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If you want some quick insight into the niches that the Edmonton
Journal and Edmonton Sun have tried to carve out for themselves, you
don’t need to look any further than how they’re dealing with the
imminent return of Chris Pronger.

The Edmonton Journal, the paper of choice for your wine drinking
elites in the Capital Region, has published TWO columns admonishing
fans for even thinking about giving Pronger a hard time tonight. Tom Barrett writes:

There’s another issue here, too. Edmonton is starting to
get a bit of a reputation for whining. Oiler fans are booing a growing
number of former Oilers, including Jason Arnott after all these years.
Who’s next to get tormented? Mike Grier? Jason Chimera?

It’s starting to get a little silly folks. Save it for Mick McGeough.

I know I’m preaching to the unconvertible, but continuing to boo every
player who wants to leave or gets traded for whatever reason is making
us look like a bush town.

Scott McKeen adds:

We don’t have to admire his decision. We might even think
it’s selfish. But booing a departed Oiler smacks of something wrong
with us: Arrested development, or abandonment issues.

�

It’s only a theory, but I think a chorus of boos Tuesday night will
send the wrong message to the Oilers; that the fans’ unrequited love
for Pronger exceeds their feelings for the remaining Oilers. How do
you mend a broken heart?

Given that a) I’ve never heard of either of these writers and b) their
position is wimpy, I can only conclude that they’ve been seconded from
the “Co-operation, Sharing and Teamwork” section of the paper or something.
Whatever happened to the Alberta that I remember, the Alberta that
complains about everything? The Alberta that responds to judicial decisions about federal powers by threatening to invoke the notwithstanding clause
even though they don’t have jurisdiction? Why, if these guys were
political reporters covering Ralph Klein saying “Let the eastern
bastards freeze in the dark”, they’d probably say that he was
wrong.

Thankfully, the Edmonton Sun, the newspaper for people who like their news liberally surrounded with pictures of scantily clad women, doesn’t go in for this silliness. Are they
lamenting the pending fiasco? Hell no. The closest that the Sun
comes to any expression of concern are a couple of quotes from Joffrey
Lupul which boil down to “Stay classy Edmonton.” One imagines that
Lupul’s point of view is more than a little motivated by the fact that
scorn can only be heaped on a traitorous Pronger twice a year. Scorn
could be heaped on an underperforming Lupul 41 times annually. It’s
in his interest to have the scorn heaping bar set high.

Personally, I’m ok with Chris Pronger becoming Northern Alberta’s
cultural variant of the bogeyman and being treated as such on his
infrequent appearances in town. Every society has such a figure and I find the idea of fathers saying to their children “You better behave or your mom will have a kid with Chris Pronger and our family will split up” to be a testament to the primacy of hockey in Canadian life.

Really, that’s what the whole thing comes down to. People in Canada, and especially Edmonton, care an awful lot about hockey. With the caring comes the lunacy. Guys like Kelly Hrudey whining about the booing…if people weren’t motivated to come out and boo a guy like Chris Pronger, Kelly Hrudey wouldn’t have made a bunch of money playing money and then continued to make great money talking about it. I’m a big Hrudey fan but he’s just wrong on this point. This isn’t going down to your local hockey rink and booing the kid who can’t raise the puck or coughs it up at a crucial moment; it’s pro sports. It’s not just about the games, it’s about the spectacle. This is part of it. I’m not saying that people should throw batteries at the guy but if gets booed, experiences some rough chants and sees a bunch of negative signs…well, that’s the price of deciding to leave a city where they care about their hockey team.

According to Eric Duhatschek the Oilers figure that they’ll take in an extra 10,000 or so purchases of the game tomorrow night. At $11.95 per, that’s a pretty nice piece of change. I suspect that there will never be an Edmonton-Anaheim game on free TV again.

I watched the chunk of Pronger’s press conference that got YouTubed. Christie Chorley deserves some credit, I think, for making a joke about the whole thing although it’s flawed in that it wasn’t that funny. “Nice to meet you, finally”? Really? She’s had five months to prepare for this moment and that was the best she could come up with? That’s brutal. She couldn’t have asked around, talked to people that she knows who are funny, come up with something better than that? Terrible.

I’m sure that this is just further evidence that I’m soft on the Pronger issue but I actually thought that he handled himself rather well in the whole thing today. If his position is that his private life belongs to him and it’s up to him and his family whether people like it or not, well bully for him. I don’t necessarily think that that means the media needs to agree - the thing I find funny about people complaining that Pronger should have answered questions from the local media is that the local media is totally toothless. They weren’t going to get anything out of him.

