JR Ewing

Sorry, I don't mean to imply what you think of the players. I combined a direct response to something you said with things I've heard other people say. Definitely not trying to put words in your moouth. And this is my exact point. It's not that I hate fighting or anything like that. I'm a guy who's been on his feet cheering. I've enjoyed seeing my guy beat down the other guy. All of that. I just think the day is coming when the league will have to ban/reduce the fights to legally protect themselves in the same way that the NFL had to address headshots or even how the WWE had to ban certain dangerous moves in their ring. The data is in, and head injuries are exceptionally dangerous. JR

Well, time for dueling experts, I suppose. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/study-finds-recent-rule-changes-didnt-reduce-rates-of-concussions-in-nhl/article13291450/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter%C2%A0 In the case of this study, they gathered their data from NHL and OHL teams and media reports. They found that the highest group of head injuries came from the fights. I have to be honest and admit that I don't find the the doctors (educated though they are) watching youtube videos of hockey fights to be scientific proof of anything. But, whatever... I'm not here to convince you or anybody else. I like a good fight, too, and it's not that I *want* it driven from the game, but see the day coming that the league won't have much choice but to greatly reduce the number of fights that happen. JR

If the NHL wants to get serious about reducing the number of head injuries, then they probably don't have much choice but to make fighting a heavily penalized rarity. Due to scientific study, some numbers are rolling in, and we can stop pretending that it's all Raffi Torres and Matt Cooke's fault now. The problem is much larger than a few isolated incidents. The study notes that the concussions aren't really a result of hits which the NHL has banned. What difference can fines and suspensions make if so few of the concussions are from non-suspendable hits? I think the league has some tough questions to ask themselves if player safety is an honest concern to them. It should be. -Blind-side hits only account for 4% of the concussions. Targeting these hits is fine, but it's obvious overkill considering they're not responsible for many of the injuries. Fights are clearly a bigger cause of the problem. -If the league were to reduce the number of hits in general, it could probably go some way towards addressing the problem. Fewer hits, fewer collisions, fewer instances for head injuries. We've all seen how the hitting has changed in the last 20 years where players, wearing armour my Baldur's Gate characters would be jealous of, come flying in at full speed and deck opposing players. -So what caused the largest percentage (28%) of concussions? Fights, and the league needs to really look and see if it's worth having around as something which is so accepted. I like a good fight, too, but it's a bit of a disgrace to see the effects it had on a guy like Derek Boogaard who, in his team physical just before he died, couldn't even think of a word which began with the letter 'r'. -I don't think that removing or greatly reducing the number of fights makes the NHL Ice Capades or anything like that. The NFL doesn't feature fights, and not too many people are calling it flag football or questioning the masculinity of the players. -I suspect that if the fights weren't there, it wouldn't make much of a difference for viewership or attendance either way. I don't think there's too many people who would say "Oh, they're not fighting? NOW I'll watch", and if you watch mainly for the fighting, maybe you can find a stream of the Quebec Senior League or the ECHL. They'll have what you're looking for. JR

Well, a tough finish after carrying the majority of play... Plus -Jesse Joensuu used all of his size and skill. Was around the net all night, stuck up for teammates, and popped one in. -Luke Gazdic scoring a goal on the first shift of his first NHL game. Beauty. Lived a lot of young boys' dreams right there. Topped it off with a fight that sent Thorburn's helmet a good five feet away, and probably made himself a few fans. -Oilers held the Corsi advantage against the Jets: 49-42. Good showing, especially with Gagner and Corsi monster RNH out. The Oilers lost battle, but if they continue this way, they'll win the war, and they didn't do it much last year. Only 6 times, in fact. Minus -Devan Dubnyk was kind dreadful. If he'd played even just an average game, the Oilers walk away with a win. -Ryan Smyth looked really out of step. Could have just been a bad game, but it kills me to see. -Since I was a kid, and there were more games on the radio than on TV, I had a simple little system which I always thought was helpful in telling me if a player had a game: the more I heard his name in reference to the play, the more impact he was having on the night. I think I only heard Nail Yakupov's name maybe three times. Dallas Eakins -I watched with stunned (and happy) disbelief when Eakins was asked (post-game) why he pulled the goaltender so early and he responded by saying that analytics have shown that NHL coaches are too conservative in how they use that tactic. Was so good to hear. -Loved his use of the 4th line. He used them as little as possible and gave them only offensive zone starts, far away from their own net and trouble. Beats last year, watching RFK roll all lines, play the 4th against the Datsyuks of this world, and generally get the team torched by that approach. Best Forward: Jesse Joensuu Best Defense: Jeff Petry Also: Hockey Night in Canada is a shadow of its former great self. JR

