Neutral-Zone Crap: Stamkos or Tavares? Why not both?
Both stars should have their tickets booked to Beijing...plus, the new (old) dynamic in Vancouver, the NHL's blind faith in Arizona and 'Bobby Margarita'
With the Tampa Bay Lightning playing the Toronto Maple Leafs Thursday night, much of the conversation centered around which player should be on Canada’s final roster for the Olympics, Steve Stamkos of the Lightning or John Tavares of the Maple Leafs.
Not sure why it even has to be a debate. Both of them have proven through the first quarter of the season they deserve the chance to wear Canada’s colors in Beijing. And really, it shouldn’t even be close. With 13 goals and 32 points – thanks in part to a four-point performance Thursday night – Stamkos is second among Canadian NHL scorers who are available to the Olympic team. (Nazem Kadri, who is having a career season in Colorado, is not because he was not named to Canada’s preliminary 55-player roster.) With 12 goals and 29 points, Tavares is fourth among eligible Canadian players, behind Connor McDavid, Stamkos and Jonathan Huberdeau.
Last time we checked, the whole purpose of going to the Olympics is to win the tournament. And a big part of winning the tournament lies in the ability to outscore your opponent. With that in mind, would you rather have Ryan O’Reilly (and his four goals) or Mark Scheifele (and his six goals) or Mark Stone (and his three goals) than either Stamkos or Tavares? Some players in the NHL have played themselves onto the team, while others have played themselves off. Stamkos, and to a lesser extent Tavares, have done that. And in case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t a ton of Canadian players who have gotten off to great offensive starts. Sidney Crosby (four goals) and Nathan MacKinnon (two) have been hobbled by injuries, as have Brayden Point and Mitch Marner.
And don’t forget, Team Canada coach Jon Cooper had a front-row seat in 2014 when then-Lightning GM Steve Yzerman left Martin St-Louis off his initial roster for Sochi. Even though St-Louis was on the final roster – ironically, as an injury replacement for Stamkos – it created such a rift between St-Louis and Yzerman that St-Louis asked for, and received, a trade to the New York Rangers. Surely Cooper would not repeat that mistake, particularly when Stamkos’ play has merited the selection. Offensively, he has carried a Lightning team ravaged by injuries.
“I’m not going to lie and say I haven’t thought about it,” Stamkos said. “It’s certainly one of the greatest honors you can have, representing your country, so I’m not going to say I’m not thinking about it. But first and foremost, I have to go out and play. You kind of let your play do the talking for you. Let’s just go out there and play and at the end of the day, I wanted to put myself back in that conversation by being healthy and playing well.”
Mission accomplished.
PUTTING THE ‘SENIOR’ IN SENIOR MANAGEMENT
Not sure there has ever been a GM-coach tandem where both men were senior citizens, but the Vancouver Canucks made a clear statement when they added Jim Rutherford as the president of hockey operations and so-called interim GM of their team. They did not bring in the league’s best turnaround artist to coach (in Bruce Boudreau) and one of the only two GMs in NHL history to win Stanley Cups with two different teams (in Rutherford) to embark on a rebuilding project.
Nobody knows how this is going to work out, and it has the potential to end badly. But for the first time in years, the Canucks finally have an identity. They will no longer have one foot in rebuilding and another in trying to be a playoff contender, something that almost always leads to perpetual mediocrity. Rutherford will be aggressive and active. After all, he’s gone more than 10 months without making a trade. And do not be the least bit surprised if the Canucks’ search for a permanent GM goes on for a long time, perhaps even indefinitely. Rutherford took the job in Vancouver because he has the opportunity to be in charge, and the betting here is that he’ll really, really like running a hockey operations department again.
