The city of Houston and the Olympics both serve the same purpose for the NHL. Both exist as points of leverage for commissioner Gary Bettman, who is never hesitant to accumulate chips to play when it comes to advising tax-paying citizens what they must do in order that their respective cities keep their teams and negotiating against the players.
In the wake of the estimable Katie Strang’s reporting for The Athletic, we know that Houston is the current city of prominence the NHL has to leverage against cities such as Ottawa and Calgary, whose club owners are seeking new arenas.
Once there was a time the league used Kansas City, Mo., in that manner (something about a visit from Mario Lemieux) and once was the time Seattle was an enticing civic mistress (a publicized stop in town from Wayne Gretzky) when Pittsburgh and Edmonton were looking to cut real estate deals. And, of course, Las Vegas served its purpose as a bauble before Bill Foley sent $500 million the league’s way to become one of the Original 31.
Houston makes sense as a U.S. port if accompanied by a viable hockey infrastructure. The Hurricanes are in trouble. The Panthers have been a sinkhole since their move out of Miami to Sunrise. The Islanders are going to become fair game if the bid for Belmont is rejected.
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Gary Bettmans ugly arena greed meets its match in Calgary
In this time of high political debate in our country,…
Culturally, of course, Quebec has always made more sense, just as has a second franchise in Toronto. I have always said that three NHL teams in the New York metropolitan area and one in Toronto would be akin to having three major league baseball teams in Toronto and one here, but the NHL is all about markets in the lower 48 that might translate to enhanced media and digital rights deals down the way.
The NHL is also about issuing implied threats to voters who don’t want to reach into their own pockets to help finance revenue-generating playpens for wealthy franchise owners. Houston is your latest implied threat, spoken or otherwise.
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The NHLs shortsighted greed kept them out of the Olympics
The NHL playing preseason games in China is a bittersweet…
Attempting to parse Bettman’s words regarding potential future NHL appearance in the Olympics is a fool’s errand. There is a reason that late in the 2012-13 lockout negotiations the league removed the section of the CBA mandating participation in the Games, and that was so Bettman could use the Olympics as a five-ring chip against the NHLPA in future talks.
The league will send its players to the Olympics as soon as Bettman, Mr. Hall of Famer Jeremy Jacobs and the Board can extract a financial give-back from the union in exchange for the privilege of competing. Growing the game is secondary to growing the owners’ immediate take. That’s the bottom line.
If George Parros wants to make his mark as the new sheriff in town, the first-year head of the Department of Player Safety will ignore whatever excuses Radko Gudas offers for using his stick like a guillotine against Mathieu Perreault and suspend the serial predator for no fewer than eight games.
And if the Philadelphia defenseman and the NHLPA don’t like it, the players can appeal on behalf of a player who has made a career out of targeting them.
So is it only abysmal production in the desert from Arizona’s Max Domi, who does not have a five-on-five goal through 21 games and 289:34, on with Clayton Keller for 188:30 and Derek Stepan for 187:13, per naturalstatttrick.com.
Or is there more/less to it than that from the third-year pro, who may have already become infected by the unstable environment that has marked the NHL’s deserted franchise ever since the disastrous decision to scoot to Glendale 14 years ago?
Another amnesty buyout contract on the books, this one Columbus’ seven-year extension worth $5.875 million per year for Cam Atkinson that kicks in next season with the undersized winger at age 29.
It is well documented that the Nov. 5, 1955, Jean Beliveau power-play hat trick recorded within 44 seconds on a single minor — well, the first goal was scored with a two-man advantage — is the one that prompted the rule change beginning the following season that two-minute power plays would end after one goal.
The Canadiens, who finished atop the league by 24 points over the second-place Red Wings (100-76), scored multiple goals eight times on the same power play in going 63-for-271 for 23.2 percent, which seems kind of light with Beliveau, Maurice Richard, ‘Boom Boom’ Geoffrion, Bert Olmstead, Dickie Moore, Henri Richard and Doug Harvey at their disposal. By the way, I researched this by going game-by-game using the Hockey Summary Project.
You may not believe this but, more incredible than the feat by Le Gros Bill is that the Canadiens immediately thereafter went 3-for-41 on the power play the remainder of November and then went 4-for-43 in January 1956. Of course, there was Dec. 10, 1955, when Geoffrion and Beliveau scored power-play goals four seconds apart against Detroit’s Glenn Hall.
The Red Wings, who had a 17.8 power-play percentage at 52-for-292, did not score multiple goals at all on the same advantage despite the presence of Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, Alex Delvecchio and Red Kelly. The Rangers, who finished two points behind Detroit in third place, struck three times for multiple goals on the same power play while finishing 42-for-279 (15.0 percent), with Wally Hergesheimer and Dave Creighton scored 27 seconds apart on a two-man advantage Oct. 23 of that season.
Now ask yourself: Do you think you’re going to find this kind of material on a pay subscription site?
Finally, no, I don’t get why Alain Vigneault’s initial default mechanism is to slide Pavel Buchnevich down in the rotation as the coach did Friday in the Rangers’ loss to Columbus.
Don’t get it at all.