When the news came down on Thursday that the Nashville Predators had signed Pekka Rinne to a franchise-record $49M deal over seven years, I have to admit, I was fairly shocked. The Preds have, for the most part, been a franchise that’s avoided the inefficiencies of the free agent market, consistently putting together a playoff-calibre team on a payroll right around the salary-cap midpoint. They’ve done this to both minimize player costs and maximize revenue sharing income, which makes sense in a market that was on very shaky ground just a handful of years ago, and still ranks hockey behind the NFL and college sports. That the Preds suddenly went out and started spending money isn’t entirely a shock: they were always going to have to do so in order to keep this group together. What stunned me is that they blew a massive amount of dough on a goaltender, particularly one whose career numbers are barely above average, outside of his recent career year. It goes against everything that we’ve learned in recent years about how to allocate salary cap space, and raises a number of red flags for the franchise going forward. Namely:

1) Nashville isn’t paying for that big of a boost.

Pekka Rinne has played three full seasons in the NHL, posting save percentages of .917, .911, and .930, for a career average right around .920. That sounds pretty good at first, but there are a couple of issues here. One, last season’s .930 is pretty far out of line with the other two; I’ll dig deeper into that below, but I figure that’s skewing the average a little bit. The second, and more immediate, concern is that even if Rinne’s true talent is around .920, that isn’t worlds better than average. For comparison’s sake, through Rinne’s career, NHL average SV% has been about .913. That works out to an extra goal saved every 150 shots. Over the last three years, Rinne’s faced about 30 shots per night, and played 60 nights per year, so we’re talking about an extra goal saved every five games, or about 12 per year. Obviously, that isn’t nothing - there’s a definite difference between a 20-goal and 30-goal scorer - but it isn’t enough of a difference to be worth that kind money. The difference between 20 and 30 goals for a forward is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2-3M; the gap between Rinne and a League-average goalie might be double that.

2) Nashville is paying for a career year.

Revisiting last season, one of the significant anomalies is his save percentage on the penalty kill (PKSV%). League average PKSV% has been holding steady at around .865-.870 for over a decade now; Rinne’s PKSV% last year was .912. That number has a strong likelihood of regressing to the mean over time, meaning he’s unlikely to ever have as good of a season as that again. By the same token, he’s also unlikely to have as bad of a year as 2009-10, when he posted a career-worst .911 overall SV%, based in part on a PKSV% of .835¹. All of which is a roundabout way of saying, goaltender performance is too variable to bank on from year to year, and paying for a career year, as I’ve discussed previously, is almost certain to come back and haunt the team at some point down the road. I’m not saying that Rinne isn’t a good goaltender, just that he isn’t Dominik Hasek-good, as he looked last season.

3) Goalies get worse with age.

It’s not a guarantee, of course: Hasek and Tim Thomas stand out as examples of guys who put up multiple fantastic seasons deep into their 30s. But as a general rule, goalies, like most players, will peak in their mid-20s and then slowly decline from there. Rinne just turned 29; his extension will run out shortly before he’s 37. There’s reason to question whether he’s a .920 goaltender right now; unless he is the Finnish Tim Thomas, the latter half of that contract is going to be a millstone.

4) This contract breaks Nashville’s salary structure.

Like I said earlier, Nashville has always tried to stay around the salary-cap midpoint for financial reasons. If they spend $7M on the goalie - probably twice as much as they should - that’s a lot of money that can’t go towards resigning Ryan Suter and/or Shea Weber, the backbones of their defence. Or, alternatively, it’s money they can no longer pay for a high-end forward, assuming there’s any such beast available come July 1. Much as some have suggested that the Preds would be screwed without Rinne, we thought the same thing after they lost Tomas Vokoun, but they’ve continued to find goalies that can excel in their defence-first system. Besides, if the last few playoffs have taught us anything, it’s that big-name, money goalies are no more likely than their less-heralded colleagues to take their team to the Finals or win a Stanley Cup. If you want to win in this league, you need quality talent both up front and on your blueline. If I was in Poile’s shoes, I’d be offering Rinne a deal comparable to that of Antti Niemi - or even a bit less, since he doesn’t have a Stanley Cup ring as leverage - and if he doesn’t like it, I’ll take my chances with Anders Lindback. Goalies like Pekka Rinne don’t quite grow on trees, but they’re a hell of a lot more common than defencemen like Shea Weber.

Now, there’s always the possibility that the Preds’ owners are willing to open their wallets, forego revenue sharing, and make a run at the Cup, gambling that playoff revenues will keep them in the black. If so, it’s a great step forward for the franchise and their fans, who have suffered through a lot to get to this point. But at the same time, they recently let go of Steve Sullivan and Joel Ward, two important players in their first-ever playoff series victory last year. More importantly, even if they are now ready to spend, this isn’t the way to do it. Even if you’re a cap team, you still have to manage within a budget, so you still need to make the most efficient use of your money. In that respect, signing Rinne for as much and as long as the Nashville Predators did remains the wrong move.

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¹ - Interestingly, his even-strength SV%, a better gauge of his true talent, didn’t swing nearly as hard: .925 in 2009-10 vs. .932 in 2010-11, both above-average numbers.

Author’s note: Fans of this feature are encouraged to check out this guest post I made for Oilers Refinery, on the naming of the new Winnipeg team. While they ultimately went with “Jets” anyway, I think there were several good reasons to go in another direction.

¹ – Relative +/- is the difference between a player’s on-ice +/- and off-ice +/- at even-strength, corrected for ice time.

Author’s note: The title of this post comes from a “series” of two posts I had made at a friend’s website, where I used to occasionally write before coming here. The first was about going to a Hitmen playoff game in 2005; the second was about going to a Predators game in Nashville in 2006. Note also that, if they’re not there already, I should have some photos from the weekend up on Flickr here in the next couple of days.

Back when the original Heritage Classic in Edmonton was announced in 2003, I figured it would be a one-off: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch a real NHL game outside, and reconnect with the roots of the sport. In spite of its initial success, I never thought the outdoor game was something that the NHL would pursue, given the logistics of converting a football stadium and the unpredictability of Mother Nature. Here in Calgary, for example, Chinook winds can carry you from -20°C to +5°C in the span of a day. Sure enough, though, after the lockout, the idea took root in the US and became a ratings bonanza, at least relative to the NHL’s usual anaemic performance. Eventually, rumours began circulating that the Flames were seeking to host a Winter Classic at McMahon Stadium, but I didn’t think it would ever happen: it was just too good for American TV to ever ship back up to Canada.

Fast forward to last summer and the announcement of a second Heritage Classic, to be held right here in Calgary, with the Montreal Canadiens again playing as the visitors. It would be a dedicated game for Canada, separate from the Winter Classic, with an all-Canadian matchup and all-Canadian slate of sponsors, led by a certain donut chain with strong ties to the game. While I figured the game itself would be too expensive (in the end, the best offer I got was still north of $400 a pair), there were sure to be lots of hockey-related festivities befitting a host city. If nothing else, the Calgary Hitmen, a junior team owned by the Calgary Flames, would be playing on the same ice the day after the main event, and as a season-ticket holder, I’d have access to that game as part of my regular package. So I was stoked.

Now that the weekend has come and gone, I wanted to share some of the experiences that came with it. I may not have gotten to go to the Heritage Classic itself, but I did get to enjoy a number of unique events that’ll probably mean more to me in the long run, anyway.

Friday, February 18: Battle of the Farmhands of Alberta

The weekend kicked off with the Flames’ AHL affiliate, the Abbotsford Heat, “hosting” the Oilers’ AHL affiliate, the Oklahoma City Barons, at the Saddledome. There were still $20 seats available a couple of days beforehand, so I joined my regular seatmates from the Hitmen games just a few seats over from where we normally sit. I didn’t know much about either team, having only seen a handful of these players in preseason games, but I was at least familiar with a couple of recent-vintage Hitmen alumni: Abbotsford’s Keith Seabrook (brother of Brent) and OKC’s Alex Plante.

In the end, the appeal of the event wound up having little to do with the game itself. While seeing the old Hitmen and young Oilers prospects in action was nice, the game itself wasn’t all that entertaining: OKC won the tentative affair 3-1 on a pair of late third-period goals, including an empty-netter. The real fun of the game was interacting with the people there. My seatmates and I spent some time razzing each other about our choices of affiliation, and cracking jokes about Martin Gerber’s tendency to retreat all the way into his net when the play was at the other end of the ice (someone called him a “turtle”). When I jumped up and cheered the first OKC goal of the night, I looked around and found myself to be the only Oilers fan in the section, which was pretty funny in its own right. The intermission shows were the usual minor-league brand of bizarre, with human bowling and human hamster balls as the two events. Best of all, though, was getting to meet a couple of writers for my favourite Oilers blog, Copper and Blue, in Bruce McCurdy (accredited through his new gig at the Edmonton Journal’s Cult of Hockey blog, and originator of the above subtitle) and Lisa McRitchie. They came over during the second intermission, and while Lisa went down to get some action shots, Bruce stayed and chatted until about halfway through the third. It was a fun conversation, and while I didn’t catch much of the game while it was happening, but in checking the stats after, I don’t think I missed much. I did catch the part that counted, though, as the Barons scored two goals in the final 1:06 to clinch the victory.

Before we left the arena, our friends told us that Yvan “Roadrunner” Cournoyer and Henri “Pocket Rocket” Richard, two Montreal Canadiens legends and Hockey Hall of Famers, would be signing autographs at a mall just north of the city at 11:00 the next morning. We couldn’t not go: Mom grew up in Montreal with the dynasties of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and I cheered for the team when I was a kid, living the glory of the ’93 Cup win and absorbing every morsel of history I could.

Saturday, February 19: Meeting les Anciens Glorieux

We got to the signing with our tickets around 11:30, by which point the line-up was already snaking all around the store they’d been set up in. Little wonder: for a $25 charitable donation, you’d get a Heritage Classic puck signed by both legends, and a picture taken with your own camera if you wanted; for a few dollars more, the organizers would let you put pretty much anything you wanted in front of them to sign. Some people had brought photo albums, history books, original Forum programmes from the 1960s, DVDs of historical games, you name it. I brought my 1943 vintage replica jersey, the kind the Habs wore as a third jersey a few years ago, while my mom brought a Henri Richard hockey card from the early 1970s and a Habs commemorative card from the NHL’s 75^th anniversary celebrations in 1992. Behind us was a lady who had brought a commemorative book of every Canadiens Hall of Famer, Yvan Cournoyer’s entry bookmarked for signing, and a scrapbook with pictures of herself and Henri Richard from a signing event many years ago. We wound up chatting during the long line-up, and eventually went to coffee afterward.

When we got to the front, Mom and I were both on cloud nine. We laid out each item in turn, and got them all signed by the appropriate person. Mom explained the card she gave Cournoyer by telling him that she’d looked all over and couldn’t find a card of his in her collection; he joked that they’d “all sold out.” Mom thanked the two for the years of good memories they’d given her, we got our pictures taken, and without hesitation, they offered their hands to shake, which absolutely floored me. Who offers to shake the fans’ hands? We were just about to leave when I checked the camera we’d borrowed and saw…the pictures hadn’t saved! We were horrified. We checked with the people there, and they checked with Cournoyer and Richard, and they were amenable to retakes. I made sure the camera worked this time, and we got our picture at last. It wasn’t something they had to do by any means, but I get the feeling they’re used to people getting a bit flustered and forgetting something because they’re meeting their heroes: the lady behind us forgot to get her puck signed, and was also allowed to go back and have the oversight corrected. The whole experience showed just how classy and friendly these gentlemen are, as all of les anciens glorieux are, and how lucky the game is to have ambassadors like them.

Afterward, as we walked towards the coffee shop, Mom and I were over the moon. We just met the Roadrunner and the Pocket Rocket! At coffee, we talked with the lady from the line for nearly an hour about Habs memories, historical tidbits, and the age-old Halak vs. Price debate. We eventually had to go – it was 3 PM and we hadn’t had lunch yet – but it was great to meet a couple of new friends by chance, and wonderful beyond words to spend time with two legends of the game.

Sunday, February 20: The Heritage Classic

Sunday was the most ordinary day of the lot, with all my efforts to procure affordable tickets to the game ending unsuccessfully. It’s probably just as well, not only because the windchill dipped below -20°C, but also because the game, frankly, was kind of a dud.

