Realignment Woes Grow

As most everyone has heard by now the NHLPA failed to approve the league's realignment plan by the set deadline. This lack of movement was essentially the Players' Association rejecting the realignment plan without actually rejecting it. It was a clever bit of maneuvering on the part of someone or someone else to do something that pretty much just pisses everyone off in one way or another.

A number of quality blogs have done a great job poking holes in the NHLPA's statement about why a plan popular amongst the league, owners, and fans (except, probably Florida and Tampa) would be unceremoniously rejected. The travel complaints from the NHLPA have been a target from the media, and with good reason, the claims are overall pretty silly in the face of the efforts of the league to add parity to travel schedules across the league, except for Florida and Tampa. But the area in which I'm more interested is that the Players' Association was given no say during the formative period of the new league structure. Just today Travis Hughes of SBNation and Broad Street Hockey reported that Flyers player rep Braydon Coburn said that the unbalanced conferences structure was the primary area of concern for the NHLPA. While this concern is certainly notable, the conference structure is far more agreeable than some of the other setups suggested by the owners and the league.

Where I Again Try To Guess The Future

Bergfors predicting how many goals he'll score for the Nashville Predators

Many Nashville Predators were excited about the off season acquisition of Swedish sniper Niclas Bergfors. He was seen as a Kostitsyn-esque low-risk investment. Like the Belarusian Niclas never seemed to be able to settle down into a consistent role. Unlike our trigger shy Eastern European friend Bergfors never could seem to put anything interesting on the table. His single goal this season didn't come off of a shot, but rather involved a surprised Swede chesting the puck in the net past a likely very startled Miikka Kiprusoff. What made the play all the more hilarious was that the puck was coming off a rather silly looking shot from Hillen. Bear Force has generally been a disappointment and watching McGrattan gobble up the last roster spot had to be tough on the kid, so it came as no surprised when the Predators chose to waive the player.

We've Crossed the First Threshold.

There are two simple rules that I follow early in each and ever NHL season. The first that the standings are pretty meaningless until (American) Thanksgiving. This is the time of year with bizarre stat leaders, neck in neck races between future champions and lottery winners, and the Ottawa Senators not thinking that they are going to be spending the second half of the season hanging out with the Blue Jackets in their mom's basement listening to Jawbreaker and watching The Kids In The Hall DVDs. I know, doesn't sound like the worst Friday night, but it certainly isn't how you want to spend the second half of your hockey season. My second rule is that I start to evaluate a team's performance until they've struck the ten game mark. While teams continue to go through changes, work around injuries, and have mid-season surges, I think that you can get a solid feel for the look and feel of the team.

That brings us to the Nashville Predators. At the start of last week I would say that I wasn't anticipating sitting down and writing this little piece. Sure, when I'm ranting and going off the deep end I'm far more entertaining, but it would still mean the Preds were playing like utter crap and that I was twitchy from people jumping ship, calling for Trotz's/Poile's head/blood, and declaring war on the color gold. Fortunately for my mental health things have settled down from that point and the team finds itself right in the thick of the Western Conference and only three points from the Central Division leading Blackhawks. So, with all those positive thoughts in mind let's actually take a look at the team.

2011-2012 NHL Color Scales: Red & Blue

And so we have reached the final color scale. I do plan on releasing all of these on a single page so that people can have them or fiddle with them or whatever it is that people do when they are downloading pictures off the internet. Today we have the two largest scales in the Red and the Blue scales. People often talk about how overused these colors are in the league and this pair of scales really demonstrates how extensive the use of blue and red really are. It isn't terribly surprising since blue and red are often tested as the two most popular colors in the world. In case you're curious, orange is often picked as the least appealing color, go figure. If this is your first time looking at these scales I invite you to go back and take a look at the first two entries for the rest of the the scales in the series: Green, Purple, & Natural and Orange, Silver, & Gold.

And since both of these are so long, you can find them both after the bump if you navigated here via the main page.