LOL At least you call it like you see it. JR

Team: Maple Leafs. Horrifically outshot last year and then paid good players to leave. Player: Tie between Cam Ward and Marc-Andre Fleury JR

Prediction: Leafs fans will be sorely disappointed at the end of the year. JR

As per the title, tell us something you predict will happen this season. JR

Random thoughts... -There is defensive benefit to controlling the puck at the other end of the ice. More, in fact, than being big, strong, tough, a good hitter, etc, and not having the ability in the offensive zone. It's pretty damned tough to score from your own end. -There are better ways of looking at defense than how many hits a player had. In and of themselves, they're not suggestive of how good he is defensively. They reflect things like how much time a player spend in his own end and the style of defense he plays, and not necessarily the quality of it. -Plus/Minus is really only relevant when comparing players on the same team, and if we consider the sort of competition the players faced, what kind of zone starts they had, etc. -To that extent, Subban was sheltered more than Letang. Subban starts in the offensive zone 53.6% (highest among Habs D) of the time, while Letang's Zone Starts was 48.3% (middle of the pack). -The Corsi Rel Quality of Competition (higher is better) for Subban was 0.026. Letang's was 0.696. -Given the above two points: if Letang is so bad defensively, why did Michel Therrien not attempt to shelter him? Why didn't he give him as absolutely many offensive zone starts as he could against weak possession players? He didn't do that at all. To go with the comparison with Marc-Andre Bergeron, we couldn't find two players who were used more differently. In 2012, Tampa Bay gave Bergerson offensive zone starts 71% of the time against negative possession players. -Re: who's better with the puck. I won't comment based on a skills/"saw him good" basis. It's muddy and cloudy territory, and usually says as much about our own bias as anything else. It's relevant to note, though, that the Penguins suffer a larger offensive drop when Letang's off the ice than do the Habs when Subban is off the ice. The Pens go from creating 1.24 GF/20 min with Letang on, down to 0.81 when he's off. For the Habs, it's 1.00 GF/20 down to 0.74. JR

Ouch. We have to at least get the man with the right jersey. JR

@jammer2 LOL! Man, that article is a classic right there. It's not everyday that you hear a player say something like: Must have felt like a jackass saying that, because he sure sounded like one. JR

Yeah, Ballard hired Imlach as GM in 1979, and he was an immediate disaster. He had a hate-on for Darryl Sittler. Took him to court to block him from appearing on a TV show, and tried his absolute best to trade him, but Sittler refused to waive his NTC clause unless the Leafs paid him $500,000. Imlach, at a loss, settled for trading Lanny McDonald instead, purely out of spite because McDonald and Sittler were best buddies. Imlach insisted that all players visting the Leafs business offices wear a shirt and tie, fining any offender $250, and banned the players from drinking beer on flights after games. Pyramid Power? I thought it was Red Kelly who was into that? JR

Nothing new there. This was their way of being able to suspend a star player without really suspending him. JR

The signs were definitely there. Offensively - Barker, even in junior, lived and died by the PP, and was helped by being part of Medicine Hat's huge offensive game: they were the runaway leaders in GF in Barker's deaft year of 2004. Pretty much the same story during his NHL career. His one big year, when he had 40 pts in 68 games, he played about 3.5 minutes per night on the PP, just about all with Brian Campbell, and had a big number of 2nd assists. Defensively - He's just never really gotten it done at ES at the NHL level, but it's also interesting to see the sort of things which have been said about dating back to his draft year. How Redline Report scouted him: I don't think anybody wants to see those things being said about young players... Barker has had ankle issues: http://www.tsn.ca/nh...rs/bio/?id=4498 Ankle injuries seem likely to have affected his mobility. Combine that with a player who was always seen as a work in progress, and it can be bad news. The history of the league is LOADED with kids who never learned to play defense at the NHL level. Far more than ever figured it out. JR

