A Yankee Whistles in Dixie

Marc Savard and Hits to the Head

2010-03-08T10:50:00.000-08:00

Just as it took a season-ending hit to the knees of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in the 2008 season opener to alter NFL rules regarding low hits, could it be the injury of another Boston-area pro athlete that causes the NHL to enact rule changes regarding hits to the head?

On Sunday, Bruins center Marc Savard was on the receiving end of either an elbow or a shoulder, depending on whom you believe, from Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke after Savard had released a shot, leaving himself in a vulnerable position in which he could not protect himself. Savard, who was removed from the Mellon Arena ice on a stretcher, said today that he blacked out for 15 to 20 seconds and the Bruins have diagnosed him with a concussion.

As it happens, NHL general managers are meeting in Florida and the subject of whether or how to change rules regarding hits to the head already sat on the agenda. At a previous meeting in November in Toronto, the general managers were unable to agree on a solution.

Could the timing of Cooke's unpenalized result in a rule change? Eventually, I believe the general managers will begin to look at Savard's injury in the same way that the NFL perceived rule changes it has made to protect quarterbacks and in regards to hits to the head. NHL GMs could debate the minutiae forever -- is the player on the receiving end of the hit at fault for having his head down, etc. -- but in the end I believe it will come down to a business decision.

NHL general managers are, after all, businessmen -- ask any player who has ever negotiated a contract with one -- and the newer strain in vogue in the NHL in terms of hiring GMs is that they tend to be younger or more educated or both. Boston's Peter Chiarelli attended Harvard and worked as an agent. Toronto's Brian Burke and Washington's George McPhee both have law degrees. Pittsburgh's Ray Shero, Minnesota's Chuck Fletcher and Chicago's Stan Bowman, while their fathers were accomplished, if not legendary, old-school hockey figures, also hail from a younger generation who did not come up through the former player route in the way that former old-school Flyers general manager Bob Clarke and ex-Bruins man Harry Sinden did. Dallas' Joe Nieuwendyk played at Cornell. I could go on and on.

Eventually, I believe, the general managers will see that hits to the head are bad for business just as the NFL saw that protecting the knees (and heads, under prior rule changes) of one of its marquee stars like Brady was integral to its business. How many fans wanted to tune in to watch Matt Cassel instead of Brady on a Patriots' schedule that had many nationally televised games on it?

Savard might not be Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin, but he's one of the game's elite passers. In the four seasons prior to this one, only San Jose's Joe Thornton totaled more assists than Savard's 269. And his team is in a dogfight to make the playoffs. With 18 games left, Boston sits uncomfortably in the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, two points up on the New York Rangers.

The Bruins also happen to be the NHL's lowest-scoring team at 2.31 points per game and Savard is their top offensive player. He is tied for third on the team in points with 33 because he has missed 23 games with two other injuries, a sprained knee and a broken foot. A two-time All-Star who has led Boston in points for the three prior seasons, he has averaged 0.80 points per game this season. That's more than Bruins' points leader Patrice Bergeron's 0.68 per game.

So if you were Chiarelli and Bruins coach Claude Julien -- who called Savard "our best player" after Sunday's game in calling for Cooke to be suspended -- how would you like your post-trade deadline chances to make the playoffs now that Chiarelli decided that the price to pay to add scoring was more than he wanted to pay? If the Bruins don't make it in large part because they can't score, what would owner Jeremy Jacobs think of the niceties of the hits-to-the-head debate as he's missing out on playoff revenue and his team once again yields the local media spotlight to the Celtics' postseason and Red Sox's regular season?

Just as the NHL saw the careers of premier stars like Eric Lindros and Pat LaFontaine diminished because of concussions, it does not need to lose anymore -- or any player for that matter. In the end, the issue involves player safety, which should create an outcry from the NHLPA.

At its essence, a body check's reason for being is to separate the man from the puck. That can still be accomplished without concussive hits to the head.

Who Should Start In Net This Weekend?

2010-03-05T09:29:00.000-08:00

Normally, I tend to post when I feel like I have big, meaty issues to weigh in on, but since the Thrashers are hot and interest seems to be on the increase, I think it would be interesting to discuss which goalies the Thrashers should start in their two games this weekend.

They play back-to-back games less than 24 hours apart. That makes it a virtual certainty (especially with so many games remaining in so few days) that Ondrej Pavelec will earn one of the starts. On paper, the more critical game is against Tampa Bay, which trails the Thrashers by three points for the Eastern Conference's final playoff berth and has played one more game. It's one of those "four-point games," in the hockey lingo -- a regulation win by Tampa pulls them within a point of the Thrashers and a regulation win by the Thrashers puts them five points ahead of the Lightning. Five points at this juncture of the season, with what would be 18 games left and three teams over which to climb, is an awfully uphill struggle.

It can be done, but only by going on a hot streak, which the Lightning definitely are not on. In a 2-2 game with Philadelphia in their first game back after the Olympic break, the Lightning surrendered five goals in the third period and got drilled 7-2. Then they lost in regulation 5-4 to Washington last night. (That's 12 goals in two games for those of you counting at home as they prepare for a Thrashers team that has scored 10 in its first two since the break.) Coach Rick Tocchet's bunch has lost five in a row and are 4-6 in their last 10.

Meanwhile, the red hot Carolina Hurricanes, owners of the NHL's third worst record, visit town on Sunday having won seven in a row. Remember: This team played in the Eastern Conference finals last season and suffered through an injury to their starting goalie and top player, Eric Staal, earlier in the season. Now both are back.

The Canes have outscored their opponents 29-12 in those last seven games and haven't scored fewer than three goals in a game and haven't allowed more than three -- which they've done only twice -- in that span. Also, four of those victories have come against the East's third- (Ottawa), fourth- (New Jersey) and fifth-places teams (Buffalo, twice).

So what do you do? Play your de facto No. 1 goalie, Johan Hedberg, who has started nine of the last 12 games, at home on Sunday or in what is, on paper, the more meaningful game -- even if it is on the road? So John Anderson's strategy is either to go for the easier points (Carolina, on paper) or for the more meaningful game.

But if Tampa Bay continues to implode, those strategies could be one in the same: He could start Hedberg tomorrow in Tampa in the hopes of dealing a potential knock-out blow to the Lightning while possibly picking up the easier points -- even though it's on the road and the Lightning have outplayed the Thrashers in the season series so far (The Thrashers are 1-2-2). Then Anderson would be playing with house money when he comes home on Sunday. A regulation loss to Tampa, on the other hand, could make the strategy potentially more high-risk.

That, as they say, is why Anderson gets paid the big bucks.

Looks like Anderson rendered this post moot by saying that Hedberg would start on Saturday and possibly again on Sunday. Regardless, these are the thoughts he must have weighed when making his decision.

* * *

Oh, one other thing: Kari Lehtonen got his first playing time last night with the Dallas Stars, allowing two goals on 16 shots. Apparently, he'll make his first start on Saturday against Pittsburgh. Sort of a sink-or-swim moment, I suppose.

The Thrashers and the Ewing (Kovalchuk?) Theory

2010-03-04T05:53:00.000-08:00

I never read Bill Simmons's column on ESPN.com, if at all, until I met my friend Joe Rauch back in 2007. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that Joe is a big NBA fan and I've always followed hockey a lot more than I do the NBA, which seems to be Simmons' favorite league to write about. (It also might have something to do with my aversion to Simmons' initial "Boston Sports Guy" persona, seeing as I was a fan of New York sports teams -- owing to my birth in that city and my father's rooting for New York teams -- even while growing up in Massachusetts.)

So it was Joe who first mentioned to me Simmons' "Ewing Theory."Actually, Simmons credits his friend Dave Cirilli with inventing the theory, but I'd say that Simmons is probably a little bit better known. Simply elucidated, the theory states that college and pro superstar Patrick Ewing's teams always played better without him -- a truism for almost all superstar-dominated teams.

I started thinking about how this might apply to the Atlanta Thrashers after they defeated the Florida Panthers 4-2 on Tuesday to go 3-1-2 since trading Ilya Kovalchuk. Could it be that the Thrashers will be better without the best player in franchise history than they were with him?

Remember, it's just a theory, not a law. But the more I started looking at Simmons and Cirilli's theory, the more I found how well it suited the Thrashers. Two crucial elements must be in order for the theory to apply. They are (and I'm excerpting now):

A star athlete receives an inordinate amount of media attention and fan interest, and yet his teams never win anything substantial with him (other than maybe some early-round playoff series).
That same athlete leaves his team (either by injury, trade, graduation, free agency or retirement) -- and both the media and fans immediately write off the team for the following season.

This is the 2009-10 Thrashers in a nutshell. The way Simmons describes the theory, the season doesn't necessarily have to be the following one. His prime example is that of the 1999 NBA Eastern Conference finals when Ewing went down with a torn Achilles tendon in Game 2. The Knicks won three of the next four games to win the series against the Indiana Pacers after the Knicks had been written off. Another example includes the Tennessee Volunteers when they won the 1998 NCAA football title the year after Peyton Manning graduated without ever having done so.

The central point of the Ewing Theory is that when teams have a superstar, the rest of the players tend to stand by passively as bystanders waiting for said superstar to do his thing. I first started thinking about this in relation to the Thrashers when I wrote a story for NHL.com last week about the state of the team coming out of the Olympic break.

Forward Jim Slater, who played on the same teams as Kovalchuk for five seasons, said of Kovalchuk, "Maybe we relied too much" on him. Goalie Johan Hedberg agreed. Coach John Anderson basically did also.

In some ways, it's a case study on different methods of how to build a team. Shortly after the Thrashers traded Dany Heatley in 2005, a player said to me, "Now they just need to get rid of the other guy" -- the other guy, obviously, being Kovalchuk. A philosophical debate ensued about whether it's easier to win with a team built around superstars or one built, in this player's words, with a team of all $2 million players, a salary about 33 percent above the NHL average at the time.

At times when I have searched my mind to find successful examples of the mythical team of $2 million players, I end up settling on the 2006 Carolina Hurricanes who won the Stanley Cup -- lots of above average players who meshed together flawlessly. Of course, the team of $2 million players is an impossibility -- an ideal, really -- that would necessarily have to have some exceptions to exist in the real world. For the '06 'Canes, Eric Staal, one of the NHL's top forwards, and Rod Brind'Amour would represent two of those exceptions. But a look back at the team's defense would hardly reveal greatness. Bret Hedican was the 'Canes' No. 1 that year. Aging Glen Wesley, Frantisek Kaberle, Anton Babchuk, Niclas Wallin, Aaron Ward hardly represent as a collective anything near the backline of the great Montreal Canadiens of the 1970s.

That Carolina team rolled four lines and got contributions from everywhere. In their very brief run of success thus far without Kovalchuk, the Thrashers are doing the same. Defensemen like Pavel Kubina are scoring. Two forward lines are scoring (Evander Kane-Slater-Colby Armstrong, which was why Armstrong was not traded at the deadline; and Bryan Little-Nik Antropov-Niclas Bergfors), as is the power play.

If the Thrashers can maintain this level of play, they will have a better than average chance to make the playoffs. They hold three games in hand on seventh-place Montreal, which they trail by two points; and stand one point behind the New York Rangers, who are tied for eighth with Boston, while holding two games in hand on the Rangers.

The Thrashers also have a favorable schedule with 13 of their remaining 21 games at home. They are getting solid goaltending from Hedberg and, for the first time in their history, the strength of the team is its defense.

If they make it, another chapter could be written in the history of the Ewing Theory. Maybe hockey fans will come to call it "The Kovalchuk Theory."

Idea of Thrashers' Move Is Laughable

2010-02-18T06:52:00.000-08:00

Once again a vaporous rumor has emerged from Canada that the Atlanta Thrashers are imminently about to move. Ten months ago the supposed destination was Hamilton. This time ot is the frosted plains of Manitoba and poor jilted Winnipeg.

Personally, I thought the Winnipeg Free Press did a pretty good job of how it handled this story. It addressed every single wild rumor, practically down to, "My dog was at the park and heard that..." and then basically shot them all down. Like so many of these reports, this one was unsourced, leaving one to wonder where these come from all of the time. Is it as simple these days as starting a campaign on Twitter? That was about as strong of a source as the Free Press cited.

Nonetheless, the story seemed to whip up the locals into a frenzy, including the city's Mayor Sam Katz who told the paper, "I can tell you when you hear from as many sources I've heard from, there's a good possibility." So the mayor's source, apparently, also was the grapevine. Just a more high-falutin' grapevine. What a surprise -- a politician telling his constituents something that they wanted to hear. Never mind that a spokesman for the group reputed to be the buyer of the Thrashers stated that "it's completely false."

As Winnipeg has a successful AHL franchise, one rumor involved that franchise moving with a junior hockey franchise from Saskatoon taking its place. Both the junior team's owner and the Western Hockey League's commissioner shot that one down.

So, basically, we have a baseless rumor. These ceaseless rumors appear to be fed by a variety of factors, namely Canadians' insatiable appetite for a seventh franchise. With good reason, Canadian hockey fans are upset by the migration of franchises in Quebec and Winnipeg to the United States. One of those, the Colorado Avalanche, became a model for economic and on-ice success while the other became the poster child for quite the opposite. It would be as if the St. Louis Cardinals and the Baltimore Orioles moved to Canada and one played in front of sold-out crowds and won multiple championships while the other played in front of half-empty stadiums in a city that showed no interest -- selling hamburgers to vegetarians as, Sports Illustrated's Michael Farber has put it.

The second factor for these rumors is that many question the economic viability of franchises in nontraditional U.S. markets that have had difficulty in winning and, as a result, drawing crowds. (Ownership problems in Nashville, Tampa Bay and Phoenix have fueled this way of thinking.)

Let me state why Atlanta -- even with an ownership group that has been mired in litigation for eyars -- is different and why, in my opinion, really, I see it as a set of facts, as to why the Thrashers are going nowhere.

Fact No. 1

This under-reported fact basically makes it impossible for the Thrashers to move: On May 10 of last year Thrashers general manager Don Waddell, seemingly out of a desire to put this to rest this issue forever, shed some light on a legal agreement that the NHL and the Atlanta Spirit ownership had previously not publicized. Waddell told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (I cannot link to some of these stories because the AJC's archives require a paid subscription) that naming rights to Philips Arena require the presence of both an NHL and NBA franchise. That agreement will pay $9.3 million for nine more years. So there's a paltry 84 million reasons why the Thrashers won't move.

Secondly, Waddell also stated that when the team's current owners, known as Atlanta Spirit, agreed to buy the team in 2003 they signed a binding commitment with the NHL to keep the team in Atlanta for a certain number of years. He would not reveal how many but said the number was "multiple." Of course, I'm sure the lack of specificity could fuel the conspiracy theories, but Waddell, so tired of addressing the issue, said, "I've been through this so many times, but the truth is there are too many obstacles."

Fact No. 2

The NHL wants Atlanta. For those from the Great White North who have never been to Atlanta, the city is far different from Raleigh and Nashville and Ft. Lauderdale and even, to some degree, Phoenix and Tampa.

Atlanta is the eighth largest television market in the United States. Atlanta has 2.3875 million television households, as defined by Nielsen. And the market continues to grow. In 2009, it trailed Boston, the seventh largest television market, by 40,000 TV households. In 2010, it trailed The Hub of Hockey, as Kevin Dupont has christened it, by 33,000. So, it's foreseeable that Atlanta will overtake Boston in a few years. With a population in the metropolitan area of between 4.5 and 5 million (depending how far out of the urban core you go), Atlanta would be the second largest city in Canada.

