Explaining the Vegas Golden Knights

So what just happened? 
On Sunday, the Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Winnipeg Jets to advance to the Stanley Cup Final. 

The win is the latest in what’s been a stunning campaign – they were 500-1 to win the championship at the start of the season – one that’s seen the Golden Knights stake their claim as the best expansion team in the history of North American sports. There’s a very good chance that they’ll win the next round too, becoming Stanley Cup champions in their very first season.  Nobody saw this coming – as a new team, the Knights weren’t expected to contend for anything aside from last place. But they’ve defied all the odds, and are now just four wins away from the most unlikely championship the sport has ever seen.

That sounds like an amazing underdog story. 
It sure is!

So how did the Golden Knights do it? 
No idea!

Ha ha. But seriously, how did they do it? 
Seriously … no idea. I don’t know. Nobody does. The entire hockey world is completely perplexed by this. There’s no logical explanation.

Um, aren’t you supposed to be some sort of expert? 
Look, I could try to make something up, and pretend that anyone could have seen any of this coming. But I’d be lying. None of this makes any sense.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

How the concussion lawsuit could threaten the NHL's future

The NHL is having a rough few months. They just announced that they won’t be going to the Olympics, even though their fans and players want them to. They have franchises in trouble. Everybody seems to be complaining about the playoff format. Their new expansion team just got overshadowed by a bigger league. This year’s playoff race has turned into a bust, with basically all the spots wrapped up before the final weekend. And it’s already sounding like the next lockout is all but inevitable.

And believe it or not, none of that comes close to being the league’s biggest problem right now.

That’s because the league is facing a major threat in the form of a lawsuit over its handling of concussions. The slow-moving suit has been winding its way through the courts for a few years now, and there’s no immediate end in sight. But some recent developments have pushed it back onto the front page. And it hasn’t been a good look for the NHL.

So what exactly is this lawsuit, and what does it mean for the NHL?

It’s a complicated issue with a lot of moving parts, but at a high level, this is about former NHL players who say they suffered concussions during their playing days, whether the league and its teams did enough to ensure player safety at the time, and what sort of responsibility (if any) the league should have to those players today.

Much of this resolves around a degenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Most experts agree that CTE is related to a history of concussions and brain injuries, and can lead to all sorts of symptoms late in life, including dementia, aggression, depression and suicidal thoughts. Some of the stories of former athletes living with symptoms are gut-wrenching.

A growing list of former NHL players are suing the league, claiming that they suffered concussions during their careers – in some cases, multiple untreated concussions. Some players claim they’re already experiencing CTE-like problems, while others are concerned that they’ll face them in the future. The list began with 10 players filing suit in 2010; that list quickly grew to over a hundred. The case is now a class action suit, meaning it could include any ex-player who was suffering from concussion-related problems.

As often happens, this case has moved slowly. But we recently found out that a judge told the parties last year that she wants the case to go to trial in 2017, in some form or another.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Questioning the NHL's playoff format

With less than a month before the start of the postseason, the NHL has a bit of a mess on its hands. The league’s playoff format has come under fire; one player flat out called the format “stupid”, and plenty of others are criticizing it in only slightly softer terms.

So what exactly is the problem? How did we get here? And do the critics have a point? Let’s break out our handy Q&A format to get to the bottom of this.

So what’s the hockey world complaining about now?

Who says we’re complaining? We’re all busy enjoying the very best time of year for hockey fans, as the race to the regular season finish line gives way to the frantic first round of the … OK, fine, we’re complaining. But for once, we have a good reason: the playoff format being completely and irrevocably screwed up.

That sounds bad. What’s the issue?

The current format is a little complicated, probably more so than it needs to be. But basically, the top three teams in each of the league’s four divisions earn a playoff spot. That leaves four slots open, and those are filled by the two best remaining teams in each conference. Those are the wildcards, and they can come from any division.

Once they’re in, those wildcards get the bottom two seeds and face the two division winners; the best division winner gets the worst wildcard team, while the other division winner gets the other wildcard. Meanwhile, the second and third place teams in each division play each other.

That seems… fine?

For the most part, it is. You can get into weird situations where wildcard teams crossover to the wrong division, which is kind of confusing. But generally, the current system works well enough.

Um, just as long as one division in a conference isn’t way better than the other one. Then everything goes to hell.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Working through the latest NHL relocation rumors

Did you hear the one about the NHL team that might be moving?

Sorry, weary hockey fans will reply, you’re going to need to be more specific.

The NHL is once again in the midst of a flurry of reports and rumors about teams that could need new homes. Maybe that means a new arena down the street. Or maybe it means a new home across the continent. The league always seems to have a few teams in the middle of some kind of uncertainty, and these days that’s more true than ever.

At some point, the stories all start to blend together, and it can get confusing. Let’s break out our handy Q&A format to see if we can sort it all out.

So what just happened with the New York Islanders?

Here’s the short version. For years, the Islanders were stuck playing in the Nassau Coliseum, an absolute dump of a building in Uniondale, New York. It was nearly 50 years old, and while it could boast plenty of history, it wasn’t anywhere near modern NHL standards. The team had been trying to find a replacement for years; in 2011, they went to voters to ask for $400m to build a new arena, and were soundly rejected.

And so, in 2012, the team announced that it would move to Brooklyn to share the Barclays Center with the NBA’s Nets, starting with the 2015-16 season.

How’d that go?

