What We Learned: Why canceling NHL games could give us the best season ever

22 Oct
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

We can all agree that there's no way the lockout ends in time for Gary Bettman's fictional 82-game full season, right?

They'd have to agree to the new CBA, like, as I'm writing this, for the Nov. 2 cutoff date to be met; and even then, it might be a stretch.

I know the League canceled the dates — not the games, an important distinction — through Nov. 1 on Friday. There are also rumors that when the next batch of cancellations comes, it could be larger than the two preceding it. At this point, I think I'm starting to be fine with that, because I came to the realization that a season shortened by 24 games could make for the best one ever.

I decided the other day that what I'd really like to see — and I know it'll never ever happen for a bunch of reasons — is for the NHL to go to a 58-game schedule, just this once. In it, each team could play every other team in the league twice, once at home, and once on the road. In a league that loves reminding everyone about its competitive balance, what better schedule could exist than that?

It solves a lot of problems about competitive balance as well. No longer would the Canucks, for example, get to beat up on Edmonton, Calgary, Minnesota and Colorado a combined 24 games a season as a means of padding their Presidents Trophy credentials while teams in the Central play their way through a 24-date divisional meat grinder.

This way, all 30 teams' playing field for making the playoffs and racking up wins over the course of a season becomes as level as it can possibly be.

(Coming Up: More Alex Ovechkin threats; Pascal Dupuis is fiscally responsible; Nik Kronwall, next captain of the Red Wings?; Predators talk lockout with fans; Don Cherry high on Habs; Islanders to Staten Island; Rich Clune picks the wrong fight; getting Scott Gomez to the Flames; goalie issues for the Blue Jackets and Flyers; and a beautiful goal from the NCAA.)

The Jets play the Oilers just as much as the Kings play the Panthers, and there can be little complaining about strength of schedule. Of course, injuries and other factors will play a part in individual contests, but over the course of 58 games, it works itself out.

This also preserves the slight randomness of what a shorter season can do to get teams into the playoffs when they otherwise might not have. The thing to remember is that playing 82 games gives you a really good idea of teams who deserve to be in the playoffs, so by definition playing 29 percent or so fewer makes it easier for more chaos.

Perhaps one reason it'll never happen is, of course, that teams will object to all the travel.

Even one two-week road trip that bumps six or seven Western Conference road opponents off the docket for teams in the East will be trying, and you know the Red Wings will have a lot to say about all of it as well. This also disproportionately plays to the advantage of Western Conference teams because when they come to the East Coast, they won't have nearly as much travel to deal with going from one city to the next. The NHLPA would probably kick up a bit of a stink about that, and the owners won't be happy to foot the bill for all that jet fuel.

The other issues is that games like, say, Toronto versus Montreal or Detroit versus Chicago (and so forth) are a big deal for this League; and only having two of them a year doesn't make much sense from either a publicity or financial perspective. That, and geography, are why so many long-time rivals are grouped together in the same division, and why there's an unbalanced schedule in the first place.

The upside, though, is that every fanbase gets to see every one of the league's best players and teams. No waiting another two years to see the Oilers kids, or Sid Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. You want to grow the game again? Make sure every fan gets an eyeful of the very best the league has to offer. This could also increase the potential for those home-and-home grudge matches for closer-together teams that don't always get to play each other.

There's no reason at all, for example, you couldn't have a Thursday/Saturday series between Pittsburgh and Detroit. And that would rule.

Again, it would be interesting to see the NHL adopt the schedule-making policies of other leagues, like those in soccer, just for a year. It works very, very well over there, and could work just as well here.

Of course, given that it makes even a little bit of sense, we can all rest assured that it can't happen. Not with these guys in charge.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Ducks prospect Nic Kerdiles had his full-season suspension reduced to 10 games by the NCAA, and an Anaheim executive says that's enough for the kid to stay in school and not jump to major juniors. Nonetheless, he won't get to start his freshman season until the end of November.

Boston Bruins: Here's a video of the Kings' Rich Clune biting off way more than he can chew in a game that ended up being Providence's first win of the season. Bobby Robins delivered a savage beating here.

Buffalo Sabres: Mikhail Grigorenko is making a joke out of the QMJHL, scoring 10 goals and 13 assists in the first 11 games of his season. Not bad for a 25-year-old.

Calgary Flames: The Flames, not unlike their northern Albertan neighbors, would really like to build a new rink. But given how things are going in Edmonton, they're really just sitting back and watching, and they're wise to do so. It's a very entertaining situation, after all.

Carolina Hurricanes: Justin Faulk is injured oh no oh no oh no. Oh wait. It's just a muscle strain and he's fine. Dodged a bullet there.

Chicago Blackhawks: Poor Carter Hutton. His Rockford IceHogs have played four games, and he's been very good, allowing just nine goals in that time. Nonetheless, the team is 0-3-1 because it has scored just five goals in those four games. Not good enough, Brandon Saad and Andrew Shaw.

Colorado Avalanche: Tyson Barrie had a goal and two assists in Lake Erie's win over Oklahoma City, which isn't such a bad team to do that against.

Columbus Blue Jackets: I clicked this link about the Blue Jackets' organizational depth expecting a laugh, and I was richly rewarded by that goaltending situation. Man, I almost forgot they were really willing to enter the season with a Sergei Bobrovsky/Steve Mason combo in net. Is there a place lower than 30th?

Dallas Stars: Not a good weekend for the Texas Stars' PK. It went 38 percent (killing 3 of 8) in a weekend sweep at the hands of Houston. Now, okay, Houston is super-talented. But try to keep the percentage above 50 for the rest of the season.

Detroit Red Wings presented by Amway: Could Nik Kronwall be the next captain of the Red Wings? I mean, he probably has enough frequent flyer miles saved up, right?

Edmonton Oilers: Ben Eager really hit a guy with a chair in a Toronto bar? That's not the Ben Eager I know. I'm still waiting for the police report to confirm whether the guy was facing away from him.

Florida Panthers: The San Antonio Rampage won 1-0 over Milwaukee. Wow, that Jacob Markstrom kid really is the future of the fra… what's that? Dov Grumet-Morris was in net? And Markstrom has a 3.01/.908 line this season? Hmm. Might wanna start looking into that Luongo situation again.

Los Angeles Kings: The LA Kings won something called the Mobile Excellence Award, so you know Matt Greene wasn't involved.

Minnesota Wild: Craig Leipold recently told a group of entrepreneurs that they have to come up with a "bodacious" idea to be successful. Yeah, like signing contracts in bad faith and almost single-handedly causing the lockout.

Montreal Canadiens: Don Cherry is hyped for the current Canadiens roster. Which is weird because I checked and there's only two Good Ontario Boys on it.

Nashville Predators: Someone tell Gary Bettman there were Preds employees who had the audacity to actually discuss the lockout with season-ticket holders. The nerve! Fine them into oblivion, Gary.

New Jersey Devils: This is pretty much the do-or-die, make-or-break season in Bobby Butler's career. So it doesn't bode well that he has a measly single assist through three games.

New York Islanders: The Islanders on Staten Island. That's a new one. Although, I do like the idea of them being straight from the slums of Shaolin.

New York Rangers: The Connecticut Whale are 0-3-1 to start the year, but at least Kyle Jean, a rookie and free agent signing, has six points in those four games.

Ottawa Senators: I love what a lunatic Robin Lehner is. He tried to fight two different guys, then settled for beating the hell out of Riku Helenius. (And sure the Senators blew that 5-0 lead but still, fun.)

Philadelphia Flyers: What a headline: "Is Ilya Bryzgalov's KHL inconsistency reason for concern?" Yeah I dunno what about his NHL inconsistency?

Phoenix Coyotes: Today is Day No. 73 since Jude LaCava of Fox 10 in Arizona said Greg Jamison would have the deal for the Coyotes sewn up within the next five days. And now, even Glendale's mayor is all like, "Yeah would it really be the worst thing in the world if they left though? Because, like, then we'd get to have libraries and stuff still. Do people like that? Libraries? I feel like they do. Anyway the no one cares about the Coyotes. Just think about it."

Pittsburgh Penguins: Pascal Dupuis has saved a lot of the several million dollars he's made in his 10-year NHL career and therefore isn't all that worried about money right now. What a concept.

San Jose Sharks: The Worcester Sharks have designs on making the AHL playoffs this season. Their coach, who's been behind the bench there for 15 seasons, thinks they have five or six 20-goal scorers on the roster.

St. Louis Blues: Actual hockey fan on seeing her first AHL fight: "I was like, yay!" That red-haired 10-year-old girl is part of the problem in hockey's culture of violence.

Tampa Bay Lightning: I swear if this lockout means we've seen the last of Marty St. Louis I'm gonna be pissed.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Clarke MacArthur knows what it is: "A week ago, it would be easy to get all excited. Then after this, you could be down in the dumps again." Blah.

Vancouver Canucks: Real nice goal from Zack Kassian in Friday's shootout win over Abbotsford (skip to 30 seconds in).

Washington Capitals: Alex Ovechkin is back to threatening to stay in the KHL. Big talk, bud. No one buys it.

Winnipeg Jets: The Jets may regret drafting Jacob Trouba? Because he might not one day be as good as Filip Forsberg could be? Oh boy are we ever in the middle of a lockout. (For the record, Trouba, a defenseman, has two goals and two assists as a freshman at the University of Michigan.)

Play of the Weekend

PRETTY NICE goal by Alex Petan of Michigan Tech, as the Huskies knocked off No. 1 Minnesota on Friday night. (They lost on Saturday, but that game was awful close too.)

Gold Star Award

Decent weekend for Justin Schultz. Three goals, two of them shorthanded, and an assist in two games. He now has 4-2-6 in four AHL games. That signing could work out okay for Edmonton.

Minus of the Weekend

Pierre LeBrun says he spoke with a team executive who says if there's no deal struck this week, you might as well go ahead and cancel the whole season. Good to see Gary's willing to negotiate.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User "noahhabib" is trying to infuriate two fanbases at once.

To Montreal:

Jay Bouwmeester

To Calgary:

Scott Gomez

Yeesh.

Signoff

Whatcha got under the foil, Mr. Party Pooper? Some party poop?

