Antitrust? The Leafs and NHL asked for it

From The Rink has linked to a Reuters article which said Jim Balsillie is going to have ground for an antitrust suit vs. the NHL.

Wait, there's more: Balsillie and the boys, according to a court filing transcribed by James Mirtle, have "discovered evidence that, despite the NHL repeatedly telling this Court and the Canadian Competition Bureau that the territorial veto rights provision in Article 4.3 of the NHL Constitution is no longer operative, the Toronto Maple Leafs take the exact opposite view." That could be kind of huge, especially with what business experts have said in the past 24-72 hours:

"By offering to buy the Phoenix Coyotes for $140 million in the hope of then flipping it to a buyer of its choice, however, the North American sports league risks hemorrhaging money and an antitrust lawsuit, sports bankers and analysts said.

" 'It's a way to prevent the court's becoming the de facto new commissioner of the NHL,' said Roger Noll, a professor of economics at Stanford University."

" ... Several sports bankers also expect Balsillie to sue the NHL on antitrust grounds, arguing the league is preventing a team in Hamilton for no valid reason.

"In the end, a settlement with Balsillie remains the best option, said Mark Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham University's School of Business.

" 'Stranger things have happened,' Conrad said. 'If you want to replicate Middle East peace talks you may have that possibility happen.' "

It is not as if the Toronto Maple Leafs and NHL had no inkling this might be coming. As noted in June, "A court has found that Major League Baseball's infamous antitrust exemption does not apply to the sale of franchises, so speaking as a layperson, it could be a legal tempest." It might go double if MLSEL believes it could act unilaterally to restrict competition. (Actually, in antitrust ruling, it goes triple if the court finds for the plaintiff.)

(You have no idea how long the wait has been to bust out that Rachael Leigh Cook reference.)

He's a Dowbboy who lives in a bubble

You sort of have to admire what Bruce Dowbiggin has done with the place since he moved into William Houston's former digs as sports media critic.

Dowbboy has done a reno. The place has been converted to one part bully pulpit to use on people who didn't graduate from his school of journalism. The other half is an echo chamber for people who want reassurance they are not living through a media revolution.

• Erin Andrews calling 911 because a couple paparazzi were skulking around her home after dark "demonstrates that the ESPN star ... clearly has no idea how people in her business chase a story." (July 31)


• The Score tweaking its format to focus on "the chatter, the personalities" means that the network "has in mind what TMZ and Deadspin and a raft of social websites have done to redefine the relationship between those being covered and those doing the covering," (Aug. 5) since those sites are so, so evil for giving people what they want to see. Plus there are all those stupid young people who want to know whom Reggie Bush is dating.
  


• Most recently, Chicago Blackhawks hockey star Patrick Kane being arrested and charged with assault last weekend "was not exactly a shining moment for the integrity of bloggers" (Aug. 12) because people joked, passed judgment and gossiped about it on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and the like, just like they have always joked, passed judgment and gossiped.

It's pretty clear: Dowbiggin's generation has a monopoly on good taste and substance. We get it.

Sorry to pop that secure little bubble of boomer conceit, but that is hogwash. Next to no one is prattling on about the "blogosphere" in 2009, really. The two sides came together. They locked swords. No one really got anywhere. They called a truce. Eventually, they realized they actually had a lot in common, kind of like Canada and the U.S. since the end of the War of 1812.

One should be grateful for the good sports journalists who share the experience extends to their audience. It might have been best to let this slide for that reason alone. Besides, who knows what if any overlap there is between who reads this and who reads a sports media column on globesports.com. Nevertheless, batter up:

"While Usual Suspects commiserates with Andrews' fragile state of mind after being spied upon, the tape demonstrates that the ESPN star, who has struggled to overcome the reputation as a sideline cupcake, clearly has no idea how people in her business chase a story. Gated community or not, reporters are supposed to go and knock on doors of celebrities, relatives of car-crash victims, defrauded investors, fraud artists and, yes, people who’ve had their privacy violated. It’s called getting the other side of the story."

Erin Andrews calling 911 to get rid of some paparazzi could have had more to do with only wanting the good stuff which comes with being famous during a period when she was also feeling vulnerable.

"Levy has in mind what TMZ and Deadspin and a raft of social websites have done to redefine the relationship between those being covered and those doing the covering. With Twitter and camera phones, fans can engage their heroes in new and - sometimes - frightening ways for traditionalists ... It also means putting younger people on the air who may not have experience but do connect with the target audience.

"... And having both Cabbie (Cabral Richards) and Al Strachan working in the same format is often too jarring a concept to contemplate for Usual Suspects."

Frightening for traditionalists? Too jarring? That's not an M.P., that's a Y.P, your problem. There also seems to be an assumption that everyone in that 18-34 demographic is interested in whom is dating whom and what Chris Bosh Tweeted. Personal experience suggests the contrary.

There are many sports writers born after 1970 who can go in depth about a topic with humour and wit, and without putting themselves above the audience. Just to a name a few, there are Jeff Pearlman, Jonah Keri, Kurtenblog, Jerry Brewer at the Seattle Times , and so on. The same goes for the writers in their 20s, like those at cisblog.ca (present company excluded).

Then there's those bad, bad bloggers unleashing a "torrent of abuse" on poor Patrick Kane:

"The question of whether independent bloggers should have equal status with mainstream media is a hot topic in the industry. But the alleged Patrick Kane robbery and battery of a cabby was not exactly a shining moment for the integrity of bloggers. The release of the police charges Monday morning (actually, it was Sunday) brought an immediate torrent of abuse in the blogosphere for Kane, who was accused of beating a hapless Buffalo cabby for a 20-cent tip. Before Kane could explain his side, sites were saying 'How could Kane be this stupid?...

"Patrick Kane is a stuck-up, rich, spoiled, bratty punk... this punk kid needs a ass beating... The best possible light for Kane is that he is a mean drunk, a guy who is not above physically abusing a 62 year old man after a stupid prank went awry.' You get the flavour."

That is what people do when hit with bits of uncomfortable news. They make jokes. The cracks people post on Twitter are in the same ballpark with the sick jokes people told after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, when I was nine. It is the culture, for good or ill.

With respect to sports discussion, what Dowbiggin seems unwilling to reconcile is that the barriers have come down. That's TS for anyone who feels threatened (note that the good ones do not).

With regard to only bloggers looking bad on the Kane story, please. Some would say the thrust of the headlines on James Mirtle's post on Monday and Steve Simmons' Sun Media column on Tuesday were virtually identical: "Patrick Kane: A reputation ruined in an instant" and "No doubt Kane will pay; In court of public opinion, young star's reputation is tarnished by cabbie incident."

That is not to disagree with either Mr. Mirtle or Mr. Simmons. The younger cross-platformer and the older columnist (who does some TV) each said his piece very well and anyone is free to agree or disagree. It's simply that there is no us and them, and it's tiresome to have the "blogosphere" being treated as a bogeyman.