Awful, thanks for asking.

Barclays is a nice enough building, but it wasn’t built for hockey. Seating capacity was low, the sightlines didn’t work, and the ice was terrible. And maybe worst of all, the team’s longtime fan base in Long Island had to spend an hour on the subway just to see their team play home games, while potential new fans in Brooklyn never seemed to warm to the team.

The whole thing was a disaster from the start, and within a year everyone was searching for an exit plan. There was talk of an escape clause. One rumor had the team moving to Queens. And late last month, news broke that Barclays was planning on kicking the Islanders out, effective in 2019.

So where would they go?

Right now, nobody knows. The Barclays exit isn’t a done deal, so it’s always possible that they could find a way to stay, although at this point it’s hard to see how anybody would want that. They could revisit that Queens idea, even though it didn’t get much traction when it first came up last year. They could even move in with the Rangers for a while.

And if you really want to get silly, you could note that the old Nassau Coliseum was recently renovated; it’s too small now to be a long-term home, but could work as a temporary measure.

In a perfect world, now would be the time for the Islanders to get a new arena of their own somewhere. But teams normally get arena deals when they have leverage. Right now, the Islanders have none.

Could they move to a new market altogether?

It’s certainly an option, although right now it seems like everyone’s focus is on keeping the team in the New York area. But if they can’t find a fit, at some point relocation will have to be on the table. And there are markets out there that would be interested in taking them, including Seattle, Quebec City or Hartford.

Wait, Hartford? As in the Hartford Whalers?

The very same. The area apparently wants to get back into the NHL game, with a proposal to renovate the old Civic Center arena (now called the XL Center) to get it up to modern standards in an attempt to lure a team. When news of the Islanders’ arena troubles broke, the governor of Connecticut sent the team a letter offering them a new home.

Would now be a good time to listen to the Whalers fantastic old theme song?

Damn right it would.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

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The ten biggest NHL stories of 2016

So that was … interesting.

One of the most common complaints about the modern NHL is that the league’s product is occasionally boring. And when it comes to the action on the ice, that’s often true. But in the bigger picture, 2016 couldn’t be accused of being dull. The year was a lot of things – ridiculous, controversial, head-scratching – but it was rarely boring.

Here are 10 of the biggest stories from an undeniably weird but entertaining year in the NHL.

1) The Penguins win it all

By the end of 2015, the Penguins were a mess. They’d just fired their coach, they were barely hanging in the playoff race, and they seemed more like a collection of aging, overpaid stars than an actual team.

By the end of 2016, they were the best team in hockey.

Nobody had a better 2016 than the Penguins, who close out the year near the top of the NHL standings and as defending Stanley Cup champions. They won that Cup thanks to a dominant performance by Sidney Crosby, now fully healthy and once again the undisputed best player in the world. He was supported by an unlikely hero in goal, as rookie Matt Murray took over the job despite having just 13 career starts heading into the playoffs.

And then there was Phil Kessel, the much-maligned winger who’d been acquired the previous summer. He went from league-wide punch line to the Penguins’ leading postseason scorer, not to mention one of the sport’s most lovable memes. By September, he was even throwing bombs on Twitter.

Phil Kessel is the best. In 2016, the Penguins were too.

2) The day the hockey world went nuts

June 29 seemed like it would be a relatively normal day in the NHL. The draft had just passed, and the start of unrestricted free agency was still two days away. The rumor mill was busy, as it always is this time of year, but nobody was expecting anything too crazy.

Then everyone lots their minds.

First came word that the Oilers had traded former first overall pick Taylor Hall to the Devils for defenseman Adam Larsson, in a move that stood as easily the most stunning one-for-one deal in recent NHL history. It held that honor for all of a half hour or so, before we learned that Montreal had sent PK Subban to the Predators for Shea Weber. You could hear hockey fans’ heads exploding around the world.

By the time reports emerged that Steven Stamkos had re-signed in Tampa, the day seemed almost incomprehensible. The Stamkos free agency auction was the biggest story in the league when the day began; by the time it ended, fans barely noticed.

In a league where nobody makes big moves anymore, we got three within an hour. It was madness. Here’s hoping it happens again someday soon.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

The Golden Knights finally have a name and a logo. How'd they do?

After several months of waiting, followed by an additional several weeks of waiting for reasons nobody was quite clear on, and then a few more minutes of waiting while they tried to figure out how to get their video to play, the NHL’s newest expansion team finally has an identity. They’re the Golden Knights, as unveiled Tuesday night at what the league hyped as “historic event”.

Of course, we kind of already knew that; the name had been rumored for a while now, thanks to the team filing for trademarks on various Knight-related monikers back in the summer. But still, making it official counts for something, and the team also used yesterday’s event as an opportunity to unveil their logo and team colors.

So how’d they do? Well, the event itself was a disaster, one that featured two failed attempts to play the announcement video. For an agonizing few minutes, it looked like the team had gone with the “Placeholders”.

They eventually got the video working, although not before an extended stalling job by a clearly seething Gary Bettman. Oh, and while everyone was waiting the team web site went live and spoiled the surprise. Other than that, it was smooth sailing.

But that should all be forgotten eventually. What about the name and logo itself? Well, this being the NHL, we have a long history of new teams to look back on. Many of those franchises ended up being laughable failures, and while you can’t necessarily blame that on a name or a logo, every little bit helps. So let’s look back at some of the lessons learned from those teams that came before, and figure out whether the Las Vegas brains trust managed to get their first major decisions right.

