It's Time for Bodies to Start Moving

A number of factors have contributed to a super-slow season of trading thus far in the NHL, with the restrictions of the salary cap system probably the No. 1 reason.

But, with the league's Christmas roster freeze over, you have to believe action will start to heat up heading towards the trade deadline.

That deadline, don't forget, has been moved up this year to Feb. 27, a full 10 days earlier in the schedule compared to last season.

Between injuries and tight races, however, GMs are starting to get antsy now.

One of the most interesting teams to watch will be the Phoenix Coyotes.

The Desert Dogs have had a decent December under Wayne Gretzky, with a win in San Jose on Thursday night bumping them to 4-4-2 in their last 10 games.

Still, the Coyotes sit eight points out of a playoff berth and skate out of the very tough Pacific Division.

So, even if Gretzky keeps them going in a better fashion than was the case earlier this year, you have to believe Phoenix will be a seller this winter.

And they have some things to sell, including unrestricted free-agents-in-waiting Shane Doan, Ladislav Nagy and Mike Comrie.

Doan, a 30-year-old power forward, would obviously be the most cherished commodity, although his goal against the Sharks on Thursday was only his seventh of the season.

At $3.4 million a year he's not crazy expensive, and he was a 30-goal shooter last year and a member of the Canadian Olympic team.

If Phoenix GM Mike Barnett chooses to move Doan, he's a player who could theoretically make a Butch Goring-like impact for a playoff team.

Imagine, for example, how Doan could change the look of a smallish Montreal Canadiens squad that's already looking very impressive these days and has excess youth - Canadian junior goalie Carey Price, Kyle Chipchura, Andrei Kostitsyn - to make a move.

If the Coyotes could put together that kind of a deal and then draft high next June, the Barnett-Gretzky program would get a huge boost.

Proving the best deals are usually the ones you have to wait for, meanwhile, you have to wonder if Maple Leafs GM John Ferguson would have fared better in doing a deal with Mikael Tellqvist if he'd been able to hold out a bit longer.

Anaheim is in desperate straits right now, having to make a deal to acquire goalie Sebastien Caron from Chicago to add some depth after losing Michael Leighton on waivers and seeing both Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Ilya Bryzgalov go down with groin problems.

Going into Friday night's game in Raleigh, the Ducks were prepared to go with Michael Wall, formerly the minor-league backup to Leighton, and ECHL callup David McKee, although they were hoping Bryzgalov might be ready to return.

Maybe Tellqvist would have been an enticing commodity for the Ducks, who have also lost defenceman Francois Beauchemin with a lacerated spleen.

Columbus, meanwhile, was just getting into the playoff hunt when Pascal LeClaire was lost for a month or more. Fredrik Norrena certainly looked less than terrific in giving up seven to the Red Wings on Thursday.

Then there's the Leafs themselves, of course, a team currently and understandably dissatisfied with the work of goalies Andrew Raycroft and Jean-Sebastien Aubin.

Tellqvist's .902 save percentage, after all, is not only better than that of Phoenix teammate Curtis Joseph, it's better than either of the Leaf goaltenders these days.

Ducks Swim to the Top

The numbers don't lie. At a time when NHL parity means the difference between teams is wafer-thin, the Anaheim Ducks have forcefully established themselves as the NHL's best team.

Actually, check that. They are the NHL's most successful team thus far, with more wins and fewer losses than any other club.

The Buffalo Sabres winning percentage of .763 runs second only to the Ducks' .794, but there are folks - certainly many of them in western New York - who would argue the Sabres are the better squad. They've cooled since starting the season with 10 straight wins and 15 victories in their first 17 games, but they couldn't exactly maintain that pace all season long.

It may indeed be a question of taste. The Ducks are the NHL's fourth best defensive team, the Sabres the NHL's best offensive team by almost a half-goal per game.

The Sabres are better to watch; the Ducks have three fabulous veterans in Teemu Selanne, Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer.

