A Peek Into the Future

Go ahead, imagine.

It's February, 2010. The gold medal game of the Vancouver Winter Olympics at GM Place.

Captain Sidney Crosby leads Team Canada on to the ice to take on the U.S., the second time in eight years the two countries will battle for gold in an Olympics held on North American soil.

At one end, American starting goaltender Ryan Miller scratches the blue painted crease with his skates, readying for the biggest international game of his life.

At the other end?

Well, it's none other than Cam Ward of Sherwood Park, Alberta, also getting ready to make a splash on the international stage.

Ward, by 2010, would be 26. Miller would be 29.

And the scenario, while hardly definite, is entirely plausible.

It's also the scenario that will be played out Thursday night in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final in Raleigh when Ward and the Carolina Hurricanes try to administer the knockout blow to Miller and the Buffalo Sabres after failing to do so two nights earlier in Buffalo.

Both have played very well in the conference final. Ward stole an overtime win for his team in Game 6 after replacing Martin Gerber partway through the game, while Miller made a point blank save on Rod Brind'Amour with less than two minutes left in Game 6 to ultimately give teammate Daniel Briere a chance to later with the game in OT.

One of these youngsters will go on to play for the Stanley Cup, and possibly forge their reputation further by winning the Cup.

But how likely is a Ward-Miller confrontation four years from now at the Olympics in Vancouver?

Well, it's likelier Miller will be there, if only because he will undoubtedly face less competition.

Four years ago when Canada faced the U.S. for gold in Salt Lake City, the goaltending matchup was Mike Richter against Martin Brodeur. While Brodeur is still competing, Richter is still retired, and none of the U.S. goalies at the Turin Olympics, specifically Robert Esche or Rick DiPietro, was so strong as to nail down a spot as the favorite for the Vancouver Games.

Miller has some experience at this type of competition taking place over a matter of years. He had to outlast, after all, both Martin Biron and Mika Noronen just to land the Sabres starting job.

The likeliest scenario, you have to believe, would see either Miller or DiPietro in the U.S. net four years from now.

Ward, meanwhile, would have to survive a much more difficult set of challenges to reach that point.

Brodeur, for starters, will be 37 by the 2010 Games. Given that he and Mikka Kiprusoff were 1-2 this season as the NHL's best goalies, and given that both Patrick Roy and Ed Belfour were still going strong at that age, you wouldn't put it past the durable Brodeur to still be pushing to be No. 1 for Canada for a third straight Olympics.

Roberto Luongo, meanwhile, will be 30 years ago in 2010, and after years of playing second fiddle to Brodeur internationally, you can bet Luongo will be zeroing in on Vancouver as his time to shine for Team Canada.

Other potential candidates would include Marc-Andre Fleury and Jose Theodore, although he would be 33 by the Vancouver Games and would have to get his game back to an elite level. Perhaps even the likes of Ray Emery or Pascal LeClaire will be the man for Canada by then. Maple Leaf fans, of course, would love to think Justin Pogge would by 2010 be established as the Leaf starter by then at the age of 24 and one of the best in the world.

But maybe it'll be Ward vs. Miller, just as it will be for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final Thursday night.

That's one element that makes you wonder even more what the result of Game 7 will mean not just to the teams, but to the individual reputations and futures on both sides.

Not Dead Yet

It seemed, on the surface, an utterly crushing defeat for the Buffalo Sabres in Game 5 Sunday night against the Carolina Hurricanes.

The kind of defeat that suggests a team's will has been broken.

Up 3-1 on the road partway through the game. Unable to score on a variety of chances in overtime, including during a carry-over power play from the third period.

Stuck with a tough hooking penalty on J.P. Dumont. Beaten on a wild bouncer off the end boards for the OT winner.

Man, that one had to hurt.

But despite the devastating nature of the setback, there were also some strong suggestions that the Sabres aren't dead yet.

First, there was that two-goal lead established over the opening 25 minutes of the game, with the Sabres looking sharp and opportunistic.

