I should be leading off with, oh, the Detroit Red Wings getting off to another strong start, and Henrik Zetterberg’s terrific season.
Or about Sandis Ozolinsh’s personal and professional recovery as the Latvian defenseman and the San Jose Sharks head to Denver for a Monday night game against the Avalanche.
Or about the approval of the sale that seems to give the Predators a chance to survive in Nashville.
Or about the Chicago Blackhawks’ encouraging renaissance under the leadership of Rocky Wirtz, and the excitement-generating play of rookies Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.
But I can’t.
That’s because the NHL’s board of governors, who never meet in Butte, Mont. (not that there’s anything wrong with Butte, as long as the M&M Cafe still is open), gathered at Pebble Beach last week and — among other things — addressed how the much-reviled post-lockout scheduling format should be changed.
They put an earring on a pig.
That’s about it.
They announced they had approved a new schedule “matrix” that still doesn’t send every team to every rink at least once every season.
Sick of seeing Northwest Division teams four times apiece in Denver? That’s nearly half the Avalanche’s home schedule, and it made for yawns rather than passion.
Sick of seeing each Eastern Conference team come into Denver only once in three seasons?
Wow, the NHL really addressed those concerns, essentially returning to the pre-lockout system. Everybody meets divisional rivals six times instead of eight, cutting only one home game.
That part is at least defensible. This isn’t: Sticking with four games between teams in the same conference, but not in the same division, the NHL didn’t make enough room to guarantee that all teams visit the other 29 arenas every season.
So the result was a “matrix” that calls for 18 interconference games for each team — a guaranteed one against the 15 teams, plus three more interconference “wild-card” games to be filled in. A-ha, the NHL is saying, every team plays every team! Isn’t that what everyone wanted?
In a word: No.
All this means is that almost without exception, each team from the opposite conference comes into Denver or anywhere else only once every two seasons.
Instead of once every three seasons.
Big deal.
I had tried to back away from writing about this at every turn, because it had become the NHL writers’ fallback idea. It was brought up and discussed so much, it almost seemed to be getting lame.
There is some room for slight change for the 2009-10 season, if the union agrees the schedule can be expanded to 84 games — with the tradeoff being that the number of exhibition games allowed is dropped from nine to five. Season-ticket holders might not even mind that, as many reminded me the last time I addressed this, if the extra regular-season home game is offset by one fewer exhibition game included in the season-ticket package.
But the matrix that came out of the board of governors meeting is even more disgraceful than this current system, and I say that because the post-lockout system at least could be termed an experiment that failed.
This shows that a bunch of closed-minded, selfish, parochial powers in the East still carry the day and can force the league to do their bidding.
Gee, and they wonder why this league sometimes seems in trouble.
There were dozens of ways to change the schedule that would have addressed the problems and made sense.
This wasn’t one of them.
State of the game. The governors, including Avalanche president Pierre Lacroix, decided against recommending significant rules changes to combat the downturn in scoring (again).
The sentiment was that overreaction, such as making the nets bigger, would be worse than no reaction at all, and I agree with that. However, Sabres president Larry Quinn argued that the league needs to at least study potential major changes, including trying to find a way to completely legislate the trap out of the game. That’s the single biggest problem the league still has, and if it takes putting more lines on the ice and mandating defensive-zone traffic, so to speak, so be it.
Burke’s law. Influential Anaheim GM Brian Burke advanced this theory: It’s Patrick Roy’s fault.
“I blame Patrick Roy for all of this because he glamorized the goaltender position,” Burke told reporters at the meetings. “The single biggest difference in any pro sport over the last 50 years is the emergence of the goaltender position in the National Hockey League. They’re superior athletes, better coached, better trained. You watch tape from 20 years ago and some of the goals going in are horrendous, just horrible. You wonder, ‘What were they doing?’ I don’t think we should lament goals being down. We should be committed to entertaining hockey and a big save is an exciting play.”
Joel Quenneville must have slipped him a tape of Rockies goalie Hardy Astrom.
SPOTLIGHT ON …
Sharks center Patrick Marleau
Remember when the Avalanche had the most dreaded 1-2, pick-your-poison center combination in the NHL?
Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg?
San Jose has had that kind of advantage since Joe Thornton joined the Sharks two years ago, teaming with Marleau, but there is a possibility that Marleau’s sometimes rocky relationship with Sharks coach Ron Wilson could lead to the Sharks seeing what they could get for him in a trade.
Or contribute to Wilson’s firing, of course.
(This is the NHL, after all.)
In the meantime, Marleau has been struggling this season with only four goals and seven assists.
“The puck just isn’t going into the net,” Marleau told Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News. “It’s just one of those things that comes and goes. But it’s not going to stay this way. Everybody’s trying to work to get better. And when it comes together, it’s really going to come in a big way.”
The two Avalanche-Sharks matchups in four days — the rematch is Monday night in Denver — come between two teams meandering through the early part of the schedule, winning more than they’re losing, but appearing to be underachieving.
If Marleau gets going, that will correct a lot of the Sharks’ problems.