To be sure, part of the problem was simply that the Habs got their asses kicked. But because of the low base temperature (around -12°C), ice conditions were less than ideal for an NHL-level game. The pucks hopped around crazily, players lost their edges more than usual, guys held up on hits, and both teams wound up giving up a lot of bad chances that they ordinarily wouldn’t. The result was a sloppily-played game all around, though Montreal was far and away the worse team for most of the game. They appeared, for a time, to have gotten their act together in the second period, but a shorthanded goal by Anton Babchuk made the game 2-0 partway through the period and all but sealed it. I have to admit, towards the end, I kind of wanted to see some history made. While Rene Bourque ultimately didn’t complete the first-ever outdoor hat trick, Miikka Kiprusoff did get the first-ever outdoor shutout in NHL history. The angles for the game – something Eddie and Doug had complained about with the Winter Classic – were good throughout, and seeing the game both in the Sun and under the lights was a nice treat.

After the game, I made arrangements to meet Canadiens and international hockey blogger Bruce Peter and his dad at a Chinese place near McMahon Stadium. We talked about hockey in pretty much every form you can think of: we talked about the Heritage Classic itself, the upcoming trade deadline and the recent trading flurry, the state of hockey development in eastern Europe (among other international topics), and the coping mechanisms needed when rooting for a bad team. After dropping the Peters at their car at the end of the night, I went pretty much straight to bed, because tomorrow, for me, was the big day.

Monday, February 21: WHL Outdoors

After parking and eating at the University, we walked down to the stadium and met up with our regular seatmates. Before the game, we headed into the merchandise tent and found that all the previous day’s stuff was 50% off. Score! We each got a couple of things and then went inside, arriving at our section just as the players were filing off the ice from warm-ups. That was when I got my first real look at the setup in McMahon, and it was certainly a special moment. I don’t know if it had the same impact as my first time at ice level of the Saddledome – I’ve been to McMahon for a few football games before – but I definitely enjoyed getting a good look in person at some of the stuff I’d seen on TV the day before. The three broadcast booths from the day before still sat behind the penalty boxes, but now the RDS booth had been redecorated in the colours of Rogers Sportsnet and the WHL Outdoors game. The temporary studios for CBC and Versus were still standing, but being packed up throughout the game. On the side where the players entered, there was a miniature sheet of ice for kids to play on, and on our side of the field were the giant Canadiens, Flames, and NHL logos, visible seemingly from orbit. Looming high above it all was the temporary scoreboard plunked in front of the regular McMahon Stadium scoreboard with possibly the largest video screen I’ve ever seen in my life. When we were shown on it before the game, I think I may have been about ten feet tall. Sitting.

The temperature for the game hovered around the freezing mark throughout, with only occasional winds bringing a serious chill. Being about ten degrees warmer than the previous evening did wonders for the ice and the game itself: it was faster, the players were less tentative about hitting and less prone to spilling for no apparent reason, and the puck didn’t bounce around like a tennis ball. It was probably the best-played of the games I saw that weekend, because it was the most like a regular, indoor game. Of course, despite the relative mildness, we were still dressed to the nines in thermal layers: longjohns, long-sleeve shirt, hoodie, jacket, sweet hat, double-layered gloves, and hand and foot warmers. It’s a good thing we did, too: after two hours, my feet started to freeze without the warmers, and when that wind picked up, it was nice to have two hoods to insulate my neck.

Before and during the game, the Hitmen honoured the history of junior hockey in Calgary. They started with the first Albertan team to win the Memorial Cup, the 1926 Calgary Canadians, then followed up with a couple of more recent franchises that have come and gone – the Calgary Buffaloes/Centennials, now the Tri-City Americans, and the Calgary Wranglers, now the Lethbridge Hurricanes – before finishing with our Hitmen. Throughout the game, during TV timeouts, videos were played commemorating the history of each team, their impact on the hockey world, and the legacy they left with the players. These were supplemented with interviews with team representatives, who all lauded Calgary’s junior hockey tradition and some of the key personnel involved. A key name that kept coming up was that of trainer “Bearcat” Murray, a fixture behind the Flames’ bench in the ‘80s and ‘90s and Mr. Everything – from bottle-washer to bus driver, as one put it – for the junior teams that came before. As someone with a long-standing interest in the history of the game, it was fun to learn a few new things about the legacy of the sport in the city prior to the Flames’ arrival. I wonder if the Flames did the same with the history of the pro game in Calgary, honouring their predecessors, the Tigers, Stampeders, and Cowboys.

In amongst all that, of course, there was a hockey game. It took a few minutes to acclimatize to the new angle, new jerseys, and strange circumstance: it was almost like we weren’t at a hockey game, at times, which made it hard to get into the play at first. But then, just two and a half minutes in, the Pats made it 1-0, and suddenly it became much easier to focus. A few penalties disrupted the flow midway through the first – the Hitmen wound up going 0/3 on maybe two minutes of actual power-play time, if that gives any indication – but it proceeded surprisingly well from there, with the pace picking up as the players got used to the situation. After one, the score remained 1-0 Regina.

Early in the second, immediately after a failed Hitmen power play, Pats captain Garrett Mitchell came out of the box, picked up a loose puck in the neutral zone, and scored on a breakaway. 2-0 Regina. Dammit. Towards the end of the period, Hitmen defender Spencer Humphries laid a hellacious but clean hit on Spencer Neigum, the Pats’ penalty-minute leader by a mile at 155 on the year. Needless to say, we saw our first scrap of the day, and it was a beauty, going on for well over a minute with both guys throwing ‘em like they meant it. Neigum was slapped with an instigator, and the Hitmen had another power play. Less than a minute in, defenceman Jaynen Rissling pinched into the high slot and slapped home a Trevor Cheek pass to bring the game to within one after 40 minutes.

In the third period, the Sun finally broke free of the clouds it had been hiding behind and lit up the north side of the rink. It was a bit like the Heritage Classic in reverse: dim skies under the lights replaced by a bright, sunny sky to finish the day. The Hitmen carried the momentum into the third period, with Minnesota Wild prospect Kris Foucault scoring his 20^th partway through the period to tie the game at two. The pace continued throughout the period, with physical play picking up and several net-front scrums ensuing. As the period drew to a close, overtime appeared to be in the offing, but it was not to be: with just 36.5 seconds left, Regina’s Chandler Stephenson scored his sixth of the year to make it 3-2. While the Hitmen made a valiant effort with the net empty, the game ended in a futile twelve-man battle in the low slot. Final score: Regina Pats 3, Calgary Hitmen 2. The record-breaking 20,888-strong crowd filed out, the vast majority of them Hitmen fans dejected at the last-second loss.

After the game, we returned to the merchandise tent. We initially left empty-handed, but I decided I really wanted a Habs Heritage Classic hoodie, so I ran back. None in my size. That should’ve been the end, but I got a couple of T-shirts instead – and an instant case of buyer’s remorse, as I saw that there were still Habs Heritage Classic jerseys available. I initially resisted, but then ran back again, only to find that the jerseys had been packed away. I left disappointed, but on the walk back to the van began to wonder why I was really disappointed. We had seen a lot of people in that tent in the minutes after the final horn; were we all just there to get some last-second deals, or were we really trying to feel less bummed-out by buying more neat stuff? More specifically, was I really upset about missing out on that jersey, or the way the game had ended?

In the end, I realized on the drive home that I needed to be more appreciative of the things I already had, and the things that I had already gotten out of the weekend. I already own 23 hockey jerseys, five of them Canadiens jerseys, more than any other team. In terms of “stuff” from the weekend, I cleaned up: T-shirts, a hoodie, a travel mug, a lanyard with my ticket in it, bags, programs, and various signed merchandise. But the most important thing I got out of the weekend was memories. Meeting people I’d spent years talking to online, getting a Habs jersey signed by two of the greatest players in franchise history – and interacting with two of the friendliest and most accommodating people in the sport – and spending the weekend with family and friends, enjoying the quality time together because of the game of hockey. That, ultimately, is what the Family Day weekend is all about, and that’s exactly what the Heritage Classic delivered. How could I possibly ask for more?

Over the All-Star Break, CBC released the results of an NHLPA poll that included many of the usual topics: favourite coach, best player, the instigator, etc. One of the questions in that poll was, “Which team would you least like to play for?” Coming in second with 20% of the votes was Edmonton (first: the Islanders at 27%). Dan Tencer, a local radio host, initially said on Twitter that, “[the] Number will change dramatically when [the] team gets better”, but then followed it up by saying, “[a] New building in [the] next few years would [also] improve the number.”Oh, geez. Not the arena thing again.For the past few years, the Oilers have been trying to extract some amount of government assistance in the construction of a new arena to replace their current home. Rexall Place (nee Northlands Coliseum) was built in 1974 for a World Hockey Association team, without many of the considerations that went into more modern facilities: luxury boxes, seating for more than 17,000, etc. Despite that, it’s a highly-touted concert and entertainment facility, that’s still considered to be in the middle of its life-cycle. All the same, I can see why the Oilers might want a larger, more state-of-the-art facility, something like the Bell Centre in Montreal.In principle, I don’t have a problem with the Oilers replacing their arena, even if I will miss the historical appeal of the current one, but I do oppose having the government get involved in building it. Part of this is out of philosophical opposition. Multimillion-dollar sports teams are not a public trust, and having the government pay for a new facility to make the team’s billionaire owner more money is abhorrent when we have many other, more pressing social ills and practical needs. Part of it, too, is because I know my town’s next. Calgary and Edmonton have long been like two feuding siblings, and what one has, the other “needs.” If Edmonton gets a taxpayer-funded downtown arena in the next couple of years, Calgary will want (and probably get) a taxpayer-funded replacement for the Scotiabank Saddledome soon thereafter. This, despite the fact that it is much newer (1983), much larger (19,289), more centrally located (just outside downtown on the Stampede Grounds), and much more distinctive. Having attended literally hundreds of games there over the last few years, I don’t think we need a new arena in Calgary any time soon, and I certainly don’t want to be footing the bill for it, especially if it goes bad. Thus my interest in the Edmonton arena situation.So with that, I’d like to go through some of the more common arguments that have been made in favour of building this new ice palace, and try to debunk them.1) “We won’t be able to attract free agents with this old thing.”Leaving aside the aforementioned historical charm and relative good health of the facility, there was another interesting piece of information coming out of that poll that counters this assertion. Rexall Place was voted as having the best ice in the League, which is a bit of a surprising result, considering the ice plant is old and has been in need of replacement for some time, but the players should know best. Combine this with the recent $3.5M renovation to the Oilers’ dressing room and training facilities and one is left wondering what could be so bad that players would refuse to come. It’s not like they’re stuck with long bathroom lines and cramped concessions. Tencer had it right the first time: when the team starts winning, the players will come. It’s not like anyone moves to Detroit for their health.2) “The Oilers can’t support themselves in the current situation.”The Oilers currently have four players on one-way NHL deals playing in the AHL: Sheldon Souray ($4.5M salary), Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers ($1.05M), Alexandre Giroux ($500K), and now Zack Stortini ($700K, pro-rated about $275K for the rest of the year). Add in Robert Nilsson’s $416,667 per year buyout, and you’re paying around $6.5M for guys not to play here this season. When the Oilers are losing “several million dollars” per year while not making the playoffs, one wonders whether making better financial decisions might not be a more efficient way to address the problem from both ends. Certainly, the fact that the Oilers have a bunch of bad contracts – and I’m not even getting into Khabibulin, Strudwick, Jacques, and MacIntyre, none of whom should be on an NHL roster at this point, never mind making a combined $5.6M this year – isn’t something the taxpayers should be rectifying.3) “Quebec City’s getting money from the federal government.”Not necessarily, and also an apples-and-oranges comparison, partially because Quebec City no longer has a team, whereas Edmonton still does, and partially because Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn’t need to buy votes in traditionally-conservative Alberta like he does in Quebec. Furthermore, it’s worth pointing out that even if this Quebec arena gets built, it’s no guarantee that they’ll ever get an NHL team. On the one hand, Gary Bettman is on record as saying that former NHL cities like Winnipeg and Quebec would likely get first dibs on any potentially relocated franchise; on the other hand, he also indicated that there no immediate plans for relocation and expansion. Furthermore, as Mario Lemieux can attest, the existence of an empty facility in another city can be a powerful, ah, motivator in convincing government officials to back your arena plan. Quebec, like Kansas City, is then left with a white elephant. It’s a deeply flawed, politically-motivated plan, and using it as justification for publicly funding an arena on the other side of the country is bad business.Update: In the time since I started this article, this story’s become a bit of a moving target. After initial reports that the federal government was considering a number of different funds to help support the venture, the province and city eventually agreed to foot the bill for just about everything. While this does set an unfortunate precedent for the situation in Edmonton, I believe that my overall point stands: the government paying for an arena so that a private corporation might get ownership of an NHL team at an indeterminate point in the future is a poor plan to emulate.4) “The Oilers could move to [Hamilton/Quebec City/Kansas City/Houston]!”Bull. Back when Katz bought the team three years ago, much was made of the fact that he was born, raised, and educated in Edmonton, made his billions in Edmonton, and was a friend of the old Boys on the Bus; as such, he naturally wanted to ensure that the team would remain there forever. Even if one were to believe that he’s willing to move the team – and I don’t – every Oilers owner since Peter Pocklington has threatened, with varying degrees of subtlety, to move the team; no one’s come close since Pocklington himself nearly succeeded in 1998, and times have changed since then. The Canadian dollar has been near par for years, making it once again possible for Canadian teams other than Toronto and Montreal to hold their own against the larger American markets. The economic downturn has deflated a lot of once-fat wallets, meaning there’s probably no one waiting in the wings to pack up the team and move them: certainly, Jim Balsillie isn’t interested in moving a Canadian team to Hamilton. Even if there were, the NHL has renewed its commitment to stability and a strong Canadian presence in the face of several dysfunctional ownerships in recent years; Gary Bettman wouldn’t stand for it. He just spent three years and many millions of the other NHL owners’ dollars ensuring that the Phoenix Coyotes, a financially insolvent team with a long tradition of losing that regularly plays before four-digit crowds in an inopportunely-placed arena, stayed put. The Oilers have too much history and too much support – in terms of both fans and local business – to go elsewhere, and any implications otherwise are absurd. Of course…see my response to #3. Even if it’s a crazy idea when you think rationally about it, the emotional reaction to such a threat is strong enough that one level of government or another probably will be blackmailed into doing it eventually, either to placate the people or to score points as “the guy[s] who saved the Oilers.”The bottom line is: there’s really no good argument for any level of government to pay for the Oilers to build a new arena. It’s not something we do here in Canada, it’s rife with risks to the public purse, and it’s highly unlikely to help the city’s economy or transform the surrounding area as advertised. More to the point, we the taxpayers have spoken up and said we don’t want it; we have better things to spend that money on. So do the right thing, Edmonton. Don’t give in to the emotional blackmail. Make Daryl Katz pay for his own arena, for all of our sakes.Glove tap to Andy Grabia, who’s been persistently following this story on Battle of Alberta and Why Downtown? since November 2006; his archives proved invaluable in tracking down many of the primary sources cited here.

