| Dallas Stars News | | | Dubinsky returns for Game 5; No hearing for Brown; Spacek rips Habs (Puck Headlines) (Puck Daddy)
• John Tortorella, when asked how he was going to get his forwards going on Tuesday: "Pray." He then read an excerpt from his memoir on a trip he took around the world after splitting from the Tampa Bay Lightning.
• By the way, in case it wasn't clear that John Tortorella's sense of humour is lacking, on Wednesday morning he made it clear that he was joking about prayer and retracted the joke. [ NHL ]
• No hearing for Dustin Brown for his controversial collision with Michal Rozsival. [ LA Kings Insider ]
• Brandon Dubinsky returns to the Rangers' lineup for Game 5. [ Newsday ]
• Showing some much-needed attention to the Devils' relatively anonymous blueline. [ NJ ]
• An argument for shaking up the New York Rangers' lines by removing Carl Hagelin from the top unit: "Hagelin is currently playing top line minutes with the Rangers two most skilled forwards, and ha exactly zero goals to show for it. That's no goals and just three assists in 18 games so far this postseason. No matter which way you look at this, it's unacceptable to have a top line player with zero goals in 18 games. At some point, changes need to be made." [ Blue Seat Blogs ]
• Jaroslav Spacek claims he might have retired at the end of the year if he had finished it in Montreal, and rips the Canadiens hockey operations team, from the bizarre rules for the players to the total lack of communication. "'So much bad stuff,' Spacek said. 'In my 20-year hockey career, I'd never seen anything like it. If you don't like the way I play, kick me in the ass. But no one said anything. It was terrible.'" [ Montreal Gazette ]
• Another major step towards the Phoenix Coyotes staying in Arizona was taken after the team was eliminated last night, as the Glendale City Council voted to approve a preliminary budget that includes $17 million to the prospective buyer of the team for operating costs for the city's Jobing.com Arena." [ Winnipeg Free Press ]
• The Wild have signed 2010 first-round pick Mikael Grandlund to his entry-level contract. He announced the deal himself in a video on the Wild's website. [ Wild ]
• Michael Arace on the American invasion in the NHL. [ Blue Jackets Xtra ]
• Alex Semin cuts his forehead on his gold medal, which is a very enigmatic thing to do. [ RMNB ] Ratings down for conference finals; Ted Nugent backs David Booth; NHL 13 teaser (Puck Headlines) (Puck Daddy)
Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.
• You're probably seen Zdeno Chara's tribute to Pavel Demitra by now, but here's Slovakia's Branko Radivojevic rocking a tribute T-shirt after their semifinal win over the Czech Republic at the Hockey World Championship in Helsinki.
• NBC audiences were down over the weekend for the conference finals. Lepore: "Saturday's Rangers-Devils game drew a 1.3 overnight rating, down 13% from last year's Game 4 between Boston and Tampa Bay. It may have been hurt by the early timeslot, or the fact that there was a huge dip in ratings in the lone local market, New York. Game 3 drew a 4.2 in the Big Apple, well down from the 6.2 for Game 1 on the NBC Sports Network. Sunday's Game 4 between the Coyotes and Kings drew a 1.1 overnight, down 15% from last year's Game 4 between the Canucks and Sharks, which was a 2-1 series, as opposed to the 3-0 lead the Kings had heading in. The game drew a series high 2.7 in Los Angeles." [ Puck The Media ]
• Henrik Lundqvist on the New York Rangers fans that invade the Rock: "We always have played there in Newark. It's one of the things that makes it special to play these types of games, play New York teams. We have a lot of support, and talked about
it earlier, a couple days ago, when you see the way that the fans react to things that happen during the game or even the results, it's exciting." [ Rangers Rants ]
• Looks like Stu Bickel will move up to forward to replace the suspended Brandon Prust. [ Slap Shot ]
• Larry Brooks believes the hate-o-meter is slowly seeing the needled move on the Rangers and New Jersey Devils. [ NY Post ]
• Sports Business Journal is reporting that the Detroit Red Wings have settled on a designer for a new 18,000-seat arena to replace the Joe. [ Detroit News ]
• Jim Rutherford, President and General Manager of the National Hockey League's Carolina Hurricanes, today announced that the team has agreed to terms with defenseman Jamie McBain on a two-year contract. The deal will pay McBain $1.7 million in 2012-13, and $1.9 million in 2013-14. [ Hurricanes ]
• They signed Bobby Sanguinetti and forward Nicolas Blanchard to two-way contracts, too. [ Canes Country ]
• Zach Parise is a free agent … risk? "It is very likely that he will elevate whichever team signs him in the short run, but as teams weigh the idea of making him an offer, they need to keep in mind the distinct possibility that he will underperform this contract in the near future and eventually become an anchor on the team's salary cap finances." [ NHL Numbers ]
• Bear killin' David Booth has a friend in Ted Nugent. [ PITB ]
What We Learned: Embarrassing LA sports media moments while covering Kings playoff run (Puck Daddy)
Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.
