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Tag: John Carlson

Blogs • NHL • Team USA

Feb 24, 2014

Don’t Change What Olympic Hockey Has Become

Team USA came up short in Sochi and if Gary Bettman and the league have their way, it might be the last time the United States has a chance to win the gold medal with NHL players.

My biggest fear about this Team USA was scoring goals. When the team was announced on New Year’s Day, I battled a debilitating hangover to stay awake through the Red Wings-Maple Leafs Winter Classic for the release of the team, and my first thought following the end of the ceremony was that Team USA was going to be a more star-studded version of the New York Rangers. They would be a hard-nosed team that forechecks through grinding and plays steady defense, but really, they would rely on their goaltending to win games.

During the first game, my fear was being realized for the first 14:27 against Slovakia until John Carlson scored. And then when Slovakia tied it just 24 seconds into the second, I thought “This might be a one-goal game” and “What if we don’t score then next goal?” But Team USA scored six unanswered goals and won 7-1. They got past Russia thanks to Quick’s net being off its mooring and T.J. Oshie’s incredible shootout skills. Their game against Slovenia turned into their second first-round laugher and then it turned out I had nothing to be nervous about playing the aging Czech Republic team in the quarterfinals.

All along we knew the tournament would come down to Team USA, Canada, Sweden, Finland and Russia. We knew those five teams were the only teams with a true chance at winning gold and that the other seven teams were just there to fill out the 12-team field. Getting to the semifinals seemed like it would be a formality (and it was) and then once Team USA got there is when the tournament would really start for them. But once there is when my biggest fear for Team USA 2014 was realized. Team USA was shut out by Canada and lost the chance of playing in the gold-medal game and then they were shut out by Finland and lost the chance at leaving Sochi with a medal. The feeling about the state of USA Hockey between the win over the Czech Republic and the start of the semifinal game against Canada was erased. After a four-win week, the positive storylines surrounding Oshie and Quick and Phil Kessel turned into criticism of Patrick Kane’s production, Dan Bylsma’s coaching and the front office’s player selection process.

Prior to the tournament, I thought the gold medal was Canada’s to lose the way I have thought the gold medal was Canada’s to lose every Olympics. But after Team USA’s 20 goals in their four dominant efforts and Quick’s Conn Smythe-esque performances, I thought this was the year USA Hockey overtook Hockey Canada. I was wrong. And this might have been the last chance for the United States to prove itself in the Olympics with NHL players.

If Gary Bettman, his trusty staff and the NHL owners have their way, there’s no way the league will allow its players to compete in the 2018 Games in South Korea. I can’t imagine there are any general managers, who aren’t part of their country’s front office, that enjoy watching their players — the keys to their own jobs and livelihoods — compete in playoff-like games with nothing at stake for their employers. I’m sure Glen Sather isn’t too happy that his leading scorer will miss the next few weeks with a broken hand suffered in Sochi and Garth Snow has already made it known that he isn’t a fan of the Olympics now that his franchise player and Team Canada’s third-best player is out for the rest of the season with a torn MCL.

Despite injuries, which are going to happen in the NHL as well the Olympics, the Games have proven to be the best infomercial for a league that has tried everything to increase their audience and gain attention in the post-lockout era. But the NHL still doesn’t recognize that. Gary Bettman doesn’t recognize that. All he knows is that for three weeks, his league didn’t play any games this season even though what was happening in Sochi was doing more for the growth of his game than anything that has happened in North America this season. But can you blame Bettman or the owners for not wanting to continue to capitalize on something positive for the league and its fans?

Under Bettman’s watch, teams have left Canada as well as two of the United States’ few hockey hotbeds in Connecticut and Minnesota for the Southern U.S. Bettman locked out his players in 1994-95, again in 2004-05 and a third time in 2012-13. He has been the face of countless bad ideas for the league and its fans and has continued serving as the commissioner, preaching that the league is flourishing, finding new revenues and doing better than ever. Or at least better than it was at the time of his most recent lockout. He has pissed on his fans, real fans who have grown up with the game in an attempt to make the sport appeal to those who first heard T.J. Oshie’s name nine days ago. He has only ever cared about attracting casual fans and you would think that he would view the Olympics as a marketing blessing every four years. Instead he has been outspoken on trying to prohibit NHL players from participating in the Olympics.