Ryan Lambert publishes hockey awesomeness almost never over at The Two-Line Pass. Check it out, why don't you? Or you can e-mail him and follow him on Twitter if you so desire.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Wings
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Why NHL’s bad faith negotiating damages CBA talk progress (Trending Topics)

19 Oct
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

"[We're] going to get a deal done" - Gary Bettman to some dude, October 18, 2012, approximately 2:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

"We were done in an hour today because there was really nothing there." - Gary Bettman to reporters, October 18, 2012, 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Funny, that.

Why, it's almost like the NHL had no intention whatsoever of accepting whatever offer the NHL Players' Association put forward yesterday, and that everything it has done to this point has come as part of bad-faith negotiations disguised as platitudes about how much the fans matter and how important it is for them to get a deal done.

[Nick Cotsonika: Enough with the grudges and greed, get down to business and solve the CBA]

OK, maybe I shouldn't go that far. Getting a deal done is clearly on the League's to-do list, but getting one that in any way serves to protect even the slightest interest of the players (i.e. The Product) is something in which Bettman and the five or six guys driving this Cold War have no interest whatever. Period.

Let's put it this way: Both sides have likely always targeted a 50-50 endgame. How they eventually get there is the real issue, and some of the ancillary stuff — like what revenues they're going to be splitting right down the middle (but not really, wink-wink) and how players are able to actually earn money under that system — is very much up for debate.

So it should have come as no surprise to anyone on the entire planet that the League just happened that extend a 50-50 offer on Tuesday that was couched in a lot of the language uncovered by Deadspin's report on its B.S. focus groupery about 16 hours earlier.

Shared sacrifice, indeed.

Make no mistake, the League knows exactly why fans have been so quick to turn on it in this labor negotiation when they backed it near-uniformly in the last one: Its draconian power grab is as transparent as the Russian players' threat to stay in the KHL.

[Related: 'Not a good day' as NHL and NHLPA meet again, get nowhere]

That's why the Luntz Global questionnaire had all that stuff about "Which stuff about how greedy all the greedy owners are is the MOST true?" Because everyone saw through that first joke of a proposal this summer, and everyone saw through the petulant, teary-eyed foot-stomping about "The PA hasn't made an offer in weeks!!!"

To be totally clear here, the only thing Donald Fehr was brought in to do for the NHLPA was make sure the amputation wasn't as bad as the owners would have liked it to have been. Everyone involved, and even most who aren't, has always known that this deal, like the last CBA the players were bullied into signing, would end with the players losing money. Fehr's goal — and boy is it ever a crazy one — is to make sure the paycut they eventually take doesn't cost them anything that's already guaranteed in their current contracts. What a jerk. What a monster.

Yeah, 50-50 revenue splits in the NHL's deal sound super-fair, and so does increased revenue sharing (and, OK, so it's only like 80 percent of what the players wanted, but it's something). But when the owners are dictating what does and doesn't count as revenue that gets split, and oh by the way you guys have to pay for the "make-whole" issue yourselves because we're not getting involved in that … well, anyone with half a functioning brain can see that this in no way constitutes a good-faith offer.

Donald Fehr called it "borderline unfair" yesterday, and that sounds like a nice way of putting it.

[Also: The Vent: Fan cheers for Leafs to protest lockout; others plan a party]

Let's think about that 50-50 split critically, okay? The current split is 57-43 in favor of the players. We all know this. So the league is essentially asking for that 7 percent back — and in reality, it's a little more than 12 percent of what the players actually make — with what concessions going the other way. Did you guess, "Almost none?" Good job. No intention to honor contracts as currently written, no givebacks on free agency rights. Just suspension appeals going to someone other than Gary Bettman. Whoopie.

The point of the NHL's offer this week was to turn the conversation from, "Hahaha look at this stupid focus group garbage," to, "Aren't the players a bunch of jerks for trying to rob you of an 82-game season by not accepting our slightly-less-insulting-than-the-original offer? We sure think so."

To some extent, it worked. That's why they negotiated in public and put the whole thing, more or less, on its website, complete with a handy-dandy explanation of all the nice and cool things the NHL was offering. Not that there weren't some good things in there (some of which helped the teams that conformed to the league's war against cap-circumventing contracts in an entertaining and largely-acceptable way), but there certainly weren't enough that the players should have considered entertaining it for more than a minute.

[Sunaya Sapurji: Meet the most interesting man in junior hockey]

But again, it was a PR move, and so the NHLPA fought back in the only way it knew how, offering three proposals with all different terms, but two of them with revenue shares based on growth, rather than just flatly dropping to 50-50 as the NHL's does. The other, which they had to know the league would never accept under any circumstance, sure doesn't make Bettman look good. Basically, it said, "We'll go to 50-50 today if you give us the money you owe us on the current deals up front."

Oof. That last part really has to sting Bettman. The players were ready to capitulate to your 50-50 demands right away, as long as the owners you represent in all this gave them the money contractually owed them.

Instead you pitched a fit to the media and considered it to be in a different language than what you were asking.

This is, in the NHL's mind, not acceptable. Reason enough for Bettman to storm out of a Toronto office building after talking about how deeply disappointing all this non-capitulation is — and to be sure, that's the only thing he's upset about — then get in a hired car and take the first flight back to New York City. Second time in a row that's happened. All the PR spin in the world can't change the fact that it's the league, not the PA, that refuses to negotiate.

"There was nothing to talk about," Gary? Sounds to me like that's only because the things to talk about weren't exactly what you wanted to hear. Next time try holding your breath until your face turns blue. That'll show everyone that you and aren't being inflexible at all.

Don Fehr, the players, and the fans (one of whom you directly lied to less than two hours before your press conference) will know you mean business.

Pearls of Biz-dom
We all know that there isn't a better Twitter account out there than that of Paul Bissonnette. So why not find his best bit of advice on love, life and lappers from the last week?

BizNasty on the bright side: "Insult me all you want but I'm still tied for 1st in every single statistical category in the NHL right now."

If you've got something for Trending Topics, holla at Lambert on Twitter or . He'll even credit you so you get a thousand followers in one day and you'll become the most popular person on the Internet! You can also visit his blog if you're so inclined.

Tags: , , , , , , , standard
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What We Learned: NHL lockout is 1 month old, and Don Fehr doesn’t have to care

15 Oct
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

It seems like only yesterday we were sitting through interminable, impromptu press conferences about how no progress had been made in negotiations and that therefore this latest NHL lockout was growing more imminent by the minute.

Now, a month later, we are lucky enough to be sitting through interminable, impromptu press conferences about how no progress had been made in negotiations and that therefore this latest NHL lockout will stretch on in perpetuity.

[Also: Is it just a matter of time before World Cup of Hockey makes a comeback?]

Gary Bettman and Bill Daly are still meeting regularly with Don and Steve Fehr, talking about the dumbest crap imaginable because neither wants to acknowledge that they're both being absurdly implacable with their demands when it comes to those fabled Core Economic Issues. Ice quality isn't a thing the heads of what is actually a fairly power players' union should be talking about with the league's top two executives on Day 20-, 30-, or soon 40-something of this kind of thing.

Dispatches from Bob McKenzie and, more recently, Elliotte Friedman that show just how tense these negotiations are getting, and therefore how much longer they're likely to last. They're apparently growing more disconcerting by the day.

(Meanwhile, outside the walls of expensive boardrooms, more or less everyone else has been seized by apathy.)

The NHL says it's lost something like $250 million or so by canceling these games, and, as Friedman points out, this is likely all still happening because of that whole league's "the fans are so stupid they'll keep coming back" narrative.

The widely acknowledged truth is that this assertion is almost certainly true — despite the million polls running on Canadian media sites that say about half of fans really for-sure cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die mean it this time when they say won't — and that the second they unlock the doors to 30 arenas around the country, fans will pour into them, howling. But nonetheless, if the league is already turning out its pockets, it doesn't exactly portend a happy outcome here.

[More: Kings scouts who were 9/11 victims get moment with Stanley Cup]

Owners say the 50 percent growth seen in the last seven years is unsustainable and I believe them (unless something really stupid like expansion happens in the next few years) but if missing one month of the season is a loss of $250 million, four months is a loss of a billion, and the NHL season typically lasts about eight or even nine months. I don't know what kind of financial scare-numbers the league was spitting out last time it put fans through a lockout. But given the surge in revenues, and what they're already saying they've lost, I wonder if the owners really willing to douse $2.25 billion (based on their math) in gasoline and light it on fire? Remember, they only paid $1.88 billion to players last year.

There's going to come a point at which the league will likely lose more money than it can hope to make up through whatever givebacks it gets from the players. That's just simple math. And the PA knows that.

(Coming Up: Mike Babcock lobbies for Olympic gig; Teemu isn't thinking retirement; the French Connection gets a statue; the fat guy at Predators games is sad about the lockout; DC mayor asks for lockout's end; Jordan Staal's house greater-than-sign Eric Staal's house; Ryan O'Reilly, still unsigned; the Stanley Cup goes to Iowa; Brayden Schenn scores a beauty; Ondrej Pavelec finally, finally wins; and a way for the Red Wings to acquire Nail Yakupov.)

It's why they haven't made a proposal in weeks; and why Daly is starting to say, "Hey I mean when are we gonna hear from these guys, right?" to any media member who will listen. Clearly, the PA's refusal to submit a new proposal is as much a negotiating tactic as the owners' laughable first offer was.

It's hard to doubt the resolve of warmongers like Jeremy Jacobs and Ed Snider, but at some point one would think Gary Bettman will stop allowing himself to be bullied by them because he does, to be fair, have 20-something other owners to which he has to answer. Again, we've heard that some owners aren't happy about this lockout, and that it's being steered solely by the hawks on the Board of Governors. Easy to believe. A lot of them have to be sweating bullets at this point over the discomfort of the whole thing.

[Nick Cotsonika: Oilers' kid stars embrace AHL stage]

Don Fehr doesn't give a rat's ass about Bettman's demands or how much the League claims to lose. He's more than happy to sit back in his chair and argue the labor negotiations equivalent of who gets top bunk, because he's a hired gun. The players brought him in to get them a good CBA and he's not exactly checking his watch to make sure he does that in any kind of orderly fashion. He's now just waiting out the owners, because he thinks they'll crack first. Friedman says it worked for him in baseball, and that's clearly what he's counting on to work again.

