Tom Benjamin's NHL Blog
Business as Usual
Posted by Tom on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 10:08 pm
James Mirtle has a good piece on the realignment issue, and the NHLPA decision to put the kibosh on Gary Bettman’s realignment plan. Most of the pundits – paid and unpaid – have interpreted the story as an opening salvo in an upcoming collective bargaining war with Donald Fehr and the players firing the first shot. Mirtle avoids drawing that conclusion and the result is an article that is worth reading. I don’t think Donald Fehr saw any connection between this issue and the CBA negotiations when the players shot down Bettman’s plan. First, it isn’t clear that the new alignment will actually reduce travel. The league claimed that it would when selling their plan, but they don’t really know. After the NHLPA asked some questions, the league ran some tests that produced some surprising results. In the test runs Vancouver traveled more miles after realignment than before. Winnipeg – Winnipeg! – travelled more miles under the new setup. (I... [Read more]
The 2012 CBA
Posted by Tom on Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 3:25 pm
In the wake of the NBA settlement, a panel on Bob McCown’s show talked about the possibility of a work stoppage in the NHL next season. All participants thought a stoppage was likely but that it will not be a long one this time, presumably because the players will give up more quickly than they did the last go round. The results from the NFL and NBA do not auger well for the NHLPA. NBA players used to get 57% of revenues just like hockey players get 57% today. Now they get about half the revenues. Why should the owners of basketball teams get so much more that the owners of hockey teams? Why shouldn’t hockey players take another cut when the owners can easily force another cut? The players have no leverage in collective bargaining and they never will have any leverage: 1) A work stoppage is almost never in the financial interest of the player. Careers are too short to recoup the cost of a strike or lockout. For the individual player, a pay cut is almost always better than missing... [Read more]
No, He Doesn’t Have a Point
Posted by Tom on Monday, November 14, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Elliotte Friedman thinks that Mark Howe had a point when he said, “I like the game a little better in our era, mostly because the players policed the game. I think there’s so much onus put on the officials right now …” I thought a lot about what Howe said during the Hockey Night In Canada pre-game show after seeing Milan Lucic run Ryan Miller without in-game consequence. (Lucic has a hearing Monday afternoon with the NHL). While Sabres like Paul Gaustad later said they were “embarrassed” they didn’t do anything about it, we’re seeing more and more teams programmed to step back and let the referees — or Brendan Shanahan — handle it… What if the reason we’re seeing so many dangerous on-ice plays is that we’ve forgotten how to deal with the bully in the schoolyard? You can run to the principal all you want. Eventually, you’ve got to stand up for yourself. The Bruins sure do… [More frontier justice has]... [Read more]
The Best Answer (For now)
Posted by Tom on Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 10:34 pm
Greg Whyshynski thinks the NHL may have to take action in the wake of the fiasco between Philadelphia and Tampa last night. The Lightning trapped and the Flyers delayed their contest into a nonhockey game. Clearly Greg is right if other coaches decide to follow the lead of Peter Laviolette. The Flyer response to the trap cannot become an acceptable strategy. Is it going to continue? Perhaps Laviolette was merely registering a protest, making a point about the way the Lightning choose to play. If that is the case, we can safely ignore the incident as an aberration, unlikely to be repeated. Unfortunately, I can’t see any NHL coach embarassing the league to make the point about the way another team plays. Particularly when he has coached against many other teams that adopt the same or a similar style. Why now? I think Laviolette believes he has found a winning strategy when the Flyers are on the road and playing a team that traps even when the game is tied. The Lightning trap from... [Read more]
This and That
Posted by Tom on Friday, October 28, 2011 at 7:18 pm
A variety of thoughts on a variety of subjects: 1) A sloppy, wild and hugely entertaining World Series game distracted me from hockey (and another forgettable Canuck performance) last night. That the Winnipeg Jets and Philadelphia Flyers played a sloppy, wild and hugely entertaining hockey game the same night gives rise to the question, “Are poorly played games more entertaining than well played ones?” Ironically, the answer is probably yes. At least Ladd scored Winnipeg’s winning goal late in regulation. Giving both teams a point in a 9-8 game would have been a travesty. 2) Tyler Dellow dug up a nice little contradiction between what Gary Bettman has been saying about the league involvement with the Dallas Stars and papers filed in the bankruptcy case. I don’t think it is a terribly large surprise that the league has been footing the bills. (Somebody had to picking up the tab and it was neither Hicks nor his creditors.) It also it isn’t a huge surprise that... [Read more]
More on Booth
Posted by Tom on Monday, October 24, 2011 at 8:17 pm
I figured I had said all I wanted to say about the trade until I saw the analysis from Matthew Sekeres of the Globe. The most important part of his column describes the trade from both sides: If Booth pulls a Keith Ballard (struggling to adapt to a hockey market after a career spent in the Sunbelt), then the Canucks have traded two serviceable parts for a handsomely-paid underachiever. If nothing else, Gillis wasn’t gun shy about repeating a mistake. Vancouver traded winger Michael Grabner and a first-round pick for Ballard at the 2010 draft. Florida, in its infinite wisdom, allowed Grabner to escape to the New York Islanders via waivers. He had 34 goals last year. Even if it has not yet worked out – and may never work out – I don’t think Ballard was a mistake. Sometimes good decisions turn out badly and I think this was a good decision. The price turned out to be high, but Grabner shouldn’t really count. The Canucks did not have a roster spot for him and if... [Read more]
Using the Muscle
Posted by Tom on Sunday, October 23, 2011 at 11:06 am
I’m very happy about the decision to obtain David Booth because Booth is my kind of player – he’s a great skater, he’s strong, and he shoots the puck. That said, it isn’t clear that Booth will make the Canucks better right now. Mikael Samuelsson has been a surprisingly (to me) good player for Vancouver, and Marco Sturm finally showed some flashes of decent play in his last game against the Predators. The Canucks have given up some depth this season to get the best player in the deal. A hole on the second line has been filled, but that leaves an out of position Cody Hodgson or Andrew Ebbets on the third line, which seems to me to be less than ideal for a checking line. Still, that’s not a difficult hole to fill at the deadline if it proves to be a problem. Still, I can’t see how the Canucks can lose the trade over the longer term. I think Booth has to be better on Vancouver than he was in Florida, and if he is, he’ll earn his money. (If Booth... [Read more]
Bobby Lu
Posted by Tom on Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 11:24 am
I just finished reading Michael Shermers “The Believing Brain“, an examination of the science behind our beliefs. The following passage sets out the subject of the book. When I read it I immediately thought of Roberto Luongo and his relationship with a significant portion of the Vancouver fanbase: “We form our beliefs for a wide variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow. …[O]ur perceptions about reality are dependent on the beliefs that we hold about it. Reality exists independent of human minds, but our understanding of it depends upon the beliefs we hold at any given moment.” Unfortunately for Luongo, some number of Canuck fans... [Read more]