I’m sure a lot of the guys who are really tuned into the Oilers - guys like Jim Matheson and Robin Brownlee - know the story or at least a big chunk of it. I’m sure that they could tell you exactly what it is. They’ve apparently chosen not to. Contrary to what you’d think if your understanding of newsgathering is based on the Oilers press corps, news sometimes comes out without having the subject of the news just tell you the story. None of it matters anyway but I find the criticism that he didn’t stick around to face the awesome inquisitorial skill of Bryan Hall (”Aren’t you going to miss Tony Roma’s ribs?”) a bit misleading, given their reluctance to ask questions, push him for answers or, you know, ask other people who might know and write a story based on their answers. Pronger’s under no obligation to answer questions but that doesn’t need to be the end of the story as far as the media are concerned.

Check out the NHL’s latest Steve Yzerman product. I hear for an extra fifty bucks, they’ll have Fernando Pisani, Dwayne Roloson and Ales Hemsky sign it as well.

How far is the gulf between Sportsnet’s Mike Brophy and reality? He was talking on the Oilers-Hawks broadcast about Chris Pronger’s return and offered this, in a bitter tone of voice:

“I just hope that the fans who are going to rip Pronger remember that he carried that team on his back to the Stanley Cup Finals. How quickly some people forget.”

Give me a break. I defended Pronger after he announced that he wanted a trade, and argued that it was understandable that he wouldn’t really talk about it if, as rumoured, it was his wife who was unhappy in Edmonton because there’s nothing he could do other than blame her. That said, if I was in Edmonton on Tuesday night, I’d be trying to get my section chanting “Lauren sucks!” The flipside of basking in the adulation of a city like Pronger did last year is that people tend to get a little bitter when you say you want out. They take it personally. It’s going to be a fantastically ugly scene at the Rex next Tuesday; I have a hard time saying that it shouldn’t be.

One of these two columns is satire. The other is genuine NHL approved content.

A friend pointed out the decision of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal in Vigoren v. Nystuen. It’s a tragic case involving a 14 year old boy who suffered serious injuries in a car accident but notable in that an NHL scout was called to give expert evidence as to the chances that he’d make the NHL. Essentially, they were trying to make an argument that his lost future earnings were high because he lost a good shot at an NHL career.

Generally speaking, opinion evidence isn’t admissible. The trial judge allowed Carter Sears, a scout with the New York Rangers and formerly the Director of Player Personnel and Head Scout for the Red Deer Rebels to give evidence as an expert “able to assess the current skills and potential development of young hockey players, including the potential to be successful in the Major Junior Hockey League and in professional hockey.”

Sears testified that Nystuen was the best goal scorer available in the WHL draft that year and that he was one of the best pure goal scorers he’d ever seen while scouting for Red Deer. He compared him favourably to Patrick Marleau.

I’d love to see a transcript of the cross-examination done of Sears. There were multiple defendants in the action and, while the appellate decision doesn’t talk about it, it does discuss the objections of defence counsel to Sears being qualified to testify. There were two objections raised to him testifying. The first went to the necessity of Sears’ testimony to aid the trier of fact in assessing his loss. I like what Justice Richards had to say about the point:

Although the issue may be close to the line, it appears to me that the relative strengths and weaknesses of Nystuen as a hockey player and his potential for moving up in the hockey ranks is the sort of subject-matter that ordinary people are unlikely to form a correct judgment about if unassisted by someone with special knowledge.

Personally, I’m not sure that I agree with the judge - Sears could have testified as to whether his team was interested in drafting the guy and evidence could have been put before the court as to how players drafted highly coming into junior have done. The issue I take with saying that ordinary people are unlikely to form a correct judgment on the guy is that I don’t know that hockey scouts are any better when we’re dealing with 14 year olds.

This was really hit on by the second objection raised which was whether or not Sears was qualified to give expert evidence on the question of Nystuen’s potential as a professional player. This would be the more interesting point, I think. There’d be a fun tongue in cheek line about whether or not anyone hired by Glen Sather could be an expert in evaluating junior players. More realistically, it’d be interesting to cross examine him on just how speculative his comments as to professional potential were. I’m not a close follower of the NHL draft, let alone the various major junior drafts but I’ve got a pretty strong suspicion that 14 year olds can go a lot of different ways in the 4 years before they get drafted at which point they can go a lot of different ways before they become NHLers. Personally, I suspect that it’s such a crapshoot that it’d be awfully difficult for Sears to defend whatever he was saying on the stand.

It looks to me like their strategy of painting him as someone with an excellent chance at an NHL career worked - it’s not clear when the trial was held but the appeal was heard in December of 2005. The jury awarded him $900,000.00 in pre-trial loss of income. It’s pretty tough to figure out how they could have come up with that much for someone who was at most 25 unless they accepted that he’d lost a chance at an NHL career.

Anyway, it’s an interesting case. I’ll be interested to see the result of the new trial, assuming that the case isn’t settled.

