Now? Now he’s a Hockey Hall of Famer.

The fight is over and a childhood hero is enshrined for eternity. Bias accepted here, there’s never been a doubt as to Oates’ career being Hall-worthy.

I am as happy as a hockey fan can be. The complaining, the indignant stat-prattling, the case-making, the whining about it all… It’s over. I don’t have to crow about an open-and-shut case anymore.

There’s no need to talk about the injustice of it all and continue alternating between banging my head against the wall and shouting from the mountain tops. Adam Oates: Hall of Famer.

Back in late September during the preseason, I wanted to interview Oates about being snubbed by the Hall. With him being the Devils assistant coach and it also being the team’s first preseason game of the year, the Hall was the last thing on his mind. All business, all the time. That’s part of what got the Washington Capitals to hire Oates as their head coach today on top of it all.

It feels a bit silly to feel as happy for what someone else accomplished, but that’s part of being a fan, right? Embracing those that helped bring the love of the game to you. Oates is the key figure on my personal “Mount Rushmore” of hockey. Oates, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Yzerman, and Teemu Selanne. There are plenty other players I have a great appreciation for, but those four? They turned hockey from something I watched and enjoyed into something I obsess over and love dearly, maybe a bit too much if you ask some of my friends.

But Oates? He was the guy who sparked it all for me. Seeing a guy like that play live in person when you’re a kid leaves an impression on you. Seeing him win your favorite local team a championship hammers it home even more. Watching him excel as a professional for nearly 20 years is icing on the cake.

Adam Oates is a Hockey Hall of Famer. What a great day.

The trip started off on 12/28/09 with an overnight stop in Buffalo to prepare us for the driving the next day to Detroit.  That evening, the entire gang of the Collar City Madmen hit Duff’s Wings in Orchard Park, NY.  Given that location you can bet we were within shouting distance of Ralph Wilson Stadium and sure enough we rolled right past it on the way to Duff’s on this snowy, blustery Buffalo night.  Hundreds of wings were consumed, a few beers were had and some bubble hockey was played.

That’s right – bubble hockey.  For being a Buffalo-area sports-type place the whole restaurant was decked out in Bills, Sabres and Bandits jerseys.  There was a Danny Briere jersey turned so that his name wasn’t showing to the people and there were a few more interesting autographed jerseys including one of Bills punter Brian Moorman.  Sure, he fits in well with the autographed Thurman Thomas jersey.

The highlight of the decor for our hockey-mad gang were the different NHL pennants hanging from the rafters (Hartford Whalers represented) and the pucks hanging around the wall.  Why was this important to notice?  Easy.

This is what we call a good omen.

Here over the doorway to the restrooms, were these pucks which on first glance the skating Puckman celebrating the 1985 National Championship was the shining beacon for everyone.  Of course after looking at this picture a day or two later I noticed the other part of this set up that told me this trip was going to be awesome:  The 1980s Oswego State puck RIGHT NEXT TO IT.

Fate was smiling upon our merry band for sure.

We packed up the cars and moved out of Buffalo to head across Canada to get to Detroit on 12/29/09 and I can say without a doubt that Canada is the much more farm-friendly version of upstate New York, driving wise.  When you ride along I-90 through New York the landscape is pretty dominated by trees whereas going across southern Ontario through Niagara wine country (including Wayne Gretzky Vineyards) there is very little in the way of trees to occupy any of the landscape and everything in the way of what I can only imagine what the Great Plains would look like.  Farms everywhere.

I noticed this in southern Quebec on the way to Montreal over the summer as well and it struck me as odd then too and to see the same thing going down the highway through cities like Hamilton, Brantford and London it threw me off.  It must be one of those comforts of home kind of things or the fact that upstate New York isn’t quite as immediately farm-like as some folks would like you to believe.

On the way through Canada we hit a rest area, the only one along the way oddly enough, to grab some food and sure enough we spot folks who weren’t part of our group there decked out in Rensselaer hockey gear.  Being the inquisitive folks that we are and the fact we were in the middle of Canada we had to find out who they were on the way to go see.  Turns out we ran into Brandon Pirri’s parents.  They were a bit startled by our group and the fact that we were driving from the area out to Detroit to go see the team play.  In fact, if I was to get a chance to ask them I’m sure they’d say there were horrified by our fandom but that’s neither here nor there.

I discovered that my timing at border crossings is quite outstanding as when our car came up to go back into the United States into Michigan, it was right after a shift change and, much like in July after the NHL Draft, we were the first car up for the new guard.  We hand over our passports and enhanced IDs and I say right now that my enhanced driver’s license makes me look like a felon.  Flat out, I look insane.  Add to that I now have a bit of a beard going on and according to the border patrol agent, I looked older than what my license says. (aside: I look older than 30?  DAMN IT!).

Piling on with further confusion is that Tim has a shaved head now (he’s got hair in his picture) and apparently Tim and Tyler looked like twins (…the hell?) it meant we got the once over and then over again by the agent.  Whatever, she did her job and considering every knucklehead in the last few days was trying to fly to Detroit with bombs… We can understand.  But honestly, four extremely pasty white guys with New York plates coming to Detroit, the chances were better that trouble would find us rather than us going to look for it.

As for the Great Lakes Invitational on 12/29 and 12/30 for us RPI fans, our entertainment came in the form of RPI beating Michigan 4-3 and getting some help from maybe some of the best and most loyal fans in all of college hockey:  Michigan Tech.  Their fans and some band members were eager to join up with us for the Michigan game and take part in our taunts and cheers and given how poorly Michigan Tech’s season has gone (including a 10-1 thrashing at the hands of Michigan State in the other game that night) having them jump on the bandwagon for the night was probably as fun for them as it was for us to help send the very partisan Wolverine crowd home disappointed.