Gary Bettman takes a lot of crap for things that probably aren’t really his fault, or at least not his alone. Yet as commissioner, he is the public face and cheerleader for all manner of unpopular and/or boneheaded moves, and thus gets jeered by fans across the NHL. (Funny enough, it doesn’t work the other way around: good moves tend to be attributed to the Board of Governors, the GMs, the Competition Committee, or even individuals like rising-star League executive Brendan Shanahan.) Take, for example, the “Gary Bettman loser point.” It probably actually came about as the brainchild of some GM or Hockey Operations type, who figured that by reducing the risk inherent to overtime, teams might be encouraged to go for it once they got there, instead of taking the risk-averse route and playing for the tie. It was a nice idea in theory, but ultimately an incomplete one.

At first, the loser point appeared to be doing its job and reducing the number of tied games¹, but over time, coaches figured out how to game the system, and as they are wont to do, promptly ruined everyone’s fun. Teams started playing for the tie more in regulation, in order to guarantee themselves at least one point.² As the perceived value of a standings point increased in the final third or so of the season, they probably played for the tie more in overtime, too: after all, why risk giving up the third point to a team you’re in a race with when you can trap it up and deny them that extra edge?³

The introduction of the shootout in 2005 was supposed to fix this by removing the tie outright, but instead it merely moved the goalposts. While at first, coaches may have resisted taking a chance on something unfamiliar, once they realized that it operated on the Any Given Sunday principle, i.e. that anyone could win a game with just three shots, they started playing for that instead – especially if their team wasn’t very good at the main game.⁴ Shootouts are on the rise with each passing year, and various proposals have been put forward to try to limit them in some fashion, including removing shootout wins from the tiebreaker, as was done this year⁵, and extending overtime to include a 3-on-3 component, which will likely happen in the next couple of years.

Wait, where are you going with all of this?

As I see it, there are two separate but related problems with the standings system. The first is that, because some games are worth three points and some only two, the standings are, frankly, a sham: teams now earn playoff spots and home ice, not on the basis of their ability to win hockey games, but on their ability to force overtime and win a skills competition. The second, which I’ve been laboriously working toward, is that the incentive structure is all wrong. A victory, regardless of how it comes, is worth the same two points it has been since time immemorial; a loss, depending on how it comes, could still earn you a point, without costing the other guy anything. There is a benefit to forcing overtime, but no corresponding cost to balance the system.

To demonstrate, let’s look at Eddie’s LA Kings, now mired in 11th place in the Western Conference despite a +18 goal differential, the fourth-best total in the West. In looking at their record, I immediately saw why: the Kings have just one OTL point all year, while no other team in the West has fewer than four, and most teams have five or six. Turn five of LA’s regulation losses into OT losses, and they move from 24-20-1 to 24-15-6 – one point out of fourth! If you go the other way, and lump all losses together, the Kings have the fourth-fewest aggregate losses in the West (21), behind only the three division leaders. Yet because the Kings have failed to force overtime to the same extent as their peers, they’re on the outside looking in. That doesn’t make a lick of sense.

So, what would you propose?

For years now, I’ve been a supporter of the three-point system used internationally: three points for a regulation win, two for an OT win, and one for an OT loss. While any system that rewards losing still strikes me as a bit wrong-headed, and certainly doesn’t address the incentive problem in overtime, it lessen the impact of said problem by encouraging teams to try to win it in regulation instead. After all, in a tight playoff race, who’s going to take the chance of giving a rival a point and sacrificing one in the process?

I don’t follow European hockey, so I don’t have numbers to support this, but anecdotally, I can point to the 2010 Olympics. In the round robin, Canada and Switzerland were tied with about ten minutes to go. Canada poured it on like a medal was on the line, because they knew that if they lost that third point, and didn’t beat the US, they’d be out of contention for a bye to the quarter-finals. While they were ultimately unable to forestall overtime (or beat the US, at least in the round robin), the fact that Canada played like they did beforehand tells me that at least in my sample of one, the incentive structure worked as intended.

The other benefit, of course, is that the standings would finally make sense again: every game would be worth the same, .500 would mean what it used to mean, and teams would be appropriately rewarded for winning in regulation. Sure, the record book would fly out the window, but I would argue that that already happened, back when the OTL and later shootout were implemented: wins and points totals are already inflated because of the systems now in place.⁶ I believe this will lead to more exciting finishes in regulation, as teams try to grab that third point for the win, and thus fewer shootouts, especially if coupled with something like Ken Holland’s 3-on-3 overtime plan. I think both results would be beneficial, since I’ve always felt that shootouts were a gimmicky and fundamentally unfair way to decide a team game.

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Postscript: Because I’m sure someone will be interested, here are the standings up to Monday night’s games, under the current system (L) and under the proposed three-point system (R). For the sake of a consistent comparison with different numbers of games played, I sorted it by points percentage, rather than points. (Note: NSOW = “non-shootout wins,” the NHL’s new tiebreaker for 2010-11; RW/RL are regulation wins/losses.) Unfortunately, it can’t really illustrate my key point – because it’s based on this year’s data, it’s based on this year’s incentives, so the Kings still get boned – but it at least shows what a three-point standings system would look like.

¹ The average number of ties per team per season held steady around 9-10 ties/team from the re-introduction of regular-season overtime in 1983 until the mid-‘90s; from there, it steadily climbed to around 12 ties/team by 1999, when the OTL point was introduced. The experiment worked, kinda, for a couple of years: the average dropped to around 10 ties/team for a couple of years before climbing back up to 11.3 ties/team the last year before the lockout. Incidentally, if you’re looking for a reason for the increase in ties through the ‘90s, it’s probably related to the general slogging-down that crept into the game over that period of time: teams went from averaging just under 300 goals per season through the late ‘80s and early ‘90s to just over 200 goals per season between the late ‘90s and the lockout.

² The number of overtime games per team per season increased from 16.5 in the last two years pre-OTL to around 18 the first three years after, and nearly 21 (!) in the final two years before the lockout.

³ I really wish I had a tally of how many ties/shootouts happened at a given point of the season (by halves, quarters, or months; any would work) to back this assertion up.

⁴ Indeed, the average number of overtime games per team per season held steadily at 18 from 2005-09, before increasing to 20 last year; meanwhile, the average number of shootouts went from 9.7 in the first post-lockout year to 10.6 two years ago to 12.3 last year.

⁵ Removing the shootout win from the tiebreaker may be working: the number of OT games is down from 20 to 18.7 (prorated) this year. Meanwhile, the average number of shootout games has decreased from 12.3 to 8.9 (prorated) this year, the lowest post-lockout total, and in line with the number of ties we saw in the ‘80s. These could be year-by-year fluctuations, with last year more of a blip, or they could be evidence of the system working as intended. We probably won’t find out, because they’ll change the system long before we have enough data, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

⁶ Average wins and points, respectively, since the lockout: 41 and 91.4; between 1983-99, adjusted for an 82-game schedule, they were 35.9 and 82.

I had such grand plans.

Thanks to a pretty murderous eight-week stretch of school/work, highlighted by three different conference presentations, I didn’t really have much time for writing. I had planned to write a piece about the pros and cons of sending junior-eligible players to the AHL, but then stats changed, arguments had to be rewritten, and it needed too much work to be timely, so I dropped it for now. Then, I figured I’d write something about some of the misconceptions people in hockey have about the brain and brain injuries, inspired by comments made on the show; that turned into a tossed-together last-minute email with a rather regrettable tone that made me cringe when it was read on the show. Oops. Fortunately, because only a small bit was read out, I can reformat it into something more professional to be posted here; that’s next on the docket.

In the meantime, I was inspired by an email to the show with the suggestion of an All-Star format pitting stars with Stanley Cup rings against those without. While Eddie and Doug dismissed the notion on the basis of there not being enough All-Star talent without Stanley Cup rings, I strongly disagree. I’ve written in the past that I think the win stat is overrated, and that the idea of a person “being a winner” or “not being a winner” is similarly irrelevant. I figure that a team of Cup-less All-Stars should stand a pretty decent chance against an All-Star team full of previous champions. To that end, I decided to do a bit of research, using the latest fan polling numbers as a guideline, then substituting as need be to make up the two All-Star teams. It’s far from perfect, as I haven’t tried to force equal representation by conference, or make sure every team has at least one representative, but I think it makes the overall point. So here are my preliminary rosters for Team Champs and Team No Rings, with a few comments thereafter.

Breaking things down by position:

Forwards: I think this is actually a well-matched group: these names are all over the top 50 in NHL scoring, and nearly all of them have at least 0.9 points per game this season. There’s a couple of Art Ross, Rocket Richard, and Hart Trophies on each side of the ledger, with the Champs having a slight hardware edge from Lady Byngs and Conn Smythes. There are also several players on each team who are good at both ends of the rink, which means that no one’s going to get hemmed in and beaten upon forever. There is a bit of a dearth in diversity here, with nearly everyone having at least one teammate or recent ex-teammate to work with, but then it’s hardly a surprise that there are a lot of dynamic duos and whole lines clustered together at the top of the scoring charts, since there are going to be plenty of assists to go around in these groups. If there’s an edge, I might give it slightly to the Champs, but either of these line-ups could torch even an All-Star goalie at will, so I’m calling it a wash.