There is no doubt this is Rutherford’s team and roster and that he has carte blanche to make the changes he sees fit. When he left the Penguins in January, it was for personal reasons, but one of those reasons was that he felt ownership was starting to undermine his autonomy, and he took it personally. And with the green light to go full speed on building a legitimate playoff contender, it will be intriguing to see where Rutherford takes this roster. He wouldn’t have taken the job if he didn’t think the Canucks were close to being a contender. It might be a stretch to suggest that a team that currently occupies 25th place will turn things around in time to salvage this season, but whatever happens, the Canucks will be a very fascinating team to watch.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE…EXCEPT A TRAIN WRECK
“There’s no issue with the Arizona Coyotes.” Yup, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman actually used those words when speaking to reporters after the league’s board of governors meeting Friday.
It’s difficult to understand why the NHL continues to trudge through the desert, fighting for a team that continues to do nothing but drain its finances and give it migraines. We’re actually at the point where we don’t even know whether Phoenix is a viable hockey market anymore because the Coyotes have been so badly operated for so long that they’ve never given themselves a chance. They have essentially given their fans no reason to cheer for them. The way this team has been run, it could be located in downtown Toronto and it still might struggle.
But the NHL continues to fight on. Fair enough. With that in mind, you can understand why Bettman might want to tamp down the problems the Coyotes are having and provide some reassurance that things will work out. But to say “there’s no issue” is disingenuous at best and an outright falsehood at worst. The team has not paid its taxes and arena rent for 17 months, something the team has explained by using the dog-ate-my-homework excuse, one that almost certainly wouldn’t fly if the taxpayers of Glendale used it. The Coyotes have been propped up by the company that controls the arena, have been a regular at the trough of NHL revenue sharing, have had a conga line of owners and hockey personnel, renounced a draft pick and were caught up in a recruiting scandal. Oh yes, and as of this moment, they have no idea where they’re going to play next season.
Bettman went on to claim that the Coyotes are victims of a nefarious plot devised by their landlords. “It’s clear the City of Glendale has either an agenda or an edge in the way they’re dealing with the Coyotes,” Bettman said. An agenda, you say? What agenda would that be? The one where it gets the money it’s owed so it can fund a police force and local infrastructure? That agenda? And as far as having an edge, you’d probably have one too if your tenants were as delinquent in paying their rent as this guy:
So to say “there’s no issue” with the Coyotes is right up there with claiming there’s no connection between head injuries and long-term cognitive issues and that NHL officials are the best in the world. There are a lot of issues with the Coyotes, chief among them being that the league continues to enable them.
FUN WITH NUMBERS - SITUATIONAL SCORING
Every other week, we’ll take a look at a stat unique to Hockey Unfiltered. And it has to do with situational scoring. In hockey, there’s an old saying that suggests they don’t ask how, they ask how many. Well around here, we don’t simply ask how many. We want to know how many mattered.
So here’s the bi-weekly update to Hockey Unfiltered’s Situational Scoring Race. And, as the name suggests, it measures situational scoring, specifically which players produce offense at the most crucial times in the game.
As always, there are a couple of things to note, the most important being that goals are weighted more heavily than assists, with goals worth one point and assists worth half a point. In this system, goals can be worth more than one point and assists worth more than a half a point. For example, the first goal of a game is automatically worth two points, one for being the first goal of the game and one for putting that player’s team ahead in a game. An overtime goal is worth three, one for putting the team ahead, one for being the game-winner and one for the overtime goal. If that is the only goal in a 1-0 game, it’s worth four.
It can all be a little confusing, so here’s a glossary:
FIRST: When a player scores the first goal of the game.
AHEAD: Any goal that puts a team ahead at any point in the game, including overtime.
TIED: Any goal that pulls a team into a tie at any point in the game.
COMEBACK: A goal that is scored when a team is trailing by two goals or more and is part of a series of goals that eventually ties the game, regardless of the ultimate outcome of the game.
WINNER: A game-winning goal, but not by the NHL’s definition. The game-winner in this category is the goal that puts a team ahead in a game to stay. So in other words, you could have a 7-6 game and maybe the first goal of the game was the game-winner.