For what it’s worth, Michigan’s goaltending is abysmal.  Bryan Hogan may be the single worst goaltender I’ve watched in person since… Former Michigan goaltender Billy Sauer in the 2008 Frozen Four.  Michigan does have a talented squad but they must really hate themselves some Bryan Hogan because he can’t stop anything thrown at the net.

For those of you who are Michigan haters, we came up with a few chants that really helped keep the crowd quiet so feel free to adopt them as your own.

“Worse Than Sauer”

“Where’s Jack Campbell?”

There may have been only about 20-30 of us in our vocal section made up of the Collar City Madmen and other RPI folks as well as the MTU fans who joined in, but after RPI jumped ahead 3-1 after Paul Kerins’ soft wrister found its way into the net, I can assure you that even a place as large as Joe Louis Arena that 30 people can be heard saying these things.  We confirmed this with some of the RPI players we spoke to at the 12/31/09 Red Wings game who said they got a good laugh out of our vocal antics.

Beautiful.

As for the GLI title game, well… Bryce Merriam looked nervous in warmups and he looked equally as nervous when the game started and RPI was in an almost instant 2-0 hole against a truly great Michigan State team.  I know that sounds like I’m huffing and puffing and dropping to my knees for the team that won the tournament (they defeated RPI 6-1) but after having seen how some past great teams have showed up in Troy to hand RPI their heads, this Michigan State team did the same thing (albeit with a home ice and officials advantage).

This team beat a good RPI squad and did so after fending off a flurry of threats in the middle of the second period and skated away relatively easily with the win.  The Spartans are very good. They’re as dangerously good as the Miami team with Ryan Jones a couple seasons ago and Corey Tropp and Jeff Petry are two of the more dangerous players I’ve seen on the ice.  No, I wasn’t being secretly snarky about Tropp – he’s got a bit of a history, it’s a shame that there’s this incident as he’s also a pretty good hockey player as well.  Jeff Petry was the guy who really impressed me though.  I’ll confess to going into full-on man-crush mode.  What a friggin’ player and just a dynamic defenseman for the Spartans.  I said this at the tournament and I’ll say it here publicly because hey, why not?  Michigan State is a definitive contender to be at Ford Field.  They are very, very good and easily the best team I’ve watched this season.

As for the first of two NHL games we would take in, the Red Wings-Avalanche tilt on New Years Eve was special for me.  It was my first Red Wings game in Detroit and after calling Joe Louis Arena “home” the previous two nights, there’s nothing that compares to the buzz inside an arena when the real home team is there and there’s nearly 20,000 people packing the place out and this holds true for Detroit.

Not bad seats, right?

As for the game, truly spectacular from this Wings fan’s perspective and a haunting one for the rest of our groups because, while some folks may not have been rooting for the Wings at all, they definitely weren’t prepared to see former Boston University forward Brandon Yip on the ice for the Avs.  We all certainly weren’t prepared to see Brandon Yip score two goals in our presence, that’s for sure.

Thankfully for us, Darren Helm and former Maine Black Bear Jimmy Howard were the heroes of the day as Detroit went on to win the game 4-2. Helm had two goals (both shorthanded, one on an empty net) to seal it for the Wings and Jimmy Howard was college-like in his rock-solid play to  help us ring in 2010 on a very high note.  Here’s a few more photos from Joe Louis Arena, feel free to click on them to help make them look bigger on your monitors, I made them smaller so as to make the page easier to load.

As for our New Year’s Day jaunt back to Buffalo, the day’s drive was interrupted by a lunchtime stop in London, Ontario to grab some food and catch the Winter Classic (well, two periods worth).  You’d think this would be easy to do given that it’s a hockey event and we were in Canada so finding a place open that could hold eight or nine people and would have the game on would be easy to do.

Not so fast.  Being that it was indeed New Years Day we forget things like it being a holiday for most everyone, so our initial research into places in London that proclaimed lots of TVs and food proved to come up empty as hell.  Luckily we spotted a Boston Pizza restaurant that was open and was definitely showing the game.  Yeah… I know, city not known for their pizza proclaiming superiority – it’s like getting a Los Angeles Cheesesteak or Chicago Wings – whatever we were in Canada so anything goes.  The wait staff was shocked to see so many of us and they were equally happy to bring us in because, hey, we’re ignorant Americans and we’re hungry.

The Winter Classic when broadcasted by CBC is a glorious wonder.  Jim Hughson doing play by play and no NBC masturbatory bullshit.  We were also spared from listening to the Dropkick Murphys during the pregame and we were already back in the car while Lenny Clarke murdered “Sweet Caroline.”  Thank goodness for small miracles.

Upon reaching Buffalo, the temperature must’ve dropped about 30 degrees because it felt like we had landed on Hoth when we parked and walked up to HSBC Arena.  Ice cold, windy, awful… Ahh, Buffalo.  As for the game inside featuring the Sabres and Thrashers, well, it started off pretty bad for Buffalo as the Thrashers jumped out 3-0 in spite of Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller doing everything humanly possible to keep the team in the game.

Then the Thrashers stopped playing… And the Sabres figured out that they’re leading the Northeast Division and they should play like it.  Back they come to tie the game at three and get it to overtime where down at the opposite end of the ice from where our awesome luxury suite was located, this happened:

Unreal.  Just a completely freaky goal but it sent us all home on a high note to end our Rust Belt Hockey Tour.  Of the games we attended and someone in the gang had a vested interest in one of the teams, our record was 3-1 with RPIs loss to Michigan State being the only (understandable) blemish.  Beating Michigan in Joe Louis Arena is the absolute highlight of the trip on a trip that didn’t have any lowlights to speak of.