The name

What’s in a name? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? No, it wouldn’t, because sports teams with dumb names are embarrassing. The hockey world has had its share of examples, although to our credit we’ve never hit rock bottom and named a team the Pelicans like some other sports we could mention. Still, this is the big one, and you want to make sure you get it right.

The idea name will carry a taste of local flavor, without getting too cute. You want something creative, but not silly. Originality is good, but you can carried away with fancy spellings or singular names that will be confusing to write about.

And most importantly of all, you can’t just take the most popular team in the league and try to steal their name. Las Vegas almost made that mistake; reports from August had them leaning towards going with something based on the word “Hawks”. Thankfully, hockey fans laughed at the transparent attempt to hone in on Chicago’s territory and the idea was dropped. Instead, we got the Golden Knights.

When it was done right: In general, NHL team names have been getting better with age. They were all over the map in the early days of expansion, largely because they were left to the whims of owners or fan surveys. These days, much more thought goes into the naming process, and we end up with names ranging from the solid (“Lightning”) to the vaguely cool (“Predators”) to the lame-until-someone-explains-it-to-you (“Thrashers”). Personally, I’ve always like Blue Jackets, although I realize I may be in a minority there.

When it was done wrong: Sometimes, teams can get too clever, like when Pittsburgh went with “Penguins” even though there aren’t any nearby. Other times, they’re not clever enough, like when Winnipeg’s WHA entry went with “Jets” even though there was already an NFL team called that (and also, Winnipeg didn’t have airports, paved roads or running water until 2013). Both of those names are cool now, but it took some time.

But nothing has ever been worse than when the new Anaheim franchise named itself after a terrible Disney movie, christening themselves The Mighty Ducks in 1993. Everyone over the age of six hated it, and the team dropped the “Mighty” in 2006.

How’d Vegas do?: We’ll give them a “not bad” here.

Golden Knights is a reasonably cool name. Most fans will just call them the Knights, which has long been the go-to choice for kids who needed a fake name for a team in a computer sports game that wasn’t already being used somewhere. And “Vegas Knights” is kind of a pun, I guess. Sure, something about gambling would have been better, but the NHL apparently said that was a no-go, so here we are.

Owner Bill Foley went further in the press release, babbling on about how “We selected ‘Knights’ because knights are the defenders of the realm and protect those who cannot defend themselves. They are the elite warrior class.” That’s nonsense, the sort of thing that a marketing department with too much time on its hands comes up with and slips into a press release when nobody’s looking. But Foley clearly never actually said that, nor did any other actual human being, so we won’t hold it against him.

One interesting note: The official name drops the “Las” from “Las Vegas”, which is kind of weird. You just know they’re going to get all cranky whenever anyone calls them the Las Vegas Golden Knights. So let’s all agree to do that as often as possible.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

An objective and unbiased reaction to the Auston Matthews debut

Last night featured the NHL debut of heavily hyped Toronto Maple Leafs rookie Auston Matthews. It was a big moment for the franchise, which hasn’t had an elite-level prospect in at least a generation or two. The buildup to the game was very exciting. It was also all very confusing for Maple Leaf fans, who aren’t used to actually having something to feel optimistic about.

How do I know? Because I am a Leafs fan, and have been for over 30 years. So I get where Leafs Nation is coming from on this one. But don’t worry, I’m also an unbiased sportswriter, and you can trust me to handle this assignment objectively.

Anyway, Matthews finally made his long-awaited debut on Wednesday night. And in the very first game of the NHL regular-season schedule, on the road against a divisional rival in front of a national TV audience, Matthews went out and had what may well be the greatest debut game in the history of the NHL.

That sounds like hyperbole, but it’s really not. Let’s run through what we just witnessed, in handy Q&A format.

OK, so what just happened?

Matthews didn’t take long to get on the scoreboard, converting a slick setup in front to score his first career goal just eight minutes into the game. The goal came on his first career shot, matching the achievement of another first overall pick, Mario Lemieux. He was just getting started.

Eight minutes later, Matthews picked the pocket of two-time Norris Trophy winner Erik Karlsson to score his second goal of the period. He finished the hat trick early in the second by ripping a wrist shot from the face-off circle. That made him one of only five players in modern NHL history to record a hat trick in his first game.

At that point, sensing the need to build some suspense, Matthews went over 18 minutes before scoring again. His fourth of the night, on a nifty two-on-one feed from fellow rookie Willian Nylander, officially put him in uncharted territory as the first player since the advent of the forward pass to score four times in his first NHL game.

Needless to say, this was all very exciting for long-suffering Maple Leafs fans. But again, I’m an objective sportswriter, so I can handle it.

So who is Auston Matthews?

WHOEVER HE DAMN WELL WANTS TO BE! WHOOO! SUCK IT, 29 OTHER FAN BASES!

You OK, bud?

Sorry. Sorry, I can do this. Give me another try.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Five regular season storylines worth watching

The NHL regular season opened on Wednesday night with four games. We’ll have nine more on Thursday, and by the end of the weekend every team will have at least a couple of games under their belts.

This season will include all the usual intrigue – who’ll win the Cup, who’ll be MVP, who’ll by the feel-good underdog story and who’ll get themselves fired. But this year, there are a few more stories worth keeping an eye on. Here are five to watch as the season unfolds.