The battered Buffalo defence corps, meanwhile, held up reasonably well, better, in fact, than it had in Game 4. By Game 6 tomorrow, both Jeff Jillson and Doug Janik will have to be feeling a little steadier, and Teppo Numminen may even be back. Rory Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, was a plus-2 in over 26 minutes of skating time, while Toni Lydman scored a gorgeous goal.

Adam Mair returned from a long concussion layoff and stirred up trouble, while lanky Paul Gaustad was more effective, drilling Eric Staal with a hard hit into the boards.

Finally, Lindy Ruff has to be wondering just how many times can his Carolina Peter Laviolette play juggle-a-goalie and come out looking brilliant?

Whether it's Cam Ward going in for Martin Gerber or Gerber relieving Ward, it has been uncanny how often Laviolette has hit the jackpot.

But that also means he has seen both netminders as wanting at different times. Gerber looked like the right choice for Game 5 and now Ward appears automatic for Game 6, but this seems a very unorthodox way to get top-flight playoff goaltending.

The Sabres seem to be wobbling, but they might well have enough to force this one to go seven.

Then, Ryan Miller could have a chance to steal it.

 

No Other Choice

The Anaheim Mighty Ducks, facing post-season extinction, at least had a choice.

Down 3-0 to the Edmonton Oilers going into Game 4 Thursday night, Ducks coach Randy Carlyle had the opportunity to turn to 2003 playoff MVP Jean Sebastien Giguere in goal, and did as Anaheim captured its first victory of the series.

The Edmonton Oilers, facing as big a problem in goal as the Ducks or even bigger, don't have that kind of option at hand.

It's Dwayne Roloson or bust for the Oilers, and the possibility that the 36-year-old has finally lost his playoff mojo is the only real source of optimism for Anaheim heading into Game 5 on Saturday night.

Jussi Markkanen, in case you wondered, is the Oiler backup, and it so happens he hasn't appeared in a game since March 1st.

He turned 30 years of age this month, but he has only 13 minutes of NHL playoff experience on his resume, and that came four years ago.

That's not exactly an realistic option.

Roloson, however, is showing rather obvious signs of fatigue, and who would blame him if that's the case? After being either a backup or platoon goalie for his entire career, he has been ridden hard by Edmonton coach Craig MacTavish down the the stretch and throughout the playoffs.

Poor Roloson. He has started 35 of Edmonton's last 36 games after previously never having played more than 50 regular season games in his career.

Over the past four periods, the once-sizzling Roloson has allowed nine goals, at least half of which have either stoppable or downright ugly.

His most effective play in Game 4 was a rather obvious dive that nonetheless netted the Oilers a power play when Andy McDonald was sent off for goalie interference. Roloson has been "unintentionally" losing his facemask often during the Anaheim series, fortuitously whenever his team can use a break.

But if the Roloson magic is gone, the Oilers are in huge trouble, if not in securing the fourth and final win over Anaheim, then in the Stanley Cup final against either Buffalo or Carolina.

For the Oilers, after all, there is no other goaltending option.

The Big One

Usually, Game 5 of a playoff series is regarded as the critical, must-win game that often determines the ultimate winner.

But here's guessing that in the Buffalo-Carolina series, the critical match in Game 4 Friday night on the other side of the Peace Bridge.

The Sabres, having already stolen home ice advantage, can jump ahead 3-1 in the series with a victory, a margin they are not likely to lose based on their performances so far in the post-season.

The Hurricanes, on the other hand, can re-acquire home-ice with a win, and then would turn the series into a best-of-three with two of the matches in Raleigh.

But it's more of a feel, really. Carolina looked so dominant in Game 2, then were so badly outplayed in the second period of Game 3 before storming back in the third.

If the Canes can't turn that late game push into a Game 4 triumph, they're pretty much done.