We enjoyed Detroit quite a bit (no, seriously) and found a bar that welcomed us as much as we enjoyed it.  We did a slight tour and checked out the sights that will be more popular in Detroit come Frozen Four time (Ford Field, Comerica Park, Hockeytown Cafe) as well as the more tourist-driven locations like Greektown and the General Motors building.  For the bad rap that Detroit gets in general, sure, some of it is earned and there are some really rough parts of town… But you’re not going to those areas if you’re going there for games or other events.  It’s easy for me to say as I was never there on my own and making my way around town but I’d absolutely go back again.  Whether I go for the Frozen Four or not is up in the air as of yet, but I wouldn’t have reservations about going back.

Surrounding such a trip with tons of hockey games though is a must-do.  Joe Louis Arena for being as old as it is compares similarly, to me, with the Carrier Dome in Syracuse as far as how the concourse is laid out and the amenities contained within it.  The inside bowl of the arena is spectacular as far as sight lines go.  For the GLI we were in the lower level along the goal line and it was a great place to be and the same can be said of our seats for the Wings game in the upper half 15 rows back in the 200 level.  We were in the corner but it didn’t matter because the views were perfect and unhindered by anything and folks leaning forward in their seats wasn’t much of an issue either.

It doesn’t have all the fun bells and whistles a lot of the new arenas do and sure the concessions are a bit too expensive ($8.75 for a Miller Lite? Blow me.) but being able to duck off down to the Olympia Room to get away from the concourse is a good thing, even if that gets crowded too.  I say this with my Red Wings fan hat on that the place is great, but I understand why folks are clamoring for something new and reverential to the team’s past.

The great secret I’ve discovered is the road trip itself and when the college schedule was completed and it was announced that RPI would be heading to Detroit for the Great Lakes Invitational I circled the date and started to ask around to some of the other RPI-mad fans I know to see if this might be something we could do and sure enough… Everyone else was more than fair game and driving (yes, driving) from here around Albany to Detroit seemed to be the way to go about it.  More folks were contacted and more people were interested.  Hey, more the merrier, right?

For two days, this annual Michigan-centric tournament takes over Joe Louis Arena and University of Michigan, Michigan State and Michigan Tech have a battle to see who can be the GLI champion and get a banner hung inside the Joe to state as much.  Every year a fourth team is invited and RPI got the call this time around.  North Dakota was there last year, so it’s not as if a patsy is invited to secure an easy win for someone, although some Michigan fans seem to find RPI to be the weakest team to be invited in a long time.  We’ll see how that goes as Michigan is having a bit of an off year.

Fun thing about getting this many heads together for a plan is other ideas pop up.  The NHL schedule was released and sure enough, the “traditional” New Year’s Eve game at Joe Louis Arena was back on, after being called off for preparation for the Winter Classic last year.  Detroit against Colorado is the game and so another call was made to secure tickets for the gang.  Three nights in a row our band of RPI fanatics (now tentatively bearing the moniker of Collar City Madmen) would be holed up at Joe Louis Arena for a total of at least three games, probably four or five depending on how ambitious we are to see the other games of the GLI.

For myself, getting to see a Red Wings game at the Joe is the icing on the cake.  Look at it this way, about 25 years ago my hockey fandom was kicked into high gear thanks to the local team from RPI winning the National Championship against Providence College… At Joe Louis Arena.  It was that same local team that provided another local team, the Adirondack Red Wings, with a soon-to-be Hall of Fame player in Adam Oates (who was later unceremoniously traded by the Red Wings in one of the worst trades of all time) but helped make that connection to the NHL team I now follow.  Fast forward to now and here I’ll be in the same arena getting to see BOTH of these teams.

This is about as close to a religious experience as this lapsed Catholic will ever get.  I’ll be at the Joe where Oates, Puppa, Carter and Servinis helped lead RPI to their last National Championship and I’ll be getting my photo taken at Gordie Howe’s statue and finding ways to get as many pictures of Steve Yzerman’s banner as one person can get.

It’s my moment damn it, keep your remarks to yourself.

As Ron Popeil might say, “But wait, there’s more.”

This schedule for the trip means that New Year’s Eve will be spent hoping the Red Wings didn’t lose anymore players to injury and maybe pull out a victory and then finding a bar to hole up with the gang, usher in 2010 and then get right the hell to sleep because a road trip to Buffalo is in order for the day of January 1st.  Sure, most everyone will be going bonkers over the Winter Classic in Boston but we’ll be getting geared up for Thrashers v. Sabres at HSBC Arena in Buffalo because, really, you can’t have enough hockey.

Oddly enough, for the limited number of NHL games I get to see live this will be the second time I’ve seen Atlanta play in the last three or four years.  The last time I saw them was down at Madison Square Garden against the Rangers when the Thrashers won in overtime and Ilya Kovalchuk proved to me what a madman on the ice he can be.  Just an unreal, sick talent.  More fun than that, this helps make packing for a trip easy.

RPI jersey?  Check.  Red Wings jersey?  Check.  Old school Buffalo Sabres jersey?  Check.

Good to go!

I know it sounds insane to be fired up for a trip to two cities in the Rust Belt of the USA but here I am writing this up in the wee hours of the morning before hitting the road to get to Buffalo and stay the night there before trekking to Michigan.  What makes going to places like this in the dead of winter when the climate is at its bleakest and these cities are seemingly even less “fun” to visit?  It’s hockey, stupid.  Simple as that.  It’s cities like these where hockey lives and breathes the hardest even when things financially aren’t at their best.  The fans love their teams and when it comes to college hockey at Joe Louis Arena… Well, that’s a big deal there too because state bragging rights are more-or-less on the line and the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry is vicious.  Even going as an “objective” hockey fan for an event like this I would be fired up so you can imagine what the adrenaline rate is now having horses in most of  the races involved here.

