Kidd’s Corner
2013 Stanley Cup Playoff First Round
April 30, 2013


Happy playoffs everyone! To think just a few months ago we were trying to decipher what Hockey Related Revenue was, and now here we are wondering who may raise Lord Stanley’s cup. There are some very happy fan bases looking forward to the playoffs for the first time in a while, and others trying to remember what it’s like to not be watching post-season hockey. The first round has some interesting matchups and here are my thoughts on each series.

If I were to tell you during the lockout that a quarter of the way into the season that the NHL’s most dominant player, and consensus Hart Memorial (MVP) favorite, was going to have a season ending injury, who would have crossed your mind? 99.9% of you would have said Sidney Crosby. However, Sid the Kid is healthy,playing well, and second in the league in points. As we all know, the unfortunate injury came to the reigning Norris trophy winner for the leagues best defenceman, 22 year old Ottawa Senator, Erik Karlsson.

Karlsson’s injury occurred at the end of the second period, oddly, against Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins. On a seemingly meaningless forecheck, a Penguin sloppily lost his footing, and then came down with all of his weight on the back heel of Karlsson. Who was this Penguin? He’s no stranger to controversial plays ending player’s seasons or even careers. The culprit was one the leagues most hated pests, Matt Cooke. The next morning Karlsson underwent successful surgery to repair a 70% cut of his Achilles tendon. Below is a video of the injury.

Erik Karlsson Injury

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This blow will hurt the NHL as Karlsson has been emerging not only as one of the leagues greatest talents, but also one of its greatest personalities. He has been a great advocate for the NHL as the league forges forward in this latest “post lockout era”. As for the Ottawa Senators, their playoff hopes are essentially over. Already dealing with the loss of their leading scorer Jason Spezza and young shutdown defenceman Jared Cowan, not to mention Milan Michalek’s constant injuries. They are essentially missing their top line.

Although in all of this, there could be a silver lining for the future of the league. Unfortunately sometimes it takes a significant injury to a star player in order to raise awareness about player safety. Concussions have been a problem for years in professional sports. Within the NHL, even the career ending concussions of once dominant star Eric Lindros weren’t enough to bring the issue to the forefront. But when Sidney Crosby, the face of the NHL, went down with a concussion and missed a significant amount of time, enough was enough. Rules, equipment, and protocols for diagnosing injuries have all changed. This wasn’t the first time an injury brought to light the need for a change in equipment or rules. Bryan Berard, first round pick, 1997 rookie of the year, and freshman All-Star took an unintentional high stick to his right eye from Marian Hossa. This changed the way many players and leagues thought about wearing visors or even full cages, as well as penalties for unintentional high sticks.

Richard Zednik of the Florida Panthers caught a stray skate from a teammate to the neck causing serious injury and almost cost him his life. Shortly after the injury, the Ontario Hockey League (major junior) made neck guards mandatory. Finally, Kevin Bieksa of the Vancouver Canucks has had is calf cut twice by skates, which led to him and some other players to wear Kevlar protective socks. He had a small chuckle when he showed up to practice the day after the Karlsson incident to find a pair of the socks were in every player’s stall. Perhaps after the NHL reviews this incident, they will make these socks mandatory for player’s safety. Although many players don’t like the Kevlar due to lack of comfort, and some players have been going barefoot in their skates since childhood, this small change could save them from a career ending injury.

Bauer Kevlar Socks



The cut Erik Karlsson received will keep him sidelined for up to 4 months plus physiotherapy. He in fact may never be the same. He may lose his speed and agility that sets him above other defencemen, or he could have a full recovery. Many analysts around the league have had mixed thoughts about the incident. Some saying it was just a terrible accident, and others saying Matt Cooke did it intentionally and shouldn’t be allowed to play in the league. After all, he has had some major suspensions in the past. Check to the head of Artem Anisimov, check to the head of Scott Walker, check from behind on Fedor Tyutin, elbow to the head of Ryan McDonough, not to mention he personally ended the career of Bruins forward Marc Savard. Some will argue Cooke didn’t “end” Savard’s career because of Savard’s attempted comeback; however, Savard was never the same as a player and more concussions came with ease after the dirty blind shot to the head he received at the hands of Cooke. Cooke eventually was given an ultimatum by the league to change his game or he was going to be kicked out of it - and for 2 years he has been without incident.