Lots of discussion around the Oilogosphere about Marc Andre Bergeron of late. I’m not sure why. He’s doing the same Marc Andre Bergeron stuff that he’s always done. He’s scoring at ES (42nd in ESP/60 amongst defencemen with at least 100 minutes), outscoring by a healthy margin (out of the top 42 scorers amongst defencemen in terms of ESP/60, Bergeron is 7th in ESGD/60 at +1.64 ESGD/60; he’s 13th overall amongst defencemen in ESGD/60> He sucks on the PP, but then he’s never been good on the PP. He gets hidden away at ES from anyone good, same as he always has.

Does he make mistakes and get bailed out by Roloson from time to time? Sure, but so does everyone. Part of the advantage that you get in spending money on a goaltender is that you can get away with more chances against and spend less money elsewhere. Or you can spend a lot of money but just piss it away indiscriminately on guys who underachieve. Around here, we call that the “Calgary Flames Plan for the 2005-06 NW Division Title.” The point being, you can’t have everything and a good goalie will cover a lot of faults. Bergeron’s greatest weakness happens to come in an area of strength for the Oilers right now - he is responsible for more chances against than your average defenceman. Fortunately, for Edmonton, they’ve got a guy who can deal with them.

Has he looked bad time and again? Sure, but it hasn’t been reflected in the results yet. I can accept that 20 games does not a season make, but with Bergeron it’s been a lot longer than 20 games that he’s put together this kind of production. His ES+/60 has spiked this year, which I suspect is due to more offence coming from players outside of the Oilers first line with whom Bergeron is more likely to be on the ice but, to paraphrase Dennis Green, “Bergeron is who we thought he is!” He’s a small guy, sketchy in his own end, crappy on the PP who can put up points at ES. He’s dirt cheap and he’s a reasonable option on the bottom pairing for this team.

‘
You can’t point to him costing the Oilers games right now - unlike Crossanov last year, Bergeron is obviously healthily to the plus side of the ledger. As with last season, <>more good things than bad things happen when he’s on the ice. Well, depending on how much weight you give the Roloson thing, I suppose. In any event, it seems a little unfair to tar Bergeron with the blame for the struggles on the Oilers backend at this point because a lot of the guys at the front of the defence corps have been getting torn apart. If those guys need to be upgraded and Bergeron is bait because there’s no room for him if the top end gets better and everyone else takes a step down the ladder, that’s one thing. If the Oilers need to get someone who’s better on the PP and he needs those soft minutes to hide at ES, that’s another. On the results though, you can’t argue that Bergeron, either this year or in the past, has been a sinkhole for the Oilers.

Edmonton absolutely needs to fix their defence. This has little to nothing to do with Bergeron though. The Oilers’ resources, both in terms of money and things you can trade to get new players are finite and I’d just as soon not see them expending them on fixes for Bergeron when there are other areas of the team that need to get repaired first.

With Steve Staios getting his Thank You Contract and Ryan Smyth sounding pretty pissed off that he gets no love, either someone has to go or I can’t see Smyth coming back. I’m thinking that we may well see Stoll disappear in the night at some point. I speculated earlier that it might be Torres but he doesn’t have a big contract yet and if keeps going the way he’s going, he won’t be getting much of a raise. Two things would have to happen. One, Reasoner would have to keep his act together. Reasoner’s been getting more ES minutes than Stoll of late and I think he could help swallow Stoll’s PK TOI as well. Second, I think you’d have to find a centre who can play some of the fourth line minutes. I’m kind of vaguely watching Pouliot to see if he can do this but if he can’t, you’d think that the Oilers could acquire someone who could play a fourth line role. I wonder if Rem Murray has an out clause?

With Edmonton playing Calgary tomorrow and RiversQ vomiting data on the interweb, I was curious about the Oilers and Flames strength of schedule at ES at the moment. Like the Oilers, the Flames are getting outshot by a surprisingly large amount right now at ES. Calgary outshot the opposition by 0.7 ESS/60 last year. Edmonton outshot the opposition by 2.5 ESS/60. This year, the Flames are getting outshot by 3.2 ESS/60. The Oilers are getting outshot by 2.1 ESS/60.

Unlike the humourously named SweatyO, I still tend to think that it’s early and that sample size is an issue. I’m sure I don’t have to remind people reading this that the Oilers offence absolutely went in the toilet over the last quarter of last year. Before that quarter, they were decent offensively. Scoring goals against good defensive teams wasn’t a problem in the playofffs. Shit happens and 20 games isn’t enough to judge a team on.

For Andy Grabia’s benefit, I’ll explain the abbreviations in the table. Basically, it’s your standard hockey abbreviations (S=shots, G=goals, F=for, A=against) with the added twist of me having tossed in an x for eXpected. D stands for differential. Just put the words in place of the letters in your head and it will all make sense.

The expected values are just averages of the rates in the various categories, weighted to reflect the schedule that teams have played. Take Edmonton’s xGF of 2.23 as an example. All that number is is a weighted average of the GA/60 rate of Edmonton’s opposition thus far. I’ve sorted the list by actual goal differential minus expected goal differential. Obviously, the list is going to be polluted to a certain extent by the fact that Edmonton gets “credit” for playing Detroit so many times but the Oilers are partly responsible for Detroit’s numbers. There’s a math word here that I’m looking for, something to do with cleansing the data by going further back and adjusting or something - I’m sure that one of my mathematically inclined readers can tell me what it is.