As a result, the NHL wants and needs a market of this size. Look at the lengths to which the NHL has gone to keep teams in the 12th (Phoenix), 23rd (Pittsburgh) and 26th (Nashville) largest markets. What comes with a market of Atlanta's size are corporations that have enormous amounts of sponsorship dollars to spend. Thirteen Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Georgia -- most of them in Atlanta with a few others within 100 miles -- including Home Depot (revenues of $71 billion in 2008), Coca-Cola ($31.9 billion) Delta Air Lines ($22.7 billion), UPS ($51.5 billion) and SunTrust Banks ($12.8 billion). Last June, another Fortune 500, NCR, announced it was moving its headquarters to suburban Atlanta. In late 2007, Invesco announced it was moving its corporate headquarters from London to Atlanta.

This is the type of place the NHL knows it has to be. Here's how NHL commissioner Gary Bettman put it to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jeff Schultz earlier this month:

“We think it’s very important [for the league] and we believe that whatever issues the franchise has, they can be overcome, and ultimately the franchise can be successful. We have a strong track record of addressing franchise problems and not abandoning cities. Look at Phoenix. I don’t think you need to go much farther down the road than that. But look at Buffalo, Ottawa, Pittsburgh. All three have had problems at some point, but they’ve all been successful.

“When the ownership situation is resolved, we believe the franchise will be able to move forward. We’re committed to the market. Our track record indicates we do everything we can do to avoid relocation.”

Fact No. 3

The NHLPA wants to be in Atlanta. Shortly before the NHL All-Star Game came to Atlanta two years ago, I interviewed then-NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly and we discussed his views on the viability of nontraditional markets. Remember, the NHL salary cap is a function of all 30 teams' revenues, so among the chief jobs of the PA's executive director is to help grow revenues so player salaries will grow commensurately.

Here is the quote in that story from Kelly, a Bostonian, that I always hark back to: "It's obviously vitally important that there be a franchise in Atlanta. I do [believe] more so than others because it's obviously one of the major boom markets of the United States. It's one of the major TV markets.

"Do we need two franchises in Florida? Maybe not ... Do we need another franchise somewhere in Las Vegas? Maybe again, that's a crapshoot as to how a franchise would do in Las Vegas."

Now, that was two years ago and Kelly is no longer running the union. Will his successor espouse the same view? It's hard to say. But the logic -- the population and the dollars -- is hard to dispute.

I'm sure that misinformed Canadian publications will continue to throw out the Thrashers' name when another Canadian city or prospective ownership group announces that it wants to -- surprise, surprise -- return an NHL team to its rightful place. And it's true that the Thrashers' attendance has been down -- Waddell admitted as much when he traded Ilya Kovalchuk recently -- but that is a function of winning as much as anything.

The Thrashers have shown an ability to draw when they provides excitement: They did in their inaugural season and they did in 2005-06 when they narrowly missed the playoffs, with Philips operating at 84 percent of capacity, and again in 2006-07, its lone playoff appearance (88 percent capacity).

As ESPN.com's Scott Burnside, a transplanted Canadian who is now a metro Atlanta resident, has written and observed: Buffalo was thought to be a bad market until the Sabres turned things around post-lockout and became one of the NHL's hottest tickets in 2006-07. The same is true of Washington.

Atlanta is no different.

Kovalchuk's Most Memorable Moments

2010-02-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

As it appears that Ilya Kovalchuk's remarkable tenure with the Atlanta Thrashers is about to end in the coming days, I thought I would write about the 10 moments that were the most memorable to me. This is not a "best goals" list. If you're looking for that, here's a pretty good one on YouTube.

I've been in Atlanta for Kovalchuk's entire career and, in one capacity or another -- back-up writer, beat writer, free-lancer for The Sporting News and NHL.com -- I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly of the mercurial Russian's career. As captain of the Thrashers, the soon-to-be 27-year-old winger has widely been credited throughout the league with refraining from the shenanigans that earned him a reputation early in his career for being a hot-head and a showman. There was the time when he threw a broken stick into the stands in frustration in 2005 after no penalty was called for what he thought was a slash and he received a one-game suspension and the time when he was late to a morning skate in New Jersey after he missed the team bus and coach Bob Hartley held him out of the game. Kovalchuk blamed the cab driver for getting lost. One of my favorite lines about Kovalchuk was written by Sports Illustrated's Michael Farber, winner of the distinguished Elmer Ferguson Award, "The question is, Which will be more entertaining: watching Kovalchuk score 50 goals or watching him celebrate 50 times?"

Kovalchuk doesn't quite celebrate like that much any more, but I remember coming back from a road trip in 2006 and bringing with me a copy of The Washington Post that showed a photo of him leaping into the boards after celebrating a goal just to remind myself how exciting it could be to watch him play at times. You'll see times like that reflected on this list as much as the talent that should make him one of the great all-time goal-scorers in NHL history.

No. 10: Benched Before the All-Star Game

Kovalchuk was voted a starter for the Eastern Conference for the 2004 All-Star Game in St. Paul and in the Thrashers' last game before the break he committed a typical turnover with 5:31 into the second period that turned a 1-0 Thrashers' lead into a 5-1 loss against Philadelphia. Kovalchuk was trying to stick-handle through three Flyers and beat his friend, defenseman Danii Markov. Markov stole the puck and turned it into an assist as the Flyers pulled away. Hartley benched Kovalchuk for the rest of the game for the mistake.

I had the night off, but was supposed to interview Kovalchuk for the All-Star story after the game. When I had to come to interview at the morning skate that day, he told me he couldn't talk because he had to take teammate Ivan Majesky to the DMV. I had to wait almost an hour after the game before he calmed down and appeared.

No. 9: The Big Stage, March 12, 2006

Making a furious bid to overcome a bad start and make the playoffs for the first time in team history, the Thrashers won some amazing games down the stretch in the spring of 2006. One of those came at Madison Square Garden -- a venue in which Kovalchuk almost always shines. The Thrashers trailed 2-0 with less than 13 minutes to go in regulation but earned a 3-2 overtime victory thanks to Kovalchuk's tying goal with less than five minutes left. The Rangers scored the first goal in that game because of a defensive lapse by Kovalchuk.

The left wing had been in Hartley's doghouse for a variety of reasons and when I approached him after the game, he gave me a gruff, "You want to talk to me now?" But here's what he said later of playing on the big stage: "It's New York City. I think everybody likes games here, but my favorite place is still A-T-L. When you play in front of your crowd, there is five times more emotions, and you draw energy from them."

No. 8: Four-Goal Game, Nov. 11, 2005

With huge expectations after signing Bobby Holik, Peter Bondra, trading for Marian Hossa and Greg de Vries, adding Scott Mellanby and Jaroslav Modry, the Thrashers got off to a dreadful start in 2005-06 after the lockout. Kovalchuk missed the first three games because of a contract dispute and got off to a bit of a slow start. But on Nov. 11, he broke out with a four-goal game at Philips Arena against the Lightning in a 5-2 win that jump-started both himself and the team towards a better showing.

No. 7: 50 Goals, April 6, 2006

With six games to go in '05-'06, the Thrashers were still in the playoff hunt but their chances were growing more desperate. They trailed at Tampa Bay when Kovalchuk netted his 50th goal with four seconds left in regulation on a bizarre bouncing shot past Sean Burke. The Thrashers lost in a shootout, missing out on a valuable point against their Southeast Division rivals who eventually beat them out for one of the East's two final playoff spots. The Thrashers missed the playoffs by two points that season, getting eliminated in their second-to-last game of the season.

No. 6: Playing in Russia During the Lockout

Probably the warmest greeting I ever received from Kovalchuk was passing him in the halls of the dingy arena in Kazan, where Kovalchuk played during the NHL lockout in 2004-05. Traveling to the Republic of Tatarstan in winter was a long way for an American reporter to go and I think he appreciated it. Unlike in the NHL where the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NHLPA states that players can only spend three hours -- on-ice or off it -- of practice at a team's practice facility, Soviet-era coaches in what was then known as Russia's Super League (today it goes by the moniker KHL or Continental Hockey League) will keep their players practicing all day. When I saw Kovalchuk, he was finishing up a basketball game that was part of the players' training regimen. Unlike older players who came through the Soviet system, Kovalchuk bristled under such methods. Here are some memorable quotes from that story:

"We're like prisoners here. Everyone knows everything around [here]. You go to some bar or restaurant and the bill directly goes to [Kazan's general] manager."

On losing a game to the former team of his coach Zinetula Bilyaletdinov in which Kovalchuk committed a costly penalty: "After the game yesterday, I was enemy number one. I'm on the black list right now. The coach was dressed all black like something happened. His face is like we lost eight in a row and we're out of the playoffs."

Also, without a CBA, coaches could fine players whatever they liked. Coach Bil, as they called him, fined one player half a month's salary for having two beers on a charter flight. If the same happened to him, Kovalchuk said, "I'd be gone."

No. 5 Illegal Stick Saga

The curve on Kovalchuk's sticks blatantly broke the rules back for his first few seasons and back in 2005-06 opposing teams started to call for measurements in the hopes of catching him in the act to earn a power play. He narrowly escaped in a game against Nashville, as he threw the stick in question to the bench and assistant equipment manager Joey Guilmet ran it down the hallway to the team's locker room. When the officials compelled Guilmet to bring back the stick, he produced one that was legal and, Nashville said, had not been used.

But a few weeks later on Jan. 31 in a 5-2 loss to Buffalo, he was caught red-handed and Hartley was furious. To send Kovalchuk a message, he had him practice on the third line with Serge Aubin and Jim Slater. Kovalchuk was the first one off the ice and bolted the practice facility. Later, reached by phone, he claimed all was fine.

Said his friend Slava Kozlov, "I think he's upset. I like when Kovy's upset. He got benched a few years ago in New Jersey [the day he missed the cab to the morning skate], and the next game he scored two goals. He's going to recover quick. We're going to support him because he's part of our team."

No. 4.: Oilers are 'Morons,' Dec. 8, 2002

Despite playing a continent and a conference apart, the Thrashers and Edmonton Oilers had created a bit of a rivalry in the early '00s -- thanks, in part, again to Kovalchuk getting caught by the Oilers for using an illegal stick in Feb. 2002. Mike Comrie was the offending player who made the accusation and when the Oil visited Atlanta in December 2002, tempers flared.

Kovalchuk fought Comrie and received a two-minute unsportsmanlike penalty in the process for pulling Comrie's hair. But he saved his best for coach Craig MacTavish and the Oilers after the game. With the help of translator Pavel Strizhevsky, a Russian emigre who lived in Atlanta and free-lanced at the time for Russia Sport-Express, Kovalchuk said:

"[MacTavish] was the last one in the NHL to play without the helmet, so he probably had the last brains knocked out a long time ago."

And: "[The Oilers] were screaming at me the whole game. They were morons. They way they play is ridiculous."

No. 3: Pointing at Crosby, Jan. 6, 2006

It was the kind of move that was sure to rile the hockey gods, not to mention Don Cherry. In the rookie year of Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby, Kovalchuk wanted to show who was boss. Crosby was sent to the box for slashing Kovalchuk and 24 seconds later, Kovalchuk scored on one of his trademark one-timers. Earlier in the game they exchanged slashes and big hits. He then pointed at Crosby in the penalty box for the entire Philips Arena crowd to see. This YouTube video has gotten more than 350,000 views.

After the game, Kovalchuk offered this up: "He took those stupid penalties all the time and he's an 18-year-old kid and he can't play like this. He started yapping at his teammates."

The next night Atlanta went to Pittsburgh, where Kovalchuk was lustily booed, and won again.

No. 2: NHL All-Star Game, Jan. 27, 2008

Again demonstrating his love of the big stage, Kovalchuk put on a show for his hometown fans at Philips Arena -- though not by scoring. The Eastern Conference won the game 8-7 and Kovalchuk had two golden opportunities. Western team goalie and Russian countryman Evgeni Nabokov robbed Kovalchuk from close range with a glove save in the second period after which Kovalchuk fell on his back in mock incredulity. A few minutes later, Nabokov robbed him again on a breakaway and, again playing to the crowd, threw his stick in feigned disgust. Kovalchuk had 18 family members and friends in the stands, including his sister who made the trip from Russia. He said the experience was "unbelievable."

No. 1: Grady Hospital, Oct. 5, 2003

Almost all of the moments on this list were in public. But the one that sticks at the most for me was a private one. Thrasher Dan Snyder had of toxic shock at Grady Memorial Hospital, as a result of an infection that had entered his body from wounds suffered in a horrific car crash with Dany Heatley six days earlier. Word had gotten out among the team members and they began to gather at the hospital.

Snyder's mother LuAnn recalled seeing a very young-looking Kovalchuk weeping and not recognizing him at first. To try and console him, she said, she offered him a piece of the watch that her son was wearing at the time of the accident. The watch had been severed in several pieces by the violence of the crash. LuAnn Snyder recalled her conversation with Kovalchuk as follows: "It's going to be a hard year. You have to work hard and you have to be a leader. You have to work hard and you have to be a leader. You don't have to play for Dan, but be there for him. He said, 'Yes, I will do this and I will try. I promise.' "

Kovalchuk tied for the NHL-lead in goals that season with 41. Before the Thrashers visited the rink this past October that was built in Snyder's hometown of Elmira, Ontario, and named in Snyder's honor, Kovalchuk had this to say, "I think it's important, because Dan, he was a member of our team. He's still a member of our team. He's always going to be with us. When his name is there, it means we're there, too. For us, it's going to be a big deal to see the fans, to see the rink."

WrestleMania Comes to Atlanta

2010-02-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

Six months ago I was sitting in Papadeaux's in Norcross having lunch with Atlanta Falcons vice president of marketing Jim Smith when he mentioned that he was working with the folks at the Georgia World Congress Center/Georgia Dome and Atlanta Sports Council to help bring WrestleMania to Atlanta.

As the dome's major tenant, the Falcons at times help to bring other events to the facility. In the same lunch, Smith mentioned that he had also assisted in helping to bring two high-profile soccer events to the dome that summer, an exhibition between clubs AC Milan and Club America and another between the Mexican and Venezuelan national teams. As the former general manager of Major League Soccer's Columbus Crew, he knew the futbol product he was trying to sell.

It turns out that he also knew a little something about the WWE. About 15 years ago, Smith, a Connecticut native, worked for the Greenwich, Conn.-based company for parts of two years as director of live marketing, where, as he put it, he promoted shows all around the country.

Successfully landing the bid for WrestleMania for the first time in Atlanta represented the confluence of a number of relationships and events. At Monday's press conference at the Georgia Dome to announce the event, Atlanta Sports Council President Gary Stokan said he knew WWE Senior Vice President of Special Events John Saboor from Saboor's days as president of Central Florida Sports Commission -- essentially, Stokan's counterpart in Orlando. Stokan said Saboor gave him the heads-up to bid on the event and the sports council pulled in all the necessary players.

That dynamic was on display on Monday. It's not often that you see political dignitaries like Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Georgia Commissioner of Economic Development Ken Stewart standing side by side with the likes of WWE Chairman Vince McMahon and "Superstars" -- as the WWE refers to them -- John Cena, Big Show, Batista and Edge.

But they all played their parts -- wrestlers and politicians. Stokan credited Reed, from his time as a state senator, for helping to change the Georgia state flag and remove the Confederate War Emblem. Stokan noted that Atlanta would lose high-profile events like the NCAA Final Four men's basketball tournament if the state flag still bore the emblem. (The NCAA has a ban on holding events in states that fly the symbol, which has hurt South Carolina, Georgia's neighbor to the north.) He said he and Saboor negotiated the terms of the deal on the back of a napkin at Dantanna's and that the Atlanta team made a strong pitch at WWE headquarters in Connecticut.

"I think the Falcons, as [team president Rich McKay] said during the press conference, we want to be a part of the major events here in Atlanta," the Falcons' Smith said. "This is a major event and one we wanted to be a part of. It’s being played here and we think we can a bring a lot to the table to add to the excitement and the WrestleMania week, not just the event."

Smith, a marketer himself, praised the WWE's marketing skills. Perhaps Cena put it best when he referred to McMahon, who built the now publicly traded company with a market capitalization of $1.19 billion, as "an insane genius."

