Since my post about the midway point of the NHL season is behind me, here are a few rattlings about other recent goings-on in hockey:
Karlsson dialed in
Before I stray to any non-NHL topics, can we talk about Erik Sven Gunnar Karlsson? You know, The Greatest Defenseman Of His Generation, or at least The Greatest Offensive-Minded Defenseman Of His Generation. The man who until recently could do no wrong, and about whom it was, until recently, illegal to think of in anything other than divine terms. The man whose play enthralled the age-bigoted Millennial scribe Ryan Lambert to such a weird degree that Lambert always wrote of him inhomoerotic lavishing prose.
You might recall that 20 or so games into this season, Karlsson's first one playing for any NHL team besides the Senators, many of the same people who once rhapsodized about him were suddenly pointing to his low (for him) point totals and were wondering if he had exited his prime and wouldn't work out in San Jose. Never mind that he was driving play and performing very well defensively (which is quite important for a defenseman!) but was simply experiencing bad puck luck in the offensive zone. Never mind that he is just 28, that hockey is streaky, and that it's foolish to seriously entertain major conclusions based on one-fourth of a season, especially when those conclusions run counter to nine full seasons' worth of evidence.
Well, now that another fourth of the campaign has been played, Erik Karlsson has done what everybody should have known he would do: Kept at it, thereby course-correcting his puck luck, and reverted to All-Star form. After ringing up three assists in San Jose's win over Edmonton on Tuesday, Karlsson now has points in 14 consecutive outings, which is something only 14 other defensemen in NHL history have ever done. And with him having assists in each of those games, he is also on a 14-game assist streak -- only four other defensemen have done that before, and their names happen to be Bobby Orr, Paul Coffey, Phil Housley, and Brian Leetch. Rarefied air, indeed. Methinks everything is just fine in Karlsson's world right now.
The Black Girl Hockey Club
Last summer, Renee Hess of Riverside, CA started a blog with the goal of fulfilling her "idea to put together a group of Black women hockey fans." With the self-explanatory name Black Girl Hockey Club, it now has more than 1,100 followers from around the country, and last month more than 40 of them traveled to DC to get together and attend a game between the Caps and Sabres. The game proved to be a good one, with the Caps prevailing 4-3 and Devante Smith-Pelly notching his 100th career point. The BGHC gals got to meet him and other players afterwards. They plan to do this sort of thing again in other NHL cities.
On January 5th Hess used the BGHC's Instagram and Twitter accounts to mention Kalei Forga, a 12-year-old girl who plays hockey and who has started a GoFundMe account to help raise the money needed for her to participate in an international tournament in France. Next thing she knew, funds were rolling in and one of the contributors was Minnesota Wild defenseman Matt Dumba, who used his own Twitter account to re-tweet the BGHC's post.
The BGHC blog is here. Kalei's GoFundMe page is here. This kind of stuff is good and needs more publicity.
The WJC
This past weekend, the annual World Junior Championships (i.e., for players under the age of 20) ended with Team Finland winning the gold medal game 3-2 over Team USA. Perusing the Canadian media throughout the tourney, and especially during the medal round, I saw a seemingly endless parade of headlines and articles describing the Finns as underdogs and wondering how they manage to hang with the big boys. I kept thinking that the writers of such articles must be on crack.
I turn 48 next week and Finland has been one of hockey's powerhouse nations for as long as I can recall, producing NHL stars before I was old enough to vote (see Kurri, Jari; Tikkanen, Esa). Even back in 1987, when the Canadians got disqualified from that year's WJC on its final day thanks to this bench-clearing brawl with theCommies Soviets, the Finns were the best team participating; they won gold that year, and even if the Canadians had not gotten DQ'd, under the rules of that era Team Canada would have needed to beat the Soviets by five or more goals in order to get past Team Finland and reach the top of the podium.
As I have pointed out before, Finland won more Olympic medals than Canada during the five Olympics in which NHL players were allowed to participate. In fact, Finland won more medals than any of the big seven hockey nations during that span, for it was the only one that medaled in all five of those Olympics. Say what you want about none of its medals being gold, you still get the picture: Finland was on the podium every time -- while Canada twice had no medal at all, and Russia, Sweden, and the USA thrice had no medal at all.