You can tell from the list that many of the NW teams have played against a lot of pretty solid ES teams to this point. Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver are all in the toughest 20% of the league in terms of xGD. That fit with the sense I had coming into this. The size of Anaheim’s ES hit is amazing - they go from being .67 ESGD/60 better than the Oilers to .10 ESGD/60 better than the Oilers when you factor in schedule. I admit, I’m inclined to think that the list as sorted by the difference between ESGD/60 and xESGD/60 is a lot closer to what I’d expect the league to look like than the current raw numbers are. I’ve got this in my own version of the Big Spreadsheet now - it’s something I’ll follow over the course of the season.

By the way - take note of the fact that Edmonton’s xGF number is lowest in the league. Keep in mind that that’s based entirely on their opposition’s GA. I’m not quite ready to join those slagging the offence or suggesting that it’s disappointing. The PP so far, absolutely, it’s terribly depressing despite scoring goals at a mediocre rate. Edmonton hasn’t really had a lot of games with the soft underbelly of the league at ES though and until that time, I don’t know that it makes a hell of a lot of sense to start ripping into the O.

I’ve noticed that the Islanders seem to be getting a lot of good press recently. Alexei Yashin has apparently appeared somewhat interested in playing the game. Ted Nolan is getting rave reviews. The Rick DiPietro contract makes sense. Really?

Nah, I don’t think so. Like the vast, vast majority of the Earth’s population I rarely see Islanders games. I can’t help but notice two things though. First of all, the Islanders are 0 in terms of goal differential. They’ve got a pair of shootout wins already - 8 would be a lot over the course of the season. They’re winning despite being badly outshot at ES and it’s not the $65MM man getting it done, it’s Mike Dunham, of all people. Dunham has a .958 ESSV% at the moment and a .932 SV% overall. He’s seen roughly 40% of the Islanders shots. His hot play won’t continue. The Isles will start to slide soon, I imagine. I know I sound crazy saying this when they’re so far back but I still like Philadelphia’s chances to take that division. It sure would help if they’d get a goalie though. They’ve played the third toughest sked in the league this seaseon, according to Sagarin.

Andy Grabia has an interesting comment in a thread at Battle of Alberta. He writes:

I remain unconvinced that the “breakout pass” is having that much of a qualitative effect on the offence. If that was the case, we’d still be doing damage when and if we did actually enter the opposing team’s zone. Does anyone think, “right on, here we go, when we enter the offensive zone? I don’t.

I’m just not seeing the defence as the problem with this team, especially at the offensive level. Like I said before, we’re 9th in Goals Against A Game, and 15th in Goals For. Other teams worse than us in Goals For A Game:

I kind of agree with Andy that the impact of Pronger’s loss on the goal scoring by virtue of the loss of the breakout pass has been overrated. First of all, Edmonton is scoring 2.65 ESG/60 at the moment. Last year, they scored 2.41 ESG/60. Shooting percentage is up a bit at ES - 0.7% to 9.0% but oddly enough, so are shots. Edmonton is 11th in the league in ESG/60 right now and fourth in the Western Conference. The Western Conference is considerably stingier than the Eastern Conference right now (about 0.25 fewer ESG/60) so I’d say that given the context, the Oilers are doing just fine offensively at ES.

I don’t know that you can tie the PP to the loss of Pronger, myself. Based on the games I’ve seen, the Oilers biggest difficulty on the PP has been gaining the zone. They’re doing a decent job creating chances and have been keeping their heads above water with a fantastic shooting percentage. I think that you’d be hardpressed right now to make the argument that they aren’t generating their fair share of chances on those rare occasions when they get into the zone. In order to tie their struggles to the defence, you’ve got to somehow make the argument that the reason the Oilers are far and away the worst team in the NHL at getting shots on the PP is because they’ve lost Pronger. Chris Pronger is a great player but he’s not worth 17 shots/hour on the PP, which is the difference between last year and this year for the Oilers.

The flipside, of course, is that the Oilers defensive numbers make them look better at preventing goals than they actually are. They’re essentially in the same spot as they were last year at ES but of course last year, they were running a sideshow through the nets. While I’m all for the idea that the Oilers need a defenceman, I don’t particularly think that he needs to be an offensive defenceman per se. I’d be quite satisfied with a couple of 6′3″ or 6′4″ guys who clear the front of the net, don’t make stupid plays with the puck in their own end and don’t hand their stick to the goalie with the blade up at the end of a one goal game. If better passing is part of that equation, then so be it but I don’t necessarily think that it has to be. Edmonton’s got more than a few defencemen who just make consistently sketchy plays with the puck in their own end at the moment. It’s not that I don’t think that they can make a pass, it’s that some of them are prone to an awful lot of stupid plays.