Mirtle also linked to a piece from Second City Hockey which cut to the heart of how "the Kane story ... could be useful in shattering some stories and myths we tell ourselves":

"The big one is 'hockey players are different.' No, they're not. Sorry. You know why you don't see as many athlete/criminal stories about hockey? Because there's less attention. There's less people following them to clubs, recognizing them, flashing pictures on their phones. The gossip pages tend to stay away, because no one cares about hockey players. But to suggest these guys are a different breed, that's asinine. They're rich, young kids, and those can add up to be bad combinations ... These guys are not angels, they're just people. People with freakish DNA and more money than you or I. Sure, maybe there are less of these stories in the NHL than other sports, but it's percentage points, not a wide chasm."

That might come closer to the truth than anything else published on the subjuct of "20 Cent." Hey, guess what? It was on a blog. If anyone had that kind of nuanced take in a newspaper, it passed by like a warm summer day.

Perhaps Kane and the Senators' situation with Dany Heatley each belie the culture of exceptionalism that is part of Canada's Hockey Reflex.

One would think Dowbiggin, having written a really well-received book called The Meaning of Puck, might take this into account instead of playing shoot-the-messenger. It's like what a film critic (this came across the ol' Google Reader during the process of putting this together) said about the tendency of veteran film critics, even Roger Ebert, to indulge in get-off-my-lawn techniques: "Often, the old guard sees the new guard as suspect, their tastes as lacking, and culture waning, no matter what the reality is. In the end, the thing that disappoints me most is that Roger used this moment to take what I consider a profoundly cheap shot."

Meantime, it is understood that perhaps a younger writer should not worry about Dowbiggin. The people on the blogs should just forget what's in the paper. The excellent Toronto Sun Family recently stated "aging baby boomers who grew up with print newspapers in their hands should be considered the demographics of choice ... Canada's 10 million or so baby boomers should be sufficient to carry print newspapers that are adequately staffed and focused on community affairs."

That reasoning is not entirely off. One might wonder about the argument that you should only be paid for your work if you pander to a certain demographic. What happens to anyone who wants to stay current and with it? Do they just get left with the scraps?

Point being, if Bruce Dowbiggin wants to pander to the older audience which still gets the paper, fine. He can do it without cheap shots and condescension. It would be a riot.

Hoserdome: Theoren Fleury; two minutes for hero worship

Reading about Theoren Fleury affirms why one hates-loves sarcasm.

Honestly, the knee-jerk reaction was, "He must really be hard up for money," when it hit the wires that Fleury wants to make a comeback six years after he last played in the NHL. Lo and behold, From The Rink has revealed that is pretty much the case. A divorce, a bad investment and likely the collateral damage from a chemical dependency problem apparently left him in a huge hole. Tyler Dellow from mc79hockey dug out a story from February about Fleury unsuccessfully trying to get an Alberta court to award him a $130,000 rebate on his child support. He did get his payments reduced by 80 per cent. Grrrrrrreat.

Of course, someone would barely know if that if they relied on the newspapers. One Calgary paper made no reference to financial problems and played it as a cheery underdog story. The other was more realistic but financial issues were not mentioned until the 18th paragraph and then only briefly.

Perhaps Theoren Fleury needs to be close to hockey to feel valuable, but that is also what led him into trouble. One hopes that happens, but it's kind of weak to gloss over why someone who is older than recent retirees Jeremy Roenick and Joe Sakic is trying to come back. Imagine the typical reaction when a 41-year-old boxer announces his comeback plans years after he has passed his best-before date as an athlete. The reaction is one of sadness.

Thursdays with RIM Jim: Making head and tail of something that should be settled with a coin flip

(If you want a short and snappy answer about where the Phoenix Coyotes will play, just say Kansas City.)

A league with a dated perspective deserves a dated analogy, so the latest turn in the Phoenix Coyotes saga makes the NHL look like the scene in Old School where Will Ferrell screams, "We can't have anyone freakin' out out there! We gotta keep our composure!"

The NHL, as always, is expressing confidence it is going to prevail. There is a half a mind to snark off, like one of Jim Rome's listeners, "Dear Gary, pro sports leagues always prevail in court, sincerely, Al Davis, Oakland-Los Angeles-Oakland Raiders."

Meantime, the realization the Phoenix Coyotes drama has — with a tip of the cap to lame-duck Ottawa GOSINOG* Larry O'Brien — is more than a big swinging dick contest has really hit critical mass since this time last week. Judge Redfield T. Baum's ruling on Wednesday really takes the animus between Jim Balsillie, Gary Bettman and 26 owners of solvent-for-now teams out of play (see From The Rink). That should be burned into memory. Everyone has seen the Phoenix New Times article which laid out the depth of the sweetheart deal Jerry Reinsdorf stood to score from the city of Glendale, Arizona.

The New Times' Sarah Fenske notes that a "good city manager ... has to do whatever he can to keep the (team)" — stop cry-laughing, Ottawa readers — "But it's one thing to fight to save a team. It's another thing entirely to fix the playing field for connected insiders." Here is the trenchant part:

"Michael Reinsdorf, who is Jerry's son, had been hired to help manage the Arizona Cardinals' stadium in 2004. (His firm, IFG, got the contract as a joint venture with Global Spectrum, a Philadelphia-based firm that just happens to employ John Kaites as a lobbyist.)

"In the fall of 2008, Glendale hired Michael Reinsdorf's IFG to assess stadium operations at the Coyotes' home, Jobing.com Arena. It was IFG — which, again, is Michael Reinsdorf's firm — that suggested Glendale hire Beacon, as city officials confirmed to me.

"The Reinsdorfs have a long history of working with Beacon. In fact, court records show Beacon was sued in Los Angeles by a client who claimed Beacon had leaked a confidential report to, yes, Michael Reinsdorf.

"So when the Coyotes ran into trouble, Ed Beasley brought in Michael Reinsdorf's firm. At the suggestion of Michael's firm, he brought in a second company, one that had a history of dealing with Michael Reinsdorf. Then he stood by as that firm secretly met with Kaites and Jerry Reinsdorf.

"And now we're supposed to look at the firm's analysis as neutral, looking out for Glendale's best interests?

"I simply don't buy it.

"In May, the Coyotes filed for bankruptcy. Its current owners want to sell to an investor who'd move the team to Canada; it's their only hope to recoup even part of their investment, they say. Meanwhile, for reasons that are still unclear — to me, at least — Kaites and Reinsdorf have become the NHL's pick.

The great Stephen Brunt, who makes grasshoppers of us all, characterizes it by saying the "subsidies (Jerry) Reinsdorf is demanding are political dynamite in a place where few are sentimentally attached to the team."

Meantime, as James Mirtle notes, Balsillie's bid still has a legal leg to stand on:

"That the judge hasn't already thrown out Balsillie's bid says to me he won't feel obliged to do so before the auction itself, although we're certainly going to hear plenty of new arguments from the league on that front. And while some of the information presented by the NHL certainly paints Balsillie in such a way that makes it easy to see why they dislike him, the fact his dealings in Pittsburgh and Nashville were aimed solely at moving a team to Hamilton will not likely 'taint' him in the eyes of the court.

"Think of it from the court's perspective: If the biggest issues surrounding Balsillie's conduct relate to his push for a franchise in his backyard, would his winning the Coyotes bidding process not solve those issues?"

