The play of  ageless Teemu Selanne (center) aside, things are not looking up for the flightless Ducks. (John Cordes/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

The rumor-mongers are mongering and the buzzards are circling the wounded Ducks that are limping around in Anaheim, all fully expecting their coach to be sacrificed or a big name player to be shipped out. Maybe something will happen, maybe it won’t, but there’s a game to be played on Wednesday night against Montreal and another chance to turn the season around. It may, however, be too late.

UPDATE: After defeating the Canadiens 4-1, their first victory in seven games and first victory of the season in which they surrendered the opening goal, the Ducks fired head coach Randy Carlyle and replaced him with Bruce Boudreau, who had just been fired as coach of the Capitals on Monday.
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Jim Kelley doing what he did best: composing another incisive column. (Bill Sikes/AP)

By Stu Hackel

A year after his death, Hall of Fame hockey writer, SI.com columnist and my friend Jim Kelley was honored on Tuesday in his hometown of Buffalo. A one-block section of Washington Street between the First Niagara Center (the Sabres’ arena) and The Buffalo News, his employer for more than three decades, was dedicated as Jim Kelley Way.

Kelley’s wife Susan (who with his daughters and grandchildren meant everything to him) and his father, Jim, Sr. (his role model as a hard-working family man) unveiled the street sign.

Here’s a column on the dedication by Jim’s former News colleague Bucky Gleason. In it, he wrote, “The Sabres and The News didn’t always make it easy on Kelley, and I guess the same could be said about him. His passion for the truth often made for busy crossroads with no stop signs and numerous left turns. It wasn’t always pretty or easy or safe or popular. But it was during the most trying moments that Kelley’s integrity, his conscience, forced him to stand up for what was right even when it meant standing alone.”

Here’s the post I wrote about Jim when he passed away. We knew each other a long time, we were both hockey lifers, and we were also co-workers a couple of times. We shared a lot of the same values and passions and, like Bucky Gleason and probably everyone else who ever encountered Jim, I was inspired by his adherence to principle and unwavering quest to get at the truth in work and in life. I still am.

I think about Jim every day when I open up a blank window on which to write these posts. And I miss him a lot.

First-year coach MIke Yeo has quietly made his low-profile Wild into an early Western Conference leader. (Brace Hemmelgarn-US PRESSWIRE)

By Stu Hackel

Far away from the glaring spotlight of expectation that will shine on high-profile first-time NHL head coaches Dale Hunter and Kirk Muller, a little-known former Penguins assistant is doing some pretty special things in his first crack at running a team.

Mike Yeo, the NHL’s youngest coach,  has his Minnesota Wild tied with the Chicago Blackhawks for first place overall in Western Conference after a 3-1 win over Tampa Bay on Monday night.  Yeo may be less celebrated than the two former NHL captains who were newly installed in Washington and Raleigh, but they’d be happy to have his level of achievement after their first 24 games.
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Once a jolly, ebullient players’ coach, Bruce Boudreau got tough with his underperforming stars, such as captain Alexander Ovechkin, this season and ended up alienating them. (Ann Heisenfelt/AP Photos)

By Stu Hackel

The coaching obituary of Bruce Boudreau will reflect that one of the NHL’s most colorful and visible men behind the bench could not get the best out of a talented group of players when it mattered.  When adjustments were on the agenda, he couldn’t make his team follow. In a results-oriented business, that’s all that counts.

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The Bruins’ traditional post-Thanksgiving Day game, this year against the Red Wings, will launch NBC’s national coverage of the NHL five weeks earlier than usual. (Damian Strohmeyer/Sports Illustrated)

By Stu Hackel

On Nov. 29, 1991, the Bruins hosted the Canadiens in an afternoon game. It was the day after Thanksgiving and Boston defeated its fierce Montreal rivals 5-4 in overtime. Whether it was superstition, a strong fan response or smart marketing, the B’s repeated the post-Turkey Day match the following season, this time against the Hartford Whalers (again an OT victory for the home side) and this Friday afternoon game has been a fixture on Boston’s calendar ever since.

Now, 20 years later, the NHL and NBC are turning this tradition into a special event, one that is emblematic of an innovative new era for a league historically considered second-rate in the areas of marketing and promotion.
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Philosophical differences between coach Brent Sutter and captain Jarome Iginla do not bode well for the Flames. (Colleen De Neve/ZUMAPRESS.com)

By Stu Hackel

Coaches are hired to be fired, as the saying goes. But what happens in between cements the perception we have of the guys who stand behind the bench in the NHL, the ones who prepare their teams in long hours of meetings and video study. It’s a hard job, especially when fans, the media and even the players believe they know better than the coach what a team should be doing.

That seems to be the situation in which Flames coach Brent Sutter finds himself vis a vis his captain Jarome Iginla. Sutter believes his team won’t be the consistent force it can be unless everyone buys into his scheme, and that Calgary will continue to play as a bunch of individuals and not realize the potential of its collective talents. Specifically, he wants Iginla — the 15-year NHL veteran who has topped the 1,000 point plateau and is only 11 goals away from 500 — to concentrate on his defensive game.

Right now, the 34-year-old Iginla is minus-12, with only five goals and four assists — not vintage Iggy.

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Rookie goalie Anders Nilsson was thrown to the marauding Penguins in the latest sorry display by the perpetually rebuilding Islanders, who are again sinking out of sight. (Charles LeClaire-US PRESSWIRE)

By Stu Hackel

Sidney Crosby’s magnificent return on Monday night overshadowed — well, more like dwarfed — the sorry performance of the team he singlehandedly dismantled: the New York Islanders. Heap as many accolades you want on Crosby, they are all deserved as he commanded his superior skills to produce a magical night for the NHL and the world of sports.

But let’s also look at the team he sliced and diced, one that is on the verge of kissing yet another season goodbye after having not even completed one quarter of the schedule. That team is, once again, a mess.
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When last seen together, Sidney Crosby was playing at a superstar level, but Alex Ovechkin’s game was showing signs of decline that have become more pronounced. (Photo by Geoff Burke-US PRESSWIRE)

By Stu Hackel

They’ll be linked forever, it seems, as this generation’s Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux or, in an earlier time, Rocket Richard and Gordie Howe. The Siamese twins of the New NHL’s image machinery,  Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, have once again skated to the forefront of our minds.
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Courtesy of Wiley & Sons

By Stu Hackel

If hockey ever produced a cautionary tale, it’s the life of Bobby Hull. That tale, and not merely recounting Hull’s on-ice exploits, is the approach taken by award-winning Toronto author Gare Joyce in his excellent new book, The Devil and Bobby Hull (John Wiley & Sons, 274 pages).

Hull was hockey’s biggest attraction in the waning days of the Original Six era, more charismatic than the laconic Gordie Howe, flashier than the decorous Jean Beliveau. In his day, he was King of the Ice ( to borrow the honorific crown conjured up by the late Paul Quarrington in his great 1988 hockey novel, King Leary). Hull’s reign was wedged between those of Rocket Richard and Bobby Orr, although he was hardly in decline during Orr’s peak. He was not only the NHL’s top goal scorer — the first NHLer to break the 50-goal barrier in a season — but also it’s most explosive, visible and marketable player.

Five times a Sports Illustrated cover subject — unprecedented for an NHL player of that time – Hull’s stardom transcended the game, and through his numerous endorsements, which doubled his Black Hawks salary, Gare establishes that he became the first hockey figure to gain continent-wide recognition and was the impetus for the league’s first great expansion in 1967.

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Goaltender Brian Elliott has been a surprising part of the Blues’ turnaround under coach Ken Hitchcock. (Jimmy Simmons/ZUMAPRESS.com)

By Stu Hackel

Some thoughts from around the NHL:..

The Blues defeated the Panthers Thursday tonight in a matchup of  two of the NHL’s more interesting clubs — and who would have thought they’d describe them that way a couple of weeks ago? The Blues are improved since Ken Hitchcock took over as coach, winning four of five and in the fifth getting a point after losing the postgame skills competition to the Maple Leafs.

The Blues’ wins have all come at home, but now they play five of their next seven games are on the road. Their special teams play is better. Hitchcock has simplified the game for the players (Bernie Miklasz’s column today in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has more on that) and, probably most importantly, the Blues are getting very good goaltending, especially from Brian Elliott, who was not even guaranteed a roster spot in training camp.
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