Matt Cooke hit on Marc Savard



My thoughts on the incident are this: Yes, it looks like it could have been an accident. An extremely sloppy forecheck, Cooke’s skate came up suspiciously high and “accidently” came down on Karlsson’s ankle with his full weight. But he didn’t try very hard to make sure he didn’t cut him. In fact, Cooke put his full weight on Karlsson’s heal. A player kicking another player in the NHL will result in a match penalty and is an automatic date with Brendan Shanahan of the NHL Player Safety Committee. Should this not be considered a kick even if it was unintentional? Compare this incident to unintentional high sticks. You can get 4 minute double minor if a high stick is draws blood. Even goalie interference penalties are given to a player if a team’s own defenceman pushes someone into the crease and he doesn’t “make a big enough effort to get out of the way”. So by this logic should a known offender like Cooke not be held accountable for ending the season of the leagues best defenceman and possibly best player? Many would argue that Matt Cooke is a changed man. He has openly said he feels horrible for Erik and the Senators organization. Although, he said the same thing about Marc Savard. The bottom line is, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Matt Cooke was the player involved. And what do I think about Matt Cooke’s incredible turn around the last 2 years? How he has changed his game, and hasn’t terribly injured someone in a long time? I say only one thing.

“The devils greatest trick was convincing the world that he didn’t exist” - Charles Baudelaire

 

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The first missile has been fired in what is certain to be a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) war between Gary Bettman, Commissioner of the NHL, and Donald Fehr, Executive Director of the NHLPA. Just 7 years after the black eye left by the lockout of 2004-2005 season has healed, negotiations are once again underway on a new deal, and things could get messy once again. For the first few days of meetings, players and executives spoke about a number of issues and the world was waiting for the first physical offer to be launched. The power of social media that has changed the way we receive our sports news, whether it be on draft day, free agency, trade deadline or even in the playoffs, once again showed its speed of disseminating information. On Friday, Renaud Lavoie of RDS (@RenLavoieRDS) tweeted that the NHL had sent out their initial offer. The offer was shocking and immediately sent negative waves through the sports world. I will break down just what each item in the proposal means, and what my thoughts are on what we will see.

Here is what the league proposed for changes

New 2013 Proposal	2005-2012 CBA Agreement
Players portion of revenues is 46%	Players portion of revenues is 57%
Players must play 10 seasons before earning Unrestricted Free Agency Status (UFA)	Players must play 7 seasons or reach the age of 27 to before earning Unrestricted Free Agency Status (UFA)
New contracts signed by players are limited to 5 years in length	No limit on contract length, although amendments to deter salary cap circumvention and over 35 rule
The elimination of Salary Arbitration	If a Restricted Free Agent (RFA) is not happy with money offered to them, they may file for 3rd party arbitrator to determine contract value
Entry level contracts for players coming into the NHL will be for a length of 5 years with a cap	Entry level contracts for players coming into the NHL will be for a length of 3 years with a cap

 
It was not a shock in the least that the NHL wants to lower the players’ portion of profit sharing from 57% to 46%. Revenue sharing has been a red button in both the NBA and NFL recent CBA discussions, both of which were able to fight off a lockout. Even though the NBA had to go to a shortened season they were still able to get the CBA off the ground. 50% seems to be the going rate and that is probably what the NHL is shooting for. However you need to come on strong when negotiating and you don’t want to concede everything up front.

One interesting note to think about is something that Larry Brooks of the New York Post (@NYP_Brooksie) blogged about. His source states that not only will their be a drop of players percentage proposed, but also how the profits are grouped into a shared profit or an owner profit. The new layout may mean that players take closer to a 22% drop in revenues. With the NHL posting a record $3.2 Bil in revenue in 2012, you would have to think that greedy players ballooning salaries are making teams less solvent. That must mean small market teams are getting bullied and can’t afford high-end free agents, right? Well the owners lost that argument when the Minnesota Wild reeled in Zach Parise and Ryan Suter to matching 13-year $98 Mil contracts. Oddly it was only April that Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold was complaining that his team was not making a profit and players’ high salaries are to blame. So it would seem that it’s not the players, but the owners themselves to blame for overpayment and inflated salaries, and in turn they expect to have the players pay for it out of their revenue sharing.

Meanwhile Commissioner Gary Bettman’s salary has doubled from $3.7 mil to $7.5 mil since the lockout. That salary would make him the 18^th highest paid player in the league by cap hit, coming in just $300K less than the ridiculous contracts just signed by Ryan Suter and Zach Parise.

The second change is that they want players to play in the league for 10 seasons before they can reach unrestricted free agent status. This would be at the very least 3 seasons longer than the current rules. Also there is no age limit, whereas currently if you are turning 27, regardless of the amount of the seasons you have played, you are eligible to be a UFA as soon as your contract expires. I understand that this is to try and save from huge contracts like those that were just signed by Suter and Parise. It’s not just this rule on its own that scares me, it’s this rule along with the other three rules that have been imposed. Together they create a very scary cocktail that implies that teams own players rather than have them under contract. Keep the 10 years in mind as we move forward.