Bringing this back to what Andy wrote, I agree with him that a puck moving defenceman isn’t the priority. I’m not nearly as down on the offence as he is though. I still figure that the PP is down by way more than one guy can be responsible for and it’s going to come. They need to get the backend calmed down and they’ll have a good team. If I’m right and the PP comes along on it’s own, they’re well positioned at the moment to make a nice little run.

Watching the Ducks-Hawks game tonight, they do this thing where Brian Hayward answers an email question. The question tonight was “How do you calculate +/-?” Not the greatest question in the world, but new market, grow the game, etc.

Hayward gets it wrong and the PBP guy, John Ahlers, has to cover for him and include the part about shorties for and against counting. My god. It’s not just the fans who need to be educated down there, it’s the Canadian born and bred hockey experts we export as well. I’m not sure whether John Ahlers is Canadian or not but he gets huge credit for a sly Slapshot reference when Chicago took a penalty.

There was a nice piece of information from one of these guys as well. I’m not sure which, but after yet another Chicago penalty, it was mentioned that Trent Yawney was saying that he doesn’t mind penalties if they’re taken while the Hawks are hitting. He should. Chicago is currently getting a minute less per game on the PP than their opposition, despite having a lousy PP and PK that should slant things in their direction, all other things being equal. Watching the game tonight, there were many just undisciplined penalties on the part of the Hawks - they had a combined five non-conincidental high sticking, roughing and slashing penalties. It’s just stupid hockey.

Marc-Andre Bergeron sure pissed off John Davidson with his comments about the Blues attendance sucking. Davidson appeared on the Oilers broadcast the other night and kind of ripped on Bergeron for his comments. Evidently he went and did the same in Calgary, because George Johnson has this quote:

“…when I read [Oilers defenseman Marc-Andre] Bergeron saying things like ‘We get more people for practices,’ that pisses me off. It’s as if they’re laughing at us.

“How long ago were they struggling to put people in the seats in Edmonton? Or here in Calgary, for that matter? Six years ago? Seven? There are some awfully short memories, obviously. The world goes around and around.”

I think it was more like 10 or 11 years ago when Edmonton was struggling to fill the seats but that’s neither here nor there. JD might not be aware of this, given that he’s an Eastern guy, but Bergeron wasn’t in Edmonton when they were having trouble putting people in the seats. The Oilers, to the best of my knowledge, never resorted to something as desperate as the fake blog. They had the dignity to stay with the more traditional constant threats to leave. It took a solid seven or eight years of pretty much constant earth salting on the part of Peter Pocklington for Edmonton to reach a nadir. Even then, they weren’t playing games in front of 4,500 people, which is what the crowd in St. Louis supposedly was the other day, regardless of the attendance numbers. Considering the Blues took advantage of the situation in Calgary and Edmonton to grab players like Al MacInnis and Doug Weight, I’m not going to shed any tears for the straits that they find themselves in now. It kind of sucks for Davidson that he’s wearing the sins of the past administration in St. Louis but that’s sports.

I had cause to spend about 6.5 hours travelling yesterday and spent much of the time listening to the FAN 590. I’m not really a radio guy, generally speaking, so I have no idea what goes on there. After listening to it for that long, I’ve become convinced that I’m way too tough on the newspaper guys. They’re miles and miles ahead of the radio guys. Then you’ve got the callers - not to get too snooty, since I’m a guy writing shit on the internet, but if you’ve ever called a sports radio station, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote. My favourite one yesterday was a guy who phoned up Bob McCown to suggest that the NHL should just go to a perpetual power play. He doesn’t like the 5 on 5 so he suggests that teams take turns alternating power plays. The proper response to his comments would have been “Are you sure that you like hockey?” but McCown humoured the guy. It’s not a wonder he has the reputation of being an asshole - he’s no doubt embittered by having listened to people phoning him with this nonsense for the past 12 years.

Anyway, I picked a good day to be stuck in the car because there were a couple of really interesting stories. First, the FAN was hot on rumours that Bryan Murray is about to get fired, possibly after the game last night if it didn’t go well for Ottawa. The theory that they were working with was pretty simple - Columbus might hire Ken Hitchcock, Ottawa will want him if they fire Bryan Murray, so if Ottawa fires Bryan Murray now, they can get Hitchcock. Seems reasonably straightforward. Then it gets weird. One of the voices (I think it was Mike Brophy) is talking about who he’d rather coach, Ottawa or Columbus. Now, as close to a direct quote as I can come is that he’d rather coach Columbus because they’re closer to the Stanley Cup than Ottawa. Also they have great young talent, like Nikolai Zherdev, Rick Nash and David Vyborny. I knew I was listening to radio in a market that has been stuck with the ancient Leafs forever when I heard that (the soon to be 32) Vyborny is “great young talent.” More to the point, Dany Heatley was born in 1981 and Jason Spezza was born in 1983. Nash and Zherdev were both born in 1984. There are miles and miles between where those two Senators are and where Zherdev and Nash are. Columbus has some other talent percolating through the system but the idea that Columbus is closer to the Stanley Cup than Ottawa is beyond ludicrous. I’ll blame Mike Brophy for it.

