Trying to Make Sense of the NHL Lockout

Oh boy, it's like 2004 all over again...

At midnight last night, the NHL once again locked out their players, and it appears that hockey fans are ready to have another long work stoppage ahead of them. If you're leeping score at home, this is the third lockout in 18 years under the reign of commissionor Gary Bettman. The 1994-95 season was cut in half, while the 2004-05 season was wiped out completely, but there are some major differences between the last lockout and this one. For starters, the last lockout HAD to happen in order to fix the sport and the league for the better. A hard salary cap was implemented, in an effort to make small market teams competitive in a league that unneccessarily 30 teams. Now here we are in 2012, and having another lockout happen for few more reasons than the owners biting themselves in the ass.

With the implementation of a salary cap on the league, owners and GM's were limited on how much they could throw at players in order to build a contender, so something was created in order to lower a player's cap hit while getting away with paying them a shit load of money in the first few years of the deal: the super long 10-15 year contract that pretty much circumvents the cap. We saw a few deals like that this past summer with the dual deals Minnesota handed Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, as well as the offer sheet thrown at Shea Weber by Philadelphia, which Nashville surprisingly matched. Add to that the list of players that have ridiculously long contracts that are only structured as such to reduce their respective cap hits (Rick DiPietro, Ilya Kovalchuk, Alex Ovechkin, Tyler Myers, Christian Ehroff, Marian Hossa, Brad Richards, Roberto Luongo, Niklas Backstrom, Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, and more) and what we really have here are GM's and owners that need to be saved from themselves. They got themselves into this mess, and now they want to reduce the player's shared revenue because they fucked up and just want to cover their own asses.

There's a little more to the proceedings than all the GM/owner bullshit I mentioned above, as a good chunk of it boils down to Bettman not wanting to come close to anything related to a compromise with the NHLPA. With the League's yearly revenue at a record 3.3 billion, the NHL has never prospered so much as a whole ever before. Granted there are plenty of teams that are still (and always have) suffering from a lack of a fanbase (Phoenix, Columbus) but the NHL should count their blessings that fans came back in droves after the 04-05 lockout with arms wide open. If this lockout lasts a full season, don't expect the fans to come back like they did before, and I for one wouldn't blame them. In fact, if this lockout kills the whole season, I think I may even take a break from my beloved NHL watching. Though honestly I don't think it will last the whole season, mostly because there's so much more to lose this time around (The Winter Classic, HBO's 24/7) it's still fucking unbelievable that we're going through this bullshit AGAIN...but here we are.

Somebody needs to lock Bettman and NHLPA head Don Fehr in a room together and let them come to a fucking agreement. The fact that we're here again is not only mind-numbing, but fucking revolting. Play some goddamned hockey!

The Flyers Free-Agent Futility

The more things change, the more they stay the same. So it is with the Philadelphia Flyers, and they begin to go through another off-season chasing a big-money free-agent that will likely pay little dividends in the end. That free-agent in question is former Phoenix Coyotes goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov; the exclusive negotiating rights of whom the Flyers acquired from the Coyotes in exchange for a minor-leaguer and what little they had left in terms of draft picks. Whether they end up signing Bryzgalov or not before he officially hits free-agent status July 1st is kind of irrelevant when you think about it, especially considering the Flyers’ track record of free-agent futility.

Last season, when the Flyers made a storybook run to the Stanley Cup Finals, goaltending in general was practically irrelevant. On the shoulders of Michael Leighton and Brian Boucher, the Flyers managed to do the impossible and reach the Finals before getting knocked out by the Blackhawks. It was during their run however that many fans and analysts started to realize that you didn’t really need a big-money goaltender to win the Cup, as the Hawks didn’t have one either. While the Flyers’ lack of defense was exposed, they addressed it in the summer that followed by acquiring Andrej Meszaros and Sean O’Donnell, and for a good chunk of this past season, it appeared that those were the right moves to make.

Back to the issue of goaltending however, this is what really proved to be the team’s absolute biggest flaw. They rode rookie Sergei Bobrovsky harder they should have (he started nearly 60 games) and were the only team in the NHL not to record a shutout all season long. Playoff hero Leighton was demoted to the AHL, and veteran Boucher got many of the starts come playoff time, to little avail. So now, a year after declaring that the team didn’t need a big-money goaltender to win it all, GM Paul Holmgren is chasing Bryzgalov, who is going to be commanding a huge salary.

If the Flyers had the salary cap space, signing Bryzgalov wouldn’t be so much of a deal, but they don’t. Even with the salary cap expected to rise up league-wide, they still won’t have enough cash to lock him in. Forwards Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, Danny Briere, Scott Hartnell, Claude Giroux, and Kris Versteeg; combined with defensemen Chris Pronger, Kimmo Timonen, Matt Carle, Brayden Coburn, and Meszaros all amount to almost 90% of the team’s salary cap spending. They won’t be able to re-sign key free-agent forward Ville Leino, nor solid stay-at-home defenseman O’Donnell. Who are the Flyers going to be dumping salary to? The Florida Panthers need plenty of salary to reach the salary floor alone, so that looks like a good trading partner right there. Not to mention the fact that the Flyers have zilch in terms of prospects in the system or draft picks either. Former GM Bobby Clarke used to mortgage the future for veteran players all time until it finally caught up with him, and now it appears that Holmgren is going down the exact same path after the past few years of making some shrewd and great moves and signings.