"When you listen to the press conference, they live this," Smith said. "This is their life. They don’t do anything else and they love it. You can see it in every interview and every discussion that it wasn’t staged. That’s a real passion for what they’re doing. That’s why they’re so successful.”

Stokan said sports events have brought $1.8 billion in economic development to Georgia since 1999, resulting in $73 million in direct government revenue (read: taxes). For his part, Reed said the event would bring $50 million in economic impact to Atlanta and said he planned on attending.

Then McMahon and the wrestlers took turns hyping the event. Edge described WrestleMania as "a shot of adrenaline directly to your heart."Batista described it as a "vibe -- electricity."

McKay, escorted out by WWE divas Eve and Kelly Kelly, quipped that a schedule conflict prevented Falcons Owner Arthur Blank from attending the event and that "thank God he wasn't able to make it." On a serious side, he noted how the event would help to give back to the community through WWE's relationship with the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

So, as Reed put it, get ready for a 13-month march to Atlanta when WrestleMania arrives on April 3, 2011.

* * *

Note: The lunch I described with Smith was the beginning of a process that resulted in my becoming a paid free-lance reporter/blogger for AtlantaFalcons.com for the 2009 NFL season.

How Lightning Sale Could Benefit Thrashers

2010-01-31T07:58:00.000-08:00

Without nearly as much fanfare, it appears that the ownership situation surrounding the Tampa Bay Lightning might be in a perilous situation that could start to approach that of the Phoenix Coyotes' before former 'Yotes owner Jerry Moyes put that team into bankruptcy.

The big difference between the two situations is that the NHL looks as if it has been able to find a stable buyer of its choosing before anything truly calamitous happened with the Lightning, a Stanley Cup winner in 2004 that ranked among NHL attendance leaders for a few seasons. The Hockey News' Ken Campbell, about as well connected as any Toronto-based hockey reporter, has been all over this one and is reporting that the Lightning could be sold imminently to Boston-based hedge fund operator Jeffrey Vinik.

For hockey fans, most of whose eyes must glaze over whenever they hear that another team's ownership is in trouble (save those in Canada who salivate at the thought of a struggling U.S. Sun Belt franchise possibly re-locating back to the Great White North), this story has one very juicy tidbit that could affect the Lightning's on-ice product. Campbell is reporting that as part of Vinik's purchase of the team the Lightning would immediately trade Vincent Lecavalier to get his 2009-10 salary of $10 million off the books. According to NHLNumbers.com, the Lightning are less than $4.6 million from the league's salary cap.

Of course, Lecavalier, who has a no-trade clause, would have to approve any such deal and we've seen how that can go (see Heatley, Dany). By trading Lecavalier, whose cap hit is only $7.27 million (annual cap figures are the average of each year's salary divided by the number of years on the contract), the Lighting would still be above the league's cap floor of $40.6 million and would probably be a lot closer towards breaking even -- even if their on-ice product would no doubt suffer. In fact, Lecavalier would have 10 more years and about $75 million left on the deal after this season.

Larry Brooks of the New York Post has reported twice this week that 10 NHL teams are suffering double-digit declines in revenues from 2008-09 to 2009-10. Campbell says that the Lightning's paid attendance is averaging only 10,500 per game. So it would not be a huge stretch to guess that Tampa Bay is one of those teams whose revenues are down double digits this season and that a new owner, coming from a hedge-fund background, would seek to cut costs immediately. Florida has been one of the hardest-hit states by the Great Recession and the Lightning, while in playoff contention this season -- though hardly blowing the doors off -- have not made the postseason since they were a first-round loser in 2007. The economy and poor play would both be factors that would complicate selling tickets, luxury box suites, premium tickets and sponsorships -- in essence, all of the things that make hockey teams money -- in that market.

But what would trading Lecavalier do to the Lightning? As long-time Lightning beat writer Erik Erlendsson writes, it "could be a sure way to alienate a season-ticket base that already has thinned out the past two seasons" -- once one of the most vibrant of NHL nontraditional markets. During my years on the Thrashers' beat, I watched up close the rebuilding project that the Washington Capitals took on after electing to trade Jaromir Jagr, Sergei Gonchar, Michael Nylander, Peter Bondra, Steve Konowalchuk and virtually every other veteran with almost any trade value back in 2004. The Capitals were dreadful for years and the then-MCI Center was about as bereft of fans as any arena in the NHL for a number of seasons.

But astute drafting by Caps general manager George McPhee and the amassing of draft picks that came with those trades turned into Alexander Ovechkin, Mike Green, Nicklas Backstrom, Jeff Schultz and on and on and on that has turned the Caps not only into perhaps hockey's most exciting team but also a raging box office success. If the Lightning traded Lecavalier, surely, as Erlendsson suggests, they would face some kind of backlash. But they also are much farther along in their rebuilding process than Washington was at the time of its rebuilding project and would retain noted veterans like Martin St. Louis and Ryan Malone. In Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman already in place, they have the core of their future intact. If they were to add, as Campbell suggests, defenseman Jack Johnson, winger Wayne Simmonds and draft picks from the Los Angeles Kings, the Lightning might only be a few years away from a, pardon the pun, phoenix-like resurrection from the ashes.

Since I formerly covered the Thrashers and still closely follow that team's progress, I often view events in terms of how they would affect Atlanta. Moving Lecavalier to Los Angeles could be one of the best things ever to happen to the Thrashers. Not only would it remove a perennial Thrasher-killer from a Southeast Division rival, but in the process it also would remove the team that I view as the most likely landing source of Thrashers soon-to-be unrestricted free agent, Ilya Kovalchuk.

To me, Los Angeles would appear to be an ideal location for Kovalchuk to land: Great weather, little media scrutiny and a vastly improved young team whose presence he could make into a Stanley Cup contender. Plus, the Kings have cap room and a stable, deep-pocketed owner in billionaire Philip Anschutz. Remove the Kings as a potential bidder in the Kovalchuk sweepstakes come July 1 and, in my mind, the chances of Kovalchuk re-signing in Atlanta greatly increase.

So, there you have it. Winners and losers of a potential Lecavalier trade. Any winner, no doubt, would be the team that landed one of hockey's classiest and most talented players. Tangentially, Atlanta also could be a winner in both a short-term and long-term sense. And while the Lightning would definitely be a short-term loser (though not in the fiscal sense), if they manage their team properly they could be a long-term success -- especially if they finally land a stable, wealthy owner.

Kovalchuk, The Canadian Dollar And The Cap

2010-01-28T09:38:00.001-08:00

As much as I think that a lot of the names surrounding potential offerings to the Atlanta Thrashers as part of a trade for Ilya Kovalchuk are nothing but speculation, I think there has been some really insightful commentary on the circumstances surrounding the negotiations. But I also think a point has been left out about where the cap could be headed.

I think two of the best this week came from Puck Daddy, who pointed out that Kovalchuk's asking price could come down if the Thrashers wait until the summer, and Craig Custance, who wrote that if the Thrashers lose Kovalchuk they will need to spend nearly $20 million just to get the salary cap floor. Both of those are extremely relevant to what the Atlanta Spirit ownership group must involve in their thinking as it negotiates.

Let's take a look at those quickly for a minute before I get to some other news items that I saw earlier in the week that the Thrashers and every other NHL team who would consider meeting Kovalchuk's demands definitely should take into account. First is the option of letting Kovalchuk hit the open market on July 1. It sounds risky -- and it is -- but Thrashers general manager Don Waddell has done it before twice with Slava Kozlov and re-signed him both times. With so many capped out and uncertain about whether the cap will go up or down, teams could get sticker shock as they contemplate making Kovalchuk the league's highest-paid player for a term possibly as long as 12 years at that much-mentioned maximum salary figure of $11.36 million per season. As a result, Kovalchuk's demands could decrease if no one wants to give him that max deal. Of course, the risks in following that path are that someone could meet that figure -- it only takes one, as they say -- or that a more attractive team with a better history of winning could knock on Kovalchuk's door and he may choose to bolt.

But it's no secret that Kovalchuk likes living and playing in Atlanta. Otherwise, he would do what Marian Hossa did and not accept any offer to force a trade. I'm not sure that anyone doubts that Kovalchuk would remain in Atlanta if ownership meets his price. After all, how many other general managers would build a team around him and take in his input in player moves, as Atlanta did in signing Nik Antropov last summer? And it's not like coach John Anderson uses the strong-arm tactics of his predecessor Bob Hartley in managing Kovalchuk. Could anyone envision Kovalchuk playing for Jacques Lemaire-type and chafing as Marian Gaborik did for all of those years? All are calculated risks on both sides of the negotiation.

But now let's look at what could happen with the cap. Larry Brooks of The New York Post reported this tidy little item on Monday that "the league is experiencing an overall two-percent decline in hockey-related revenue prior to currency conversion, after a three-percent decline in HRR last quarter." The NHL salary cap went up 0.18 percent from 2008-09 to 2009-10, only $100,000.

Bridget Wentworth of the Star-Ledger reported last May that NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly projected that the cap would decrease by about 5 percent, or $2 to $2.5 million, unless the NHLPA "wants a 5 percent inflator" -- its right as part of the collective bargaining agreement to which the league must agree, as it ultimately did. That use of the inflator, or escalator clause, kept the cap from such a decline. Last year hockey-related revenues rose 1 percent from $2.62 billion to $2.64 billion, according to Sports Business Journal.

If, at present, revenues overall are down 2 percent -- before currency conversion -- the future of the cap the next few seasons might not exactly be looking skyward, to put it modestly. Let's see what happens when currency conversion comes in. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that options traders are the most bearish on the Canadian dollar that they have been in 13 months. Canadian teams represent 20 percent of league's franchises but in terms of revenue they contribute a disproportionate share. This story that I wrote for The Sporting News two years ago shows that the Canadian teams were contributing about 28 percent of the revenue and the Canadian dollar wasn't at $0.96 then. The New York Times in December showed how the Canadian dollar went from $0.62 in 2002 to $o.96 in seven years -- a 50 percent increase -- helping the bottom line of Canadian teams and the league as a whole.

But what happens if the cycle reverses itself, as the Bloomberg story suggests? It's not like we'll go back to a situation tomorrow where the Canadian dollar goes back to $0.75, but if it did that 28 percent of revenues that Canadian teams contribute would be cut to 21 percent and that could have a major impact on the salary cap.

So what does all of this have to do with Kovalchuk's impending free agency? In the Star-Ledger story, Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke was quoted as saying the cap, in effect, has a 12-month lag time between when they compute the numbers and what the current economic reality is. So if, over the next few years, the Canadian dollar settles back into its more historic relationship with the U.S. dollar it could strangle the growth of the NHL's upper team payroll limit, currently set at $56.8 million. Even a modest decrease in the Canadian dollar over the next six months before the league computes the cap for its July 1 free agency date could make a relative impact. (Perhaps that's why Kovalchuk is pushing hard for that big number now while it's still available.) NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has long cautioned as a general theme about teams' entering into player contracts of extreme length -- those given to Philadelphia's Mike Richards, the Islanders' Rick DiPietro, the Red Wings' Henrik Zetterberg and Chicago's Marian Hossa, to name a few.

The Thrashers definitely have to have this long-term thinking reflected in their negotiations with Kovalchuk -- and so should other potential suitors.

Sutton's Hit

2010-01-20T09:15:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I wrote about how Andy Sutton ruined my Thanksgiving in 2006. On Tuesday, the New York Islander did far worse to Pittsburgh Penguins forward Pascal Dupuis, with whom he played in both Minnesota and Atlanta.

I don't mean to make light of the situation. For those who haven't seen the grisly video, it's available on YouTube. Let's hope that Dupuis comes out of this without any ill effects.

I've seen at least one story written by someone whom I respect who attests to Sutton's character, saying that that likely will be taken into consideration in assessing any additional discipline than the game misconduct he received on Tuesday.

Sutton certainly is no Todd Bertuzzi, but he does have his own history. I covered Sutton for years in Atlanta and got to know him pretty well. Let's say his personality is fairly complex. In terms of book smarts, he's probably one of the more intelligent players in the NHL. He once told me that he was an environmental engineering major in college at Michigan Tech -- how many pro hockey players can say that? -- and that the possibility of playing hockey professionally did not seem to be a serious option for him until he reached his junior season, so, until then, he had focused mainly on his education. Also, he is a fairly sensitive when it comes to criticism, a reputation he earned in Atlanta from both coaches and media alike.

Amid all this, he can be guilty of some of the worst mental lapses on the ice -- the kind that would infuriate coaches and teammates. I'll note a few, including some that include questionable hits.

The first that comes to mind was not a hit but still ranks among the dumbest things I've ever seen a hockey player do on the ice. The Thrashers had won three out of four following a six-game losing streak. They were finishing up a seven-game road trip in Philadelphia on Feb. 21, 2004, and had fought hard to rally from a 3-0 deficit to play to a 4-4 tie with 61 seconds left in regulation. On a relatively harmless 2-on-2, Sutton was playing left defense. John LeClair had broken his stick in the Thrashers' zone and it lay there for several minutes, not having been removed from the ice. Sutton used his stick to flip the broken one at the puck carrier, Simon Gagne, to dislodge the puck. The officials immediately awarded Gagne a penalty shot and he scored for a 5-4 victory. Ilya Kovalchuk received a gross misconduct penalty at 20:00 of the third period. Marc Savard smashed his stick at the boards.

Here's what Sutton said after the game: "We looked at the tape, and it was the right call. I was mostly upset because the stick sat there for so long. Usually those guys pick the stick up. I think both the referee and the linesman -- although I think they made the right call -- I think they both skated by the stick a couple of times. I was just mad because it sat there and I could have tripped over it just as easily and he could have come in and scored that way. "They made the right call. It was unfortunate it came in a tie game with a minute left."

The tone sounds somewhat similar to what a repentant Sutton told reporters after Tuesday's game: "Just playing my usual game, trying to play hard, finish checks. I feel awful. I've played with Pascal. I've known him a long time. I obviously never intended for that happen."

The next incident that comes to mind will figure most prominently in what NHL Director of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell chooses to do in whether to hand Sutton a suspension. I was not present that night (I was attending a friend's wedding) but the Thrashers lost to Toronto 9-1 in October 2005. Sutton's hit on Darcy Tucker that night was remarkably similar to the one he delivered on Dupuis on Tuesday, except that Tucker had the good fortune not to hit his head on the dasher. Nonetheless, Tucker required 20 stitches and Sutton was suspended for four games.

I remember the explanation I was given at the time was that when the 6-foot-6 Sutton went to deliver the blow with his arms they were at the same level as the head of the 5-foot-10 Tucker. (Here's the video.) I guess Campbell did not believe that one. Because the opponent was Toronto, which receives the most media coverage in the NHL, and Leafs coach Pat Quinn loudly complained afterward, the Thrashers started to receive a reputation for playing like goons. Here's what Sutton said about that perception: "I think it's totally inaccurate. When I was playing against Toronto, in no shape or way was I trying to hurt anyone. I play hard."

It's understandable -- though not acceptable -- when players get frustrated in a big loss and make some errors in discipline. What's harder to understand is when they do it in a game that they're winning. That is what eventually touched off the 2006 Thanksgiving Eve brawl with Washington -- Sutton's head-hunting of Mike Green in a game the Thrashers were in command of and ended with 176 penalty minutes. Sutton received a double-minor for roughing and high-sticking at 18:38 of the third period with the Thrashers up 4-2.

And that game had something of a precedent. The previous season in a game against Washington in which the Thrashers were less than a minute away from victory, Sutton delivered a thunderous check along the boards to Washington defenseman Ivan Majesky, Sutton's teammate in Atlanta in 2003-04. The hit was legal, but completely unnecessary -- the kind that serves only to infuriate opponents and display questionable judgment.

The point is that this list of incidents is not akin to anything done by Donald Brashear, who has a long history of suspensions. It is not to equate Sutton to the likes of Brashear -- to the contrary, Sutton has proven himself as a fairly productive top four defenseman on his last two teams and he is an important piece on a surprising Islanders team that is in the Eastern Conference's playoff race.