That said, the Sabres are running out of wiggle room. Even if they advance to, one would expect, play upstart Edmonton in the Stanley Cup final, they can't afford any more injuries to important players.

Yes, the Sabres are deep. But nobody's that deep. They can compensate for the absence of Tim Connolly, but injuries to Dmitri Kalinin and Teppo Numminen on the back end are putting a lot of pressure on Buffalo's No. 1 pair of Henrik Tallinder and Toni Lydman.

One final thought. The Oilers might want to think twice about sweeping the Ducks in the Western Conference final and then having to sit back and wait for the winner of the Sabres-Hurricanes matchup.

New Jersey had a long wait between beating the Rangers and meeting the Hurricanes, and never looked quite as sharp after the break. The Ducks, meanwhile, waltzed past Colorado in the second round, and after an eight-day layoff, have never looked as impressive since in their battle with the Oilers.

The Dwindling Dream

There is a distinct possibility, it seems, that the Maple Leafs could have all this cap money to spend this summer and nobody to spend it on.

Nobody, at least, of the substance that will add a proven, world-class player, specifically a forward to help out Mats Sundin.

There is still Patrik Elias of the Devils, of course, although those in the know suggest that since Elias' best friends in hockey are Martin Havlat of the Senators and goalie Tomas Vokoun of Nashville, you might want to keep an eye on those teams and those players.

The bidding for Elias is probably going to start around $6 million, and the chances of him becoming a Leaf are slim.

Other good skill players have been picked off, or at least re-signed. Columbus re-inked David Vyborny, and Nashville re-signed clever defenceman Marek Zidlicky.

Another distant dream died Sunday when Brad Richards re-signed with the Tampa Bay Lightning for $39 million over five years. Some had wondered if the Bolts would be able to pony up the cash to keep Richards, or if he might force their hand this summer through arbitration and thus become available on the trade market immediately or through unrestricted free agency.

As it turns out, not so much.

The signing apparently pushes the Bolts near the $40 million mark in payroll, but they're not going to dump Vinny Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis has a no-trade clause.

Which brings us back to the Leafs.

Assuming they won't blow their brains out on an aging veteran centre like Joe Sakic or Doug Weight, the mid-range forwards available may be people like Anson Carter, Sergei Samsonov, Mark Parrish, Jamie Langenbrunner, Jeff Halpern and Matt Cullen.

All good players. But not quite the home runs Leaf fans - or even new coach Paul Maurice - had in mind, and some will be re-signed by their current teams before the free agent season begins.

There's still the biggees on defence, namely Zdeno Chara, Wade Redden and Ed Jovanovski. All three could be re-signed by their current teams, and the Leafs might yet take themselves out of the running if they decide to give Bryan McCabe the big dough.

One thought on McCabe, by the way. He's a superior athlete with very questionable decision-making talents, which makes you wonder whether he could ever really be worth the $5 million or more he wants.

But after three years of watching him run around under the coaching of Pat Quinn and Rick Ley, it sure would be interesting to have a look at how his talents could be harnessed in the kind of structured system Maurice is proposing.

Problem is, the Leafs will have to commit to four years or more to find out.

Food for Weekend Thought

When it comes to the Toronto Argonauts, I have a pretty straightforward way of evaluating their decisions.

If it's okay by Pinball, it's okay by me.

I just trust this man's judgement about football - and, more important, human beings - that much.

So if Pinball Clemons says its the right move to bring in Ricky Williams, then it's the right move, period.

Is he a football coach looking to improve his roster?

Yep.

Would he be interested in Williams if he wasn't a talented football player?

Probably not.

But then again, look back to last spring when Pinball and GM Adam Rita invited Derek Medler to camp. Medler, after a splendid career at Laurier, had landed in jail, and this was his stab at resurrecting his football dream.

I remember asking Pinball why he would bother with such a potential problem, and he looked at me with an incredulous look on his face.

"Why would you ever give up on anybody?" he said.

That, it seems to me, is consistent with the the message the Argos have been trying to spread in the troubled parts of the GTA.