New contracts signed have a maximum length of 5 years. It is also believed that the player must receive the same amount of salary in each of the years of the contract. On top of that there are no signing bonuses allowed. These rules on new contracts I am fine with to an extent. They are the result of teams doing whatever they can to circumvent the cap hit of players. Just about every big contract signed in the last 4 years has been front-loaded and it needs to stop. It got so bad that the New Jersey Devils were penalized a first round draft pick for their contract with Ilya Kovalchuck. This will create a slightly different NHL as we are going to see veterans move around more towards the end of their career, much like what we are seeing of Jaromir Jagr.

The elimination of salary arbitration is where I really start to worry. Currently when a player is a Restricted Free Agent (RFA), and they feel the offer from their team isn’t where it should be, an arbitrator will decide on what he should be paid. Shea Weber would be the highest profile arbitration case of the last few years. Without this arbitration we could see some battles between players and teams, however we may just see more offer sheets from opposing teams to acquire these RFA’s. Offer sheets can be a nasty affair like that of Dustin Penner from the Oilers a few years ago. However if they become common practice, it will be up to the team of the RFA to offer a just contract, and the offer sheets could in turn replace arbitration as the way salaries are policed. The problem is you rarely see offer sheets for anything past top 6 forwards or top 4 d-men, but again that as well would probably change.

Entry level contracts extending from 3 to 5 years is a bit absurd. Players would make at most $900K for the first 5 full seasons of their career. To put that into perspective, Sidney Crosby would have had four 100 point seasons (the other still scoring about 1.2 points per game), won an Art Ross trophy, Hart Memorial trophy, Lester B. Pearson trophy, Maurice “Rocket Richard trophy, Mark Messier Leadership trophy, a Stanley Cup, youngest captain in the NHL, youngest captain to win a Stanley Cup, and still make less than Mike Knuble. Not only is that a little bit absurd to think about, but with the growing strength of the KHL and the money they are throwing around, we don’t want to give young stars more motivation to play over seas. This rule would immediately deter the already rapidly diminishing Russian population from planning on joining the NHL. I would be surprised if down the road we would see top level North American talent giving a good hard look as well.

Lets put this all together, a player is drafted by a team. He is a great talent and signs a 5 year deal. He sits in that locker room full of 30 year olds driving Maserati’s and aren’t half the player he is. Finally after 5 years he has had a decent career but being on a small market defensive minded team he hasn’t put up the numbers he could on a better team. Also they are sitting on too many pre-2013 contracts that have them close to cap. He still has 5 more years before he can be a UFA, and with no arbitration, his team could low ball him with a 5 year contract. As an RFA he isn’t allowed to talk to other teams, and it is up to them to solicit an offer sheet to acquire him, or for someone to trade for his rights. The teams essentially own these players and have too much power over them. If he holds out he is deemed to be a bad apple or poison in the room, and all of a sudden he isn’t wanted around the league.

On the flip side, if superstars like Sidney Crosby dominate the league for 5 years, they are going to need to be paid, and paid big. No more of this $7.5mil cap hit followed by his new $8.3mil cap hit. After 5 years of $900k, Crosby would have wanted about $10-14mil, especially since it’s only for 5 years, and the state of concussions in the NHL. So in the end, we could be looking at a new, yet tell tale problem. Superstars getting paid big bucks, and everyone else being left behind.

Of course I don’t think that all of these rule changes are going to happen. The NHL will have to slide on a few of them. It is just a starting point, and this thing is far from over. Damien Cox of the Toronto Star (@DamoSpin), who I hate with a passion, tweeted “Folks, as I’ve said for some time now, pay absolutely no attention to the NHL-NHLPA stuff until November 1^st.” Although he is a self-promoting dick who reports only on the negativity that surrounds hockey and would rather see a lockout than a season so he could write about it, he does have a point. Both sides will go back and forth until a reasonable agreement can be reached. Sometimes it’s just too hard to ignore news, now that we get it faster than ever before. Then again the NHL did stick to their guns in 04-05. If the NHL doesn’t budge, we could see a very long lockout. And now that the NHL has competition overseas with the KHL, a lockout could be detrimental to its prolonged success of being the worlds top hockey league.

