By Sam Handler | Wednesday October 17th 2007, 6:12 pm
So I just found out that Yahoo Sports shows live NHL games for free. Not only that, but they’ve got previously intertron-televised games availible too. So yeah, I thought I’d share that. The Avs are gonna be on Yahoo Sports NHL-Intertron-TV on October 23 at 7:30 mountain time, and I’ll be tuning in.
By Gabe Stein | Tuesday October 16th 2007, 10:22 pm
I was browsing the internets today when I came across a post about Fantasy Hockey saving the NHL. While I agree that Fantasy Hockey systems could be improved to help fans get hooked on hockey, the percentage of fans that even play fantasy sports for any league is small compared to TV viewership. Making hockey fun to follow is helpful, but increased viewership is what makes it worthwhile to advertisers (and ESPN) and therefore profitable. I love hockey, so I’ve put a lot of thought into what could be done to save the sport. Here’s my list of far-fetched and feasible ideas that could return hockey to the glory days.
1. Fire Gary Bettman, hire Wayne Gretzky. Gary Bettman should absolutely not have a job. In fact, he shouldn’t have been hired in the first place. He’s not a hockey man, and he’s killed the league with two lockouts at critical times and insane franchise and TV moves. I’ve even read conspiracy theories that David Stern convinved the NHL to hire Bettman because he knew Gary would ruin the sport, leaving the basketball as America’s top third sport.
Meanwhile, Gretzky was more convincing as commissioner of the Bubble Hockey League than Bettman has ever been in the NHL post. Screw the betting scandal: Wayne’s still the NHL’s only household name, a smart guy and more than anything, a hockey guy. You’ve got to promote your stars, and Gretzky should be the NHL foreman.
2. Play games earlier. Games start anywhere from 7 - 8 local time, which is already too late for a sporting event, and makes it impossible for East Coast fans to watch their teams when they head west. I know the NHL wants to avoid scheduling conflicts with other prime time events, but that just begs of desparation. If you aren’t the top ticket in prime time, pretend you are. All games should start from 6-6:30pm local time weekdays, and 4:00pm on Saturday. No one wants to be watching TV as late as 9pm on a Saturday, they want to be out partying. Saturday afternoon games are perfect for filling the spot between college football and hitting the clubs.
3. Simplify Sunday. I know I just said that hockey should pretend they’re the number one sport, but Sunday is a different story. Instead of multiple games at 1pm and Sunday night, the NHL should play just one, nationally-televised game on Sunday. They should play it opposite the late NFL game at 4pm Eastern and coordinate it with the NFL schedule so teams in the Sunday game aren’t competing with cross-town NFL franchises playing at the same time. It probably violates their contract with the NFL, but if at all possible, NBC should carry the “National Game” as the lead-in to Sunday Night Football. It goes without saying that the National Game should feature a steady diet of Malkin, Crosby and Ovechkin.
4. Shorten the schedule. 82 is way too many games. It makes each game less valuable as a spectator event and allows fans to ignore bits of the season instead of being forced to focus on every single match. Plus, and here’s the meat of the issue, the Stanley Cup is played far too late. No one wants to think about hockey, much less attend a game, once the weather warms up and the baseball season starts. The Stanley Cup finals should end no later than March 31, which means cutting the season down to something like 60 games and implementing my next point.
5. Playoffs?! Are you kidding me? Sending more than half the league to the playoffs is a joke. I know the NHL wants to reward fans in small markets with lots of playoff bids, but 16 teams makes it far too easy to get to the playoffs. It rewards mediocre play, and frankly, gives fans little to be proud of unless their team makes the conference finals. Meanwhile, because it’s so easy, fans of teams who don’t make the playoffs have a hard time seeing the bright points and tend to jump the shark after unsuccessful seasons at a higher rate than other sports.
Contrast that to the MLB, where only eight teams (or 26.6%) make the playoffs, and you see why fans get so excited for the baseball post season. I would convert hockey to a similar eight-team bracket, with a first round, conference finals round and Stanley Cup finals round, all best-of-seven series. Like the current NHL format, the division winners should get an automatic ticket to the playoffs as seeds 1-3, with the fourth drawn from the best of the remaining teams.
6. Ditch the zone. I hate the trapezoid, even though I like calling it the trapezone. I’m not a big proponent of math in general, but geometry is my worst subject, so including weird shapes on the rink to create arbitrary boundaries for the goalie doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It sounds like a protectionary rule you might see in youth roller hockey, but not appropriate for the big kids’ game. If you want to decrease the goalie’s impact on the game, let players check them when they venture out of the crease. They’re already wearing more padding than anyone else, they can take it if they want to play out of the crease area.
