Preparing To Riot: Adam Oates’ annual Hall of Fame bid

It’s time for the annual boning over of the most unappreciated passer in the modern era of the NHL. Last year I was resigned knowing full well that Adam Oates wasn’t going to be voted into hockey’s hall of fame. I said it last year that if Adam Oates didn’t go into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010, we were going to riot. It’d be more like Internet rioting and not the cop car burning rioting we see in beautiful Montreal, but it’s something, right? Instead, now it feels as if I’m going through the five stages of grieving.

First up: Denial.

No way. How can you leave the guy who is sixth all time in assists out of the Hall of Fame? He had more assists than Steve Yzerman and Gordie Howe. There’s clearly been a miscalculation of the voting here.

Then it’s anger.

Are you kidding me? The guy who sits 16th all time in NHL points scored can’t crack through the ballots on the Hall of Fame vote?! What the hot shit is this all about?! What kind of jerks vote on this!? I AM OUTRAGED!

Then it’s time to start bargaining.

All right, so if you’re not taking Adam Oates into the Hall of Fame, then let’s just  get him hooked up with a Canadian folk hero who is right behind him all time in points with a ravenous fan base looking for any kind of good news. After all, guys who spent a lot of time in Canada seem to get breaks with the voters.  All right Doug Gilmour, you work with us, we’ll work with you and we’ll both get through this together and down some brews in Toronto to celebrate.

So the bargaining thing might pan out, but I’m not holding my breath on that just yet because it’s making me fall into the fourth stage: Depression.

I don’t see what else you can say for the guy. I mean, he hasn’t worn as many ugly sweaters as my favorite emo band but my favorite emo band makes me want to drink a bleach coolatta. Sure that Mighty Ducks of Anaheim sweater was a Disney side show, but that’s no reason to keep a guy out of the Hall of Fame. I mean, he might be the only guy to get stuck having to wear hideous jerseys in his only two Stanley Cup final appearances in 1998 with the Capitals and 2003 with the Ducks.

Blue eagles and teal ducks?  Rock the red my ass, Washington. Adam Oates had to wear the stupid eagle and get swept out of the final by the Red Wings. I was asleep for most of that 2003 final, but when I came out of my coma I saw that Oates hadn’t gotten his name on the Stanley Cup again. At least he’s still got that 1985 National Championship to hang onto. You know, the one where RPI beat a Minnesota-Duluth team with Brett Hull in the semi-finals and a Lou Lamoriello coached Providence team in the finals. Ahh, memories.

Who knew that one would ramble so much when depressed, eh? Never mind that though, it’s all part of the grieving process and it brings us to the big one here and the one I’m pretty much set with as it is: Acceptance.

It’s pretty clear that being the one, lonely voice out here on the Internet clamoring for what should be a slam-dunk Hall of Fame career isn’t doing very much to help bring attention to a man who didn’t live to score goals, but rather lived to help create goals for his teammates, two of which he helped get into the hall of fame already in Brett Hull and Cam Neely. He’s a man who as a center for mostly pedestrian teams managed to do everything possible to make his teammates better and to help power plays become lethal with his playmaking ability.

These things matter not though, at least that’s what I’m telling myself in hoping that by setting the bar as low as possible the Hall of Fame voters will do the right thing and surprise the hell out of me on Tuesday by saying that they’ll be swinging the doors open for Adam Oates. My head and heart say that this will be his year and it makes the most sense as this year’s first-year eligible players have only one stand out person in Joe Nieuwendyk (a fine college player himself, albeit at Cornell).  Other interesting names including Pierre Turgeon, Peter Bondra, Eric Lindros and John LeClair also sit there, but they’re not getting within sniffing distance of the Hall because the wait list of guys that belong in the Hall is too long already.

Dino Ciccarelli (who I’ve lauded here before) as well as Dave Andreychuk (he of 640 goals), and the aforementioned Doug Gilmour are the main egregious omissions from Toronto’s hallowed hall. Two 600+ goal scorers and the man who is 17th all-time in points NOT in the hall of fame. That’s not even taking into account the cases for guys like Pavel Bure and Alexander Mogilny. Ridiculous.

Even more ridiculous is that if they do try to get things right, someone will still get left out because the Hall of Fame will only allow four players to be inducted at a time. I’m certainly not advocating swinging the doors open and letting everyone and their mother in, but just to put some of the differences aside (Dino and the media not seeing eye-to-eye, for instance) and instead of being petty dicks about the past, doing the right thing and opening the Hall up to those who have been more than patiently waiting for a long delayed call.

