NHL Rewind: February 19-26

A look back at the week that was in the National Hockey League...

Carter to Los Angeles:

Trades are happening. Sure, the biggest and most rumoured of all trades – Rick Nash from Columbus to…well, somewhere – hadn’t happened, but there is the usual wheeling and dealing that ranges from interesting to exciting.

Although Nash remains in Ohio, the Blue Jackets did deal away high-profile off-season acquisition Jeff Carter to the Los Angeles Kings in return for the talented but often underwhelming D Jack Johnson, as good an offensive defenceman as there’s ever been in Columbus, and a conditional pick.

It’s a solid trade for both teams. LA desperately needs some offense, and there aren’t many better guys in the league for kick-starting a scoring spree than the former Flyer, Carter, who will be reunited with old buddy Mike Richards out west. Remember, if the rumours were/are true, it was their partying ways and a refusal to commit to drinking no alcohol during the season that saw them shipped out of Philadelphia.

Carter will be a good fit in LA. The Kings need something to get their offense going. It’s the worst in the league, which is insane when you look at their roster, which includes such names as Anze Kopitar, Mike Richards and Dustin Brown. Add Carter to that number, get them all fired up, and with spectacular goaltending from the superb Jonathan Quick, they’ll shake the Western Conference tree come playoffs.

As for Columbus, they are getting rid of a malcontent, and I can’t imagine that there’ll be many in C-Bus who aren’t happy to see the sulking Carter go. He never really got over the fact that he’d been traded out of Philly in the offseason, and really didn’t give the long-suffering Jackets fans much at all. Now, the rebuild begins – AGAIN – in Columbus. This season, one which started with a whole lot of promise for the Blue Jackets, has fallen apart quickly and horribly.

Offense:

What a wild week it’s been, seemingly Hat Trick Central. Before departing Columbus for the West Coast, Jeff Carter notched his second 3-goal game of the season, helping the Blue Jackets dismantle San Jose 6-3, a rare display of what the team in red, blue and white can do when they put their minds – and skates – to the task.

Then it was Evgeni Malkin’s turn. In Pittsburgh, that kid is top of the heap and his MVP-calibre form doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Whatever Carter can do, Malkin can do better. The Pens’ greatest asset who isn’t named Sidney Crosby scored three goals in Pittsburgh’s 8-1 rout of Tampa Bay on Saturday. One of his goals is a definite candidate for Goal of the Year. All around the league, people are starting to realise that he can’t be stopped.

Out west a few hours later, Dustin Brown, the subject of trade rumours, too, had a four-point game (3G, 1A) to help the Kings celebrate Jeff Carter’s arrival in town with a 4-0 victory against Chicago. It was a nice taste of what Los Angeles can do when they get on track. As I wrote earlier, if they get on track like that on a consistent basis, watch out!

Sunday, the offensive landslide continued. Tampa Bay got on the right end of a hat trick. Their old warrior, Martin St Louis, still one of the best, most explosive players in the NHL, had three goals and an assist – he had a hand in every one of the goals that the Lightning scored – as Tampa rebounded from a drubbing in the best possible way, taking the 4-3 decision against a surprisingly good New Jersey team.

The Streak:

Detroit’s streak of 23 straight home wins is over. What a run it was. Truth be told, though, I’m surprised that it lasted so long. I mean, Columbus beating San Jose 6-3 during the week is proof enough that in today’s NHL, strange things can happen on any given night. That the Red Wings managed to string twenty-three straight wins together at the Joe Louis Arena is even more incredible when you consider the fickle nature of the league.

The way Detroit were winning games late in their run were almost mythical, and it’s added to the legend of The Streak. Big props to Joey MacDonald, who carried the team to a couple of wins during his time subbing for the injured Jimmy Howard. Oh yeah, and there’s that guy Pavel Datsyuk. If you want to win a game at the death, put the puck on that man’s stick and, more often than not, you’re going to come away with the W.

Chicago:

The Blackhawks are too good to be as bad as they are at the moment. Their biggest problem is in goals. Someone in the front office at the United Centre needs to decide on which goalie gives them the best chance to win a game in the near – Stanley Cup playoffs – future, be it anointed starter Corey Crawford or the backup, Ray Emery. A decision needs to be made soon, before the ‘Hawks fall out of playoff contention.

