Archive for the ‘10 Thoughts’ Category

A stunningly large amount of Jonathan Toews pictures on Getty Images are him celebrating goals. None of them are all that cool, but still – there’s a ton.

“Thoughts on Thoughts” is a feature that looks at Elliotte Friedman’s terrific weekly post “30 Thoughts.” Justin Bourne selects his 10 favourite tidbits, and elaborates.

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Last edition: Canucks discover winning ugly is a beautiful thing  (Full Friedman edition here.)

Friedman’s column, May 1st: NHL awards picks and 30 Thoughts

Opening:

Elliotte Friedman shared his NHL awards ballot, which reads as such, in sum:

Hart: Jonathan Toews (Crosby didn’t play enough games)
Norris: Ryan Suter
Calder: Jonas Brodin
Lady Byng: Patrick Kane
Selke: Jonathan Toews
All Star Teams: to come in 30 Thoughts
And a couple of the best concurrent paragraphs ever:

Every year, I try to remind people that just because I didn’t vote for your favourite player on your favourite team, it’s not negative. It just means someone is a little better. Of course, that never works, so it’s time for a new tactic: if you’re unhappy with these selections, yes, it is because I hate your player, your team and you too.

Enjoy!

If you missed my own awards votes, you can check them out here.

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1. NHL All-Star Team selections: Toews, Crosby, Tavares at centre; Ovechkin, Kane, St. Louis at right wing; Rick Nash, Henrik Zetterberg and Kunitz at left wing; Suter, Subban, Doughty, Beauchemin, Chara and Keith on defence; Bobrovsky, Henrik Lundqvist and Antti Niemi in goal.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Thoughts on Thoughts” is a feature that looks at Elliotte Friedman’s terrific weekly post “30 Thoughts.” Justin Bourne selects his 10 favourite tidbits, and elaborates.

Last edition: Craig MacTavish poised to shake up Oilers (Full Friedman edition here.)

Friedman’s column, April 26th: Canucks discover winning ugly is a beautiful thing

Opening:

In this week’s edition of Elliotte Friedman’s always excellent 30 Thoughts, he wrote about how the Canucks have a different identity than they did when they were winning mulitple Presidents’ Trophies in the style of, as Friedge put it, “Ermenegildo Zegnas” (as in, stylishly). Things aren’t as pretty, but they’re paying attention to both ends of the ice more than they ever have.

“It’s not good enough for us to just win games,” Henrik Sedin said by telephone on Tuesday. “Fans feel it should be 5-1 or 5-2 … seeing some highlight goals. We have to win in a certain way.

“You look at Detroit, I think people judge them on what they should be instead of what they have … We are not a run-and-gun team anymore. You’ve got to be good in your own end. When healthy, I think this is as good a team as we have ever had.”

I think I get what he’s saying.

I’m not sure if this has come from a conscious effort, or if it’s just they’ve had to fight more to get wins (it would be easy to be less dominant, play in closer, uglier games, then claim it’s on purpose), but I will say: I think all this scrapping will be great for them come playoffs. And the pressure of not being the top dawg should serve them well too. If they can avoid St. Louis in the first round, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them have a great post-season run.

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3. As Karlsson prepared to return, Bryan Murray said the two things that concerned him most about his club were things the reigning Norris Trophy winner could fix. “We’re not great at breakouts,” the Senators GM said. Karlsson will singlehandedly take care of that. Also, the power play entered last night’s game at Washington five for its last 50. The Senators went 1-for-5, but the one put them into the playoffs and he assisted on it.

I had to pick this thought purely for the Bryan Murray quote “We’re not great at breakouts.” I mean, I know he was under no pressure to specify in what regard (communication? Is D2 struggling to read reverses? Do the forwards have a tendency to cheat their routes?), I just love how “fan” that quote is. “The goal-getting Dan, it’s been a major issue.”  Read the rest of this entry »

“Thoughts on Thoughts” is a feature that looks at Elliotte Friedman’s terrific weekly post “30 Thoughts.” Justin Bourne selects his 10 favourite tidbits, and elaborates.

Last edition: NHL players in Sochi Olympics won’t come cheap (Full Friedman edition here.)

Friedman’s column, April 16th: Craig MacTavish poised to shake up Oilers

Opening:

Edmonton is trying a new tactic: firing the GM, with the new boss openly coming at the roster.

“I’m an impatient guy and I bring that impatience to this situation. We’re at the stage… that we have to do some bold things,” Craig MacTavish said at Monday’s news conference introducing him as the Oilers’ new GM. “We have to expose ourselves to some semblance of risk to try and move the team forward in a rapid fashion. We’ve got a lot of primary pieces here, but we’ve got to add some depth to help these young players.

Yes! I’m so excited for this. Well, I’m not excited, because I think MacTavish is a cerebral dude who’s going to make the Oilers better (and I could do without another run of successful Oilers), but I mean this part:

MacTavish, who refused to blame Krueger, sounded a lot like Brian Burke during the latter’s first media conference in Toronto. He didn’t use the word “truculent” but the message is similar: I’m impatient and we’re going to do something about it.