Or else there’s hell to be paid.

I was on the radio – For real

Big thanks to Matt and Jeff on The Weekend Warmup at 96.3 the Big Jab in Portland, Maine for having me on the show with them this morning talking about hockey. Being a one-time radio producer, it was fun to be on the other end of the phone this time.

We talked Bruins failure, Bruins future and whether or not Joe Thornton is finally being Chokie Chokerson or not in the playoffs.

Part 1 is here.  5-22-10-BigJab-Portland-ME-Part1

Part 2 is here. 5-22-10-BigJab-Portland-ME1-Part2

The guys are still smarting over the Bruins and who can blame them really.

Consistency Meets Ignorance

Colin Campbell spun the Wheel Of Justice this afternoon and it landed on “0 Games” for Penguins forward Matt Cooke for his dirty, blindside “shoulder” to the head of Bruins forward Marc Savard.

You’ve seen the video, if you want to watch it again you can do that in my previous post.  I’m not in the NBC business of milking video to hammer home a point.

Via Twitter, TSN’s Bob McKenzie passed along Colin Campbell’s comments on why there would be no suspension for Matt Cooke. There’s a big comment here that just infuriates me as a fan of the game and as a lover of all things common sense.

Colie Campbell explaining his decision now. Said it was a matter of consistency. No suspension for Richards. No suspension for Cooke.

The man who makes his rulings about as wide-ranging and inconsistent as possible is preaching consistency as the reason why there’s no suspension.  It’s things like this that make me feel as if Lewis Black is actually the lead writer for the NHL. This kind of explanation comes from the guy who handed out what was ultimately a six-game suspension for Sean Avery for making crass comments about his former girlfriends,  meanwhile allowing players that seek and destroy players with dirty hits to the brain to get a pass comes away as something Black would ramble about after his “if it weren’t for my horse” story.

If for nothing else, Matt Cooke has helped Mike Richards of the Flyers out a lot because his hit on David Booth of the Panthers now looks a lot nicer in retrospect.  At the time, I railed against Campbell to do something to set the tone that shots to an unsuspecting player shouldn’t go unpunished:

It’s at a time like this where maybe, just maybe, sitting down a high-profile team’s captain down for more than a few games might send the message that the league intends to be serious about protecting its players.

The league didn’t intend to be serious and instead fell back upon the five-minute major penalty and game misconduct that Richards was assessed to be penalty enough for the Flyers captain.  This is where I’ll draw on this penalty for comparisons sake with Matt Cooke.  Cooke didn’t receive a penalty for his hit and a lot of fans, because of that, have claimed that Cooke’s hit was “perfectly legal” and that’s why the league couldn’t do anything about it.

Pardon me folks, but if that kind of hit is legal, then how come Richards got booked for doing essentially the same thing but more in line of an actual hockey play? See how interpreting the rules is a fun game for everyone? By that standing, Richards got nailed on one of the new rules the NHL instituted and that hit was instead used to hold up to the rest of the league that, yes they’ll call major penalties for interference if the hit is bad enough.

Well… Where’s the consistency then with Cooke’s play?  Cooke blatantly went after Marc Savard, had every intention of clipping him in the head (whether with his shoulder or his elbow, I don’t think it mattered which) and did so knowing full-well that Savard had no idea the hit was coming. At the least, David Booth knew Richards was going to hit him he just had a microsecond to prepare himself for it.

Does this make Cooke’s hit legal though?  Look into your own hockey-loving soul and tell me what you come away with. Put yourself in the shoes of the objective observer, or the fan of the guy who got knocked into next week. What does your gut tell you when you look at that play? If it tells you that it’s OK and that Marc Savard should’ve known better… I don’t know what to say to you, I would just strongly advocate on behalf of the rest of the world to please stop watching hockey and most certainly stop talking about the game to other people.

If you thought the bad choices ended there, don’t worry the real slap in the face to fans of common sense comes through later on.

[Campbell] Said if this hit happens next season it is a suspension. And if it’s a repeat offender like Cooke, the suspension will be stiffer again.

Now I may not be a rocket scientist here and I may subscribe to the “chaos theory” and have a dark humor, but all I’m gathering from this is that the rest of the season and playoffs are open game for interpretive checks to the head as long as you’re in the neighborhood of the play.