There are very few stakes for Fehr. Everyone already hates Bettman, and by extension the owners, anyway. Even if fans are getting sick of the constant spin from both sides, there remains only one true villain in this unless you're a hopelessly pro-league shill. Even if he started a fire, everyone would look at Bettman like he was the pyromaniac. You don't think Fehr knows and takes advantage of that?

Thirty days? That's nothing to Don Fehr, who dashed a World Series to get to where he wanted to be. It's starting to look like all those prognostications that they'd get this sorted by the Winter Classic at the absolute, very latest underestimated the lengths to which he'd go.

When we look back on this period of worry in a year, we'll likely see how foolish we were.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Teemu Selanne says he's more than willing to come back to the NHL instead of retiring this season, but more important is the fact that this story is accompanied by pictures of him looking at a horse approvingly.

Boston Bruins: A shaky start for Chris Bourque? You mean the career AHLer who they basically traded the rights to a mediocre prospect to acquire didn't magically become an NHL All-Star because he's now playing for his dad's organization?

Buffalo Sabres: The Sabres put up statues of the French Connection, which no one cared about since there's that whole Lockout Thing going on.

Calgary Flames: Sven Baertschi is going crazy on the AHL. Two goals and four points in his first two games of the year. Yikes.

Carolina Hurricanes: Jordan Staal bought a new house in the Raleigh area for $2 million, slightly more expensive than the $1.85 million house Eric had built. Meanwhile Jared Staal lives in a basement apartment and cries himself to sleep every night.

Chicago Blackhawks: The Blackhawks' farm team in Rockford lost its first game of the season, 1-0 in a shootout, despite having about half a dozen NHLers on the roster. Somehow this is Corey Crawford's fault I just know it.

Colorado Avalanche: Don't forget that Ryan O'Reilly somehow, hilariously, remains unsigned in Colorado.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Ryan Murray is basically just sitting around waiting for the lockout to end so he can get the hell out of Regina forever.

Dallas Stars: The Texas Stars are trying very hard to rebound from their last-place finish in the AHL's Western Conference last season. Starting the new campaign at 1-0 (thanks to a win over San Antonio) gets them 1/31st of the way to their win total from last year.

Detroit Red Wings presented by Amway: Mike Babcock is already lobbying to get another crack at coaching the 2014 Canadian Olympic team. It's believed the coaching decisions for that squad (which will surely lose in hilarious fashion) will be made after the lockout.

Edmonton Oilers: The poor Oilers. Doesn't the NHL think about what kind of damage this is doing to their ability to get that arena built? Sheesh. Some people, man. So inconsiderate.

Florida Panthers: Don't know about this Panthers' affiliate AHL team. Only 19 shots in their first game of the season, and 10 of those came in the first period. Poor Jacob Markstrom.

Los Angeles Kings: One good thing about the lockout for the Kings is that a bunch of staffers and other employees get a day with the Cup when they otherwise might not have. The bad news for the Cup is it had to go to Iowa.

Minnesota Wild: Minnesota Golden Gophers fans say they're more than happy to welcome disenfranchised Wild fans to the bandwagon.  Worth noting that it's probably a good year to start watching the Gophs anyway. They're 2-0 with 12 scored and two allowed, and the duo of Nick Bjugstad and Kyle Rau is gonna combine for about a billion goals this season. In summary, everyone should watch college hockey because it owns.

Montreal Canadiens: Alexei Yemelin to the KHL for Ak Bars, his original KHL team with which he won the Gagarin Cup in 2009.

Nashville Predators: The fat guy who takes off his shirt at Predators games is bummed about the lockout.

New Jersey Devils: Even with four actual NHL players on the roster (Adam Henrique, Mattias Tedenby, Jacob Josefson and Adam Larsson), the Albany Devils lost to Manchester, which only had one NHLer on the roster, in the season opener. "You get guys mishandling pucks. It's tougher for guys like Henrique and Josefson and Larsson," said Devils coach Rick Kowalsky. That's the ticket.

New York Islanders: Important Frans Nielsen update: He has five assists and a plus-4 rating in five games for Lukko. Frans Nielsen rules.

New York Rangers: Mike Del Zotto is literally working at a supermarket during the lockout. I expect that kind of thing from Tim Erixon but not MDZ.

Ottawa Senators: Can someone explain to me why Ben Bishop gets to sign for the Senators' farm team even though he has a one-way deal with Ottawa? I'm very confused by this.

Philadelphia Flyers: I guess this goal by Brayden Schenn was okay.

Phoenix Coyotes: Today is Day No. 66 since Jude LaCava of Fox 10 in Arizona said Greg Jamison would have the deal for the Coyotes sewn up within the next five days. Coyotes prospect Brett MacLean had 18 NHL games under his belt at age 23, but was forced to retire after suffering cardiac arrest during a pickup game this summer. Wow does that ever suck.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Matt Cooke is getting more involved with his kids' sports teams during the lockout. "Now remember, guys, when that player shows you his numbers, you put your shoulder RIGHT between 'em. That's the most effective way to put them in the hospital. And for the love of Pete, skate around with your elbows UP how many times do I have to say this?"

San Jose Sharks: What is perhaps the best hockey photo of the year already exists, thanks to this Worcester Sharks game:

St. Louis Blues: Vladimir Tarasenko, the Blues' next big thing, suffered a concussion on Saturday and because he's playing in the KHL, the ambulance probably showed up four hours after the game and left him by the side of the road.

Tampa Bay Lightning: Good for the Bolts. With very little to do given the lockout, it seems team employees are just using time they would have spent at the office volunteering for nonprofits instead.

Toronto Maple Leafs: As you might expect, the crowd at that planned Toronto rally against the lockout drew upwards of a dozen fans. What a success.

Vancouver Canucks: Alex Edler and Jason Garrison both hurt themselves prior to the lockout and are therefore still on the team's payroll. Doesn't seem fair.

Washington Capitals: The mayor of Washington, D.C., personally asked Ted Leonsis to end the lockout. "Hahahaha, yeah okay bud," Leonsis probably said while high-fiving Jeremy Jacobs.

Winnipeg Jets: Mark Scheifele is still kickin' away in the OHL with 13 points in his first 10 games. I wonder if Jets fans will still try to delude themselves into thinking he's NHL-ready again this year. That was my favorite part of last season by far.

Gold Star Award

After ripping up the AHL as a rookie last season, Cory Conacher is at it again this year, with two goals and three assists in his first two games for Syracuse. In 84 career AHL games, he now has 45-46-91.

Minus of the Weekend

Congrats to Ondrej Pavelec for finally getting a win in the KHL. Only took him seven tries.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User "OilCountry84" is locked in.

A foundation of
Edmonton gets Johan Franzen + ?
Detroit gets Nail Yakupov

Remember, this is an OILERS fan saying this.

Signoff

That is the feces that is created when shame eats too much stupid.

Ryan Lambert publishes hockey awesomeness almost never over at The Two-Line Pass. Check it out, why don't you? Or you can e-mail him and follow him on Twitter if you so desire.

Tags: , Don Fehr, , , , , , Wings
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Trending Topics: Where all others have failed, YOUR NHL fan protest will definitely work

12 Oct
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

We live in an age of protest for the first time in a while. The 1960s saw millions of people take to the streets to give voice to their beliefs, and that trend is now back.

Every year, people protest against things like unfair economic conditions around the world and the current U.S. banking system; and that kind of dissent has even come, to a far smaller degree, to the NHL.

We've seen rallies in favor of not-trading Jason Spezza, and we've seen them in opposition to the continued reign of Scott Howson, and against the management of the Maple Leafs. Now, we're starting to see demonstrations against the lockout; the recent one outside the NHL Store in New York is a prime example, as is this Saturday's "Give Us Our Game Back" planned event in Toronto.

Hockey protests, it seems, aren't exactly partisan. Canadians, both Sens and Leafs fans, have done them. American fans have done them. And they've all accomplished the same thing.

Jack squat.

Thus, it's logical to assume, if not wholly set your watch to, this rally attracting a few dozen fans at the absolute maximum, and absolutely nothing at all happening whatsoever. They'll mill around at whichever out-of-the-way street corner they choose to gather, maybe shout a few things. Some guy who fancies himself the Leader of this particular ineffectual movement might stand on a milk carton and shout some words with no one could disagree — "The lockout sucks! Whaddaya say, gang?" — to a smattering of applause.

Then… nothing.

The thing with these protests is that you everyone knows they're not going to do anything to sway the opinions of either the NHL or the PA.

Bill Daly is not bursting into Gary Bettman's office saying, "Gary, 12 people have clicked 'Attending' on this protest Facebook invite. We better start the season post haste!"

Likewise, the Fehr brothers aren't monitoring Twitter to see if anyone has a strong enough opinion to make them take a 30-percent salary rollback. Instead of glumly gathering outside the NHL Store in your Ranger jersey, you could have gone for a nice walk, read a book, or talked to a loved one. Think about it.

The entire thing is stupid. The idea of it. The execution of it. The sad attempts to get coverage for it. If you go to one of these events, you are dumb and wasting your time.

This is, apparently, especially true of the one planned for tomorrow. The fine folks at Pension Plan Puppets already told Torontonians not to waste their time on the matter, linking to a Toronto Star interview with one of its organizers, who said, "We're concerned about the lockout's effects on local businesses, on this city's and this country's hockey traditions."

Yeah, local business. A key component to all this. Because it turns out that even the slightest digging (okay, goading) from the PPP boys uncovered that some of the guys promoting this this thing are, you guessed it, small business owners. It is in their financial interest for you or your friends to show up to this rally and promote the idea that this lockout is not only hurting fans, but also local businesses around the rink. (This despite the fact there's no evidence that local economies are hurt by work stoppages in pro sports.)

So not only is this particular protest, it seems to also be cynical and half-assed.

Here's what you can do instead: Accept that this lockout is going to happen no matter how many people show up and protest.

What, exactly, is being protested remains somewhat unclear. If it's the general idea that the lockout is not a good thing for hockey fans, then maybe it's time to start protesting other demonstrably not-good stuff, like world hunger, human rights violations, or Michael Bay. No one likes that. Just go out in front of your house with a sign about how bad it is and walk in a circle. There, now you're Doing Something about it. Or at least, as much of a Something as this fan rally will accomplish.