7. Shoot from the right angles. One of the best things the NHL can do to get fans interested is show them how complex and fast and beautiful the game really is. To do this, they need to get “inside the glass,” as it were, with some new camera angles that bring TV viewers closer to the action. Obviously, last year’s rail cam experiment was a total dud. It’s too shaky and there’s no real sense of depth when you’re shooting from the side. That said, the NHL needs to keep experimenting with how they film hockey, because current camera angles just don’t do the game justice.
8. Widen the playing field. The NHL should adopt the international rink size. It gives players more room to work with and therefore more creative plays and more scoring. Fans love olympic hockey, and the NHL could do well by copying some of the game’s international mystique, which brings me to my next point.
9. Count up, not down. When the NHL records goals, they record them as being scored in the fifth or the 12th minute, and yet the clock counts down, not up, meaning those are realy minutes 15 or 8. This is confusing for new fans and forces people like me to struggle with unnecessary math. The NHL should count up, like in international hockey, both to make it easier on fans and capture some of the mystique of international hockey and soccer. Speaking of which, foreign soccer fans might be more willing to adopt the NHL if the timing system was similar.
10. It’s the marketing, stupid. Back when hockey was “The Coolest Game on Earth,” it was the coolest game on Earth. It also had some of the coolest commercials. MyNHL is by far one of the worst slogans and marketing campaigns ever. It has no energy, no life, and the commercials themselves are just bad. They look like the product of student filmmakers, not a major sports league. If I was the NHL, I would fire my ad firm and hire just about anyone else. I would also start a series of hockey commercials based on the trailers for “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima,” with the league’s superstars talking candidly, on camera, about other superstars with dramatic highlights from classic games mixed in. Think about it: Hockey is a foreigner’s game, it’s a fast game, it’s a beautiful game with tons of tradition and history, and most importantly, really smart, articulate, humble, respectful and usually funny players people can identify with. That’s something you can market, and done the right way, it should be really intriguing to US audiences.
To make matters worse, companies aren’t really putting a lot of effort into hockey-themed commercials anymore, which is also a problem. I remember watching Avs games back before the lockout just to see the latest Hockey Falls commercial. If I was the NHL, I would do anything to get commercials like those back, even giving Bud Light and other vendors steep discounts to run them. They made hockey personal and made every minute of a game fun to watch. If nothing else, the NHL should buy the rights to Hockey Falls and other famous campaigns and use them as new marketing campaigns. Even though this is the “new” NHL, people have fond memories of hockey’s past, and seeing that stuff around again could draw them back in.
So that’s my rant. The Rockies are in the World Series, which is super exciting, but I wanted to touch one something else while we have a few days off. Hopefully the NHL will still be alive and kicking the next time the Rockies win the pennant. If not, well, I’m always open to take the commissioner’s job…call me.
By Sam Handler | Tuesday October 09th 2007, 1:50 pm
When did this happen? I’m actually sort of excited for the season, probably because I’m at college in Minnesota. Anyway, I guess this is a PSA. Intertron users: the NHL has started. For more information visit www.nhl.com. Now without further ado, here is Snoop Dogg talking about his love of hockey.
p.s. The players are wearing new jerseys that make them look like indie rockers. Don’t be alarmed, this is officially sanctioned.
By Sam Handler | Sunday January 28th 2007, 1:19 am
In my never-ending quest to waste my life on YouTube, I found a video of Chris Chelios reminiscing about when Jules Winfield was his coach. “Do I look like a BI***?! Do I LOOK like a BI***?!”
p.s. Who Says Jules Samuel L. Jackson has been typecast?
Was anyone else reminded of the beginning of last year in the game last night? I sure was.
As usual, the Avs played like superstars in the first period and somehow managed to squander away the lead through lazy second and third period play. Things were looking up after two quick back to back goals by the vet, Sakic, and his (optimistically) younger counterpart, Wolski, scored two powerplay goals in the first period. The first period was most certainly Avalanche dominated. Shots were 22-7 in favor of the Avs, and Dallas had taken a total of five penalties, while the Avs were never shorthanded. However, the powerplay was bittersweet for the Avs. Even though they converted 2/9 powerplays, they missed a second 5 on 3 opportunity and fell short when it mattered most.
As the third period closed, Darryl Sydor slashed Milan Hejduk’s stick in half, giving the Avalanche a 4 on 3 powerplay to start off OT. While the Avs cycled the puck well and got off a few shots from the circles, but nothing passed Turco, and as Sydor’s two minutes expired, Turco fired it up the ice directly to Turco, giving him a breakaway and a goal.
