It Can Help To Be in Nashville

NASHVILLE--It's been more than 13 years between trips to Music City, and it's interesting to see how it's all turned out.

The last time was back in December, 1997 before the Predators had even played a game, and I was dispatched south to see what this new market in Tennessee, home to the NHL's 27th franchise, might be all about. At that point, the Predators, bought for $80 million, still had to sell 12,000 season tickets by March, 1998 to be allowed to begin operations the next season.

Back then, it was no sure shot, and it has been a long, bumpy ride. This was before the Titans had arrived, and it wasn't clear whether the town was ready for major pro sports, although interviewing Danny Geoffrion, son of Boom-Boom and by then already a Predators season-ticket holder, yielded some prophetic words.

"You have to understand, as I have learned, that in Tennessee things don't happen overnight. Things take time, " he said.

True enough. With my column, we ran a picture of Danny with his kids, including 9-year-old Blake, who is now a 23-year-old forward with the Predators as they try to figure out a way to fight back from a three games to one deficit against Vancouver in the club's first ever foray into the second round of the post-season.

Then, there was one public rink in Nashville and about 400 children playing. Today, there are three rinks and about 2,000 kids registered, and Blake Geoffrion is the first bona fide product of that system to make the NHL.

In Tennessee, things don't happen overnight. But with a little patience, maybe things do eventually happen that last.

Any hockey market - heck, even Phoenix - can look viable and worthwhile at playoff time when excitement is high and the seats are filled. Here, there's tons of enthusiasm, and while you wonder about the viability of a market in which you can buy lower bowl tickets for a Stanley Cup playoff game for $100, they seem to be making it work with continued subsidies from the city, more activity in Bridgestone Arena and, of course, revenue sharing from the NHL.

If there is an advantage to running a team out of here, however, it's the patience a hockey man can have.

GM David Poile, you may or may not remember, turned down overtures from the Maple Leafs to take the job of starting the Preds from scratch. His draft-and-develop, take-your-time, no rush here approach has probably been exactly what has been required given the financial restrictions faced by the team over the years.

It's also easier to take that approach here than it would have probably been in Toronto. You can bring young players along slowly without them being declared instant superstars or total flops before they've even learned what it's like to be a pro.

Take the case of forward Colin Wilson. The Preds took him seventh overall in 2008, two slots after the Leafs took Luke Schenn, three shots before Vancouver drafted Cody Hodgson.

While Schenn and Hodgson have already attracted miles of newsprint for their development paths, Wilson's progress has barely been noticed outside of Nashville. This season, he played 82 games for the team and scored 16 goals, but when the post-season began he found himself a healthy scratch for the first 10 games.

"He didn't take it very well at first," said head coach Barry Trotz, the only coach the team has ever had. "He's doing better now. It's all about the maturation process."

In bigger markets, that would have been a huge story. Coaches would have been roasted for not giving the kid a fair shot, opinions would have been aired as to whether the team had blown the pick, and Wilson would have either had to hide or answer daily queries about why he was on the outside looking in.

He did get into the lineup for Game 4 as an injury fill for Steve Sullivan, a gametime note, rather than a major story locally. Compare that to the experiences of Nazem Kadri, drafted in the same No. 7 slot a year later, and you begin to understand that with less scrutiny and attention comes the ability of teams in certain markets to develop young players without a cloud of controversy and analysis accompanying their every move.

Paul Maurice said much the same earlier this year about Jeff Skinner in Carolina, about how if things weren't going well in a game he could bump Skinner to the fourth line for half-a-game and no one would notice or make a big deal about it.

It's neither good nor bad, just the different challenges, advantages and disadvantages of different hockey situations.

In Nashville, there haven't been many advantages since the team played its first game in October, 1998.

Being able to develop hockey players gradually, however, would be one in a market where things don't happen overnight.

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Long-Term Snares

This can still be Alexander Ovechkin's moment.

Sure, another may come. But at some point, if Ovechkin wants to be regarded as something more than a hockey version of Dominique Wilkins, a great scorer and that's about it, he has to do something more, like turn a lost cause into, at the very least, a fight to the finish.

You know, like Jonathan Toews did for Chicago in the first round.