Here's the deal: Nothing you do at any time in the next few months is going to matter even a little bit. Instead, if you think you can make a difference, wouldn't it be a better idea to do so somewhere it'll actually matter?

Instead of paying a hundred bucks for tickets to a game that has since been canceled, have a few beers and eat before and after, why not donate even some of that money to a local nonprofit or a charity that means something to you? Instead of spending hundreds of hours in front of your TV watching hockey this winter, you might want think about volunteering somewhere.There are causes that actually need your attention and support, and need it desperately. Giving that hour or two of your time you might have considered flushing down the toilet by attending a stupid rally would actually be put to good use. Doing even a rudimentary amount of research online will help you find organizations in your area, and the odds that you'll have to look at any self-important dummies in Leafs jerseys shouting about the lockout will be reduced significantly.

If you wanna make a difference, get serious about it and stop believing this crap will end the lockout any faster.

And if you're the kind of person who thinks organizing something like this is a good idea, stop wasting everyone's time.

Pearls of Biz-dom

We all know that there isn't a better Twitter account out there than that of Paul Bissonnette. So why not find his best bit of advice on love, life and lappers from the last week?

BizNasty on exciting lockout alternatives: "That was more uneventful than the movie The Grey. #Giants #Reds"

If you've got something for Trending Topics, holla at Lambert on Twitter or . He'll even credit you so you get a thousand followers in one day and you'll become the most popular person on the Internet! You can also visit his blog if you're so inclined.

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What We Learned: When ESPN meets the KHL, it’s Alex Ovechkin that wins

08 Oct
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

In an effort to fill the void in hockey fans' lives and potentially capitalize on whatever vague remaining interest they may have in Alex Ovechkin's exploits — and let's be honest, for almost all of us, that interest is waning about as rapidly as his goal totals — ESPN recently announced that it would begin airing KHL games on whatever it's calling its ESPN3 platform these days.

In addition, they will also air a game on ESPN2 — actual hockey on an ESPN television property! — at 1 p.m. Tuesday, and then again at 8 p.m. that night.

A great idea for disenfranchised hockey fans in theory. Hockey fans are starved for the sport, since the season was meant to have started in just five days, and apart from the AHL, which has its own broadcast things going on, the KHL is undoubtedly the best league on the planet. As an added bonus, it has no connection with the NHL, with which the Worldwide Leader in Sports is current embroiled in a bit of a Cold War, but does feature a number of very recognizable NHL players.

Alex Ovechkin is one. Jakub Voracek, Zdeno Chara, Evgeni Malkin, Pavel Datsyuk and Pekka Rinne are others. These are people ESPN knows hockey fans might tune in to see. At least they could be. Maybe. If fans are really bored.

The problems with this whole thing are three-fold, and each is why it's odd to me that ESPN would pursue this other than as an "eff you" to the NHL.

(Coming Up: Bobby Ryan calls out the Euro NHLers during lockout; Bryz says KHLers might not return; Nathan MacKinnon's brilliant goal; Nashville, Carolina keep the fans engaged; Mikhail Grabovski's apathy; Blackhawks on the fence about leaving; Mikael Granlund and Alex Steen, killin' it; Kevin Bieksa is charitable; Braden Holtby is human after all.)

1. It is almost exclusively showing games for Ovechkin's Dynamo Moscow.

Sure he's the biggest name over there right now, but he's also the only name I even recognize on it. I tend to follow this sport FAIRLY closely, and this is a bunch of Russian names I've literally never heard in my life. Ovechkin, yes, but also Gynge, Kasanchuk and Pestunov. There are other KHL teams with a larger number of names you and I have heard.

For example, there is Ovechkin's opponents for the TV game, HC Lev, which actually has players hockey fans have heard of if they've been paying attention. Yes, they have Chara and Voracek, but also semi-recognizable names like Martin Skoula, Marcel Hossa, Erik Christensen, Jiri Novotny, Michal Repik, Tomas Surovy and Jaroslav Svoboda. I don't mean to imply that people are saying, "Honey hold the kids outta school, Petr Vrana's playing this afternoon!" but at least these are names people who've played NHL 09 would recognize, for the most part.

2. Very few people have ESPN3, and those who do probably aren't hyped to watch hockey on it.

This right here says the ESPN3/WatchESPN platform has 40 million subscribers. It was semi-recently crowing about having 108,000 unique visitors watching at least part of a match between Premier League champions Manchester City play Queens Park Rangers.

To put that into perspective, at the time the NHL signed with OLN in 2005, that network had 64 million subscribers. Remember all the jokes then?

3. No one cares about the KHL outside Russia.

Therefore, when the diehardest of diehard hockey fans tune into these games, guess what they're going so see: Ovechkin. And nothing but.

Remember how bad hockey coverage was back in the NHL's OLN days? Every game had Sidney Crosby in it, and every action was viewed through the lens of "How does this affect Sidney Crosby?" You can expect one whole hell of a lot of that come once again on Tuesday, as Ovechkin's every move and lazy backcheck will be dissected ad nauseum. You might get a little of that with Chara as well, in that "Alex Ovechkin and Dynamo Moscow take on Zdeno Chara and HC Lev" way, but make no mistake, they're focusing on Ovechkin because they want you to remember he scored 65 that one time.

The biggest issue for actual hockey fans who might be tempted to watch these games, though, is who's going to be calling them. Steve Levy and Barry Melrose. Both, presumably, have the job because they raised their hands when one of the executives asked a crowded lunchroom who there liked hockey.

For most hockey fans, this pairing is a non-starter. Levy is of course a very familiar face on a network that has largely ignored this sport to the point where mentioning the two in the same breath is, 99 times out of 100, for the sake of a punchline.

Meanwhile, Melrose is known mostly as the guy with the mullet, and, for those with somewhat longer memories, the guy who was hired for name recognition purposes by two of the NHL's more recent incompetent owners, then benched Steven Stamkos, and was predictably fired after 16 games.

Plus, as anyone who has watched the NCAA hockey tournament on ESPN the last few years can attest, he has only the vaguest recognition of players he claims to have watched all season. Listening to him try to figure out all the little accent marks over Czech players names tomorrow might be the only reason to tune it at all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be able to watch hockey, because I am the absolute target audience here because I would watch you and your friends play hockey on a 13-inch black and white television with a blurry picture.

But the question, for a network that has done all in its power to tell hockey fans to cram it with walnuts for the last seven years, should be whether this is something that appeals to more than a few thousand people who have no lives (again, like me), and the answer, you'd think, is "Of course not."

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Bobby Ryan has no plans whatever to play overseas during this lockout. "I think it's important to stay here (in the United States) and be part of the solution and not just run from it," he said. That's a shot across your bow, Alex Ovechkin.

Boston Bruins: Chris Bourque played his first game for the Providence Bruins in a 4-1 exhibition loss to Springfield. Did you know his dad is legendary Boston defenseman Ray Bourque?

Buffalo Sabres: Zemgus Girgensons is the youngest player in the AHL this season, at  just 18 years old. He's 15 days younger than Hampus Lindholm, who's also in the league, which just goes to show that if you're 18 and in the AHL, your name is required to be pretty awesome.

Calgary Flames: The Flames are pretty pumped to have drafted Max Reinhart, who they believe is almost at Sven Baertschi's level of NHL preparedness. That's pretty high praise, but it also doesn't matter since there's a lockout that will probably last the whole season. An extra year in the minors never hurt anyone.

Carolina Hurricanes: This is my favorite link of the week: "Hey just so you know the AHL isn't also locked out. Oh, you weren't aware that the NHL was locked out? Right, I forgot, we're in Charlotte."

Chicago Blackhawks: As with most NHL players who haven't gone to Europe yet Duncan Keith's agent says doing so is still an option if the lockout stretches on. Same for Toews and Kane and Sharp.

Colorado Avalanche: I find it hilarious that Semyon Varlamov went over to Yaroslavl to be the backup to Vitaly Kolesnik. This guy is the future of Avs goaltending?

Columbus Blue Jackets: Those rumors of John Davidson to the Jackets just won't go away, and if he goes there, I expect Scott Howson to be carrying a box with a fern sticking poking out of it out the backdoor of Nationwide Arena within a week.

Dallas Stars: Here's a Q&A with Jamie Benn after he signed with the Hamburg Freezers. After reading it, I was very hungry.

Detroit Red Wings presented by Amway: Jonathan Ericsson is yet another player who will go to Sweden during the lockout, but right now he's only committed to playing in three games over there. Seems like the shortest-term deal ever.

Edmonton Oilers: Expect to see headlines like "Oil Barons pummel ______" all season long. Especially because they beat talent-laden Houston Friday night, 4-0, without either Jordan Eberle or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

Florida Panthers: Florida's farm team in San Antonio is starting to draw some respectable crowds. How respectable? Some 16,151 showed up to see a preseason game last season, and drew 7,134 on average last year. The team hopes to beat that this year.

Los Angeles Kings: Jordan Nolan and Andrei Loktionov are pretty much the only two actual Kings on the Manchester Monarchs' roster, but they also scored the only two goals of a preseason game against Bridgeport, so I guess that's all they'll need.

Minnesota Wild: Despite that first loss to Oklahoma City, Mikael Granlund and Charlie Coyle might already be way too good to play in the AHL. In Saturday's return engagement, they scored six goals. Four of them were Granlund's in his first semi-official pro game in North America. Doesn't seem fair.

Montreal Canadiens: That "La Tournée des Joueurs" tour is still going very well, and will be at Le Colisée in Quebec City on Thursday. They have 15,000 seats available, and have sold out everywhere else they've gone. Carey Price recently joined the tour too.

Nashville Predators: The Preds are hard at work trying to keep the fans they have engaged even during this lockout. That includes by getting discounts for fans who wear branded merch to local businesses.

New Jersey Devils: Travis Zajac on how the lockout effects his Devils: "We're in an area where there's tons of sports, the Yankees, the Nets, the Knicks, football. All these teams are in competition for fans and it definitely hurts us coming off a successful season like we had." Yeah, the Knicks, Nets, and Jets are really drawing a lot of positive interest.