Though all was not as it seemed. The penalty clock had started thirty seconds late, meaning Sydor was out of the box 30 seconds early according to the clock at the Pepsi Center. Perhaps the loss as a whole cannot be attributed to this singular blunder, but it certainly could have played a part in the Avs’ awareness of the situation. In the words of Stars coach Dave Tipett, “A clock not working on a penalty time in overtime, now that seems a little wow. I’m looking up there and suddenly Syd is coming out of the box and he scores and that was that. We got a break there.”
This is the Avs’ first loss in a home opener in the Pepsi Center, though certainly not Joel Quenneville’s first season opener loss, his record standing at 0-7-2.
If anything good can be taken from this game, at least we can’t blame Jose Theodore. Theodore played some ridiculous hockey during the last 15 minutes of the third period, making numerous saves and mending some ugly defensive wounds. A .901 save percentage is tough to argue with, and when the GWG is scored on a breakaway, who can blame the goalie? Another player looking as good as I hoped is, naturally, Ian Laperriere. The man has some passion. He reminds me of Dan Hinote, but scores more goals and fights more people more often. He didn’t dissapoint last night either, fighting Matthew Barnaby and certainly playing with some emotion. So while the game was ugly, there were a few diamonds in the rough, and hey… 81 games to go.
On a less serious note, what the hell happened to Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part II” being played after goals? At the game tonight, they played Blur’s inferior “Song 2″, much to my dismay. The ‘woo hoo’ in Song 2 just doesn’t hold the same kickassocity as the “da dun da dun da da da, HEY” that Gary Glitter brings.
By Gabe Stein | Sunday September 17th 2006, 11:14 am
So apparently, the Avs have already started training camp - which means it’s time to get ready for hockey, again. And I’m totally ready. I’m so ready that I’m going to march down to DU and by my Burgundy and White tickets right now. So ready that I’ve already predicted the outcome of this season for the Avs: it’s going to suck.
I hate to be a pessimist, I really do. I like making stupid predictions about the Rockies and Broncos. But when you look at this team from last year to this year, there’s absolutely nothing exciting about the coming season.
We’ve traded away our top scorer for Jordan Leopold, who is in turn expected to replace Rob Blake. The result is that we’re minus one top scorer, minus Rob Blake, and plus someone who’s maybe half of what Rob Blake was. We’ve made no big pickups in the off season, unlike seemingly every other team in the galaxy, including most of the teams in our division, especially last years’ winners, the Flames, and the Stanley Cup runners up, the Oilers (Lupul is a great pickup).
If the off-season tells us anything, it’s that Stan Kroenke has finally arrived in Denver. Like the Nuggets, Stan has installed a penny-pincher at every corner in the Avs’ front office. Pierre Lacroix, who when given the money was one of the best GMs in hockey, has stepped down and now his replacement either no longer has the money to spend, or isn’t willing to spend money, and is constantly looking for bargains to replace superstars (read, Tyler Arnason, Jordan Leopold). The Kroenke Sports regime is content to have mediocre teams good enough to barely make the playoffs, but not good enough to go anywhere. One Team, One Goal has disappeared, and unlike Pat Bowlen and the Broncos, who say the Super Bowl is always on their mind, the Avs are no longer looking for the cup every year.
If we’ve learned anything from the new NHL, it’s the speed, size and youth mean everything. The Avs have done some of that in the youth and speed department, but they’ve heavily downgraded in size, across the board. There are only a few bright points to look forward to. One of them is a healthy Marek Svatos (who we signed on a minimum contract), who was among the Western Conference leaders with 30 goals before being injured in the middle of the season. Another is Paul Stastny, University of Denver standout and Avs’ first-round draft pick who’s made waves in training camp and may make the team as a true Rookie. We’ll also get to see what Wojtek Woslki, who was less than impressive in the playoffs, can do in a full season. (I think Cody McCormick, Brad Richardson and Brett McLean also deserve a nod in this area). And of course, I think we’re all looking forward to the return of quite possibly the most important off-season signing, Ian Laperriere, his antics, and his orchestra.
But there are too many question marks that balance out the positives - something that we haven’t had to say too much in this organization’s history. How Jose Theodore will play given a full season as the starter is one of the biggest questions - not to mention how much of an effect his salary has already had on the team’s apparently limited budget. But the other literally huge gap is perhaps more important: the blue line. If anyone thinks that Ken Klee and Jordan Leopold can pickup the slack left by Rob Blake’s return to Los Angeles, let me know, because I’m not very excited. Leopold eats a lot of time, but neither of the two replacements show the scoring talent that Blake posessed, which was one of the biggest components of the team’s success last year. Match that with the loss of Alex Tanguay, and you have a real problem. The team’s leading scorer last year is being “replaced” (if you can call it that) by Tyler Arnason, a five-year pro who’s never scored more than 55 points in his career. Tyler is fairly quick on the ice, he’s young, and could still potentially develop into a scorer on a good team with some support…but he’s not going to come close to matching Tanguay’s production.