Mirtle also linked to an East Valley Tribune column, "Bettman responsible for Coyotes' mess," which made it sound worse than the Montreal Expos situation a few years ago:

"This has become a disaster of Titanic proportions. The Coyotes still don’t know who their owner will be, and they may not have an answer by the Oct. 3 start of the regular season. They don’t have a TV contract. Their season-ticket base is dwindling, and sponsors are scurrying away like cockroaches when the light comes on."

No one can really say for sure how the court will decide Sept. 10, which is just five days before Bettman's overpriced orphans of winter will play their first exhibition game. It's a little funny that no one seems able to definitively answer, "What's going to happen if Balsillie wins in court?"

The great site Make It Eight argues that Bettman has a chance to set "a precedent for accomodation" if the court accepts Balsillie's bid at auction. Go ahead and say that will never happen. To hazard a guess, if Balsillie won, the NHL would insist on holding a vote . Bettman would win in a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-esque landslide and the league would run the Coyotes and try to scare up an investor who could plunk the Coyotes some place such as as Las Vegas Kansas City, which already has an arena built by the company which owns the Los Angeles Kings. After Wednesday, though, the league's power seems less absolute, but they have wriggled off the hook before.

Related:
Why an empty rink may be better than a local rink (James Mirtle, From The Rink)

(GOSINOG: Acronym for Guilty of Stupidity, If Not Officially Guilty. O'Brien's case perhaps should have never gone to court, but the damage was enough.)

DanyWatch Day 23: Heater left holding the bag, which might not contain $4 million

None of the principals in the Dany Heatley debacle had time to pick up face paint for Canada Day, but boy are their faces red.

This is not about trying to figure out how this ends. Maybe it gets worked out within a day, or maybe a team who strikes out in free agency will look at "Dany Nicks" as a nice silver medal.

This is more about about being a fan and feeling inadequate trying to figure out what's going on in a league where two front offices do not even seem to understand the rules. The Ottawa Senators and Edmonton Oilers, and possibly Heatley's agents, seemed to work on the assumption a trade had to be wrapped up by 12 a.m. July 1, since hey, that was what they'd heard on TSN and read in the newspaper like all us Al Capp schmos. There was that $4-million matzo ball, the bonus Heatley was due, hanging out there, as you know. It turns out, as mc79hockey explained, they had another 24 hours, possibly longer. Cue Tyler Dellow, who knows this stuff cold (he has a law degree, which makes him the Canadian version of Craig Calcaterra):

"The really interesting thing though is that I don’t think Ottawa necessarily has to pay Heatley the $4MM at some point (Wednesday). The CBA specifically deals with what happens when a team defaults on a contract.

"... There is, I think, some room here for the Senators to simply agree with Heatley that they will default on payment of his bonus and that he'll hold off on grieving that default. Then, once he’s traded, he can file his grievance and his new team can cure the default."

This is the pertinent section of the CBA Tyler dug out:

"11.15 Default. If a Club defaults in the payment of any compensation to the Player provided for in his SPC (standard player's contract — Ed.) or fails to perform any other obligation under his SPC, the Player may, by notice in writing to the Club and to the League and the NHLPA, specify the nature of any and all defaults and thereafter:

(a) If the Club fails to remedy the default within fourteen (14) days from receipt of such notice, except as hereinafter provided in subsections (b), (c) and (d) of this Section 11.15, the SPC shall be terminated, and, upon the date of such termination, all obligations of both parties shall cease, except the obligation of the Club to pay the Player’s compensation to that date."

Cripes, where was that piece of understanding three weeks ago? No doubt there are some CBA experts who were aware, but we are talking about the normals.

It sure looks like everyone believed they had a deadline. Hindsight is 20/15 when someone is standing to the side of it all. However, it stands to reason that if Heatley and his agents were aware of the rules, they could have said to the Senators, "Dany is going to sleep on it," before talking to the New York Rangers, who cleared cap space by trading Scott Gomez to the Montreal Canadiens in the afternoon. The Senators probably could have sat tight and remained in control of the situation. Instead, they were sitting there getting tense because of a deadline that was not only arbitrary, but apparently wrong. No wonder beat writers in other NHL cities are calling Eugene Melnyk's franchise "one of the most dysfunctional clubs in the NHL."

The point, hopefully, is how much one's eyes can get opened to the realities of the salary-capped NHL within a span of 24 hours. This stems from a comment one of this site's users, Alex, left Tuesday morning which turned to be prescient, at least for now-now:

"The reason Heatley is not going to be dealt (at least possibly until the trade deadline) is the lack of understanding of value in the cap environment by Ottawa fans. Every Ottawa fan seems to be expecting a huge return for him. But his value is not high. He is an excellent player and maybe he will get 50 goals again, but his contract is bad enough to cut his value way down. They would get spare parts and other people's salary problems in return. Near the trade deadline when contenders are looking to add salary is when his value will be at its peak, but still with the length of the contact it won't be what fans are expecting.

"Since Murray (who above all wants to avoid looking bad or disappointing fans) can't get what fans expect for him, he won't be dealt."

From the get-go, it seemed like a lot of the Heatley coverage in Ottawa has not reflected that the days are gone when one team could just pick up the phone and hammer out a blockbuster trade.

The other big ball-and-stick sports have gone through this evolution. In the NFL, you rarely see star players traded in their prime. (The deal the Chicago Bears made with the Denver Broncos for quarterback Jake Cutler does not count since Denver's coach is a wingnut and Cutler is not actually a star).

The informational revolution in baseball over the past 10 years has made it harder for teams to flip a veteran for a package of prospects at the trade deadline. Meantime, in pro basketball, only the truly deranged really understand the ins and outs and why it's good to add a player with an expiring contract, like the Raptors did last winter with veteran forward Shawn Marion.

Try telling that to anyone today. After all, the Hockey Reflex dictates that consumers should be led to believe something big is going to go down before the next commercial break. Of course, it does not always go that way, as TSN's insider, Darren Dreger, said on his Twitter after the first round of the NHL draft last Friday ...

"The perfect storm didn't materialize. Tons of talk, but the cap complications killed deals. Saturday should be fun."*

... but it will, probably in the next few minutes, honest.

Ultimately, it seems better to try to understand how this is possible. The endless flame-fanning and rip-jobs in the Ottawa media (and Edmonton too, shame on you, Terry Jones) got really old really fast. Heatley should not rate a single iota of sympathy. He asked for a trade, got one, and shot it down. The situation is akin to Trish Piedmont telling Andy Stitzer in The 40-Year-Old Virgin: "You asked for this, Andy. You asked for all of it." Puck Daddy's headline is "Oilers, Senators had deal in place; Heatley nixed it."

The media might point the cannon at Heatley (fist bump: John Fogerty), but the onus is misplaced. James Mirtle noted the CBA is a culprit:

• "There has to be some way to force players to either (a) honour their contractual commitment to a team or (b) not be able to veto deals when they're the ones requesting a trade. Heatley put the Sens in a terrible position by asking (publicly, no less) to be moved with his July 1 bonus date approaching, and if he now is going to turn down deals, it's going to become increasingly difficult for GM Bryan Murray to get anything resembling fair value for his top player.