Too bad the two teams won't meet even a single time, unless, of course, they collide in the Stanley Cup final.

Right now, the Ducks may be running into a few injury problems going into a road trip that will take them to Raleigh, St. Paul and Motown as 2006 turns into 2007.

Sean O'Donnell was already out going into Tuesday's divisional game against San Jose, and then the Ducks saw Todd Marchant, Francois Beauchemin and goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere leave that game with various injuries.

The Giguere injury is most worrisome. Backup Ilya Bryzgalov, the hero of the playoffs last spring, is already out with a groin problem, and 21-year-old third stringer Michael Wall now has all of four periods of NHL experience under his belt after mopping up for Giguere on Tuesday.

Wall was the backup goalie to Michael Leighton with the Ducks's top minor league affiliate and was recalled earlier in the season when Bryzgalov first went down because Leighton needed to clear waivers to be recalled.

When it became clear Brygalov would be out longer, Anaheim tried to recall Leighton, but saw him snapped up by Nashville.

Now Wall, a native of Telkwa, B.C. who played junior hockey for the Prince George Cougars and Everett Silvertips, may be Anaheim's only crease candidate for a while depending on the severity of Giguere's injury. 

Mario and Rory

Have we all had enough of discussing the City of Pittsburgh and its hockey team?

Not yet?

Okay, here's a little more on Mario Lemieux, but we also want to touch on Rory Fitzpatrick.

Mario, it's fair to say, has taken the gloves off, and maybe its something he should have done a long time ago.

He has formally told the hockey world and the local community that he's willing to listen to offers for the Penguins from outside Pennsylvania.

He's finally going to use the leverage he has.

See, local politicians have only been too happy to use Lemieux against himself for years. Instead of ever out-and-out rejecting the Pens and their arena dreams, they just kept stringing Lemieux along, knowing that as a resident of the city he desperately wanted to keep the team there.

If Lemieux had opened the bidding to non-Pittsburgh suitors five years ago, either the city would have met his demands for a rink or the Pens would have moved, realizing that the public and political support for the hockey team just isn't there.

Now, having wasted so much time, Lemieux is finally going to use the threat of moving the team to get the politicians in Pittsburgh to commit to something.

It'll have to happen fast. This team, if its going to move, will want to have a new home by the spring.

If the people and politicians don't want the team, fine. As a taxpayer myself, I wouldn't want to give a red cent to an NHL team.

But if that's the case in Pittsburgh, the Pens may move.

Interestingly, the hardening of Lemieux's attitude has also brought Waterloo businessman Jim Balsillie back into the bidding.

Balsillie has fired off a letter to Lemieux apologizing for any bad feelings caused last week when he terminated his purchase agreement to buy the Pens and offering to get involved in the new "Plan B" process.

Given that Lemieux dismissed Balsillie's efforts as "unequivocably dead" last week and said the club plan's to keep the Blackberry king's deposit, remoured to be $10 million, it'll be interesting to see if these two men end up talking turkey again.

Nothing on this front is likely to happen until towards the end of January when the 30-day window for appeals on the Pennsylvania Gaming Board's decision of this week has expired.

But enough of the Pens.

Rory Fitzpatrick has roared into second place in the Western Conference balloting for all-star defencemen, and here's why I like it.

First, it shows hockey fans have a sense of humour. Sometimes, one is left to wonder whether that's the case. The attack ads on Nicklas Lidstrom and Scott Niedermayer are a hoot.

Second, it does highlight the ridiculousness of the all-star voting process and, by connection, the all-star game itself.

The game is an anachronism at best, no longer truly relevant today, at least not in its current format.

Anybody remember the last all-star game? Who won, who lost?

Anybody remember last year's season-ending all-star team?

The Hart Trophy? Yes. The Calder? Yes. But nobody pays attention to who is or isn't an all-star anymore.

In my mind, it all went out the window the year Chris Nilan became an "all-star," and ever since then the league has been scrambling to make this a relevant event again.

To me, Rory Fitzpatrick is as good a fit as anybody.