So when you look it all up and down, I can’t honestly say that the team has improved at all from last season. Our saving grace may be Jose Theodore, who can make up a lot of slack if he can return to his old form - but if he’s not perfect, it’s going to be a long season and a long few years to come.
By Gabe Stein | Wednesday August 09th 2006, 9:18 am
Nope, no we didn’t. We’ve been keeping track of Avs news (there hasn’t been much), and we have to say, we don’t like much of what we’ve seen. Everyone else around us has gone out and gotten somebody - but despite Lacroix’s assurances that we’d be able to pick up a star this offseason, well, nothing much has happened. Now the team goes into the next season minus Tanguay and Blake, and plus, well, virtually no one. Not what I expected going into the offseason.
Still, here’s what’s been happening in Avaland:
We picked up center Tyler Arnason, a center who has played for the Blackhawks but was traded late last year to the Senators. He’s a young guy with a decent amount of offensive skill, but no Alex Tanguay - Tyler had just 45 points last year in 79 games.
We signed Kurt Sauer…ok…
…signed the dynamic duo of Clark and Skrastins, good…
…agreed to terms with Liles, Budaj, and McCormik, alright….
…signed McClean for another year, avoid arbitration…good call…
…and we’ve picked up, Ken Klee and Paul Stasny! YES!!! Wait…what?
Klee, a no-namer from New Jersey is a scrappy big blue-liner, who has never scored more than 20 points in a season except in one fluke year for Toronto. He does eat up some time (18+ per game), but as a replacement for Blake, which is basically how the Avs are trying to sell this, you’ve got to be KIDDING me!
You might recognize Paul Stasny as the standout DU forward who scored 29 goals in 28 games last year. Well, he was our second-round choice, and now we’ve signed him. He’s got some talent and he’s an excitingly fast player - but it’ll take a few years to see what he develops into.
Meanwhile, Justin Leopold, the guy we acquired for Tanguay, has gone down with surgery for a hernia, which will take him…well, apparently 10-12 weeks to recover. Seems a lot for a hernia, but as long as he’s ready for the season…
So that’s what’s up for the Avalanche. No big-name acquisitions, no start-studded contract swapping…just, a lot more of the same. If anything does happen though (and we expect it won’t), we’ll keep you posted.
Today (actually, yesterday by now) it was announced that on November 13, 2006, Patrick Roy, by almost all accounts the best goaltender in history, will be inducted into the National Hockey League Hall of Fame.
Over his illustrious 18-year career, Roy won four Stanley Cups, two with the Montreal Canadiens, and two with the Colorado Avalanche. During those runs he won three Conn Smythe (Playoff MVP) trophies, an NHL record. During his second Stanley Cup run in 1993, Roy won an NHL-record 10 straight playoff overtime games to bring the cup to Montreal for the second time in his career. In 1995, he was traded to the Colorado Avalanche, where he won his third Stanley Cup in that same season.
Roy was one of the leading figures in the notorious rivalry between the Detroid Red Wings and the Colorado Avalanche. In 1997, Roy fought Red Wings goalie Mike Vernon during a game late in the season. In 1998, Roy fought Wings goalie Chris Osgood. Mike Hanes, who called both fights on the radio, said at the time that Roy won them both…this is still disputed by many Wings fans.
During the 2000-2001 season, Patrick Roy lead the Avalanche to their second Stanley Cup just five years after moving to Colorado. That year, Roy won his third Conn Smythe and helped Ray Borque win his first ever Stanley Cup - after 18 fruitless years of being one of the best defensemen in the league.
Roy played his last NHL game with the Avalanche in 2003 in the playoffs against the Minnesota Wild. Then Wild right-winger Richard Park scored the last ever goal against Patrick Roy on April 22, in overtime in the seventh game of a first-round playoff series.
During his career, Roy won three Conn Smythe awards, five William M. Jennings trophies (given to goltenders whose teams have the league’s best goals-against number in the regular season), and three Vezina trophies (given to the league’s best goaltender as voted by the league’s General Managers). Roy played in the NHL All-Star game eleven times in his career, and was selected to the NHL’s All-Rookie team after his first year. Roy holds the NHL’s all-time record for most wins (551), and most playoff wins (151). During his career, he played in 1,029 regular season games, and 247 playoff games, placing him at the top of both lists all-time. On October 28, 2003, Roy’s number, 33, was retired by the Colorado Avalanche. Roy was the second player to have his number retired by the Avalanche, after Raymond Borque (77), who retired after the 2000-01 Stanley Cup-winning season. In 2004, Patrick Roy was selected to the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, and in 2005, the National Hockey League announced on their website that Patrick Roy was the best goaltender of all time.