The NCAA has made it a point to have better “destination” cities for some of their bigger events (namely the Frozen Four) but it’s places like Detroit and Buffalo (and Minneapolis/St. Paul) where hockey encompasses the lives of the folks there.  Sure some folks can get up in arms over selecting Ford Field as a Frozen Four venue (rightfully so) but their line of thought was right.  For every Tampa Bay the NCAA picks out, they make sure to take care of St. Paul, Minnesota and the Denver too.

As for updates while I’m gone for the week… Don’t expect too much unless I witness something completely insane or I’m duly inspired and want to (potentially) drunkenly ramble when I return back to the hotel room.  If you’re wanting in on crazy stories from the road or photos as they happen, I strongly suggest following me on Twitter @HockeyJoeGM.

If you’re looking for the straight stuff about RPI hockey, you need to be reading Without A Peer and following along with Tom and Gary at their site and with them on Twitter as well @without_a_peer.  I’m sure there will be plenty of stuff to hear from us about while this newest chapter of hockey road trip madness unfolds.

One thing about this time of year that I got really into when I was working in radio was doing something to help out those that can’t help themselves.  With the job market still being brutal for a lot of folks around the country and money always being tight for everyone else, seeing something charitable come up always moves me to want to do something to help out.  Being a guy with a website that has a nice loyal band of fans it’s times like these that I feel motivated to try and do something to help a good cause and, to the surprise of many of you out there, one Red Wings blog is really stepping up to the plate to do something really nice this year.

Bill Houlihan, The Chief at Abel To Yzerman, was struck with good tidings of the season to step up and do just that.  It started off with a great rallying point to put something together for “one of their 19 members” – the man behind Red Wings Brazil, Guilherme – To donate some money and see if they could get enough funds together to get Guilherme to see a game live and in person at Joe Louis Arena.  Seeing bloggers and commenters alike teaming up to do something that incredibly cool for a fan in a very different market, it’s pretty damn amazing in its own right.  There was one “problem”  though as after about 30 hours, the goal of $1000 set by The Chief was met.

So then what to do if folks are more than willing and able to donate money?  Easy.  Keep the money rolling in and donate it to the Red Wings Wish Club, a team charity organization that helps out with the Children’s Hospital of Michigan.

In my days working in radio, our main holiday charity drive built up funds for the childrens hospital in my home area and getting to see the kind of work that is done and the facilities they have there and knowing how much the money is both used to do great things and needed so desperately to keep doing great things I can’t even begin to stress enough to you folks what even the smallest donation can do if you even give just a little bit.

I’ve visited the Children’s Hospital at Albany Medical Center more than a few times and while it’s heartbreaking to see babies and toddlers going through any number of problems big and small alike, it’s reassuring to know that they’re getting the best of care possible from some of the finest medical minds you’ll find in this country.  These specialized hospitals aren’t found in as great a number as you’d find a typical hospital and giving kids the kind of care they need when they’re so fragile and so young is of the utmost importance.

I know it’s just a few days before Christmas and asking anyone to give up a few bucks is a tall order no matter what your situation is, but in the spirit of the holidays if you’ve got the time stop by A2Y and give a click to the PayPal button they’ve got set up there and see if you can do a little something special for a special hockey-related kind of charity action.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a Penguins fan, a Blackhawks fan, a Rangers fan or an Avalanche fan… Doing something nice to help out the kids is something that a fan of any team can do.

Let’s break this one down, shall we?

“In this particular case what happened is we (in the League’s video replay room in Toronto) see the puck in the net and call the video goal judge and say, ‘Blow the horn and get the referee over here. We see a puck in the net that hasn’t been ruled a goal,’ ” Murphy said. “At that point the referee comes over and we have a discussion. They came to us and said, ‘My intent to blow the whistle was there, I have this play dead before the puck crosses the goal line,’ No more needs to be said. Once we hear that, video review is out of the process. It’s a call made on the ice and it’s a non-reviewable call. It’s a whistle blown by the referee and it was blown or the intent to blow it was before the puck crossed the goal line.”

Now, if you missed out on the play, just check the previous post here for the YouTube video or just go straight to YouTube to see it yourself.  I say this because checking out the video is key here because the official says he intended to blow the play dead before the puck is even in the net.

Really, is that what we’re looking to do there Dennis?  Because if that’s what you’re doing there you’re an even bigger idiot because then play is still going on since… That’s exactly what was going on before the puck went in the net.  This isn’t a situation where the puck was trapped under Alex Auld’s pads and it’s a goal-mouth scramble to try and stuff in a rebound.  If it was like that, his excuse would be marginally acceptable.

But that wasn’t the case at all.  Moving on…

“The way we have always handled it is the referees call on the ice stands. He sees the shot and he sees the save and doesn’t see the puck in the net and he blows the whistle,” Murphy said. “It’s not when he blows the whistle, it’s when he intends to blow the whistle. In this case Dennis was clear with what he saw and what he interpreted and that is, ‘I had killed the play before the puck went into the net.’ I think we would all concede the puck was in the net, but Dennis didn’t see that unfortunately.”

And boom, just like that the NHL pulls the rug out from under Dennis LaRue.  You could say that they’re taking Dennis out fishing in the morning the same way Michael Corleone did with his brother Fredo.  Or if analogies and metaphors are your thing, the league has thrown him under the bus.  Considering what I said last night about how I figured this situation would go down, this is a stunning turn of events on its own.  I sincerely doubt LaRue gets treatment any harsher than this from the league or head of officiating Terry Gregson.  Why?  Well…

“In all cases we want to get the right call. In this case it is clear we didn’t,” Murphy said. “In some cases when you have video review people expect perfection and that’s never the case. There are times when we don’t want video review to intercede. We don’t want video review refereeing a game.”