When it comes to a player like Williams, Pinball says its not just about the Miami Dolphins back coming in and playing like a star.

"He owes us more than touchdowns," says Clemons. "And we owe him more than a pay cheque."

Until proven wrong, in Pinball I trust.

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Lots of rumours around the NHL and job openings these days, some true and some not.

While some have annointed Ray Shero as the next Bruins GM, and Shero is indeed a promising young executive and may get the nod. Agent Brian Lawton, after visiting with Harry Sinden in Boston and owner Jeremy Jacobs in Buffalo, has been told he's out of the running.

Too bad. If the Bruins had really wanted to change the face of their franchise, Lawton would have been a very intriguing choice.

In New Jersey, GM Lou Lamoriello definitely won't be back to coach. It looked for some time as though he was grooming his assistant this year, John MacLean, to take over as the head man next year.

Well, not so fast. Pat Burns' name will stay in the mix as he continues his battles with cancer. Meanwhile, the name of former Montreal coach Claude Julien, currently an assistant under Marc Habscheid with the Canadian entry at the world championships, has also surfaced.

Let's see. Flipping back through the pages of Devils coaching history, I see the names Jacques Lemaire, Pat Burns, Jacques Laperriere and Larry Robinson.

Lamoriello sure seems to love that Montreal connection.

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Joe Thornton is a special hockey talent, the NHL's scoring champion this season and quite possibly its MVP.

In the final week of the season when the Sharks took on the desperate Vancouver Canucks in back-to-back games, Thornton was as dominant as any NHLer this season.

But then came the playoffs.

It was stunning to see Thornton and Patrick Marleau outplayed by Shawn Horcoff and Mike Peca by such a wide margin in the second round.

Add in Thornton's previous playoff failures with Boston, his play at the world championships last year when he and Rick Nash fizzled as a scoring combination in the final two games and his uninspiring work at the Olympics this year, and it's fair to say Thornton still has to prove himself as a big-game performer.

His best work under pressure, you could argue, came as a checking centre for Canada at the 2004 World Cup.

But that didn't help the Sharks survive this spring.

Broken Down Bonds

There is the intensity of the Stanley Cup playoffs. There is the intrigue of the NBA playoffs, with the possibility now looming large that a tiring Steve Nash will go head-to-head against the team that didn't want him, the Dallas Mavericks, just before he went and won back-to-back MVP awards for the Phoenix Suns.

There is, for fans of other things, the upcoming French Open in which one of the great rivalries in international sport, Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal, may well be played out again in the final.

Then there is baseball and Barry Bonds.

Everybody's keeping at least one eye on this thing, but from here, this has ceased to be either exciting or enraging, and Bonds has ceased to be either controversial or notorious.

The whole mess is just, well, pathetic. Not even very athletic, really.

With all the interesting stuff happening in baseball, the focus is on a broken-down slugger making $18 million a year for a not-very-good team. Bonds is in a "slump," although he went 2-4 with an RBI and three runs scored on Tuesday night, the slump being the 26 at-bats he has now gone without hitting a home run to tie Babe Ruth for second on baseball's all-time list.

At a time when Ryan Smyth is losing teeth but still playing for the Edmonton Oilers and Nash is laying it all on the line for the Suns, there is no guts 'n glory team thing going on for Bonds and the San Francisco Giants. Compared to the spectacular, five-hour Mother's Day slugfest between Nadal and Federer, this Bonds story seems like a man competing against only himself.

It's been that way for a while, of course. The manager, Felipe Alou, no longer makes even the pretence that he is making decisions with respect to Bonds that might be in the best interests of the teams. He comments thats Bonds' bat looks slow, Bonds himself says he's exhausted, but then its just up to Bonds whether he plays or not.

I mean, the man can barely trot, let alone run. The ravages of years in the game, and quite probably the ravages of his unique training regimen, have hobbled Bonds, just as they did to the game's previous man of muscle, Mark McGwire.