Then, we look at Bryzgalov himself, the key figure to this whole damn thing. He’s had some really great years in Phoenix, last year in particular when he was a finalist for the Vezina Trophy, but the truth of the matter is that he’s a veteran goaltender who isn’t getting any younger. He won the Cup as a member of the Anaheim Ducks (with Pronger and O’Donnell no less) and knows what it takes to win, but who knows just how many good seasons he has left in him. The team playing in front of him is no doubt talented, but on the losing nights when Philly fans really let their feelings out about how much the team sucks, will he be able to handle it? Personally, I say fuck no.

If it’s one thing that the post-lockout NHL has proven, to win it all, you have to build through the draft. The Flyers definitely have a somewhat decent amount of homegrown talent (Richards, Carter, JVR, Giroux, Bobrovsky) but not nearly enough compared to Cup winners past of the Blackhawks, Penguins, and Red Wings. Depending on what happens this off-season, and the upcoming one as well, it may be time for another complete overhaul in Flyer-land. Personally I hope not, but if it’s one thing Flyers management has always been good at doing, it’s blowing everything the fuck up with little to no logic attached to it, and something tells me that that time isn’t all that far away.

The Shitstorm of Futility That Was the Atlanta Thrashers, and How It's Everyone's Fault

After 15 years of only getting to see minor league and junior league hockey, Winnipeg is finally getting an NHL hockey team back. The Atlanta Thrashers have finally been sold after a year’s long ownership squabble/abandonment, and will relocate to Winnipeg, Manitoba; where 15 years ago the citizens of said city watched their beloved Winnipeg Jets pack their bags and move to Phoenix, becoming the Coyotes (for more irony, the Coyotes were originally due to find a new city to call home after their season came to an end this year, and were THIS close to actually moving back to Winnipeg!) While this is indeed a joyous time for the people of Winnipeg, Manitoba in general, and even Canada as a whole, this is a very depressing time for Atlanta Thrashers fans.

You know all fifteen of them.

Since the team joined the league in the late 90s/early 2000s, they have been a prime example of utter mediocrity. In the decade plus they’ve had of existence, they qualified for the playoffs once (in 2007) and never even won a playoff game. The team’s futility is in large part to overly sloppy management from former General Manager and current Team President (wait, never mind...) Don Waddell, who had been there managing the team into the shitter of the NHL since it first joined the league. Combine that with ownership changes aplenty on top of inner-circle squabbles, and the fact that this is fucking Atlanta we’re talking about here (not exactly a hockey hotbed) and you have a tasty recipe for disaster. Back in the 1970s, there was an NHL team in Atlanta, the Atlanta Flames. Hockey didn’t work there back then either and they headed over the border as well and became the Calgary Flames. So what made NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and the brain trust in the NHL front office decide putting another team in Atlanta would be a great idea in the first place? It’s kind of hard to figure out, so I won’t even try to for fear of giving myself an aneurism and/or defecating in my pants.

The fact that the team had such a difficult time garnering any sort of fan base isn’t surprising in the least considering that they could never keep their top players for very long. Dany Heatley, currently with the San Jose Sharks, was the team’s first bona-fide superstar along with Ilya Kovalchuk. Both came into the league at the same time and lit it up for a while together for the Thrashers, and the future actually appeared kind of bright. Then, in 2003, Heatley was in a car accident, which tragically took the life of his friend and teammate Dan Snyder. After healing, both physically and mentally, Heatley requested a trade and was soon shipped to Ottawa in exchange for Marian Hossa. Like Heatley, Hossa lit it up a bit alongside Kovalchuk and star center Marc Savard; but it wasn’t long to last. Savard left Atlanta a Free Agent, and Hossa bolted afterwards as well. Kovalchuk stayed on, but it was obvious his heart wasn’t with the team. After getting traded to the New Jersey Devils at last year’s trade deadline, the writing was already on the wall then: this team is fucking doomed.

Now, here we are in 2011, and the Atlanta Thrashers are no more. All the extenuating circumstances that surround the franchise will be wiped away once they settle in Winnipeg: an actual hockey market. However, one thing to keep in mind is this: the Winnipeg Jets were sold and shipped off to Phoenix back in 1996 because we were told that Winnipeg couldn’t sustain an NHL franchise. What makes anyone think this time around will be any different? Who knows? Maybe in another 10 years or so, the franchise will be on the move again, and if NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who makes a habit of creating teams in non-traditional hockey markets that rarely if ever develop fan bases, has his way, the team will wind up in some incredibly unforeseen (and perhaps unfortunate) city that hockey has no right being played in the first goddamn place.

I hear Vegas and Kansas City are viable options the NHL has considered and still considers to this day for possible team relocations. No, I’m not fucking kidding.

On a final note, it has yet to be decided just what the new name for the franchise will be. I personally would love to see a return of the Jets, with the classic logo and powder blue jerseys, but that kind of seems like a long shot at best.

Either that, or I vote with calling them the Manitoba Mooseknuckle; just because those would be the best-selling jersey’s in the NHL next season.