Defence: This is the one area where the No Rings club really struggles. If Andrei Markov (knee), Mark Streit (shoulder), and Sheldon Souray (team pettiness) were available, I think the gap would be considerably smaller, but as far as what we have to work with, it’s hard not to favour the Champs here. Then again, maybe I’m overthinking this, putting too much stock into defensive reputation: we are talking about an All-Star Game, here. Six of the seven guys on Team No Rings played at the last Olympics – only Mike Green, who scored 31 goals last year, missed the cut on a stacked Canadian roster – and everyone’s getting the job done at both ends, when considering the ice time given to each player (Weber plays a lot of shorthanded minutes, as does Marc Staal, whom I pulled to give a little more scoring zip). As much as Doug’s ridden Lubo in the past, he was Ladislav Smid’s partner during his only good year to date, which can’t be a coincidence. He’s currently one of only two pluses on a sorry-looking Ducks blueline, as well as one of the top defensive scorers this season. Meanwhile, Ryan Whitney is the Oilers’ best overall blueliner and leading scorer this year, and the only one I could justify shoehorning in there as a homer pick. Still, I look at the Champs’ defence, and think that if your weak spots are Kris Letang and Dustin Byfuglien, with the seasons they’re having, you don’t really have a weak spot. Advantage Champs.

Goaltending: Here’s where the Champs have some real trouble. I had a hard time actually finding enough goalies to fill the roster who weren’t having terrible years, and realized that that’s in part because there just aren’t that many Stanley Cup champion goaltenders to begin with. I count ten in all, with two injured (Brodeur, Giguere), two who have aged and aren’t very good anymore (Khabibulin, Osgood), Niemi struggling, Gerber in the minors, and Mathieu Garon rounding out the list. Meanwhile, not appearing on the depth chart for Team No Rings are, among others, Ryan Miller, Roberto Luongo, Henrik Lundvist, Sergei Bobrovsky, Jonathan Quick, Nicklas Backstrom, Jonas Hiller, and Tomas Vokoun. While each of the champion goalies have shone at times this year, each of them has struggled mightily either this year or in the recent past; by contrast, there are so many good goalies who haven’t won a Cup yet it’s almost impossible to go wrong. That’s why I could leave last year’s Vezina winner in the press box, and also why I felt that I could get away with losing a defensive stud like Marc Staal for more offence. Advantage No Rings.

So, how would this theoretical All-Star Game turn out? I think it would wind up being pretty close: while their D could be a bit of a liability, the No Rings would ultimately be able to compensate with superior goaltending, making it a reasonably close game. I think the reason for this is that ultimately, in a thirty-team league, there are going to be twenty-nine “losers” every year, most of which will have a star or two on the roster, and some of which will have several. Whether or not a player has won a championship has no real bearing on how talented they are or their ability to get the job done in any given situation, especially in that situation is the All-Star Game, which carries all the pressure of a Friday night beer-league game.

*     *     *

¹ Looking at Halak’s stats at first, I almost pulled him, but then I remembered that he started like a house on fire, so I decided to take a closer look. Turns out he had three games out of four in mid-November where everything went in: half of the 8-1 game in Columbus, the 6-3 game in Colorado, and the 7-3 game in Detroit. Take those out, and his stats go from okay (2.37 GAA, .911 SV%) to all-time great (1.63 GAA, .939 SV%). Sure, you can call that cherry-picking stats, and it’s not really a great bit of analysis for many reasons, but I’m mostly bringing it up to show how one brief, bad slump can really sink your stats this early in the season. I bet things will mostly average out for Halak over the course of the year.

Since this week is Northwest Division Week, I thought I’d write my own Edmonton Oilers season preview, somewhat but not entirely in the style that the podcast has been doing these things.

Last Season: They were incredibly, almost indescribably, bad, earning the #1 pick with all of their might. Their final record was 27-47-8, good for 62 points and dead last with a bullet: the 29^th-place team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, had 74 points.

Additions: Colin Fraser, Kurtis Foster, Jim Vandermeer, Steve MacIntyre (WHY?!), Martin Gerber, Alexandre Giroux, Shaun Belle, Greg Stewart, and Brad Moran

Subtractions: Ethan Moreau, Patrick O’Sullivan, Robert Nilsson, Ryan Stone, Fernando Pisani, Ryan Potulny, Marc Pouliot, Mike Comrie, Aaron Johnson, Dean Arsene, Chris Minard, Charles Linglet

Prospects to Watch: Too numerous to describe them all in detail, but leaving aside the three everyone’s familiar with and talking about already - Jordan Eberle, Magnus Pääjärvi, and Taylor Hall, the Oilers’ last three first-round selections, or “the Sales Crew,” as some have called them - as well as guys like Anton Lander and Toni Rajala, who we already know are staying in Europe this year, we have:

• Linus Omark (23): A shootout wizard with over 200 pro games’ experience in the SEL and KHL, he’s the unnoticed NHL-ready prospect. Omark is small, but he’s apparently got some two-way ability, which may force the big club’s hand in choosing between him and one of the shinier prospects. He might be a guy who starts the year in the AHL, then winds up replacing one of the other kids when they struggle around December.
• Theo Peckham (22): The time is now for Peckham. He’s got the physical tools to be a punishing defender in the Jason Smith mold, but he had a rocky start last year due to injury and poor conditioning. He seemed to get it together in the second half, though, and there’s a spot there for him to apprentice on the third pairing this season, if he wants to grab it. With Steve Smith - another guy Peckham could stand to emulate in a lot of ways - tutoring him from the bench, he could earn himself a more permanent place on the roster by the end of the year…as long as he doesn’t score on himself, of course.
• Alex Plante (21): Injuries have sidetracked him, but have yet to utterly derail him, which is a small miracle in and of itself, given the nature of them (two concussions and a back injury). After leading the WHL in playoff defensive scoring in 2009, he stepped into the AHL and earned more responsibility over the course of last season, including a brief NHL call-up, before his second career concussion terminated his season. He doesn’t have Sheldon Souray’s cannonading shot from the point, but he could develop into a Souray type of player: a physical, shot-blocking top-four defenceman who can run a power play and kill penalties. He still needs to work on his foot speed, but he’s been doing so every summer to date, which is a good sign. He’ll be a top-four, and possibly top-two, guy in Oklahoma City this year, and will likely see a little more NHL time, too.

Honourable mention goes to Teemu Hartikainen (20), a fifth-round power forward from Finland who’s shown good hands and put up numbers in the SM-Liiga; he may earn an NHL call-up at some point in the year, but forward is a crowded position for youth.

Strengths:

• Youth: With the Sales Crew all penciled into the opening night lineup, to go with a forward corps that already includes Ales Hemsky, Dustin Penner, Sam Gagner, and Shawn Horcoff, there’s loads of speed, skill, and hockey sense there, which could make for some exciting plays and exciting games.
• Coaching: The hiring of Tom Renney represents a return to responsible bench management, after a year of Pat Quinn’s inattentive 1-2-3-1-2-3-4 line rolling and bizarre line combinations (Horcoff-Hemsky-Jacques? Seriously?!). While the aforementioned veterans will probably see their numbers suffer somewhat by playing against the best of the best and starting a lot of shifts in the defensive zone, simply because no one else can, it also means that the kids won’t get completely murdered every shift, and will have the best possible opportunity to show their stuff. Effective line combinations will probably also make a big difference, especially with the rookies.

Weaknesses:

• Youth: Young guys get slaughtered by pretty much every defensive and possession metric ever devised, meaning that however easy the coach tries to make it for them, they’re probably going to still spend a fair bit of time trapped in their own zone and giving up goals that players with a little more seasoning and savvy will avoid. This is especially true of 18-year-old rookies not named Sidney Crosby, which means things are going to be particularly difficult for Taylor Hall.
• Defence: Tom Gilbert and Ryan Whitney were good in a short stretch after the deadline last year, but I’d like to see them together for a little while longer before I believe in them as a No. 1 pairing. After that, though, things get really sketchy. We probably have Ladislav Smid and Kurtis Foster on the No. 2 pairing, which is one pairing higher than I’m comfortable with. Then there’s the third pairing, which over the course of the year will likely include various combinations of Jim Vandermeer, Jason Strudwick, Theo Peckham, Taylor Chorney, and Alex Plante; outside maybe Vandermeer, none of those options are very confidence-inspiring.
• Goaltending: The Oilers’ goaltending depth chart for 2010 consists of, in order: 1) a 37-year-old convicted drunk driver with a long injury rap sheet, dehydration issues, and one good season in the last six; 2) a 25-year-old prospect who spent key developmental years eating hot dogs and watching other teams’ prospects get better, while the Oilers twiddled their thumbs on their AHL affiliation; 3) a lanky youngster who very nearly set the NHL record for most minutes played without a win; 4) an aging career backup/marginal starter last seen in the NHL sieving it up for the Leafs and Senators two seasons ago. There’s some potential there to be sure, and I’m the last guy to hold Devan Dubnyk’s W-L record against him alone, but any way you look at it, if the plan was to win hockey games, surely even Jose Theodore would’ve been signed by now.

Question Marks:

• The Elephant (Not) in the Room: Now that it’s abundantly clear that this was Sheldon Souray’s last act in an Oilers uniform, the question becomes, what the hell do we do with him? Ideally, the return would be a young defender and a draft pick, but that absolutely isn’t happening now, not with bridges so thoroughly burned. The best-case scenario, I think, would be taking on a different problem contract of equal or lesser duration. While Wade Redden would appear to be an ideal move - it would get the Rangers under the cap, and give the Oilers a veteran defenceman looking for a fresh start - he also costs $1M more than Souray for twice as long. I’m beginning to think that I’d rather see him just bought out and be done with it: I don’t know the exact rules for buyout cap-hits, but ballparking it at under $2M over the next four seasons, it may be an attractive option if things drag out too much longer. Re-entry waivers - half the cap hit over two years - would also work in that scenario.
• Injuries: The Oilers have been one of the most-injured teams in the NHL the last few years. The training staff, led by Kevin Lowe’s brother Kenny, was fired during the summer in the wake of Sheldon Souray’s comments to the media, but Souray was specifically critical of management, claiming they, not the trainers, forced him to play injured. Knowing Kevin Lowe’s reputation as someone who’d play through anything - to say nothing of his overall track record in player procurement, salary management, and pissing off players and managers alike - you have to wonder if the right Lowe was fired. I guess we’ll see.
• Depth: I was waffling between putting this entry here or under Weaknesses. Certainly, the Oilers have been haemhorraging good depth players, especially centres, since 2006, and generally failing to replace them, making things much harder than they had to be. This year, though, there’s some unknowns. Will Fraser and Horcoff be enough down the middle to cover their defensive needs? Probably not. So, is Gagner’s two-way game ready? Maybe. Do we want to use Gagner in a two-way capacity? Probably not; I’d rather get him scoring first. What about Cogliano? He says he’s committed to playing a better defensive game and learning how to win faceoffs, so maybe he takes the third-line centre role. Will someone like Chris Vande Velde or Ryan O’Marra force his way onto the roster as a penalty killer? What effect, if any, will Zack Stortini’s surprising competence at fourth-line centre have on how this shakes out? And what about down the wings? Are there enough guys on the roster capable of playing a two-way role to force someone like Jean-Francois Jacques - a good AHL player but a terrible NHL player - off the roster? Who would replace him? Another young guy, like Omark, or one of our AHL veterans, like Moran or Giroux? Are they really going to run out Steve MacIntyre again? Didn’t they learn the first time that he’s a goon who can’t play hockey? Will Pääjärvi’s experience as a converted defender give him an edge somewhere along the way? There’s a ton of questions here, and while I’m leaning towards this being a weakness, the bottom half of the roster seems pretty malleable; that could be where the interesting decisions are made in training camp.

Keys to Victory: It really depends on how you define “victory.” Many fans would rather see another lottery pick this year, then get really good next year; that might be the best strategy, especially if they’re in a hole by the All-Star Break. In terms of winning the most hockey games this year, it basically requires everything to go right: at least two of the Sales Crew reach Calder-level performances, the goaltending is at least adequate, the injuries die down, the young vets take the next step, Shawn Horcoff has a bounce-back year without a bum shoulder and two boat-anchors strapped to his legs, and so on and so forth. Is it possible for this team to make the playoffs? Well, the Avalanche did it last year, despite getting outshot and outchanced horrifically for much of the season: if enough improvements and enough luck come in enough areas, the Northwest is no flaming hell outside of Vancouver, so anything’s possible. Still, I wouldn’t call it terribly likely either way: I don’t see a Craig Anderson anywhere in that lineup, for starters.
Given that this is a young, rebuilding team, it’s probably in everyone’s best interests if the team tanks it for another year, collects another shiny bauble, then comes back in another year or two, once the new kids have had some seasoning and maybe a guy like Lander’s ready to come over. Maybe then we start playing more like a Los Angeles or even a Chicago, and we can finally be proud of our team again, after so many years of making the news for being so horrifically run. Regardless, everyone knows that our Stanley Cup dreams are probably three or four years away at this point, so let’s just hope the kids learn a few things over the course of the season and that no one dies in the process: Lord knows we’ve had just about everything else happen.

