The NHL should appoint VP Brendan Shanahan to chair another summit, this one to focus on how best to shorten the regular season in order that the playoffs can start no later than the third week of March and the Stanley Cup can be awarded when people still remember that hockey is being played, say no later than the second week of May.
The Stanley Cup playoffs are the sport’s jewel, every bit as much a stand alone with special-event feel as the Winter Classic or the Olympics. It’s up to the league and the Players’ Association to conceive and then execute a plan that would elevate and distinguish the tournament so that it might be sold to a title sponsor.
The league and the PA should investigate the practicality of adding European league champions into the mix in order to transform the Stanley Cup playoffs into the first true team sport World Championship. What would it mean for hockey to be able to crown a global champion?
It’s time the NHL and the NHLPA study the larger topic — Donald Fehr, by the way, was an important force in the creation of the World Baseball Classic — of expanding to Europe if not integrating its schedule with the top European leagues.
If the NHL can create additional revenue from the playoffs or through expansion to Europe, it can then go about the business of reducing the number of games on the schedule from 82 to, say, 74. It can redefine the calendar, with the season to open in mid-September and end by mid-March. At the same time, while addressing the length of the season, perhaps the league could do everyone a favor by eradicating the scourge of the three-point game.
The three-point game has detracted from the drama of a playoff race rather than enhancing it. It has reduced, rather than enhanced, urgency. It devalues victories and softens the effects of defeats, except for those that come in a shootout on the final day of the season. The losers’ point is an obstacle to teams coming from behind in the standings. It creates blocs of teams that move like glaciers.
You know this year’s East that appeared to stage a great race? Appearances were deceiving. For the fact is, that over the final 46 days of the season, beginning on Feb. 11, the same eight teams that made the playoffs held the top eight spots for all but two days, March 4 and 5, when the Thrashers nosed into eighth place ahead the Canadiens.
The season is too long. The race is an illusion. Hockey, as represented by the NHL, has become a special event sport. It’s on the league and its union partners to devise a plan to showcase the playoffs as the most special event of them all.
While Jaromir Jagr did not receive any offers from NHL teams before deciding this week to re-up in Omsk for one more year in the KHL, No. 68 had been informed by a third party of the Oilers’ interest in bringing him back to North America next season, a well-placed source told Slap Shots.
Jagr, who will turn 39 in February, could have been the ultimate third-line right wing and power-play specialist had he taken another crack at the NHL, but that’s only if the magnitude of him would have been able to accept such a support role and, equally as important, a supporting actor’s paycheck.
NHL general managers are under the impression next year’s cap will come in at approximately $58 million if, as expected, the NHLPA triggers the five-percent inflator. That means the summer cap will be approximately $63.8 million, thus leaving the Rangers around $17 million with which to sign Marc Staal and Dan Girardi and address the rest of the roster’s deficiencies.
Assume that the Blueshirts, who will be obliged to carry Wade Redden‘s $6.5 million cap hit until he can be waived off the NHL roster during training camp, will spend in the $1.75-2 million neighborhood on a backup for Henrik Lundqvist, with Martin Biron and Johan Hedberg believed at the top of GM Glen Sather’s wish list.
Jaroslav Halak is having the playoffs that were supposed to belong to Ryan Miller, isn’t he?
And by the way, how’s that Canada’s Goalie thing working out for Roberto Luongo?
This just in: this new NHL general manager of the year award that will be awarded on a vote of the GMs themselves? We hear that Sather and Brian Burke voted for Calgary’s Brian Sutter, thank you.
John Tortorella returned from the Rangers’ organizational meetings to undergo hip replacement surgery on Monday, an operation that necessitated a five-day stay in the hospital.
Slap Shots has been told there is no truth to the rumor that when the anesthesiologist asked the head coach if he could count backwards from 100, Tortorella mumbled, “Stupid question,” before nodding off.