It seems obvious to me that the team should take a serious look at their goaltending situation in the offseason. Spending a bit of time in Chicago last month gave me the feeling that the confidence everyone had in Crawford when he outplayed Marty Turco last year has disappeared. I’ll say it now: long-term, Corey Crawford is not the solution between the pipes for the Chicago Blackhawks. Not if they want to win another Cup anytime soon.

Oh, hey! Those Patrick Kane for Ryan Miller fantasies look less and less like a fantasy with every bad ‘Hawks goaltending effort.

Phoenix:

Much maligned for most of their existence, the Phoenix Coyotes are suddenly 10-0-1 in the month of February and after their impressive road victory against a rising Edmonton on Saturday afternoon sit alone in first place in the Pacific Division. This is a team playing really good hockey at the moment, thanks in large part to their goalie, Mike Smith, who has quietly rattled off ten straight wins. This is another team in the West who could do some real damage. I really hope that the Coyotes can do a deal that keeps the team in Glendale.

Random Stat:

The (my) New York Rangers are 8-1 on the season when Brandon Prust, a lightning rod for the team, has a fight in the first two minutes of the game. Man, he did some good work against Buffalo’s horribly over-matched Paul Gaustad yesterday. Visor be damned, he laid some solid blows. No guy in their right mind should want to take on Pruster. The man is a beast.

Hockey Day 2012 - Celebrating America & Hockey

On the day that the United States of America comes together – either live at a game or on via the nationally-televised triple header – to celebrate the great game of hockey, I thought it would be a good time to look at just a few things that currently make America’s contribution to the game so great.

Defensemen: These kids grew up watching Brian Leetch and Chris Chelios and co. winning Stanley Cups, the World Cup of Hockey and the Conn Smythe Trophy from the blue line.

Now, another generation of brilliant American defensemen are coming through and making an impact in the league, led by guys like Ryan Suter (who has the Miracle on Ice pedigree to boot) and Brooks Orpik (speaking of the Miracle; he was named for Herb Brooks) Jack Johnson, the unrelated Erik Johnson and any one of the kids from the NHL factory that the University of Wisconsin has seemingly become, someone like Ryan McDonagh, now turning heads on Broadway as a New York Ranger. Look at your team’s roster on any given night, there’s a stand-out American-born defenseman doing good things.

Goalies: You can’t help but marvel at the great story of Tim Thomas – from Europe via every conceivable level of minor-league hockey, to the starting gig in Boston, to back-up in Boston and back to starter, and the guy who, you know, carried that team on his shoulders all the way to a 2011-12 Stanley Cup victory – but there are other good Americans stopping pucks each night, and earning praise for doing so.

Any “Best Goalie in the National Hockey League” list now put out by any of the seven thousand experts covering the game, includes three, sometimes four Americans, depending on how the season is progressing: Jimmy Howard in Detroit, Jonathan Quick in Los Angeles and, of course, Ryan Miller in Buffalo. Like the game’s popularity in America, Miller’s star has risen considerably since the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, where he put in a Jim Craig-esque performance, backstopping Team USA to a memorable silver medal. Throw Tim Thomas into that mix, your reigning Conn Smythe Trophy Winner, and you have a collection of some of the best goalies in the league. There aren’t many better.

Playmakers: There’s one on every team, American superstars at wing or centre, and they’re ripping up the league. The list is endless, but there are a few of particular note: Patrick Kane in Chicago, Bobby Ryan in Anaheim, Joe Pavelski in San Jose, Dustin Brown in Los Angeles, guys who can turn a game with a sweet deke, a hard shot or a gorgeous pass, and there are even Americans doing great things in Canadian cities: Phil Kessel in Toronto and Ryan Kesler in Vancouver. You can’t turn on NHL Live or SportsCentre or wherever else you get your hockey highlights from without seeing an American with sweet hands and fast skates lighting up the ice.

Arenas: Time has not been kind to the League in terms of seeing great venues like Chicago Stadium and the Forum in Montreal closed in favour of bigger, more cavernous buildings with far less charm and history and atmosphere. Yet, some of the greatest remaining barns in the National Hockey League are inside the United States of America. I’m talking, of course, of Madison Square Garden and the Joe Louis Arena.

Those are legendary venues and when you walk inside – at least, when I walk inside – there exists the feeling that you are in the company of decades of greatness. There are few current Canadian venues that can lay claim to such history and hockey excellence. At the Garden, you’re staring at the same ice where hockey greats like Mark Messier and Wayne Gretzky did their thing.