In reading and listening to the media reaction in the wake of the Ilya Kovalchuk saga, it’s struck me as very odd that everyone expects the NHLPA to support Kovalchuk’s right to an absurd, salary cap-breaking contract. While I’m sure the PA felt compelled to do so,victory would have meant that the rankandfile - most of whom will never have the opportunity or right to demand a similar deal for themselves-would lose more money off their paycheques to escrow, something I don’t think everyone’s fully considered. It brings to mind Spock’s famous line from Star Trek II, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few¹:while a couple dozen elite players would benefit from such a victory, the hundreds of others at the opposite end of the scale, would get screwed, meaning that ultimately, this probably isn’t something the PA really wanted to go through, anyway.

To back up for a second, as an emailerto the show noted a few weeks back, the players get a finite sum of money each year, regardless of what the numbers on the contracts say: specifically, they get 57% of hockey-related revenues, no more and no less. As revenues go up, player compensation goes up. If the cap increases out of proportion with League revenue, however, the players don’t get any more money: they’re locked in at 57%, come Hell or high water. This is where escrow comes into play: at the start of the year, the NHL and NHLPA set a percentage of each player’s salary to be stored in escrow, based on projected revenues and projected salaries. This number is updated periodically, and at the end of the year, the players get back any money they’ve paid in up to the 57%; the rest goes back to the owners.

To show how cap-circumventing contracts make things worse, let’slook at the most extreme example:Kovalchuk’s initial, rejected contract. He would have gotten $102M over 17 years, but just $3.5M of that over the last six years of the deal. The going assumption on this deal, and others like it, is that the player will retire when his salary becomes a (relative) pittance, so assume he retires after Year 11 of the deal, at the age of 38, having gotten $98.5M out of the $102M. His average salary for those 11 years would have been $8.95M, while his cap hit throughout would have only been $6M. As long as that the players are already slated receive more than their 57% share, that extra $3M per year he’s getting above his cap hit - which in some years would be as high as $5.5M - will show up in the League’s end-of-year accounting as money paid out above and beyond the players’ share, and will come right back to the owners out of the escrow fund. This loss is spread out equally across all 700+ players in the NHL, even though it’s entirely due to Kovalchuk’s contract. Is that really what the PA wants to be fighting for? Costing all its members extra money so one of them can get a couple extra million dollars?

Of course, the real question is, what’s the actual cost for each player? Tyler Dellow did some calculations using the nine most egregiously front-loaded deals as of last December, to try and get an estimate. If you update the numbers to include the final version of the Kovalchukcontract, it turns out that over the next four years, the “Frontloaded Ten”- Dellow’s nine plus Kovalchuk - will get an average of $17.2M more per season in cash than they will consume in cap dollars. Based on thesenumbers from Sports Business Journal, the players received $1.67B in salary last year, making that numberabout 1% of all player salary,which gets clawed back by the owners at the end of the year. Now, in the grand scheme of things, 1% isn’t all that much, but when you consider the fact that the owners pulled back 10.8% of the players’ salaries last year, it’s a severely disproportionate percentage of the whole, coming out of just ten contracts. Moreover, not having to pay that extra 1% would result in an extra $10,000 per $1M salary coming back to the players, which is a pretty meaningful sum of money whether you’re making $500,000 or $11M; just ask Dan Ellis.On the other hand, if any of these front-loaded players were to finish up their contracts, they’d wind up pushing things back the other way, as the latter portion of Tyler’s chart shows, but then most of today’s working stiffs probably won’t be around in eight or ten years to enjoy the corresponding decrease in escrow.

Now, maybe at the end of the day, everyone agrees that this is worth it. After all, it’s only 1%, and in exchange, the best of the best can get as much money as the owners can throw at them, and the best teams have a better chance of staying together longer. For some guys, like Drew Doughty, it’s a worthwhile sacrifice today, because it means he has a good shot at one of these deals tomorrow, but I wonder how the average NHLer would feel, if he realized that those ten contracts alone could move the escrow needle as much as they do. Would he still have wanted the Kovalchuk deal to stand as it was, without amending the CBA for future cases? I also wonder ifthe “Kovalchuk Rule” be enough to deter these crazy long-term deals, or at least tamp down their effects on escrow. We won’t know, really,for at least a couple of years, but if I’m Joe NHLer, I’m secretly hoping so, because while those changes may look like a capitulation by the PA, theycouldultimately prove tobe a small victory for the majority of its members.

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¹ Let me get on my nerd soapbox for a second: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one of the best science-fiction movies ever, and I will brook no opposition on this. The themes of revenge, redemption, and sacrifice are timeless, and the way they are executed in this film helped pull Star Trek above its usual place as camp theatre and special effects extravaganza, by telling a more universal story. It also transformed Khan from just another scenery-chewing Monster of the Week into one of the genre’s most memorable villains, and gave Kirk some much-needed human failings, to complement the damn-the-rules-I’m-always-right space cowboy of the ‘60s. The space battles, by dispensing with a lot of the future tech in favour of more traditional naval-style combat, had more punch and more tension than anything else in the franchise’s history, culminating in a heroic sacrifice that you’d have to be a robot not to be moved by. The only flaw, in my mind, is that they made a Star Trek III. And that it was terrible.

Summer sucks. It’s hot, sweaty, stinky, and worst of all, there’s no good hockey news out. Oh, sure, if you’re big on legal shenanigans, you’re probably in heaven: we’ve got the never-ending Kovalchuk saga and the can of worms that could potentially open, Khabibulin’s DUI, the Blackhawks’ cap crunch, Tom Hicks’ financial woes, and if you’re really feeling nostalgic for 2009, some more Phoenix Coyotes ownership malarkey. For those of us who hate the business end of the game, though, it’s been another dreary summer. So, I decided to take some time out and write an article or two about the history of the game, and for my first topic, I naturally picked a subject near and dear to my heart: the Edmonton Oilers. Or at least, that’s what I had intended.

See, when I started writing this article many weeks ago, I thought it would be interesting to trace back the history of the dynasty Oilers, not so much through the NHL period – everyone knows that story – but in their origins with the World Hockey Association and more specifically, the profound influence of the Winnipeg Jets of the latter half of the 1970s. But as I was writing it up, I kept coming back to not just the specific details of the Jets and their dominance, but the way the WHA did business as a whole, and how it planted the seeds for the way the NHL does business today. Many of the changes wrought in the NHL through the ‘70s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s had their origins in things the WHA did to try to get an edge on the NHL (or later, blackmail them into a merger deal), with the 1980s Oilers being the most prominent symbol of those changes. So, I’ve refocused a bit on the larger story of the World Hockey Association, and how a small, crazy, but determined league, with more dollars than sense (and not that many dollars to begin with) managed to change professional hockey forever.

The Golden Jet

The WHA was borne out of the same era that gave us the American Football League and the American Basketball Association, two rebel leagues that changed the faces of their respective sports through the 1960s and early 1970s. In fact, the WHA was founded by some of the same businessmen who had founded the ABA some years earlier, with a similar goal in mind. The problem was, they didn’t know a hell of a lot about hockey, and didn’t have many contacts in the hockey world. Enter “Wild Bill” Hunter, a junior hockey owner in Edmonton who’d made his reputation as an anti-authoritarian by founding the Western Canada Hockey League (now the WHL) in the late ‘60s against the express wishes of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, stealing the best teams from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba out of their respective provincial junior leagues in order to provide better overall competition for Western teams¹. Hunter helped put league brass in touch with a number of other hockey men, many of them NHL expansion rejectees or old buddies from the WCHL, and the WHA was set to drop the puck with a slate of twelve teams in the fall of 1972.

In the beginning, it was pretty easy to sign players. NHLers and AHLers alike were woefully underpaid compared to their brethren in other sports, thanks to a couple of unfortunate circumstances of that period. One was their weak union, led by the conniving and thieving Alan Eagleson, who posed as the players’ best friend while acting as the NHL’s puppet ruler. The other was to the reserve clause, a restrictive and illegal bit of language that allowed NHL teams to keep their players in perpetuity, and intimidate anyone who got uppity with the threat of being traded to a league also-ran or simply shipped down to the minors. The WHA used this to their advantage, deciding early on that they would not use the reserve clause, and offering two to three times more money than whatever the player had previously been making. For minor leaguers in particular, this was a pretty sweet deal: $12,000 per year in the AHL, or $30,000 in the WHA? Not much of a choice.

But while the new league had money and ideals, they didn’t have a marquee player, a legitimate star who would lend them instant credibility. After considering and dismissing recently retired Detroit star Gordie Howe – who’d eventually spend six years in the WHA with Houston and New England – they settled on Chicago’s Bobby Hull, and decided that the Winnipeg Jets, one of the more well-heeled teams in the new league, should sign him. His contract was up in 1972, which was perfectly timed, and he’d recently come off a bitter public feud with Bill Wirtz and the Black Hawks organization over that same deal. The Jets made their first overtures in the fall of 1971, and were greeted with a polite thanks-but-no-thanks. Hull’s agent was intrigued, though, and kept pushing for a deal. Eventually, Hull said he’d agree to play in Winnipeg for a million dollars – “to get rid of them,” he’d later admit – but despite the absurdity of his demand, the Jets came through. In the summer of ‘72, Bobby Hull became the Golden Jet, the face of the WHA, signing for five years and $2.75M, which included that crazy $1M signing bonus.

The NHL had not taken the WHA very seriously to this point, and with good reason: the new league had already seen five franchise relocations before a game had even been played, and hadn’t really signed away anyone of consequence. In response, the NHL expanded to Long Island and Atlanta for ’72 and announced plans for more expansion in ’74, to cut off potential expansion sites for the WHA, and also declined the new league’s challenge for the Stanley Cup². Moreover, there were two WHA teams – the New England Whalers in Boston and the Raiders in New York – challenging long-established NHL teams (and the most recent Stanley Cup finalists) in their own buildings! Little wonder, then, that NHL president Clarence Campbell wasn’t convinced that the newcomers posed a real long-term threat: the whole thing read like a flash in the pan, a bunch of crazy moves to drum up publicity based around an unsustainable financial model. By signing Hull, however, the WHA had crossed the line: they’d not only signed away one of the NHL’s best players, but in the weeks that followed, dozens more NHLers, this time of a somewhat higher calibre than before. Boston, Toronto, Chicago, California, and the expansion Islanders had been particularly hard-hit, and many other teams, most notably the Rangers, had to pay through the nose, relatively speaking, to keep their stars in the fold.

The NHL’s response this time was swift and predictable: they filed injunctions against Bobby Hull and every NHLer who had followed him. While all the other injunctions were thrown out immediately, the NHL won the one that mattered, against Hull in Chicago, setting up an appeal that would drag into the WHA’s inaugural season. Fortunately for the Jets and the WHA, however, the appeals judge was not terribly impressed by the NHL’s arguments citing the reserve clause: he slammed the NHL’s business practices as monopolistic, conspiratorial, and illegal, struck down the injunction, and made it clear that any future injunctions based on the reserve clause would be stillborn, essentially killing that, too. Of all the crazy moves they made in their early years, it was the WHA’s craziest move of all that changed everything. Not only were Hull and the others to play in the WHA, but the foundation had also been laid for the modern free-agency system, though thanks again to Eagleson and his intentionally toothless NHLPA, true unrestricted free agency didn’t come to the NHL until the 1990s.

European Invasion

Of course, the new league may have had Bobby Hull, and later Gordie Howe, but that was really about it. Even the NHLers who followed Hull, capable as they were, weren’t the sort of players that put bums in seats, and there were a lot of has-beens and never-weres in the mix, thanks to those rich contracts to minor-leaguers. Hull was getting frustrated with the lack of help, and was on the verge of retirement. To placate the league’s meal ticket, the Jets made one of the most forward-thinking and unusual moves in hockey to that date: since they weren’t exactly going to be plucking Stan Mikita out of Chicago for Hull to play with, they decided to try their luck overseas³. Through a friend of chief scout Billy Robinson, they got in touch with winger Anders Hedberg and centre Ulf Nilsson, who would join Hull in forming the greatest line in WHA history, the Hot Line. With them came smooth-skating defenceman and future captain Lars-Erik Sjöberg, whose skillset reads not unlike that of Scott Niedermayer.