Subban v Weber

Wednesday 29 June 2016. It’s a date that hockey fans won’t soon forget. Mainly because it was the day that the NHL went completely insane.

Steven Stamkos spurned free agency to resign with the Lightning. The Oilers traded Taylor Hall to the Devils for, well, not much. And in the biggest shock of them all, the Canadiens sent PK Subban to the Predators for Shea Weber.

It’s hard to overstate how big the deal was. Weber was the franchise in Nashville, spending his entire career there as he developed from solid prospect to one of the most respected blueliners in the league. And Subban was a lightning rod in Montreal, a former Norris Trophy winner as the league’s best defenseman who also happens to double as one of the NHL’s most charismatic and entertaining personalities. Seeing either guy traded felt unfathomable; to see them swapped for each other in an old school one-for-one deal was jaw-dropping.

But it happened, and now we get to spend the next few years picking the deal apart to figure out who won. Did Weber just blast one of his patented slapshots through a net? Habs win! Oh, did Subban just go end-to-end? Advantage Predators. Every big hit, brutal giveaway, flashy smile (Subban) or steely-eyed grunt (Weber) will get tossed into the evidence bin for further analysis.

The two teams face each other twice during the season, in Nashville on 3 January and in Montreal on 2 March. But really, Weber and Subban will be facing each other every night this season, and every other season for the rest of their careers.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

A complainer's guide to the World Cup

The World Cup of Hockey is fun. Along with the Olympics, it’s the only true best-on-best tournament on the international hockey landscape. It’s played on NHL rinks under NHL rules, so there’s less of an adjustment for the league’s fans. And it doesn’t even interrupt the season. All in all, it’s a pretty hard concept not to like.

But as we’ve explained in the past, not liking things is what hockey fans do. It’s kind of our thing. So with the 2016 World Cup officially getting under way this weekend in Toronto, we’d better start digging for something to complain about.

To get you started, here are a half-dozen reasons to be irrationally annoyed with the World Cup.

The teams are all weird this year

The World Cup evolved from the Canada Cup, a tournament that began in 1976 and ran five times through 1991. All of those tournaments were six-team affairs, and with one exception they all featured the Big Six of international hockey: Canada, Russia, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Finland and the USA. (West Germany replaced Finland at one tournament, in 1984). When the World Cup debuted in 1996, the format expanded to eight, with Czechoslovakia splitting into a Czech team and a Slovak squad and Germany being added to round out the field.

You may notice something about those teams: they’re all countries. That’s because the World Cup has always been an international tournament, one that pits teams representing individual countries against each other to determine world supremacy, or at least bragging rights. This might sound familiar, since it’s the standard format across all international sports and is just kind of taken for granted. It’s simple, it works, and you’d think it would be reasonably tough to screw up.

Enter the NHL. This year, the league decided to get creative, keeping the Big Six and then adding two new teams to the World Cup that don’t represent actual counties. The first is Team Europe, made up of players from countries like Slovakia, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark. It’s an unusual approach, but you can kind of see where the NHL is thinking here. None of those countries have enough talent to contend on their own, but combining them into one team at least gives fans a chance to see stars like Anze Kopitar (Slovenia), Zdeno Chara (Slovakia) and Roman Josi (Switzerland), who’d otherwise be excluded from the action.

But for the final team, the NHL just dropped any pretense of this being an international competition and let the marketing department take over. They came up with something called Team North America, which will feature players from Canada and the US who are 23 and younger, in a transparent attempt to highlight some of the league’s up-and-coming stars while trying to appeal to younger fans. The team has scary uniforms and just enough skill and speed to at least be vaguely threatening, and if you focus on that you might even manage to forget that the entire thing doesn’t make any sense.

You have to at least hand the NHL some credit for thinking outside the box here, given the league’s traditional aversion to ever trying anything new. But what we’re left is an international tournament that features eight teams, only six of which are actual countries, all because the NHL decided it had to come up with a weird solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Johnny Manziel and the CFL

We’ve reached the halfway point of the 2016 regular season in the Canadian Football League. It’s been an eventful year so far, one that’s seen the Calgary Stampeders establish themselves as the favorite, the Saskatchewan Roughriders struggle badly, and the East Division look entirely up for grabs.

The season has served up plenty of compelling storylines to chew on. All of which makes it a little odd that, for a few days this week, the biggest story in Canadian football was a failed American quarterback who isn’t playing anywhere right now.

That’s the power of reputation and celebrity, both of which Johnny Manziel has more than his share of. What the former Browns starter doesn’t have, at least right now, is much of a future in pro football. But that could change, and more and more fans are wondering if a stint in the CFL might serve as a starting point.

It’s an intriguing idea. But could it happen? Let’s work through the key questions.

Could Manziel actually come to Canada?

Technically speaking, sure. Manziel’s Canadian rights are owned by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and there’s nothing in the rulebook that would prevent them from bringing him aboard if both sides could agree to a deal (or sending his rights to some other team that wanted him).

Of course, Manziel has far bigger problems right now. The former Heisman Trophy winner washed out of his first crack at the NFL thanks to a combination of on-the-field struggles and off-the-field issues. That latter category includes rumors of out-of-control partying, a suspension for substance abuse, and an indictment for assaulting his ex-girlfriend. In recent public appearances, he reportedly hasn’t looked like he was in any sort of playing shape.