Questions, comments, concerns on my views, UFA’s, RFA’s, Offer Sheets, Contracts, Arbitration, KHL, ANYTHING? Feel free to join NotInHallOfFame.com and post on the message board or find us on Twitter

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Leading into this past weekends NHL Entry Draft there had been more chatter and rumors surrounding the league than ever before. Whispers of Rick Nash, Bobby Ryan, Ryan Suter, and Shea Weber could be heard in every corner of the hockey world. Two other players that had been linked to one another since last seasons trade deadline, however were moved before any of the above. On Saturday, Brian Burke and Paul Holmgren made a rare star player for star player swap when the Maple Leafs exchanged their young blue liner, Luke Schenn, - once said to be the future Leafs captain - for the Flyers former second overall draft pick, James van Riemsdyk.

Both teams went into the draft with their respective teams looking for something. The Leafs were seeking a top line center (among other things) and the Flyers a top 4 defenseman. Oddly enough, with the 5th overall pick, the Maple Leafs selected puck-moving defenseman in Morgan Rielly. In Turn, with the 20th overall pick, the Flyers selected gritty two-way center Scott Laughton. Obviously after the first round, both teams still needed to address their gaping needs.

Enter the trade. Schenn for JVR.

James van Riemsdyk, although not a Center, is still an incredible addition to the Leafs’ lineup. Although JVR was one of the reasons the Flyers felt comfortable dealing franchise centerpieces Mike Richards and Jeff Carter just one year prior, the 23 year old, 6’3” 190 lbs winger has been a bit of a disappointment in Philly.  High hopes of a big breakout season last year were hampered by a list of injuries including hip, foot, and head. When on top of his game, van Riemsdyk can control the ice, creating space with his size, setting up plays with his great vision, and finishing big goals from in close or from a distance.

In a Monday interview with Cybulski and Company on TSN 1050 Toronto, JVR said that there is a chance he will be tried out at center, and perhaps play in between Phil Kessel and Joffrey Lupul on the Leafs top unit. He would add a great combination of speed, size, and strength to the line and would help get Kessel some more space. If he can make the jump to the middle of the ice, this could prove to be one of, if not the, best line in hockey. Lupul and Kessel had fantastic seasons with virtually no center in Tyler Bozak.

Luke Schenn comes to Philadelphia in what he calls almost a dream come true as he is united with his younger brother Brayden (acquired by the Flyers in the MikeRichards trade a year ago). Although Luke Schenn won’t fill the hole left behind by future hall of famer Chris Pronger, he does bring some of the same qualities to the Flyers as the former Captain. The 22 year old only finished -6 on a team that let in a ton of goals. But what the Flyers love most is the fact that he is 6’2”, 230 lbs. and is a much needed right-handed shot. And that other stat, he led all defensemen in hits and was 7th overall among players with 270. His cap hit comes in less than that of JVR and will be a perfect fit for the young Flyers locker room.

Many people are trying to figure out who the winners and losers are in the deal.  There are many ways to judge a trade. Players output, fit on a roster, cap hit, contract length, age, return on investment. In my eyes these two players are almost mirror images of one another in many ways. No matter what way you bend or shake this trade, it looks like both teams win. They both get a young talented player, drafted high, who has already proven they can play in a big market. Neither is afraid of the spotlight, as they both have been considered the future and centerpiece of their former franchise. Also both of these players fell short of the incredibly high expectations for such young players and have been referred to as disappointments, and maybe even busts. But I would disagree.

My final analysis is that both players were in need of a change. It was no secret that JVR was on the way out. The fans were getting tired of waiting for him, but more importantly so was GM Paul Holmgren. He wasn’t fitting into the plans of the Flyers anymore because when he was out with injury Brayden Schenn and Sean Couturier took the reigns and won over the staff and the fans. Now as a Flyers fan, I hate to see JVR go. He is going to be an elite forward, maybe as early as next year. His offensive prowess and size is a perfect fit in Toronto and the crowd will love him. He could be the forward that brings them to the next level.

Luke on the other hand fell victim to being thrown into the league far too young. The expectations in the Toronto media were far too high for any 18 year old and they were impossible to live up to. They turned on him and scrutiny in the media lead him over think plays, creating even more mistakes. Rifts in the dressing room didn’t help matters - rumor has it that team captain, Dion Phaneuf, and Schenn don’t see eye to eye, and are not on speaking terms. That being said I have always been a fan of both Schenn brothers. Luke’s size and aggression will be fantastic in Philly and will get the crowd on their feet every night. Playing with his younger brother will only help elevate his game. Leafs’ former coach Ron Wilson (American) once said he was pulling for Canada in the WJHC, because if younger brother Brayden lost, Luke would be depressed for weeks. No better place to unite the Schenns than in the City of Brotherly Love - Philadelphia.