Whoa, hang on… Time out here.  This entire statement is full of gigantic magnanimous flaws.  First of all, instant replay was instituted to get things to be as close to perfect as possible and asking players and fans alike for perfection out of the system, I think, isn’t asking a lot.  All you have to do is look to see if puck crossed line.  That’s a simple thing to do given this particular set of circumstances, yet the NHL leaves the door open for the human element of the matter to screw things up with terrible reasoning.

Get under the bus Dennis.

Isn’t the purpose of having a war room in Toronto watching everything to make sure everything is called correctly?  After all, if they don’t want video review to referee the games why does the league do video review of the referees work to make sure they aren’t completely terrible at their jobs?  Again, the league makes it look like they’re saying a lot when they’re really just saying, “Yeah, we fucked up and there’s nothing that can be done about it other than throwing one of our guys under the bus.”

Incompetence – The NHL has it.

Now, I’m not going to come out here and whine and pee my pants over a very obviously blown ruling.  What I’m going to do is call out these officials for being complete cowards.

The final ruling on this play was that “the whistle had blown” and there was no goal because of that.  Funny thing about that ruling is that the whistle did blow… About three seconds after the puck was in the net.  Now there’s a fuzzy thing in the NHL rulebook about having the “intent to blow the whistle” and that’s put in use when something happens in the gray area time inbetween the play and what should be a dead play.

The problem there being that the official states that the whistle had blown to kill the play.  Well sure, the play is good and dead when you’ve scored a goal.  Now give the NHL boys in Toronto’s replay war room credit, they called the Joe almost immediately to tell them that they screwed up and they’d better get it right.  Instead, LaRue and Auger decided to do a very Major League Baseball-like thing and say, “Nope, I’m right because I say I’m right and there ain’t no stupid television camera that’s going to tell me different.”

Instead, these two make a bad situation worse because they’re first wrong about the goal and then they’re wrong about their reason for it not being a goal.  Just perfect.  Do I expect any kind of punishment from the NHL to the officials for bludgeoning a call? Of course not.  If anything, Herr Bettman has shown nothing but blind support to his vision-impaired men in black and white and I expect there to be nothing different this time.

Gary Bettman looks totally awesome in tights.

I’d call it a case of the blind leading the blind, but it comes off more like the Pied Piper of Hamelin leading the rats out of town.   The only difference here being that Piper Bettman is putting the rats on a Rose Bowl-kind of float to show how much he loves them while he leads all the fans out of town.  After all the God-awful officiating we’ve seen in Major League Baseball’s playoffs to the horrific nightly car crash that the NBA calls the situation with its referees (who are probably the most crooked of them all) to even World Cup soccer qualifying it makes sense that even the NHL can’t get their act together.  All I ask is that they try to give a damn and not let some self-important bloated opinion of themselves get in the way of getting the game right.

I know that’s asking a lot but hey at least Bill McCreary setting the example for other officials how to hog the spotlight is going away after this year, we can only hope it hasn’t caught on too much.  Wait, Kerry Fraser is going away too, right?  Maybe things will get better.

I’m not holding my breath.  After all, Kelly Sutherland is a long way off from retiring.

The issue at play with the trapezoid is that in these races for the puck, players are getting hurt and a lot of folks hate that goaltenders can’t hunt pucks down and keep play flowing along in control of the defense.  Some GMs are anonymously arguing that goalies keeping play moving along will help the offense.

Well sure, that’d be a great argument if we hadn’t gone through years of deathly boring defense-first, sport-ruining hockey before Herr Bettman and his Army of Idiot Minions decided to lock out the players and reinforce the rule book to make sure fans weren’t bored to tears.

The argument against the trapezoid for purposes of saving players from being injured is a bit stickier.  No one likes to lose any players to injury, especially in lunatic bat-out-of-hell chases for the puck into the end boards.  After all, who wants to see more injuries like these?

I’m a squeamish sissy so I sure as hell don’t want to see those kinds of injuries anymore and that’s just because I don’t want to post them on my website, never mind going through them myself.  Of course, the GMs decided against making any changes to the trapezoid rules because… Well, why have a seemingly lame duck season with one set of rules when another set is on the way?  If changes are going to happen, they’ll come up after the season if at all.

Besides, it seems as if the trapezoid debate is more of something for message board and blog fodder as it is, at least that’s what I gathered from this quote by Sharks GM Doug Wilson”

“I don’t think there’s a great appetite to change it,” said Wilson. “And I don’t mind that because you’ve got to be conscious that when you change one thing, it could impact two or three other things. We put it on the agenda, we’d asked to talk about it, just to really spur thought.”

Spur thought in the room there and here on the Interwebs for us  mom’s basement geniuses to tackle.  Of course, fan opinions on the trapezoid are fairly predictable.  Fans of teams with goalies who play the puck well or are overly concerned with player injuries are upset, meanwhile others are likely indifferent or pleased.  One team I was concerned with was the Devils and Tom Gulitti at Fire and Ice got some thoughts from the man most hurt by (and opposed to) the trapezoid, Martin Brodeur. Brodeur, in this case, is sticking up for his defensemen.

“I’m not involved, but my view of it is it’s a no-brainer if they want to start to eliminate these huge hits for the defensemen,” Brodeur said. “Many times you’re able to just chip the puck and save a big hit. That was one thing when I was younger whenever my defensemen or somebody was getting a big hit, I felt guilty that I let that the guys get hit like that. Now, I’ve got to sit and watch all the time.”

That’s a tough stand to argue against and I won’t do that.  It’s stupid to do that and he’s right, it sucks to see guys take huge hits and it’s even worse to see guys get hurt from it all.

It’s also part of the game.  I won’t be some macho asshole here and start telling guys to take off the skirt, I already admitted I’m a huge wuss and I’m as physically fragile as it gets.  What I will do, instead, is offer a solution to adopt that saves everyone the trouble.

