Archive for September, 2009

We’ll start with what is quite possibly the greatest hockey story ever, from The Score’s own Andrew Stoeten: the WHL’s Brandon Wheat Kings have a player named Wheaton King. That’s right, Wheat King plays for the Wheat Kings.

Theo Fleury has decided to call it a career after being released by the Calgary Flames. Still, it’s much better to end things after some preseason success with the team he’ll always be associated with than as a suspended Chicago Blackhawk. It should also help with sales of his new book, expected to come out this fall.

Down Goes Brown with – hands-down – the best Google screenshot I’ve ever seen.

From Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy comes this great video of NHL duputy commissioner Bill Daly being extremely candide on Jim Balsillie and the current predicament of the Phoenix Coyotes. The most important point? Basically that the chief job of Daly and Gary Bettman is simply to do the bidding of the NHL Board of Governors, and that it’s the Board, not Bettman, blocking Balsillie’s path. So the next time someone opines that they hate Gary Bettman, feel free to explain to them that they really hate the owners of the NHL. Or don’t.

Also pointed out by Wyshynski is this awesome exchange between Hockey Buzz’s Columbus Blue Jackets blogger Eric Smith and someone claiming to be Blue Jackets’ forward Nikita Filatov:

Smith: @NikitaFilatov is a FAKE! Just talked to Filatov and he asked me “What is Twitter?” Said he is going to check it out though.
Filatov: Eric Smith says account is fake, don’t listen. He is hack journalist who pretends to know me.

Normally, I’d go with the blogger here, but he does work for Eklund and Filatov’s account is verified, so who knows…

According to journalist Michael Russo, it appears that ex-New York Islanders forward Andy Hilbert is the Minnesota Wild‘s final cut of training camp. He has apparently been offered a two-way contract, and if he accepts he’ll be waived and sent to the Wild’s AHL affiliate in Houston. Cue my obligatory reference to why someone should claim him on waivers.

In a slightly surprising move, the Montreal Canadiens have decided to demote Sergei Kostitsyn to the Hamilton Bulldogs. I wonder if that will stop a friend of mine from differentiating between the Kostitsyn brothers with the nicknames “Big Tits” and “Little Tits”. I’m thinking not. Lions in Winter has decided that this makes the younger Kostitsyn the new target for everyone who doesn’t have Alexei Kovalev to beat on anymore.

Over in Canucks-land, the fight between the Gilbert Brule and Jannik Hansen in last night’s tilt between Vancouver and the Edmonton Oilers will have some lasting repercussions: Hansen will be out four to six weeks after breaking his hand on Brule’s face. Some have suggested that this means Cody Hodgson gets a roster spot, but over at Nucks Misconduct they’re betting on Tanner Glass (AHL numbers from last season: 44 games played, four goals, 13 points, 100 PIM). Given Glass’s relatively limited skill-set, I’ll go with Canucks Army and guess that Hodgson sticks, at least for nine games.

Lastly, following teams like the Leafs, Oilers and Canucks this fall, the story has been the same: junior players getting sent back to junior because it’s in their long-term interest. According to the good folks at Mile High Hockey, the Colorado Avalanche have something totally different in mind: keeping both of their highest picks from this summer’s entry draft. For the sake of Matt Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly, I hope things work out a little differently for them then they did for, say, Gilbert Brule.

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Waiver Wire Finds is going to be an occasional feature on Hockey or Die! For the next few days, as players around the league get put on the open market as they’re cut from their NHL clubs. Logic suggested starting with a more notable player, like the Flyers Randy Jones or (The) Rob Schremp, but given as my track record so far indicates, I’ll brook no interference from logic.

Instead, I’ll start with the mostly unknown Tyler Weiman, who was just cut by the Colorado Avalanche. Weiman was a fifth-round pick of the Avalanche in 2002, and had an unremarkable junior career as the starting goaltender for the rather miserable Tri-City Americans. His career record in Tri-City was 67-97-18, on a team not blessed with an overabundance of talent. Aside from his 2003-04 backup (one Carey Price) his most notable teammates were probably Montreal Canadiens prospect Shawn Belle and minor-league enforcer Jon “Nasty” Mirasty.