New York Islanders: Lots of defensive depth in the Islanders' pipeline, if you count Ty Wishart, which you shouldn't.

New York Rangers: Not that it will come as a surprise, but Chris Kreider is officially committed to playing for the Connecticut Whale. "It's still pro hockey. I don't look at it like (this isn't the NHL)," Kreider said. "It's still a huge jump up from where I played most of last year, so I have to be ready and I have to be focused." He'll get big-time minutes in the AHL.

Ottawa Senators: Kyle Turris to Kärpät of the Finnish elite league, where he'll be able to play with Jason Demers and Jussi Jokinen. Exciting times to be a hockey fan. Jeez.

Philadelphia Flyers: Oh, maybe never mind on Jake Voracek playing for Lev on Tuesday.

Phoenix Coyotes: Today is Day No. 59 since Jude LaCava of Fox 10 in Arizona said Greg Jamison would have the deal for the Coyotes sewn up within the next five days.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Speaking of European signings, Dustin Jeffrey might now lead the league in "weirdest." He's going to play with the Tilburg Trappers of the Dutch Eredivisie. The most notable player on that team currently is former decent UNH forward Josh Prudden.

San Jose Sharks: Apparently no one reported on this until now but Brad Stuart got a no-trade clause on his new deal with San Jose. I feel like I knew that though. Someone must have come up with that, right?

St. Louis Blues: Alex Steen is killing it in Sweden so far. Four goals and 10 points in just six games.

Tampa Bay Lightning: The Bolts seem to really like having their AHL team start training camp in Newfoundland, as they're now doing it for the second straight year. Their new affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch, have 11 players that have gotten into at least one NHL game in their careers.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Mikhail Grabovski says it doesn't matter if the entire season is locked out. Cool, man.

Vancouver Canucks: Kevin Bieksa will host a charity game with a pretty damn good roster. The Sedins, Dan Hamhuis, Manny Malhotra, Max Lapierre, Cory Schneider and Willie Mitchell will all play against UBC on Oct. 17 to raise money for a number of Canucks charities.

Washington Capitals: Braden Holtby got his first exhibition action of the year, giving up two goals on 10 shots against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. "Where was this guy last spring?" wondered the Boston Bruins.

Winnipeg Jets: Andrew Ladd was gonna go play in the KHL but now he's not, for reasons that I should think are obvious.

Gold Star Award

This was a pretty decent goal by future No. 2 overall pick Nathan MacKinnon. Too bad he's no Seth Jones.

Minus of the Weekend

Ilya Bryzgalov says some Russian players might not come back from the KHL after this lockout. "Oh that would be really terrible don't do that," said Ed Snider, probably.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User "Vankiller Whale" is on top of things.

To Vancouver: Hossa, Ott 1st, Anderson

To Ottawa: Luongo, Hjalmarssen, Connauton (VAN's best D prospect)

To Chicago: Turris, Lehner, Raymond, Van 2nd

Yes yes yes. Yes across the board.

Signoff

If you want, you can read a bloated government report on smoking, or go straight to the horse's mouth and get the facts from the tobacco industry.

Ryan Lambert publishes hockey awesomeness almost never over at The Two-Line Pass. Check it out, why don't you? Or you can e-mail him and follow him on Twitter if you so desire.

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How NHL player bonuses landed League, fans in lockout misery (Trending Topics)

05 Oct
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

You can say that a lot of things were the cause of the lockout and not be wrong. As Gary Bettman says, the lack of control over things like jet fuel have certainly cut into owners' pocketbooks. As have increasing player costs. As has owners' base avarice. As has runaway spending by GMs. As have a wide variety of other factors.

But of those, player costs and GMs' willingness to spend their owners' money are the two that are most inexorably linked.

Competition for players, specifically top players, has become so fierce that GMs are willing to spend anything and everything they can to acquire them. Witness the contracts collected by Ryan Suter, Zach Parise and Shea Weber this summer, when teams went to considerable lengths to woo and eventually sign them, and did so using what should be considered the kind of spirit-of-the-thing cap circumvention that Gary Bettman slapped the Devils for a few years back.

[More: Outrage, indifference as NHL cancels regular-season games]

It's one area where the CBA, theoretically, should have been able to prevent this, but failed to do so: Signing bonuses are capped at just 10 percent of a player's total salary, but only for those coming into the league on entry-level deals. From what I can tell, a guy like Weber, with his $110 million contract, is free to collect as much or as little of that in bonuses as a team will allow. In his case, the Flyers — and the Predators, who took on the offer-sheet deal — allowed for a lot. He'll only be paid $4 million in actual game-check salary from that deal over the first four years of it. The rest of his cap hit, a total of $52 million, will be paid in $13 million lump-sum bonuses at the beginning of each deal.

I think we can all agree that Shea Weber, of all the defensemen (or even all the players period) in the league, is probably worth $56 million over the next four years, especially given how much he means to the Predators in particular now that Suter is gone to Minnesota. Remember, that $26 million bonus investment in a calendar year is viewed as a big reason why Nashville won't shop Weber for a long while.

But for him to collect just $4 million in real salary during that time must make owners' blood boil, particularly if their names happen to rhyme with Beremy Bacobs.

In the case of Parise and Suter and Weber, and every other player that gets them league-wide, the bonuses are a kind of lockout insurance, as they aren't affected in any way by the fact that the teams aren't allowing players to actually play, and therefore don't have to pay them to do so. As Greg pointed out yesterday, that's why these bonuses were built in.

But for all Parise's "Gary loves lockouts" talk, there must be some amount of accountability on the players' part for them to say, "Whoa hey these bonuses aren't going to be helpful to everyone else in the PA except us, and that could lead to a lockout. I mean, look how big they are!"

It's fair to get them for yourself as long as your new team is willing to give them out, but then you can't complain about them, or look around when you get locked out like you have no idea how this happened.

And I'm not saying ownership isn't culpable. They are, ultimately, the guys cutting the checks for these things, and therefore they have to sign off on the deals. They did so despite the fact that they didn't like them very much. Maybe they also did so knowing they could then use them as ammo for the lockout argument in general, but that seems like a really expensive investment to make in something that would ultimately cost them money (at least, if you buy Bill Daly's "We lost $100 million by not having a preseason" line of talk, which you probably shouldn't).

Perhaps the easiest party to blame is the GMs, who don't seem to be locked out at all despite being the ones either coming up with or agreeing to these deals. That's worthy of blame, and they probably get chewed out by owners and league executives alike on a regular basis for signing them, but that's behind closed doors. If Craig Leipold shows up to the Parise/Suter presser grinnin' like an idiot and whistlin' Dixie, then what kind of impression does that make?

So now that the NHL has finally begun canceling games, like we all knew they would, guys like Weber and Suter and Parise won't have to worry about when they start getting their escrow checks, like other players do. They don't have to get jobs overseas as a means of staying sharp and simultaneously collecting pay from KHL or Czech teams.

They're fine. Just like the owners. And they're also a big part of the reason their NHL peers have to go overseas.

Hopefully, the next collective bargaining agreement has a little more in the way of protections built into it so these types of absurd payouts are limited in the same way those for rookies are. There's no reason whatsoever that they shouldn't be. They're pricy and they're stupid and they benefit no one but the players. If the NHLPA wants a true partnership, which is the PR-friendly word every player has used in every interview about how awful this lockout is for them, they'll become more flexible in this regard.

Not all points of contention in the last CBA were avoidable, but this one very much was. One thing I think everyone can agree on going forward is that there needs to be more in the way of controls put in place so there isn't another lockout in a good, long while. The NHL and NHLPA are both guilty of a lack of foresight in this case, and everyone but the players collecting these stupid bonuses are paying for it now.

Pearls of Biz-dom

We all know that there isn't a better Twitter account out there than that of Paul Bissonnette. So why not find his best bit of advice on love, life and lappers from the last week?

BizNasty on bizarre trends that sound dirty but apparently are not: "Google 'Japanese Bagel Head'. What's going on over there?"

If you've got something for Trending Topics, holla at Lambert on Twitter or . He'll even credit you so you get a thousand followers in one day and you'll become the most popular person on the Internet! You can also visit his blog if you're so inclined.

Fantasy Football video from Yahoo! Sports:

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What We Learned: Despite what NBA’s doing, don’t bother trying to stop NHL diving

01 Oct
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

You hear it every year. What is the NHL going to do to stop all this diving and embellishing?

There have been various proposed crackdowns in a number of different sports. In soccer, referees are now allowed to present yellow cards to particularly egregious actors, and getting enough of those can indeed lead to suspension.

In the NFL, if you pretend to be injured, you can get an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and cost your team a timeout.

In the NHL, of course, there are two-minute minors for diving and for even acting as though an actual penalty was worse than it was, such as shaking your hand like someone just tried to remove it, when all you received is an inadvertent tap on the glove.

But the League wants to go beyond than that.

As you likely well know by now, the NHL is kicking around the idea of circulating a list of known divers around the league so that officials can better spot the actions of these cowardly no-goodniks. Guys like Ryan Kesler and maybe even Evgeni Malkin could very well appear on this list, and therefore their unacceptable actions will no longer be tolerated, unless they are.

The problem with this list is that it doesn't accomplish much. Okay, sure, it gives homer broadcasters something to harp about whenever an offending player comes to town; imagine Jack Edwards' glee at seeing someone like Tomas Plekanec appear on that list. But what else could it possibly achieve?

If anything, it will just lead to those guys drawing fewer penalties they might have deserved or, at worst, lead those players to maybe earn an extra two penalty minutes a couple times a season.

The reason I bring this up is that the NBA is apparently kicking around the idea of penalizing floppers — same act, different name — by conducting reviews of every game, and potentially fining those it believes intentionally hit the deck to draw a couple free throws. Here's why that, and all other attempts to crack down on this kind of behavior are always going to fall short: Because players don't care.

(Coming Up: Rick Nash injury update; Kings for sale; lockout hurting arenas; Daryl Katz "I'm a Dumbass" Tour; will the Staals head overseas?; Kansas City bummed about losing exhibition game; Blue Jackets already with the Nathan MacKinnon talk; Jimmy Howard misses Chris Osgood; Canucks go to midgets; Toby Enstrom's waiting game; Nazem Kadri is fat; and trading Bouwmeester to the Avalanche.)