Do I think this will happen? Signs point to “no” but what’s going to stop some other player with a checkered past and questionable nature from taking a run at a guy that’s been killing his team on the scoreboard now? He won’t get punished for his transgression and Jebus help us all if it happens in the playoffs where players traditionally get a slap on the wrist for dirty hits.

The real idiocy of this though, and amazingly enough, it spins back to Sean Avery again somehow. The NHL can’t get a ruling made on shots to the head until next season yet when Avery was dancing and putting on a show in front of Martin Brodeur in the playoffs, a ruling was made before that series between New Jersey and New York was even over that if a player was to conduct themselves the same way they’d earn a minor penalty for it.

Explain to me how the NHL Rulebook couldn’t get something penciled in under “roughing” immediately for clocking an unsuspecting player in the head. This type of thing, where we’ve already seen at least two high-profile ugly incidents just this year, has to wait until next season. What the fuck kind of boneheads do we have in charge around here that something that protects the players, the league’s top investment and main commodity, has to sit on the back burner while bureaucracy takes over to allow it to clear all channels.

From Colin Campbell, to Gary Bettman, to all 30 owners to the figment heads of the NHLPA to the general managers I ask this:

What’s the fucking hold up?

The NHL wants to preach consistency and that’s fine, that’s their right to do so.  In my defense, I’ll throwback ignorance in their face. They’ve ignored these hits in the past, they’ve left them unpunished or not punished strongly enough and in some cases they’ve gone so far as to hide behind a rulebook that’s been left wide open to interpretation as it is to claim that a hit is legal. It’s not consistency the league is rolling with here, it’s cowardice and now they’re turning this whole thing into a PR stunt to make it look like they’re doing their job.

This stuff is already in the rulebook if you want it to be there. Remember the big “re-do” of the rules the league did after the lockout ended in 2005? None of those rules were new at all, they were always there and were never enforced. Instead, the league slapped a coat of paint on things and told folks, “Hey look! We’re going to call these things now! SEE! WE CAN DO IT RIGHT!”

The league felt Sean Avery was making a mockery of the game with what he did to Martin Brodeur so they instituted an addendum to a rule that already existed (unsportsmanlike conduct)  immediately and then proudly showed it off to everyone during that series that it would never happen again.  Same rules, new paint.

So now next year there will be a rule about targeting a player’s head. The rules are already there, be it interference, charging, elbowing or roughing but this new coat of paint and supposed stiffer punishments for offenders and repeat offenders are going to be what they’ll all pat each other on the back over for doing their jobs when all along they’ve been asleep at the wheel while officials both on and off the ice have been too feeble or beholden to old standards and lunkhead thinking to do jack shit about it.

It’s embarrassing all around and it says a lot about the state of the game when the fans have spoken out in a more coherent way than the league’s been able to.  Fans might be crazy, they might go out of their mind, they might say things a bit more colorfully and less PR-friendly… But a lot of times they get it, and seeing guys getting carted off the ice because another player took it upon himself to potentially ruin another man’s career gets everyone’s dander up.

We get it that hockey is a powerful and strong game, but we also know it when there’s a loose cannon running around out there with ill intent for everyone else on the ice.  We get it when that player has to face up to the consequences of his actions. What we don’t get is when those who are supposed to be smarter about these things and know better than us “common folk” can’t seem to put it together.

Photo courtesy of Matt Freed – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Your Move, Colin

Let’s just cut to the chase here.

Dirty. Disgusting. Blind-sided. Unnecessary.

These are all the right words to use to describe that hit on Boston Bruins forward Marc Savard at the hands of long-time notorious douchebag Matt Cooke. No, he’s not a douchebag because he plays for the Penguins, he’s a douchebag because he’s been that way his entire career. He’s reckless, he very rarely faces the music on the ice for his actions and he’s got a sufficient record in which to put him away for a long time.

That is, of course,  if NHL Disciplinarian Colin Campbell feels that this time is the moment to send a message to the rest of the league that unnecessary shots to an unsuspecting player’s head are bad news for everyone.

The stars are aligned here for Matt Cooke to get a major-league spanking at the hands of the NHL for this hit.  Of course… The one hang up here is that Flyers forward Mike Richards essentially did the same thing to Florida Panthers forward David Booth and received no punishment from the league for it.