Obscuring the Issue

The NHL, eventually, will be going to bigger nets. That will make some recoil in horror, but it's going to happen. Bet on it.

I support the concept. At the same time, I can easily accept that people don' t like the idea.

As long, that is, as they do so on a logical basis.

If you think the game is already wide-open enough and has enough scoring, for example, that is a solid argument against bigger nets.

So is the possibility that raising the crossbar for high shots to be goals rather than over the net might make life a little more dangerous around the net for forwards and defencemen.

Even the notion that moving to larger nets would fundamentally change the manner in which thousands of goalies have learned the sport has some traction.

Just don't tell me that it would be an affront to the NHL record book.

Don't try and argue that current scoring marks would somehow be unfairly under attack.

For starters, you have to understand that already the record book deals with apples and oranges by statistically scoring records from the 1930s, '40s and '50s with those of the '80s and '90s.

The game has changed so drastically over the decades that in some ways its not even the same game. Yet nobody minds that Max Bentley's scoring records are held up to those of Mike Bossy or Brett Hull.

What is true, however, is that because the net has remained the same size while the goaltenders have dramatically increased in size, the available scoring area has been gradually decreased over the past 20 years, in particular.

Phil Esposito could see a lot more net, for example, than Jonathan Cheechoo.

That's not opinion. It's fact.

Making the nets slightly higher and wider, then, would actually reset the balance between goalie and shooter.

It wouldn't ruin the NHL record book. It would actually make it more meaningful.

By comparison, the manner in which goalies are now able to record victories in OT and shootouts will make it far easier for netminders like Martin Brodeur, for example, to approach Patrick Roy's all-time wins record.

Brodeur has 18 wins this season, but four have come in shootouts. Roy didn't have the ability to win games that way and had to settle for ties.

Anaheim's Jean-Sebastien Giguere has 23 wins this season, two by shootout. Those extra opportunities to register victories may make it a lot easier for Giguere to break Bernie Parent's 1973-74 record of 47 wins in a single season.

Now that's distorting the record book.

But when I hear Jarome Iginla say larger nets would "change records and things," it makes me want to scream.

He might not like the idea for a whole host of reasons.

But the record book should not be included in that list.

Limits on Largesse

The CFL now has a salary cap, which of course will come as a surprise to those who thought it had a salary cap before.

But let's not go over that comedy sketch again.

The new cap is slightly more than $4 million per team, and it comes with a host of new penalties for going over the cap or otherwise trying to find innnovative ways around it, plus league executives whose job it will be to make sure every team is in compliance.

This has produced different responses from different teams.

The Grey Cup champion B.C. Lions are owned by David Braley, who, along with Montreal owner Bob Wetenhall, voted against the new salary cap measures.

When the cap police showed up at the Lions' offices to start examining what the team's payroll looked like, they were told to get lost.

Nope, can't see our books.

Then there's the Toronto Argonauts. A conservative estimate is with the likes of Damon Allen and Ricky Williams in the lineup, the Argos spent about $5 million on players last season.

Obviously they had some adjustments to make.

That's why you've seen a host of established Argo vets booted out the door in the past week.

Antonius Bonner. Eric England. Clifford Ivory. R. Jay Soward. Keith Stokes.

Some, like Soward, were likely gone anyway on the basis of their play last season.

But some had to go so the Argos could replace them with younger, cheaper players next season that would properly position the club under the salary cap.

So the Lions responded one way and the Argos another. One senses that the cap is going to be a matter of some conflict in the coming months. This time, instead of pitting teams like Montreal and B.C. against a commissioner like Tom Wright, it's going to see those teams locking horns with other teams like Calgary, Toronto and Winnipeg.

Teams traditionally ignored the last salary cap too, until the league just gave up and decided to tell the world that what has been advertised as a a cap was actually a minimum.

It's likely the same abuses will occur this time unless swift measures are taken. With Wright officially history as of Jan. 1st, and no replacement in sight, it's hard to believe there will be the necessary leadership out of the CFL's head office to make the new rules stick.