Interesting point for this - I think that Ken Hitchcock has had an absolutely insanely good record in one goal games during his career. Philly was good last year. Dallas was always good in them when Hitch was coaching. This has been the Senators’ Achilles heel - they lose the close ones. There’s an idea in baseball that the eptitude of a manager might be somewhat visible in whether his team overperforms or underperforms their expected record. I don’t know how much credence to give that but Ottawa has had a couple of seasons where they’ve dramatically underperformed their expected points. I still believe that it’s largely just shitty luck but at the same time, Hitch just doesn’t seem to get unlucky that way. I can definitely see why he’d be attractive to the Senators.

I missed most of the show between that and McCown, thank god - the bit that I did here, the guy was going on about how the Boston Red Sox are paying $51.1MM just to talk to Daisuke Matsuzaka which is just not the case. He went on for a good 10 minutes about this before acknowledging that the money is only payable if they sign him. Anyway, then McCown comes on and he had a fantastic show , although listening to his show (which runs for three hours), I always think “This would have made an interesting one hour program.” He went for 20 minutes at one point bantering with with the Sportsnet legal analyst about how bad his law school was. That had nothing to do with anything, but there it was.

He gets good guests though - I think Mirtle is the only Globe and Mail guy who doesn’t appear regularly on the show. He had a guests on the two big stories of the day, which were the firing of Don Meehan by Alexander Ovechkin and the denial by a US judge of a request by Evgeni Malkin’s Russian team for an injunction barring him from playing for the Penguins. McCown’s guests were pretty tuned in on the subjects - he had Don Meehan, J.P Barry (Malkin’s agent) and some Russian lawyer who was representing the Russian team.

On discussion his firing, I thought Meehan acquitted himself pretty well. It’s a pretty awkward thing for him to discuss, to be sure - he pointedly avoided commenting on the qualifications of Ovechkin’s mother to represent him - but he managed to avoid slamming anyone. The more interesting thing, as far as I’m concerned, is Ovechkin’s decision. As I see it, Ovechkin won’t want to go to arbitration - he’ll be looking for Rick Nash money or more. I’d guess more.

My understanding is that 3% of the contract is a pretty common comission in the NHL. At salaries like Ovechkin’s, it’s hard to see what how Meehan’s contract negotiating services can be worth that. Say Ovechkin earns $5MM, which isn’t unreasonable. That’s $150,000.00 in agent’s fees. How can Meehan’s contribution possibly be worth that? An interesting note here is that while the players as a whole may benefit from having a cadre of agents aggressively pushing up salaries for players in certain classes, one guy firing his agent won’t make a lot of impact. Ovechkin can, in a manner of speaking, ride on the efforts of other agents who know the market well and extract every dollar for their client. He can then just point to the contracts and compare them to his own position. He can free ride on the commissions that other guys pay their agents.

The other big story was, obviously, the Malkin decision. I’m going to hold off talking about that until I can dig up the decision - I’ve got someone on the lookout for it for me. In looking for it though, I came across a blog that, amongst other things, discusses the hotness of various federal judges in the US. Here’s what they had to say about Judge Loretta Preska:

In a word: magnificent. Tall, thin, elegant. Great bone structure, perfectly coiffed silver hair. Note to self: nominate for superhotties contest next year? Fabulous dark blue suit. Who designed? Dramatic, extra-long jacket, white-trimmed lapels; tapers down towards clasp, then flares out again–gorgeous cut. Nice accessories: big gold eagle pin, ladies-who-lunch pearl necklace, matching earrings. Delivers intro like newscaster, smooth as butter. Gestures grandly with long fingers; flawless manicure. WOW! Judicial style score: 9.5.

That’s just weird. Really, really weird. The Hot Oil girls would shake their heads at that.

Of note: Edmonton’s PP moved up about 15 spots with the explosion against St. Louis. I was looking at the numbers for guys before the Colorado game and I was surprised at the number of Oilers players with decent numbers, given how bad the PP has been: Stoll, Hemsky, Sykora, Lupul, Tjarnqvist and Horcoff were all up over 4.0 PPP/60. Hemsky and Sykora are both over 5.5 PPP/60. It’s starting to come along.

Flip side of that coin is (not surprisingly) Raffi, who’s got nothing in more than 30 minutes of PP time. Bergeron’s explosion tonight doesn’t even move him over 3.0 PPP/60. The guy just can’t play on the PP, two goal game or not.