When the three Swedes signed in the summer of ’74, they agreed that they would try to influence the Jets towards a more European style of play. This meant much more east-west movement and changing of positions as holes opened up, as opposed to the traditional north-south, stay-in-your-lanes game that the NHL and WHA had played to that point. It was a beautiful, flowing game that would require significant skill, great skating, and above-average hockey sense, but all three could bring it, and most importantly, Hull had been keen to play in that style since before leaving Chicago. After just one practice, the Hot Line was ready to take the league by storm, which is precisely what they did. That first year, Hull set the WHA record at 77 goals, while Nilsson finished second in assists with 94. Granted, the Jets still missed the playoffs in 1975, but it wasn’t due to any failings on the part of their Europeans, who now numbered seven or eight, and included a couple of Finns in addition to the many Swedes they’d recruited. In fact, the Jets found their Canadians to typically be the ones lacking, and turfed some of them in favour of more Swedes!

As you might expect, the Jets’ European contingent proved to be popular targets, especially the two on the Hull line. Euros were “soft,” and easy to intimidate, so the theory went: scare off the Swedes, lock down Hull, and call it a night. Problem was the Swedes didn’t scare that easily. They took their lumps, played through the abuse, and frustrated their opponents by dominating them, anyway, particularly on the many power plays they earned. From 1975-79, the Jets played in all four Avco Cup Finals, winning three of them; they beat the Soviet Red Army 5-3, two years after the Habs tied them, with the Hot Line outscoring the Kharlamov line 5-0⁴; they even challenged the Canadiens to an exhibition series, which was sadly never played. They were the dynasty of the WHA, and there didn’t seem to be much anyone could do to stop them. WHA veteran Dennis Sobchuk summarizes the experience of “defending” against Hull, Nilsson, and Hedberg:

“They’d do all these criss-crosses and drop passes, and the puck would just be sitting there between the dots while you took your man to the net. Then you’d look up and see Bobby going a hundred miles an hour with his stick over his head. You’d just close your eyes and you wouldn’t open them until you heard the puck hit the glass or the crowd react to the goal. It was one of the scariest sights you could imagine.”

Slats and Gretz

The nigh-unstoppability of the Jets was a source of frustration for most, but for journeyman winger Glen Sather, in the twilight of his career as captain of the Edmonton Oilers in 1976-77, they were a source of inspiration. Sather saw the magic up close and personal, playing twelve games against the Jets and seeing his team go 4-8 (0-6 in Winnipeg) and get outscored 72-33, including 61-15 in the eight losses. No, that’s not a typo. He witnessed firsthand how they frustrated defences, and realized that understanding and emulating them would be the key to beating them (or at least staunching the bleeding). So, when head coach Bep Guidolin stepped down late in the season and handed the reins of the team to his captain, Slats immediately changed the game plan. Amazingly, the Oilers, who had gone 11 games under .500 to that point, finished the year 9-7-2 and snuck into a playoff berth on the final weekend of the year. They followed that up with a one-game-below-.500 performance the next season and another low playoff seed. Granted, they got pasted 4-1 in the playoffs both years by league powers Houston and New England, respectively, but it was a step in the right direction, which the fans appreciated, if nothing else. Still, Sather wanted to challenge the Jets, and in order to do that, the Oilers would need a major infusion of talent, which serendipity would provide in 1978.

To give a bit of background, during the ‘70s, the NHL draft age was 20, meaning that no matter how talented you were, you weren’t making the NHL until at least then. The WHA felt this, too, was an unfair and illegal practice, and eventually got the courts to see their way on this topic, as well.⁵ After merger talks fell through in 1977 thanks to three of the old-guard owners the WHA had wronged five years earlier – in Toronto, Boston, and Chicago – the rebel league decided to step up the pace on signing kids, reasoning that eventually, the NHL would have to accept a merger, just to gain the rights to those players. Among the players who got their start in the WHA as teenagers were longtime NHLers Ken Linseman, Rick Vaive, Craig Hartsburg, Rob Ramage, and Michel Goulet, as well as future Hall of Famers Mark Messier and Mike Gartner. The biggest prize of all, though, was the 17-year-old kid from Brantford who’d just lit junior hockey on fire, scoring three points per game and setting an OHA record with 70 goals as a 16-year-old in 1977-78, leaving little to prove at that level despite not being draft-eligible until 1981. Wayne Gretzky was ready to turn pro; the only question was, with whom.

It turns out that it wasn’t originally supposed to be with Edmonton: while he’d later be the perfect cornerstone for Glen Sather’s European-by-way-of-Winnipeg system, he was first courted by the Birmingham Bulls at the 1978 World Juniors, declining then because his father insisted that he finish his junior season. By the time Gretzky came available, the Bulls had no room for him, opening the door for Nelson Skalbania, former Oilers owner and future Flames owner, to sign him as the star attraction of his revitalized Indianapolis Racers, much as Sidney Crosby would be in Pittsburgh more than 25 years later. Unfortunately, Indy didn’t have the hockey history or appetite that the Steel City did, and moreover, the pressure seemed to be getting to the young prodigy, who had failed to impress in his early games. He finally broke out of his slump and showed his phenomenal gifts during a home game against the Oilers, scoring his first two professional goals against Sather’s club that night in a mere eight seconds, no doubt leaving an impression on the young bench boss. When Skalbania decided the experiment was over and started shopping Gretzky to make ends meet, it became a match made in heaven. While the Jets themselves made a competitive offer, they couldn’t afford to match Peter Pocklington’s pure-cash deal⁶. Gretzky, Peter Driscoll, and Eddie Mio became Oilers for $850,000, giving the Oilers the foundation for a dynasty; Indy, despite the cash infusion, bled out before Christmas.

Wayne flourished in his new environment, surrounded by veterans who could show him the ropes and support him through his early growing pains, and placed into a system that gave him free reign to take offensive chances when he saw the opportunity. Even at 17, he was making those signature two-moves-ahead plays that left opponents wondering just how he knew a guy would be there, or how he found the back of the net. He finished third in league scoring, won rookie of the year in what one would assume to be a landslide, and then paced the Oilers with 15 points en route to a seven-game victory over the Whalers in the semi-finals. Waiting for them in the Avco Cup Finals was their old nemesis, the Winnipeg Jets, setting up a showdown between master and apprentice. On paper, the Oilers were the superior team, having finished in first place by a double-digit point total while Winnipeg barely managed .500⁷, but when the teams hit the ice, the result rather resembled that of the initial meeting between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader: disaster for the upstarts. The Jets had now lost the Hot Line to the NHL and retirement, but found scoring from all over the roster, and were able to hold Gretzky off the scoresheet in the opening set in Edmonton, stealing a 2-0 series lead and all but ending things right there. While the Oilers would win a couple of blowouts, and outscore Winnipeg in the series altogether, it was the Jets who emerged victorious in game six, the last game in WHA history, by a 7-3 tally, with a late and meaningless Dave Semenko goal serving as the league’s last.

The Legacy of the WHA

It can be fairly said that the WHA is to some degree responsible for hockey being the high-stakes business it is today. Gretzky and company were a big hit even playing out of remote Edmonton in the ‘80s; having Gretzky in L.A. and Messier et al. in New York in the early ‘90s, though, was a massive coup for the NHL. The former grew the game in non-traditional markets, paving the way for the Pacific and Southeast Divisions to, well, exist, while the latter brought the Cup to the NHL’s biggest media market for the first time since World War II, ending the longest drought in League history. While the lockout and the trap era sapped a lot of the NHL’s momentum from that period, the impact of those moves is unquestionably felt to this day: the WHA itself may have brought hockey to Arizona and Texas 20-plus years before the NHL did, but it was WHA alumnus Wayne Gretzky and his profile in the Sun Belt that made it possible for it to survive. It’s all very ironic, really, coming from a league that lived paycheque to paycheque for much of its existence: WHA history is littered with league cash calls, franchises moving in the middle of the night and folding mid-season, of missed paydays and envelopes of cash being divvied into stipends by coaches on airplanes. Even before all of that, though, the pressure the WHA put on the NHL forced salaries upward, firmly into the six-figure range for high-end players, and the death of the reserve clause made life at least a little easier on players, in terms of free agency, especially during the WHA period, when they had the leverage of another league to play in. Even after that, contract holdouts – which could almost never happen before – were now enough of a weapon that players could finally be well-compensated. The money Bruce McNall gave Gretzky in 1988 probably didn’t hurt that upward trend at all, either.

The WHA also brought a stylistic change to the game of hockey: the bubble-hockey game of yesteryear was on its way out, thanks in large part to the dominance of the Oilers, and the tendency of others to mimic their successful formula just as surely as the Oilers had imitated the Jets years earlier. Today, the North American and European games have hybridized each other to a degree: while there are still some clear stylistic differences, owing to different rules and rink dimensions, European hockey is much more North American in style than it was 30 years ago, and vice versa. The WHA also pioneered making European players integral to the roster of a North American team: Lars-Erik Sjöberg was the first European captain of a WHA and NHL team with the Jets, and was the first European captain to hoist a North American pro hockey trophy, in the 1976 and 1978 Avco Cups. The 1970s Jets were, at their peak, about half-European and half-North American, well before the Red Wings enjoyed success with the Russian Five in the ‘90s, or their ample complement of Swedes in the 2000s.

The other underrated impact of the WHA was the reintroduction of the 18-year-old draft. Steve Stamkos scored 51 goals in his 19-year-old season this past year: in the old system, he’d still be in Sarnia. Steve Yzerman scored 176 points his first two seasons, years he would’ve spent in Peterborough otherwise. I could go on down the list of high selections and see guys who’ve made immediate impacts in the NHL who wouldn’t have even been considered prior to 1979. Of lesser note, but still worth mentioning, is that the new Entry Draft – replacing the Amateur Draft of years past – allowed teams to select draft-aged pros. While it was targeted at allowing the NHL to snag 18- and 19-year-olds who had played in the WHA, it also allowed, for example, Boston to choose Sergei Samsonov out of the IHL in 1997.

Most immediately, though, there are the teams. Unfortunately, Quebec, Winnipeg, and Hartford all wound up finding new homes, as the fall of the dollar and the rise of the large market – as noted above, another indirect WHA legacy – took their toll through the ‘90s, and Edmonton was only saved by some last-minute intervention on the part of a massive number of local businessmen. Then again, former WHA teams account for eight Stanley Cups and eleven Finals appearances since the merger in 1979. Gretzky’s Oilers, of course, went on that legendary run in the ‘80s, while Colorado (Quebec) was a League power through the late ‘90s and early 2000s, winning two Cups, and Carolina (Hartford) won the first post-lockout Cup, and the first all-WHA Final, against Edmonton in 2006. Former WHA teams have made a tremendous impact on the League, but the funny thing is, none of them might have been there at all if not for Canada’s love of beer.

Epilogue: The Beer Boycott

The WHA always was a little…different. Aside from the perpetual off-ice eye-poking of the NHL, there were a lot of things that happened in the WHA that you’d never have seen in the senior loop: the short-lived blue puck, rat-killing competitions in musty old dressing rooms, players smuggled out of road cities in equipment bags, guys jumping into hotel pools in full gear, drunken fans challenging entire dressing rooms to a brawl (and subsequently being chased down by a dozen half- or fully-naked hockey players, fresh from the showers), and so on. So it’s only appropriate that things ended the way they did.

Back in 1977, the proposed merger would’ve seen six WHA teams – the four ultimate survivors, plus Cincinnati and Houston – join the NHL intact and play in their own division, slowly integrating with the rest of the League over the course of five years. With the defeat of that merger, and the subsequent collapse of several more teams, the NHL mostly had the WHA over a barrel. Despite their bravado, the WHA was forced to sign the terms of their surrender in 1979: the four surviving clubs would be allowed to protect just two skaters and two goalies, with the rest either reclaimed by their NHL clubs or sent to the draft pool⁸; the other two teams, Cincinnati and Birmingham, would be paid by the survivors to go away; and the WHA teams selected from the bottom of the draft, instead of the top, as most expansion teams would. Oh, and they each had to pay a $6M expansion fee for the privilege. Great deal.