The NHL should give it the old college try.  Eliminate the trapezoid, allow goalies to play the puck at their own volition but save everyone the trouble and adopt no-touch icing.  One thing Brodeur said in Gulitti’s great piece was that more often than not goalies are going to make mistakes playing the puck so its on them to decide if they want to take the chance.  Sure, that’s easy for him to say being one of the best puckhandling goaltenders of all time, but it’s still true.  In that case, spin the wheel and make the deal terrible puck-playing goaltenders.  How bad do you want to keep possession of the puck and how bad do you want to potentially get chewed out by your coach for being a bonehead?

Yeah, I thought so.

Adding no-touch icing does nothing to take away from the flow of the game since, more often than not, icing is going to end up being called and the chances of it getting waived off are generally pretty few.  Therefore, adopting a rule that cuts to the chase, and just gets the play moving along shouldn’t be that big of a deal.  Races for the puck to save a faceoff from happening are pretty friggin’ rare and if that’s the kind of play in hockey that gets your juices flowing… Maybe finding a new sport to watch would be a good start because you’ve missed the boat.

My one sticking point here is that a little more be asked of the linesmen aside from playing ignorant to plays off the puck, being unable to keep count of players on the ice and effectively watching the lines.  Tall order, I know.

The linesmen are also the judges of icing and one of the rule changes that was made after the return from Herr Bettman’s Attempted Murder of the NHL was the elimination of the red line and two-line passes.   There was a stipulation in the rulings on icing that could be better put to use here should the NHL do the smart thing and do things the college way.

Rule 65 – Section e: The Linesman shall have discretion to wave off apparent icing infractions on attempted passes if those passes are deemed receivable.

How’s about we reinforce the linesman’s definition of what the attempted breakout pass looks like.  After all, if you want to keep play moving this isn’t a bad way to do so and you don’t even need to rewrite anything in the rules.  By implementing these changes, you’re able to corral the injury problems with defensemen getting destroyed by attacking forwards moving at breakneck speed and you’re able to unchain the goaltenders from the net.

As long as defensemen aren’t allowed to skate in front of/latch onto attacking forwards like they were allowed to do through most of the 90s and early 2000s, things should work out just fine.  It works out fine (for the most part) in college hockey and making it work in the NHL shouldn’t be much of a problem. Then again, that’s putting a lot of faith into the men in stripes to do the right thing.   Maybe I should hold back on these drastic suggestions after all.

So rather than go into hiding and pretend like my efforts to take down the Western Conference elite of Sports Blog Nation are going all for naught, here I am to go and toot my own horn and pick out some MVPs and some players I’m going to put on notice.

Results from Week 1 vs. The Cannon

While it was just an 8-5 victory, my goaltending chomped on the tailpipe much in thanks to Josh Harding of the Wild getting bombed on and Ray Emery falling from his high horse after earning a shutout in his first start.  Marty Turco was steady but uninspiring from a fantasy standpoint.

Offensively, Drew Doughty was my main man providing tremendous value for a late-round selection tallying a goal and four assists during the first week of play.  James Neal of the Stars carried the goal scoring trophy for the team nailing down three goals.  Brendan Morrow added two goals and three assists and Sidney Crosby showed why it was awesome that he fell into my lap at fourth overall scoring four goals including a game winner.

Who’s on notice after the first week?  Alex Tanguay who scored just one assist (granted it was on the power play) and landing only three shots on goal.  Paul Martin of the Devils finds himself on the hot seat as well tabulating just one shot on goal, an even +/- rating  and one assist (also on the power play).  Josh Harding in his one start for the week managed to earn a 6.01 GAA and a .739 save percentage with only 17 saves.  Ouch babe.

The Cannons were lead by Evgeni Malkin (2g 5a 16 PIM 12 sog) and Alex Burrows (3g 1a 6PIM 23 sog).  Steve Mason and Cam Ward carried the goaltending efforts earning two wins a piece and putting up mostly nice GAA and save percent numbers while seeing a ton of action in the first week.

All in all, a very pleasing effort for the Frontiersmen but that goaltending has to get better.

Results from Week 2 vs. Winging It In Motown

The trend keeps on keepin’ on.  Another eight victories and only losing out on four against the Red Wings laden squad.  This is when it’s fun to not be a homer.  No, not Tomas Holmstrom.

Since you didn’t get to see how the squads shaped up before, here’s the comparison (click to enlarge).

As you can see, there was one transaction made by me.  Josh Harding got the boot already in favor of Scott Clemmensen.  Harding has been lit up in two starts for Minnesota and well, if I’m going to have a backup goalie that starts occasionally, I’d prefer it to be a guy who doesn’t have an astronomical goals against average and a minuscule save percentage.  Call me old fashioned.  As it stood, the only thing I struck out on this time were wins.  Turco had a stellar week including a shutout and Emery, while mediocre, wasn’t overly brutal in his one start.

Offensively, the Frontiersmen were beastly although they enjoy the company of the minus rating.  Alfredsson, Knuble and Neal all ponied up the assists and Brendan Morrow did the heavy lifting with the goal scoring.  You really can’t complain when you get consistent offensive work like that each week.  What I can complain about is how miserable Alex Tanguay is.  I know the offense in Tampa Bay is struggling (as will happen when you basically have one scoring line and nothing else) but tallying zero points and a -3 for the week is a good way to end up on a fantasy managers bad side… Especially when you have one of his other teammates setting up at center for you.

Vinny Lecavalier has yet to score a goal and while the three assists this past week were nice, the -4 is a mega kick in the nuts.  Vinny will get his goals eventually, but the pain of his lack of success is being felt in places other than central Florida.  This isn’t to say that Vinny is officially on notice, but it’s just plain old frustrating.