• "How bad would it be if the Sens had to pay Heatley's $4-million bonus before making a trade? Well, his contract was heavily front-loaded, with Ottawa paying out $10-million in Year 1 of a six-year, $45-million extension he signed in 2007. If Murray pays the bonus, it'll mean Ottawa forked out $14-million — 31 per cent of the contract — for only one season under those terms, and the acquiring team will get Heatley for just $31-million over five years (about $6-million a season instead of $7.5-million)."

See how far you get with that down on Parliament Hill today, though. Heatley is the bad guy, but a NHL GM not knowing the rules might be worse.

Many metabeers should be consumed in Tyler Dellow's honour on this Canada Day. (That is a new word for beers you say you're going to drink in gratitude to someone, except you're now a semi-responsible adult and have to be sober enough to drive, or get on the right bus, subway and/or streetcar).

UPDATE: Alanah McGinley has all-things-considered take defence of Heatley posted at Kukla's Korner that reasonable-minded Senators fans ought to read.

"... most of the rhetoric floating around seems to go off the charts.

"And why? Well, the justification for this is clear, we're told. First, Heatley went public with his desire to leave Ottawa. Next, he turned down a possible escape trade to Edmonton, making the situation infinitely worse.

"However, being that I’m willing to give Heatley the benefit of the doubt, I’m also willing to believe in at least the possibility that there were other factors at play in the choices he’s made in the last few weeks. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that a goalie named Ray Emery was in the hot seat, getting blamed for all the destruction around him as his once-mighty Senators took an abrupt and unexplainable plummet into the crapper. And back then, everyone whispered all sorts of unsubstantiated and shocking gossip blaming Emery for the team’s fortunes.

"But then Emery left and seems to have done reasonably well since then. And yet Ottawa is still... Ottawa.

"So isn’t it remotely possible — just an tiny bit possible — that the problems in Ottawa might have more to do with the Senators organization itself than any one player? If so, then maybe Dany Heatley's comments to Darren Dreger last night, implying he felt he was getting deliberately screwed around by the team, are at least reasonable from his point of view. (Not that I have any reason to believe he was, simply that I'm no more likely to let the Senators off the hook than I am to let Heatley off for this mess.)

"On the other hand, Heatley is the one that made this public and that wanted out of a contract that HE willingly signed in the first place, so he has plenty of fault in this no matter what. And I’m not saying the Senators are the 'bad guys' in this drama, either. Only that we don’t necessarily know the whole story. And since Heatley strikes me as a reasonably smart guy able to anticipate he’d look pretty bad in all this, I can only assume he felt he had good reasons to take this path.

"Whatever the truth, it seems likely there's far more back-story to this than simply 'Dany Heatley is an evil psycho,' and everyone's sanctimonious moaning about how terribly Heatley has treated the 'poor Ottawa Senators' strikes me as an infantile over-reaction. At the end of the day, it's just business, and conflicts aren't unheard of in business, especially given the amounts of money at stake.

"... until some clever and gutsy Ottawa hockey journalist writes a tell-all book about Heatley and/or the Senators, I'm reserving judgment."

(*It wasn't.)

Hoserdome 2009: Malkin from Mlodinow as Pens collect Cup

The Pittsburgh Penguins are walking around with Stanley Cup-sized hangovers and meantime, we should all be reading The Drunkard's Walk.

That Stanley Cup final which wrapped up last night is a good chance to reflect on randomness, which ruled this series. Randomness is good in sports. You don't want the odds-on fave winning all the time, it would be boring. So randomness it is for choosing a tell-all for the decider, where the Penguins beat the Detroit Red Wings 2-1. Why the hell not?

The road team won — which had not happened in Game 7 of the final since 1971. The Penguins beat the Red Wings, who almost never lose at home at the playoffs. The Pens were outscored 17-14 in the series, including 12-4 at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena. They won even though Sidney Crosby had many points in the final series as non-factor Marian Hossa. Crosby was also knocked out of Game 7 halfway through after his left knee was squished between the Wings' Johan Franzen and the boards. That should disabuse anyone of the notion the Penguins winning was some inside job orchestrated by the NHL to keep NBC happy.

The offensive hero of the decider, Max Talbot, who scored both Penguins goals, was not mentioned in a pregame Yahoo! Sports column on which listed twenty-seven potential Game 7 heroes. In the final two minutes, the Red Wings nearly forced overtime; a shot by Niklas Kronwall pinged the crossbar and ricocheted out instead of into the net and Pittsburgh goalie Marc-André Fleury made the save of his life, sliding cross-crease to deny Nicklas Lidström with one second left.

For this ass-talker's purposes, random is as much of a descriptive for this series as great. The choice here before Game 1 two weeks ago was "Pittsburgh in 7." It was not borne out of believing that Pittsburgh was the better team. It was steeped more in a passage from Leonard Mlodinow's best-seller, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, which sports economist David Berri posted at The Wages of Wins Journal a couple weeks back:

"... if one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55% of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10. And if the superior team could beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 match-ups. There is really no way for a sports league to change this."

It seemed like a good bit of back-pocket knowledge, especially since well before the playoffs, James Mirtle had written something along the lines of, "I'm starting to think this will be a year where we see a random Stanley Cup champion." It also provided basis for going against the grain beyond being, shudder, a contrarian for contrarian's sake.

Detroit seemed like the superior team, but not vastly superior to the Penguins, especially to someone who had no way of knowing for sure about each team's injuries. The Penguins were good enough to win a Stanley Cup and as Outliers argued, you don't have to be super-qualified, you just have to be qualified.

Berri's predictions for the NBA's conference finals indirectly (or perhaps not) illustrated the point. His analysis backed up what everyone who only half-follows hoops knew, that the Cleveland Cavaliers and L.A. Lakers were supposed to win in a pair of walkovers, five games maximum. You know the rest of the story. The Cavaliers were upended in six games by the Orlando Magic. Berri penned a follow-up called, "Fooled By Randomness," explaining,well, shit happens. As sports fans, we shouldn't run from it. We should embrace it.

"The small sample we see in the playoffs imposes an element of randomness on the outcome. This randomness makes it interesting, but it also makes decision-making complicated."

The New York Times' review of The Drunkard's Walk explains how people don't appreciate randomness when they're making predictions:

"... Anyone who has ever bought a mutual fund because it has been on a roll or bet that a racehorse will extend its winning streak has fallen into the same confusion. Chances are the champion will regress toward the mean and another will have its glory day. In all life's games, some players are better than others, but randomness maintains the upper hand.

Hardest of all for our blinkered brains are cases involving Bayesian statistics, where one must gauge how the probability of one event hinges on that of another."

One event hinging on that of another? That sounds much like the hockey media's tendency to form an opinion of what's going to happen in the next game based on the last game, or the last one in the arena of the team which has home ice. The way the Stanley Cup final played out certainly left everyone covering the series totally bumfuzzled.

The Red Wings won the first two games in Detroit, which was taken to mean that the Penguins were too young and and immature. The young and immature Penguins bounced back by winning the next two games, which indicated the Red Wings were old and tired. The old and tired Red Wings then blew the Penguins off the ice in a 5-0 rout in Game 5 last Saturday, chasing Fleury halfway through the game, hence the Penguins were done. At that point, the Anna Faris character from House Bunny (oh, don't act like you didn't download it) would have chimed in, "Ya, hence!"