So clearly, Manziel has some significant questions to answer before he’ll be playing anywhere, and it’s quite possible that we’ve seen the last of him on a football field. But speculation over his future flared up this week in part thanks to CFL commissioner Jeffrey Orridge, who appeared to leave the door open to Manziel playing in the league in comments made to ESPN. Orridge’s words were framed as suggesting that Manziel would be welcome in Canada, a characterization he later denied. And the Tiger-Cats say that they’ve had no contact with Manziel of his camp.

So if all of this is largely speculation and what-if scenarios, why were so many people talking about it? A big part of that is no doubt based on Manziel’s fame, even if it’s largely been of the train wreck variety lately. But there’s another piece here, and it has to do with some CFL history at the quarterback position.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

A Canadian look back at the 2016 Summer Olympics

Well hey, that ended up being kind of fun.

While it’s true that Canadians don’t always get quite as excited about the Summer Olympics as some other countries we could mention, we still enjoy a good show. And for the most part, that’s what the last two weeks delivered, as Canadian athletes treated us to an entertaining and largely successful Games.

So before the whole country moves on to NHL training camps, the Blue Jays stretch run, and whichever random event our shirtless prime minister wanders into next, let’s take one last look back at Rio. Here are some of the country’s best, worst and strangest moments of the 2016 Summer Olympics, along with the uniquely Canadian experiences they brought to mind for those of us watching at home.

Best overall performance

We’ll start with the easiest call. The competition to become Canada’s biggest star of Rio ended early and decisively, with swimmer Penny Oleksiak winning four medals in the Games’ opening days. After earning bronze in a pair of relay events and silver in the individual 100m butterfly, Oleksiak went on to capture the country’s first gold medal in the 100m freestyle.

That gave her Oleksiak four medals, making her the first Canadian athlete to ever take home that many in a single Summer Olympics. Not surprisingly, she was rewarded with the honor of being named flag bearer for the closing ceremony. And best of all, given that she’s just 16 years old, it’s fair to say that this probably won’t be the last that Canadians see of her in Olympic action.

Also, she got a Twitter follow from Drake, so there’s that.

Comparable Canadian experience: When you roll up the rim and actually win, and then just keep winning for the rest of the contest. (OK, sure, all you ever win are the lousy free donuts, but we can’t all be Penny Oleksiak.)

Worst moment for old people

Shortly after Oleksiak’s first medal, we learned that she and team-mate Taylor Ruck were officially the first ever Olympic medalists to have been born in the 2000s. We then realized that couldn’t possibly be right, since the whole Y2K thing was only a few years ago, right? Then we sat down and did the math. Then we felt very, very sad.

Comparable Canadian experience: When you make a “Dr Penfield, I smell burnt toast” joke and some kid just stares at you like you’re a moron.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Why Canadians don't get all that excited for the Summer Olympics

After four years of waiting, the big moment is almost here. The eyes of the world will be focused on Rio next week, as the planet’s greatest athletes gather and the ceremonial torch is lit for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Do the Games start next week? I’m not actually sure. Look, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t sound as excited as I should be. Please understand that I have a pre-existing condition: I’m Canadian. And to be clear, we like the Summer Olympics just fine. We watch them. We’ve even been known to win a gold medal or two. But they’re not really our thing, you know? At least not in quite the same way that they seem to be for a lot of you.

So I thought I’d take a shot at explaining why that is. Here are eight key reasons why any Canadians you know probably aren’t quite as hyped for the Summer Games as you might expect.

1) It’s not the Winter Olympics

Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way first, if only because it’s not as big a factor as you might think. Yes, Canada tends to get far more into the Winter Olympics. That makes sense; we’re a country of snow and ice, so we do better in events that take place in the environment we’re used to. We dominate hockey, we’re pretty good at speedskating, and we’ve had our moments in figure skating and skiing. None of those events, you may have noticed, work all that well in August.

But winter sports aren’t all we can do. Despite what your stereotypes may have taught you, we do have summer here in Canada. It lasts for three weeks, and ends with 30% of the population having been carried off by mosquitos, but it does happen. And over the years, Canadians have had Olympic success at traditional summer sports like track and field, swimming, diving and rowing. We may not be an international powerhouse, but we have our moments.

So no, it’s not just a winter/summer thing. There’s a bit more going on here.

2) We’re just not all that good

Look, let’s call it like it is. People like to watch their country win, and Canada doesn’t win all that much in the Summer Games. When they show you the medal table, you typically have to scroll a few pages to find us. There’s a few reasons for that, including a relatively small population and a culture that would rather spend money on things like healthcare than making sure everyone can jump really high. But the bottom line is that we try hard and have fun, and sometimes that’s about it.

And again, we do win sometimes. And when that happens, it’s a big deal. We break out into a little national party whenever somebody medals, especially if it’s an unexpected upset, which it probably is. But that all adds up to a steady stream of occasional nice moments, not a flood of non-stop glory. And we’re fine with that. It’s just kind of tough to get too worked up over finishing 36^th.

3) Even when we are the best, we get screwed in weird ways

One of my earliest childhood memories involved staying up late to watch Shawn O’Sullivan and Willie DeWitt win boxing gold at the 1984 Games. But neither did, because they got screwed by the judges. And that tends to happen kind of a lot, in both the Summer and Winter events. Sometimes it’s on purpose, because shadowy forces conspire against us. Sometimes it’s by accident, because somebody pressed the wrong button. Sometimes we even lose based on rules everyone knows, and sometimes it’s based on ones that nobody has even heard of.