Even worse, when Bonds was plunked Tuesday night by Russ Springer of the Astros, the temptation was to almost feel sorry for the creaking slugger as he dragged himself down to first base and Springer was tossed out of the one-sided game.

This is no pursuit of glory. It's a sorry, unhappy, mean-spirited spectacle that will, even when Bonds hits No. 714 and then No. 715, bring little joy to anyone, let alone baseball fans.

The best that could happen now is that he breaks the record this weekend across The Bay in Oakland as a designated hitter, and then the story can just go away until the time comes that he takes a run at Hammerin' Hank.

Paying the Piper

For the most part this season, it is as though the NHL seemed to simply get away with the potential effects of last year's lockout.

It was as though Katrina came, but left no destroyed homes and flooded communities in its wake.

The fans, to a large extent, did come back, and in most markets. The game was vastly improved, giving the sport a positive spin directly related to its on-ice product for the first time in years. Partway through the season, news began to surface that revenues might actually outstrip projections, which would mean the salary cap would increase substantially for next season.

Now, however, the NHL is finally going to have to deal with the real issue that was, along with the state of game, very much at the heart of the lockout and the league's business problems.

Three of the four conference finalists are set already with Buffalo, Carolina and Anaheim.

Edmonton, it appears, has very, very good chance of becoming the fourth.

That slate of teams, its fair to say, is not going to provide the NHL with an overwhelming opportunity to sell the sport.

With Edmonton, of course, Canada will be fine. But Canada's always fine.

In terms of the U.S., you couldn't have four markets of lesser impact than Buffalo, Raleigh, Edmonton and Orange County. Yes, all these teams are terrific, good to watch and run by capable managers and skilled coaches.

This is not about the quality or desirability of these teams.

This is about the fact the NHL has done a very, very poor job of selling its games and selling its players over the past 15 years, and so no American outside of Anaheim knows who Ryan Getzlaf is, and nobody outside of Tobacco Road could pick out Cam Ward from a police lineup.

In fact, the people on Tobacco Road probably couldn't. A lot of Canadians, to be fair, would struggle to identify Getzlaf and Ward, two native born sons who are among the bright young lights of the game.

With all the big markets - Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Toronto, Denver, Vancouver, Montreal - long eliminated from the post-season, this is where the NHL would start to see the results if they'd spent the past eight months aggressively pushing the players and personalities of all these other, smaller markets.

But they never did it. Indeed, the television deal with OLN contributed to this problem. Last week in Buffalo, a city that has been in the league for more than three decades, it was impossible to find a hotel or establishment where OLN games could be viewed on the off-nights of the Sabres-Senators series.

Then there were those ridiculous tai chi/soft porn/art of war "My NHL" commercials aired for most of the season showing pretend players pretending to play hockey and pretend fans pretending to be excited by it all.

Yeah, that was a hit. At least the NHL finally figured it out and started using the strength of the league - it's players - to sell the game on vastly improved "My Stanley Cup" spots in recent weeks. The NHL Players Association, meanwhile, has been too busy fighting its own civil war to make any impact at all within the new "partnership" with the league that was supposedly formed through the lockout.

But its all been too late, and the NHL is about to find out - again - how irrelevant it is to the overall North American sports landscape.

Without a clear, compelling strategy to market and sell the game better in the post-lockout era than was the case prior to the lockout, the opportunities that might be available to the league are, once more, going unmined.

And the cities left in the hunt for the Cup are going to be treated like a quartet of Hootersvilles.

This, of course, will be totally unfair to the Canes, Sabres, Ducks and Oilers, or the Sharks if they come back and win that series.

They don't deserve to be ignored. But south of the Canadian border and outside of their home cities, they surely are about to be.

What if Hockey was more like Curling?

Until about 2:45 a.m. EST on Thursday morning, it looked like the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs had become a bonspiel.

You know. Sweep. Sweep. Sweep.