Of course, Pittsburgh won three nights later at home to force Game 7. No one really knew what to believe anymore. It's not clear if the predictions for the winner-take-all game broke down along any blogger-vs. MSM lines. Puck Daddy surveyed eight hockey guys who write mostly for a web audience and five chose the Penguins.

Maybe everyone was just tired of Detroit winning. There are also straightforward hockey explanations. For one, Pittsburgh's rookie coach Dan Bylsma made some adjustments in Game 6 (James Mirtle, From The Rink). Marc-André Fleury had one hell of an evenout in Game 7 after struggling terribly in his previous outings in Detroit.

Secondary scoring also helps. Scratch a hockey coach whose team just lost a tightly contested series and he'll often tell you it could have been different if someone off the second and third line could have just popped a couple goals. The Penguins' winning goals in Games 6 and 7 came from Tyler Kennedy (15 goals and 35 points in the regular season) and Talbot (12 and 22). Meantime, the Red Wings also had five forwards who were, in hockey parlance, squeezing the stick exceptionally hard. Hossa, Tomas Holmström, Hart Trophy finalist Pavel Datsyuk (who was dealing with a foot injury), Jiri Hudler and Mikael Samuelsson all went goal-less in the final, finishing with scoring droughts ranging between eight and 19 games.

There's a randomness to that. Could anyone have foreseen Talbot scoring four goals in the final after scoring two in the first three playoff series? Could have anyone have predicted all five of those players going stone-cold at the same time? Likely not. Mlodinow's point about what can happen when one team should beat the other 55% of the time seems to apply.

It would be nice to say yours truly had the courage of his convictions throughout the past two weeks, but I turtled. On Kinger's sports talk radio show on CFRC 101.9 in Kingston, I stuck by the Pittsburgh pick, simply saying, "I'm going to ride it out, like George Costanza when he had that bad stock." It turns out that was the smart play (and in that Seinfeld episode, George ends up with a financial windfall after deciding to "go down with the ship.")

The Penguins were full value for their effort. Writing this is just a way to point out that while everything is so black-and-white in how sports are presented, with winners and losers, really it's not. There was some randomness to how this went down; that's one simplification among dozens.

At the very least, it is one way to disabuse anyone who says the Red Wings are over the hill when, as Mirtle says, "Detroit's got the top minds in the game in the front office and behind the bench, and I have no doubt they'll be back in the finals in the near future."

In sports, sometimes the winning team is the one that executes when an opportunity comes along. It can be completely random, like outcomes in everyday life. It sure made for a hell of a series.

P.S. Did anyone else have an issue with Hockey Night in Canada's Don Cherry referring to the season as "nine months of war" last night? War metaphors in sports are usually a no-no and it seems kind of hypocritical coming from someone who's always talking about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. It's almost like Cherry, a smart man, should be more aware of the distinction.

Related:
Playing The Odds (George Johnson, The New York Times, June 8, 2008)

The money pit in Phoenix

As a follow-up to a recent post on the Phoenix Coyotes, it's only necessary to point out the number-crunching From The Rink did about Glendale:

"... it's all but impossible for Phoenix to turn a profit, even under ideal conditions. The team's expenses are too high and its potential for generating revenues too low barring a long playoff run and a massive price hike." — James Mirtle

The great mc79hockey also looked at the team's expenses and wondered how in hell they think they can make money settling cut-rate tickets to some of the NHL's smallest crowds.

That doesn't necessarily give people in Canada license to bash people in Phoenix who did actually support the Coyotes. The fans weren't responsible for profligate spending and the NHL's broken economic model — or for the birdbrained decision to build a hockey arena in Glendale, Arizona, so far from Phoenix's downtown core. There is also the more macro concern that Arizona "was one of the most severely affected states" for foreclosure filings last month (Phoenix Business Journal, May 13). When people are losing their homes, it's little tough to fork out more money for hockey tickets. Businesses probably have less latitude to gobble up tickets which can lavished on clients. As Mirtle notes, though, the dream scenario for preserving the NHL in Phoenix involves a massive price hike:

"To hit those ticket revenue figures, prices would have to increase significantly from the average $37 current average price, however. My rough math tells me that, even if the team sold an extra 3,000 seats a game at current rates, they'd be $12-million shy of the "potential" ticket revenue figure here, meaning tickets would have to cost roughly $15 to $17 more on average to hit that mark."

Meantime, the one irony of all the Balsillie-boosting, as others have noted, is you'd move a team from one economically devastated area to another, Hamilton.

As a sidenote, it seems like a lot of us up in Canada are throwing stones from a glass arena. It's a bit of a collective conceit that Canada has some monopoly on supporting major league hockey. Kurtenblog noted earlier this week there was one season during the pre-lockout era when the Nashville Predators had a higher average attendance than Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. (Granted, hockey was a novelty in Nashville, and who knows what the difference were in average ticket price and comped tickets.) We're not so perfect.

One 'skate' to drop amid the obfuscation from Balsillie and Bettman

There is more than one way to thin-slice what someone says in a court filing. As soon as the word of what Gary Bettman said in court filings hit the newswires yesterday, one knee-jerk reaction was, "Here we go. Head-fake 'em with the talk about Winnipeg and the idiots go for it." Bettman didn't necessarily say he wanted the Phoenix Coyotes to move to Winnipeg; he just hates the idea less than them moving to Southern Ontario, since it would mean giving in to Jim Balsillie.

Now that the throat has been cleared of snarky phlegm, there is a historical precedent people should think about amid the legal hockey tape holding together the remnants of the Coyotes franchise. If applied, it could represent a win-win for both Emperor Gary and BlackBerry boy. Balsillie would get a hockey team. Bettman would have so much hand that it would be coming out of his gloves!

The precedent involves a U.S. city which just lost a major pro sports team — Seattle — and a team located in Southern Ontario.

Of course, this is just one ass-talker's personal theory, not to be taken literally. It derives from:

• A desire to see a second NHL team in Southern Ontario, although its catchment area is very vague;
• Animus/grudging admiration for Gary Bettman;
• A knowledge of the legal pinholes Jim Balsillie must pass through to enter the kingdom of hoser heaven, owning a NHL team.

As some of you know, the Seattle Mariners baseball team "were created as a result of a lawsuit." (Wikipedia.) The city had a team, the Seattle Pilots, which existed for only one season, 1969, before they were bought and relocated to Milwaukee. All three levels of government sued the American League for breach of contract and eventually, the league set things right by offering them an expansion franchise to begin play in 1977.

The Toronto Blue Jays also came into being during that round of expansion, since a baseball league requires an even number of teams. For those who don't remember or find this as dry as a great-uncle's funeral, shortly before that time Labatt's had almost succeeded in purchasing the San Francisco Giants and moving them to Toronto. An 11th-hour effort by business and political leaders in San Fran, including late Mayor George Moscone, kept the Giants from moving.

The thought of three levels of government, the city of Hamilton, the province of Ontario and the government of Canada, suing the NHL might be a little far-fetched, even if Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a professed hockey nut who's not above being litigious. We're probably too docile to take that step.