Despite the overwhelmingly pro-NHL terms, the hardliners held strong, and defeated the measure by only voting 12-5 in favour, with LA, Boston, and the three Canadian teams in dissent. (One presumes that they didn’t want to lose half of their Hockey Night in Canada royalties to the three new Canadian teams.) That might have been it, but for Canadian beer drinkers. The Montreal Canadiens, then as now, were owned by the Molson family, of Molson Breweries. The people of Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Quebec City started a boycott of Molson products and, in short order, made their message heard: the Habs and Canucks changed their votes, allowing the WHA merger to go through, much to the fury of Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard (pissing him off was a side benefit of the whole affair). The course of hockey history was changed, and the WHA’s legacy was preserved, all because of beer, which really goes to show that the stereotypes are, to some degree, true: we may love our brews up here, but nothing, not even beer, will come between us and our hockey teams.

Special thanks to Ed Willes, whose marvelous book The Rebel League: The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association furnished many of the facts, quotes, and stories in this essay, and Oilers blogger Bruce McCurdy, who held season tickets from 1977-93, and shared his first-hand observations of those late-‘70s and early-‘80s teams with me.

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¹ Hunter would take one more opportunity to piss off the Establishment in 1983, when he attempted to buy the St. Louis Blues and move them to Saskatoon. Not surprisingly, the NHL kicked up a fuss and blocked the bid at the end of the season. For more on that situation, including how the Blues missed the 1983 draft because of it, check out this great post on St. Louis Game Time: it’s a story worth reading. Given Hunter’s life and contributions to the sport – the creation of the WHL, the creation of the WHA and the Oilers, and the long-reaching effects of those manoeuvres – it boggles my mind that he’s not in the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder.

² While the challenge format was effectively terminated in 1915, in favour of various pre-arranged interleague (and later, NHL-only) series and tournaments, the Stanley Cup is still technically a challenge trophy. The initial rules set forward by the Trustees of the Cup in 1893 specify that the Cup defaults to the champion of the previous winner’s League, and that any challenges from there would have to come from the champion of another “senior hockey association,” which in the modern understanding, could conceivably have included the WHA. However, the NHL was granted the authority to determine the conditions of Stanley Cup competition and qualification of future challengers in a 1947 agreement with the Trustees of the Cup: because of this, the Trustees have rejected all challenges since its inception, even in 2005, when the NHL wasn’t actually playing for it. In 2006, an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that, should the same thing happen again, the Cup could be awarded to a non-NHL team.

³ Of course, this wasn’t an entirely unusual move for the WHA. The Calgary Broncos, before closing up shop and moving to Cleveland, had drafted a large number of Eastern Europeans, including future Summit Series stars Valeri Kharlamov and Alexander Maltsev. The Toronto Toros signed Vaclav Nedomansky out of Czechoslovakia around the same time the Jets went shopping in Scandinavia. Hell, even the NHL was getting in on the act, with the Leafs signing Börje Salming and Inge Hammarström out of Sweden in 1973. Still, the Jets were far and away the most aggressive and successful participants in the first wave of European recruitment.

⁴ Strangely enough, the games between WHA teams and international all-star teams counted in the standings during the league’s last couple of years. This was done primarily to make teams and fans alike take the game seriously, rather than treat it as an exhibition, though I suspect it may have been done in part to paper over holes created in the schedule by the numerous franchise collapses in that later period. If nothing else, it gave the hybrid-style teams, Winnipeg and Edmonton, loads of practice against European squads.

⁵ I don’t know if this was their intent, but they certainly got this by barring Ken Linseman from playing as an underager in Birmingham in 1977, despite signing away other underagers in prior years; Linseman filed an injunction and won the right to play. If that really was their gambit, it worked out brilliantly.

⁶ No truth to the rumour that a game of backgammon actually decided the thing: the Jets offered less money and a stake in the franchise, and with no guarantee of an NHL merger and the Racers losing money at an alarming rate, the Oilers’ up-front cash was the obvious choice. A game was, in fact, offered but ultimately rejected.

⁷ A point worth making regarding the matchup is that Sjöberg missed most of the regular season with injury. Certainly, one would think that with their Niedermayer healthy for the whole year, the Jets would’ve finished much better than they did.

⁸ The reclamation draft was a disaster for the WHA clubs, with most of the good players from that league being spread throughout the NHL, forcing the WHA teams to pay through the nose in a trade or burn expansion-draft picks in order to keep more than a couple of them. Even when the WHA teams played by the rules, they got screwed: the Oilers initially claimed Wayne Gretzky and Bengt-Åke Gustafsson as their two protected skaters, but lost Gustafsson to the Capitals anyway, and likely only kept Gretzky because he’d signed a 21-year personal services contract with Peter Pocklington directly.

See what I did there? (Sorry.)Anyway, so like all hockey fans living in Calgary, I was keenly waiting for the Heritage Classic announcement on Wednesday, curious what the Flames and Habs would dig out of their closets. Ken King had promised something from Calgary’s deep hockey past, which had me thinking of the Calgary Tigers, who played the Habs in the city’s first Stanley Cup Final in 1924; sure enough, the Flames delivered precisely that, while the Habs went conservative after a year and a half of blasts from the past that ranged from the elegant (1910-11) to the eyesore (1912-13). Their only change was to revert to the numbering and lettering style they used in their final years at the Forum, in the ’80s and ’90s. Some have complained that they lacked imagination, saying they should’ve gone with one of their early white sweaters, but to hell with it: the Habs have given us enough retro nightmares to last a lifetime, thanks, though I wouldn’t have said no to their 1924-25 “globe” sweater, which they wore after beating the Tigers for the Cup.

Which brings me back to that Flames/Tigers jersey. Now, you know me, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the game’s past, and fascination with the way things used to be. I’m also a jersey collector: I own 18 jerseys now, and I’m sure to add more later. I own the Habsbarberpole and make no apologies for it. That being said, the Habs were wise to leave the barberpole in the pre-Great War era, where it belongs, and on a similar note, the Flames might have been wise to go with a design that’s less…well, garish. See, the problem with both the barberpole and the Flaming Tigers there is that back in 1912/1924, we didn’t have post-space-age fabrics, vibrant dyes, HDTV cameras, television floodlights, and white painted ice: it was coloured wool, sunlight, natural ice, and your own two eyes. The Sens are trying to evoke their old barberpoles with their current third, and it’s the same problem: it’s just too much of an eyesore in the modern environment.

Don’t get me wrong, I love what the Flames have done here in principle, but in practice, I’m deeply concerned that it’s going to look like hell; it certainly doesn’t show well in the August sun, though some Flames bloggers assure me that it looks better in person than it does on a computer screen. Problem is, that’s where most people are going to see it: on their TVs or computers. There’s a half a percent chance I might go to the game myself, being local and being a Hitmen season-ticket holder (side note: how awesome is it that the Hitmen are going to be playing outside the day after the Flames do? I hope they also go into the wayback machine, maybe pull out the sweaters of the first Calgary junior WHL team, the Buffaloes; Lord knows the Pats have the history in spades), but I imagine it’ll be far too rich for my blood; more likely, I’ll be watching from my couch on my HDTV, and…oh, man. It’s gonna be a trip. I also can’t wait for the first Flaming Tigers sweater I pass in the hall this year at the University. I fear for my eyesight already.

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Since it came up on the show this week, as well, a brief word about Chinook winds: about three times a year, warm winds descend from the Rocky Mountains - by a process I still don’t understand, even after reading the Wikipedia article - inducing significant temperature spikes for a handful of days. The phenomenon isn’t unique to southern Alberta, but it’s far and away more prevalent here than anywhere else. While the usual effect is simply to bring the temperature from around -15°C to about the freezing point, melting the snow and making for hellish driving conditions after it refreezes, I do remember one winter growing up in Drumheller, an hour and a half from Calgary, where the temperature actually got up to about +10°C, which was truly remarkable. That being said, Ken King is clearly describing a worst-case scenario: it’s just as likely that it’ll actually be colder here than it was in Edmonton in 2003, but far more likely than either of those cases is that conditions will be akin to those in Buffalo, Chicago, and Boston: cold enough to keep the ice, maybe get a touch of snow, but not so cold as to be bloody miserable. Actually, if I remember correctly, there was also a contingency plan in Edmonton, in case it got too cold for the ice to still be playable - the surface would get brittle and start shredding under the intense skating - but obviously, that never came to pass.

Goaltending is probably the toughest position to evaluate in all of hockey. A poor performance by the numbers may betray a goalie hung out to dry by his teammates. A flashy performance in net - acrobatic glove saves and desperate cross-crease slides - may mask poor fundamentals. Today’s touted first-rounder may be tomorrow’s franchise goalie, or tomorrow’s unremarkable journeyman. A playoff hero may be a legend in the making or a flash in the pan. Well-compensated ‘keepers can be subsequently relegated to the backup role, often without warning. The only consistent thing about goaltending, it seems, is that it’s inconsistent.Some, like Gabriel Desjardins at Behind the Net and Philip Myrland at The Contrarian Goaltender, have tried to attack the problem statistically. They, and others like them, have figured out a few interesting things, like how shot volume affects save percentage, how playing with or without the lead affects where the balance of play occurs, how play in different situations creates dramatically different expectations for save percentage¹, and how bloody terrible the NHL’s scorers actually are - seriously, read this article about the MSG shot-distance estimates, that guy is out to lunch. On the other hand, some of the stuff these guys write can get pretty heady, especially the notion that luck can be a big factor in short-term results: not every fan is going to have the time or interest required to understand and apply this stuff to their own armchair-GM assessments. Furthermore, even the most repeatable statistic, even-strength save percentage, seems like it would be rife with complications due to variations in defensive play, as well as other, less tangible factors - confidence, personal issues, disputes between teammates, whatever - leaving plenty of room for variation and debate. I’m not yet convinced that there’s a single, reliable way to evaluate goalies, especially given the inconsistencies noted above.

So where am I going with all of this? Well, while different NHL teams use these sort of advanced stats to inform their decision-making process to differing degrees - some use them quite a bit, while others don’t use them at all - when it comes to the media and fans, it seems like the most important statistic is the simplest, the win. It’s the first number you hear in a stat line most of the time, and many times, it’s played as a trump card to end all debate. “At the end of the night, this guy wins hockey games, and that’s all that really matters,” the radio host smugly concludes before hanging up and taking the next caller. The problem with that line of thinking is that it ignores over half the game, and does a grave disservice to the other 18 guys on the ice.

To borrow a line from long-time checker and coach Craig MacTavish, hockey is a game of what you create minus what you give up. While the goaltender may be the final arbiter of “what you give up,” in the most critical sense, he’s far from the only contributor: the defencemen and forwards obviously have to cover their men and break up opportunities, and the best of each at that job are given major awards at the end of the year, highlighting their importance. More to the point, the goaltender has very little influence on “what you create”: save for the odd clearing pass that’s taken all the way, you’re talking about half of the game the goalie has nothing to do with, yet the win or loss is credited or blamed on them alone on the stat sheet. How is it fair that the goalie gets slapped with the loss when their team fails to score? Or that the goalie gets credit for the win even when they were terrible and their teammates bailed them out in a 6-5 game?²

Here are a couple of recent examples to illustrate my point:

1) Miikka Kiprusoff: In 2008-09, Kiprusoff led the NHL with 45 wins, leading certain local radio hosts to tout him as not only the team MVP, but also a Vezina candidate, and possibly Mayor of Calgary. It was crazy. Problem was, every Flames game that I had seen (excepting those against my Oilers, funny enough), Kiprusoff looked like a shadow of his former self, biffing saves he would’ve readily made in his Vezina year of 2006. I couldn’t accept that he was the best Flame on the ice, especially with the years Cammalleri and Iginla had had. So I went to the stats to see what was going on and there it was: his GAA (2.84) and SV% (.903) were both good for 32^nd in the League, putting him behind not only most starters but several backups as well. Then, I checked the team stats and saw that he was being bailed out by his teammates, to the tune of 251 goals, 8^th-best total in the NHL and 4^th-best in the West. In a hilarious cruel twist of fate, he posted top-ten marks in both goals-against (2.31, 7^th) and save percentage (.920, T-9^th) this year, but won just 35 games and missed the playoffs because this time, his ‘mates failed him, putting up the second-worst offensive totals in the League at just 201 goals. Ouch.