But it does show that Sutton has something of a history as a result of lapses of judgment more than malice. With hits to the head becoming a bigger issue for the NHL, this is exactly the type of incident on which Campbell could take a stand. How much of a stand is up to him and what he makes of Sutton's history.

Sizing Up Richards Vs. Philly Media

2010-01-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

As a former beat writer, I always find dust-ups between writers and the athletes, coaches and executives they cover irresistible reading, especially when they become public as did the spat between Philadelphia Flyers captain Mike Richards and the veritable horde that covers the team.

In my first season covering the Thrashers, there was the time that combustible goalie Pasi Nurminen didn't like a question that I asked him about his rebound control after a particularly ugly loss to Ottawa. Nurminen, in his broken English, barked something back at me to the order of, "What game you watching?" The next day, the morning show on Atlanta's alternative-FM radio station played the audio clip over and over. Listening to it in my car, I cringed. Later in the day I learned that the team was listening to the station in the locker room before practice, which made Nurminen's slow burn grow even hotter. We smoothed it over and eventually Nurminen became one of my better sources.

However, I saw far more parallels in another incident that I went through to the Richards' affair. But first a few disclosures in regards to the group that covers the Flyers. I once worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer when current Flyers beat writer Sam Carchidi -- who appears to have been at the center of the controversy -- covered high school sports in south Jersey. I don't think I ever spoke to him. Secondly, I've been to dinner with CSNPhilly.com writer Tim Panaccio once in 2004 and was once in a notes group with Delaware County Daily Times writer Anthony Sanfilippo. That's about the extent of my relationship with those who cover the team, along with small talk one occasionally makes during games and morning skates to pass the time. Also, in September I did two lengthy phone interviews with the Daily News for its Flyers job. So, as I'm not at all close to the situation, I'd say I can write about it fairly objectively.

To sum up, Richards has had a rocky relationship with the Philadelphia media, which, as almost anyone who follows this type of stuff knows, is about as aggressive as any in the country. Richards is arguably the best player on his team, which is one of the problems, but the bigger one is that he is the team captain. In hockey, that role often designates a player as the "go-to" guy for media, whose members expect the captain to be the voice of reason, hold himself and his teammates accountable for their actions and act as a sort of informal spokesman. But Richards, who is 24 and does not exactly appear the picture of the wizened veteran, has taken personally criticism -- some of it coming from his own general manager, as Panaccio pointed out -- that he and his teammates might have a little too much fun with the night life. For this reason, Richards maintained a one-week moratorium on speaking to the media in October after stories came out that suggested Joffrey Lupul was traded from Philadelphia to Anaheim, for, in part, enjoying himself a bit too much.

The issue arose again on Sunday following a 5-3 Flyers' loss to Washington after a profile in The Hockey News on Richards addressed the partying subject. (I can't link to that story since some of THN's content is subscriber-protected.) On his blog, DeFilippo transcribed the exchange between Richards and the reporters. I'll excerpt the following portion here, which isn't exactly flattering to Richards. I'll pick it up with Carchidi questioning a Richards quote in The Hockey News that the Philadelphia media "makes stuff up." Richards himself brought up the term "drinking articles" and appears to accuse Carchidi of writing something to that end.

RICHARDS: You didn’t write an article at the beginning of the year?

INQUIRER: That said you were drinking?

RICHARDS: That we’re out too much and that you asked Lupes (Joffrey Lupul, now with Anaheim) all the questions and everything? Anthony? Weren’t there articles?

DELCO TIMES: There were articles about those events but nothing naming you specifically.

RICHARDS: They said the players were drinking too much. Richards and Carter were out all the time.

INQUIRER: He (Lupul) said that?

RICHARDS: Isn’t that what the article said?

INQUIRER: No. I think that you’re making that up.

RICHARDS: Oh, O.K.

INQUIRER: You’re making it up.

RICHARDS: O.K.

Here, it's hard to tell if Richards is agreeing with Carchidi's contention that the articles saying Richards drinks/drank too much were a figment of Richards' imagination or if Richards is being sarcastic. After the session soon ended, press members and Richards exchanged heated words and Flyers coach Peter Laviolette eventually had to step in between them.

Once again we fall into the chasm between reality and perception and now I'll fall back on my own experience. Back on Nov.24, 2006, Andy Sutton ruined my Thanksgiving. It seems like a different eon, but back then the Capitals were among the league's dregs and Thrashers were atop the Southeast Division, bullying them on the scoreboard and physically, as well. The Thrashers had the game in hand when the 6-foot-6 Sutton, in the final minutes, exercised some poor judgment and decided to go head-hunting on Caps' up-and-coming 21-year-old rookie Mike Green. The Caps decided enough was enough and a brawl ensued. I'm grateful to Off The Wing Opinion for the following video clip.

In the end, Thrashers captain Scott Mellanby received an instigator penalty and a resulting one-game suspension. I remained in D.C. with my wife's family for the holiday while the team moved on for its next game in Tampa. All Thanksgiving Day long, I tried to reach Mellanby for comment on the suspension via his cell phone. (A team public relations official had told me to call Mellanby on his cell.) In a fit of pique, Mellanby was not answering. In the end, I wrote that Mellanby "could not be reached for comment."

The next day after the morning skate at the St. Pete Times Forum when I saw Mellanby, with whom I enjoyed a good relationship, he was furious. He was raging about how I wrote that he was "unavailable" -- which I did not -- and accused me of being unavailable because I had stayed behind in D.C. with family for the holiday. I countered that I was calling him repeatedly because the team's public relations staff told me to and said he would speak to me then. In an empty locker room, he told me to wait for a minute and grabbed a print-out of my story in his stall. He looked up when he was done and said, "I have no problem with that."

Now, Mellanby was in his 20th season at that point and also was probably one of the league's most respected players. He was as grizzled and wizened as veterans come. He was more angry that the league office did not grant him a hearing than he was at me. I just added fuel to the fire. That night in the press box, he sat next to me and we discussed fore-checking schemes and some ideas he had brought up at practice that the team was trying to incorporate.

I don't think that's going to happen any time soon between Richards and Carchidi or any of the Philadelphia media. But the issue is similar. Richards' perception was that the Philly media had written stories that he and others were always out partying. In fact, Panaccio in his story quotes GM Paul Holmgren in June saying that partying was an "issue" that he and then coach John Stevens had addressed. Just like Mellanby was angry that someone had told him I wrote he was "unavailable" -- which would not have been fair to him since he was at a practice and available to the media but I had previously arranged with my editors not to be at practice that day because of the holiday -- when in fact I did not write that.

In the end will Richards show as much maturity as Mellanby, now an executive with the Vancouver Canucks? It's probably doubtful. But if he's going to remain in Philadelphia and remain the team's captain, it would probably be in his best interest to make peace. Whether he realizes it or not, he will only make his own life easier. Philadelphia can be tough on captains, no matter how good they are. Just ask Eric Lindros.

How Heatley Can Salvage His Reputation

2009-08-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

If Dany Heatley thought he could put to rest the controversy surrounding his request for the Ottawa Senators to trade him by holding a pre-emptive conference call with reporters before Hockey Canada's Olympic orientation camp, his words proved the idea wrong.
I'm not quite sure what the collected hockey scribes of North America -- particularly those in Canadian cities who feel so aggrieved by his trade request and subsequent invocation of his no-trade clause to the Oilers (Edmonton and Ottawa most specifically) -- expected to hear from Heatley when he finally ended his months-long silence. If it was not obvious before, it should be now that the reason Heatley remained silent was for the same reason that his agent Stacey McAlpine cut short the conference call that was supposed to last an hour but, from reports, took between 15 and 25 minutes.
That is, Heatley's reasons for the trade request were petty and any elucidation of those reasons -- even if they were made by a champion orator, which Heatley absolutely is not -- would ring hollow and fall flat, which, by every press account that I read, they did.
For August, the quietest of months when it comes to hockey press coverage, a good deal of commentary came out of the conference call. It ranged from mean-spirited to insightful. I believe ESPN.com's Scott Burnside had one of the best columns as did the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jeff Schultz.
Almost any analysis of Heatley has to go back to the car accident that resulted in the death of his friend and teammate Dan Snyder. Both Burnside and Schultz, who covered Heatley during his days with the Atlanta Thrashers, understood this and traced Heatley's meandering career to his apparent failure to deal with what happened in Atlanta almost six years ago now.
The best analysis, I thought, hit on the idea that Heatley has devolved into a somewhat sad figure because of this and because of his failure to understand it.
In a column that was otherwise vengeful, as he was writing for a readership that was spurned by Heatley (Edmonton) for his refusal to accept a trade to that city, Terry Jones of the Edmonton Sun summed up that pitiable sentiment perfectly when he wrote: "The sad thing is that just listening to him you can tell he doesn't get it."
That's it. He doesn't get it. But there is a way for him to get it, but he would have to do a figurative 180-degree turn to salvage his reputation.
He could hold another press conference and say that he is dropping his trade request and that he wants to remain in Ottawa. He could say that he is willing to work with coach Cory Clouston and will work on those parts of his game for which Clouston so mildly chastised him in the press (mainly, a better effort on the defensive end of the game).
He could say that he was upset that Clouston reduced his ice time and altered his role on the power play and that he dealt with it the wrong way.
After all, Ottawa's new winger Alexei Kovalev has said he wants Heatley to return to the team and captain Daniel Alfredsson also appeared to signal that he would welcome Heatley back. While most of Heatley's teammates are probably more confused by his request than angry, they would no doubt accept him back if -- and it's a huge "if" -- he puts forth a big effort, sublimates his ego to the team and returns to the production levels that made him the first NHL player in seven seasons to record back-to-back 50-goal seasons.
More problematic would be an Ottawa press corps that has vilified Heatley for his request. The fans would do their booing at first, but if Heatley were truly contrite and then produced, they would do what fans do and support him.
There's virtually no other way for him to salvage his reputation. Should he get his presumed wish and get himself traded to San Jose, he would still get smacked around in the Canadian press, which, frankly for a Canadian-born player like Heatley, matters most unless he earned himself a Conn Smythe Trophy in leading the Sharks to a first ever Stanley Cup.
But that is a long shot. Not that Heatley lacks the talent -- quite to the contrary, he possesses it in abundance. More to the point, right now it appears that he lacks the focus.
And there is one final psychological point at work here. (The whole affair is a fascinating look into Heatley's psyche, if nothing else.) To what degree does some as famous as Heatley is in his native country -- or anyone for that matter -- want to be a pariah of this degree?
With the media, Heatley is anything but confrontational, the kind of personality trait that could cause one to overlook the ravings of the press corps and get on with his life. Just a look at Heatley's life this summer has illustrated the sort of discomfort he will have to live with if he does not change his mind: He chose not to attend the wedding of one of his closest friends and teammates, Jason Spezza, most likely to avoid having to speak to the media and also pulled out at the last minute from a conference for children in Toronto for apparently the same reason.
Does Heatley really want to become a sort of shut-in? He can set himself free by renouncing his choice. But it's a difficult thing to admit one is wrong, especially when everyone around you tells you that you are not.
In the end, we will soon learn what is more important to him: his reputation, which stands in tatters, or his will to play for his team of choice. Certainly it appears that playing for Canada in international competitions does matter to him, as he is Canada's all-time leading scorer in world championships.
If Burnside is right and Heatley's self-sullying of his reputation causes Hockey Canada to refuse to take him for the 2010 Olympics, which will be held in the same province, British Columbia, where Heatley makes his offseason home, that could be the one factor that could cause him to alter his course.
But perhaps not. Which factor will be the greater pull for Heatley?
We'll soon know.

Thoughts on Adam Rubin and the Mets

2009-07-28T06:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday when the news broke that the New York Mets had fired vice president for player development Tony Bernazard over angry outbursts directed at everyone from players and minor leaguers to scouts, I was riveted by what came out of the press conference to announce it.
Mets general manager Omar Minaya specifically called out the team's beat writer for the New York Daily News, Adam Rubin, saying that Rubin purposely tried to get Bernazard fired because Rubin wanted a player personnel job within the Mets organization.
That's a humiliating situation for a reporter to be in. I know, I've been there.
During the 2003-04 NHL season when Atlanta Thrashers right wing Dany Heatley was rehabbing from injuries suffered in a car crash that led to the death of teammate Dan Snyder, everything Heatley did was huge news.
It was about as difficult a situation as a rookie beat writer can walk into, with the accident happening just a few weeks into my tenure. For a while, the team won and that masked most of the tensions that those around the team would have felt from having to deal with the enormity of Heatley's situation (the emotional loss from the death of a popular teammate, Heatley's legal jeopardy, the on-ice loss of star, etc.).
But then the team began to lose and the perception of petty slights on both sides of the ledger -- the team's and the media's (mostly mine, as I was the only reporter with the team on a daily basis) -- grew into a general sense of animosity.
It all broke down one day in acrimony over a story that I wrote about Heatley's first full practice with the team since his accident. Thrashers coach Bob Hartley referred to a "mistake by our beat writer," in front of a large (for the Thrashers but surely nothing compared to what was there for the Mets yesterday) media assemblage.
I could feel my face turn red. There is nothing worse for a reporter than becoming the story, as opposed to reporting on it. Journal-Constitution columnist Mark Bradley was forced to slap Hartley down, much as the Daily News' Filip Bondy had to do today in defense of Rubin. It ruined my relationship with the team for the final three months of the season, something that was not repaired until the NHL lockout ended more than a year later. (The great irony is that I rebuilt my relationship with Hartley and we remain on good terms.)
Although my situation was not quite as severe, I could feel Rubin's pain when he had to give an impromptu press conference and said, "I don't know how I'm going to cover this team anymore."
The answers to that question seemed to arrive in the aftermath from Daily News editor-in-chief Martin Dunn who said that the paper will stand behind Rubin "1,000 percent."
Rubin also shot back with this first-person account today to defend his record. And Minaya was forced hours later to offer what could be mistaken for an apology, along with the team's reclusive chief operating officer, Jeff Wilpon.
In the end, Rubin appears to be not only vindicated but now to have the national spotlight on him for having broken the stories that got Bernazard fired.
Some media ethicists may fault Rubin for the crime of asking for career advice from Mets officials. In the New York Times, columnist George Vecsey writes that Rubin may have engaged in a "slight conflict of interest" -- which I agree with to a degree because you do have to be so careful of how your conversations with the people whom you cover might be interpreted -- but in the end Vecsey opines that Rubin was mostly "naive to trust the wrong people."
I also agree with Bondy's assertion that "Beat reporters spend a lot of time talking about stuff with baseball guys during the eight months a year they cover the sport. There is considerable chatting, in both directions."
It's a long season and there's a lot of small talk but in whatever you say you can always provide ammunition to your critics. It seems that is mostly what Rubin is guilty of.
The great irony is that in trying to expand his career's horizons through those conversations that Minaya distorted, Rubin may have done just that. He is now sure to receive recognition for his work and attention from potential employers after this ham-handed flap by the Mets.