OT: Overtime goal.
SO: Only shootout game-winning goals are counted in this category.
NHL: Where the player stands in the actual NHL scoring race.
Apologies for the way it looks, but this is a one-man operation here and that one man happens to be a luddite.
FROM NHL INSIDER TO BOOZE MOGUL
So, I’ve known Bob McKenzie for more than three decades. He first hired me as a copy editor at The Hockey News in the fall of 1988 when he was the editor-in-chief. Toward the end of my first week, I ventured into his office to ask him something, at which point McKenzie lifted his head, growled and said, “What the f—k do you want?” A few weeks later, I edited a story that McKenzie happened to look over after I left the office. The piece was so riddled with solid-cursor marks to indicate my errors that I was almost blinded when I turned my monitor on the next morning.
Times have certainly changed. McKenzie isn’t nearly as gruff anymore, having achieved a Zen-like balance that is the envy of his peers. And back in those days, he was strictly a ‘rum and Diet Coke with lots of ice and a twisted lime’ kind of guy. But that has been replaced by a love for margaritas, which has led to him launching a product called ‘Bobby Margarita’ along with the Ace Beverage Group. The non-carbonated, ready-to-drink beverage was introduced in Alberta this week and should be on shelves by early next week. It is due to roll out in January in Nova Scotia and sometime in April 2022 in Ontario and Saskatchewan.
The whole thing started as a lark. Bored one night between games at TSN, McKenzie went to a Best Buy and bought a blender to make margaritas. He adopted the moniker ‘Bobby Margarita’ not long after when he used it to sign off for the summer after TSN’s coverage of free agent frenzy ended. “On July 2, I would usually break out the ‘Bobby Margarita’ stuff just for a laugh,” McKenzie said. “It kind of took on a life of its own over time.”
So with the help of his enterprising son and Rogers Sportsnet hockey reporter Shawn, McKenzie has launched his own recipe. It comes in a 473-milliliter can and McKenzie hopes to capitalize on the growing ready-to-drink alcoholic beverage market, both with hockey fans and those who have no idea who he is. Since it comes in a can, you’ll have to apply the salt to the rim of your glass yourself, which is entirely fitting for a guy whose saltiness level has diminished to granular status.
DRIBS AND DRABS
Bettman announced that NHL revenues should be up over $5 billion this season, which puts it ahead of the pre-pandemic levels, and that the salary cap should rise to about $82.5 million next season…Cale Makar Watch: The Avalanche defenseman is currently on a 45-goal pace…Watched 14-year-old Michael Misa play again last week. One of two players who has applied for exceptional status with Hockey Canada to play in the Ontario Hockey League next season, Misa had a goal and two assists in a 5-0 win for the Mississauga Senators Under-16 team over the Toronto Red Wings and was dominant. The bottom four teams in the OHL this season will be involved in a lottery to see who gets the first pick and it should be intriguing to see how this plays out. A man-child by the name of Ryan Roobroeck from the London Jr. Knights has also applied for exceptional status, something Hockey Canada has never given to two players in the same year. If neither of them gets it, chances are Toronto Marlies defenseman Sam Dickinson, or Malcolm Spence, Misa’s teammate with the Senators, will likely go first overall…Over in the Western Hockey League, Tij Iginla, whose father, Jarome, was recently inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, was drafted ninth overall by the Seattle Thunderbirds in its Prospects Draft. So the son already has one over on his dad because Jarome was never drafted by a WHL team…The Ottawa Senators have placed defenseman Michael Del Zotto on waivers. For the life of me, I can’t understand why the Senators signed a 31-year-old defenseman with few options to a guaranteed two-year deal with a $2 million cap hit in the first place…My good pal and Toronto Sun hockey reporter Terry Koshan posed the following question to me the other day: “Where is the bigger mess, Philadelphia or Montreal?” Anyone, anyone? Bueller?