Who is on notice?  Paul Martin of the Devils.   Zeroes across the board and three shots on goal.  At least get kicked out of a game or something man.  Defensemen are thin pickings in the league as it is, but its frustrating to not get anything from a guy that is getting enough playing time to make things happen.

That said, the whining ends there.  +/- is a bit of a crap-shoot category and it can fluctuate from week to week so there’s no real use in trying to plan against that, especially when you can get a lot more out of every single other category possible by playing a guy any given night.  I would like to see the goal scoring pick up though.  You hear me Vinny?

This week I will have my duel with Nathan from Hockey Wilderness, one of a handful of in-house throwdowns.  After reminding Nathan about his team, suffice to say he hates his Yahoo auto-drafted squad.  I’m not about to start counting wins here, but confidence is running high.  Nathan’s “State of Mediocre” pulled a rather Wild-like showing this past week getting shutout by Defending Big D 11-0.

Oh yes, confidence is VERY high.

Sakic was already out of the lineup for the Avs dealing with a busted back but living in Colorado in December means having to deal with winter and snow removal and for Joe Sakic that resulted in one of the more bizarre injuries recorded by humans as he broke three fingers and damaged tendons in his hand while… Well, screwing around with the snowblower.

Public Enemy #1 in Denver

It could be more beneficial to you, the readers, to break down how bad the goaltending in Denver was last year or talk about how the offense was, by far, the weakest in the NHL managing to score 199 goals, two less than the NHL’s worst team the Islanders.

So they can’t put it in the net and they can’t keep it out of the net, but hey, they beat Detroit in some shootouts so season success, right?  Oy.  OK so what do the Avs do to make corrections for this season?  Their first step came in the form of first round draft pick centerman Matt Duchene.  Duchene will make for a great addition up the middle for a team in search of a new pivot now that Joe Sakic is retired and Paul Stastny has to carry the offensive workload.  Duchene will have his hands full, however, as expectations are high and at 18 years-old he’d normally be the lone supremely young guy trying to help turn around the franchise.

Of course, this is Colorado and with the Avs trading away Ryan Smyth (to Los Angeles) in the off-season to get cap relief scoring is at even more of a premium in the Rockies thus opening the door for yet another 18 year-old 2009 draft pick in Ryan O’Reilly.  Duchene should stick around all season long and if O’Reilly is still around after 10 games (otherwise they head back to juniors for the duration of the season), the Avs are in with the youth movement for the long haul.

How do you spell Avalanche?  R-E-B-U-I-L-D-I-N-G

On the wings, Milan Hejduk and Wojtek Wolski are still here as is the enigmatic Marek Svatos.  Svatos so far in his career has been the hot-and-cold type of player.  In his first full NHL season (2005-2006) he scored 32 goals.  He then followed that up with season tallies the next three years of 15, 26, 14 goals respectively.  Svatos has also never played a full 82 game season and averages 64.5 games played per season.   Inconsistency, thy name is Svatos.

OK so what about the rest of the forwards? T.J. Hensick, T.J. Galiardi, Cody McLeod, Chris Stewart, David Jones and Matt Hendricks lead the “Who the hell are they?” crew while Darcy Tucker and David Koci lead the “Don’t Turn Your Back On Them” brigade.  Of that bunch, Chris Stewart is the most promising of the bunch while T.J. Hensick is still trying to capture the glory he once had at the University of Michigan.  T.J. Galiardi, on the other hand, will be getting his first real taste of the NHL this year after being a high scoring hero at Dartmouth College.

One other young guy to keep an eye out for later is former Minnesota Golden Gopher Ryan Stoa.  He’ll start the year in the AHL at Lake Erie, but with what the Avs are dealing with talent-wise at the NHL level, don’t be surprised to see Stoa join the club and flash the skills.

Hang on, David Koci has something to share with us.

Thanks David, that was inspiring.

The defensive corps is where the strength of this Avalanche team will be.  Unfortunately for the Avs, these aren’t the, ahem, glory days kind of guys like Blake and Bourque, but Adam Foote is back in the fold (re-acquired in a trade last year) and he’s been deigned the new captain of the team.  John-Michael Liles, Ruslan Salei, Brett Clark and Kyle Quincey (acquired in the Smyth deal) make for a very serviceable unit on the back line.  Long time AHL’er and youngster Kyle Cumiskey gets to crack the big roster this year and once Tom Preissing returns from injury, Cumiskey will duke it out with him for steady playing time.

Goaltending in Colorado should prove to be interesting as career backup Craig Anderson was signed in the offseason and he’ll provide the bulk of the work in starting as new GM Greg Sherman sends the message to Peter Budaj that perhaps he should play a little bit better, a message that certainly couldn’t be sent last year with Andrew Raycroft as the backup to “push” him.  Now Budaj is slated as the backup but at the very least should Anderson struggle a bit there will be someone mostly solid right behind him to steady the ship.

The Avs have a new head coach this year after deciding to live with deja vu all over again with Tony Granato last season.   They’ve brought aboard former player Joe Sacco and while he has no NHL coaching experience, having him learn on the fly with what should be a really young team isn’t the worst thing in the world.   After all, he was the coach of the Lake Erie Monsters, the Avalanche farm squad.  Instant success isn’t demanded of him here but helping the admittedly very young team develop better at this level is.  Sacco was always a solid depth forward in his career in the NHL and he was never a big time scorer… Which works out to be pretty coincidental since that is what this Avalanche lineup will be like.

It’ll be a young team, it’ll have moments of fleeting glory but one thing it will not be is a playoff team, something, I’m sure Sean Payton at Anyone But Detroit will be very grumpy about me saying.  I will say though, at least Sean is being realistic about things, at least kind of, from what he had to say with the Slap Shots blog at the New York Times.

