By Allan Muir
Curtis Sanford spent his entire NHL career as the second or third option on the depth chart. Never a starter, but a reliable backup for parts of six seasons with St. Louis, Vancouver and Columbus. He compiled a fairly nondescript résumé along the way, and while he made a few playoff appearances in the minors, he never had a chance to prove that he could be a postseason hero in the big leagues.
Until Monday.
It came out of the sky: a meteor streaks over Chelyabinsk, Russia, wreaking damage. (Sergey Hametov/AP)
By Allan Muir
There’s now a hockey twist to the stunning story of the massive meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia this morning.
We found this posted on the KHL’s Facebook page:
The meteor shower which struck Chelyabinsk and its environs has also caused some disruption to the hockey season schedule. The emergency services have confirmed that the walls of the Arena Traktor were among those structures to suffer damage, and therefore large-scale events at the stadium have been postponed.
The sporting facilities will undergo an inspection by experts to assess the readiness of the arena to return to full operational use.
The results of the assessment will be made public on Monday, after which it will become clear whether the Chelyabinsk club can stage the first games of the playoffs. The knockout stages of the Gagarin Cup get underway on Wednesday, and as Traktor is already assured of a top four place in the Eastern Conference, the team is due to start the playoffs with home games on the 21st and 22nd of February.
At this time, the meteor shower has not affected Traktor’s schedule, as the Chelyabinsk men finish their regular season campaign with a trip on the road to Magnitogorsk on Sunday. However, three events – today’s and tomorrow’s Youth Hockey League games between Belye Medvedi of Chelyabinsk and Magnitogorsk’s Stalnye Lisy and Saturday’s planned opening of the Traktor’s museum — have had to be postponed.
The Great One is rumored to be looming over Toronto’s perennially fallen Leafs. (Nick Turchiano/Icon SMI/Getty)
By Allan Muir
• Purple Monkey Dishwasher. Does Wayne Gretzky want to be president of the Toronto Maple Leafs? Probably not, but someone speculated about it on the radio, then the internet got ahold of it, so apparently now it’s a thing.
• Don’t jump! Is this the first suspendable hit of the season? Nick Kypreos was the first to report on Twitter that Brayden Schenn would hear from Brendan Shanahan today after he leapt off the ice just prior to making contact with Anton Volchenkov. Hard to determine the first point of contact from this video, but it doesn’t appear to be the head. Still, there’s a desire to eliminate hits that involve leaving the ice, and since there was no penalty called on the play, the guess here is that Schenn will face a fine if nothing else.
Should he stay or should he go? Roberto Luongo is valuable to the Canucks either way. (Bob Frid/Icon SMI)
By Allan Muir
• Maybe they can get that Strombone guy in return. If Vancouver GM Mike Gillis is saying on record that there’s a provisional deal in place for Roberto Luongo, the early season’s biggest drama must be about to close. Or not. Who knows. Key point is buried at the end of the column: Luongo’s been the consummate pro during all this trade speculation, preventing the process from turning into a soap opera. This time around, being the anti-Tim Thomas is a good thing.
• Let’s not discount this free beer idea. The special warmup jerseys and pregame speeches were swell, but the healing process actually began with a competitive effort last night in Columbus. New GM John Davidson promised that his team wouldn’t be outworked, and the Jackets backed him up in theirt 3-2 shootout loss to Detroit. A consistent, focused effort will go a long way in C-bus…at least for now…
• Must be the cooking. The Leafs have lost 12 of 14 at the ACC after being dropped 2-1 by the Sabres last night. At least it was a freebie for season-ticket holders.
• All things being equal, I’d take the blond. Ian Mendes has the scoop on the best behind-the-bench distraction since Taylor Stevens.
NHL arenas will be quiet and empty on the league’s originally scheduled opening night, and likely for some time as the lockout drags. But thankfully, hockey’s landscape is vast and full of alternative action. (Bill Streicher/Icon SMI)
Hockey Fix Guides: MUIR: Canadian Major Juniors | CAZENEUVE: AHL, ECHL, U.S. juniors | BAUMGAERTNER: KHL, Euro leagues | KWAK: 2012-13 NCAA men’s and women’s ice hockey
By Stu Hackel
It’s time for Plan B.
Like many of you, I had planned to watch opening night of the NHL season, probably switching between the Senators-Canadiens game and the Bruins-Flyers tilt in the early evening and doing the same for the two late contests, the Canucks taking on the Flames in Calgary and the Blues battling the Avalanche in Colorado.
Thanks to the ongoing lockout, we won’t be doing that. So the search for hockey — in person, on video screens and computer monitors, on this continent or elsewhere — is on.
Fans who were hoping to see the NHL’s elite in action, even if it is in the KHL, will just have to wait a little longer. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
By Stu Hackel
[UPDATE: ESPN and the KHL finalized their agreement and announced their early schedule on Friday.]
Hold on hockey fans. We have another non-deal…at least for the moment.
We reported on Tuesday — as did just about everyone who covers hockey and the NHL lockout — that the KHL had announced an agreement for the broadcast of its games over the ESPN3 channel, which is available in more than 73 million U.S. households, and mostly streamed online. The excitement here at Red Light was palpable. Live hockey and it was starting today! We were all set to fire up the computer and catch Alex Ovechkin and his Dynamo Moscow mates take on Ak Bars Kazan with former Penguin Alexei Morozov, and then enjoy a daily game starting on Saturday and running through Tuesday, as announced by the KHL in their early schedule.