Consistency is  a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

So what does Colin Campbell do here?  Does he spank Cooke for being a repeat offender? Possibly.  Does he make an example of Cooke for both being a repeat offender and for not having learned a lesson from previous toothless offenses? I doubt that.  Just recently the league handed out punishment to previous offender Wild enforcer Derek Boogaard for a knee-on-knee hit to Edmonton Oilers forward Ryan Jones in the form of a two game suspension.  Considering he’s got an official record with the NHL two games seems about right considering.

That said, what will the NHL do with Cooke especially with league members meeting in Florida this week discussing the problem with head shots?

Seemingly so, this would seem like the right time to make Matt Cooke into the league’s whipping boy and pariah for how not to conduct one’s self on the ice when it comes to head shots.  Then again, the league’s wild inconsistency when it comes to head shots is maddening on it’s own. The lack of action against Mike Richards with his hit on David Booth was baffling.

Not to get morbid about things here, but it was reported that Savard was knocked unconscious by Cooke’s hit and he was carted off the ice on a stretcher.  For all that the NHL wants to do to keep up appearances, they come off seemingly lax when it comes to keeping their players’ sensibilities in order and there’s nothing worse for bad publicity than a player having to be taken off the ice on a stretcher.  That goes for any sport, mind you, but when it happens in hockey it gives you an immediate feeling of dread, generally because hockey fans and players and coaches are more accustomed to seeing guys fight their way to the bench to be taken care of in the bowels of the arena away from the public eye.

Hockey players are tough customers and to see them fallen in such a manner that it leaves them powerless to get off the ice… It’s stunning to all the senses from the fairweather fan all the way up to the most hardened veteran player and executive.  Joe Public is going to have that same sick feeling of dread as would, say, Steve Yzerman or Brian Burke.  That same fan is also going to have that feeling of outrage over no immediate justice being handed out.  Keep in mind that Cooke wasn’t penalized for the hit and that Savard will be out for a good amount of time with a concussion.

Concussions are not taken lightly any more, thankfully, and players are given whatever amount of time they need to to recoup from such a violent injury.   Look at Andreas Lilja of the Detroit Red Wings who missed a full year of hockey to recover from a concussion suffered in a fight with Nashville’s Shea Weber.  Rubbing some dirt on it doesn’t apply to brain injuries.

I know I sound like a horrible, broken record when it comes to these things but, again, this is a time when the NHL can step up and send a message that these kinds of plays will not be tolerated. The league doesn’t want the players to police themselves to the fullest and deal with line brawls to solve seeming on-ice injustice so they have to step up and show that this sort of ridiculous recklessness and total lack of respect for the fellow man on the ice will not be tolerated.

Moments like these and others like them are when the NHL should be stepping in and saying, “If you’re not going to respect each other on the ice, we’re not about to show you the same courtesy.  Please enjoy forfeiting your salary for the next ______ game(s).”

Unfortunately, I expect gutlessness from Colin Campbell here. I expect a slap on the wrist and I expect that nothing in any way is going to change until the “brain trust” for the NHL puts it together to make an official ruling or set of regulations.

Deadline Day – Deal 3: Boston & Florida

Trade:

Florida gets: Forwards Craig Weller, Byron Bitz, 2nd Round Pick

Boston gets: Defensemen Dennis Seidenberg, Matt Bartkowski (sophomore – Ohio State)

Analysis:

Boston gets a better defensive defenseman in Seidenberg as he’s a shot blocking freak. So they’ve got that going for them.  They hand off a bunch of blue collar spare parts in Weller and Bitz and the Bruins have draft picks to throw away and they do that here handing off a 2nd rounder to the Panthers.

Seidenberg will help out from a defensive stand point but the Bruins main issue is goal scoring and Seidenberg isn’t helping there. Expect another move or two still for Boston.

Deadline Day – Deal 1: Derek Morris to Phoenix

Trade:

Boston sends Derek Morris to Phoenix for a 2011 4th round pick.

Analysis:

This deal clears out salary space for Boston to make more moves later today.  Depending on how the rest of the day and season goes for Boston, the signing of Morris at the beginning of the year will call into question the wisdom of Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli signing Morris (and others) to such fat contracts while letting the team’s only goal scorer twist in the wind and eventually get traded.

We’ll see how this pans out the rest of the day for Boston, clearly they’re angling to just get into the playoffs and hope to get hot. Of course they could be setting up to face either Pittsburgh or Washington so picking one’s poison might not be so awesome here.