Category: NHL General

The Ducks are making a case for being considered a contender by going 7-2-1 in their last 10 games. They are in the top 10 in three of the six rankings this. Here are the NHL Power Rankings by top sites this week.

Well, everyone is back from the Olympics and we’ve played enough games to affect the Power Rankings.  Here are the NHL Power Rankings by top sites this week.

The NHL trade deadline has come and gone and like most things concerning hockey, no one seemed to really care. ESPN had a halfhearted report of all the last minute trades (a record setting number this year) but couldn’t muster the enthusiasm they had for the NBA trade deadline. Sad. The NHL is such a better game right now than the NBA. Well, for the 3 of us out there who still care, here is a roundup of the trades and reactions around the blogosphere.

[TSN.ca]: List of all trades this season by date.

[Off Wing Opinion]: At The NHL Trade Deadline…

[Hockey Rants]: Assessing the Deadline Day Deals

[Canucks Corner]: Deadline Day

[Puckupdate.com]: Trade is over

If there was ever a cautionary tale about the ills of drugs and alcohol, look no further than Theo Fleury. After winning the Stanley Cup just two years into his career, everything has since fallen apart. We find Theoren playing hockey in Britain (they have hockey?) for the Belfast Giants. Well, we did. His career in that league is over too.

You’d think having to play ice hockey in a country of field hockey would mellow Theo out a bit but recently, he tried to climb out of the penalty box to reach a fan who had been taunting him all game. And last Saturday, he refused to go to the penalty box after being called for elbowing (maybe there was a fan there he didn’t want to fight) and got a 10 minute misconduct. After getting back on the ice, he fired a puck at the referee and missed him by inches.

Theo was thrown out of the game, went apeshit and threatened the officials so he got another game misconduct. Theo has vowed never to play in the league again. I guess there’s always the South African Ice Hockey Association.

[Calgary Sun]: Theo on thin ice after meltdown

End of the road

I don’t think anyone thought the US had any shot at winning a gold at the Olympics but the team embarassed itself by only winning one game and getting bounced in the quarterfinals.

Afterward, Mike Modana melts down off camera and criticized USA Hockey for managing poor management and said that players had to make their own travel arrangements for their families. Modana said that the organization needed a complete overhaul, to which the General Manager shockingly disagreed.

The Canadian Hockey team is another story. They were gold medal favorites and lost in the quarterfinals, shut out by the Russians 2-0. Gretzky took the blame for the failure but said he’d be back in 2010. The Canadian press has been critical of the team but seems to be pretty even keeled in the assessment of the loss. Perhaps because the columnists haven’t had a chance to digest the loss yet. We’ll turn to the bloggers for their opinions on the Canada debacle:

[James Mirtle]:
To be honest, I really can’t come up with an example of a best-on-best hockey tournament in which Canada played worse than this one in Turin. Even from the start, when a heavily overmatched Italian team played the Canadians to a 1-1 draw through 22 minutes, it was ugly.

[HockeyAnalysis.com]: The player selection committee has to take some blame for this loss. I criticized the selection committee for taking Draper and Doan and you could have made a strong argument against Martin St. Louis being on the team as well. When I selected my Olympic team I suggested that one of the Tampa players should have been left off the team and St. Louis would have been the obvious choice. Certainly Eric Staal, Sidney Crosby, Patrick Marleau, Alex Tanguay or even Brendan Shanahan would have all contributed more offense than Doan, Draper and St. Louis.

[Canucks Hockey]: To all the armchair GM’s out there, would you have left Joe Thornton and Jarome Iginla, two of the best power forwards in the game but were non-factors for most of the tournament, off the team for Sidney Crosby and Eric Staal? Would you have left Chris Pronger, All-Star and Olympic gold medallist but struggled on the big ice, for Dion Phaneuf? You can go on and on and on for every player on this roster – they were, after all, shut out for three of the six games they played – but hindsight is 20/20.

[Jes Golbez]: Many will expect Wayne Gretzky to shoulder the blame, but I’d put much more of it on the shoulders of coach Pat Quinn. Did Canada look like a poorly coached team to you? To me, Canada lacked exactly what a good coach would provide.

Well it looks like the Yahoo folks are on vacation again so there’s no update on their power rankings. Here are the NHL Power Rankings by top sites this week.

No involvement

It seems the reports that the Great One knew about the gambling ring are incorrect. The wiretapped conversation that has him discussing the ring are only after he was informed of his wife’s involvement on Monday. So I guess while his remark when asked about his wife’s involvement by reporters on Tuesday (“Oh, really? I don’t know, you’d have to ask her that.”) was less than guileless, we can’t really blame Gretz for the implied denial of knowledge. After Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”, we have much lower standards on the truth.

Gretzky and his wife are headed to Turino on Tuesday where the international press will have their chance to run roughshod with this story should any new developments occur. Anything short of a gold medal in Turino for the Canadian hockey team will be viewed as a major disappointment but the head of the Canadian Olympic Committee has said that Gretzky won’t be a distraction and that what the Canadian team does will override the scandal. In Gretzky’s favor, if you need any more proof that he does belong at the Olympics, you have to look no further than Stephen A Smith, who opines that “Gretzky needs to skip the Olympics”.

Meanwhile, there’s no news on Tocchet but Guy Junker in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review points out: “When the rumblings started about Pete Rose and his gambling problems, the first thing we heard was that he didn’t bet on baseball. Then we were told he didn’t bet on Cincinnati Reds games. Then we were told he didn’t bet against the Reds.” Interesting point. He’s probably the first journalist not to lemmingly repeat the “no evidence of hockey bets” statement issued by the NHL.

Finally, here is a columnist who feels the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

The Gambling One?

When Wayne Gretzky said he didn’t know anything about Rick Tocchet’s gambling operation, we believed him because, well, he’s Wayne Gretzky. Now there’s a report by the Newark Star-Ledger that a couple of weeks ago, Gretzky was on tape discussing the situation with Rich Tocchet and how to protect themselves and Gretzky’s wife, Janet Jones. However, there is no evidence that the Great One bet on any games himself. As we reported yesterday, Janet Jones is believed to have wagered $500,000 on games during a 40 day period. I’m not feeling so bad about the $50 I lost on the Super Bowl now.

Jones denies that Gretzky ever did any gambling except on horse racing. However, Coyote GM Mike Barnett recently made a bet on the Super Bowl with Rick Tocchet. I wonder if he hates the Bill Leavy as much as we do.

Man, Rick Tocchet is ruining a lot of reputations right now.

[Reuters]: Gretzky denies involvement in gambling ring
[USA Today]: Gretzky’s wife: ‘Great One’ didn’t gamble