All three levels of government certainly have self-interest. The city council wants to revitalize the rapidly deteriorating downtown core in the Hammer. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government, as others have already noted, would like to take back some once solidly-red ridings in the 905 area code that have gone NDP in the biggest union town in Canada. Attaching a hockey team to any big federal-provincial infrastructure project, such as the expanded light-rail system Southern Ontario is begging for, would make it an easier sell. (As an aside, you do realize that by 2025, you're going to be nostalgic for the days when gas for your car was only $1.30 a litre?)

There is a scenario which could come into play as this winds it way through the court system. The NHL, as baseball did, could turn around and offer Balsillie an expansion team. It would be a face-save and a sop to Canadian patriotism, plus it is probably inevitable that the NHL will have to put a second team in the Toronto area, since it is one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas in North America and the largest where hockey is a major sport (where it ranks in size is debatable, see the comments from Jason Cormier). Two of the larger three, New York and L.A., have more than one hockey team. Chicago also has a thriving AHL franchise.

It would allow both to get what they want. Balsillie gets a team, albeit an expansion outfit instead of the Coyotes, who are presently a good young team that's close to being a contender. He gets time to build an arena that is more accessible to fans in the Kitchener-Waterloo region and in Toronto. This addresses any concern about a team playing out of Copps Coliseum siphoning off ticket buyers from the Buffalo Sabres, who always seem to have one skate on the banana peel which is Western New York's economy:

"The Sabres are always in a very precarious financial position, given Buffalo's shrinking size and awful economy. The Sabres (company name Niagara Frontier Hockey, L.P.) depend on the roughly 15 percent of their business that comes from the Niagara Peninsula, all the way up the Golden Horseshoe to Hamilton. Never mind that after almost 40 years most of the Canadians who attend Sabres games do not root for Buffalo; the main thing is that they’re helping to fill the HSBC Arena."
— Jeff Z. Klein, The New York Times

Meantime, Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly will still have "hand," to borrow George Costanza's term, in the relationship. It reduces the possibility of Bettman having to present the Stanley Cup to one of Balsillie's employees in the near future.

Bettman, et al., certainly want to expand the NHL from 30 to 32 teams, even during a recession.

The Hollywood producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, a noted "celebrity puckhead," (From The Rink) is apparently interested in owning a team in Las Vegas (David Shoalts, globesports.com). Please also keep in mind that another fish Bettman would like to fry is to provide a tenant for the Sprint Center in Kansas City, which is operated by L.A. Kings owner Phillip Anschutz's company.

It could become a three-minus-one: The NHL adds Kansas City, Las Vegas and thethe Golden Horseshoe Hammerheads, while subtracting Phoenix. It could also be four-minus-two, if the Sabres' situation in Western New York becomes untenable if the local economy continues to crater; relocation to a more western city such as Winnipeg or Seattle could be on the table. (Klein, a Sabres fan, makes a good point that people should stand up to defend "a true hockey city" such as Buffalo, but he lays on a little thick by pointing out that many hockey people make their home there. They moved to avoid paying Canadian taxes.)

No one knows how an Arizona bankruptcy court might mind. The best we get before Tuesday is an educated guess. However, people should at least be open to the scenario where Balsillie gets his team through expansion, although this would be a few years down the road, so try not take it too literally.

A 32-team NHL with four divisions even works out in terms of scheduling. Each team plays six games vs. each divisional foe (42 games), three vs. inter-divisional opponents (24 games) and one against each inter-conference team (16 games) to make up an 82-game schedule. For argument's sake, here are possible alignments that try to maintain existing rivalries:

• Adams Division: Boston, Buffalo, Florida, Tampa Bay, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton
  
  
• Patrick Division: Atlanta, Carolina, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, N.Y. Islanders, N.Y. Rangers, Washington
  
  
• Norris Division: Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Nashville, St. Louis, Kansas City
  
  
• Smythe Division: Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles, San Jose, Vancouver, Las Vegas
  

Obviously, the NHL would probably copy the NFL and divvy up 32 teams into eight divisions of four. But the fantasy has gone this far ...

Anyway, this is not a prediction on how it might shake out, but an acknowledgement of a possible compromise. Balsillie is not going to give up. Bettman, like one of those Southern expansion teams playing the neutral zone trap back in the '90s, could just be trying to prolong the inevitable.

It's better to look at this way than to jump to conclusions about what a paid liar like Bettman says in a court filing. Sure, he might prefer the Phoenix Coyotes to move to Winnipeg instead of Southern Ontario. Taken another way, that could be on par with a man saying he'd rather be kicked in the rear end than in the groin.

Balsillie season: The NHL's game of Calvinball

Many containers of alcohol should be poured and consumed in James Mirtle's honour for unearthing NHL commissioner Gary Bettman's words on when it's time to move a team, from a February interview with Hockey Night in Canada's Jeff Marek:

"The fact is, the biggest litmus test ultimately was nobody wanted to own a team there (referring to Quebec City and Winnipeg in the mid-1990s). And when the marketplace decides that it doesn’t want to own a team there, it has no future."

It seems like something to keep in mind when the NHL is pitching bull and woo about sports mogul Jerry Reinsdorf's "underfunded bid" (Jeff Blair, globesports.com) to buy the Phoenix Coyotes so Jim Balsillie can't.

You have to love the NHL's endless game of Calvinball when it comes to keeping a team from relocating to Canada. The double standard is so obvious it barely requires pointing out. Anyway, there's only so much an outside observer can add to the mix. It is hilarious the NHL wants Jerry Reinsdorf as an owner, considering that in his capacity with the Chicago White Sox he was a main culprit in scuttling a World Series and that, with the Chicago Bulls, he deep-sixed a dynasty to prove some point that only mattered to him and economics professors. But I digress.

Stephen Brunt did a honker of a chat the other day that covered a lot of bases, including putting Wayne Gretzky in the crosshairs (which Blair also did in the above-linked column):

"If the Coyotes wind up in bankruptcy and (Gretzky) indeed endorses the alternative offer for the Coyotes (from Jerry Reinsdorf or whomever), would love to know what he's been promised in terms of the teams obligations to him. Gretzky has $22.5-million hanging in the balance here, and as an unsecured creditor, would otherwise have to get in line.

Fun, fun. Five days until the big showdown in an Arizona bankruptcy court.

Related:
On when to pull the plug (From The Rink)
NHL helping cash-strapped Coyotes (cbcsports.ca, Feb. 5, 2009)

Hoserdome 2009: Playoffs, Day 4

Having six of the seven series at 2-0 seems like a bit of a rip, especially since, as From The Rink notes, teams almost never come back after dropping the first two games in the other guys' barn.

1. It's a frightening concept, but the Chicago Blackhawks are set to sweep the Calgary Flames because of this thing called "better players." (Glove tap: Michael Schur as Ken Tremendous.)
   
   It's hard to get your mind wrapped around that after a lifetime of being spoon-fed pabulum about heart and veteran leadership by commentators on Canadian networks, so let it sink in.
   
   Incidentally, Jonathan Toews for the 2010 Olympic team? Coming Down The Pipe! wants to know.
2. Patrice Bergeron's takedown of Mike Komisarek was a laugh and a half. You have Komisarek running across the ice like an idiot to take a head shot at a player who's got a history of concussions, getting his ass handed to him and then having NESN's Jack Edwards mine it for head-injury humour: "Concuss that!"
   