More Bargain Contracts From the Nashville Predators

There has been an ongoing series over at NBC Sports’ ProHockeyTalk where James O’Brien takes a look at each NHL team’s best bargain contracts. The only two players that made the cut for the Nashville Predators were Pekka Rinne and Ryan Suter who next season will be making $3.4 million and $3.5 million dollars respectively. Clearly both of these are extremely talented hockey players. What is also clear is that they both only have a single season left on their contracts are due sizable raises when the 2012 offseason arrives. Those aren’t the only bargain contracts on the Predators roster, and I am hardly surprised that Mr. O’Brien overlooked some of Poile’s deft signings. 

Wouldn't You Want Out?

This blog is inspired by recent events and certainly this CBC Sports article from Elliotte Friedman. There are assumptions and speculation, and a surprising lack of humor, floating around this piece.

There has been a lot of talk about the Nashville Predators taking the next step. David Poile shocked Preds fans last offseason when they went out and grabbed one of the best players available through free agency Matthew Lombardi. The organization further shocked fans by going out and grabbing center Mike Fisher from Ottawa (replacing the Matt Lombardi), showing a commitment to spend the money needed to compete. Myself and other Predators fans were looking forward to an offseason where we could solidify our team around new captain Shea Weber and get the missing elements needed to make Nashville a real Stanley Cup threat. At this point any fan of the team knows that the offseason is not going how anyone envisioned it.

I can't verify that this Shea, but it could be

This offseason, the Preds have brought on board Brett Ledba, Zack Stortini, Niclas Bergfors, and Tyler Sloan. Wow, about the only thing that we can get excited about it Bergfors, a player that is basically this season’s Sergei Kostitsyn. What have we lost? Where to begin? Joel Ward, Mark Dekanich, Marcel Goc, Matthew Lombardi (who may never play again), Shane O’Brien, JP Dumont, Steve Sullivan and Cody Franson were all either traded, not invited back, or had their contract bought out. Any and all replacements are rookies that have never seen NHL ice or only played in the NHL due to last season’s injury woes. On top of all the player movements we had and error on the part of David Poile that almost cost the team O’Reilly, Halischuk, Kostisyn, and Spaling. So, here we are. If you were an elite defenseman, is this the commitment to winning that you want to see from your organization?

Your 2011-2012 Nashville... Predators?

What we’re left with is a team that has once again decided to work with what they’ve got. After clearing all sorts of cap space by buying out Dumont, trading away Lombardi’s dead fish contract, and passing on a new contract with Sullivan fans have seen nothing happen. No one can say whether the team is going to be better or worse next season due to the assumed influx of young, homegrown talent. The team has clearly adopted this very passive strategy in a division where we saw rivals make bold and numerous moves to improve their teams. And now think about Weber; a player that had faith in the organization and frequently expressed that he wished to remain with the team. He’s been watching this offseason unfold right along side, and as we grew more and more tense following the draft, we could assume that Weber was feeling that right along with the rest of us. He’s approaching that soft “prime” age of 27 years and he has to think about his future, his future holding the Cup above his head.

When I start thinking about things that way I can start to understand his point of view. Already this summer we have seen people argue whether or not Predators Hockey can even win the Stanley Cup, a brilliant blog inspired by the idea that the organization believes that the team can win on the merits of defense alone. Weber gets to see all of this first hand and has access to information for which bloggers and fanatics would practically kill to obtain. You take everything that has happened this offseason and that “sure thing” attitude of Weber might have taken a few hits. He may have just gotten fed up. And what about the agent change? The switch was made before even the draft had taken place, and like Patten over at Puck Scene writes about, the agent change may have created an even bigger mess out of this offseason. If he wanted to give the franchise one more shot then he could’ve set up a one-year deal before arbitration, but I agree with Elliotte Friedman that Weber may just want out at this point. The goal and dream of any NHL player is to win the Stanley Cup, and it is perfectly reasonable for Weber believe that such a victory is not within the grasp of this Nashville Predators organization.