Looking at Anderson vs. Griffey as Braves Surge

2009-07-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

Imagine if the Atlanta Braves had signed both John Smoltz and Ken Griffey Jr., as most fans were hoping, during the offseason?
I'll admit -- I was among them (at least on Griffey, not on Smoltz). Griffey is about three years older than I am and when he first came up with the Mariners, I was a much bigger baseball fan.
Something about the idea of signing him captured the imaginations of so many baseball fans in Atlanta. Even if he could not perform at the level that he did when he first came up more than two decades ago -- of course everyone knew that he could not -- it was Griffey nostalgia that would have played so well in Atlanta.
After all, unlike so many other sports, isn't so much of baseball about a reverence of and affection for the past? (I don't see Hollywood making movies like "Field of Dreams" or "The Natural" about other sports.)
Atlanta baseball fans could have re-lived their own pasts, the idea goes, by watching Griffey creak around the outfield, even if he were a shadow of his former self. One could sense the team's sales and marketing department collectively salivating over the billboards, slogans and Griffey-generated ticket sales.
When he chose to sign instead with the Mariners amid a flurry of acrimony, all of that hot-stove anticipation was dashed. Exacerbating the problem was that it marked the third time in three months that the Braves had failed to land a big name.
First in December, it was ex-Brave Rafael Furcal ditching the team at the last second (after the Braves believed that Furcal had agreed to a contract) to re-up with the Dodgers, prompting Braves president John Schuerholz's tirade that the organization would never again deal with Furcal's Atlanta-based agent Paul Kinzer.
In January, Smoltz seemed to do the impossible and turned his back on the only organization with which he had ever played to sign with Boston.
Clearly, by the time that the Braves failed to land Griffey, the luster of 14 straight division titles was so far in the past that many -- the fans, media -- began to dump on the organization.
Whether the Braves make the National League playoffs remains to be seen, but what seems fairly obvious right now is that with Smoltz or Griffey or both, they would not be a better team. The Braves are 6 1/2 games behind the defending World Series' champion Phillies in the East, but only 3 1/2 behind Colorado for the Wild Card spot. If the current pace holds, it looks as if the Braves are on the verge of playing meaningful baseball well into September for the first time in four seasons -- what seems like an eternity here in Atlanta, where postseason runs once seemed a birthright.
Since June 28, when the Braves entered the day 34-40, they have gone 17-8 over their last 25 games. Their pitching -- already among the best in the major leagues -- got a shot in the arm from the promotion of rookie Tommy Hanson (in spite of the fiasco that erupted when the Braves cut future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine) at the start of June, but it's the amazing turnaround in run scoring that has the Braves competitive again.
Which brings us back to Mr. Griffey. Griffey is doing the impossible: By hitting .211 with 10 home runs and 27 RBI, he almost makes ex-Brave outfielder Jeff Francoeur's offensive output look like an All-Star season in comparison. Griffey also has 45 strikeouts in 75 games.
His contract is worth $4.5 million with $2 million in guaranteed money.
Now let's look at who the Braves signed instead, Garret Anderson. Anderson, who started slowly, is making $2.5 million this year with the Braves.
In the 10 games since the All-Star Break, Anderson is hitting a sizzling .429 and has scored 7 runs and has 4 RBI. Over his last 13 games, he's hitting .383 with 7 runs and 6 RBI.
Overall, he's hitting .292 with 7 home runs and 37 RBI. He has struck out 40 times in 77 games.
So not only did the Braves save money in the long run with Griffey's incentives, but they also got a player who is hitting 81 points higher and has 10 more RBI.
To be fair, others -- notably Yunel Escobar, Martin Prado, Brian McCann and Chipper Jones, who was suffering through an inexplicable season-long (by his standards) slump -- have picked up at the plate and now Braves admirers are saying the lineup doesn't have any easy out in the top eight.
And then there is Smoltz, who gave up six earned runs in five innings on Sunday and watched his record fall to 1-4 and his earned-run average balloon to 7.04. The Red Sox say they plan on sticking with Smoltz -- for how long, one wonders -- but a frustrated 42-year-old Smoltz seemed to openly raise the prospect of his retirement after his latest outing.
(Interesting how what the Braves feared would happen if they had allowed Glavine to return to the major league roster is playing out in Boston with Smoltz. While I think that the Braves made the right move with Smoltz, I still think they dealt unfairly with Glavine.)
So with football -- King of Sports here in the South -- about to get training camps underway in less than a week in Atlanta, the Braves could keep a bit of the sporting interest turned their way.
That certainly would not be the case with Smoltz and Griffey in the lineup.

Reflecting on a Favorite Book

2009-07-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I was reading through the briefs in The New York Times and the news hit me like a punch in the gut. Two Bosnian Serbs were sentenced by a United Nations war crimes tribunal for the deaths of 119 Muslims in 1992 as part of the ugly ethnic cleansing campaigns that tore apart the breakaway republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina amid the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.
In two separate incidents, the men locked their victims, ranging from two days old to age 75, in a house and burned them alive.
The crimes took place in the town of Visegrad -- which happens to be the setting of one of my favorite books, which, coincidentally, I finished reading for the second time (and first in 16 years since I read it in college) just a few days ago.
The name of the book is "The Bridge on the Drina," a work of historical fiction that received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1961. It's the story of an idyllic but at times troubled town from the when the bridge was built by the Ottoman Empire in the 1570s to 1914 when a portion of it was blown up during World War I.
The author, Ivo Andric, was a Serb who was raised in Visegrad by his widowed mother and her parents around the time when Serb nationalism began to simmer, helping to draw 20th-century Europe into so much conflagration. (World War I began as a result of the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Habsburg monarchy, archduke Franz Ferdinand, by Serbian nationalists in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.)
As the foreward to my edition of the book mentions, Andric shows a tremendous sensitivity to the Muslims in the book, despite his ethnicity. For much of the book, he writes about the simple co-existence of the town's inhabitants.
He writes of a great flood and how "The force of the elements and the weight of common misfortune brought all these men together and bridged, at least for this one evening, the gulf that divided one faith from the other..."
Throughout the book Andric sprinkles in references to divisions in the town, but for the most part, those divisions remain buried. (Until the Turks conquered Bosnia, the religion of the local populace was Eastern Orthodox Christian -- Serbian -- or Roman Catholic -- Croatian -- but under Turkish rule most of nobility and land-owning classes converted to Islam; in all, about 30 to 40 percent. Nonetheless, all continued to speak the same language, Serbo-Croatian. Curiously, Andric refers to the Muslims in the book as "Turks.")
Here's one of Andric's examples of how those tensions were buried. In chapter VI, he writes about how people in the town, located just over the boarder from Serbia proper, reacted to the rebellion of Karageorge (or Black George) in Serbia against the Turks:

There were in the town both Turks and Serbs who swore that they had heard with their own ears the rumbling of "Karageorge's gun" (naturally with completely opposite feelings). But even if it were a matter for doubt whether the echo of the Serb insurrectionists' gun could be heard as far as the town, for a man often thinks that he can hear what he is afraid of or what he hopes for, there could be no doubt about the fires which the insurgents lit by night on the bare and rocky crest of Panos between Veletovo and Gostilje, on which the huge isolated pines could be counted from the town with the naked eye. Both Turks and Serbs saw the fires clearly and looked at them attentively, although both pretended not to have noticed them. From darkened windows and from the shadows of dense gardens, both took careful note of when and where they were lighted and extinguished. The Serbian women crossed themselves in the darkness and wept from inexplicable emotion, but in their tears they saw reflected from those fires of insurrection even as those ghostly flames which had once fallen upon Radisav's grave and which their ancestors almost three centuries before had also seen through their tears from that same Mejdan....
In those summer nights the wishes and the prayers of both cirlced around those flames, but in different directions. The Serbs prayed to God that these saving flames, like those which they had always carried in their hearts and carefully concealed, should spread to these mountains, while the Turks prayed to Allah to halt their progress and extinguish them, to frustrate the seditious designs of the infidel and restore the old order and the peace of the true faith.

Andric writes that any time such a rebellion occurred, inevitably some Serbs were scape-goated and paid with their lives, their heads displayed on spikes along the bridge.
In 1878, the fears of the town's "Turks" came true, as the Ottoman Empire -- the "sick man of Europe" -- withdrew and Austria-Hungary, a Christian power, was given the right to occupy Bosnia military and to run in administratively. Thus, the long-feared erosion of the Muslims' power and rights began. The same year, Serbia was granted independence and expelled its Muslims.
In 1909, Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia. By 1914, timed with the onset of World War I, Andric writes about how tensions in the town are coming to a boil with the rise of nationalism. Born in 1892, Andric would have been one of the university students that he portrays at the time debating the merits of nationalism against socialism.
And he explains how foreign powers exacerbated the differences in the town. The Austrians asked the local Muslims to participate in a schutzkorps, a local militia designed to patrol the town for Serb insurrectionists. One of the wise old Muslims named Alihodja, who ranks among the book's major characters and who seems to embody Andric's sympathies, often counsels against any political violence -- mostly because he himself always seems simply to want to be left alone by any authority, be it Turkish or Austrian. He successfully convinces most of the town's prominent Muslims leaders not to participate.
In the final, turbulent times in which the book comes to a close, Andric reveals the bloodlust and opportunism that he ascribes to the lowest of motives associated with war time. Gustav, a long-time Austrian beer server and cafe owner, shows up drunken in the quasi-military uniform of the schutzkorps shouting at an Austro-Hungarian military officer that he was "promised that I could hang two Serbs with my own hands when the time came." The lieutenant, in his Hungarian-accented German, "exasperatedly" denies Gustav his request.
Nonetheless, the execution of three Serbs -- guilty of the crime of giving light signals at night towards the Serbian frontier -- goes on. Andric appears to indicate that one of them, Vajo, is innocent and that "in a weak and tearful voice asserted his innocence, that his competitor was responsible for the charge, that he had never done any military service and never in his life known that one could make signals with lights."
It's all to no avail, as the man is executed on the bridge.
The book ends with the death of Alihodja, who suffers a heart attack after the bridge, which had been mined, has a hole blown between two of its grand piers. In his final breaths, he cannot comprehend that anyone would consciously destroy something so gorgeous, vital and enduring as a bridge that was the bequest of an Ottoman Vezir.
Which brings us back to the present. As I was reading the book, I would periodically go online to look up photos of the bridge or research the history of the area, which has interested me ever since I took an Eastern European history class in the fall of 1993.
Someday, I had thought, if I could ever persuade my wife to do it, I would like to visit the town and see the bridge's amazing architecture. But amid my research I learned that Visegrad is part of the Republika Srpska, the Serbian enclave of partitioned Bosnia, and that almost all of the town's 14,000 Muslims are gone, the victims of ethnic cleansing.
This post mentions how the bridge was used to dispose of Muslims who were shot, beaten and otherwise tortured and that a resort hotel overlooking the bridge, used a center for mass rapes, continues to operate as if nothing had happened.
And then I came across the news item about the crimes of Milan and Sredoje Lukic.
Andric died in 1975. It makes me wonder what he would have thought of this sordid history and the sad legacy of the town that is home to "The Bridge on the Drina."

ESPN and The Future of Sports Media

2009-07-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

About a year ago it started to dawn on me where the future of sports journalism -- traditionally the province of daily newspapers -- was going.
The first domino came last summer when the news broke that longtime Atlanta Braves general manager John Schuerholz was giving up his role to become team president. A quick visit to the Braves' official Web site revealed an incongruous picture.
One link announced that the team was having a press conference later in the day. Another, an independently reported story by MLB.com staffer Mark Bowman, broke the news itself about Schuerholz's departure.
The second came when I heard that former Falcons beat writer Steve Wyche was leaving the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a job with NFL.com and the NFL Network. (Wyche remains a fixture here in Atlanta on local radio.)
Around the same time, The Sporting News hired Jeff D'Alessio away from the AJC and launched an innovative daily online newspaper, Sporting News Today.
The picture rounded out for me when the NFL season began and I noticed that ESPN.com had hired friend and former hockey writer colleague Tim Graham away from the Palm Beach Post, where he worked for less than one year as back-up Dolphins writer, as its AFC East blogger. That meant that in addition to all of the national writers and reporters that ESPN has on the NFL, the Web site had created a direct 1-to-4 ratio of reporters (or bloggers) to teams.
What was to prevent ESPN.com eventually, I reasoned, from going to a 1-to-2 ratio or a 1-to-1 ratio with, in effect, beat writers for every team?
The answer is on the front page of the New York Times today written by Brooks Barnes (with whom I worked briefly in the West Chester, Pa., office of the Philadelphia Inquirer when we were both two-year correspondents).
For some reason, today could be a watershed moment -- at least for media navel gazers like myself -- as Sports Business Journal's Bill King has a lengthy story today examining how staff and travel cuts by daily newspapers have hurt the teams that they cover. This Tweet today from SBJ's Liz Mullen sums up the story succinctly enough: "SBJ survey: 303 sports editorial job cuts at 50 North American dailies in last 18 mos. sports staffs at papers cut 21%."
The Times' story says that ESPN.com is opening microsites, in addition to its pilot site in Chicago, in Dallas, Los Angeles and Dallas.
ESPN already has eviscerated local sports casts, as local TV executives have cut back the amount of time they devote to sports and have filled in with relentless weather coverage, forfeiting sports news to the cable goliath. And those who follow what is going on with print journalism don't need to be reminded that the Internet (hello, ESPN.com) is eroding the financial underpinning of newspapers to the point that a good number of large ones are half the size of their former selves, having gotten there in only a few short years.
Will ESPN.com's micro sites be successful? It's hard to doubt almost anything that the network does will fail. It certainly has financial resources these days that newspapers can only dream of and putting reporters on the road with teams is the backbone of comprehensive sports coverage. It seems unclear from the Times' story as to whether that will be the case or not.
But why wouldn't they? Obviously, ESPN sees the vacuum.
Here is how I began to envision sports coverage when I had my epiphany last year and it appears to be shaking out. First, you will have the large, independent news-gathering organizations. Under this I put ESPN, ESPN.com, Sporting News Today, Sports Illustarted and SI.com, the New York Times and a select few other truly national newspapers. (The Wall Street Journal has increased sports coverage and will continue to beef up that part of its operation.) For example, I wonder how many newspapers sent a writer to the British Open. The AJC used to and Stewart Cink, a local guy, winning the tournament was huge news, but readers will have to go to a news organization like the Times with the budget to put a writer on the ground in Scotland to find non-news wire coverage.
Secondly, you will have what remains of newspapers until they find a sustainable model for survival. In Atlanta, with the coming of the fall season, expect some significant cutbacks in terms of writers traveling with the teams they cover. (This began last winter in the midst of the paper's latest round of buyouts when University of Georgia and Georgia Tech basketball, Thrashers and Hawks coverage on the road was cut back in certain circumstances.)
Those newspapers will have to pick their poison, so to speak. It's impossible for the AJC not to travel with Georgia and Tech football and -- for now -- the Braves because of the popularity of beat writer Dave O'Brien online. The Falcons, on the upswing, should be in a similar category (also because of the relatively limited travel and, thus expense, related to an NFL team) and the Hawks -- again, for now -- also would seem to be in that category.
Everything else would seem to be up for debate, as the paper has stopped traveling with NASCAR (when I joined the paper in 1999 the paper attended races in 33 of 39 weeks, I believe) and golf, Olympic sports and a lot of others -- playoffs included -- that are national in nature.
If financial pressure continues to increase on papers like the AJC, is it possible that the paper would restrict travel further to save costs? Yes.
And it's not the simple question of how the paper travels, it's in the numbers. When Georgia Tech made it to the 2004 NCAA men's basketball tournament finals, the paper had about 10 people there. It sent several on the day of the game. But when the Hawks were in the second round of the NBA playoffs for the first time in who knows how long, the paper sent the beat writer and columnist Mark Bradley to Cleveland.
So, in addition to the expansion of some large national media entities, most notably ESPN, you will see another source of expansion: the leagues and teams themselves. The coming of these experiments were explored briefly in today's SBJ.
Bowman has been covering the Braves for a few years now. And the leagues and teams themselves keep hiring notable sports writers. Sam Smith, one of the most respected NBA writers in the league and author of "The Jordan Rules," writes for the Chicago Bulls' Web site -- with a disclaimer noting that the contents of Smith's writing have not been "reviewed or endorsed" by the team.
Another example is the recent leap by ex-Redskins beat writer Jason LaCanfora to a job seemingly similar to what Wyche is doing with the NFL.
And back on June 22 when the NHL laid off 20 employees at its league offices, it was accompanied by coverage by SBJ's Tripp Mickle that alluded to the coming growth of the league as a media company. Mickle's Tweets that day mentioned that the league would hire "20 new employees" and that the new hires "aim to get rt skills".
Oh, and let's not forget bloggers, whose contributions are significant. However, I'm talking mainly about paid media.
So, there it is sports fans. The great irony is that readers' consumption continues to increase. Where will they get their news? Here are a variety of sources. The market will determine the winners.