   
   
   Brilliant. And people think I'm weird for preferring baseball and basketball to hockey. Then again, I'm a pansy.
3. Canadian Roberto Luongo, Swede Henrik Lundqvist, American Tim Thomas, Swiss Jonas Hillier and Russian Nikolai Khabibulin have been the best goalies in the post-season, for anyone thinking about Vancouver 2010.
   

Blackhawks 3 Flames 2 (Chicago leads 2-0) — The good news for Calgary, beyond getting to go home, is they finally scored on the power play after an 0-for-47 drought. The bad news is they were shut out while playing 5-on-5.

By the way, Patrick Sharp, who scored the second Blackhawks goal, played at the University of Vermont. Since fellow UVM product Martin St. Louis is in Tampa Bay, it's rare to see a former Catamount in the playoffs (yes, yes, there's Torrey Mitchell on the San Jose Sharks).

Rogers Sportsnet's Calgary correspondent Roger Millions is off the air for a few days after saying you-know-what on the air. It wasn't a firing offence, since it was a team mistake, but at this rate, the Flames might be done by the time he's back.

Bruins 5 Canadiens 1 (Boston leads 2-0) — The epitaph for a Habs season gone horribly asunder came from a Montreal-aligned friend who said, "The only forward they've got who's any good as Alex Kovalev and I don't want him back next season."

The Bruins likely lose Milan Lucic to a one-game suspension, but that should not hurt much in the long run.

Between Montreal getting skated out of the rink and the New York Yankees getting shelled for 22 runs, there was a run on Haterade on Saturday. The logical explanation is that the Habs overachieved in 2007-08, overplayed their top guys (a condition known as being "Paddock-ed" and didn't have enough in the tank for this season. The fun explanation is that their fans flew to the close to the sun on wings of vote-robots.

Red Wings 4 Blue Jackets 0 (Detroit leads 2-0) — Michigan have its hockey team, but Ohio is first in home foreclosures.

Rangers 1 Capitals 0 (New York leads 2-0) — Apparently, Henrik Lundqvist has decided to spoil the Capitals' season, but just less than one-quarter of the teams which lose the first two games at home actually manage to come back and win.

The thumbnail sketch of the Rangers is that the veterans responded after John Tortorella was brought in as coach. Strangely enough, Ryan Callahan, obviously a grizzled 24-year-old third-year pro, has a team-high 10 goals since the coaching change. That all comes back to veteran leadership.

(Last but not least, a tip of the cap is due to Ian Duval, who scored two goals in the Kelowna Rockets' win over the Vancouver Giants in Game 1 of the WHL semi-final series last night. Duval played triple-A midget hockey for the Central Plains Capitals, based in Portage la Prairie, Man., during two OOLFers' tenure at the Portage Daily Graphic.)

The best piece on Poddubny...

Allan Maki doesn't always get his due writing for a Globe & Mail sports section which has its Blair-and-Brunt 1-2 punch, but he often finds great material in his native Thunder Bay. His profile of the recently deceased NHLer, Walt Poddubny, was about perfect.

"It would be a cautionary tale, he had said over a handful of conversations. He would talk at length about the highs — being a Toronto Maple Leaf and a 40-goal scorer with the New York Rangers — to the lows: being out of the game, too hobbled to hold a regular job, too broke to undergo surgery; a guy who was living in the basement of his sister's home."

Related:
A man who lived for the game that left him behind; Walt Poddubny had a hard life after the NHL, but was eager to share his story as a cautionary tale for those with hockey dreams. He died before he had the chance (Allan Maki, globesports.com; via fromtherink.com)

CIS Corner: Heading into semi-final Saturday

Thanks to everyone who came by Friday to help out Andrew Bucholtz, Rob Pettapiece and Jared Book with the live blogging from CIS Final 8 at Scotiabank Place on Friday, where Carleton advanced to semi-final Saturday while Ottawa was ousted by Western, with extreme prejudice.

Out of Left Field's sister site cisblog.ca set a single-day traffic record. There will be live blogs of the semis, UBC-Calgary and Western-Carleton, starting around 6 p.m. tonight. I'll join play-by-play man Mark Masters and sideline reporter Alison Sandor on the Streaming Sports Network Canada webcast at ssncanada.ca.

Anything blog-worthy will be on either of those two sites, so apologies if this ends up being a quiet weekend on this site for other matters. (What's up with Syracuse only playing one overtime tonight?)

Incidentally, Carleton's rout of St. Francis Xavier had an even stronger Kingston connection than usual. Stu Turnbull's father, area coaching legend Tom Turnbull, was interviewed during the game by The Score's Adnan Virk, one of his former students at Ernestown Secondary School. That was a sight-and-a-half to see.

Snark break ...

First things first, SB Nation has merged with Yahoo! Sports, which is presumably huge for people such as that James Mirtle guy ...

The Yankees organization really is a bunch of jerky-jerk-jerks. Eighty-five dollars to sit behind the foul pole? To quote their former assistant to the travelling secretary, "Am I seeing Sinatra in there?"

At least the Bronx Bombers are going to have to fight with the condo builders in Toronto for elbow room in the 10th circle. There's no other way to feel about learning that the Leafs plan to raise ticket prices. Seriously, why can't there be a second NHL team in Toronto?

The Ottawa Senators having "good seats still available" 48 hours before a game against the NHL-leading San Jose Sharks is mainly a reflection of:

(a) the economy
(b) being 13 points out of a playoff spot with 23 games left
(c) Not having everyone follow the example set by Mike Fisher
(d) Figuring Joe Thornton will just choke in the playoffs again
(e) All of the above

It's a little rich that, "most of Ottawa has missed the quality that Fisher believes is at his core: his Christian faith," when there's a story about it in the paper or on the TV news at least once a year.

No one should doubt that Fisher is completely sincere in his convictions about how, "Day to day, I try to have my time with God." However, when asked to confirm that, apparently Jason Spezza said, "Actually, Fish and I don't hang out that much," then laughed to himself for 25 minutes.

A private member's bill that would establish a National Hockey Day in Canada. That's as gratuitous as, well, potshots at Jason Spezza.

Last but not least, Conan O'Brien's Vintage Baseball bit. Did you hear Andy Richter is joining him on the new Tonight Show?

Conan O'Brien 1864 Baseball
Uploaded by Youpinadi

A-twitter about getting Tavares, maybe

Sens Army Blog is having some fun with the revelation that someone has assumed the personality of Daniel Alfredsson on Twitter.

At least the imposter likes a challenge, since Swedish hockey players are not exactly known for having much in the way of identifiable personality. Twitter Alfie is apparently a caring type, writing after one loss, "Murraysburg, sorry it may have cost you your jobs."

He's also a culture vulture, who gets updates from CBC News and dishing that he relaxes with ABBA's Christmas album, which plays into any number of Swedish stereotypes. That is one giveaway that it's not Alfredsson, along with the fact "Murraysburg" is the kind of clever compound word that usually comes from some random corner of the web, not a hockey player who's got way too much time for such silliness.