Had this year's WJC been won by Switzerland, Denmark, or Kazakhstan, then yes, it would be fair to refer to the winner as having punched above its weight class. But it's absurd to say that when you're talking about the same country that has given us Teemu Selanne, Saku Koivu, Jere Lehtinen, Miikka Kiprusoff, Kimmo Timonen, Pekka Rinne, Patrik Laine, etc. To my ears, it sounds dumb to talk about Finland hockey as if it were the equivalent of early 1990's Southern Miss football.
Makes you go hmmmm
Until recently, I did not know that these United States are home to something called the Federal Hockey League. I would have thought that was a fictional organization from Slap Shot, but it turns out to be an actual league with six franchises located in small to smallish markets across some far-flung geography.
The Carolina Thunderbirds play in Winston-Salem, NC. The nearest FHL franchise to them is the Mentor Ice Breakers, who play 475 miles away near the shore of Lake Erie in Mentor, OH, in an arena with a seating capacity of 1,600. Meanwhile, over in upstate NY, the Watertown Wolves ply their trade in a city with a population of less than 30,000.
I do not know anything about the FHL's financial health or its prospects for long-term survival. It sure sounds like a long shot of a league, but hey, this is its ninth season -- and it just so happens that one of its executives, Carolina Thunderbirds President/GM Scott Brand, recently came up with a whale of a rule change and got it on the books.
Brand's idea was to have shootouts not take place after overtime, but following the pre-game warm-up before each and every game. In other words, have the shootout before the game even starts and without knowing if it will even prove to be needed.
It sounds nutty at first, largely because it is somewhat nutty, but the purpose is to raise the stakes late in regulation of a tied game, and also in overtime should the game get there. Because if you already lost the shootout prior to puck drop, you know you cannot allow the game to "get to a shootout" because then you are guaranteed to lose with no way of getting the two points in the standings.
Not to say that you ever would sit on your ass during an OT or late in a tied contest, but let's face it -- you are more likely to go for broke and empty all your barrels when you know that winning before the shootout is literally your only chance at winning. On the flip side, if you prevailed in the pre-game shootout and are up a goal late in the third, do you really want to go into the hockey equivalent of prevent defense when you know the other team is going to go all-out and throw every kitchen and bathroom sink at you trying to force the extra session?
Brand lobbied the league and got his idea into the rule book, albeit only on a short-term basis and only at the Thunderbirds' home arena, and it played out in reality at a recent game between the Thunderbirds and Port Huron Prowlers. Port Huron won the pre-game shootout, so as the waning minutes of regulation ticked away with the score tied 4-4, Carolina poured it on knowing they had to score in actual game action due to having already dropped the shootout. It did not work, so the game went to OT and Carolina pulled its goalie in the extra session even though the score was tied. Then there were three goalmouth scrambles in the final minute while the home team's net sat wide open and unprotected at the other end. But none of that action generated a goal, so overtime ended with the game tied at four, which meant Carolina lost.
According to Brand "the players liked it, they thought the last three minutes of that overtime was the most intense hockey we played." The excitement in the arena was palpable and the fans loved it too -- right up until the final horn sounded and there was no fourth chance for their team to avoid defeat. Brand said the feedback afterwards was "nasty" and that he "received things close to a death threat." Therefore he stood by his pledge to let the response of the paying customers determine if the rule change would stick, and as of today, the pre-game shootout is already a thing of the past.
I am mostly a purist but am not automatically opposed to change. I must say there is something about the pre-game shootout that really appeals to me, and I hope it gets another chance. I certainly wouldn't try it at the NHL level, but I do believe it would be good idea for a lower league like the FHL or Southern Professional Hockey League to try it for a full season, league-wide, and see how it goes.
And if that were to happen and it were to go well, then who knows? Once upon a time, hybrid icing seemed like an odd idea, but by 2013-14 it became the law of the land in the NHL after having started out way down the ladder in the USHL. The idea for hybrid icing came from the man who was then the USHL's Director of Hockey Ops -- and that man happens to be the same Scott Brand who dreamed up pre-game shootouts in his current role as Carolina Thunderbirds President/GM.