It's possibly the greatest bit of investigative journalism conducted since Woodward and Bernstein brought down Richard Nixon.
This exemplary, collective effort of sleuth work is currently ongoing in Los Angeles, Calif., where an entire media market has unearthed the NHL's shocking secret:
The city has a professional hockey team.
Over the past week or so here at Puck Daddy, we've tried to document every startling discovery made by the intrepid Los Angeles media, like how to properly pronounce Anze Kopitar's name (it's hard because he's from Bosnia or something), the real name of this Drew Doughty character ( it's actually Brad !) and that hockey is in fact not played with a ball, but rather a little piece of rubber known as a "puck." That last one makes me pretty uncomfortable because of the word it rhymes with. ("Duck" — sorry, I just don't trust 'em; they have weird beaks).
Just how villainous is this team, operating as a sort of sporting sleeper cell? They got all the way to the Western Conference Finals without one local noticing. That takes real criminal talent. And not only that, but, the NHL had the diabolical idea to hide it right under the Los Angelinos' noses, by having their home games played at the Staples Center. You know, where the Lakers play. Further, they named the team the Kings to intentionally confuse even the savviest media organization into thinking they are the NBA's Sacramento Kings.
Astonishingly devious stuff. More twists and turns than the Da Vinci Code, which I've read three times just to make sure I understood it all.
The best bit of this journalism on this pressing issue comes, of course, from the city's paper of record, the Los Angeles Times, winner of 44 Pulitzer Prizes since 1942, including three in 2012. It was for that towering beacon of journalistic excellence that columnist Chris Erskine successfully scruted several of the team and sport's most inscrutable mysteries .
For instance, that thing I said earlier about the puck (again, yuck… oh and that's another gross word it rhymes with), I learned it from Erskine. Apparently they even freeze the thing. And that's a huge point of concern, because, "The hardest shots can reach 110 mph and tear flesh, crush bone, even kill you if you're not careful." Yikes, you guys!
( Coming Up: Rick Nash to Boston?; Tororella defends Prust; Ryan Suter faces his future; Evegni Malkin is having a pretty good season; why Lundqvist is King; why the Capitals can't win with Ovechkin; the Islanders know how to party; Canucks might keep Luongo; Ryan Miller on the CBA; Flames and Oilers coaching news; and are the Kings in trouble?)
Devils vs. Rangers in Game 2; top NHL free agents; top 10 playoff saves (Playoff Puck Previews) (Puck Daddy)
Back by popular demand, here are your Puck Previews: Spotlighting the key games in NHL action, news and views as well as general frivolity. Make sure to stop back here for the nightly Three Stars when the games are finished.
Via Lockhart Steele on Twitter: "Guy wants to sell me these for $150 each. seeing Callahan lay out Deron Williams worth it? Thoughts?" Insert your shot-blocking and/or goaltending joke here. [ Deadspin , s/t @Tedislaw ]
Eastern Conference Final Game 2 Preview: New Jersey Devils at New York Rangers, 8 p.m. ET. No lineup changes for the Rangers but the Devils could have a new look for Game 2: Coach Pete DeBoer reunited Zach Parise with Travis Zajac and Ilya Kovalchuk, and will have Patrik Elias skating with Petr Sykora and Dainius Zubrus. The Devils are going to try to find a way around the Rangers' shot blocking that doesn't involve maiming. By the way, that whole "keep Rangers fans out of the Rock" thing the Devils were doing? It's disappeared, and the team hasn't explained why.
Check out previews and updated scores for all of today's games on the Y! Sports NHL scores and scheds page . For tonight's starting goalies, check out Left Wing Lock.
Evening Reading
• Listen to today's Marek Vs. Wyshynski here.
• Adam Proteau presents the top 10 UFAs this summer. You know Nos. 1 and 2; did you know No. 3 was Dennis Wideman of the Washington Capitals? [ THN ]
Klingberg a Name to Remember
Sometimes, you get lucky. And sometimes, advanced scouting and playing a hunch works in your favor.
With Swedish defenseman John Klingberg, weâll say the Stars got a little bit of both.
When the Stars scouting staff met Klingberg before he w... Sheldon Souray wants to stay
The 2011-12 season ended in disappointing fashion for the Dallas Stars, as they barely missed the playoffs after stumbling to a 3-9-0 record down the stretch. But for veteran defenseman Sheldon Souray, in many ways, it was a highly successful year... Roster Report
MOST VALUABLE PLAYER Kari Lehtonen is an absolute no-brainer pick here]]> | | | | |
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