The point is that Canada having success at the Olympics is often viewed as some sort of weird glitch, and the world has a tendency to respond by taking the cartridge out and blowing on it until everything works again. That kind of thing wears on you after a while.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Could Las Vegas expansion actually work?

The NHL has descended on Las Vegas for its annual awards show. But this year, the winners will be overshadowed by far bigger news, as the league finally confirmed the worst-kept secret in hockey: the NHL is putting an expansion team in Las Vegas. Commissioner Gary Bettman made it official on Wednesday.

But will it work? That’s the question, and it’s one that has more than a few observers feeling skeptical. So let’s try to figure it out by working our way through the pros and cons of NHL hockey in Las Vegas.

Pro: Las Vegas is a big city, and seems ready for a big league team

Until today, Las Vegas was one of the largest cities in the United States without a team in any of the Big Four professional sports leagues. (For the purpose of making that point, we’ll just agree to ignore the fact that there isn’t really a Big Four anymore, and probably hasn’t been for years.) Depending on how you measure the population, Las Vegas is already a bigger market than several cities that already have NHL teams, including Pittsburgh, Buffalo and St Louis. And it’s growing.

And that’s just the basic population; it’s not counting the massive number of tourists who are there at pretty much all times. Those tourists flock to buy tickets for all sorts of entertainment options, including magicians, ventriloquists and trapeze acts. Surely pro sports couldn’t be that hard of a sell.

If anything, the numbers say that the city should already have a team, if not several. Part of the reason they’ve been shut out is gambling, and the reluctance of major pro sports to be perceived as getting anywhere near it. But that taboo has been fading for years, and as it did, a Vegas big league debut started to feel inevitable. Vegas has been a rumored home for a major franchise for years now, including current reports that they could be a potential home for the NFL and the NBA.

Con: Hockey still feels like a weird choice to be first

Picture an ideal hockey market. Did you picture a desert? Probably not.

Yes, some league was going to be head to Vegas eventually, but it’s still a little odd to see the NHL taking the lead. The city has had minor league hockey teams before, but there’s not exactly a ton of history with the sport to draw on. And the occasional anecdote aside, there’s little evidence that sports fans in Las Vegas are really all that interested in hockey.

That doesn’t mean that the NHL can’t succeed in a southern market – the three California teams have proven that you can, at least to some degree. But it adds a degree of difficulty, and given the spotty history of NHL expansion attempts, that’s not necessarily what you want to be facing.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

RIP Gordie Howe

Gordie Howe passed away this morning, surrounded by family at his son’s home. He was a Hall of Famer and four-times Stanley Cup champion who dominated the record book over the course of a 32-year career, and he was known as Mr Hockey because nobody else could have been.

Howe’s death doesn’t come as a shock – he’d been battling serious health problems for several years – and over the next few days, you’re going to see a flood of tributes to him from around the sports world. Some of those will be written by those who watched him play, and others by those who were lucky enough to have known him. They’ll be touching and heart-felt, and I encourage you to read every one of them.

I’m young enough that I never saw Howe play. Even his later years, when he was putting up 41 points for the Whalers as a 51-year-old, were before my time. And yet Howe was one of the most important players of my lifetime; he did as much to shape my identity as a hockey fan as any player I could name. Howe was hockey. He was the archetype of what a hockey player should be.

That wasn’t because of his scoring records, which were stunning at the time but have almost all long since been broken. It’s not about his unmatched longevity, amazing as that was, or about his dominance in his prime, although there’s no question that he was the best player in the sport for long stretches.

Hockey’s always been a strange game, and to a new fan, it can feel like two different sports are being played at once. There are the element of speed and skill that show themselves throughout the game in ways both big and small; the way that some players can almost effortlessly do things on ice that, if you stop and think about it, should really be impossible. And there’s also the violence, the fury of collisions and elbows and sometimes fists. Not everyone appreciates that side of the game, and it’s been fading from the sport in recent years, but it’s still there in some form and always will be.

Those two halves of the game shouldn’t be able to co-exist, but they do, often on the same shift. At its best, hockey can be a work of art that leaves blood and teeth all over the canvas. And that’s why Gordie Howe always seemed to matter so much, why he was at the very core of what the sport was. Nobody ever combined both halves of the game the way he did.

Howe won the NHL’s scoring title six times, as well as six MVP honors, both marks that stood until Wayne Gretzky arrived. He was also a 23-time All-Star, which seems like it must be a typo. Nobody will touch that mark, and is speaks to Howe’s legacy of being so good for so long.

But the secret to Howe’s success was that his skill was tied to a legendary mean streak. Before he ascended to Mr Hockey status, he had another nickname: Mr Elbows. If you’re wondering where he got it, well, ask anyone who ever went into a corner with him. Be patient waiting for an answer; there’s a decent chance their jaw is still wired shut.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

So you've decided to be a hockey fan: A guide for NHL newbies

The Stanley Cup final is here, with the Pittsburgh Penguins facing the San Jose Sharks in a matchup of two highly skilled and entertaining teams. If Monday night’s opening game was any indication, this should be a fun series. And as with all Cup finals, there will be plenty of brand new fans tuning in for the very first time to see the NHL put its best foot forward.

If you’re one of those new fans, have no fear. Hockey can be a confusing sport, especially for newcomers. But if you’re willing to stick with it, you can learn a lot. And you may just find yourself becoming a fan for life.

