-headed Norris monster of Pronger and Niedermayer is better than aging Bourque and in-his-prime Blake. Foote and Schneider represent different types of skill sets, and I'd give the advantage to Foote at 29 over Schneider at 38, but it's hard to argue with Anaheim's two #1's.

And if you really wanted to break it down even further, you could look at the Avs' mix of Martin Skoula, Jon Klemm, or Greg deVries as their #4 guy vs. Anaheim's Francois Beauchemin. But for now, I'll just leave it at that.

Do you think there's a blueline in modern NHL memory that's topped the Anaheim roster? Debate it out in the comments.

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Definitions

Folks, before we all get on the "Marc Crawford is Hitler" bandwagon, let's remember some key vernacular surrounding our beloved game:

"Punish him" = Check a player hard every time he touches the puck
"Pay the price" = Fight through physical adversity, like a forward battling for position in the slot OR get a player to drop the gloves in retribution for some event during a prior game

Nowhere have I ever seen or heard anything synonymous with "Sucker punch the guy in the back of the head, then drive his skull into the ice to break his neck." If Marc Crawford pointed to Steve Moore's number and said that Moore must pay the price, I'm pretty sure Crawford was telling his defense to check him hard whenever they got the chance, and if there was an opportunity to get him to drop the gloves, then go for it. However, I'm 99.999999999% certain that Crawford's subtext did not translate into what actually happened.

That little bit of mental connect-the-dots all happened in the mind of one Todd Bertuzzi. Look, you can blame Crawford and the organization for not saying, "We faced them once after he hit Naslund, it's done with and we'll let it go." You can blame them for creating an atmosphere where for one fraction of a second, a little miswiring in Todd Bertuzzi's brain thought that this was justified. But to say that Crawford goaded Bertuzzi into almost killing Moore? That's just absurd. Circumstances contribute to everything we say and do, but ultimately, we can only control our own decisions and attitude.

In this case, Bertuzzi made the absolute wrong choice.

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Coaching styles

Thanks to the different news bits from today's Kukla's Korner, we got a nice cross-section of how coaches are reacting. First off, a little bit of motivation from Mike Keenan:

“You won one game, big (expletive) deal!Do it right!” screamed coach Mike Keenan in the middle of the Calgary Flames practice yesterday....

Holy rage, Batman. Good to see Keenan's still up to form. What was all that stuff about him mellowing out?

Let's check in to see how things are going down south with our favorite humorist, John Tortorella. If you haven't been following the news, Torts was expressing his anger at some media types by calling them clowns. Today, some of the media decided to play a practical joke on Torts to see if he would be like Mitt Romney and lighten up slightly.

A day after the whole media clowns thing, we decide it would be funny if when coach Tortorella came in to meet with reporters today after practice at the St. Pete Times Forum, we all would wear red clown noses. Low and behold, one of the media relations people for the Lightning said he had a box of red noses from when the circus was in town, and he runs to his office to get them.

So Torts comes into the meeting room, looks at four people with red noses, breathes deeply and says, “Great guys. Can we get going here, please. I have things to do.”

Didn’t even break a grin.

Wow. Someone forgot his happy pills this morning. What about you, Ron Wilson, what did you do the other day?

And when he was finished, he told the players “do whatever you want” and skated away.

I did that to my brother once when I was mad at him. It involved many more expletives, though. Maybe that means I can be an NHL coach someday. Let's check in on Mr. Hardass himself, Ken Hitchcock.

Hitchcock would not get into detail about his message, he only hinted: “Let’s just say we don’t have many of those over the course of the season, but today was one of those. A heart-to-heart.”

A heart-to-heart? You mean one of those motivational speeches we only see in sports movies? Where's the yelling? Where's the name-calling? Where's the cursing? Well, Hitch's boys are doing more with a lot less on paper than Wilson, Tortorella, or Keenan while showing a lot of heart, so maybe those other coaches can try going with the tender approach.

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Thanks Tom!

I had listened to the HNIC piece on bloggers but I didn't see the actual video until today. Thanks to Tom Benjamin's blog roll, I was pseudo-featured for a few seconds around the seven-minute mark. Ron didn't click on me, but he seemed to be focusing more on the Canadian bloggers/market. It's too bad they didn't click on the Battle of California; I would have loved to see Earl Sleek's greatest hits make it on to the CBC.

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The PA really wants this?

Recent reports coming out of the NHL Board of Governors meetings have an interesting tidbit regarding the whole "hits to the head" issue that has plagued the league so far. Apparently, the players themselves are finally waking up to the whole lack-of-respect notion within the league, and new PA head honcho Paul Kelly wants the players to have input on discipline regarding these situations.

Remember the age-old adage of "Let the players police themselves"? That used to mean Marty McSorely riding shotgun with Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri. Now, it looks like it'll mean something else.

How much involvement will the players have? That's still to be determined, but it's a positive step forward for a group of guys that seem hell-bent on their own win-at-all-costs destruction rather than looking at the bigger picture of player safety. Still, the idea seems to be a Pandora's Box of internal strife waiting to explode for the PA. Think about it this way -- for every bad hit that's happened over the past few seasons, you've had some players talking about how hits to the head are just part of the game and the victim's responsibility for being aware of his surroundings. Then you've got the other group of players, usually the skill players, who talk about how this is eventually going to lead to paralysis or worse, death.

So what happens when you have these two different groups -- and there's no real way to get a true sense of how big each one is -- being involved in the actual discipline process? Will the game wind up taking a more protective stance or will it be pushed into more of "responsibility of the person who gets hit" mode of thinking?

Here's an idea that will probably never come to pass but it would hold the players accountable for their own safety. Paul Kelly and the PA want to participate in discipline? Fine; how about a 50% share? Under this idea, any time a dirty play goes into league/PA review, the PA gets to make a first vote at what the severity of the punishment is:

A) 0-5 games
B) 6-10 games
C) 11-15 games
D) 16-20 games
E) 21-25 games
F) 25+ games

With the Internet, it's easy to get votes tabulated. Logistically, let's say that players have two days to visit a special PA web page with video of the hit. All they do is fill out an online poll -- you snooze, you lose, and your voice isn't heard -- and the most popular range of suspension games is forwarded to Colin Campbell, who determines a final number.

Do you think Sean Avery will vote the same as someone with a concussion history, such as Paul Kariya? If a player on the Hurricanes makes a bad hit to throw someone into the boards headfirst, will Erik Cole support his teammate or look at his own injury history and vote accordingly? A player-involved discipline system like this would force many players to look in the mirror and decide where their allegiances are: to their fellow players, to their teammates, to themselves, or to the game?

I don't think something like this would ever come to fruition because it's just too radical a change, and we all know how glacially the NHL likes to move over major changes. Most likely, Colin Campbell will wind up meeting with a group of PA representatives and get their input. However, if that's the case, you'll never get a true sampling of what the PA's constituency really cares about: safety and respect or their own win-at-all-costs impulses. They want a voice? Let's give them a voice.

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