But no listings of these games have appeared on any of ESPN’s webpages, there was no quote from anyone at ESPN in the KHL’s press release, and when we looked for the Dynamo-Ak Bars tilt on ESPN3, what we saw was a soccer game between youth players from FC Barcelona and VfL Wolfsburg.
We contacted ESPN and a spokeswoman sent along this statement: “We can confirm that we have reached an agreement in principle to bring some KHL coverage to fans in the UK (on ESPN) and in the US (on ESPN3). However, details of a deal and specific coverage plans are not yet solidified. We will share more schedule details as soon as possible.”
The spokeswoman added that ESPN hoped the deal would be concluded by the end of the week but confirmed that the Dynamo-Ak Bars game would not be seen, the entire schedule has yet to be determined, and we should disregard the games that the KHL trumpeted on Tuesday.
The KHL’s announcement was, to say the least, a bit premature. The league has yet to respond to our request for comment, so it’s uncertain if this snafu was the result of a miscommunication or some over-eagerness on KHL’s part.
Ain’t nothing like the real thing: It’s doubtful that many fans would watch replacement players in the NHL, but will they tune in on ESPN3 to see Alex Ovechkin play for the KHL’s Dynamo Moscow? (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters photos)
By Stu Hackel
[UPDATE: The KHL deal with ESPN to show games from that league as discussed below has not been finalized and, until it is, the scheduled games listed in the item will not be shown on ESPN3. More on that in this blog post.]
With the NHL and NHLPA having trouble figuring out just what constitutes Hockey Related Revenue during Tuesday’s negotiations, it’s probable that the first few weeks of regular season games will have to be officially cancelled or, at least, postponed. It’s not good news.
With that in mind, here’s a little roundup of lockout-related items.
Picking Scabs: One of the more abhorrent rumors circulating about the current labor impasse was started by former Maple Leafs assistant GM Bill Watters who, most recently during a streamed internet program on Monday night, raised the possibility of replacement players coming into the NHL in November as a means for Commissioner Gary Bettman to end the players’ resistance to the league’s contract offer.
Alex Ovechkin stands out in hockey’s culture because he does things his own way. (Dave Sandford/Getty Images)
By Stu Hackel
No one should be surprised that Alexander Ovechkin has, once again, commanded the spotlight — at least briefly — during the NHL lockout. Ovechkin has many talents and grabbing attention is one of them. He’s been as charismatic a personality as hockey has ever seen and he’s always relished standing apart, from his special on-ice abilities (which we hope are not on the wane), to his leaping, glass-crashing goal celebration, his yellow skate laces and his now-banned darkened visor. This is a one-of-a-kind specimen and we should accept no substitutes.
The insurance on Alex Ovechkin for this year’s World Championships came to $400,000 and he played in only three games. The price for a KHL season will be much higher. (Photo by Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/GettyImages)
By Stu Hackel
They’re packing up and getting ready to go: Locked out NHL players have begun their inevitable migration to Europe in search of work.
Evgeni Malkin and Sergei Gonchar are headed to Magnitogorsk to play for Metallurg of the KHL. Jaromir Jagr heads home to Kladno in the Czech Republic to play for his hometown team, which he owns with his father, and it seems that Tomas Plekanec will go with him. Joe Thornton, who met his wife while playing for Davos in the Swiss league during the last lockout, will go back there and could be joined by Rick Nash, his linemate in Davos that season. Ilya Kovalchuk, Ruslan Fedotenko, Lubomir Visnovsky, Jiri Tlusty, Mark Streit, Yannick Weber, Jiri Hudler, Jussi Jokinen and goalies Michal Neuvirth and Semyon Varlamov are also part of the first wave of signings across the Atlantic. There are indications that Alex Ovechkin, Logan Couture, Niklas Backstrom and Anze Kopitar could be right behind while Pavel Datsyuk, who had reportedly been signed actually remains undecided. (You can follow the post-lockout transactions here.)
These signings occasionally get murky, confirmed then unconfirmed. The player and the team must agree on the money, the player has to be formally transferred by the IIHF (Nail Yakopov is having that problem) and there is also the matter of insurance and we’ll get into that below.
What’s not murky is that while players wait for negotiators to reach an agreement, staying in shape is a priority. That’s why some choose to play in Europe. They can rent ice in North America and scrimmage with each other all they want, or practice with established clubs in their areas on a daily basis, but nothing takes the place of real games. For some, especially those who have families in North America, it’s not always an easy decision to pick up and go, so they may delay a Euro decision in hope that the sides reach an agreement sooner rather than later. But the longer this CBA stalemate goes on, the more those who remain here will consider going over.
Unfortunately for free agent Alex Semin, his reputation precedes his impressive statistics. (Jerome Davis/Icon SMI)
By Stu Hackel
Goal scoring in the NHL is down, the thin free agent market is depleted of top offensive talent, and the trade market seems frozen, so one name in particular stands out: unrestricted free agent Alexander Semin. Theoretically at least, he could be the solution to some team’s scoring woes, but there he sits by the phone, waiting for his agent Marc Gandler to tell him which club wants to sign a supremely talented 28-year-old who has put up seasons of 38, 34 and 40 goals during his NHL career. His numbers are comparable to Zach Parise’s, but no one is throwing a 13-year contract worth $98 million at Semin. Not even close.
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