Karlsson dialed in
Before I stray to any non-NHL topics, can we talk about Erik Sven Gunnar Karlsson? You know, The Greatest Defenseman Of His Generation, or at least The Greatest Offensive-Minded Defenseman Of His Generation. The man who until recently could do no wrong, and about whom it was, until recently, illegal to think of in anything other than divine terms. The man whose play enthralled the age-bigoted Millennial scribe Ryan Lambert to such a weird degree that Lambert always wrote of him in
You might recall that 20 or so games into this season, Karlsson's first one playing for any NHL team besides the Senators, many of the same people who once rhapsodized about him were suddenly pointing to his low (for him) point totals and were wondering if he had exited his prime and wouldn't work out in San Jose. Never mind that he was driving play and performing very well defensively (which is quite important for a defenseman!) but was simply experiencing bad puck luck in the offensive zone. Never mind that he is just 28, that hockey is streaky, and that it's foolish to seriously entertain major conclusions based on one-fourth of a season, especially when those conclusions run counter to nine full seasons' worth of evidence.
Well, now that another fourth of the campaign has been played, Erik Karlsson has done what everybody should have known he would do: Kept at it, thereby course-correcting his puck luck, and reverted to All-Star form. After ringing up three assists in San Jose's win over Edmonton on Tuesday, Karlsson now has points in 14 consecutive outings, which is something only 14 other defensemen in NHL history have ever done. And with him having assists in each of those games, he is also on a 14-game assist streak -- only four other defensemen have done that before, and their names happen to be Bobby Orr, Paul Coffey, Phil Housley, and Brian Leetch. Rarefied air, indeed. Methinks everything is just fine in Karlsson's world right now.
The Black Girl Hockey Club
Last summer, Renee Hess of Riverside, CA started a blog with the goal of fulfilling her "idea to put together a group of Black women hockey fans." With the self-explanatory name Black Girl Hockey Club, it now has more than 1,100 followers from around the country, and last month more than 40 of them traveled to DC to get together and attend a game between the Caps and Sabres. The game proved to be a good one, with the Caps prevailing 4-3 and Devante Smith-Pelly notching his 100th career point. The BGHC gals got to meet him and other players afterwards. They plan to do this sort of thing again in other NHL cities.
On January 5th Hess used the BGHC's Instagram and Twitter accounts to mention Kalei Forga, a 12-year-old girl who plays hockey and who has started a GoFundMe account to help raise the money needed for her to participate in an international tournament in France. Next thing she knew, funds were rolling in and one of the contributors was Minnesota Wild defenseman Matt Dumba, who used his own Twitter account to re-tweet the BGHC's post.
The BGHC blog is here. Kalei's GoFundMe page is here. This kind of stuff is good and needs more publicity.
The WJC
This past weekend, the annual World Junior Championships (i.e., for players under the age of 20) ended with Team Finland winning the gold medal game 3-2 over Team USA. Perusing the Canadian media throughout the tourney, and especially during the medal round, I saw a seemingly endless parade of headlines and articles describing the Finns as underdogs and wondering how they manage to hang with the big boys. I kept thinking that the writers of such articles must be on crack.
I turn 48 next week and Finland has been one of hockey's powerhouse nations for as long as I can recall, producing NHL stars before I was old enough to vote (see Kurri, Jari; Tikkanen, Esa). Even back in 1987, when the Canadians got disqualified from that year's WJC on its final day thanks to this bench-clearing brawl with the
As I have pointed out before, Finland won more Olympic medals than Canada during the five Olympics in which NHL players were allowed to participate. In fact, Finland won more medals than any of the big seven hockey nations during that span, for it was the only one that medaled in all five of those Olympics. Say what you want about none of its medals being gold, you still get the picture: Finland was on the podium every time -- while Canada twice had no medal at all, and Russia, Sweden, and the USA thrice had no medal at all.