The Avalanche will be better — they finished 15th in the West last year so there is nowhere to go but up. I’ve got them finishing 13th, ahead of Nashville and the mess currently known as the Phoenix Coyotes.

Normally there would be nowhere to go but up, but in this case, staying the course is what I count on happening for the Avs this year.  They will be out of the playoffs most assuredly and finishing dead last in the brutal Western Conference is a fate they appear to be aligned for.

Thanks for playing Colorado, go get ‘em next year.

Just imagine how it is actually playing the games.

The Penguins showed in Game 7 that they did, in fact, want it more. They played harder and more aggressive for the better part of the game. They played smarter for the entire game and didn’t allow for Detroit to wheel and deal the way they like to.

Most importantly, and this was something I made it a point to say both last year and this, their third and fourth lines responded better than Detroit’s did, a point that was made emphatically in Game 7 by Maxime Talbot scoring both Pittsburgh goals. Talbot last year was the lone player on Pittsburgh’s third and fourth lines who proved to be a burr in the side of the Red Wings.

This year, Talbot solidified himself as a folk hero win or loss given how he handled himself against the Capitals and how he played smartly and selflessly throughout the playoffs. I know that the folks in Pittsburgh’s blogging circles will write folk songs and sing the praises of guys like Crosby, Fleury and Malkin but Talbot is the guy for whom much of Pens fans adulation and warm memories from here on out will be saved for.

Evgeni Malkin is the superstar you should get forced down your throat.
(Photo – AP)

In this go-round, Talbot had sustained help from Ruslan Fedotenko – a guy who already has Stanley Cup folk hero status for the last 25 Tampa Bay Lightning fans that haven’t been run off by the new owners there. Adding characters like Craig Adams and Fedotenko helped solidify the other lines for Pittsburgh helping younger players like Tyler Kennedy and Jordan Staal feel more at home working the grinder lines and realizing that by doing their job checking and defending you can still find a way to pot a goal or two.

Pieces like that are what the team was missing last year and they were able to capitalize best on playing the aggressive forecheck (you know, like I kept saying they ought to do) and put pressure on Detroit’s defense.

No, not Nick Lidstrom and Brian Rafalski – those guys you can’t exactly rattle. Brad Stuart and Niklas Kronwall however…

To this point in the playoffs, I had been singing the praises of Brad Stuart as his play through the first three rounds had been solid if not spectacular. In the Finals, however, Stuart’s efforts in Game 7 are what folks are going to be paying attention to. Stuart took a bad slashing penalty in the first period and had a brutal turnover and mis-timed moment to pinch in leading to both of Maxime Talbot’s goals.

Having that kind of résumé in an elimination game will often get a guy run out of town. For Stuart, it’s a Finals he’d like to forget as his play suffered. Whether that be from his own mistakes or for having to perpetually look out for Niklas Kronwall who would take himself out of plays looking to deliver a hit elsewhere or do too much on the puck it’s tough to say.

For all the advances that Kronwall seemed to make last season in his play after finally finding a way to remain healthy, I couldn’t help but find myself watching him to see how he would handle himself and his positioning. A lot of the time he’s solid, but there’s enough brain farting going on that teams were finding ways to expose him.

I hammered on a lot of this after Game 3 of this series and his +/- rating didn’t change after Game 3. In Games 4 and 5 he pulled in a +1 rating and in Game 6 he was even.

Yeah, you guessed it, he was a -2 in Game 7 along with Brad Stuart. Game 7 saw plenty of reckless play from the two of them and if anything that -2 was well earned on their part. The poor unfortunate guy that had to deal with all that was Chris Osgood who truly played stellar all throughout this series and the playoffs.

For Pittsburgh though, Conn Smythe Trophy winner Evgeni Malkin was the story from beginning to end.

Enough about Crosby and him captaining the team to the win – I’m done with that. Good for him for winning but it’s not because of him they were able to beat Detroit. Not in Game 7 and not in the rest of the series. He’s the guy you’re going to get forced down your throats from now until Lord knows when, but it’s got to be eating him up how much more sound the Penguins play when he’s not around. Malkin carried this team last year while Crosby was out with an injury and he carried the team again in Game 7 when Crosby left with an injury in the second period after taking a hit from Johan Franzen.

This was Malkin’s baby from the start of the playoffs and he earned it. Worst of all? Fans in North America aren’t going to hear enough about him because he’s Russian and speaks poor English and the NHL can’t wrap their head around marketing players that don’t come from North America.

Amazing, isn’t it? I’ve got a full-blown man-crush on the Hart Trophy candidates this year (Alex Ovechkin, Pavel Datsyuk and Malkin) but the league can’t do anything with them. This is why if you too are a Twitter user you should be following Dmitry Chesnokov, one of the contributors at Yahoo’s Puck Daddy.

He’s Russian and gets all the juicy interviews with the Russian stars and gets the personality out of them that the NHL is too ignorant or lazy to try for and hey, guess what, Russian players aren’t the robots you see elsewhere around the league.

Look at it this way, when your favorite Russian player is giving a poorly-worded interview in English, that guy is a regular Jeremy Roenick or Brett Hull when interviewed in Russian.

It’s so frustrating to see such marketing ability available here and no one putting it to use it’s even managed to derail my Stanley Cup wrap up.

I know a lot is going to get made about how Herr Bettman’s wet dream finally came true here, and it did let’s not think differently, but what we’ve got here is a damn spanking nice little cross-conference rivalry teeming over with superstars. Canadians, Russians, Swedes, Finns and Slovaks all over the place.

Sets the stage pretty nicely for Vancouver in 2010 now, doesn’t it?

Don’t worry, training camps open in three months and the NHL Draft is two weeks away with the Free Agency window opening soon after that.

The off-season begins now.