The Rising Price of Waiting

It was a story that already had everything.

Now a little bad blood and accusations of deceit are nicely turning the sale of the Pittsburgh Penguins into a Movie of The Week.

A little sex and a body found in a dumper dumpster (oops) and we'd have crime novel.

By comparison, looking back over the past seven years and the financial twists and turns of the Penguins, Chapter 11 was straightforward.

Mario Lemieux was one sour dude yesterday when he took the microphone to comment on the latest suitor to leave him at or near the altar.

Don't forget, Jim Balsillie wasn't the first to sign a letter of intent to buy the Penguins. A Hartford real estate developer named Sam Fingold was the first back in the summer, so no wonder Lemieux is wondering exactly when a deal is actually a deal these days.

But while Mario Lemieux was doing the spurned lover thing yesterday, Balsillie was making it clear he doesn't believe his bid to buy the Pens is "unequivocably dead," as Lemieux so eloquently termed it yesterday.

"All it takes is three willing parties and a five-minute phone call to get this restarted," said Balsillie in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The details are fuzzy, but the essence of the Balsillie exit - temporary or otherwise - is that something fundamental changed between the time Balsillie made representations to the NHL's executive committee in West Palm Beach and late last week.

Some suggest Balsillie told the executive board he was willing to go along with several conditions, but when it came to putting them in writing, he balked.

His camp, of course, is telling a different story, that the NHL tried to impose new conditions on him.

If there's a positive development in this for Lemieux, it's that the price of the Penguins may increase regardless of which casino group lands the coveted state's licence on Wednesday.

If it's the Isle of Capri, the group that has pledged $290 million towards a rink, then a new buyer would know for certain that an arena will be built.

That might well make the price go beyond the $175 million Balsillie and Fingold had signed up to pay.

If it's not the Isle of Capri, well, all bets are off and the Pens effectively become a free agent-in-waiting, open to offers to keep the team in Pittsburgh or offers to move them elsewhere.

And Vernon Wells would tell you the only thing better than actual free agency is pending free agency.

Weekend Fodder

Ottawa and Tampa Bay came into the NHL together, which makes it interesting that both clubs appear to be at a crossroads in this NHL season. Ottawa has been getting homped of late, giving up goals at a rate once unthinkable in the nation's capital. After seeming to get it all sorted out three weeks ago, the Sens are officially in distress once more. With the Lightning, the time to fire coach John Tortorella was in the summer. This team not only doesn't respond to him any more, it doesn't respond to anything . . . Four coaching openings have come and gone in the NHL and still Pat Quinn remains unemployed. A strange fate for a man who a year ago was poised to lead the defending gold medallists into the Winter Olympics

A year after the fact, it seems even more unbelievable that Wayne Gretzky didn't choose Sidney Crosby for the Turin Games, but did choose Todd Bertuzzi . . . One wonders why NHL commissioner Gary Bettman would want to get involved as the broker in the unending Bertuzzi-Steve Moore battle. One supposes the new owners of the Vancouver Canucks, one of 30 teams that employs Bettman, would like this put to bed . . . So much for the Legion of Doom. Mikael Renberg has left the NHL and John LeClair doesn't have a job. Only Eric Lindros is still a meaningful NHL competitor, the last vestige of what was for a time one of hockey's great forward lines . . . With Charlie Taaffe set to go in Hamilton, all the coaching jobs are now filled. Now they can start working on a commissioner.

Strange to see a SunMedia writer blasting the Lou Marsh Trophy selection process this week for being too eastern-based. The reporter's research failed to unearth the fact that an Edmonton media outlet was supposed to participate but did not, and that the chairman of Lou Marsh panel, Silken Laumann, is from British Columbia. Could it be the real story was the fact that for the first time in a long time there wasn't a SunMedia voter? Naw, that would be too petty . . . Completely understandable why Craig Hartsburg didn't take John Tavares and Angelo Esposito for the world junior team. But it would have been fun to watch those two play. That said, it will be enjoyable to watch Sam Gagner, son of ex-Leaf Dave Gagner, skate on the world stage . . . Canadian hockey fans better be very familiar with a hockey player named Leland or one named Carey by next month or gold will not have been captured at the world junior championships. That's as in Leland Irving of Swan Hills, Alberta and Carey Price of Anaheim Lake, B.C., the two goalies selected by Hartsburg on Friday.