The NHL rules actually have fines and even suspensions built into them when diving by one player becomes problematic. As with the NBA's half-baked idea, it involves postgame reviews at league offices.

First offense: The NBA sends a warning letter. Ooooooo, scary! Nothing like a terse letter from head offices to stop doing a thing to really put the fear of God into you.

Second offense: A $1,000 fine. Whoaaa not $1,000, that's 1/500th of league minimum.

Third offense: A one-game suspension. Which actually isn't that bad of a deterrent, in theory anyway.

Fourth offense and beyond: Penalties are doubled from the previous infractions.

It might shock you to learn, however, that this kind of thing is never enforced, at least not publicly.

Now, you might say that it's rare for a team or a single player to get whistled for diving, and that much is true. In the last two seasons, Max Lapierre and Alex Semin, respectively, each led the league with just three of them. Neither Semin nor Lapierre were suspended by the league for hitting that threshold, despite what it says in the NHL Rulebook.

The only player who has even had his diving fine publicly announced in the last several years, as far as I can tell, is Sean Avery (of course it's Sean Avery).

That was in 2005.

The thing with that diving list — or the NBA's proposed fine system, or the NHL's existing one — is that we know who the divers are on the ice. We see them 20, 30, 40 games or more a season, and as a consequence we know what this kind of thing looks like. The NHL very obviously chooses not to enforce what it has written down despite the fact that this is happening with at least some frequency.

Fines, again, don't work. These guys make lots and lots of money and even if the NHL maxed out the fine amount to the largest allowable under the past CBA, that's $2,500 and no one cares. At least in the NBA, they have a history of fines that are of sizable amounts ($100,000 to Kobe Bryant being like $2,500 to the average NHLer, sure).

If you want accountability from professional athletes on this matter, you need two things, neither of which will ever actually happen.

First, you need officials who aren't afraid to call diving whenever they see it. If there's four dives in a game, call every single one of them and make sure the teams get the message that on this ref's watch, diving won't be tolerated.

Second, increase the punishment heavily and make the review process more transparent. Here's what every player does when they get that letter from the league: crumple it up and throw it in the garbage. You or I would do the same thing because really who cares. So, fines for the first offense, suspensions for the second, at a minimum. You want to circulate that divers list? Make all diving and embellishment penalties for guys on it count double on the ice and in terms of supplementary discipline. Four minutes in the box, $2,000 out of your wallet, two-game suspension, etc.

Otherwise, the NHL just looks like the punk teacher who gets driven out of the inner city school at the beginning of all those movies Dangerous Minds-type movies.

The problem is the NHLPA likely won't go for that, and the list is already going to be extremely subjective since it's based on perhaps the most subjective penalty around in the first place. Plus, players will always find a way around it because they're very good at what they do.

And so in the end, the only thing you can really say about diving is that there's nothing you can ever do except pay it lip service — "Boy is it bad!" — and hope no one notices when you don't do anything about it.

Hey, it's worked for the NHL so far.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Ducks goaltending prospect John Gibson is off to an okay start for Kitchener of the OHL. He stopped 42 of 43 on Saturday night and now in three games this season has a GAA of 0.97 and save percentage of .969.

Boston Bruins: Jordan Caron is likely to be a full-time NHL player when or if the season eventually starts. Peter Chiarelli said he saw a significant development in Caron's game just over the summer.

Buffalo Sabres: The Sabres have a number of good young prospects, all of whom will likely improve as a result of the quality of players now flooding the AHL.

Calgary Flames: Here's Flames defensive prospect Patrick Sieloff drilling Justin Bailey from late last week.

Gotta keep your head up.

Carolina Hurricanes: In which Eric Staal gets deep about the prospect of playing overseas: "Everyone is their own individual." Seems both he and his brother Jordan will be staying in North America.

Chicago Blackhawks: Blackhawks farm team the Rockford IceHogs are putting coupons for free tickets to preseason games in their local newspaper, so why not go to a free hockey game if you're near there? Great marketing here.

Colorado Avalanche: Kansas City is all bummed that the cancelation of the NHL preseason will deny them an Avs/Rangers game. Hey guys, don't worry about it. Just wait a few years and you'll get either the Coyotes or Oilers.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Probably not too early to start with this stuff, eh?

Dallas Stars: Say this for Rauman Lukko of the SM-Liiga: They love their Danes. In the last few days alone, they've signed Danish NHLers Philip Larsen of Dallas, Mikkel Boedker of Phoenix and the great Frans Nielsen of the Islanders. Frans Nielsen will be the SM-Liiga MVP this year book it.

Detroit Red Wings presented by Amway: Because of the lockout, Jimmy Howard can't get advice from goaltending coach and mentor Chris Osgood, which in this article is being framed as a negative for some reason. As far as Osgood is concerned, though, you know what they say: Those who can't do, teach.

Edmonton Oilers: Next stop on the Daryl Katz "I'm a Dumbass" Tour is a public talk with the City Council. That'll go well.

Florida Panthers: "Panthers not on ice but staff is out in the community." You know, rooting around in garbage cans, panhandling, collecting cans, that sort of thing. Oh that's not what they're talking about? Never mind then.

Los Angeles Kings: The guy who wants to buy AEG — which owns the Kings, LA Galaxy and part of the Lakers — is a former surgeon and pharma mogul who wants to use the company's considerable heft in an effort to raise kids' awareness of the importance of health and physical fitness. Seems like a good guy to me.

Minnesota Wild: The Houston Aeros are holding camp at the Xcel Energy Center because why not. They'll also host Rockford in an AHL game there in November.

Montreal Canadiens: As with the Aeros and most other AHL teams, the Hamilton Bulldogs are also holding their training camp right now. That team could have as many as six rookies on it, and Aaron Palushaj is already talking like he's a greybeard at 23 years old.

Nashville Predators: The locked out Preds players hired a coach to help them refine their skills while they can't work with their actual coaches. That's initiative right there.

New Jersey Devils: Not one but two of Travis Zajac's brothers, Darcy and Kelly, are participating in the Albany Devils training camp. Also in camp, oddly, are three former UNH Wildcats.

New York Islanders: Nino Niederreiter hopes this latest trip to the AHL is enough to catapult him to a full-time NHL job. Don't forget, though, that he only had one goal in his final 55 games last season after dealing with a concussion.

New York Rangers: Rick Nash shoulder injury update: He's day-to-day with a bruised bone, but didn't break anything. Good news, bad news.

Ottawa Senators: Jared Cowen doesn't much seem to like playing in the AHL again. "I'm not saying it's bad here," is never a good way to start a sentence about a place you're playing.

Philadelphia Flyers: Given Claude Giroux's recent concussions maybe going to play in the KHL would be a frigging terrible idea.

Phoenix Coyotes: Today is Day No. 52 since Jude LaCava of Fox 10 in Arizona said Greg Jamison would have the deal for the Coyotes sewn up within the next five days. Oh and Glendale is working with Greg Jamison to rework its original deal to pay him to run the arena because he's totally buying the team, guys.

Pittsburgh Penguins: Do the Pittsburgh Penguins have roster flaws? Let's just have a quick glance at the goals they gave up in the playoffs last year and see what the problem there was. I'll give you a hint: It starts with Marc-Andre Fleur-.

San Jose Sharks: The area around HP Pavilion will lose out on a lot of business, and that will obviously hurt profits, say owners there. Meanwhile, the Sharks' owners are probably happy they don't have to lose another $15 million this season.

St. Louis Blues: Vladimir Sobotka is lighting up the Czech league, with eight points in his first five games. He only had 20 all of last season.

Tampa Bay Lightning: Bolts center and Alaska native Nate Thompson signed with the Alaska Aces of the ECHL, joining other Alaskans Joey Crabb and Scott Gomez on the team. Meanwhile, Matt Carle, Ty Conklin and Brandon Dubinsky continue to turn their back on their home state.

Toronto Maple Leafs: The Marlies already love what Paul Ranger is doing in his return to professional hockey.

Vancouver Canucks: Kevin Bieksa and Dan Hamhuis recently went to a AAA midget hockey practice to work with and talk to the kids. Bieksa admitted to being gassed afterwards. Getting run around by 15- and 16-year olds when you're already supposed to have been in camp? Good work, Kev.

Washington Capitals: Brooks Laich had a goal and an assist in his first game with Kloten of the Swiss A League. Fun fact, one of his teammates is Matthias Bieber. No relation.

Winnipeg Jets: Toby Enstrom wants to sign for Modo but can't yet because the club is still a little dubious about whether that ruling that Swedish teams could sign NHLers will hold up.

Gold Star Award

Tom Fitzgerald's son Ryan looks to be a top-quality prospect, taking home the MVP award at the first ever USA Hockey All-American Prospects Game in Buffalo ahead of guys like oh I don't know Seth Jones. Three assists and dominated at the dot in a 5-2 win.

Minus of the Weekend

Nazem Kadri seems to have spent the summer on the Dustin Byfuglien diet.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User "Flames rebuilder" just wants to help.

To Calgary:
Paul Stastny
Duncan Siemens

To Colorado:
Jay Bouwmeester
Mikael Backlund

Good job out there.

Signoff

Oh, spoons. Can I assume the potatoes will be mashed tonight?

Ryan Lambert publishes hockey awesomeness almost never over at The Two-Line Pass. Check it out, why don't you? Or you can e-mail him and follow him on Twitter if you so desire.

More news from the Yahoo! Sports Minute:

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Congratulations, Canada, on winning this 40-year-old hockey game (Trending Topics)

28 Sep
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

Friday is the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and Russia, and if you don't know what that is, then lucky you, I guess.

In short: It was a series organized between the best NHL players in the world, represented by convicted criminal and lowlife Alan Eagleson, and the USSR's seemingly invincible superteam of, ahem, "amateurs." Canada won the eight-game series — yes, eight, a number antithetical to everything we now value in hockey — in which there were no overtimes, 4-3-1.

In Canada, this is treated as A Big Deal.

Basically, it was the first time professional players had played against the Soviet juggernaut because, prior to that, they really only competed in the Olympics, where pros weren't allowed until much later. So it was a situation where, sure, the USSR could pummel the best amateur talent from around the world into a fine pulp since 1954 (except in 1960. You're welcome, world ...), but the question was how they'd stack up against the best pros in the world, as represented by a galaxy of Team Canada stars.