What Falcons' New Minority Investors Mean

2009-07-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

There are several kinds of sports business stories. There are those that mean everything to a fan: seasons canceled over labor disputes, a team's decision to cut payroll and dump its stars or a sale to a new owner who promises dramatic changes to payroll, culture, etc.
Then there are those that are interesting only to those with a keen interest in business and that have little impact on the reader whose sole interest is the team's on-field performance. Inside baseball stories, so to speak.
Classify the decision by Falcons owner Arthur Blank to sell a minority interest in the team under this last category. According to the story in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Blank will still retain a controlling interest of more than 90 percent in the team. (To my knowledge, the NFL does not allow any owner to own less than a majority interest in any of its teams and also disallows corporations from owning teams; that way NFL franchises don't get in any Atlanta Spirit-style court messes.)
With this sale, Blank was simply monetizing his asset. Seven years ago, Blank paid a reported $545 million for the Falcons. As of last September in Forbes' annual valuation of NFL teams -- which economists I have interviewed cite as reliable and use in their own work -- the Falcons were estimated to have a value of $872 million.
So simply in appreciation, Blank has banked $327 million. (And you wonder why there are always people willing to buy downtrodden pro sports franchises, as the Falcons had the label of, when Blank bought them.)
Let's pretend, then, that Blank allowed his four new investors to buy 1 percent of the team for $8 or $9 million. The team already had two minority investors and, if we take the reporting in the story at face value that Blank still retains more than a 90 percent interest, let's assume that Blank sold 5 percent of the team.
That's a realized gain of between $40 and $45 million. Not bad.
In a statement released by Blank in announcing the transaction, Blank indicated that impetus for the sale was to increase funding to his family foundation: "This decision is driven primarily by my charitable and estate- planning goals and by the value that can be added to the franchise by partnering with minority owners of this caliber."
Blank's family foundation is not endowed -- that will happen, I believe, when both he and his wife are deceased, with the sale of his estate endowing the foundation. For a story I wrote early last year about Blank Foundation grants, its president Penny McPhee, explained how the foundation was financed.
"McPhee said foundation officials meet annually with Arthur Blank's finance team on a multi-year budget. She said Blank does not want the annual donations to be erratic, lest they affect the foundation's partners in a negative way."
Well, the Great Recession has taken its toll on almost everyone. That story indicated the foundation would make $19 million in grants in 2008. The first story I wrote at the Atlanta Business Chronicle indicated that the foundation gave out $23.3 million in 2006.
This year's total was set to be down to about $12 million, according to his November 2008 story by Rachel Tobin Ramos in the Journal-Constitution.
Obviously, this situation was not sitting well with Blank. The new infusion from this minority sale in the Falcons ought to help him get back to higher levels of funding for the foundation and weather the storm.
It's also interesting to take a look at who he chose to bring in -- in general, businessmen and entrepreneurs who share his interests. I don't know much about Ronald E. Canakaris or Ed Mendel, but I do know a bit about Doug Hertz (who, I believe, is a big Georgia Tech fan) and Derek Smith, whom I wrote a story about several months ago.
I first heard about Hertz in that same first story I wrote for the ABC. For those in Atlanta familiar with AM talk sportstalk station 790 The Zone, Hertz is the force behind Thursday's telethon on that station for Camp Twin Lakes, a nonprofit that hosts children with disabilities and serious illnesses.
Published reports have stated that Smith's value in Alpharetta-based ChoicePoint fluctuated over the years between $120 and $50 million. He recently founded his Myfifident Foundation
foundation with $10 million.
So, obviously, these are serious players who are not only incredibly wealthy but also share Blank's passion for philanthropy.
As for what it means for the Falcons, perhaps the bottom line is just a few more wealthy individuals watching games in the owners on Sundays.

The Blackhawks' Pickle

2009-07-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

If commissioner Gary Bettman's pre-lockout hope was that an NHL salary cap would function to create NFL-style parody, then Chicago hockey fans are about to get a first-hand taste of what that means.
Blackhawks fans, say hello to your friends in Buffalo and Tampa Bay -- two of the NHL's best franchises in the middle part of this decade that have sunken to also-ran status (or worse) because they were, in effect, "capped out."
ESPN.com's Scott Burnside gives an insightful look today into why Chicago general manager Dale Tallon was relieved of his duties after bringing the franchise to its most successful point in 13 years. It seems there was a lot of politicking going on in the front office and that when Tallon flubbed the timing of sending out qualifying offers to retain the team's restricted free agents at the end of last month, potentially risking that they could become unrestricted and leading to the filing of a grievance by the NHL Players Association, Tallon provided the amunition to his enemies that led to his ouster.
Yes, the Blackhawks have delivered one of the NHL's most exciting renaissances in recent years and, in the process, have become a financial juggernaut, leading the league with an average attendance of 22,247.
But this isn't Major League Baseball or the NBA where a team can buy itself out of bad contracts or the NFL, where cutting a player means you don't have to pay him. These are precarious times for NHL general managers to negotiate the NHL's guaranteed contracts and its hard salary cap, set for next season at $56.8 million.
And it appears that the trend of teams' awarding insanely long contracts is going to start haunting some teams. Philadelphia is among them, with Daniel Briere and his eight-year, $52-million deal and Chris Pronger, whose seven-year, $34.9-million extension won't kick in until he's 35, leaving the Flyers, most likely, with dead cap space at the end of that contract for at least a few years.
But let's take a look at the 'Hawks and what gave Chicago president John McDonough the pretense to get rid of Tallon.
Because of Tallon's mistake in the timing with the qualifying offers, he was forced quickly to sign deals with two players that ended up being more lucrative than might have been the case to prevent the possibility that they would go unrestricted (at which point he might have lost them to potential rivals or had to pay them even more). In particular, rookie of the year finalist Kris Versteeg, a forward, will assume a $3.083 million cap hit for the next three years, as will defenseman Cam Barker.
Those millions -- or hundreds of thousands -- are precious in the cap era and the Blackhawks' cap issues will shortly become an acute mess. A quick look at the Blackhawks' cap figures on NHLnumbers.com would indicate that the Blackhawks' window to win the Stanley Cup, as currently constituted, could be as short as next season.
Here's why: The Blackhawks owe the 21 players signed to contracts an estimated $58.147 million, which would theoretically put them $1.347 million over the cap.
Two of Chicago's best players and the foundation of the franchise for years to come, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, are on rookie contracts that pay them $850,000 and $875,000, respectively. However, those players' cap numbers are $3.725 for Kane and $2.8 million because of performance bonuses in their contracts. The Blackhawks are only under the salary cap because of a $4.26 million cushion provided by the league in case those players do not hit all of those bonuses.
If they do hit all of those bonuses -- which is very possible, considering they ranked as Chicago's No. 2 and 3 scorers last season -- then the mechanism in which the NHL compensates for teams that exceed the cap through bonsuses is to deduct the overage from the following season. (Ain't cost certainty a bitch?)
So the Blackhawks could face a 2010-11 season in which all of the following happens: The salary cap goes down because of continuining economic pressures, the Blackhawks face a charge of several million dollars from the previous season, further lessening their cap space, and, oh by the way, those two pillars of the foundation both hit restricted free agency. So does defenseman Duncan Keith, who led the team in average ice time per game. (Defenseman Brent Seabrook, No. 2 in average ice time, hits it the following season, but that's another quandary for another year.)
This is the crisis that new general manager Stan Bowman, one season into his tenure, will face. It will be impossible for him to keep the key elements of the team together.
Take a look at Chicago's largest contracts:
-- Defenseman Brian Campbell, cap hit of $7.140 million with four years remaining after '09-'10.
-- Goalie Cristobal Huet, who was the team's back-up in this year's playoffs but will assume the No. 1 job, at $5.625 million with two more years.
-- Right wing Marian Hossa, $5.233 million, with 10 years remaining.

So if Kane, Toews and Seabrook all receive contracts in the $5-$6-million range, one way to get under the cap would be to get rid of Campbell, Hossa and Huet, which, in addition to being nearly impossible, would eviscerate the team.
Here are some of the hideous options the Blackhawks could undertake to remedy the situation. They could buy out Campbell at a cost of $19 to $20 million. They could send him -- their No. 3 defenseman and highest scoring player at that position -- to the minors and pay him $7.14 million per year so he wouldn't count against his cap.
They could trade Huet, if anyone would take him at that salary, or buy him out and then try to find a cheap goalie capable of winning a Stanley Cup. (Good luck with that, although it's more risky than impossible.)
Ironically, the most movable player becomes Hossa. His 2009 Stanley Cup final performance aside, he's one of the game's premier wings and when compared to his peers his $5.233 cap number makes him much more palatable -- despite the length of his contract -- than say, Dany Heatley, whom Ottawa is finding untradable, in part, because of his $7.5 million cap number. (Remember, those players were once traded for each other with Greg de Vries thrown in largely as a salary dump for the then-cap strapped Senators.)
One other minor point about the Blackhawks' situation is how it puts the NHL and the NHLPA at odds even when they are supposedly partners. The union wants to maximize revenues (and, thus, salaries) so having a team resurgent in a market like Chicago, with its vast windfall of revenues, is vital.
But to the NHL the most important thing is keeping teams under the cap, which, in this case, could hurt the Blackhawks on the ice and, as a result, on the balance sheet. Chicago's loss could be the gain of, say, Nashville or Phoenix, if it still exists, which would do nothing for revenues.
So good luck Stan Bowman. You'll need all the help you can get from your legendary father.
And your accountant.

How about a DeVo Reunion in Atlanta?

2009-07-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I was watching the NHL Network when the names of some of the remaining unrestricted free agents scrolled across the screen. One leaped out at me: Greg de Vries.
It was hard to understand why the Thrashers let him go in the first place, although I'm sure the fact that he made $2.75 million last season was a big part of it. De Vries has size and some offensive upside (former coach Bob Hartley once referred to him as his "secret weapon" for the shootouts even though that little experiment didn't last long) but most of all he's probably one of the top character guys the franchise has ever had.
From my modest view of things, the Thrashers' roster could use an infusion of leadership. Ilya Kovalchuk is the team's captain and he was lauded for his work as captain after receiving the "C" last season. No doubt, Kovalchuk has the respect of every player in that room, but going forward it remains to be seen over the long haul if he will continue to do all of the things that a captain needs to do, especially standing up after a tough loss, taking responsibility and saying all of the right things.
That has not always been Kovalchuk's strong suit, as youth and hot-headedness have caused him at difficult times either to ditch the media -- most often, to the credit of the team's public relations staff, he would be dragged back to talk long after he had showered and calmed down -- or he would say some intemperate things. (See MacTavish, Craig; Crosby, Sidney.)
And unless he signs a new contract some time by the end of December, Thrashers media availability sessions will become a circus concerning Kovalchuk's status, as they were in 2008 with Marian Hossa, as the trading deadline approaches.
For Kovalchuk, such circumstances could be far from an ideal, just in terms of team leadership implications alone, to put it mildly.
Having been out of the room on a daily basis for a little more than two years now, I cannot personally attest to the leadership qualities of every player on the roster. However, if I had to name the team's veteran leaders/character players who play key roles (especially with the loss of Garnet Exelby) I'd say they are Slava Kozlov, who can be media shy himself at times, Colby Armstrong, Marty Reasoner, Ron Hainsey and Johan Hedberg, who, as a back-up goaltender, is hardly in much of a position to lead. (I'm not saying that Eric Boulton, Jim Slater and Chris Thorburn aren't good character players -- to the contrary, they are -- but defensemen log significantly more minutes than third- and fourth-liners and play a more integral role.)
That seems a little thin to my liking, especially on the backline where Hainsey appears to be the only player in a position to lead. Maybe Pavel Kubina will be a great leader, but I'm not quite sure that's his reputation or skill set.
Now let's take a look at what you get in de Vries, who, despite his age, hasn't played fewer than 71 games in a season over the last four and twice played a full 82 in his two seasons in Atlanta. At the end of the 2007-08 season, de Vries played with a broken rib. Notably, he scored the game-winning goal over St. Louis in the second-to-last game of the season as Nashville earned the Western Conference's final playoff berth by only three points.
That's character and it's leading by example. What's more, de Vries is a calming influence, always saying the right things at difficult times. He is one of those players who helps to build team unity, as he did in Atlanta by being one of the ring leaders of team paintball games.
There's also the small matter of his having played in 111 playoff games in 10 different seasons, winning the Stanley Cup in 2001 with Colorado.
Yes, he will be 37 during the season, but who would you rather have as a third-pair defenseman, deVo or Joel Kwiatkowski, who will be 33 in March and whom the Thrashers thought they had signed until they learned that Kwiatkowski already had inked a deal to return to Russia?
For the record, de Vries is plus-23 in 878 NHL games while Kwiatkowski is minus-27 in 282 career games, albeit having played on mostly dreadful teams.
At this stage of his career, de Vries probably is not looking for a huge contract, but he likely would not play for the NHL minimum ($525,000) either. The question is whether Thrashers general manager Don Waddell has the budget for perhaps $1 million for de Vries and whether de Vries would want to return.
Last year the Thrashers were keen on having defenseman Mathieu Schneider to help in the tutelage of budding star Zach Bogosian and, by all accounts, the experiment went well. In that sense, money for de Vries would go to that same good, mentoring cause and would accomplish the same goal -- along with having a more than competent player at a key position.

Francoeur's Fall and Hope for a Fresh Start

2009-07-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

A little more than a year ago I spoke to Jeff Francoeur for a story that I wrote about his seemingly limitless potential as a corporate pitchman.
At age 24, the right fielder was coming off his second straight season in which he played all 162 games. The Atlanta Braves home-grown product had hit .293 the year before with 19 home runs and 105 RBI and he had a bona fide squeaky-clean, local-boy-makes-good image. (I remember when I was at the Journal-Constitution and covered one of his high school football games during the 2001 season at Parkview -- Francoeur was an unbelievably dominant player as a safety and wide receiver on back-to-back state championship teams -- I counted something like nine different staffers who had written stories about him; today nine reporters would represent almost the entire AJC sports staff.)
By early 2008, Francoeur already had endorsement deals with Delta Air Lines, sports apparel maker Under Armour and sporting goods equipment manufacturer Mizuno.
He had switched his representation to Cobb County-based Career Sports and Entertainment, an agency that specialized in marketing, as well as client representation. He was entering a contract year and figured to cash in both with on the field and off.
I was convinced that for Francoeur the sky was the limit concerning his marketing potential, as, apparently, was Francoeur.
"We're looking at a couple of other big ones for this offseason," he said. "There are so many good businesses in Atlanta, from Coke, Home Depot, Chick-fil-A."
That story ran on May 30. If his decline had not begun at that point, it was about to. According to the AJC's Dave O'Brien, Francoeur's numbers have been dreadful since the 2007 All-Star Break: a .256 average with 25 home runs, 153 RBI, a .304 on-base percentage and a .381 slugging percentage in 310 games.
I remember feeling bad for Francoeur after the story ran. There he was on the front page of the Atlanta Business Chronicle talking about his strategies for life after baseball and such and at the same time the fortunes of his on-field career were plummeting.
Was it possible that he took his eye off the prize, that he was thinking too much about contracts and endorsements and not baseball? I've never been around him long enough to know, but I'd imagine that that his comments in that story might not have made the Braves' baseball people too happy. Of course, had Francoeur played the same way as he had in his first few seasons, there would have been no issue at all.
But on a few occasions, Francoeur, someone unaccustomed to having to deal with adversity, could have made better decisions in how he handled situations. At the top of the list was his comments after the Braves sent him to the minors to try to get his hitting back up to par in '08.
He bristled at the demotion and talked about how it had hurt his relationship with the organization. Then this past offseason there was his decision to consult a hitting coach other than the Braves' Terry Pendleton.
An effervescent personality who is a hard-worker and popular with his teammates and the fans, Francoeur's popularity made it virtually impossible for the team to criticism him publicly. But until the point where the Braves ultimately shipped him to the Mets late on Friday, the trade rumors had long persisted.
How much was the Braves' shopping of Francoeur a question of performance and how much was it a question of attitude?
Only Frank Wren, Bobby Cox and John Schuerholz know the answer. Yet it's possible that performance and attitude were intertwined and that is what so frustrated the Braves. But the truth is that on an offensively weak team like the Braves, Francoeur's performance at the plate was not nearly good enough.
I am neither a fan of the Braves nor Mets (nor any baseball team, really) but I hope Francoeur regains his past form mainly because it's sad to see someone who appears to be a genuinely decent person succumb to such a fall from grace. (I covered the night when Parkview retired his baseball jersey in 2007 and he cried and gave a long speech and seemed sincerely moved, lingering long after the ceremony had ended to talk with members of the Gwinnett Daily Post and others.)
It would be a great irony to see an Atlanta product come back to haunt the Braves' most hated rival. I doubt few if any fans would turn on him in the way that they did when Tom Glavine signed with the Mets. After all, Francoeur didn't choose to leave, even if the move was necessary.
If Francoeur doesn't get back to form, he risks becoming one of those baseball oddites like 1980 American League Rookie of the Year Joe Charboneau who was out of the major leagues after hitting .214 in '82.
And that's a cruel fate that few, if any, deserve.