Of course this is all speculation. My personal favorite theory is that Poile and Weber are just trying to help Weber’s new agent gain some experience at being a player agent.

Selfishly, I also don't want to have to work on new art for my sidebars for the 2012-2013 season. I really enjoy the ones that I have at the moment.... *Warning, lower resolution screen users may have no idea what I'm talking about*

How Much Is Too Much: True North Entertainment and Canadian Militarism (or how to write sensationalist titles)

I guess you’d have to say that the biggest thing happening this offseason is the ongoing emergence and changes of the new Winnipeg Jets. The most recent round of controversy surrounded the unveiling of the team’s logos. Personally, I’m not a fan of any of the logos that the organization unveiled. I think they could potentially become iconic, at the moment they currently are just boring, or flat out bad when it comes to the word mark. But I’m not here today to throw in my 2 cents (or 0.0191 Canadian cents) on the branding. Well, I guess I am doing just that, in a way.

Disclaimer: I don't know a ton about Canadian politics, so this piece is based entirely off of the articles that I read as well as a personal reaction to the concepts discussed within those articles.

Just Call 'Em the Jets? Even if It Was I Would Always Disagree

I find the whole Winnipeg NHL naming thing to be all together tons of fun. The very second that it looked like True North Entertainment was going to acquire the Atlanta Thrashers organization one of the biggest topics has been the new name of the franchise. There were previously assurance from TNE was that the name would be revealed only after the 13,000 season ticket mark was reached, and this number was achieved almost immediately. Well, we still have not as much as a whisper as to the future identity of the franchise. I recently read an article from Tom Oleson of the Winnipeg Free Press talking about the deep and widespread commitment to the Jets moniker. It is a fun little read, even if the author is a tad fixated on polar bears. I agree with Oleson that the Polar Bears would make for a terrible name, but a third of the article talking about bears? Still, he gives further credence to the fact that the overwhelming number of hockey fans want the franchise to be renamed the Jets, whether they are Manitoba or Winnipeg is another thing.

Personally, I'm not a fan of bringing to name back into the NHL. The original Jets organization moved to Phoenix. It still exists, and the Phoenix Coyotes still recognize and pay tribute to the Winnipeg Jets. The new team coming to Manitoba is totally unrelated to the former Jets and I believe deserve their own identity that is not mired in misplaced nostalgia. Yes, misplaced. There is nothing innately wrong with nostalgia but there have been suggestions that there could be a fan backlash, disillusionment, and a loss or departure of fans if the team is not named the Jets. These fans seem to forget that regardless of the name, Winnipeg will once again be home to an NHL team. The whole threatened negative reaction seems extremely ungrateful towards the folks that have worked hard and spent millions of dollars to bring the NHL back to the province.  Which leads me to the big issue.

Why hasn't TNE come out and announced the name of the team?

I think it is because TNE has stated that they want the franchise to begin its own history in Manitoba, but are faced with massive support to revive the Jets name and colors. Paul Friesen of the Toronto Sun reminded us all that even if the team were called the Jets TNE wouldn't own the history (source). The team would be the Jets in name only since, as I mentioned, Phoenix has possession of the Winnipeg Jets' history. Another recent article from the Winnipeg Free Press also discusses the complexities and problems with renaming the franchise as the Jets. History, records, retired numbers, these are things that would have to be tacked on but are all things officially held by the Phoenix Coyotes organization.

I break it down like this:
The fans want to paint stripes on a horse and call it a zebra, whereas TNE would rather replace the horse with something like a moose or maybe another bird.

And Then A Step to the Right

With the impending move of the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg chatter has renewed as to what team will replace the Thrashers in the East.  There are two popular theories: the first is that one of the Detroit or Columbus would go East since those cities are in the eastern time zone, while the second is that Nashville will move to the East since it is in position to slip into the Southeast division.  The major conversation among my fellow Predators fans is whether the conference move would be a boon or a curse on the team.  My own viewpoint is that I would much rather the team remains in the Western Conference, and so I shall explain.