Despite his temper and his tendancy to mis-handle the puck, Roy unequivocably deserves this honor. He will always be in the minds of Coloradan’s, as the man who brought the state its first national championship in any major sport, and a man who established himself as the leading figure of the best franchise in all of hockey for eight years. Among his achievements, perhaps what he should be most remembered for is the effect he had on Colorado hockey. He made the games exciting to watch, was at least partially responsible for the Avs’ incredible success, and was one of the reasons the Avs have sold out every game they’ve ever played at home. Now, three years after his retirement, Roy is still a legendary figure in Colorado, and the continuing devotion of Colorado hockey fans to the Avalanche can be attributed to him in the same way that two Stanley Cups can. Long live the King!
It’s true, everything you heard is true. The Colorado Avalanche recently traded Alex Tanguay, 78-point man, to the divisional rival Calgary Flames? In return, they get Jordan Leopold, a decent, time-sucking (I mean that in a good way) defenseman and a second round pick. Now I know what you’re thinking, because it’s the same thing I was thinking: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!
Before you jump off a cliff or something, think about this: In last year’ playoffs, the Avs finished at number 8 in goals for, posting 22 goals in the post season. That seems pretty good, especially for just making it to the fourth game of the second round…until you look at goals against, where the Avs allowed 31 goals, making them fourth-worst in the league. By comparison, Edmonton allowed just less than 50% more goals (61) in almost 3 times as many games, and Carolina’s numbers are similar. Both Stanley Cup finals teams were positive in Goal Differential, whereas the Avs are a stunning -9. When you break it down, the Avs were doing just fine on offense, scoring 2.44 goals a game, despite being shut out numerous times. But the defense allowed 3.44 goals a game during the playoffs. Every single Conference Finals team let in less than 3 goals a game.
Now let’s look at Alex Tanguay’s contributions to the team during the playoffs. Six points in nine games. Now, he was fabulous during the regular season, and we really would have missed his production - but when you get right down to it, when it really counted, we weren’t missing any offense. We were missing defense. And that’s why this trade makes some amount of sense.
Looking at Jared Leopold, he was a 20-pt. defenseman last year, scoring only two goals. But everyone says he’s capable of 10 or 15, and as a bonus, he’s only 25, so we actually gain a year in the trade. (Tanguay is 26). Plus, Leopold is exactly the sort of defenseman we need to secure the blue line. Like Blake, he eats up a ton of minutes (avg 22:19 minutes last year), which means he’s obviously very solid defensively.
Our defense core was quite honestly very weak last year. We had two good lines of defense, in Blake/Liles (Liles actually had his fair share of troubles, however) and Skarstins/Clark, but beyond that, Vaananen was streaky, and obviously a non-factor in the second half, and Patrice Brisebois, though good at times, also had a lot of bad moments. This now gives us a dominant third line of defense, with either Brisebois/Leopold, or probably more likely, Vaananen/Leopold making up a very good line. Now assuming this isn’t a move attempting to replace Blake, it gives us the defensive core we desperately needed last year.
And even despite Tanguay, the offense will be fine. We still have Sakic and Brunette (140+ points combined on the first line), Hedjuk, who is capable of having a way better year than he did last year, Laaksonen (34 points) and Laperriere (21 goals). Plus, Wolski will be with the Avs for the entire season, and Svatos (50 points in about half a season) will be back and healthy, as will Konowalchuk (who had 22 goals in the last NHL season three years ago). And don’t forget, our defense can put up a lot of points too.
So if Leopold can add 20 solid minutes of defense to a game, I actually think it’s a…decent trade. It accomplishes two things: first, it takes a lot of minutes off of Blake, who gets real tired by the end of a season, and second, it keeps our shakier defenders off the ice. Meanwhile, even though the Avs finished fourth in scoring last year, a lot of it due to Tanguay, the Avs actually underachieved like crazy, when you consider that Hedjuk had a horrible season, their leading goal-scorer at the time was injured halfway through the season, and Konowalchuk, a very good playmaker and a bit of a scorer himself, was out nearly the entire season.
The only thing that really bugs me about this trade is that it went to a divisional rival. Seeing Alex Tanguay more than once or twice a year is not going to be fun - I know it wasn’t fun for the Flames when they were the ones trying to contain him.
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