Best name on the world junior roster? Has to be Quebec junior winger Marc-Andre Cliche. Let the headline writers begin their work.

On the Road to Sweden

There will be a lot of eyebrows raised over the decision of the Canadian national junior program to chop youngsters Angelo Esposito and John Tavares today. In fact, neither even made it to the final round of cuts.

Once upon a time, of course, this kind of story was raised to the level of national controversy when it involved the likes of Brett Lindros, Dan Cleary and Mike Comrie.

But the fact Esposito and Tavares couldn't make, really, just tells you how hard it is for young players to crack a national junior roster for a tournament that is traditionally dominated by 18- and 19-year-old players.

There are always exceptions, and certainly both Tavares and Esposito are regarded as exceptionally talented teenagers.

But this year's national junior team has been blessed with an unusually large number of returning forwards and defencemen, 11 in all. All of those players are 19 years old, save for centre Jonathan Toews, who is 18.

Toews and two other returnees, Andrew Cogliano and Steve Downie, are expected to be 1-2-3 up the middle for Canada. Those are the roles Tavares and Esposito fill with their junior teams in Oshawa and Quebec City, respectively, and the likeliehood is that the coaching staff led by Craig Hartsburg didn't see either player fitting elsewhere in the lineup.

Sidney Crosby played as a 17-year-old in North Dakota two years ago, but he ended up playing on the wing and playing well.

Maybe Tavares or Esposito could have done that. But again, with 19-year-old returnees like Ryan O'Marra, Daniel Bertram and Tom Pyatt likely to be on the roster, they would have had to be wingers filled grinding, checking and energy roles for a team looking to win a third consecutive gold medal for Canada in Leksand and Mora, Sweden, later this month.

Both will likely get their shot next year. That is, of course, unless the highly touted Esposito is drafted so high in the NHL draft that he's in the big leagues to stay next fall.

Shut Out

Cindy Klassen got my Lou Marsh vote.

As one of the 11 people given the privilege on Monday of voting for Canada's athlete-of-the-year, I was only too happy to give my support to Klassen, although Steve Nash would have been a great choice, as well.

There was a great boardroom debate over the two athletes, evidence of the terrific year for Canadian athletes that was 2006.

But there was also an interesting discussion within a discussion, and that concerned the built-in bias against hockey players that I believe exists when it comes to the Lou Marsh Trophy.

Really, given that Joe Thornton received almost no support after a year in which he won the scoring title, took MVP honors and almost singlehandedly lifted the San Jose Sharks into the Stanley Cup playoffs, it's worth wondering what a hockey player could possibly do to win the Lou Marsh.

Despite the unrivalled prominence of the sport in our country, no hockey player - male or female - has won the prestigious award since Mario Lemieux in 1993.

Indeed, only seven hockey players - Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Bobby Clarke, Guy Lafleur and Maurice (The Rocket) Richard - have ever received this distinction over the past 70 years.

In the past quarter-century, only Lemieux and Gretzky have been so honored, and that seems to have created an artificial level of excellence that no hockey player is likely to meet in the forseeable future.

Gretzky and Lemieux are at the very least two of the top five players to have ever played the game, and there's no Gretzky or Lemieux in the game today.

But that's apparently the level a Canadian hockey player would have to reach to win the Lou Marsh.

Joe Sakic, with all his achievements in the sport, hasn't had a sniff. Ditto for Martin Brodeur, and all he's done is win three Stanley Cups, two Vezinas, a World Cup, an Olympic gold medal in the past decade. Rod Brind'Amour was sensational last year in leading Carolina to the Stanley Cup and he wasn't even considered this year.

