The NHL wants to be like the NFL, and I guess which league wouldn’t aspire to be granted the kind of sacred cow status pro football has mysteriously and regrettably achieved in this country?
Last weekend, however, in what was one of the great final weekends in NHL history, hockey reached a status the NFL wouldn’t even recognize.
It was a weekend showcasing the integrity of the athletes who are the fabric of the sport, and the integrity of coaches and front offices around the league that recognized their responsibility to compete when nothing was on the line for their own respective teams but everything was at stake for their opponents.
Not only was there nothing at stake for the Lightning when they played the Hurricanes last Saturday night, or for the Red Wings when they played the Blackhawks last Sunday afternoon in win-and-in games for their foes, there was risk of injury involved for the clubs that had already clinched playoff berths.
Yet Tampa Bay’s organization, beginning with Steve Yzerman at the top and straight through the coaching staff and the roster, recognized its greater responsibility to the game than to selfish interests. And so the Lightning competed, every one of them — including Marty St. Louis and Vincent Lecavalier — and they took out the Hurricanes in Raleigh, N.C., thus opening the playoff door for the Rangers.
And Detroit, starting with Ken Holland and running straight through the championship pedigree of that organization, recognized its obligation as well — though the chance to KO the Cup champ Blackhawks was an obvious bonus — in going to the mat to beat Chicago in overtime when the Wings might have taken the day off to get ready for the first round against the Ducks.
Plus, in a slightly different scenario, there were the Devils winning an entirely meaningless Game 82 at home against the Bruins that cost the team two spots on the Entry Draft ladder. Proving however, that no good deed goes unrewarded, the Devils a couple of days later “won” the lottery, thus hopscotching up to the fourth overall pick, unless, that is, commissioner Gary Bettman finds that the club circumvented the process.
The NFL would never give you a final weekend like that. The NFL has a 16-game schedule in which teams try until they clinch playoff spots. Then, with league approval, they sit out starters, claiming the risk of injury overrides the integrity of competition. It’s a sorry spectacle; scandalous, even.
Those of us who have covered hockey forever have a love/hate relationship with the game. No league’s operation takes more of a pounding from the people closest to it than does the NHL. The collective bargaining agreement, supplementary discipline, television contracts, they are all fair game.
But fair is fair. Last weekend, the NHL reminded us what it is made of. Last weekend was an advertisement for the league.
Last weekend, history was made.
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It’s not the hard cap that’s doing in the Blackhawks as much as the bizarre offseason decisions the front office made in coping with the situation.
When GM Stan Bowman, the fellow believed responsible for the previous summer’s offer sheet fiasco that was a significant factor in the post-Cup mess, decided not to sign Antti Niemi but to match on the offer sheet to Niklas Hjalmarsson, sign Marty Turco and then deal Andrew Ladd, well, citing the cap is nothing more than a convenient excuse.
Suggesting Bobby Ryan “stomped” on Jonathon Blum with his skate blade in Friday night’s Game 2 between the Ducks and Predators just the way Chris Pronger did stomp on Ryan Kesler with his skate blade late in 2007-08, or the way Chris Simon did stomp on Jarkko Ruutu earlier that season, is more than a tad ignorant.
Pronger got eight games, a light sentence for the hockey felony he committed. Simon got 30 games for the senseless act he committed in his very first game back after serving a suspension for going medieval on Ryan Hollweg.
I’d have given Ryan one game, but certainly can live with two-game suspension he received.
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I’m thinking if the Bruins don’t advance to at least the conference finals, then Lou Lamoriello will have the opportunity this summer to rehire Claude Julien to coach the Devils.
Who, by the way, was it in the Florida organization who decided after training camp that Michael Grabner was not worth keeping around even for a week or two?
When an equally good a case can be made for Vancouver’s Kesler as the Hart Trophy winner as it can for teammate Daniel Sedin, it would seem unlikely either could in reality be the league’s most valuable player, even if The Other Twin does win the award a year after his brother did.
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Finally, I might pay some attention to criticism of me on Versus if it weren’t delivered by a guy who undermined his own union in 2005.