All-time great players like Phil and Tony Esposito, Frank Mahovlich, Bobby Clarke, Ken Dryden, Brad Park, Serge Savard, Stan Mikita, and Yvan Cournoyer took part. Paul Henderson was also there for some reason.

Canada's win in the series was, for some reason, treated as a cultural revolution, and more confusingly, still is. Part of this is because Canada, in typical crybaby fashion, had previously withdrawn from all international competitions because of a dispute with the IIHF. But also because it's viewed as some sort of vindication of all the things that separated The West from The Communists, which doesn't seem especially fair.

The Canadian team, again, was comprised of most of the best pros in the world (the NHL wouldn't allow WHA players). The organizers on Canada's side assumed they would win easily.

They didn't. Russia made it very interesting despite their terrible equipment and the fact that the first four games were played on Canadian soil. The Soviets won two of them, and earned a draw in the other. But then Canada went to the USSR, lost once again, but then won the final three games to capture the series. Thrilling stuff.

But it was not, as Steve Simmons suggested on Twitter this week, a moment about sports and culture, or at least wouldn't be considered such if Henderson -- of all the players on that Canadian roster -- hadn't scored the series-winning goal with just 34 seconds remaining in the final period. Certainly no one likes to bring up the fact that the Canadians essentially tried to end the career of Valrei Kharlamov by having Clarke give him a two-hander on the ankle.

What's funny about this month-long Canadian celebration of the Summit Series is that fans north of the border always -- and I mean always -- bring up USA Hockey's continual crowing about the Miracle On Ice as being a sign of pathetically clinging to the past.

The Summit Series, of course, took place eight years prior and people still hold up three goals by Paul frigging Henderson as being a reason he should be in the Hall of Fame.

Yup, absolutely. Well done Canada, your Best Players in the World beat a team that had only ever been dominant on an amateur level. Barely. In eight games. And only needed rampant dirty play and goofy rules to get it done. What an achievement.

Meanwhile, the Miracle On Ice was a joke of the highest order, a fluke win by a team of college guys, several of whom went on to even slightly noteworthy NHL careers. I understand that allowing a few goals to Paul Henderson is the kind of thing that should be eternally embarrassing to Vladislav Tretiak, but Vladimir Myshkin allowing a game-winning goal to Mike Eruzione is roughly a billion times worse.

What separates the Summit Series win, which was expected, from the Miracle on Ice, which was very much not, is that if not for the latter event, you would have never heard of the vast majority of players on that team. The Canadians in 1972 were already rock stars, rich and well-established in the hockey community.

Quick, name the number of Hockey Hall of Famers on the 1980 U.S. team ....

The reason they called the win a miracle is that, y'know, it was. The Canadians should've had the series wrapped by the time it even went to Russia, and their not being able to do so is, in a word, pathetic.

In fact, Canadians should be embarrassed by what their team did in the Summit Series. Only getting nine points from eight games is some pretty weak stuff for an NHL All-Star team, no matter who they're playing. It should also be embarrassed because it makes everyone remember that Eagleson was involved.

Of course, this is the kind of stuff we should have grown to expect by Canada, given its love of revisionist hockey history. You'll recall that the 2010 gold medal, secured by Sidney Crosby on home ice with an officiating crew that included three Canadians, still took overtime to win, and did not take into account that Chris Drury — speaking of players not worthy of the international stage — led a shellacking of said team earlier in the tournament.

The U.S. still won on aggregate.

Further, this is a hockey community that gets itself all worked up over the World Junior Championships every year, and spends most of the run-up to those tournaments facetiously sandbagging its team's chances, so that when they eventually choke like a Russian goaltender in an important international game (which they have the last three times out), they can all say, "Ah well, we weren't supposed to win anyway."

I guess the lesson here is that every Canadian victory on the international stage is a memorable and improbable one.

Even if they weren't improbable at all.

When you watch the replay of Game 8 Friday night, please try to remember that it shouldn't have been remotely close.

Pearls of Biz-dom

We all know that there isn't a better Twitter account out there than that of Paul Bissonnette. So why not find his best bit of advice on love, life and lappers from the last week?

BizNasty on the bright side: "Well at least the NHL has its referee situation under control......"

If you've got something for Trending Topics, holla at Lambert on Twitter or . He'll even credit you so you get a thousand followers in one day and you'll become the most popular person on the Internet! You can also visit his blog if you're so inclined.

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What We Learned: At least you’re not an Edmonton Oilers fan

24 Sep
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

We're all going through a pretty tough time right now. Preseason games are already canceled league-wide, and even if you don't like preseason games — glorified AHL games featuring two players you've heard of — what the lack of those games portends is at least significant.

In another week, we'll probably have lost some actual regular-season games to match all the torched exhibitions, and that's generally pretty bad news.

But even if this affects you more deeply than other fans -- such as if you're a season-ticket holder or had one of your planned handful of trips to the rink slated for early October -- you can lean back in your chair right now and be thankful that your team isn't actively trying to wage a psychological war on you.

That is, if you're a fan of any team but the Edmonton Oilers.

In case you've not heard, the Oilers are going through a bit of a situation right now. The Edmonton City Council was all set to help owner Darryl Katz fund the construction of a new arena, which is probably needed because Rexall Place is a decrepit hellhole, as well as a business district designed to revitalize the city's downtown area. Now Katz wants more money because of… well, I'm pretty sure there's a good reason.

The problem is that when this drug store billionaire went to the City Council with his hand out a second time, the elected officials swatted it away and refused to pass the hat. They were already ponying up the hundreds of millions previously agreed to, and thus didn't feel as though any additional funds because construction costs are on the rise or because they don't want to pay for Katz to also build a casino or for any other reason he's acting like he needs more money.

And thus, acrimony. Lots of it in fact.

(Coming Up: The Devallano fine; lockout news from coast to coast; Coach Sidney Crosby; Nathan Horton stays home; Ovechkin in the KHL; Sergei Bobrovsky is not good; Carrie Underwood on the lockout; Vladimir Tarasenko update; Mike Gillis vs. Cap Geek; and another stupid Coyotes deadline.)

First Katz started making noise about how if the city doesn't give him the money, they might not be able to build the arena at all. That quickly devolved into his more or less threatening to move the team to who-knows-where and take with it all the promise that its current young roster plainly holds. Larry Brooks was right when he called it a shakedown.

Oilers fans are getting edgy. The prospect of the team moving out of a hockey-crazy market like Edmonton seems slim, especially with so few viable relocation options currently anywhere in the US or Canada. Plus, what with all the warring over revenues at the league level, it seems more likely that Gary Bettman would try to force Katz to sell the team rather than let him just move it to Kansas City or wherever.

Nonetheless, this hasn't stopped the Oilers themselves from trying to leverage that ill feeling among its fanbase into pressure on the city council itself. The situation may have come to a head on Saturday night, when the team's official Twitter feed retweeted a story from John MacKinnon, who seems to think the whole thing has gotten a bit silly if nothing else.

The text of that tweet?

"Oilers not locked into [Edmonton]. [Arena] deal fail would mean loss of NHL club."

In it, MacKinnon said that for local residents, ponying up the extra money Katz wants is probably a preferable outcome to losing the team altogether.

That the Oilers' official feed retweeted the story says a lot: That this is the kind of depth to which the organization is willing to stoop to get what it wants, and perhaps that the Journal, which has been a hype man for Katz not unlike the Mouth of Sauron these past several months, is going to function as a propagandist for the duration of the war.

This is deplorable stuff from the Oilers and Katz, essentially telling the fans that if they don't start leaning on their city council members, and by extension fund the arena deal with money out of their own pockets, then they will lose their team. The move is cartoonish in its cynical villainy, holding a city's love of a bad hockey team hostage to bilk taxpayers out of $25 million more than they'd already committed to the project. The way things are going Katz is about a week away from building a giant machine to block out the sun.

The issue is this: The owners already have a PR problem. Rightly or wrongly, they're largely seen as greedy jerks who are stealing hockey from the fans. The rhetoric against them has, perhaps, reached a point where it's over the top. But with Katz doing this, well, sometimes people go too far, and this is one of them. Not only is he one of the 29 owners who voted to uphold Jeremy Jacobs' initial motion to lock out the players for the second time in eight years, but he's also now demanding a ransom for his team in a petulant attempt to get what he feels he's owed even though no one ever agreed to the terms he's now laying out.

He's within his rights to do it, I guess, but he doesn't have to be such a [expletive] about it.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: The Ducks moved their annual golf tournament, which usually takes place prior to training camp, to being mid-season, which doesn't seem like a good sign. On the plus side, they at least aren't planning to lay off any full-time employees just yet.

Boston Bruins: Nathan Horton won't play overseas during the lockout, which his agent says "has nothing to do with his health," presumably while winking a lot and crossing his fingers.

Buffalo Sabres: The first All-American Prospects Game will take place in Buffalo next week, and tickets aren't selling very well, despite being available online for as little as $5. If you're in the Buffalo area, buy a ticket to this. It's going to be good and will probably be the only hockey at First Niagara Center for a while.

Calgary Flames: The Flames and Oilers are now waiting for a decision from the Alberta Labour Board about whether locking out teams in that province is legal. "The Oilers and the Flames are Alberta-based businesses and employ employees," said NHLPA lawyer Robert Blair. "When in Rome, you have to do as the Romans do." Which is why the Alberta Labour Board also hasn't made the playoffs the last three years.

Carolina Hurricanes: Hurricanes prospect Victor Rask left for Charlotte Checkers training camp and, if he does well there, probably won't come back to the Calgary Hitmen. It should be noted, however, that Hitmen coach Mike Williamson believes there's "a decent chance" Rask will be sent back to juniors.

Chicago Blackhawks: Michael Frolik is off to the Czech Republic, and is the first Blackhawk to bolt overseas. No one tell Patrick Kane about all the vodka in Russia. We might never get him back.

