New Lightning goalie Ben Bishop has sometimes been hung out to dry by Tampa Bay’s lackluster defending. (Greg Fiume/Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

It was a nice bit of work by Tampa Bay GM Steve Yzerman to outbid the competition and add Ben Bishop from Ottawa at the trade deadline. And it was an even neater trick to extend the netminder yesterday with a two-year, $4.6 million deal. That’s a reasonable cap hit for an emerging No. 1 (right around what Corey Crawford and Jimmy Howard currently make), and the short term gives Bishop time to prove himself in the role while allowing Yzerman to beat a fairly hasty retreat if he doesn’t.

Now that he’s committed to two promising but inexperienced goaltenders in Bishop and last summer’s prize acquisition, Anders Lindback, it’s time to get serious about the real problem in Tampa.

Remember Bishop’s flashy debut for the Lightning? The key takeaway from that scintillating performance wasn’t that he recorded a shutout in a 5-0 thrashing of the Carolina Hurricanes. It’s that he faced down a career-high 45 shots in the process.

And that tells you exactly where Yzerman’s full attention should be focused this summer.

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By Stu Hackel

Of the many things that Nick Lidstrom said Thursday morning while announcing the end of his remarkable playing career (video), it was perhaps the last one in his prepared remarks that spoke the loudest: “Retiring today,” he said, “allows me to walk away from the game with pride rather than have the game walk away from me.”

This is a player who for much of last season was considered the best defenseman in the NHL, and if he returned next season, he’d still be one of the best players. But after being slowed by injuries and unable to raise his level of play in this year’s postseason, Lidstrom has his own standard of excellence to uphold. He knows he’s lost the inner drive to train as hard as he must this offseason in order to bounce back and reach that level of greatness again. He won’t cheat himself, he won’t cheat his teammates and he won’t cheat the fans if he can’t play with the same determined excellence that made him, without question, the best defenseman of his era.

That’s not just me making that evaluation of Lidstrom’s talent and legacy, that’s the opinion of Scotty Bowman.

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Mike Smith has given Coyotes fans something to cheer about down to the regular season’s final days. (Chris Pondy/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

Most of the stories that the world outside of Arizona has read about the Phoenix Coyotes during the past few years have been about the viability of the franchise in Glendale, a location that was doomed from the start. It’s a sad tale about an orphaned hockey club, and it’s been made even sadder by the fact that the franchise’s tenuous situation has obscured what the team has done on the ice.

That was, to some extent, the reasoning that motivated the NHL Broadcasters Association to select Coyotes coach Dave Tippett as the winner of the 2010 Jack Adams Award as NHL Coach of the Year, a deserved honor considering how he kept his players focused and competitive amidst the constant distraction and uncertainty of the club’s off-ice business. For that, Tippett deserves the award every year.

Tippett has done another good job this season, and the Coyotes — who look more in danger of departing Arizona than ever — clinched a playoff berth Thursday when the Dallas Stars dropped their game in Nashville.  The coach is not the only reason the Coyotes once again found their way to the postseason. GM Don Maloney has done great work with a limited budget. Ray Whitney, who is a mere 39 years old (he’ll be 40 in a month), has had a truly remarkable campaign, his 51 assists ranking sixth in the league. His 75 points rank 14th in the scoring race.

But even Whitney’s fine play can’t overshadow what Mike Smith has done in goal.

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The 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens of Ken Dryden rattled off an NHL record 34-game home unbeaten streak, but most importantly also grabbed the Stanley Cup. (Photo by Melchior DiGiacomo/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Detroit’s mark of 21 consecutive victories at home has stirred up the beehive of naysayers who, not without at least some justification, believe an asterisk should accompany the Red Wings’ new entry into the NHL Record Book. But no one should lose sight of the bigger picture here and confuse what the Wings have done as an indication that they are so formidable that winning the Stanley Cup is their inevitable fate. Far from it.

The Red Wings certainly know this and that while their home record is pretty amazing, their road mark is rather mediocre at 15-15-1. They’re hardly invincible. And when you look at all the teams that have put together record streaks of one sort or another during the regular season, almost none of them won the Cup.

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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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In one of the season’s most bizarre scenes, Braydon Coburn and other Flyers defensemen simply held the puck while waiting in vain for the Lightning to abandon their 1-3-1 trap. (Photo by Chris O’Meara/AP)

By Stu Hackel

One of the most anticipated topics discussed at the GMs meetings in Toronto on Tuesday was the fallout from the Flyers-Lightning game last week.  The managers declined to consider any new rules in response to the bizarre scenes  in which Philadelphia refused to advance the puck after Tampa Bay went into its 1-3-1 defense. No Lightning player pressured the puck and the closest Tampa Bay skater was back on the offensive blueline, but the Flyers refused to move. That could change if we see a re-run of that strangeness in the future.

Most interesting were the remarks of Flyers GM Paul Holmgren, who indicated that he was not comfortable with the passive way his team responded to the trap. “To me, it just didn’t sit right,” he said of the  ploy.
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Coach Bruce Boudreau has Alex Ovechkin’s ear about being a better leader. (Mark Goldman/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

Reading the item today that The Washington Post’s Tariq El-Bashir wrote for the paper’s hockey blog about Alex Ovechkin’s new desire to be a better, more serious captain and leader reminded me of when a downcast Steve Yzerman approached Scotty Bowman after Detroit was defeated by the Devils in the 1995 Stanley Cup Final. Yzerman asked for Bowman’s advice about how he could become a champion. That turned out pretty well for Stevie Y, Scotty and Hockeytown fans. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Ovie will be holding the Stanley Cup as the Capitals parade through the streets of DC next June, but it does signal a new, more mature player who is willing to change for the benefit of his team.

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Solid gold: Nashville and the Predators will be showing their new colors next season. (Mark Humphrey/AP)

By Stu Hackel

Let’s take a skate around the NHL and look at some news on this summer day.

The biggest item comes out of Columbus, well, Sweden actually, where Blue Jackets forward Kristian Huselius, who was recovering from April hip surgery, tore a pectoral muscle while weightlifting and will miss four to six months. He had surgery Thursday morning in Columbus and is lost to the club until November at the earliest, January at the latest. GM Scott Howson tweeted that “surgery went well,” and added “We r looking at options to help get us through.” Read More…

Given the rugged nature of the position, a defenseman hasn’t won the Lady Byng Trophy (gentlemanly play) since 1954, but Nicklas Lidstrom of the Red Wings truly deserves it. (Robin Alam/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

The NHL hands out its regular season awards on Wednesday evening in Las Vegas, a venue that just oozes hockey history and tradition. Actually, the “nominees-winner” Academy Awards-style format is as artificial as Vegas glitz because the “nominees” are not nominees at all but actually the top three vote-getters from the April balloting (here’s who SI.com’s Michael Farber chose) after the votes are tabulated. So the winner has already been determined when the nominees are announced. This format transforms the known into the suspenseful, so maybe Vegas is the right venue after all.
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Strong defense and solid goaltending are just two of the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Canucks’ strengths as they head for what should be a deep run in the playoffs. (John Russell/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

In their 40th season, the Canucks have finally finished first overall, clinching the Presidents’ Trophy with their 3-1 victory over the Kings on Thursday night. The win was revealing in a couple of ways, first in how truly good Vancouver has been all season. Despite a run of injuries to their defense corps and the recent loss of Manny Malhotra, they have made the necessary adjustments and dealt with obstacles while getting stronger as the season progresses. In March, the Canucks grabbed 26 of a possible 30 points, a blistering pace.
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