Comparing Contracts: Kotalik vs. Antropov

2009-07-10T09:58:00.000-07:00

When I first saw the Thrashers' signing of Nik Antropov, I thought that four years at $4 million apiece for a two-time 20-goal scorer was a lot. The New York Rangers' signing on Thursday of Ales Kotalik, who received a three-year contract at $3 million per to replace Antropov on the Rangers' roster, essentially confirms that.
Let's take a look at the two players. NHL.com lists Antropov as a center, but for the last few years he's moved to right wing (where TSN.ca lists him). NHL.com lists Kotalik as a left winger/right winger. So, for all intents and purposes, if Atlanta was looking for a right winger to play with Ilya Kovalchuk, both players were available.
Antropov is 29 and was selected 10th overall in 1998. Kotalik was a sixth-rounder in the same draft year, which basically makes them the same age, although Kotalik is 30. Kotalik has played seven NHL seasons (only 13 games in his rookie season) and has scored 121 goals or an average of 17.3 per season. Throw out that one goal in his rookie season and he's averaging a round 20 goals per season and has hit that plateau four times.
On the other hand, Antropov has nine NHL seasons under his belt and 132 goals for an average of 14.7 per season.
That's a difference, conservatively, of eight goals over three seasons and, using Kotalik's higher average, of almost 16. Yet Antropov will make $1 million more per season and got an extra year.
Let's look at assists now. Kotalik has 130 in his career for an average of 18.6 per season while Antropov has 172 for 19.1, which makes them roughly a wash.
If Atlanta is counting on Antropov to produce at a higher level because he will play on the same line with Kovalchuk, consider that Antropov played with for several seasons in Toronto with one of the game's premier centers in Mats Sundin. In the second-most productive year of Antropov's career, he scored 26 goals when Sundin had 46 assists.
Kovalchuk has averaged 37 assists per season in his career and has never had more than 48, his total of 2008-09, so unless the Thrashers can find a center to channel 50 or 60 assists (Angelo Esposito, anyone?) they can basically expect Antropov to score somewhere between 17 and 25 goals.
Anything more than that and he'd clearly be producing beyond his historical levels.
One factor that Antropov does have on his side is size. At 6-foot-6 and 230 pounds, he's one of the game's biggest players, especially in terms of skilled forwards. Kotalik is 6-1, 227, which doesn't exactly make him a tiny.
But if Atlanta is hoping for durability out of that size, Kotalik again has the edge: He has averaged 63.6 games per season to Antropov's 58.6. (Remove that 13-game rookie season and Kotalik again rockets to an avearage of 74.2; Antropov, in his third season, played only 11 games and had a 34-game stint that season in the American Hockey League.)
One final comparison. Should Atlanta make the second playoff appearance in franchise history next season (which, in itself, would likely seal the Antropov deal as having been worth it), Antropov does not have the greatest postseason history. In 35 games, he has four goals and four assists for eight points. His best season was this past one when he truly was one of the Rangers' best players against Washington in the first round. He totaled two goals and one assist in seven games on a very low-scoring team.
Kotalik? How about 15 points in 34 games. So, Kotalik has seven more playoff points -- which are like gold -- in one less game. Again, in fairness, Kotalik's Buffalo teams were much better than any that Antropov played on but he nonetheless performed, posting back-to-back seasons of 8 points in 18 and 16 games, respectively. For that, he deserves credit.
I don't mean to sound overly negative about Antropov -- I wrote and I believe that he will be a good fit with Kovalchuk and overall I think he improves the team -- but I'm just looking at his value in terms of what Atlanta paid.
If they signed him in large part with the design of pleasing his pal Kovalchuk and hoping that Kovalchuk would re-sign beyond the coming season, their plan had best work. If not, they could be looking at three years of a disgruntled Nik Antropov who could struggle to perform at a $4-million level if history is any indicator.

Reading the Obits Today

2009-07-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

As a lover of newspapers, I've always enjoyed reading the obituary section. Morbid, you say? Not at all. I view it as the complete opposite: The celebration or chronicling of fascinating lives.
Up here in Maine today -- with the temperatures barely breaking 60 degrees and heavy downpours from the late afternoon on -- I had plenty of time to read two obits in the New York Times, one of which was extremely lengthy.
As someone who did not reach high school until the late '80s, I had little appreciation for who Robert McNamara was other than the secretary of defense during the Vietnam War. His obit read like a history lesson and made me realize how great his influence was. He will go down as one of the most important figures in American history in the 20th century.
I came away from it thinking about what a tragic figure he was -- truly someone out of Shakespearean or Greek tragedy. I needed the perspective of people who were older (which I got in reading Bob Herbert's op-ed in the Times and the excerpt in the obit about a Times' editorial on McNamara from the '90s) to comprehend how reviled he was.
McNamara served as defense secretary for seven years in the '60s and was the principal architect of the Vietnam War. By the late '60s, he realized the war was not winnable but said nothing publicly for almost 30 years. For this, he was excoriated for the lives he could have saved but did not.
Sixteen thousand soldiers died in Vietnam while McNamara was defense chief. That meant 42,000 more died after his tenure -- lives he could have potentially saved by using his stature in the country to denounce the war.
What struck me was the guilt that the man must have lived with for the final 42 years of his life. One of his sons joined anti-war protests. To know that a close member of your family disagrees with you on something so elemental and would take to the streets in a showing that would be sure to capture public attention and that so much of society finds you worthy of revulsion would be a torturous way to end one's years -- like Oedipus' blinding himself and living out his life in exile.
Many probably wished that McNamara had done exactly that. Unlike so many of the 18-, 19-, 20- and 21-years who were sent to Vietnam and came home in body bags or who came home with debilitating physical or mental scars, McNamara got to live out his years in relative peace. In a poignant anecdote, the Times described the aged McNamara and his 1,000-yard stare as a common site walking the Washington, D.C., streets near his office by the White House.
While many from the Vietnam generation would likely find nothing but disgust for McNamara, I found him pitiable. For one, the man was tortured by the idea that the only thing that prevented him from being convicted as a war criminal for his role in the decision to bomb civilian targets in Japan during World War II was the concept that the United States came out on the winning side.
I also thought of George W. Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumseld, and how he seemingly repeated so many mistakes in Iraq that McNamara did in Vietnam (a failure to know your enemy, notably) and Rumsfeld's bristling at any criticism. In the end, McNamara accepted blame for his failures.
It's one thing to realize the error of your ways and be tortured by it. It's quite another never to admit that you made any. ("Stuff happens," is a favorite Rumsfeldian bromide.)
The other obit was that of Robert Taylor, who served as publisher of the Philadelphia Bulletin when it was that city's largest newspaper and one of the largest in America. When I worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer, many of the older veterans of the paper talked wistfully about the Bulletin, which went under in 1982. (Just as 2009 is sounding the death knell for a number of large newspapers, so did the early '80s with those in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., going under.) Those reporters saw the competitive pressures from the Bulletin as making the Inquirer better; they viewed the Inquirer as badly in decline when I worked there in the late '90s, a shell of its perennial Pulitzer Prize-winning self from the era of editor Eugene Roberts.
So, in essence, the Bulletin went from being the largest afternoon paper in the United States to out of busines in about 15 years. Afternoon papers began dying, losing out to their morning counterparts which won out as readers chose the immediacy of earlier as opposed to later news.
It's not so different from what's going on today. It's taken the Internet about as long to erode the business model of today's papers.
There were but few similarities to the obits for Taylor and McNamara, one being that both lived well into their '90s. These men, ensconced in white-collar, upper class jobs, lived a lot longer than both of my grandfathers, who expired in their mid-70s after lifetimes of manual labor.
For a cold, rainy summer day, it proved to be a thought-provoking dose of reading.

Nash Contract Sets a Benchmark for Kovalchuk

2009-07-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

Just as it happened in 2005, the contract that Columbus Blue Jackets winger Rick Nash received this week will impact what the Atlanta Thrashers will need to do to re-sign Ilya Kovalchuk. (The only difference is that Nash will have signed his deal one season before Kovalchuk has to re-up.)
The two players, selected first overall one year apart, have often have their destinies intertwined. In 2004, they both finished tied for the league lead in goals at 41 (along with Jarome Iginla.)
Nash, 25, signed an eight-year, $62.4 million contract that carries with it a $7.8 million annual salary cap hit.
The 26-year-old Kovalchuk has totaled more than a point-per-game in seven NHL seasons (545 games, 297 goals, 260 assists for 557 points) or 1.02 points per game.
Nash's totals are considerably lower. In 441 games, he has 194 goals and 161 assists for 355 points or .80 points per game.
So, in essence, Kovalchuk's production is almost 25 percent higher. Does that, then, mean that he should be paid 25 percent more than Nash?
That would mean an annual cap hit of a whopping $9.75 million per season. No doubt, Kovalchuk's agent Jay Grossman would love to land a deal of that value.
When Kovalchuk signed his last deal, contracts were mostly evaluated in terms of the average salary over the length of the deal. (Kovalchuk's was just shy of $6.4 million while Nash's was about $5.4 million. Atlanta could be lucky if the difference between Nash's and Kovalchuk's contracts ends up being $1 million per year more again.)
Because NHL teams have lengthened the terms of contracts with much smaller salaries at the tail ends to lessen the annual cap hit, the average value is no longer a valid measure of a player-to-player analysis.
For example, Tampa Bay center Vinny Lecavalier has an 11-year deal worth $85 million so his average is $7.72 million. Few would argue that Nash is a better player than Lecavalier, though Nash's contract's cap hit is higher.
And because of Lecavalier's winning of a Stanley Cup, Kovalchuk cannot command as much as Lecavalier.
But look more closely at the Lecavalier deal: It pays him $10 million for each of the first seven seasons.
Alexander Ovechkin's deal does not tail off in this way. It pays him $9 million for the first six seasons and then $10 million for the last seven, giving an annual cap hit of $9.538 million.
Some would argue that Ovechkin, relatively, is underpaid then when compared to Lecavalier. (Again, Lecavalier has that Stanley Cup on his resume, even if he had perhaps a better supporting cast than Ovechkin with Brad Richards -- Conn Smythe winner in the Cup-winning year -- and Martin St. Louis -- Hart Trophy winner that year.)
Look for Atlanta to use Marian Hossa's new contract with Chicago as a comparable. The most it pays him in any year is $7.9 million, as it averages $5.233 million. It is 12 years long and pays him $62.8 million. The total of Hossa's deal is only $400,000 more than Nash's, but the amount of years involved severely alter the average cap hit. However, Hossa is four years older than Kovalchuk and, thus, closer to a theoretical decline in production while Kovalchuk would theoretically have more years remaining in his prime.)
These will be the arguments between Kovalchuk and the Thrashers as they negotiate and, for the most part, these contracts will be the comparables that, to a large degree, will set the parameters.
Last time Thrashers general manager had Doug MacLean to thank for Nash's contract. This time, he has Scott Howson.

Thoughts from Maine; Quick Note on Antropov

2009-07-03T11:18:00.000-07:00

I've been here for less than 24 hours and I'm being struck in a number of subtle ways about the quirky differences between Maine and other states, including New England ones.
A few of them come from the grocery store. Shopping in the dairy aisle right next to the french onion dip is clam dip. I asked my mom how to eat clam dip and she didn't seem to be too sure if it went on crackers or potato chips.
The best thing about grocery stores in Maine is that you can buy hard liquor there. Hmmm, cereal, soup... whiskey. Nice! That's good old-fashioned libertarianism, the kind of conservative politics that could come back in vogue, if anyone would ever choose to practice them.
There's also the bottle bill redemption. One of my first jobs was working at Star Market and my favorite thing to do was redeem bottles. It was sort of like a carnival game, trying to get the right bottle in the right bin as fast as you could, they needed to be sorted by size. (Although in the summer sometimes people tried to get money for bottles they had collected in the woods or on the streets and they were filled with things that were growing in them and smelled. Disgusting.)
But long ago Massachusetts, along with, I thought, almost every other state, jettisoned the bottle redemption concept. Not Maine, set in its ways.
And then there's the beach. The sun actually has come out today, after we left, of course. But it was probably about 70 degrees and cloudy. Almost no one at the beach stripped down to their bathing suits.
Beachgoing in Maine, to me, seems confinded to sitting in chairs and watching children make sand castles, as their ankles freeze in a few inches of ocean water.

* * *

The Thrashers got the right player in 6-foot-6 Nik Antropov, but seems to me that they way overpaid and did it in a somewhat desperate effort to retain Ilya Kovalchuk beyond this season.
Antropov was long an enigma to fans in Toronto. With his tremendous size, much more was expected of him than hitting the 20-goal plateau only twice in nine seasons.
However, he seems like he could be one of the few forwards capable of meshing with Kovalchuk in the rare way that singular talents like Dany Heatley and Marc Savard have in the past.
Compare Antropov's pay to another Thrashers winger, Slava Kozlov. Kozlov, who has recorded 71 points or more in three of the last four seasons, will make $3.85 million this coming season.
Antropov, who signed a four-year, $16-million deal, is coming off a career (contract) year in which he recorded highs in points (59) and goals (28). Only two other times in his career has Antropov hit 45 points or more.
Antropov will be 30 in February, Kozlov 37 in May, so that accounts for a large part of the pay disparity.
Still, it's a lot of money for a two-time 20-goal scorer. Take a look at how fast salaries have escalated. Savard signed a four-year, $20 million deal after 2005-06 and last season he ranked among NHL centers in points. That contract came after Savard finished in the top 10 in the NHL in points.
Seems to me that Atlanta overpaid for Antropov as much for being able to entice fellow ethnic Russian and pal Kovalchuk to re-sign in Atlanta beyond the coming season as much as they did for what he can do on the ice.