Weiman worked his way up the professional ranks, blowing past the Central Hockey League (33-6-5, 1.80 GAA, .938 SV%) and then splitting 2005-06 between the ECHL and AHL. In 2006-07, he entrenched himself at the AHL level, and has played there for three seasons. He has one NHL game to his credit (in 2007-08) but has generally outplayed his backups at the AHL level, including once-highly touted prospect Justin Peters and former first round pick Jason Bacashihua

Last year marked a breakthrough season for Weiman:

2006-07: 54GP – 27 – 22 – 3, 2.99 GAA, .905 SV%
2007-08: 31GP – 9 – 19 – 1, 3.32 GAA, .903 SV%
2008-09: 44GP – 21 – 20 – 2, 2.46 GAA, .915 SV%

That .915 SV% compares nicely with a few other tweeners (Red Wings’ backup Jim Howard, Bruins prospect Tuukka Rask and Thrashers prospect Ondrej Pavelec, among others) and all of Weiman’s numbers are well clear of his backup, Jason Bacashihua (13-21-3, 2.77 GAA, .905 SV%).

Weiman’s numbers certainly don’t indicate that he’s a shoe-in for an NHL job, but teams with questionable backups o training camp injuries could certainly do worse than to take a look at him. One possibility is the Philadelphia Flyers, who have Johan Backlund (who has had indifferent results in the Elitserien the last few years) currently slotted in the backup position for the injured Brian Boucher.

It’s probably a long-shot that Weiman gets claimed, but he could very well be of help to a team in need of help in the backup position.

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Why is ______ Still Unemployed? is a recurring feature hear at Hockey Or Die! In it, we look at some of the most useful free agents still looking for a job as teams open up training camp. We continue today with Manny Fernandez, most recently of the Boston Bruins.

Asking The Expert

In my quest for answers, I turned to the writer of the Stanley Cup of Chowder, SBNations’ Boston Bruins’ website, and he passed along the following scouting report:

Last year, we saw two very different versions of Manny Fernandez. For the first half of the season, we saw a confident veteran goaltender that was a reliable 1A to Tim Thomas in the Bruins’ goaltending tandem. Then there was the late season Manny Fernandez that was dealing with back and knee problems, looking very shaky in goal, and refusing to talk to the media. If Manny can stay healthy, he can be a solid NHL goaltender again, but that is a big if. If Manny wanted to put his ego aside and take less money to be a backup somewhere, he might have a chance to sign somewhere but I’m not sure if that is the situation he is looking for at this point in his hockey career.

By The Numbers

The statistical tools at our disposal for goaltenders are more limited than the tools we have for other skaters, but there are still a few things worth trying. The first thing we can do is use Yahoo’s split stats to compare Fernandez’s performance pre- and post- all-star break:

Pre All-Star: 14-3-1, 2.07 GAA, .928 SV%
Post All-Star: 2-5-2, 3.64 GAA, .875 SV%

Such a drastic drop-off in performance is probably attributable, to some outside factor, and we see that the injuries mentioned by our expert above coincide nicely with the decline in Fernandez’s game:

January 10, 2009: Missed two games – undisclosed
January 27, 2009: Missed four games – back injury

Those injuries have Fernandez contemplating retirement. In May, Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe reported the following:

Fernandez said he will consult with doctors to help determine whether his back might flare up again next season. He will then decide, with his family’s input, if he wants to continue his career.

It would be a shame if Fernandez were forced to retire; when healthy, he’s been among the best goaltenders in the NHL since the lockout.

It seems clear that the reason Manny Fernandez is still a free agent is because his health is such that he isn’t sure if he wants to keep playing. It doesn’t have much to do with performance.

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Even serious hockey fans can be forgiven if they aren’t sure who Jean-Francois Jacques is.

The Edmonton Oilers drafted the 6’4″, 217-pound left winger 68th overall in 2003. That pick came to them courtesy of the New Jersey Devils, in a trade that Oilers’ fans still find a little bit painful; the Oilers took the 68th pick and the 22nd overall pick in the 2003 draft in exchange for the 17th overall pick. That 17th overall pick turned into Zach Parise, while the Oilers ended up taking Marc Pouliot 22nd overall.

Ignoring how Jacques ended up with the team, he had an intriguing skill-set coming out of junior hockey: a player who could hit, fight score, and who possessed all the tools so coveted in power forwards. Nicknamed “Crazy Train”, he was a prospect with a lot of upside and a whole bunch of positive arrows.