Daily bit of hilarity from NHL.com comes courtesy of Nancy Koenig. She’s talking about interviewing a guy who didn’t want to talk about her, so she said:

“I write for the League’s website,” I reassured. “How bad do you think I’m allowed to make you look?”

Ms. Koenig is a cynical, cynical woman. Doesn’t she know that she’s independent? For shame, Nancy…for shame.

James Mirtle has a piece up saying, in essence, that by and large, things are decided in the Western Conference. While I think he’s right that most of the teams in playoff positions now in the West will end up in the playoffs, I don’t think that this is particularly unusual. At the same point last season, XXX teams from the West who made the playoffs were already in position to do so - only Anaheim and San Jose made it after that point. It’s maybe a bit unusual that those teams are so far ahead at the moment but it’s not going to last.

When you take a look at which teams are getting points out of one goal games so far, it’s almost perfectly aligned with where teams are in the standings. As it so happens, none of Mirtle’s elite have gotten off to bad starts in one goal games - the big six that he’s identified are also the teams that are winning one goal games at the moment. The chart at left shows how many one goal games teams have played in the West so far this year and what percentage of available points that they’re getting out of those games.

It should be obvious that, over the course of the entire season, the spread last year was a lot smaller. It almost always has been in the past. It’s kind of interesting that, this year, for whatever reason, the teams who people thought would be good have got off to a good start in the one goal games. Minnesota’s turnaround is amazing. It’s odd though that the rest of the NW teams have sucked at getting points out of one goal games so far. I guess that they just haven’t had a lot of OT/shootout games.

We’ll see if it lasts but I’d guess that it doesn’t. Other teams will get their hot streaks in the one goal games and the teams that are on top right now will cool off. That’s hockey.

Lots of fun stuff from the Globe and Mail crew today. Their new site is virtually unnavigable but I like a lot of their writers, so I force myself to battle it.

First off, you’ve got William Houston. In an item that may prompt a sense of deja vu for people who hang out around here, Houston reports that Roger Millions pissed all over the Calgary media on CalgaryPuck last week. Houston reveals a bit of a Ted Stevens streak in the piece:

He also took shots, on a blog posting, at the Calgary radio station The Fan 960, which is owned by the company that Millions works for, Rogers Media.

…

“[If you are] going to rip us, get the facts straight and cut the crap,” he wrote on the fan blog Calgarypuck.com.

I read this initially and was so confused that I thought Millions had a blog. After I looked around and couldn’t find it, I realized that all of the quotes were directly from Calgary Puck. I assume that Houston is just classifying everything on the internet as being a blog post. Not quite “series of tubes” but Houston is a media critic. You’d think he’d be aware of the difference here but who knows.

I’m also kind of curious as to how this came to Houston’s attention - I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that he doesn’t spend a lot of time reading CalPuck. If he got it from reading my site (I don’t think that this has been picked up elsewhere on the internet), I’m sure that he would have thrown in a link to my post, given that that’s the etiquette of the whole thing, so he can’t have got it from me. Who does that leave? Not ready for prime time Calgary media personalities. That’s my best guess. What a gonger.

Fellow Globie Roy MacGregor commented on the study saying that fighting helps win hockey games. As far as this topic goes, I’m agnostic. We’ll see what it says when they actually release it but I’ve got serious doubts. More to the point, MacGregor just pisses me off with this:

That’s the beauty of hockey: Stuff happens. And so much of it gloriously defies analysis.

No matter how hard people like this, invariably American, work on the baseball-ization of hockey, it just doesn’t work.

I haven’t checked my birth certificate lately but I’m pretty sure that I’m Canadian and I fall squarely in the “analysis = good” camp. My hockey credentials aren’t that bad - I’ve read Home Game and they’re at least as good as MacGregor’s. Does my appreciation for the numbers make me an American? Is that a bad thing? Rephrase that sentence with any racial/national identifier you care to imagine and that sentence doesn’t get published in any respectable Canadian newspaper.

I’ve intended to toss out a reference to Neate Sager’s blog for a while, but with Vic pointing out all of the Oilers blogs, I was reminded to do so. I check it out daily and it’s a cool place. A little CIS heavy for my liking but it’s always an interesting read. Plus, he likes Warren Zevon.

Joe Sakic made a crafty veteran move to draw a penalty in the Oilers-Avs game tonight. Petr Sykora was marking him along the end boards and as Sakic skated out of the corner, Sykora kind of got his stick in between Sakic’s arm and his body. It was evident on the replay that Sakic drew his arm in tight to his body, trapping the stick there. The referees call everything that even smells like a hook these days, so Sykora was off to the box.

So Sakic draws the call. Fair enough. It was a crafty veteran play. What I don’t understand though is how what Sakic did is any different than someone falling down to draw a penalty. I’m not sure on what ground people object to diving that somehow exempts Sakic’s conduct. You never hear anyone complaining about the play that Sakic made and yet it’s difficult to discern any difference between what Sakic did on that play and a guy like Sean Avery going down all over the place. I don’t get it.

