OTTAWA — So I wonder who the clown is here: the charismatic player who dances a little jig during a playoff pregame warm-up, or the suit in the general manager’s chair who trades 21-year-old Roberto Luongo in order to select Rick DiPietro first overall in the draft instead of Marian Gaborik or Dany Heatley?
Hint: It is not P.K. Subban, the Spirit of 76, who is one of the handful of charismatic players in the NHL worth the price of admission.
It has been a while since Mike Milbury, the party of the latter part who often can be seen with the floppy shoes and big, red nose on the set of the staid national crew that works NHL games for the NBC networks, has said anything, well, clownish enough to land in this space. Maybe when he defamed the Sedins a few years ago by calling the twins “Thelma and Louise.” Or maybe when he called the 2010 Russian Olympic Team “Eurotrash.”
But this on Friday — when Milbury castigated Subban apparently for not being dialed in enough during a warm-up moment preceding the Predators’ 3-2, Game 2 home defeat to the Blues — is worth mention. Saying that Subban has “been a clown in the past, and we’ve seen him act like a clown” is worthy of dishonorable mention. So too is the fact cohort Keith Jones also expressed his belief that the Nashville defenseman might need to be “reeled in” by coach Peter Laviolette.
This can’t be a generational thing, because if it were, I would be on the other side of it. No, it is more an institutional thing that seems to run through hockey, if not the boardrooms of pro sports, and to the detriment of the fans who pay extraordinary prices to watch the games.
If even one of the customers in Nashville smiled at the sight of Subban doing a little dance with the puck while his teammates were going about the oh-so serious business of skating in circles, stretching or flipping shots at the goalie, then so much the better.
Yes, Ilya Kovalchuk is all but certain to return to the NHL next season, sources confirm, and when he does, it will be via a sign-and-trade out of New Jersey, which still owns his rights. We’re told to expect significant interest in Kovalchuk, who turned 34 this month, from teams that came up a goal-scorer or two shy of competing for the Cup.
A Devils reunion is not on the agenda.
Several well-connected sources report Tampa Bay will use Jonathan Drouin as the bait to attract a top-four defenseman, with Anaheim shaping up as the most likely trade partner.
And over a summer in which at least a half-dozen top-end clubs will be seeking a top-four, Drouin’s availability likely gives the Lightning the pick of the crop.
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Rangers block Sabres from talking with Chris Drury
OTTAWA — Chris Drury isn’t going anywhere — for now….
The Sabres are thinking young and progressively in interviewing Pittsburgh assistant general manager Billy Guerin and in asking for permission (which was denied) to chat with former Sabres and current Rangers assistant GM Chris Drury regarding the vacancy in Buffalo, but I am curious when St. Louis assistant GM Martin Brodeur’s name is going to start entering the mix?
The idiotic playoff format, in which the teams with the two best records in the NHL (Capitals, Penguins) are meeting in the second round, exists for the same reason as does the offside challenge in its all but universally derided form.
That is because Gary Bettman is in favor of it.
If I were a betting man, I would say there is a pretty good chance that Carolina GM Ron Francis had a decent idea he would be able to sign Scott Darling before sending a third-rounder to Chicago for the rights to the impending free-agent goaltender.
Is there any good reason that baseball managers can post the batting order three hours before game time and name the probable starting pitchers for a full series in advance for any series — whether regular season, playoffs or the World Series — but hockey coaches won’t tell you the lineup two hours prior to a postseason game?
If Ottawa, with its thousands of empty seats for Game 1 of Round 2 against the Rangers, were a non-traditional hockey market within the U.S., cries around Canada would be deafening to move the franchise to, say, Quebec.
Finally, if the Rangers and Henrik Lundqvist wind up facing the Oilers and Cam Talbot in the Stanley Cup finals, can we just award the Conn Smythe to Benoit Allaire before the series begins?