Players suffer injuries in exhibition games. The NHL doesn’t cancel them. Players suffer injuries in practices. NHL teams don’t do away with them.
Which is to say that while it would be most unfortunate if Marian Gaborik misses even a single game for the Rangers in the aftermath of the injury he suffered during Slovakia’s defeat to Canada in Friday night’s Olympic semifinal match, it would be even more unfortunate if the NHL’s isolationists turn The Great Gabby into the poster boy for withdrawing from the Games.
Understand this. Bettman and the Board of Governors not only will look small by withdrawing from the world stage, they would be making a terrible mistake if they opt out of 2014 in Sochi, Russia, and force NHL players to choose between competing for Olympic gold or the silver chalice that is the Stanley Cup, for they might not like what they see.
Like it or not — and what’s not to like about owning the world’s imagination and winter podium once every four years? — the Olympic medal is the player’s Golden Globe while the Cup is the Oscar. There is no reason a player should have to choose between them.
But if they are forced to choose between team and country in four years, we foresee a massive defection of free agents in 2013-14 who will play in Europe — or perhaps for North American national teams — as preparation for the Games while putting their NHL careers on hold for a year.
These are hockey’s shining hours. The Olympics present a world stage the NHL cannot replicate, and one on which the NHL’s unique multi-national and multi-cultural workplace environment is illuminated, even if the ignoramuses masquerading as TV commentators can’t grasp its beauty.
But the isolationists would rather abandon the Games. There are injuries, after all. They would rather be in Nashville for Predators-Hurricanes or in DC for Caps-Senators.
Small minds, small thinkers . . . who are cautioned not to force the players into choosing between a gold medal and the silver chalice in 2014 because if they do, the Stanley Cup surely will be half-empty four years down the road.
Alex Ovechkin may have behaved badly away from the ice this week, but perhaps The Great 8 simply had had enough of the home country’s jingoistic approach to critiquing his game and his rivalry with Sidney Crosby. As if Ovechkin is going to get a fair shake there.
Imagine for a moment if Alexander Semin had slew-footed Dan Boyle in retaliation for a legal check as Boyle did to Semin in the final minutes of Canada’s quarterfinal rout of Russia.
Not only would Semin have been barred from the Olympics, the NHL would have been called on to suspend the Washington forward upon resumption of the season.
Boyle’s slew foot was an unmitigated disgrace; an attempt to injure in response for being made to look bad. So was the all-but-uniform effort of the press to ignore the despicable act.
The failure of the IIHF and the tournament’s governing body to suspend Boyle played a role in Canada’s ascension to today’s gold-medal match against the USA.
Home cooking never tasted quite so good.
Masterful job by GM Brian Burke and the USA management staff in selecting a team rather than a collection of names, and especially so given that so many candidates seemed of equal value.
Honestly, Burke could have picked Kyle Okposo instead of Ryan Callahan; Jason Pominville, Paul Gaustad or Tim Connolly instead of Joe Pavelski; T.J. Oshie instead of David Backes; Billy Guerin instead of Chris Drury.
But the GM (and presumably head coach Ron Wilson) projected players into roles from the outset. If there were three round holes, Burke selected three round pegs to fill them; not four.
Burke picked a team. Wilson is coaching one. That, by the way, is what Herb Brooks did in 1980.
But he did both jobs.
There is much speculation within the industry that the new Tampa Bay ownership will reach out to former Minnesota and Calgary GM Doug Risebrough to take over the Lightning, but Slap Shots has been told that permission has not yet been requested from the Rangers to talk to Risebrough, who is under contract to the Blueshirts as a scout.
Regardless, the future of current GM Brian Lawton is as uncertain as what has happened and will happen to the Lawton family’s significant financial investment — believed up to $10 million — into Tampa Bay’s former OK ownership deal. Lawton’s wife, Angelina, is the club’s VP of corporate communications.
Perhaps a memo can be distributed from that office proclaiming that Vincent Lecavalier‘s deal that has 10 years to go at an annual $7.727 million cap hit is now officially the NHL’s worst contract, surpassing Wade Redden‘s that only has four years to run at an annual hit of $6.5 million.