The first thing is time zones.  Nashville would be the first and only team in the EC that will be in the central time zone.  It is guaranteed that most of our road games will now have a 6:00cst start, rolling everything back an hour and making it variably difficult for people to get home and settle in before the game starts.  In some cases commuters will probably go from the door to couch without much choice if they want to catch the game.  I cannot help but wonder what sort of impact could this have on viewership and ratings?  An hour can make quite a difference.  Of course the advantage here is that fans will no longer have to contend with nearly as many 8 and 9 cst starts.

The other problem is the level of competition in the EC.  The widely held opinion is that even the weaker teams in the West would compete for playoff berths if they were located in the East.  Playing the Panthers and Senators and Hurricanes more times every year will certainly be far less exciting than playing the Sharks, Ducks, Stars, or even the Oilers.  That competition makes the Predators a better team and put a better entertainment product on the ice.  So, the team might not only lose viewers due to a time shift, but also due to a fewer number of engaging hockey games.

But someone has to move to the Eastern Conference: does the NHL send one of the two WC, but eastern time zone, teams of the Detroit Red Wings or the Columbus Blue Jackets?  Traditionalists would likely favor sending the Red Wings back into the East, but that doesn't make a lot of sense for the league.  Moving Detroit away leaves the West with a single Original 6 team in the Blackhawks and removes an iconic and constantly competitive team from the WC.  Further the Red Wings have maintained a number of rivalries in the West; it would be a minus to the league to strip away those rivalries.  Then there are the Blue Jackets.  Columbus is a team with some talent that has continued to struggle in the competitive WC and the ultra-competitive Central Division.  A move to the East would likely give the Jackets the ability to compete at a higher level and bring success to the struggling franchise.  It further helps the teams by easing their travel schedule and placing them back into their natural time zone.

If Gary Bettman and the league are interested in making money and making Sunbelt hockey success Nashville needs to remain locked in the Western Conference.

Also, don't forget to check out my continued parody of Stanley Cup Playoff predictions

Playoff Predictions 3: Sycophants and Hypocrites, how we learned to love green tea edition

If you want to catch up on my pointless and misguided Playoff Predictions check out the First and Second round.

Did I do poorly with my second round predictions or what? I guess those magic dice weren’t all that magical, for this they will be disciplined. You could probably say that I am a tad upset over the Predators losing to the Canucks, especially since the team managed to win a grand total of zero games on home ice in the second round. Still, the team reached far this season, and I can now look forward with anticipation for a more mature and healthy team next year.

Now, back to my second round predictions. The only prediction that I got anywhere near correct was calling the Sharks in 6. It took them seven games because the entire team momentarily confused Niemi for Nabakov and promptly stopped giving a shit. Fortunately for everyone cheering against the Red Wings—because seriously who cheers for the San Jose—the boys in teal black managed to stop trying to reenact their favorite scenes from The Cutting Edge 2. All my other predictions were unmitigated disasters as the Flyers and Capitals managed to reinforce the stereotype that all Eastern Conference teams suck.

Well then, let’s move on to my predictions for the Eastern and Western Conference Finals!

Some End of Season Thoughts

Today marks the first day since September 24, 2010 that I can wake up in the morning and not look forward to more Nashville Predators hockey.  As anyone reading this probably knows, the reason for the absence of anticipation is the victory of the Vancouver Canucks.  In all honesty the better team won the game and took the series.  I am proud that our boys broke past the first round and pushed the Canucks as hard as they could, though maybe not as hard as they would have liked.  Ultimately there is quite a bit to celebrate about this season, and I wanted to take note of some of things that stood out to me.