Yet again, the Caps are on the verge of failing terribly in the NHL playoffs, and this is surely becoming a broken record, a talented team that turns out to be much less than the sum of its parts. 

Ovechkin is finishing his sixth NHL season and will be 26 in the fall. He's no longer hockey's future; he's the present. But it's been made abundantly clear in these playoffs that, unlike his arch-rival Sidney Crosby, Ovechkin hasn't added to his game or developed in ways that make him more difficult to defend and his team tougher to beat.

It's the same old, same old, and what Josh Gorges and Hal Gill easily snuffed out last spring, Eric Brewer is snuffing out this spring. It's a bull-rush charge down the right wing and an attempt to step inside against a left-handed shooting defenceman, usually from 25 feet out or more. Or it's the one-timer from 50 feet. But that rush almost never sees Ovechkin dart to the outside and then cut to the net, or work a give-and-go with a teammate, or make a move and then find somebody else open. The obvious contrast in this series with Tampa Bay has been watching Marty St. Louis, Vinny Lecavalier and Steve Stamkos work together to create chances for each other, while Ovechkin stubbornly goes solo time after time.

"They are uncanny when they want to get a goal," said an admiring Mike Knuble of the Caps about the Tampa attack. "It's like they just snap their fingers or hit a button. They just dial it up. You can see it. It's like they flip a switch. When they are down, it's just like they think, 'We know we are going to score.' I don't know what it is … it just leaves you flabbergasted."

That's how people used to talk about Washington. But these days, the Caps aren't so flabbergasting, at least not in a good way, and Ovechkin seems so. . .predictable, really. If he won't change, or adapt, it's hard to see at this point how his team can succeed, particularly a team that is very young at key positions and lacks stand-on-your-head goaltending.

Artistically, last year was Ovechkin's worst season. Statistically, this year has been, and all this with 10 years still to go on his 13-year, $124 million contract that didn't make a lot of sense at the time and makes less now.

It remains remarkable how these long-term committments so often produce less-than-splendid results, but teams still believe that it will be different for them.

Right now, Washington's decision to go long with Ovechkin and Niklas Backstrom (10 years, $67 million) is looking not so different than the 2007 move by the Ottawa Senators to lock up Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza to long-term contracts in a bid to nail down the future.

The Sens were coming off a Stanley Cup final appearance, Heatley was a 50-goal shooter and Spezza a better point-per-game centre who could also score. Four years later, the Senators are at the bottom of the league, Heatley is in San Jose (without much in Ottawa to show for the trade) and Spezza is no longer a point-per-game player.

We can debate the reasons. But the contracts obviously didn't pan out for the team, and certainly didn't secure the future.

The Caps, meanwhile, have locked themselves into deals with Ovechkin and Backstrom for even longer, with both under contract until 2020, and Oveckin a year after that. Ovechkin's performance and numbers have clearly declined. Backstrom's production fell to 65 points this year from 101 points a year ago, and in these playoffs he's been a disaster, with no goals and just two assists.

Make no mistake about it, these are high end players, world class players, players that any team around the NHL would be glad to have, although perhaps without those contracts attached.

But five years after everyone laughed at the New York islanders for signing Rick DiPietro to a 15-year contract, teams are still signing these deals, and they rarely seem to produce even the same production from the athlete as before, let alone enhanced production.

Maybe it's the money that takes the edge off the player. Maybe it's the scrutiny, or the pressure, or the extra attention. Who knows exactly why. But it's worth noting Crosby was off to arguably his best season this year before being injured, and by comparison his is a shorter-term deal with only three more years to run.

Ovechkin and Backstrom, of course, have all the time in the world to turn this story around. But the Caps would like it to be now against the Tampa Bay Lightning. 

 

JVR On The Rise

You can see pretty clearly now why the Maple Leafs were hunting James Van Riemsdyk.

Van Riemsdyk, or JVR as they were chanting his name Monday night, was the young player Brian Burke really wanted in exchange for Kris Versteeg when the two teams were talking trade this winter. Van Riemsdyk, 21, had 15 goals last year and while showing flashes this season, wasn't consistently giving the Flyers the kind of performance a team looking to try and win a Stanley Cup needed.

Burke pushed and pushed, but Flyers GM Paul Holmgren wouldn't relent, an eventually the trade was made in mid-February, Versteeg to Philly for a first round pick and a third rounder.