Lowetide pretty much said what I think about Gerrad Gallant getting fired in Columbus but I have a special interest in the Blue Jackets, mostly because I found the Hockey’s Future segment of their fanbase to be so delightfully naive and supportive of a GM who is so obviously incompetent.

I find the whole firing of the coach an interesting thing though. From a business perspective, I’m not sure that it’s a defensible move. I can’t seriously imaigne that coaching is the issue in Columbus - as I wrote here in September, they looked to be extremely lucky to put up the mediocre record that they put up in their “run” in the last half of 2005-06. They’ll hire someone new - I suspect that MacLean is looking for a name as we speak - but I can’t imagine how a new coach will make the difference. The talent just isn’t there. That’s not Gerard Gallant’s fault. I can’t imagine that hiring a name coach now will do anything as far as making guys who’ve sucked their entire career into players. Getting a good coach isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but one wonders why Doug MacLean is the guy making the selection. If MacLean hires a new guy and Columbus misses the playoffs anyway (as will happen), what happens at the end of the year? Does MacLean get fired? Is the new guy someone who the new GM has to take on? Does letting MacLean make this hire mean that he gets some time to see how the new guy pans out? Who knows. What a shitshow.

According to the Vue Weekly guys, the Oilers employ a guy in group sales who is related to Mick McGeough and shares his last name. I hope he’s not on commission.

Someone asked what I thought about the Forbes story on NHL franchise valuations. As I’m sure many people are aware, franchise values are up as are profits. I found Bill Daly’s comments in the Toronto Star interesting:

We have received a renewed enthusiasm from people who want to own, invest in, and lend capital to the NHL and NHL franchises. That’s not unexpected. That’s what the CBA was intended to accomplish.

Huh. I was pretty sure that the lockout was about competitive balance and saving the Edmonton Oilers - Terry Jones wrote as much in the Edmonton Sun. I mean the day that the season was cancelled, what did Large Sports write?

What most fans here have been able to keep in mind during this entire lockout is that this has been very much about them.

When guys like James Mirtle (who, by virtue of being one of the few media guys who participates in the hockey blogosphere gets to answer for all the media’s failings) wonder why so many hockey blog types seem to delight in taking endless shots at the media, it’s stuff like this that drives certain people nuts. The NHL’s argument for the lockout was always impossible to sustain without an acknowledgment that part of their motivation was to increase business values. There’s no shame in that but at the same time, there’s no inherent virtue either. It’s value neutral.

On the topic of Bill Daly, I see that he attended the recent Lester Patrick Awards. Thoroughly independent NHL blogger Paul Kukla reports:

Talking with many of the big names in hockey at this event, including Bill Daly, Peter Karmanos Jr., Ken Holland, the honorees and others, they all had one trait. They all love the game and want the best for everyone, with the fans at the top of the list. They know the game is not perfect, but are sincerely working on a daily basis to improve the game we know today.

I mean, god…it’s like reading 1950’s style hagiographic sports writing but in awesome 21st century blog format! It should be obvious in Daly’s case that he has other motivations. Peter Karmanos Jr. is all about the fans? Here’s a line from Karmanos’ Wikipedia entry:

Subsequently, the team was moved to North Carolina and renamed the Carolina Hurricanes following the 1996-1997 season. Karmanos moved the team, despite high attendance and his earlier commitment to hockey in Hartford. As a result, Karmanos is still reviled by many people in Connecticut.

Funny that a guy who operates with the fan’s best interests at heart would be reviled. Stupid fans in Connecticut. They don’t know what’s best for them.

All of this is stupid of course. I don’t blame owners for acting in their financial interest. I don’t blame Bill Daly for acting in the interests of his employer. I don’t even blame Paul Kukla for writing fluff for the NHL website. There should be more voices in the real mediacalling these people on their bullshit though and they should have been doing it during the lockout.

One last kick at a media member. Notorious old coot Stan Fischler provides us with this gem on Dwayne Roloson:

Goaltender Dwayne Roloson, who often seems more consumed with harassing Ted Saskin than earning his millions playing hockey, is about to have the challenge of his “Look, I’m Rich” career.

With Edmonton a mediocre 8-8-1 and trying to prove that its trip to the Finals last spring was no fluke, it’s now up to pseudo-union-expert Roloson to lead his club. Otherwise Rollie goes down as yet another vastly overpaid netminder, who always seems to be beefing about something rather than appreciating what he has.

Leaving aside the fact that he’s been writing for 50 years (ask him, he’ll tell you again and again) and yet he engages in absolutely bizarre capitalization and hyphenation. More to the point, he doesn’t tell you anything. Why is Roloson’s campaign wrong? Why is he vastly overpaid? What a waste. At least John Madden is being well paid for his bizarre commentary in his later years. I’m guessing that Eklund and the New England Hockey Journal don’t pay Fischler nearly as well.