• Several late season call-ups stole spots on the rosters and allowed for guys like Colin Wilson and JP Dumont to be benched.  Jonathan Blum in particular was a revelation, as I had to remind myself that this guy was living in Milwaukee until the end of February.  Having only played 23 regular season games, if he makes the team next fall maybe he will compete for the Calder.  Matt Halischuk certainly has some fire and played solid Predators hockey.  Hustlechuk also has support scorer written all over him, and I can tell he's the kind of guy Trotz likes having around.  Finally we've Blake Geoffrion, the kid that we've all been waiting for.  Blake has shown that he can use his body and that he's willing to go in the nasty areas to score the dirty goals, two big things that will make him successful in the NHL.  It has been casually noted that Bam Bam always has an adjustment period before he is effective at each level of hockey.  Well, if we're just seeing his adjustment period I am ecstatic about the future.
• And then we have Colin Wilson.  Wilson impressed during his call-ups in the '09-10 season.  The kid had fire in his stride, drove to the net, and had some real finesse with his stick.  To start this season it looked like we were getting the Colin Wilson we were excited about, sadly that euphoria did not last.  Most of the season his play was uninspired and #33 might as well have been invisible.  I'd like to chalk it all up to a sophomore slump.  In the final game of the playoffs he seemed to have found his fire, let's all hope that he can bring it back next year.
• Kevin Klein continues to be awful.  Seriously awful.  As I've been found of saying all year, the guy is a very talented hockey player that lacks hockey smarts.  He improved playing next to Blum since I imagine Blum was more qualified to order Mr. Squinty McDevil Beard around the ice.  He's signed on through the 2014 season, so here is hoping that between Roman Josi, Ryan Ellis, and Charles-Olivier Roussel one of them can bury him as the 6th or 7th defenseman.
• Hornqvist had a rough year, everyone was expecting him and made his life hellish in front of the net.  I wanted 25 goals out of him this season and he managed 21, not too far off.  Let's hope he keeps strengthening his legs and core, because that will only make him more effective.
• I originally bemoaned the acquisition of Sergei Kostitsyn, and I was wrong.  Tits made his presence known, although he could tand to shoot more and make drop passes at the blue line less. The big question is how much it will cost to keep the Belarusian on the team.
• I also have to wonder who we lose in the off season.  Sullivan and O'Brien are the easy picks for players that won't get new contracts, but then you've got UFAs Goc and Ward and then RFAs Spaling, Halischuk, Kostitsyn and O'Reilly.  With Wilson, Geoffrion, Legwand, Fisher, Lombardi, and Smithson all under contract, how much room is there for O'Reilly and Goc?  All the RFAs except O'Reilly have a spot, and Ward fought past a poor regular season with a stellar postseason, but we'll have to see if it was enough to earn him a new contract.
• I don't think that Ward will continue his playoff level production, but it was nice to seem him come alive in the playoffs.  He's certainly proved that he can be an effective hockey player in a myriad of situations.
• One thing that I made a note of is that with new uniform coming next year, Game 6 may very well have been the final appearance of the Predators' classic uniforms.  I say classic since the only major change to the uniforms was some minor aesthetic changes when the NHL switched to Reebok Edge jerseys.  As a jersey enthusiast I feel sad to seem them go, but excited that we're experiencing our first team re-branding, which means we're only a dozen jerseys changes behind the Canucks.
• What about Bouillon and Lombardi?  Both of them have been suffering from concussion symptoms for extended periods of time, and the team has given no indication of a timeline.  Concussions are tricky and dangerous, so it's far better to have no expectations than risk the health of the player.  Lombardi is signed for another two seasons and his contributions are a mystery, while Bouillon is only contracted through next season.  Bouillon has a family and will turne 36 early into next season, if he can't shake the concussion symptoms we may see him retire.  Matthew Lombardi is a mystery.  Preds fans aren't even sure that the guy still exists, and sitings of the player are greeted with mock excitement.  If he's ready to go next season then he has the potential to be a game changer.
• UPDATE: I forgot to mention one thing about the playoffs.  You can't expect to make a deep playoff run when you're power play and your penalty kill units are not clicking.  The Preds struggled to be consistent on both fronts for both rounds of the playoffs.  They've got another summer and preseason to try and get the power play back on track.  I'll remain overly optimistic and believe in a middle of the pack power play.