Thoughts on Kubina Deal

2009-07-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

If the Thrashers felt that they were too small of a team last season, they certainly would appear to have one of the biggest top fours in the NHL with the addition of 6-foot-4 Pavel Kubina. Kubina goes with 6-2 Zach Bogosian and 6-3 Ron Hainsey and 5-10 Tobias Enstrom.
New Atlanta associate general manager Rick Dudley's fingerprints have to be all over this deal, as Dudley was general manager in Tampa Bay for several seasons while Kubina was on the team.
Kubina brings a big shot and his 17 goals in 2003-04 for Tampa (during its Stanley Cup season) tied for the league lead among all defensemen.
Over the last two seasons, Kubina posted back-to-back 40-point totals and was a plus-player in his first two seasons with the Leafs on bad teams -- both positive signs for Atlanta. The biggest challenge in using Kubina for Atlanta will be how coach John Anderson manages ice time between Kubina, 32, and defenseman Tobias Enstrom, 24, who represents the future.
The Thrashers now have something that they have never had in their history: some huge minute-munchers on the back line. To me, the most telling statistic for a defenseman, and truly players in general, is time on ice because it shows which player or players the coach has the most confidence in. If a guy is on the ice the most, there's a reason.
Last season Enstrom led the Thrashers in ice time at 23:31 and Hainsey ranked second at 22:22. Bogosian averaged 18:06, impressive for a rookie, especially considering the length of time he missed with injury. Expect his ice time to rocket upwards in Season Two.
Last season for Toronto, Kubina ranked third in average time on ice at 22:03 behind Tomas Kaberle and Ian White. Rookie Luke Schenn ranked only 31 seconds behind Kubina, which is probably what made Kubina expendable, along with his $5 million salary. Schenn is the future while Kubina represents the past as Leafs general manager Brian Burke cleans house to build his type of team.
In that sense, Garnet Exelby, once known as one of the game's premier hitters, is right up Burke's alley. The big challenge for Exelby, especially playing in Toronto under that huge microscope, will be re-establishing that reputation.
I know there had been feeling around some in the Thrashers organization for years that Exelby's physical side had slipped because of his concussion history and that he was not nearly the fearsome presence on the ice that he once was. (Leafs fans surely will talk over and over about the hit that Exelby put on Mats Sundin a few years back.)
Exelby, one of my favorite players when I covered the team, is a strong character guy and was stepping into his own as a team leader, even with his ice time ranking him as the team's No. 4 defenseman. From the comments that I read after games, he was willing to speak up, take responsibility and say when performances were not up to snuff.
But back to Enstrom. For much of the first two thirds of last season, he regressed from his strong rookie year after the team acquired Mathieu Schneider and Schneider received more minutes and more power play time. Once Schneider was traded to Montreal, however, Enstrom flourished.
Will Kubina's acquisition represent a repeat for Enstrom: High-salaried, offensively skilled defenseman reduces Enstrom's time and, as a consequence, his productivity?
Certainly, Enstrom is an enormous part of the Thrashers' future and impeding his development would not help the franchise. The biggest challenge for coach John Anderson will be managing the ice time between Kubina and Enstrom so that both produce.
There's one other possible caution for Atlanta in the deal. Could Kubina represent a replay of the signing of Jaroslav Modry? Like Kubina, Modry was a big, Czech defenseman with offensive upside who could play big minutes.
Unfortunately, what the Thrashers learned in the 2005-06 season, to their surprise, was that defensively Modry was one of those defenders who made his way in the pre-lockout NHL as an obstructionist.
When the new rules came into effect, Modry was a step (or two) too slow and often had to resort to hooking or holding which landed him far too often in the penalty box. As a result, Atlanta could not play him against other teams top offensive lines since he was too much of a liability and Modry became mostly a power play specialist, where he succeeded with 38 points. The next year, he was shipped to Dallas.
Modry was 34 when he played his first season for Atlanta. Kubina is 32. In all likelihood, Kubina is a far better skater than Modry was, has that benefit of being two years younger than Modry was, and there's no new rules to skew any analysis of his game.
But for Atlanta to be a playoff team, they'll need Kubina to return to being a plus player, which he has been three of the last five seasons but which he never was for the first six of his NHL career.
Those were mostly bad teams (although the 2002-03 Lightning were a playoff team), but they were not all that different from Atlanta has been for the last two.
How this trade works out should define the Thrashers' season.

Does Heatley Really Want to go to NY?

2009-07-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

All reports indicate that disgruntled Ottawa Senators winger Dany Heatley has invoked his no-trade clause to void a trade to Edmonton. The scuttlebutt also appears to be that the New York Rangers are heavily in the mix to land Heatley. The Rangers had trouble scoring last year and general manager Glen Sather cleared a ton of cap space by dealing center Scott Gomez to Montreal yesterday so Heatley could help immensely in that department.
But if Heatley really prefers to go to New York over Edmonton, he should take a few minutes to do some research if he truly wants to take a bite out of the Big Apple. Not a heavy investment of time, just a few short video clips or transcripts of press conferences.
The first press conference I'd pick would come from this playoff season when Rangers coach John Tortorella fielded media queries after he was suspended in a first-round playoff series against Washington for throwing a water bottle into the stands at the Verizon Center. Check out the dogged nature of the questioning from the New York Post's Larry Brooks and the contentiousness of the exchange. (Here's a transcript.)
The second would be almost any from Tortorella's first few years of coaching Vincent Lecavalier in Tampa Bay when Tortorella would call out Lecavalier by name in postgame press conferences for what he perceived to be less than what Lecavalier was capable of delivering on the ice.
Let's take the first one first. Heatley has taken enough of a bashing in the Ottawa media, so there's no reason to go there. But one thing the coverage does reveal is Heatley's aversion to media scrutiny.
In Tuesday's Ottawa Citizen, Wayne Scanlan had a fascinating story in which he interviewed Heatley defender Tom Molloy, a friend of Heatley's parents. Here is one of the most interesting parts: "Molloy wrote a letter to The Citizen sports department because the Heatleys told him they didn't have 'a forum' to express the other side of the story."
Let me clear my throat. Heatley doesn't have a forum? All he has to do is call one of, oh, about 100 Canadian media outlets to provide his side of the story and it would be front-page news all over Canada. In Atlanta, when the Braves cut future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine a few weeks back, Glavine took a few days then hit the airwaves. Everything he said made sense and fan sentiment was universally in his favor. In essence, Glavine understood that any professional athlete of his stature always has a "forum" at his disposal.
Why hasn't Heatley done the same? In short, he hasn't spoken publicly since requesting a trade because he does not like to answer hard questions until he absolutely has to. It's the offseason, so he can continue to send out his agent Stacey McAlpine to answer for him, insofar as McAlpine is inclined to be a punching bag.
I remember when Heatley got traded from Atlanta to Ottawa in 2005. It was huge news. All day long I played phone tag with McAlpine who promised to get Dany on the phone for me. Guess what? Dany had time to do a phone interview with Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun where he could proclaim how glad he was to be playing in a true hockey market, but not with an Atlanta outlet where questions, in this circumstance, where likely to be more pointed about why he wanted out.
Don't get me wrong, the media coverage in Ottawa is intense. I've had enough players who played there tell me about how the city has such a small-town feel so that everyone knows what they're doing. Players can't go out to eat or walk down the street without being recognized.
That would probably not be the case for Heatley in New York -- where even celebrities like Madonna can live without getting pestered all the time -- but I think it's fair to say that the media's relationship with the team is more adversarial than it is in Ottawa. It's just the nature of the media taking on the personality of its city.
Now let's take a look at the coach that Heatley would have to play for, the famously combustible Tortorella, who, I believe, is one of the best in the NHL. Why did Heatley request a trade in the first place? Oh, his coach, Cory Clouston, was too hard on him. Clouston once had the temerity to politely criticize Heatley in the media.
If he didn't like playing for Clouston, how he could possibly co-exist with a coach who is as in-your-face as Tortorella? Reporters I got to know on the beat in Tampa said that the Lightning players really liked Tortorella. They got more off days than most and, let's be honest, Tortorella doesn't play games. What you see is what you get and they understood that. The man led them to the Stanley Cup and they appreciated that he got the most out of them. But, as with all coaches, eventually the message stops losing its potency after a while.
If Heatley was so sensitive that he could not last two months with Clouston, who cut his ice time and put him on the second power play unit -- how else can coaches get the message to athletes guaranteed salaries in the $40-million range? Certainly not by fining them -- because he didn't like Heatley's two-way effort, how on earth could he last a full season with Tortorella?
This saga is fascinating in how it is playing out. I'd imagine that Senators general manager Bryan Murray's head is about to explode out of frustration after he worked hard to put together a deal for players he truly prized and had experience in managing.
Maybe Heatley eventually will go to the Rangers, but, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

The State of Hockey in Mass.

2009-06-30T08:46:00.001-07:00

You know that cute little subplot in the movie "Miracle" about the rivalry between the players from Minnesota and from Massachusetts? If they were making that movie about hockey amateurs today, you might be hard pressed to find such a rivalry, especially when it comes to high schoolers.
Let me explain. I was watching the TSN feed of the NHL draft on Friday night -- annoying how Versus doesn't pay for production of its own broadcast, isn't it? -- when the New York Rangers took Phillips Andover defenseman Chris Kreider at No. 19 overall. At that point TSN's Bob McKenzie observed that Massachusetts high school players have not fared very well in the draft in recent years.
Instantly, as someone who grew up going to more than my share of Massachusetts high school hockey games, my pride was injured. Was this the typical Canadian hockey chauvinism?
I was thinking about it again this morning when another thought popped into my head. Back in 2006 before the Olympics, I wrote a story about U.S. coach Peter Laviolette who happened to go to Massachusetts' Franklin High School (as I did, albeit eight years later). I interviewed Laviolette's high school coach, Bob Luccini, who at the time was working as a part-time amateur scout for Laviolette's team, the Carolina Hurricanes. Luccini was young enough to have still been coaching (in his mid 50s) yet had retired a few years earlier. Among the reasons he gave me for his decision, if memory serves, was how the caliber of high school hockey had dropped off.
That got me thinking. The Thrashers the previous year had drafted a defenseman, Jimmy Sharrow, from Framingham, Mass., and winger, Jordan LaVallee, from Westborough, Mass. Both of them left home to play in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. I also thought of Ray Bourque's son Chris, who left Boston University (a slightly different matter) to play in the Quebec league.
Obviously, I thought, this is a trend. The best high school players in Massachusetts don't stay home to play for their high schools anymore. A look at the 2008-09 Franklin High schedule lists 21 hockey games. The first isn't played until Dec. 17.
Zach Bogosian, selected third overall in the 2008 draft by the Atlanta Thrashers, played 36 games in one year of high school at Massachusetts' private Cushing Academy (cost for boarding students $42,000), which is not governed by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, before moving on to major junior in the form of Peterborough of the Ontario Hockey League.
In contrast to Massachusetts high schools, major junior teams like the Halifax Mooseheads -- which offers an English-speaking host city, as many Quebec league outposts do now, and relative proximity to home in New England -- start play on Sept. 11 this year and will play 70 regular season games.
Junior hockey also is increasingly popular in New England, further depleting the Massachusetts' high school ranks.
In the last three years of the NHL draft, Kreider was the only Massachusetts high school player drafted in the first round. In contrast, over the last four year years Minnesota high schools have produced a first-round pick every year (Nick Leddy in '09, Jake Gardiner in '08, Ryan McDonagh in '07), including the first overall pick in 2006 in defenseman Erik Johnson.
Furthermore, other states are catching up on what was close to a monopoly for Massachusetts high schools, which got the relative jump on other areas in the United States with the surge in popularity of the sport that Bobby Orr brought to the Boston Bruins in the late 1960s and 1970s.
In 2007, 10 Americans were selected in the first round and they came from places as diverse as California, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennslyvania, and, of all places, Texas (not to mention the more traditional areas).
So the bottom line is that Bob McKenzie, as is most often the case, had it right.

How the NHL Salary Cap Went Up

2009-06-29T10:43:00.001-07:00

This question has befuddled me for a while so I decided to do some research into it. As NHL fans might know, the league set its salary cap last week at $100,000 higher (at $56.8 million per team) for the 2009-10 season than it was for the previous year. This means that every year since the cap came into creation, its upper limit has gone up.
Because of The Great Recession, NHL revenues were down (ticket and suite sales, sponsorships, licensing, etc.) in 2008-09 as compared to 2007-08. With revenues down, one would expect the cap also to go down, correct? Not so fast, my friend, as Lee Corso would say.
It seems that every year, the NHL Players Association has the right to invoke a 5 percent bump in the cap. How is this possible, I wondered?
So I set out to find the legal verbiage that gives the PA this right. I had to locate my dusty copy of the NHL's Collective Bargaining Agreement, a trusty spiral-bound copy of which I obtained at the 2006 draft in Vancouver (along with a seminar for us low-rent hockey scribes run by Messrs. Bill Daly and Ted Saskin).
It took a few minutes to hunt down the applicable passage and a few more to translate it from the legalese, but I believe this to be the relevant portion:

Article 50 Team Payroll Range System, Section 50.5 (b) Lower Limit and Upper Limit (i) explains the formula for setting the per-team cap and says that it "shall be adjusted upward by a factor of five (5) percent in each League Year... until League-wide Actual [Hockey Related Revenue] equals or exceeds $2.1 billion, at which point the five (5) percent growth factor shall continue unless or until either party to this Agreement proposes a different growth factor based on actual revenue experience and/or projections, in which case the parties shall discuss and agree upon a new factor." [The italics are mine.]

There it is, basically in the fine print of the CBA, my reading of this section (borne out by what has happened in practice) shows that the league gave the players association the right to increase the cap by 5 percent every year until the CBA expires.
So if the players had not invoked this so-called "escalator clause" for 2009-10 the cap would have fallen by $2.84 million per team to $53.96 million. It doesn't seem like much, but as one agent pointed out to me during the lockout, you have to multiply the difference by all 30 teams. Do that and you have an extra $85.2 million in player salaries next season. That equates to roughly 179 extra players making the league minimum of $475,000 (or 7.8 full team rosters' worth) or another 7.5 players capable of making the league-maximum salary of $11.36 million. It's sort of like the NHLPA's equivalent of President Obama's economic stimulus plan -- flip the switch and print more cash.
Wouldn't it seem, then, like a no-brainer for the players to vote every year to invoke the 5 percent increase? Again, not so fast.
Because the CBA guarantees teams, in the famous words of Commissioner Gary Bettman, "cost certainty," the owners (and the players) always get their percentage of hockey related revenue. This is where the "escrow account," which the players dread, comes in.
The owners have the right to retain a percentage of players' salaries up to 20 percent until the exact amount of revenue and player salaries are finalized at the end of the season to make sure that each gets the exact percentage it is due. So, in theory, a player who signs a contract for $1 million might gross only $800,000. (It also works in the flip direction: if hockey-related revenue exceeds projections, a player could earn more than the contract he has signed.)
Larry Brooks of the New York Post, who understands the machinations of the CBA probably as well as any hockey writer, wrote about this subject on Sunday, June 28.
He reported that the escrow for 2008-09 was 15.9 percent and used the example of the Washington Capitals' Alexander Ovechkin, who was to be paid $9 million but, because of the escrow, grossed $1.431 million less.
Brooks reported that the union's vote on upping the cap 5 percent was close and then opined that players who voted against the escalator clause "were short-sighted and selfish, for it always is important to have the cap as high as possible and the most money possible in the system."
Let's examine that statement for a minute. If you're a high-end player like impending free agents Jay Bouwmeester or Marian Hossa, you may very well command a top salary of $8 or $9 million. Even if you have 20 percent of it withheld -- the escrow will surely increase since the cap has gone up artificially because of the escalator clause -- you still gross $6.4 or $7.2 million. Not bad.
But what if you're Colin Stuart of the Atlanta Thrashers, making the league minimum? On your contract of $475,000, you're looking at grossing perhaps $380,000 instead of $400,000. Do you want to vote, in essence, to lose $20,000 in pay so the top-end free agents can have the theoretical right to make the maximum salary of $11.36 million instead of $10.79 million?
Remember, there's probably a lot more guys making the league minimum than there are Ovechkins, Lecavaliers, Heatleys, Bouwmeesters and Hossas. And the average length of a career of a guy making the league minimum is a lot shorter than the highest-paid players. The players at the bottom end of the salary structure need to make as much as they can before they're back in the AHL, ECHL or lower-paying European leagues.