Shawn Horcoff, however, ended the triple OT marathon in Edmonton, which meant the Oilers and Sharks will have to go at least five games before one team moves on and the other begins making salary cap calculations for next season.

The Sabres, Canes and Ducks could all still rout their opponents in four straight, and if that happens, it would be similar to 1995 when three of four second round matchups were sweeps and the other went five games.

If the one-sided nature of the second round is a trend, it's pretty hard to figure out what the defining nature of the trend is.

Perhaps its the equalization of the post-lockout world. Carolina, Buffalo and Anaheim are all teams that were in terrible financial straits before the NHL and the players union shut 'er down for a year.

Meanwhile, all the financial powerhouses - Toronto, Detroit, Philadelphia, the New York Rangers and Dallas - have been sitting on the sidelines for a while now.

Maybe it's about how the new NHL is all about youth. All the teams that are left have only a sprinkling of thirtysomethings, a big departure from the win-with-veterans approach many teams took in the late 1990s and early part of this century.

Then there's the goalies.

If San Jose survives, the Final Four netminding matchups could be Ryan Miller vs. Cam Ward in the east, and Vesa Toskala vs. Ilya Bryzgalov in the west.

Not one of those four had played a post-season game before this spring.

Combined, their salaries add up to about $2.4 million.

On the bench, meanwhile, are Evgeny Nabokov ($5.4 million), Jean-Sebastien Giguere ($4 million), Martin Biron ($2.12 million) and Martin Gerber ($1.1 million).

Short-term, teams might start to be reluctant to throw more than, oh, $3 million a year at any goalie.

And Roberto Luongo, who has never made the playoffs, wants $6 million.

The really weird thing about all these sweeps, meanwhile, is that the teams poised to be swept sure didn't look like they were ready to be thrashed coming into this round.

Ottawa had hammered the defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning in five games. New Jersey had won 15 straight. Colorado had upset the Stars in five.

The best news is that rather than being beat up, quick second round series could leave all the winners in far better shape to produce quality conference finals and a truly top-drawer Stanley Cup final.

Hit Parade

Thank goodness the new NHL arrived just in time to get the hitting back in hockey.

Yep, you read that correctly.

Despite months of bellyaching from those who contended the NHL had deteriorated into flag football through its new rule standards, the first round-and-a-half of the post-season has made it abundantly clear the precise opposite is true.

Without all the hooking and interference, the playoffs have delivered a nightly crunch-fest, notably of late in the Ottawa-Buffalo and Edmonton-San Jose series.

More specifically, there has already been a long list of sensational open-ice hits in the playoffs that would rattle the teeth of even the most hardnosed onlooker, including:

Anaheim's Francois Beauchemin on Andrew Brunette of the Avalanche.

Brian Campbell of the Sabres laying out Philly's R.J. Umberger.

The Sharks' Mark Smith on Rayn Smyth of the Oilers in Game 1, followed by another heavy hit by Edmonton's Raffi Torres on San Jose's Milan Michalek in Game 2.

Detroit's Johan Franzen on the Oilers' Mike Peca in the first round

Last but not least, the devastating hit by Ottawa's Peter Schaefer on Tim Connolly of the Sabres in Game 2 on Monday night.

Remember Scott Stevens' hit on Paul Kariya in the 2003 Stanley Cup playoffs? It was a stunning hit, but it stood out even more because it was the latest installment in a long series of Stevens highlight reel hits.

They stood out even more because he was one of the few players capable of the high level of skill required to deliver such a well-timed and effective blow.

Now you're seeing more of these hits, and by a wide variety of players.

Why? Well, the premium on speed and quickness is putting atletes on the ice capable of making these hits rather than slow-moving mastodons better suited to scrumming along the boards and in front of the net.

Taking out the cheap restraining fouls, or at least calling them as the penalties they always were, has helped put players on the move and in better positions to deliver hard, clean bodychecks.

Its making the game tougher and more intimidating.

Flag football, indeed.