All things considered it was an excellent season that exceeded fan and media expectations.  Average attendance was up, the new management showed a willingness to spend money, and the talent is on the rise.  Beyond the draft there is a lot to look forward to next season.  One big thing is that we no longer live for the opportunity to crack the second round of the playoffs.  The team will have new expectations and a new image entering into the 2011-2012 season, and it should be an incredibly exciting season.

Playoff Predictions are Dead, Long Live Playoff Predictions: Round 1

First of all, some quick notes:  As you can see there are some new design elements to the blog.  I'm proud of how everything turned out, and I would love some feedback, especially if something doesn't look right to you.  You can e-mail any comments to puckandpunk [at] gmail [dot] com.  Also, the new Puck and Punk logo was created by forgivable Rangers and Flames enthusiast Cait over at HockeyN3rd.  So big thanks to her for the contribution.

At the start of every NHL season, bloggers and journalists bombard us with pointless predictions as to the performance of the teams in the league.  These predictions are then mostly ignored until they can be used to either deride someone or so that someone can talk about how awesome he or she was at predicting the final outcome of the regular season.  And then we hit the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  For the next week hockey fans are bombarded with predictions and analysis and outlines from every corner of the web.  After some time it just got annoying, but I still wanted to share my predictions and analysis of the first round of the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs

Coming Soon to Trusted Retailers of Nashville Predators Goods

I have always been deeply interested in the world of marketing, advertising, and branding. My undergraduate work often focused on those topics while I studied psychology and business marketing. Being a fan of hockey and the NHL I’m always eager to see the promotional campaigns and branding concepts developed both by the league and the individual teams. Recently I found myself browsing shop.nhl.com to do a little bit of pricing and also to what new items might be offered. One could say that I was surprised to see that the NHL introduced two new products for the Spring, a hammer and a tape measure branded with whatever team logo that you could ever want. It wasn’t just that I was surprised; one could say that was laughing my ass off until I fell out of my chair. While I have no doubt the league will sell thousands of those items, it strikes me as being as silly as the Nashville Predators toaster or anything with both a Predators logo and a Stanley Cup on it. 

I decide that I would take the time and see if I could get a sneak preview of some of the products that we can look forward to the NHL and Predators premiering over the summer. Fortunately for you I was able to get my hands on some of the distributors catalogues so that I could bring you a sneak peek of the some of the exciting items coming to shop.nhl.com and the Bridgestone Arena Pro Shop.  And sorry, no official prices as of yet, but I'll update this page if and when I can get my hands on them.

My Hockey Bookmark: An (short) Essay

I've always placed a high value of books.  I try to treat my books well, and when I buy used books I have to verify that the previous owners also treated their books well.  It is just unpleasant to page through a book and find stains or marks from pens or pencils.  The absolutely worse thing that I come across in used books is dog-eared pages.  I am pressed to think of a good reason to dog-ear pages outside of pure convenience.  Personally, I prefer to use bookmarks, but here is a problem: bookmarks get lost.  It is unavoidable that you will lose your bookmark at some point or another.  My solution to this problem is to simply use whatever flat objects that I find lying around my apartment.

In the past I have found myself using index cards with a myriad of notes, directions, lines of poetry, or crude drawings of inebriated ghosts scrawled on one or both sides.  At other times I will find myself preying on a pack of playing cards, actively choosing clubs since no one ever talks about that suit.  Most recently my bookmark of choice has been drawn from smallish stickers that came in the mail accompanying vinyl records or CDs that I had ordered.  Basically, I go after any number of objects that I'm not all that concerned with losing.  Last week I started reading Perdido Street Station by the shockingly talented China Miéville; it is a pretty incredible piece of writing and my first time reading one of Miéville's books.  I decided that I needed to grab a new bookmark in honor of diving into the works of a new author. Which brings us the the start of conflict!