It’s worth a try.
I keep thinking back to a group of scribes quickly chatting with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman outside the locker rooms in Vancouver after the league’s first try with a World vs. North America All-Star Game format in 1998.
Defending the home turf (or ice), North America won 8-7 and Bettman sensed or — perhaps from the tone of the questions — even knew there would be continued cynicism about the complete absence of sharp-edged physical play and interest in helping out the poor goalies.
Bettman said he thought it went fine, then in a manner that was more defensive than anything in the game, essentially said that the nabobs among us would find fault with anything the league tried.
He was right.
So I’m sure there will be those who poke fun at or deride the new three-on-three, four-team tournament among divisional all-star teams that will take place Jan. 31 in Nashville. But it both concedes and formalizes what the All-Star Game had become — and will remain short of raising the stakes with such things as a winning-team-takes-all pool rivaling a huge Powerball payoff.
Fun. Fast. Devoid of emotion or edge. And if it serves as an advertisement for the league’s popular new overtime format, great.
Roy’s view of Pickard. My feature on Avalanche goalie Calvin Pickard is on Page 4CC.
I also asked Patrick Roy about Pickard.
“He’s doing really well,” the Avalanche coach said. “I’m very happy with him. First of all, his attitude off the ice is phenomenal. He’s working really hard, he competes every time he touches the ice. … I think he has a future in the NHL. I’d like to think one day it will be for us, but for that to happen, we’re going to have to make decisions.”
Roy noted that Pickard has accepted his sometimes strange role the last two seasons.
“I think he understands the situation,” Roy said. “It’s a bit like this for a lot of goaltenders. Goaltenders always take a little bit more time than forwards or defensemen. Last year, I think he set the tone for himself in a way that he proved to us that he was capable of playing at that level. I’m not saying it was a surprise, but we did not expect him to play as well as he did. Now, he’s kind of forcing us to keep playing him and that’s all he can do for now.
“We made a decision two years ago to go with (Reto) Berra and Reto’s been playing well for us as well. Unfortunately for him, he’s been hurt the past two years, but eventually Joe (Sakic) and the organization is going to have a decision to make.”
(Aside: Roy had just turned 20 when he stuck with the Canadiens at the outset of the 1985-86 season … and never played another game in the AHL.)
What’s going to happen when Berra recovers from his ankle injury?
After a long pause, Roy said: “I will let you ask me the question when that happens.”
Terry Frei: tfrei@ or @tfrei
Spotlight on …
Anze Kopitar, C, L.A. Kings
When: The Avalanche faces Kopitar and the Kings on Wednesday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
What’s up: Kopitar recently signed an eight-year, $80 million contract extension that will keep him off the free-agent market this summer. The Kings now have him locked up through the 2023-24 season, when he will be 36. Kopitar will receive $9 million in bonuses July 1 this year and in 2017. His salary cap number will be $10 million each season, and his front-loaded salaries will begin at $14 million next season and gradually decrease, to “only” $7 million in the final two years of the deal.
Background: The deal is another comparative for future unrestricted free agents, most notably Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos. Chicago’s Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane are in the first seasons of similarly constructed eight-year, $84 million contract extensions they signed in 2014.
Frei’s take: Kopitar has come a long way — literally and figuratively. He was raised in Jesenice, Slovenia, near the Italy and Austria borders, when Slovenia was considered part of Yugoslavia.
In the early 1990s, Yugoslav troops attempted to quash Slovenia’s attempt to become an independent nation again. In 1992, when Kopitar was 5, the United Nations finally recognized Slovenia.
“Obviously, we were scared when those things were going on,” Kopitar once told me in the Kings’ dressing room. “But everything turned out fine. … When the war was going on, it was only for about 10 days and it didn’t impact us. But all the people were happy.”
That was about the time when he was beginning to pick up the sport under the tutelage of his father, Matjaz.
“My dad made me an ice surface as big as this room,” he said. “Every time I would come home from school or kindergarten, I would just put on skates and play there. … Hockey was not that big in Slovenia. There was always soccer and basketball before hockey.”
Something tells me he has made it bigger.