His professional career didn’t go nearly as smoothly as the Oilers were hoping. Despite good scoring totals in the AHL, Jacques couldn’t buy a point in the NHL. He played seven NHL games in 2005-06 without a point. He added 37 more games to his resume in 2006-07, again without a single point. In 2007-08, he played nine more games, and again failed to record a point. Finally, last season, he recorded a single goal, leaving his NHL stats line at this:

60GP – 1G – 0A – 1PTS – 44 PIM – -17

That, of course, was when he was playing at all. Jacques has appeared in only 62 games over the past two seasons due to various injuries, most severely back surgery which threatened to end his hockey career altogether. Entering this season, he was a question mark, and some thought he might make the team only due to a pair of happy circumstances: the Oilers lack of size in general and Jacques’ waiver eligibility.

He’s been a revelation in training camp.

Last night, against the Vancouver Canucks, Jacques was the first star of the game. Coach Pat Quinn has been playing Jacques with Shawn Horcoff and Ales Hemsky on the Oilers’ top line, and has been pleased with the results. Last night, he confirmed that Jacques would be in the lineup when the Oilers play their first game of the regular season, against the Calgary Flames. Quite possibly, Quinn was thinking back to the preseason match against Calgary on Wednesday – a game the Oilers lost, but also a game in which Jacques scored a goal, and physically punished Flames’ defenceman Robyn Regehr. Regehr, who has had his way with Ales Hemsky in years past, was the victim of several hits and was on the wrong end of a fight – all the result of Jacques’ physical play.

While Quinn hasn’t confirmed whether Jacques would keep his spot with Hemsky and Horcoff, there’s every possibility that he will start the season as the left wing on the Oilers’ top line. If that happens, the physical forward – who has flirted with the point-per-game mark at the AHL level – could do something that hitherto seemed all but impossible: start putting up numbers offensively.

UPDATE

My friend Derek Zona, who has been busy the last while managing my old site (The Copper & Blue) has a bit on Jacques up there, and passed along this quote from Pat Quinn on Jacques’ time with the top line:

“He’s going to, in my mind, have to lose his job. I like his size. I like his physical attributes. He can skate, he doesn’t mind knocking people down.”

That quote came before Jacques’ first-star performance last night. In a not-unrelated note, I’ve dropped Kim Johnsson from my fantasy hockey team, and added Jacques to the bench. If the offense comes, he’ll be a major fantasy hockey factor, since he’s already guaranteed to rack up the PIM.

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The Detroit Red Wings raised a few eyebrows when they brought veteran goaltender Dan Cloutier in on a tryout contract. The Red Wings, after all, were the team that watched Cloutier implode after allowing a goal on a Nicklas Lidstrom slap shot in the 2002 playoffs. The Canucks, ahead in the series two games to none, lost four straight.

On Thursday, the Red Wings released Cloutier from his professional tryout, but as Cloutier told ESPN on Friday, that didn’t end his comeback attempt:

“I’ve been around, I know how it works. I knew everybody was under contract and it would be difficult to make the team. I just wanted to go there and see if I still had it and see how my body would react for a training camp. It’s one thing to work out two or three times a week, but this was a real test. The last six or seven days, I felt really good. I got an opportunity to play half a game in New York, and I did well. And I surprisingly felt good… There’s a few teams in Europe that want to see what decision I will make. But at the same time, once you sign in Europe, you’re kind of finished in terms of coming back to the NHL. So I spoke to my agent, and he suggested I take a few days to think it over. I’ve got a 20-month-old daughter and maybe you don’t want to move across the world to play hockey. I don’t know. I’ve got to think about it the next few days and do what’s best.”

It will be interesting to see where Cloutier lands, although I can’t imagine an NHL team taking a chance on him at this stage of the game. Cloutier’s career went up in flames shortly after signing a big-ticket contract with the Los Angeles Kings; injuries plagued Cloutier, and in 33 games with the Kings over two seasons he put up a miserable .868 SV%. I imagine he’s bound for Europe, at least at the present.

An Unlikely Survivor

NHL veterans Kyle Calder, Jassen Cullimore and Andy Hilbert were three of the many players forced to enter training camp on tryout deals after being unable to find a guaranteed contract. The former two came to camp with the Anaheim Ducks, while Hilbert joined the Minnesota Wild. Calder has been an NHL player for the last eight seasons, and recorded 59 points with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2005-06. The 6’5″ Cullimore has played a stay at home role for 776 NHL games spread over 14 seasons. Hilbert meanwhile has been toiling in a defensive forward role with the New York Islanders for the past three seasons, never topping the 30-point mark in his career.

