Running 2007 NHL regular season thread

JR · Oct 18, 2007

The official jersey for SportsJournalists.com hockey fans:

Flash · Oct 18, 2007

JR, I love it!!

hockeybeat · Oct 18, 2007

JR said:

The official jersey for SportsJournalists.com hockey fans:

Click to expand...

That's all me!

hockeybeat · Oct 18, 2007

spnited said:

The Devils -- starting the season with a nine-game road trip til the new arena opens a week from Saturdaya,with a new coach, a new system and without some of their top players from past seasons -- are 3-3.

The Rangers, who made all the big off-season moves and to whom hockeybeat already has awarded the Stanley Cup, are 2-3.

Just saying.
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It's early. Wait until the lads get on the same page.

hockeybeat · Oct 18, 2007

Chelios is going after Don Meehan.

The Hockey News

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

SCREEN SHOTS:
CHELIOS TAKES AIM
by Adam Proteau

Over the course of his storied NHL career, Chris Chelios has not only rocked opponents with his physical play on the ice, but also with his words off it. The Red Wings defenseman was one of the first to come out in vehement opposition to the manner in which former NHL Players’ Association executive director Ted Saskin rose to power – and subsequent investigations proved Chelios’s suspicions to be valid.

However, Chelios’s most recent comments regarding the players’ union and its buckling to owner demands during the last collective bargaining negotiation indicates there’s a new target in his crosshairs – prominent player agent Don Meehan – and raises the specter of decertifying one of the game’s most powerful figures.

"In my opinion, Donny Meehan played a role in undermining our union," Chelios said this week, accusing Meehan of working with Saskin and NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly to help end the lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season. â€œIf [Meehan, Saskin, (NHL commissioner Gary) Bettman and Daly] did anything wrong, it remains to be seenâ€¦Eventually, it will all come out."

Meehan vehemently denied scuttlebutt of that nature months ago, telling the New York Post such rumors were â€œabsolute nonsense.â€

â€œI had no contact with Gary Bettman, Bill Daly or any other league negotiator during the lockout,â€ Meehan said, before daring his critics to attach their names to the accusations. "Who are these slimeballs who are trying to ruin my reputation?

"...(l)et me tell you something: If anyone wants to file charges against me, let them. If anyone has the [guts] to make this claim against me, I'll sue their [butt] off.â€

Meehan stuck by those words in a brief conversation with TheHockeyNews.com Wednesday.

â€œI’ll let my previous comments speak for me now,â€ Meehan said. â€œIf someone wishes to go (on the record) with their thoughts, I’ll review what they’ve said with my attorney and take action from there.â€

The NHLPA did not respond to multiple calls for comment on Chelios’s accusations. But the union has a process in place for agent decertification – and has used it more than once, including during the revoking of former agent Bryant McBride’s license to represent players in 2004 when it alleged McBride leaked information from the NHLPA’s secure website to a reporter.

According to the NHLPA’s regulations governing agent certification, it can revoke an agent’s license to represent players if it receives a complaint within one year from the incident which caused the complaint, or one year from the date on which the information became known to the union.

Any number of transgressions can be cause for a decertification complaint, including â€œEngaging in any...activity which creates an actual or potential conflict of interest with the effective representation of playersâ€¦â€

Regardless of whether Meehan is a target for decertification, it is clear some player agents believe the union – and rumored new executive director Paul Kelly – must go beyond a report from investigator Sheila Block and further delve into the circumstances that led to Saskin replacing predecessor Bob Goodenow as NHLPA chief.

Minnesota-based agent Neil Sheehy is one of those people.

â€œThe Block Report established that there were a lot of documents that were shredded, and hard drives that were destroyed,â€ Sheehy told TheHockeyNews.com. â€œSo the question is, how do we get all the information out? It’s important for this union moving forward that we have full transparency, that we understand what happened, and that the people who undermined the union be reckoned with – whoever they are.â€

However, another prominent agent, who requested anonymity, wondered whether Kelly and the union would better spend their time focusing on the future, rather than the past.