You probably care more about whether the Senators will try to get into the John Tavares/Victor Hedman hunt. (James Mirtle advocated that course of action today at From The Rink.) The Senators organization loves them the Twitter, although they aren't following anyone else's tweets (0 following, 106 followers), which seems like poor form.

Anyway, it would be fun if it was really Alfredsson. The question is who has the time and the motivation and who has the know-how to ferret out the culprit? Please bear in mind this is from the same person who thought a popular Sens blog was actually an inside job. Some of us -- the same ones who wish they could say they were the last to know about THE_REAL_SHAQ -- still believe.

Trade Spezza?

Hockey blogger nonpareil James Mirtle's assessment of the NHL's playoff push: "You can stick a fork in the bottom four teams in the Eastern Conference, with Toronto likely not far behind."

The Senators would need 58 points in their final 45 games to get into the playoffs. Don't worry, it's going to be OK.

Snark break...

Year-end lists and best-ofs are pointless busywork, that's why.

The NHL might hold its awards show in Las Vegas. You just know someone will end up winning the Phoenix Coyotes in a craps game.

James Mirtle's suggested lyrics for the Barenaked Ladies' version of The Hockey Theme:

Chickity China, the Chinese chicken
The TSN execs' brains stopped tickin'
Bought the song for a cool $2-mil
Didn't ruin it — but they soon will

You know what was most amusing part of taking in Russia's 8-1 World Juniors win over Slovakia? The Russians scored to make it 7-1 with 4½ minutes left and then there was a mass exodus for the exits. It was as if everyone still thought Slovakia might make a comeback.

The MLB Network launches today and it's already in more U.S. homes than the NFL Network. in Canada, thought, it's a shutout for football.

Mike Shanahan was fired by the Denver Broncos. It's hard to believe that could happen to a coach who has won one playoff game in the past 10 seasons.

Mats Sundin sure knows how to make a declarative statement: "I'm going to do what I can to help the team get into the playoffs." Ya, that will give the Canucks a return on their investment.

God bless Scott Burnside at ESPN.com for making a comparison you would never hear from a hockey writer in Canada:

"Early on, the (world junioor) tournament is reminiscent of the women's international slate, which features a small group of teams that are committed to the sport (and thus to producing competitive squads) along with a bunch of others that show up simply because the International Ice Hockey Federation tells them they must."

By the way, anyone who watched any of the third period of Canada's first two games is hereby obligated to start watching the next women's world championship. It's only fair.

"Not so much" is on the list of banished words and phrases. Wait, someone still says that?

(Personal opinion: "Race card" should have been retired long ago. Oh, it would be nice if your race was just something you pulled out of your pocket when it was convenient. Only white people could come up with race card.)

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting

• Regina football writer Rob Vanstone has a book due out soon on the 1966 Saskatchewan Roughriders. That team was so special that the franchise decided to go another 23 years before it won a second Grey Cup, lest it crowd the legacy of the first-timers.
  
  (Right after Ron Lancaster's death this fall, CBC aired an old Life & Times profile of the Little General. He recalled an old joke. "They say in Saskatchewan, there are four seasons, and the wind blows in the winter, the spring and the summmer -- and in the fall, Lancaster blows playoff games.")
• After reading this, you might want to make the Rice Owls your college football team.
  

Someone plans to rock the Tre Kroner today at the Sweden-Russia game at the World Juniors. See you in 2009.

The daily Sennies swipe

James Mirtle is running a poll at From The Rink on which team is going to end up with the No. 1 overall NHL draft choice.

The Senators, at this writing, only have 13 of 173 votes cast, putting them well behind the lead dogs in the race (Tampa Bay and the New York Islanders). Point being, they're in this discussion.

From The Rink is also in the first round of the Busted Coverage blog tournament. Go forth!

Finishing just out of the medals ... part of our heritage

Congratulations are due to The Joy of Sox, James Mirtle's From The Rink and Cynthia Long's Beijing 2008: A Dual Perspective for podiuming (not a real word) in the Canadian Blog Awards, Best Sports Blog division.

Thanks again to everyone who supported this site. It was, to evoke the words of many a Canadian athlete, a victory just to be in the final, and saying that might not make us the best, but it makes us the most thoroughly Canadian ... eh?

The long road to victory!

It's a little heavy on a Friday afternoon, but any chance to promote Gabriel Desjardins' work at behindthenet.ca cannot be passed up.

Edmonton Journal writer David Staples has a good interview with Gabe about his work in bringing hockey stats into the late 20th 21st century.

The kicker is that it's an Edmonton hockey writer profiling a Winnipegger who came of age during the 1980s when the Dale Hawerchuk Jets played Sisyphus every spring, rolling their boulder up Mount Messier. Anyways, great stuff, Gabe.

On the subject of hockey stats, check out James Mirtle's post from this morning noting that, thanks to the charity point, it's hard to put the San Jose Sharks' 22-3-1 start into context ("How good is a 22-3-1 start historically? Beats me."). Time was, only two points in the standings were available in a NHL game, now, as James notes, it averages out to 2.25. We could have used that cold, rational, sane analysis in Ottawa last fall.

Related:
Interview with hockey stats master Gabriel Desjardins (Cult of Hockey)

Apologies for another statheaded post ...

Every sport has its junk stats du jour, and the hockey guys have plus/minus in the crosshairs.

Gabe Desjardins ("Hockey's Bill James," April 4, 2007) has done some groundbreaking work at behindthenet.ca, specifically with metrics that compare a player's quality of competition and teammates.

The way the numbers are put together is a little mystifying to an English major (ahem*), but the concept is easily enough explained. Plus/minus, as many have said, made sense in the era before personal computers. The former Hockey Night in Canada announcer Dick Irvin recalled his father, as the Montreal Canadiens coach in the 1950s, deputizing him to write down which players were on the ice when goals were scored.

Since technology is only technology to those who were born after it was invented, it's kind of silly to hang on to a stat was born in a era of before personal calculators. It still has import, the way batting average and RBI do among baseball fans, but utility has simply been outpaced.

Gabe's stuff is probably going to gain greater currency -- it took Bill James 30 years to go from writing stuff during his slow hours in a factory job to getting an adulatory 60 Minutes feature.

Who knows how much working sportswriters really obsess over this. They're about what's within arm's reach,meaning until some PR flack starts including Corsi Ratings in in the press notes, most will probably continue to quote plus/minus. It will get absorbed over time, though, mark Gabe's words.

(* About 11 years ago, Mr. Desjardins -- and it was a treat to have him write a guest post when Phoenix Coyotes held a sweater retirement last year Winnipeg Jets great Dale Hawerchuk -- was a force to be reckoned with on the Queen's University College Bowl team.

The regulars consisted of Gabe, who was in electrical engineering, an engineering physics student, a law student with an engineering degree, someone who was taking degrees in commerce and sociology simultaneously. The alternate -- and yours truly is nothing but born filler-inner, was "an English and Politics student from Napanee, Ontario." It was humbling, in a good way.)

Related:
Why Plus/Minus Is A Rotten, Useless, Irrelevant and Misleading Stats For NHL Players (David Staples, Cult of Hockey)
Junking the plus-minus stat (fromtherink.com)