Same in Detroit, where it was, for many years – another golden era of Red Wings hockey – it was the domain of the Golden Brett (Hull) and Steve Yzerman, and now it’s home to the Swedish connection of Lidstrom and Zetterberg and Franzen, but the venue on the banks of the Detroit River remains wonderfully American. There are few cities in America where hockey is so greatly embraced and loved. It’s no wonder they call it Hockeytown, USA.

Even as we type, history is being made in Detroit. The longest home win streak is at 23 – an all-time NHL record – and the way the ‘Wings are playing, thanks in part to Jimmy Howard’s stellar goaltending, there’s no telling when this streak might end. I mean, they’ve played a lot of good teams thus far – San Jose, Nashville, Dallas – and they keep winning. This is American hockey history unfolding before our very eyes from the greatest franchise of the modern era.

College Hockey: College hockey is perhaps the most underrated and under-watched version of the game in America, and it’s a shame because the hockey is brilliant, and there are certain programs – Boston U, Wisconsin – that have become factories for the NHL. It’s an exciting environment, and there is momentum growing, with the powerful Big Ten conference announcing the formation of it’s own hockey championship, which will see the addition of Penn State to the other programs that already exist and thrive in other conferences.

Embracing the great rivalries fostered in football and basketball, it seems there are literally dozens of great rivalries in the NCAA, Ohio State vs. Michigan, Boston College vs. Boston University, Michigan vs. Michigan State, Colorado College vs. Denver, Minnesota vs. Minnesota-Duluth, New Hampshire vs. Maine and Minnesota vs. Wisconsin. The college atmosphere makes these games even better, not that the standard in Division I isn’t insane, anyway.

The college game has come along in leaps and bounds in recent years. The only shame is that there isn’t more exposure for the sport on accessible cable and even network TV. Thankfully, the NBC Sports Network is stepping up to the plate, airing weekly primetime games, and as that network grows and expands, so, too, should college hockey. That can only be a good thing. After all, so many of the great Americans currently turning heads in the NHL have come straight out of the NCAA ranks.

The Miracle on Ice: What’s this got to do with American hockey as it stands now? Well, plenty. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that it has everything to do with the shape that hockey has taken on in America.

Sure, the game occurred more than thirty years – thirty two this month, in fact – but there is no greater American hockey moment than the Olympic semi-final in Lake Placid, between Team USA and the seemingly-unbeatable USSR. If ever there was a men vs. boys, David vs. Goliath moment in hockey, this was it.

We all know the story, and we all know the players, who’re heroes now. Even three decades after a game that wasn’t even shown live on TV across America, names like Eruzione and Craig and Pavelich and Broten and Johnson and, of course, the late, great Minnesotan Herb Brooks, are household names, feted wherever they go, thanks to sixty minutes of undeniable hard work and team effort in Lake Placid, New York against a team no one thought the Americans could even come close to, let alone beat.

The subsequent game for gold vs. Finland was the last game that Mike Eruzione, scorer of the game-winner against the Russians – and author of one of the greatest post-goal celebrations in hockey history – ever played, because he knew he couldn’t top the emotion of that game, of that day. In some ways, American hockey will probably never eclipse that moment as the greatest it has known. Proof positive of that is in Lake Placid, a town that thrives on that game and those names, and continues to be a hockey mecca for people wanting to see the arena and relive the moment.

Sure, the Russians/USSR continued on their merry way in the years following, but it was a big moment for American hockey and you can thank Herb Brooks and Mark Johnson and Jim Craig and Mike Eruzione and every other guy on that team, on the ice and off the ice, for inspiring a bunch of kids watching grainy colour TV in their living room or basement of wherever they saw ABC’s tape-delayed coverage and the after-game interviews with Eruzione and Craig and their fathers on a snowy Lake Placid street.

That game made kids sit up and want to play hockey. Without Brooks’ inspired coaching and Johnson’s hope-and-pray score at the end of the first period and Eruzione’s winner, and Craig’s incredible goaltending performance – still one of the best I’ve ever seen, we might not have seen Patrick Kane or Brooks Orpik or Ryan Suter or Joe Pavelski or Ryan Callahan or any of the other great Americans taking it to the Canadians and Europeans, telling them, Hey, we can play this game real good, too!

Without those kids-turned superstars, we might not have Hockey Day in America – and I’m thankful that we do.

As Badger Bob Johnson used to say, “It’s A GREAT Day For Hockey!”

Happy Hockey Day, everyone!