â€œWhen someone says, â€˜undermined the union,’ does anyone think in January of 2005 – after we made the offer of a 24 per cent rollback – we were in a position where (Goodenow) was winning?â€ the agent said. â€œThe fact is, we were getting our ass kicked. (Goodenow) had no plan B or C. It was all or nothing, and when the season was canceled, it was nothing. We were dead in the water at that point.

â€œWe all want Paul Kelly to succeed, and we certainly need an infusion of vigor in the union,â€ the agent added. â€œWe can spend a whole bunch of time going back and reviewing the events of 2004 and 2005, but I hope whomever’s in charge first asks, â€˜Where are we going to?’ and, â€˜How do we get there?’ first.

â€œAnd really, wouldn’t the owners just love to see (union members and agents) attacking each other again?â€

http://www.thehockeynews.com/en/news/news.asp?idNews=26180
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JR · Oct 18, 2007

NYTimes does probing interview with SportsJournalists.com's favorite hockey player, Sean Avery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/magazine/14wwln-domains-t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1192651523-+hX0v8Hn5Ct3xYvM7kMuTg

Fantasy career: I’d like to be an editor of a fashion magazine. Creatively and artistically, it is something I’d like to do, and I think I have a lot of ideas that would be good on paper.

Is Sean Avery gay?

Not that there's anything..................................

Cansportschick · Oct 18, 2007

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but it appears Quinn's name is appearing as a successor to Hartley in Atlanta:

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/2007/10/17/quinn_atlanta_rumour/

Also in this article are other possible replacements.

hockeybeat · Oct 18, 2007

Cansportschick said:

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but it appears Quinn's name is appearing as a successor to Hartley in Atlanta:

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/2007/10/17/quinn_atlanta_rumour/

Also in this article are other possible replacements.
Click to expand...

Is there an unemployed coach that can improve Atlanta's lousy defensemen? Or make Kovalchuk care about something other than scoring goals?

Cansportschick · Oct 18, 2007

hockeybeat said:

Cansportschick said:

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but it appears Quinn's name is appearing as a successor to Hartley in Atlanta:

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/2007/10/17/quinn_atlanta_rumour/

Also in this article are other possible replacements.
Click to expand...

Is there an unemployed coach that can improve Atlanta's lousy defensemen? Or make Kovalchuk care about something other than scoring goals?
Click to expand...

hockey, I wondered the same thing. Regardless of who the coach becomes, the Thrashers have too many problems.

ondeadline · Oct 18, 2007

They way they quit on Hartley and were showing no passion, you have to believe there will be a little more jump tonight because he's been fired.

Cansportschick · Oct 18, 2007

ondeadline said:

They way they quit on Hartley and were showing no passion, you have to believe there will be a little more jump tonight because he's been fired.
Click to expand...

The defence still sucks and that is not going to fix itself up by a little jump tonight.

hockeybeat · Oct 18, 2007

Cansportschick said:

hockeybeat said:

Cansportschick said:

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but it appears Quinn's name is appearing as a successor to Hartley in Atlanta:

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/2007/10/17/quinn_atlanta_rumour/

Also in this article are other possible replacements.
Click to expand...

Is there an unemployed coach that can improve Atlanta's lousy defensemen? Or make Kovalchuk care about something other than scoring goals?
Click to expand...

hockey, I wondered the same thing. Regardless of who the coach becomes, the Thrashers have too many problems.
Click to expand...

And all of the Thrashers problems go back to Wdadell. Before last season, he vowed that they would make the playoffs. To guarantee that his team would qualify for the playoffs, he went all in and mortgaged the franchise's future for noted winner Keith Tkachuk. Oops.

What did Atlanta get out of it? Two home playoff games.

Now, Hartley isn't an innocent in this mess. His shuttling of goaltenders in the Rangers series was nonsensical and he doesn't know when to dial down the intensity. He won a Cup in Colorado because they were veteran-laden team that had won before.

I think if the Thrashers were going to fire Hartley, they should have also canned Waddell.