So the Guardian asked me to put together a guide to welcome new fans to the NHL bandwagon. Read through the handy tips below and pretty soon you’ll be all ready to enjoy all the goals, saves, hits, and even the wacky beard on face of Sharks’ assistant captain Joe Thornton!

[Goes awkwardly quiet. Looks around nervously.]

Are they gone?

OK, all you new fans, huddle up with me real quick. Sorry about that paragraph about the beard. I know it was kind of weird, but I had to get rid of all the diehard hockey fans for a minute. They’ve all rushed off to the comment section to correct me for saying “assistant” captain instead of “alternate”. But they’ll be back soon, so we don’t have much time.

OK, look … are you absolutely sure you want to do this?

Don’t get me wrong. Hockey is an amazing sport. Quite possibly the best there is. But hockey fans … hockey fans can be an interesting group. We have very strong feelings about, well, everything. And we have very specific ways of expressing those feelings. You could think of us as a kind of cult, except that cults can occasionally be reasoned with.

And worst of all, we can be especially tough on newcomers. You’d think we’d be more welcoming, given how much whining we do about hockey’s place in the sports world. We spend a lot of time complaining about how there aren’t enough hockey fans out there, but as soon as some potential new fans appear, we get our backs up. You need to know what you’re getting yourself into here. If you wanted to back out now, everyone would understand.

Really? You’re sure? OK, you’ve been warned. Welcome aboard, and may Wendel have mercy on your soul.

Here are 10 steps to help you fit in as a real hockey fan.

Step 1: Complain about everything

There are two key things you need to know about being a hockey fan. First, we love the NHL. Second, we hate everything about the NHL.

We hate the rules. We hate the way the standings work. We hate the referees, and the Department of Player Safety, and (especially) the commissioner. We hate the players for being boring, and we really hate any player who stops being boring for a few seconds. We hate that nobody scores like Wayne Gretzky did in the 80s. We hated Wayne Gretzky for scoring too much in the 80s.

If you’re going to be a real hockey fan, you’ll need to love the game but believe that everything about it is broken. And that’s only the first half of the equation…

Step 2: Be against every solution

So everything is terrible. Would you like to hear a suggestion for making things better? Hell no, you would not, because you are a hockey fan now and you hate the idea of anything ever changing.

As just one example, NHL scoring rates have been plummeting for over two decades, a trend that we all agree is sucking the excitement out of the sport. In fact, to a diehard hockey fan, there’s only one thing worse: doing literally anything about it. New rules? No. New equipment? No. Making the nets a fraction of an inch bigger? Sure, right after you’re done spitting on the graves of our ancestors, you heretic swine.

It’s the same with everything else that we claim is a problem. The puck over the glass rule is terrible, but any of the alternatives are worse. Same with the new offside review rule. And with how the draft order works. And the fact that the NHL sometimes gives out points for losing. All big problems. None worth ever actually fixing.

Anytime anyone has an idea that might improve things, your job as a hockey fan is to come up with a slightly different idea that you think would improve things even more, and then stab the person who came up with that first idea.

Everything is terrible and nothing should ever change. Drill that into your head, and you’re on the road to true hockey fandom.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

On Dwyane Wade, American disrespect, and Canadian payback

Oh, you’ve done it now, America.

Specifically, Dwyane Wayne has done it. On Saturday, Wade made international headlines before Game 3 of the NBA playoff series between his Miami Heat and the Toronto Raptors when he continued to take warm-up shots during the playing of the Canadian national anthem. And now, America, all of you will pay. By standing idly by as one of your own blatantly disrespected our anthem, you have left an entire nation feeling mildly vexed.

Wait, no, not mildly vexed. That’s not strong enough. Maybe exasperated? Irked? Slightly put-out? No, no, none of those will do. What’s the word I’m looking for? You know, the one you Americans seem to feel all the time these days, aimed in every direction, informing your every decision and interaction with the outside world?

Anger. That’s the one. Canadians are angry!

Was that OK? I feel like maybe the exclamation point was too strong. Sorry about that if it was. We’re not all that good at this.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

I am so old, and other thoughts on the Coyotes' new GM

The late 80s were a fun time to be a hockey fan. Wayne Gretzky won the final Stanley Cup of his career, was traded, and then watched the Calgary Flames win their very first. Mario Lemieux won his first MVP, a Hall-of-Famer made a stunning return to the league, and the first wave of Russian stars arrived in the NHL. We saw the first ever goalie to shoot and score, then saw the same guy appoint himself team enforcer. There was a lights-out brawl at the World Juniors and a donut-related referees strike in the Stanley Cup playoffs. It was pretty wild.

If all of that is bringing back fond memories for you, then you may want to stop reading now, because you’re about to feel very old: on Thursday, the Arizona Coyotes appointed a general manager who wasn’t alive for any of those things.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

The Blackhawks' season is over. Is their dynasty?

The Chicago Blackhawks season came to an end on Monday night in St Louis, with a Game 7 loss in their opening round series against the Blues. Now, we wait and see what else ended with it.

An era? A dynasty? Something more? Or maybe just a chapter in an ongoing story, one that can’t end with a Cup parade every time even if it’s often seemed to.