Yeah, you're right about that trade. Purely slipped my mind while writing and recalling all of the other crap Pollock pulled. haha He was an absolutely brilliant GM, and like I said earlier: anybody else smart enough to do it all would have done the same in his place. It's the league, imo, which looks for it than does he. I mean, what the hell else was he going to do? I had considered bringing up the Maple Leafs adventures in the expansion draft, but decided it was a bit beyond the scope of the Pollock post. However, to the extent that Pollock showed his genius, Imlach screwed the pooch and destroyed his club in a single afternoon. Can you imagine the ignorance of the man, and his (apparent) inability to see the draft rules which Pollock had created. While Pollock used his large farm depth to protect the players he wanted to keep, Imlach decided it was time to sell off his minor pro teams (Rochester in the AHL, and Victoria in the WHL). Two-thirds of his team gone, with only Tulsa remaining, and there went all of their terrific depth... And what did Imlach do with the left-overs? He protected old guys and left good young players available. It's sad to look at: Protected Players, and their remaining GP in the NHL: Murray Oliver 597 Duane Rupp 365 Gerry Ehman 297 George Armstrong 223 Allan Stanley 128, Darryl Sly 77 Milan Marcetta 54 Red Kelly 0 Dick Gamble 0 Don Cherry 0 Norm Armstrong 0 Bronco Horvath 0 Les Duff 0 Barry Watson 0 Stan Smrke 0 Yeah. THAT Don Cherry. Bad enough list, but look who he left for the taking: Unprotected Players and their remaining NHL games...... For other teams. Bill Flett 689 Mike Corrigan 594 Lowell MacDonald 460 Darryl Edestrand 455 Bob Baun 362 Eddie Joyal 345 Brit Selby 277 Larry Keenan 232 Al Arbour 231 Mike Laughton 189 Don Blackburn 179 Kent Douglas 145 Larry Jeffrey 122 Terry Clancy 93 Autry Erickson 66 And that's how you take the defending Cup champs; a team which had won 4 of the last 6 Cups, and turn them into a joke overnight. It's a shame. JR

Nope, nope, nope. You don't want him. You want an actual NHL defenseman. JR

I pretty much agree with that, and so does the court. Historically, they've only stuck their noses in with extreme cases. By what Dellow sighted, it would take a public declaration on Kassian's part that he meant to hit Gagner like he did for that to happen. So yeah, the Crown should keep its nose out in this (and most) instances. JR

I wouldn't be stunned if, given the chance, Eakins puts Steve MacIntyre across from Kassian at a faceoff. Just my guess, but I bet the Oilers don't consider the 5 games Kassian is going to miss to be nearly the penalty the Oilers are paying for Kassian's reckless play. Mind you, even if they dropped the gloves, it wouldn't result in a Kassian pounding, because it would become an immediate scrum. JR

No, I'm saying that we just don't know if Kassian intended to hit Gagner in the head. I agree that it was careless, but until we hook him up to a polygraph, we can't infer intent. JR

Not that I think criminal charges should be laid (I really don't)... But I don't see anything in there that was a hockey play. If he was trying to lift Gagner's stick, screwed up and hit Gagner in the face? Sucks, but a hockey play gone bad. Or if it was like the Torres hit on Hossa, where if it was done a fraction of a second earlier, it would have been clean? That's a hockey play gone wrong. If a player follows through on a slap shot and hits an opposing player with his stick, that's a hockey play gone wrong. This was something completely different than that, and without element in the rulebook. This was missing a check by 5 feet, spinning around, and firing your stick at head height with enough force to break a man's jaw. I don't think he should be charged, but this is exactly the type of play that I think the league should throw the book at. Five games wasn't enough. I read Dellow's article, and found it interesting. I disagree with it because of one point only: he asserts that the stick to head was intentional, and I don't see how we can determine that, especially in contrast to the McSorley case he pointed out. In that one, McSorley admitted he was trying to hit Brashear in such a way that a fight was the likely outcome. If Kassian's had intended to strike Gagner the way he did, precedent seems pretty clear: he would need to be charged. I just don't see a way to claim that intent here. JR

Long post, but there's no quick way to tell the tale... When the NHL decided it was time to expand, the expansion committee (which really was Clarence Campbell) decided that the person who would do the best job at creating the expansion draft rules would be Sam Pollock. We have to stop and think about this for a moment: they put a GM in charge of setting the rule about which players he and his competitors would have to give up. It would be the same as if the league expanded today, but they left it all up to Ken Holland. Whose interests do you think he'd be looking out for? Mind boggling, but that's the NHL for you. Before draft day 1967, the NHL had decided that each of the Original 6 teams could protect 11 skaters, 1 goalie and 1 junior-aged player who had been signed the year before (and even that had been bumped up from 8-1-1). Pollock's "problem" was that the Habs had a huge network of players in their minor league system, and he knew a lot of those guys would go. Hell, at this time, they had two AHL and two WHL teams... Four pro minor teams. Unreal. Did he want those players picked? Oh hell yes. Pollock looked up and down his and his 5 other competitor's rosters, the players' ages and pro experience, and then ammended the rules to create a huge exemption for himself: players who had played professionally for the first time in the 1966–67 season were ineligible from being picked until their team had filled their protected list with at least two goaltenders and eighteen other players. Due to the size of the Habs farm system, it was their players being picked more than any of the other Original 6 teams, and he knew it would be that way. By the time the 10 round had gone by, Pollock didn't even have to bother protecting guys like Serge Savard or Rogie Vachon. Pollock was able to sit on all of his best young and prime-aged players, while mostly just giving up 3rd and 4th liners. Nobody was really choosing the other teams' guys, but for the key pieces. So, BOOM! The Bruins lose Bernie Parent, completely unable to protect him. Boom! The Hawks were basically cleaned out. Pollock's ammendment allowed him to keep every single one of his best prospects while his competitors all lost some of theirs. --- Aside from all of this, Pollock colluded with other GMs. From the book "Behind the Moves", Frank Selke Jr: Another General Manager is here, telling us about how, after Pollock created ineligibility rules to protect his team the most, conspired with other GMs to not give up the little bits he stood to lose. The expansion teams, particularly in California, where there was nothing resembling a hockey market, were in trouble, and it helped make for desperate GMs. They needed NHL players they could sell to the public, and since Pollock was neck deep in actual NHL players and swimming in the filth of outstanding young prospects that he didn't have to lose on draft day, starting unloading decent players for high picks. From 1969 to 1974, the Habs had 17-1st round picks and 8-2nd rounders. In '72, they had 4 of the first 14 picks, and in 1974, they had 5 of the first 15 picks. Just look at some of these deals: -June 11, 1968 trades Gerry Desjardins to Los Angeles for the Kings first round picks in 1969 and 1972 (Steve Shutt) -January 23, 1970 trades Dick Duff to Los Angeles for Dennis Hextall and the Kings second round pick in 1971 (Larry Robinson). -May 22, 1970 trades Francois Lacombe and cash to California for the Golden Seals 1st round pick (Guy Lafleur). -May 29, 1973 trades Bob Murdoch and Randy Rota to Los Angeles for cash and the Kings first round pick in 1974 (Mario Tremblay). I'm sure there's some that I'm forgetting, but you get the idea. TLDR - Sam Pollock was given the right to creat expansion draft rules which served his team above all others. He colluded with other GMs to help protect the players he wanted and created a sort of desperation among the expansion GMs which allowed him pick the bones for what he wanted. It ended up making the results of much of '70s kind of a joke. Even worse. We would have all done it if we were in the position to do it, and smart enough to see it. JR

Not only that, but there's that whole thing where the NHL gave Sam Pollock the keys to the kingdom regarding the rules for expansion, and he set the agenda to make sure the Habs retained the vast majority of their talent, while his competition didn't, which pretty much hosed competitive balance for the next decade. JR

Yeah, my long term issues with Jones' ability, notwithstanding, visors are just as important as helmets, imo. JR

I wouldn't pay $200 for ANY jersey, but this is one IS gross. JR

http://oilers.nhl.com/club/blogpost.htm?id=20709 This can't come as a surprise to anybody who has watched much of the Oilers preseason, or who noticed that Jones deleted his twitter account after last night's game. Jones has simply not looked good, and the absolute best thing you could say is that he was a non-factor. I think it's only fair, though, to correct something which was mentioned on TSN's broadcast last night: that Jones has struggled since his eye injury. Not true. Jones was never really a very good player at all. Seems like a nice guy who's willing to work hard, but struggles to handle the puck when he's not even being pressured... If you can't take or make a pass or stay on your skates, you'd better 270 pounds and be able to knock the snot out of other big guys. JR