2) Carey Price: According to the storyline for this past season, Carey Price floundered under the pressure of Montreal’s media and fanbase, and the allure of the city’s famous nightlife, while Halak remained focused, won the starting job halfway through the year, and carried the team to the conference finals. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really tell the whole story: Chris Boyle of Eyes on the Prize, an excellent Canadiens blog, did statistical breakdowns of the two goalies, and in November and December, augmented them with a look at the goal support they received. To summarize all of that, it appears that Price got weaker goal support (to the point where he’d have needed to play like vintage Hasek just to salvage .500), put up better individual numbers in those low-scoring games (and, strangely enough, worse numbers in higher-scoring affairs), but lost a lot of games, anyway, because no one bloody scored for him. In the end, their individual stats were almost identical through the first half, with Price giving up a few more bad goals by Boyle’s eye during December, yet Price had the far worse record (10-13-3 vs. 11-6-0), a difference that appeared well before any drop-off in play, and became the goat in Montreal for his efforts. While he could be criticized for some lapses in December, despite having overall strong individual numbers, the W-L record clearly didn’t tell the whole story here.

So given that the win stat is only partially based on what the goalie actually does in-game, why do we still use it? I think in the end, it’s just the culture of sport: winning is everything. While the way a person plays should trump whether they happened to win or lose that night, results are, for better or for worse, how all sports and athletes are judged. To take another example, let’s look at current UFA Ilya Kovalchuk³. It’s been said on this very show that he’s “never won anything,” or something to that effect, which to my mind, is completely irrelevant and only partially true anyway. For one, he has three international gold medals to his name from Team Russia; for another, he played for the Atlanta Thrashers for most of his career. No one has won with that club. Speaking of ex-Thrashers, was Marian Hossa a “loser” before last month? If so, why did Chicago sign him? If winners beget winning, and winning experience is such a key, how did Pittsburgh defeat Detroit last year? The fact of the matter is, it’s not winners or winning that produce the best teams or the best hockey players. Talent, combined with hard work and a keen understanding of the game, are they keys to being a good hockey player, and good hockey players who function well together within their defined roles in the group make good hockey teams. It’s true in any era, and it’s not something that can be captured with a simple win tally.

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Before I go, I’d like to point to this article by “E” at Theory of Ice (mild language warning), which is tangentially related to the topic at hand. She doesn’t write terribly often anymore, which is a crying shame, because she’s much more eloquent and thoughtful than I am. Anyway, that article sums up my own feelings on the way we analyze and discuss hockey pretty nicely. Suffice to say, when you read a post-game summary and wonder if you even watched the same game as the reporter in question, it’s usually a bad sign.

¹ The answers, in order: more shots tend to produce higher save percentages, because there’s usually a higher volume of crappy shots; the team with the lead usually winds up defending more, especially as the game goes on; save percentage tends to go down on the PK, and up on the PP.

² All of this leaves aside the slightly-weighted coin-flip that is the shootout, which has made a mockery of the record book in recent years, especially with the already-dubious win stat. Ilya Bryzgalov and Jonathan Quick both set franchise records for wins in 2009-10, and while Bryz may ultimately prove to be the best goalie in Coyotes-Jets franchise history, with only Nikolai Khabibulin as serious competition, there’s no way Quick belongs in the conversation with Rogie Vachon and Kelly Hrudey in LA at this point. Vachon should be in the Hall of Fame, and while Hrudey isn’t in that category, he’s a lot closer than people give him credit for. Also, you damned kids can get off my lawn.

³ You know, when my schedule started slipping and one week became two, I figured I’d have to rewrite that sentence. Little did I know…

So first off, before I get too far, I should probably introduce myself. I’m Jason Robertson, longtime listener, two-time telephone guest, and damn-near-every-time emailer to the show. I’m a university student, I support the Oilers and, to a lesser extent, the Canadiens. I like long walks along the beach, and…wait, wrong window.

Anyway, I’ve been watching and/or listening to hockey games basically since the womb, though my first concrete memories come from around 1990 or 1991. I remember my confusion upon the Oilers’ elimination at the hands of lowly Minnesota in the ‘91 Campbell Conference Finals, as they were called in those days. To the best of my young recollection, the Oilers had always won, so how could they possibly have lost? (If only you knew, four-year-old me. If only you knew.) I went back and forth between Mom’s Habs and Dad’s Oilers in my youth, and still hold the 1993 Habs’ Cup run as one of my dearest early memories of hockey. The death of that ‘93 team, culminating in the Patrick Roy trade in 1995, was the death knell for the Habs as my #1 team: they’d gotten rid of everyone I liked on the team, and this new team was kind of crap, and you’re still allowed to do that when you’re nine. Then came the Cujo-Marchant sequence that eliminated the hated Stars in that classic ‘97 series - Joe Nieuwendyk probably still sees that save in his nightmares - and my loyalties were sealed, for better or for worse. Okay, mostly worse.

In recent years, my perceptions of the game have been influenced somewhat by the blogosphere (is that a word people still use?), especially the stat-heavy Oilers blogs. I’ve spent parts of the last six or seven years periodically trying and failing to make a sports blog of my own out there on the Interwebs, which may be due in part to the fact that I spend an inordinate amount of energy on rants or considered responses to points Eddie and Doug make. Many weeks, I’ve sent in pages-long comments on various topics in the NHL, which there’s no way on Earth they could possibly read on the air. So, Doug approached me recently about contributing an article here or there to the website, and I figure that’s probably something I can do, in lieu of some of the less-airable emails. I promise I won’t get bogged down too much in the advanced stats - in no small part because I don’t have the time or interest to do the math myself - but I’m sure some of the attitudes and ideas of the stats bloggers will filter down into the stuff I write, which may prove unpopular. Regardless, I hope whatever I write leads to some good discussions, and not a bunch of TLDRs in the comments.

The topic Doug and I were talking about when the idea of this column came up, actually, was the pending free-agency lunacy, which Eddie, Doug, and Adam talk about on this week’s supplemental show. Now, it seems to me that the “winners” of free agency are often awarded in the media around July 2, and secondary consideration is only given well into the season when a team dramatically succeeds or fails, or when a cap situation like the one we saw in Calgary a couple of years ago - where the team was literally unable to ice a full team due to injuries and lack of cap space - rears its ugly head. More to the point, it seems that most outlets tend to reward the team that nabbed the biggest Name Star, unless they spent more money than God on the guy, in which case, they get pasted. Me, I’d rather take the long view, but I understand that’s hard to do when there are inches that need filling and blogs that need posting, so hasty judgments will always reign. Still, if we’re going to make snap judgments, I’d at least rather consider the whole picture.

Free agency is, for all intents and purposes, an auction, and in many ways, it behaves similarly. For starters, you have your big-ticket items, the stuff everyone brought their money to try to get their hands on. These things will almost always go for an absurd amount of money, well above “book value,” simply due to supply and demand. There’s always at least one or two people who will see this as their one chance to get their hands on something dear, rationality flies out the window, and Bob’s your uncle. If you can afford it, great; you still overpaid, at least until the next guy comes along and spends even more on another, similar, tchotchke. So it is with top-end free agents, as well. Every year, some marquee name goes for crazy money, usually for a number of years, and everyone shakes their head and wonders what that gol-danged lockout was for, anyway. I mean, I love Ryan Smyth in ways that aren’t entirely healthy, but he’s not worth $6.25M for five years. That’s the same money Chris Pronger got from the Oilers two years earlier, for crying out loud, and only one of those men is going to the Hall of Fame. This year’s big ticket item is Ilya Kovalchuk, and unless he pulls a Hossa and signs for one year with a contender, he’s going to cause some team a lot of headache a couple of years down the road when they need to shed salary in order to sign all of their young free agents. That’s not to say that Kovalchuk will be a bad pick-up, as such, but the key to success in a salary-capped world is players outperforming their contracts, and anyone of any significant repute who signs a UFA contract on July 1 probably isn’t going to do that: again, supply and demand leads to overpays. Hell, anything less than meeting some pretty lofty expectations will probably lead to the guy that signed him getting fired well before the contract’s even up. Yet, I’m sure, whoever signs him on Thursday is going to be lauded for making his team better, irrespective of what it does to his team tomorrow. The way I see it, unless he wins the Stanley Cup in June, that guy’s made a mistake.

Personally, I’d rather see my team go for the small-ticket items, which in free agency as in auctions, generally fall under three broad categories:

1) Something no one knows is out there. Much like my grandfather likes to buy a broken oil lamp for $2, throw out the crappy bits, and keep the 18^th-century base worth hundreds of dollars, I like it when a team signs someone unheralded but with potential to have a great impact. The poster boy for this is Jan Hejda, the shutdown defenceman for the Columbus Blue Jackets. Prior to his signing, no one outside of Buffalo Sabres draft junkies and the aforementioned stats-obsessed Oilers fans knew this guy from Adam, and now he’s doing one of the most important jobs on the Jackets for relative pennies: just $2M per year for someone who can play top-pairing defensive minutes is fantastic. I haven’t done enough legwork to know who this year’s Jan Hejda is in the free-agent market, and we may not know until well into the season, but whoever unearths that guy is going to look like a genius a few months from now; more importantly, he’s either solved a problem that needed solving or created a position of strength he can deal from to solve other problems down the road.

2) Something that’s undervalued. Being a checker in the NHL is a bit like being a rare stamp at a coin-collector’s auction. Sure, you’re valuable for what you are, but you’re not what the guys around the room are interested in. Fact is, NHL GMs value goal-scoring to a tremendous degree, and will overpay massively to get it, leaving the muckers and grinders to pick up the table scraps between mid-July and the end of September. I mean, think of how many role-players there are getting $2M or better: they’re all either “name” guys, like Pahlsson or Madden, or they’re now-former Edmonton Oilers. That’s not to say that I think they should be getting a ton of dough, merely that they’re a good place for a GM to pick up a value contract or two that will make the team better beyond the third-liner’s rather limited scoring ability. Guys who can take shifts against better hockey players without giving anything up, who can kill penalties and win face-offs and block shots and do all the little things that coaches love, they soak up defensive minutes with minimal worry, which leaves a lot more opportunity to deploy the team’s scoring stars in offensive situations.

Another place GMs can find bargains is in players who are coming off massive injuries or slumps. Injury not only leads to deflated numbers, which immediately shaves a bit off the top, but also represents a risk of future re-injury. This will scare away some teams, and a shrewd negotiator can use this to get a further discount, especially if it’s an injury known to recur like concussions or groin pulls. As for slumps, sport is a “what have you done for me lately” business, and guys who’ve had an off-year in their contract year will often wind up undervalued compared to their career norms. One of the things the stats bloggers have found - and which I’ve been able to corroborate with five years of fantasy hockey experience - is that slumps and career years tend to be driven by low and high shooting percentages, respectively, and that shooting percentages well outside a player’s established norm tend not to repeat themselves over multiple years without an underlying cause, like age or injury. Sometimes, a slump might also be due to a player simply being unhappy in his situation, hating his coach, his role, his captain, whatever. Regardless, a penny-pinching GM might exploit this by giving a player coming off a bad slump a bargain deal, for short term and low dollars, and putting him in a position to succeed. After he’s reaped the rewards of his shrewd move, this GM would then presumably let some other poor sod pay the guy what he’s actually worth. The key here, in any case, is not to spend too much, because you’re betting on your target being a diamond in the rough, but not spending too much in case he’s actually…

3) Complete junk. Sometimes a busted oil lamp is a hidden treasure. Sometimes, it’s Jeff Finger. Yeah, I’m arguably being lazy not going for something more recent, but that signing still holds as one of the best examples of what not to do in free agency. I still can’t believe Fletcher mistook that guy for Kurt Sauer.

In my view, the GM who “wins” free agency is the guy who makes his team better without completely screwing it for the future unless he’s absolutely certain he can win the Stanley Cup this year. And usually, that means the guy who bought a lot from those first two small-ticket bins, avoided the third, and stayed the hell away from the big-ticket items, especially the ones coming off career years. Of course, if it comes down to it, the guy who sat on his hands might be the true winner of the day: sometimes the wisest course of action is to avoid unnecessary spending, try to meet your needs with homegrown kids on value contracts, and fill any holes they can’t occupy down the road by trade. It’s hard to judge after just one or two days, and it’s certainly not a sexy course of action, but as a general rule, smart tends to outlast sexy. Just ask your grandparents.

Phoenix Coyotes GM Don Maloney after day two of the draft.

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Boston Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli after day two of the draft.

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Florida Panthers GM Dale Tallon after day two of the draft.

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Anaheim Ducks GM Bob Murray after day two of the draft.

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