Jeff Schultz's AJC column

Waddell should be gone instead

By Jeff Schultz | Wednesday, October 17, 2007, 08:08 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Jeff Schultz

Four years ago, Don Waddell sat behind his desk, pointed at the wall separating his office and Bob Hartley’s, and said, â€œMy future’s in that room.â€

I’m not sure what changed. But on Wednesday, a coach who has won a Stanley Cup and led a struggling franchise to its only playoff berth and a division title lost his job, while the general manager who has been here for over nine years, seven-plus seasons and no playoff wins is preparing to hire his third coach.

Don Waddell stays.

Bob Hartley goes.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Don Waddell, the general manager who has drafted 28 defensemen but has only two to show for it on the Thrashers’ roster, stays.

Bob Hartley, who has been trying to shuffle semi-comatose bodies in hopes that defective ingredients can somehow be made into a better soup, goes.

Hartley will get another job. But how does Waddell get another chance?

The Thrashers fired the wrong guy.

At the very least, Waddell should’ve stood up Wednesday and declared, â€œYou know what? I really botched this off-season. Maybe Todd White isn’t a No. 1 center. So I resign.â€

Instead, he said this: â€œI think we’re a better team when we started the season this year than we were last year.â€

Everybody waited for the punch line.

The Thrashers figured to lose several pieces off of last year’s playoff team, which was swept in four games by the New York Rangers (tonight’s opponent — kismet!) What few imagined was that the Thrashers would come back so thin, with arguably the league’s worst depth chart at center, a thin and erratic group of defensemen, and no playmaker for Ilya Kovalchuk.

Some people have made way too much of a perceived feud between Hartley and Kovalchuk. The fact is, Kovalchuk told Waddell in the off-season that he’s fine with the coach. He just wanted a center. I dunno. Maybe Waddell misunderstood Kovalchuk, and thought Todd White was Russian for Peter Forsberg.

This is what Kovalchuk said Wednesday about Hartley: â€œHe’s a straight-up guy. Whenever there was something wrong, he always said it to my face, and that’s what I like about him. â€¦ I just [told him], â€˜Thank you.’ He really teach me a lot of good things, and I think he makes me a better player.â€

Everybody else in the Thrashers’ locker room should be so stand up. There are two things this team needs: better players and more mirrors, because they just got a good coach and an even better man fired.

Waddell took heat for mortgaging the future with pre-deadline deals last year. He shouldn’t. Those deals got the Thrashers into the playoffs. But blame Waddell for the holes that existed before the trades, and the holes that remained unfilled after the season.

Player development has been dreadful. There is little to show for nine drafts and 82 players. Of the 28 defensemen drafted, the only two here are Garnet Exelby (eighth round, 1999; blind squirrel, meet acorn) and Tobias Enstrom (eighth round, 2003; just got here).

Michael Gearon, one of the owners, talked about the franchise’s incremental progress. But it doesn’t compare to Minnesota and Nashville. Tampa Bay won a Stanley Cup. Carolina, a transplant, was torn apart and built into a Cup team.

Beyond Kovalchuk, what do the Thrashers have to build around? Goalie Kari Lehtonen is talented but seemingly more fragile by the hour. Marian Hossa will be a free agent. (Good luck convincing him to stay.) Everybody else is either 1) young and unproven; 2) old and sliding; 3) just not that good.

But does Waddell regret any of his off-season decisions?

â€œWe’re only six games into the year,â€ he said. â€œIt’s way too early to start judging whether a player will be a valuable member of your team or not.â€

Oh. So why is six games not too early to decide the fate of a coach?

â€œIt’s how we lost games,â€ Waddell said.

Is Hartley blameless? No. This is the worst start in franchise history. This team obviously has underachieved. Some players didn’t like Hartley. Some probably were worn down by his message. But doesn’t that say something about the players and personalities that Waddell has assembled?

Bobby Holik said he â€œsensed a problem toward the end of last year. I told that to Don in our after-season meetings. The last third of the season and in the playoffs, we were not getting better.â€

When Holik was asked if the problem was Hartley or the players, he said, â€œI guess the next few weeks will answer that.â€

Gearon would not address Waddell’s job security beyond saying, â€œFrom our perspective, it’s important we see progress.â€

It’s nice that there’s a standard. It would be nicer if everybody were held to it.

http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/sportscolumns/entries/2007/10/17/waddell_should.html
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