The NHL is a far different league than it was before the 2005 lockout that wiped out an entire season and ushered in a new set of rules, and that makes it hard to put what the Blackhawks have done in historical context. In decades past, an NHL dynasty meant an unstoppable force, like the great Canadiens teams of the 50s and 70s. It was Al Arbour’s Islanders winning four Cups and an unthinkable 19 straight playoff series. It was the Gretzky-led Oilers powerhouse that followed them, one that won four titles in five years and only lost when it scored into its own net.

The Hawks, by comparison, have never even repeated as champions. They’ve won Cups in 2010, 2013 and 2015, making them the only team to win three titles in the post-2005 salary cap era. But they’ve also lost in the first-round three times since that first championship. Is that really a dynasty?

Well, yeah. In today’s NHL, it is. Because today’s NHL is designed to make it all-but impossible for the best teams to stay on top. There’s a hard salary cap in place, one that forces teams to stay under a preset budget. A good team can keep its core – the four or five players who define its identity – but they’ll become increasingly expensive, squeezing out the supporting cast that’s so crucial. Like a crab getting yanked back into the bucket, the NHL’s best teams are relentlessly pulled back to the pack. The system has resulted in an age of unprecedented parity and competitive balance, one that the league relentlessly promotes as a good thing.

Despite that, the Blackhawks have been able to keep winning. Not all the time, like teams could in the old days, but more than anyone else in the league could manage. Since emerging as a contender in 2009, Chicago have won 76 playoff games; the next best team have won just 54. They’ve got three Cups, while only one other team has even won two in the cap era. Hockey fans don’t argue about the era’s best team anymore, because there’s really no argument to be had. It’s the Blackhawks by a landslide.

And yet there they were on Monday, sent home in the first round by a longtime rival with a reputation for postseason failure. The title defense was over before it even really began.

So what happened? And more importantly, what happens next?

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

The offside review rule that's ruining everything: An explainer

There’s a new rule in the NHL this year. You may have heard about it. It’s a rule we all wanted, it’s working pretty much exactly as designed, and it’s being applied often. And hockey fans hate it.

It’s the offside review rule, and if this is the first you’re hearing about it, go find a hockey fan and ask them how it’s going. Then get ready for a healthy dose of sputtering rage. Because right now, the offside review rule is ruining everything.

So what is this new rule, and why is everyone so angry about it? It gets a bit complicated, so let’s do this Q&A style.

What is the offside review and where did it come from?

The rule is a new one, introduced for this season. It allows for an instant replay review on any zone entry where a goal is scored before the puck comes back out, to see if the play may have been offside. The reviews are initiated by a coach’s challenge until the final minute of regulation; after that, including overtime, the league automatically reviews everything.

Hockey’s offside rule is relatively straightforward – basically, the puck has to cross the opposing blueline before any players have completely entered the zone. But hockey is a fast game, and players have been taught to try to time their zone entries so that they cross the line at the exact moment the puck does. So we’re talking about plays that can be decided by a fraction of an inch and a fraction of a second.

OK, so the officials were missing those calls fairly often?

No! Well, at least we didn’t think they were. Which is kind of where the problem comes in. We’ll get to that in a second.

But no, the idea here wasn’t that there was some sort of epidemic of missed calls. Instead, there had been a handful of notable cases in which an offside was clearly missed. The most famous had been this Matt Duchene goal from 2013, in which he’d been allowed to score even though he was clearly offside by several feet.

That was such an obvious mistake that it seemed like the sort of thing that replay should be able to step in and fix, and there were calls for the league to consider a review process at the time. But the real tipping point came in last year’s playoffs, when the Lightning scored an overtime winner against Montreal that appeared to be offside. That play wasn’t as comically obvious as the Duchene call, but the stakes were so much higher that plenty of fans and media began asking why the NHL wasn’t making absolutely sure they got these calls right.

And so, last summer, the NHL introduced the replay review rule. (They also introduced a review for goaltender interference, which has come under occasional fire but seems to be working more or less as expected.) To be clear: Almost everyone thought this was a good idea. And we all assumed that it would come up maybe a few times all season long.

And then…

Yeah, it turns out that NHL linesman have been secretly terrible at calling offside.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Does the NHL have a tanking problem?

It’s been an ongoing debate in the league for years, one that peaked last season and is resurfacing now as the regular season winds down. The logic is fairly simple: If a team has already been eliminated from playoff contention, then tanking – losing as many games as possible in hopes of landing a better draft pick – starts to look like an attractive strategy. And it’s one that several teams around the league sure seem to be embracing, often with the full support of their fans.

To be clear, players don’t tank. We’re not talking about teams shooting the puck into their own net, or otherwise intentionally making a mockery of things; hockey players are a proud bunch who don’t take being embarrassed kindly. And besides, no grizzled veteran is going to go out and lose on purpose just so some hotshot kid can come in next year and take his job. No, tanking comes from up above – from the front office that assembles the roster, and who have the ability to ensure that the players who do take the ice have as little chance as possible.

There are various ways that a GM could embrace the tank. They can keep top young talent stashed in the minors. They can shut down any productive player who suffers a minor injury. The most obvious step is to trade away as much veteran talent as possible, especially in the days leading up to the league’s trade deadline. That’s become an annual tradition, as the league’s worst teams open up the storefronts, offering reinforcements to the league’s better teams in exchange for draft picks or prospects. It’s a smart move, a struggling team’s best chance to stockpile assets for the future. But if done right it has the added benefit of weakening the current roster for the stretch run. And it can be taken to extremes – last year, the Sabres traded away both their goaltenders.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian