BOSTON — For those who have been away for a while, we can catch you up on this first day of spring.
This has been the hockey season: head shot, head shot, head shot, Stephane Auger, head shot, Winter Classic, head shot, head shot, Olympics, North American trash-talk, head shot, head shot, Colin Campbell.
Seriously, even one of the best advertisements the NHL has had going for it since the lockout — the Sidney Crosby-Alex Ovechkin rivalry — has been tainted by the introduction of jingoism into the mix by outside forces who have sought to superimpose a Cold War environment into the equation, as if this were 1972 with cheers greeting Bobby Clarke for slashing Valeri Kharlamov across the ankle.
The Blackhawks and Sharks seem to have peaked months ago. The Coyotes are an interesting little success story as wards of the state. The Lightning were sold again. Pierre McGuire still is talking, and there are five teams in the East — count them, five out of 15 — who have scored more goals than they have allowed.
It’s parity as parody, and everyone most certainly does not have a chance to win despite the Sixth Avenue politicians’ promises coming out of the lockout of two chickens in every pot. In the last four years before the imposition of the imposition of the hard cap, 14 different teams played in the conference finals. In the four years since the lockout, 10 different teams made it that far.
Colorado — which lost a team because of indifference nearly 30 years ago but returned to the league as a glamour market with a glamorous, Stanley Cup-ready team in 1995-96 (just add a pinch of Claude Lemieux and a tablespoon of Patrick Roy, and stir) — can’t get people to watch a team that’s been in a yearlong battle for first place.
Television ratings will take a dramatic hit — well, the good news is, that’s probably mathematically impossible — if the Red Wings, this country’s national team, fail to make the playoffs. Colorado-Detroit is over. The NHL and its television partners will be pining for Pittsburgh-Buffalo and Crosby vs. Ryan Miller.
Speaking of television partners, it would have been very unlikely for Sean Avery to be suspended in any case foe his late game slash of Scott Gomez last Tuesday at the Garden, but we’re told the NHL could not even conduct a review because Versus, which had televised the match, did not have video of the incident.
In any case, aside from one game at Fenway Park and the Games in Vancouver, this has been a hockey season lousy with brain injuries and bereft of memories, especially for people who have been concussed while their assailants have laughed at the law.
The season is too long. Games rarely are distinctive from the ones preceding and following. We decry vigilante justice then ridicule teams that don’t send out the posse after cookie-cutter, head-hunting villains.
Every game, according to the coaches, is too important for a team to risk taking a penalty by seeking vengeance, even ones in November. The two points, the two points, the two points. Because, you know, there is no such thing as actually killing a penalty.
Marc Savard becomes a casualty of a boor.
And if every game is the most important of the season, if every game is significant, then doesn’t it stand to reason that none is?
Maybe the Olympics skewed it for everyone. Maybe the Olympic hiatus created collateral damage, after all. Maybe the problem is not that the NHL shut down for two weeks, but that it re-opened for business, instead.
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In advance of Thursday’s NHLPA meeting with player agents in Toronto, the Red Wings’ Brian Rafalski has sent an e-mail to the 30 player reps asking for unanimous consent to offer the job of executive director to Donald Fehr, Slap Shots has learned.
Fehr, who served as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association from 1986 to 2009, has been acting as a consultant to the NHLPA, serving on both the search committee (of which Rafalski is a member) and the committee re-writing the union’s constitution.
We’re told that an overwhelming majority of player reps believes it is imperative for the union to hire a leader with the credibility owned by Fehr, in order to prevent the type of food fight that led to Paul Kelly’s ouster last summer.
Beyond that, we’re told that a number of player reps have begun to discuss the terms of a contract that would be offered to Fehr, who previously has said that he’s not interested in the job but has not responded to various news outlets-including this one-seeking clarification of his current position.
Fehr is scheduled to give a presentation to the player agents on Thursday.
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Marty Turco, Evgeni Nabokov and Dan Ellis are impending free agents, so the Flyers will have their share of choices this summer as they seek to fill their eternal hole in net.
But it would be no surprise if Philadelphia, which faces serious cap issues next summer, attempts instead to pull off a deal with Boston for Tim Thomas, who has three years at an annual $5 million cap hit remaining on the over-35 extension he signed last season.
Slap Shots had learned the Flyers targeted Thomas at the deadline — yes, we’re aware the Boston netminder has a no-trade clause — but were unable to figure out a way to fit the contract under the cap.
Two-part question for the defenders of Toronto GM Brian Burke‘s trade for Phil Kessel: Would any of this year’s lottery teams trade its first pick for Kessel — let alone that pick, next year’s first pick and this year’s second-round selection — and if not, why was it a good idea for the Maple Leafs?
Hiring first, Stephen Walkom, and now, Terry Gregson, to the position of NHL director of officiating would kind of be like hiring Glen Sather to be NHL director of general managers, isn’t it?
This just in. Charles Wang says that the Islanders should have been invited to the NIT.
We kid.