Calder and Cullimore were cut by the Ducks yesterday. Hilbert remains in camp with the Wild, and while he’s in tight to stay on the roster, coach Todd Richards has had positive things to say about him:

“He’s contributing in different ways. You can tell he’s a player who’s fought his way through the NHL because he’s not a particularly big guy, but he finds ways to be effective.”

Hilbert’s a guy I’ve been pulling for all summer, and a guy I think is underrated on the whole. One particularly remarkable statistic: over Hilbert’s three seasons with the Islanders, the team has been -122 in goal differential; in the same time span Hilbert has a +9 rating. He’s either tremendously lucky, or a useful player who has been buried on a bad team. I’m betting on the latter, and I think he earns a spot in Minnesota.

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Doug Murray is number three in the picture above. He’s entering his fifth season with the San Jose Sharks, his only NHL team. Last season he set a career high in games played, with 75. Here is his career NHL regular season stats line:

210GP – 1G – 20A – 21PTS – 194 PIM

Murray’s a defensive defenceman, a stay-at-home guy, a guy who brings size (6’3″, 240lbs) and grit to the lineup but who, as his stats line shows, is not expected to carry or even be particularly useful in offensive situations. Last night, in a preseason game against the Anaheim Ducks, he scored a hat-trick:

The first goal was a bad angle shot from the far right-hand side of the net, but it somehow eludes Justin Pogge. The second goal wasn’t exactly a strong one either; a strong wrist shot from the point that may have been screened by Ducks’ defenceman Steve Eminger. Murray’s final goal was a nice one, coming from almost the same position as the first one, but far closer to the centre of the ice, almost on the haceoff circle. Murray fired a hard wrist shot that went to the top corner of the net, just over Pogge’s shoulder.

After the game, all the talk was about Murray’s offensive outburst, with recently signed free agent Manny Malhotra (who also scored) joking that while he was in Columbus they always talked about Murray’s goal-scoring prowess at pre-game meetings.

It was easy to see that the Sharks were thrilled last night; a 6-0 win is one thing (although coach Todd McLellan cautioned against reading too much into it) but a hat-trick for a player like Murray is a special night indeed, and one that doesn’t come around too often.

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When Vancouver Canucks General Manager Mike Gillis issued professional tryout offers to a quartet of veteran NHL’ers, he talked about the way he wanted his players to approach training camp:

“There is going to be competition. I want that competition. I want it to be healthy competition where guys feel nervous about their place here and they have to be at the top of their game to play on this team.”

Evidently the competition was too fierce for the players Gillis invited. Yesterday, the Canucks released Mark Parrish, the last of the four players who had been invited to training camp.

Keith Carney, the sole defenceman in the group, was the first to drop out – electing to retire rather than fight for a spot on Vancouver’s crowded blueline. Dave Scatchard and Ronald Petrovicky were both released on Thursday. Scatchard is still owed 1.1-million from his buyout by the Phoenix Coyotes. Petrovicky has no such safety net, and on top of that injured his knee in training camp, hurting his chances at getting another hockey job this season.

Still, while none of the players ended up sticking with the Canucks, this still seems like a worthwhile gambit: there’s absolutely no harm in forcing prospects to work for a spot on the roster.

Other Old Men

Theo Fleury’s much ballyhooed comeback attempt hit a bump yesterday when he was released by the Calgary Flames. Flame G.M. Darryl Sutter explained:

“Our agreement with Theoren was that he had to be one of our top six wingers and there were never any intentions of assigning him to the American Hockey League.”

Be that as it may, I don’t see this as the end of the line for Fleury – not unless he himself decides that it is. His performance in training camp probably showed enough that we can be reasonably sure he could contribute at the AHL level, and an AHL franchise with trouble selling tickets could do a lot worse than bringing Fleury in.

Meanwhile, a pair of veteran NHL’ers had beeter knows yesterday, as Rob Niedermayer signed a one-year, one-million dollar contract with the New Jersey Devils, while Daryl Sydor also signed a one-year deal with the St. Louis Blues. Hockey or Die previously profiled Niedermayer here.

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