Colorado Avalanche: While most hockey players are taking the lockout as a chance to keep playing elsewhere, not so much for Ryan O'Byrne. He's getting behind the bench for the BCHL's Victoria Grizzlies as an assistant coach. That's thinking way ahead for his post-hockey career. Dude's only 28.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Sergei Bobrovsky signed with SKA St. Petersburg over the weekend because they identified a team need: a goalie who's not very good. Headline: "Bobrovsky Doesn't Expect Guaranteed Ice Time at SKA." No good.

Dallas Stars: Frölunda is building a super-team. Not only are they negotiating with Loui Eriksson to come play for them, but also two guys you might have heard of called Henrik Lundqvist and Erik Karlsson. Which doesn't seem fair.

Detroit Red Wings presented by Amway: Funny to me that the NHL fined Jimmy Devellano for saying the owners consider the players and team employees to be "cattle" but all that talk about how there's an unwritten rule that you don't sign other teams' RFAs has largely gone by the wayside.

Edmonton Oilers: Great point here: We have no idea whether Justin Schultz is actually ready for the NHL, and therefore a little bit of seasoning in the AHL during the lockout will likely do him a world of good.

Florida Panthers: Mike Weaver on the lockout -- "The players don't want this, and I'm pretty sure the Florida Panthers organization doesn't want this. We had a good season last year and were ready to build on that." Don't forget, though, that Panthers owner Cliff Viner was one of the 30 owners to have voted unanimously for the lockout, so there goes that theory.

Los Angeles Kings: Darryl Sutter has simply continued to farm during the lockout and that looks like the plan for a while. So at least someone is working.

Minnesota Wild: You're not going to believe this, but Niklas Backstrom can't go to Europe because……….. that's right, he's injured.

Montreal Canadiens: Former Habs first-rounder Louis Leblanc is gearing up for another AHL season, and he could be ready to tear that league apart. He spent 41 games last year with Montreal and had 22 points in 31 games in the AHL.

Nashville Predators: Carrie Underwood on the lockout: "Is it wrong for me to be a little happy (about the lockout)? I mean, 'I'm sorry for you, but it's great for me.'" God I hate her.

New Jersey Devils: Is Marty Brodeur thinking about going to Europe? "I know I'm closing doors in Europe now because I'm going to wait a little bit, but I'd like to go somewhere to play by November if I can get an opportunity somewhere." I hear European countries have great pension programs for seniors.

New York Islanders: When and if this season starts, is Matt Moulson due for a decline? I dunno, I feel like he can reasonably expect to keep shooting 16.4 percent forever.

New York Rangers: More on Henrik Lundqvist's potential decision to return to Sweden or stay home: He just had a baby girl with his wife, but also would like to play on the same team with his twin brother. So, no decision yet but he has good reasons to go with either option.

Ottawa Senators: A bunch of maniacs pulled Air Canada jets that weighed 130,000 pounds each 12 feet to raise $70,000 for the Sens Foundation. Yup, It's A Lockout.

Philadelphia Flyers: It's been a tough couple of months for Danny Briere. Seriously, read this whole thing, it's very good.

Phoenix Coyotes: Today is Day No. 45 since Jude LaCava of Fox 10 in Arizona said Greg Jamison would have the deal for the Coyotes sewn up within the next five days. Meanwhile, here's another stupid deadline!

Pittsburgh Penguins: Sidney Crosby becoming the de facto player-coach in informal workouts with his teammates is about the least surprising thing I've read about the lockout in weeks.

San Jose Sharks: Dan Boyle finally has this whole lockout thing figured out: "I think they want us to miss some paychecks, is what I think. For them, I guess they figure they don't have to pay us right now, so they've got nothing to gain by settling this thing." Tune in for Elementary, starring Dan Boyle, CBS Thursdays!

St. Louis Blues: Vladimir Tarasenko was going to go to SKA St. Petersburg but instead he's not. Apparently his agent changed the terms of the deal at the last minute. Who knows, it's Russia.

Tampa Bay Lightning: If Rick Nash had a hat trick in the first period of his first game in the Swiss A League, then Steven Stamkos would score 60 in his.

Toronto Maple Leafs: This just in -- It sucks being the Maple Leafs' goalie, says newspaper in town where it sucks being the Canucks' goalie.

Vancouver Canucks: I really like the idea of Mike Gillis fooling around with CapGeek to figure out how to work his team's salary situation once hockey comes back. "We're working on our cap issues right now, carefully calculating a number of different scenarios that may occur after this is over and we're trying to be as ready as we possibly can be when play starts again," he told the Province.

Washington Capitals: Alex Ovechkin had his team's only goal in Dynamo Moscow's loss to Ilya Kovalchuk's SKA. Best part of this gamer is that it reminded me that Maxim Afinogenov is still playing hockey.

Winnipeg Jets: Jets players were all set to get in a quick practice at MTS Iceplex, but they couldn't because, I swear, they were locked out. The only keys were in the locked dressing room, and in MTS Centre, where they're not allowed to go.

Gold Star Award

Rick Nash and Joe Thornton are already laying the Swiss A League to waste. A combined eight points in their first game for HC Davos, which seems totally unfair.

Minus of the Weekend
Is it just me or does Daryl Katz have the same haircut as Bruce Willis's wife in the original "Die Hard"? I'll hang up and listen.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User "coldsteelonice84" is trying to keep things interesting.

[quote]To Boston:

Kane
Hjalmarsson
Emery

To Chicago:
Krejci
Hamilton
Khudobin[/quote]
Let's go.

Signoff

I can't eat excuses!

Ryan Lambert publishes hockey awesomeness almost never over at The Two-Line Pass. Check it out, why don't you? Or you can e-mail him and follow him on Twitter if you so desire.

Tags: , Darryl Katz, , Edmonton City Council, , , Katz, , , , ,
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Trending Topics: Here’s who should be very upset about NHL lockout

21 Sep
2012
by in Fantasy Hockey, General

Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

The NHL lockout is, of course, having a massive effect on all of us. We want hockey. We want it on time and for 82 games from October to April, and then a bunch more in the playoffs.

But we're also largely resigned to our fates. This is a season already at least partly lost, if not officially then at least in the minds and the hearts and the pits of the stomachs for millions of hockey fans in the U.S., Canada and abroad.

But if you want to talk about a fanbase that has more of a right to be pissed about this than anyone, it's the people in the greater San Jose area.

For a number of years, the San Jose Sharks were arguably the very best team in the NHL. They've made the playoffs every year since 2003-04 and in that time failed to eclipse 100 just twice (in 2005-06, when they had 99, and last year, when they had 96). They won their division four times since the lockout, and finished second the other three. Since the last lockout, they've always had either a top-10-in-the-league team offense nor defense, and far more often than not, they had both. But for the cruelty of the playoffs (or, if you're an idiot, the team's lack of "clutchness"), they would be widely heralded as a gift given to hockey fans annually for the last decade-plus.

But it seems as though all that is going to go away very soon.

Last season was the worst for the Sharks (excluding the outlier 73-point season in 2002-03) since the turn of the century; and, given the age of many of the team's top players, it seems a far more likely indicator of things to come rather than yet another hiccup in an otherwise flawlessly-executed run of extraordinarily successful NHL regular seasons.

This team was decidedly average last season and was seventh in the West for a reason. Unlike its previous playoff flameouts, San Jose's performance against the Blues in the first round was the perfect example of what not to do if you're looking to avoid getting run out of the postseason in five games. To make matter worse, Todd McLellan didn't know what to do with what Ken Hitchcock's team was presenting to him, and his players looked very much out of sorts.

At this point, apart from 22-year-old Logan Couture, the team's best players aren't exactly like the Oilers when it comes to youth. Joe Thornton is 33. So is Patrick Marleau. Even Joe Pavelski, whom we often consider to be a young player, is 27, and Ryane Clowe is going to be 30 in nine days. If Thornton and Marleau are rapidly approaching retirement, Pavelski and Clowe are firmly in their middle age as hockey players.

To make matters worse, Dan Boyle, who has been central to the Sharks' power play success these last few years, is now 36 years old, and the tires have to be getting worn down a little bit. He failed to record 50 points in a full season last year for the first time since the 2003-04 season, and odds are he's not about to bounce back production-wise.

Therefore, with the stars greying, it's only natural that the team would turn to younger players, like the aforementioned Couture, to start a new era of dominance. Except that the Sharks don't have much in the way of impressive young players. Hockey's Future, an authority on these things, considers San Jose's prospect depth to be the absolute worst in the league. With rankings like that, sure, it's subjective guesswork, and open to interpretation, but when you're 30th out of 30, well, it at least doesn't speak well for your chances.

This lockout, however long it lasts, may be robbing the Sharks of their last, best chance to actually do something constructive without undertaking a massive team makeover, if they're going to do anything at all, that is.

Now, to be fair — regardless of the doom and gloom Elliotte Friedman's latest insight into the way HRR complaints will steer the upcoming CBA negotiations — the lockout might not last for the whole season this time around, and if not, all the better for the fans and, in this case, the Sharks themselves. After February began, the Sharks won just 15 of 34, perhaps the result of age catching up with them over the course of a long season.

But I'll tell you for sure what won't help the Sharks: Sitting on the sidelines while the season doesn't happen. Even if you're skating every day, it's probably not the best substitute for NHL preparedness. Joe Thornton, it should be said, is going back to Davos with old runnin' buddy Rick Nash, but as for those other older guys? Not so much.

Boyle says he absolutely won't play overseas, while Marleau considers it "unlikely" for him. Couture, to his credit, is also playing in Switzerland.

It would, frankly, be a shame if the Sharks' nearly iron-fisted grip on the top spots in the Western Conference comes to a more abrupt end that it was already scheduled for, just because of this work stoppage.

But then again, this is a team that its owners claim lost $15 million last season, so as far as the NHL's concerned, seeing them dial things back might not be the worst thing in the world.

Pearls of Biz-dom

We all know that there isn't a better Twitter account out there than that of Paul Bissonnette. So why not find his best bit of advice on love, life and lappers from the last week?

BizNasty on not being aware that "The Master" opens wide today: "What's Joaquin Phoenix up to these days?"

If you've got something for Trending Topics, holla at Lambert on Twitter or . He'll even credit you so you get a thousand followers in one day and you'll become the most popular person on the Internet! You can also visit his blog if you're so inclined.

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Tags: Clowe, Couture, , , , Topics
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