Had this year's WJC been won by Switzerland, Denmark, or Kazakhstan, then yes, it would be fair to refer to the winner as having punched above its weight class. But it's absurd to say that when you're talking about the same country that has given us Teemu Selanne, Saku Koivu, Jere Lehtinen, Miikka Kiprusoff, Kimmo Timonen, Pekka Rinne, Patrik Laine, etc. To my ears, it sounds dumb to talk about Finland hockey as if it were the equivalent of early 1990's Southern Miss football.
Makes you go hmmmm
Until recently, I did not know that these United States are home to something called the Federal Hockey League. I would have thought that was a fictional organization from Slap Shot, but it turns out to be an actual league with six franchises located in small to smallish markets across some far-flung geography.
The Carolina Thunderbirds play in Winston-Salem, NC. The nearest FHL franchise to them is the Mentor Ice Breakers, who play 475 miles away near the shore of Lake Erie in Mentor, OH, in an arena with a seating capacity of 1,600. Meanwhile, over in upstate NY, the Watertown Wolves ply their trade in a city with a population of less than 30,000.
I do not know anything about the FHL's financial health or its prospects for long-term survival. It sure sounds like a long shot of a league, but hey, this is its ninth season -- and it just so happens that one of its executives, Carolina Thunderbirds President/GM Scott Brand, recently came up with a whale of a rule change and got it on the books.
Brand's idea was to have shootouts not take place after overtime, but following the pre-game warm-up before each and every game. In other words, have the shootout before the game even starts and without knowing if it will even prove to be needed.
It sounds nutty at first, largely because it is somewhat nutty, but the purpose is to raise the stakes late in regulation of a tied game, and also in overtime should the game get there. Because if you already lost the shootout prior to puck drop, you know you cannot allow the game to "get to a shootout" because then you are guaranteed to lose with no way of getting the two points in the standings.
Not to say that you ever would sit on your ass during an OT or late in a tied contest, but let's face it -- you are more likely to go for broke and empty all your barrels when you know that winning before the shootout is literally your only chance at winning. On the flip side, if you prevailed in the pre-game shootout and are up a goal late in the third, do you really want to go into the hockey equivalent of prevent defense when you know the other team is going to go all-out and throw every kitchen and bathroom sink at you trying to force the extra session?
Brand lobbied the league and got his idea into the rule book, albeit only on a short-term basis and only at the Thunderbirds' home arena, and it played out in reality at a recent game between the Thunderbirds and Port Huron Prowlers. Port Huron won the pre-game shootout, so as the waning minutes of regulation ticked away with the score tied 4-4, Carolina poured it on knowing they had to score in actual game action due to having already dropped the shootout. It did not work, so the game went to OT and Carolina pulled its goalie in the extra session even though the score was tied. Then there were three goalmouth scrambles in the final minute while the home team's net sat wide open and unprotected at the other end. But none of that action generated a goal, so overtime ended with the game tied at four, which meant Carolina lost.
According to Brand "the players liked it, they thought the last three minutes of that overtime was the most intense hockey we played." The excitement in the arena was palpable and the fans loved it too -- right up until the final horn sounded and there was no fourth chance for their team to avoid defeat. Brand said the feedback afterwards was "nasty" and that he "received things close to a death threat." Therefore he stood by his pledge to let the response of the paying customers determine if the rule change would stick, and as of today, the pre-game shootout is already a thing of the past.
I am mostly a purist but am not automatically opposed to change. I must say there is something about the pre-game shootout that really appeals to me, and I hope it gets another chance. I certainly wouldn't try it at the NHL level, but I do believe it would be good idea for a lower league like the FHL or Southern Professional Hockey League to try it for a full season, league-wide, and see how it goes.
And if that were to happen and it were to go well, then who knows? Once upon a time, hybrid icing seemed like an odd idea, but by 2013-14 it became the law of the land in the NHL after having started out way down the ladder in the USHL. The idea for hybrid icing came from the man who was then the USHL's Director of Hockey Ops -- and that man happens to be the same Scott Brand who dreamed up pre-game shootouts in his current role as Carolina Thunderbirds President/GM.
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