I thought the exact same thing when I first read that quote. New Burke, far better than New Coke.

I thought the message MacT has delivered in his early comments since being named GM have been exactly what the Oilers have needed to realize: yes, it’s neato super cool to have some good young talent, but they just don’t seem like a difficult team to play right now, and could use an injection of what I believe baseball humans call “want” from more guys than Taylor Hall and Nail Yakupov. And, I have no doubt that he’ll be able to find it at some point.

Now, just as long as he doesn’t do anything too crazy… Read the rest of this entry »

“Thoughts on Thoughts” is a feature that looks at Elliotte Friedman’s terrific weekly post “30 Thoughts.” Justin Bourne selects his 10 favourite tidbits, and elaborates.

Last edition: Dallas is team to watch at NHL trade deadline (full Friedman edition here)

Friedman’s column, April 12th: NHL players in Sochi Olympics won’t come cheap

Opening:

In this week’s opener Friedman explains some of the financial complications that come along with the NHL and IIHF agreeing to have professionals participate in the 2014 Olympics. There are issues like travel (likely a couple million-plus to charter flights for NHLers to get to the games), and insurance (all the long-term contracts means you’re in another couple million to ensure if a player gets hurt in the games he gets his money), and yada yada yada.

Honestly, and maybe I’m naive here, but I just can’t see how a handful of millions could derail the process, let alone be more than a speedbump. Knowing the amount of money there is to be made by those involved – TV rights, jersey sales, ticket revenue and beyond – I have a hard time seeing how this doesn’t get tidied up fairly easily.

That said, that’s the most outsider-y outsiders perspective of all time, and I truly have no clue what the fine details are, so much like I was (and others were) during the lockout, I’m in full “Whatever man, just fix this” mode.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Thoughts on Thoughts” is a feature that looks at Elliotte Friedman’s terrific weekly post “30 Thoughts.” Justin Bourne selects his 10 favourite tidbits, and elaborates.

Last edition: Getzlaf contract may impact Perry

Friedman’s column, April 2nd: Dallas is team to watch at NHL trade deadline

Opening:

Over the next 24 hours, the Dallas Stars may be the team to watch.

Friedman barely got his column out on time. His opening stressed the fact that the Dallas Stars are likely to be deadline sellers, and within hours, they had moved both Derek Roy and Jaromir Jagr. Read the rest of this entry »

“Thoughts on Thoughts” is a feature that looks at Elliotte Friedman’s terrific weekly post “30 Thoughts.” Justin Bourne selects his 10 favourite tidbits, and elaborates.

Last edition: NHL realignment still needs work (Full Friedman edition here)

Friedman’s column, March 11th: Getzlaf contract may impact Perry

Opening:

The opening this week was on the Getzlaf contract. Initially, Friedman notes that some people didn’t think Getzlaf took a “hometown discount,” and that had he hit the open market, he could’ve possibly been paid more than his AAV of $8.25M. I gotta say: initially I was one of the people slagging Anaheim for giving Getzlaf the moon, but the more I think about it, the more I realize Getzlaf essentially had a knife to Murray’s throat.

“Oh, don’t wanna give me more than $7.5M? Okay, well we both suspect Perry is going to walk, so if you like, you can play hardball with me and lose both of us. Or not. Thanks for your time, hope to hear from you in the near future.”

He mentions all they can do is throw their best bait at Perry, see if he bites, then figure out their plan from there. Ducks have to do this early so they know what they’re dealing with at the deadline – you’ll have to go high, but if you get him, well, you’ve got two pretty great pieces for a long time. If there’s any doubt, you can get to work on the best possible return.

Friedge also advocates the “going for it” idea when you’re this close (after finding out what your owner wants to do). I’m not on board if I’m in the GM seat, but dealing Perry certainly isn’t an easy call with Teemu Selanne playing late into his career for another crack at the Cup, and that you’re only trading him as a couple month rental, so he’s not worth that much.

The only real thing Murray has going for him is the new CBA: you can offer your guy an extra year of term, and there’s now a period where a player can hear the best pitches from other teams before signing, meaning if you really do throw him the best package, you might be able to retain him. Tough situation.

TO THE THOUGHTS-MOBILE!

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7. The one thing everyone should remember about Iginla is that he is tight with owner Murray Edwards. There may not be any talks yet, but if he wants to stay — and they want him to stay — it will get worked out. Could he get traded, then come back in the summer?

I love the concept of this. I was racking my brain earlier trying to think of instances where it’s happened in the NHL in the past (and I took the question to Twitter, and got a ton of help there too). Here’s what I’ve come up with:

In 2005-06, Mark Recchi went from Pittsburgh to Carolina in a trade before becoming an unrestricted free agent in the off-season, won the Cup as a rental player (7G, 9A for 16PTS in 25 playoff games), then went back to the Pens in the summer. Read the rest of this entry »