"Our ideal would have been to get a player who could play right now," said Burke at the time, without mentioning Van Riemsdyk by name.

Van Riemsdyk finished the season with 21 goals, but it was Monday in Game 2 against Boston he really flashed his potential in a dominant performance, albeit one in a losing cause. The lanky forward scored twice in the first period and had eight shots in all, at times nearly unstoppable except for Tim Thomas, who was stopping pretty much everything in a glittering 52-save performance.

Van Riemsdyk went second overall in the '07 draft behind Patrick Kane, and until this season it seemed like it might be one of the weaker drafts in years. But Logan Couture (9th overall) had a breakout season in San Jose, Karl Alzner (5th) has become a regular on the Washington blueline and other first round defencemen like Kevin Shattenkirk, Jonathan Blum and Ryan McDonagh have become solid NHLers.

Van Riemsdyk, meanwhile, was teasing the Flyers, but not blowing away anybody. At least not until Monday night when he looked like power forward with wheels, finally harnessing his potential. We'll see now if he can produce more of the same as the Flyers try once more to come-from-behind on Boston.

But it sure looks like Holmgren was bang-on in assessing the young forward's value when the Leafs came knocking.

 

 

 

Vinny and The Bolts

It's been a long time between marquee moments for Vinny Lecavalier.

Say, seven years, or so.

Yes, there was that 52-goal season in the 2006-07 campaign. But the last time Lecavalier, now 31 years old, was really the man of the moment was during those halcyon days between June, 2004 and September, 2004, when he led the Tampa Bay Lightning to the Stanley Cup then followed that up with an MVP performance for Team Canada at the 2004 World Cup of Hockey.

Since then, more has been written about Lecavalier's ridiculous contract - a $7.72 million hit through the 2019-29 season - than about his special moments, at least until Sunday night.

Lecavalier's two-goal performance, including the overtime winner, gave the Lightning a 3-2 win and a stunning 2-0 stranglehold over the Washington Capitals in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference final. The first goal was a power play blast to a tiny hole that few NHLers can make, and the second came off a heads-up 100-foot pass up the ice by defenceman Randy Jones to Teddy Purcell that caught the Caps on a lazy line change.

Purcell, seeing Mike Green overcommitting to him, flipped the puck cross-ice to an unguarded Lecavalier, who had all kinds of time to put the puck high over Washington goalie Michal Neuvirth to shock the Caps after they'd tied the game late in regulation.

If there is reason to believe that the Bolts might actually be a Stanley Cup threat, part of the reason would be that Lecavalier has again joined Steven Stamkos and Martin St. Louis to give the Lightning three lethal scorers at the top of their lineup.

Yeah, there's coach Guy Boucher and his stultifying, anti-hockey 1-3-1 trap system that makes Jacques Lemaire looks like a guy who likes loosey-goosey hockey. And, of course, there's 41-year-old goalie Dwayne Roloson who has been excellent in the nine Tampa post-season matches so far.

But the Big Three up front give the Lightning the weapons that allow them to capitalize on the frustration and lack of patience from opponents, as was the case again in Game 2.

And what about those Capitals? The team that couldn't hold a 3-1 lead against Montreal last spring and hasn't been able to win Game 7s on home ice now has to be the team that can come back after losing the first two games against Tampa at home.

Against the Rangers in the first round, the Caps didn't need a lot of offence, which fit the defence-first persona they've been test-driving for several months. But Tampa scored more goals than Washington did during the regular season and is a team playing with the confidence that it can get what it needs as long as it holds the opponent to three goals or less.

With their archrivals from Pittsburgh eliminated early, and with Sidney Crosby and Evgeny Malkin having been sidelined for months, the road looked clear for the remodeled Caps to churn their way to the Eastern Conference title.

But now they've got to beat Tampa four straight or four out of five just to advance to the conference final. Green had a tough night - two bad penalties, the second Tampa goal off his skate, caught gambling defensively on the OT winner - and the Caps looked determined to set a record for going offside on the rush.

Tampa looks incredibly confident in its approach. Washington? They still don't look convinced they can win with defence, but its too late to change now.

So they've got to try and grind out four wins against a Lightning squad that not only seems to grind better, but has as many or more good finishers up front.