Hayley Wickenheiser, meanwhile, often gets a quick mention, but never serious consideration.

Other Canadians in other sports, meanwhile, don't have to meet the same levels to be seriously considered or even win.

Mike Weir isn't among the greatest golfers to ever lift a club. Not even close.

Ditto for Jacques Villeneuve among auto racers, Mark Tewskbury among swimmers, Daniel Igali among Olympic wrestlers or Adam van Koeverden among kayakers.

They all won the Lou Marsh, however, and deserved it.

But it's almost as if the history and popularity of hockey in Canada are held against shinny artists, as though they must achieve much, much more to be considered worthy of consideration as Canada's top athlete. There's a sense that hockey players receive more than enough recognition and attention, and thus are essentially shunned when it comes to the Lou Marsh.

Klassen deserved it this year. But based on recent history, it's going to be a long, long time before an athlete wearing skates AND carrying a stick will be recognized as Canada's top athlete.

Cry Me A River

The emails come in every day from Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C. and Quebec, all lamenting the Toronto-centric nature of Hockey Night in Canada and lambasting those us of in this part of the country for not being able to understand their complaint.

Well, Saturday night it was so incredibly obvious that there was no denying it.

There sat Ron MacLean and Don Cherry after the Maple Leafs had lost 5-1 to Detroit, shaking their heads at the 14 power plays the Red Wings had enjoyed on the night.

"Terrible," murmured MacLean, agreeing with his distraught companion.

'Course, had it been the Leafs who had won 5-1 with five power play winners, it would have been a wonderful night.

In fact, it's interesting to note that for the first five to six weeks of the season - when the Leafs were winning consistently - MacLean and Cherry were able to keep it zipped on the officiating. They were too busy taking credit, for example, for Kyle Wellwood's early success alongside Mats Sundin, although you don't see them doing that or holding up newspapers as proof of their expertise so much these days.

But now, with the Leafs now in a deep funk, why, the poor lads just can't contain themselves any longer.

Suddenly the game's in crisis. Too many penalties. Not enough fights. Need more hooking, holding and interference.

And after Ian White was nailed for flipping the puck over the glass and sent to the penalty box three times in two games, sure enough there was Cherry on Saturday night once again fuming over this penalty.

What they want you believe, of course, is that they only have the greater good of the game in mind, not just the greater good of the Leafs.

But if you examine the stats, the Leafs were just doing on Saturday night what they have done most of the time in the post-lockout era, and that's take too many penalties.

They were ill-prepared for the "new" NHL - Pat Quinn never believed it would stick - and after improving that part of their game earlier this season, have again fallen back into old habits.

The Leafs gave up the 12th most power plays in the league last year, an average of 6.1 per game. This year, they're giving up 5.6 per game, better but nowhere near the record of, say, the New Jersey Devils, who are giving up only 3.5 power plays per game.

HNIC would also have you believe that every game contains a ridiculous number of power plays roughly similar to that of the Red Wings-Leafs game.

Not true.

On Saturday night, the average number of power plays in the 14 NHL games held was 11 per game. Take out the Detroit-Toronto game, and that figure drops to 10.2.

The Devils gave up no power plays at all to Boston in a 5-1 win. The Sens and Rangers each had four power plays in their game. Tampa and Anaheim combined for seven, while Dallas had five against Phoenix while the Coyotes had four.

Leaf fans, of course, dig the Leafs-getting-the-shaft angle, so they were going email crazy after Saturday's game as well.

One reader suggested too many of the referees live in the Leafs' broadcast area and are thus subconciously biased against the Toronto club. (No, I don't get that one, either).

It's the basic refrain you expect out of any overly-enthusiastic, loyal Leaf fan.

Leafs lose, too many penalties called against the Leafs.

Leafs win, the world is okay again.

That's what being a fan is all about.

You just wish HNIC could do a bit better.