It won’t come as a shock if NHL players aren’t competing in the 2018 Games and we get basically another version of the World Juniors. As fans, we won’t get to properly measure each nation’s level of hockey against the other nations since the countries with the best players won’t be allowed to send those players to the Olympics. It will still be quality hockey and I will still watch because it’s hockey, but it won’t be what Olympic hockey has become and is supposed to be: each country’s best players.

I will be back for the Olympics in four years in South Korea. And I’m sure I will be on my couch on New Year’s Day fighting the lasting effects of too much Fireball and waiting for Team USA to be unveiled after the Winter Classic. I just hope the league and its owners allow that team to be full of NHL players.

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Blogs • Team USA

Feb 15, 2014

Team USA-Russia Thoughts: Do You Believe in T.J. Oshie?

T.J. Oshie became a household name after he beat the defending Vezina winner, the face of the KHL and Russian hockey and Russia’s captain in a shootout.

Doc Emrick finished the USA-Russia broadcast by saying, “Many people paid many rubles hoping to see the home team win. Not tonight.” And it was night in Sochi by the time T.J. Oshie finished off Russia, but back in the U.S. it was still early in the morning and the perfect start to the day.

To continue the perfect start to the day, like I did on Thursday, here are the Thoughts from the game.

– Ryan Callahan played the exact type of game that has people questioning why the Rangers would want to trade their captain in the middle of a season in which they are fighting for a playoff berth. Callahan sacrificed his body (including burying Ovechkin from behind), mucked it up in the corners and seemed to be involved in the play every shift throughout the game. It must have made non-Rangers fans laugh at the idea that Glen Sather is actively seeking a trade for him.

– Blake Wheeler is barely on Team USA and barely in the lineup, but there he was turning the puck over in the neutral zone and then taking a tripping penalty to make up for his turnover halfway through the first period to give Russia’s dangerous power play an early chance. I’m going to guess that that’s not the way to increase your already small amount of playing time or ensure your spot in the lineup for the rest of the tournament.

– As for Russia’s power play, their main power play featured a combination of Alexander Ovechkin, Pavel Datsyuk, Evegeni Malkin, Ilya Kovalchuk, Andrei Markov and Alexander Radulov and it was unimpressive for the options they had. Datsyuk’s second goal was a power-play goal, but Russia finished the game 1-for-6 on the power play and several times had trouble setting up in the USA zone and struggled to get shots. When you have two guys like Ovechkin and Malkin both looking for the big one-timer and two guys like Kovalchuk and Datsyuk both trying to control the play and tempo, is it possible that Russia has too many offensive weapons for the the man-advantage?

– The Russian fans made the game from a TV-watching perspective have the feel of a game with special magnitude. Even if the constant horns made it sound like a Tampa Bay Rays home game or vuvuzelas at the World Cup, the crowd made the environment hostile for Team USA and their noise levels when Russia carried the puck into the offensive zone was Stanley Cup-esque.

– I miss watching Ilya Kovalchuk on a regular basis. I’m sure if I really wanted I could still watch Kovalchuk on a regular basis if I wanted to wake up early and put my computer at risk by accessing some sketchy website that streams KHL games if you answer some survey questions and close 29 pop-up windows. As a Rangers fan, I don’t miss watching Kovalchuk the New Jersey Devil beat the Rangers, but as a hockey fan, he was entertaining and one of the best pure scorers in the league. Here’s what I said about him in the Rangers-Devils email exchange from the Stadium Series:

To me, Kovalchuk was always the most underrated superstar in the league. With 108 goals by the age of 21 after his first three years in the league, following the 2003-04 season it seemed like Kovalchuk would be one of the premier names in the league for well over the next decade. But after the lockout, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin emerged, took over as the faces of the league and Kovalchuk was pushed aside and somewhat forgotten about because of the other two and because of where he played.

In the shootout, Kovalchuk made it look easy against Jonathan Quick. His first goal was effortless and his second goal was almost a joke as he pulled Quick to the left (Quick’s right) and casually flipped the puck back across Quick, which could have been the game-winning shootout goal if T.J. Oshie didn’t exist.

You would think that playing with fellow Russians who still play in the NHL and against players he spent a decade playing against that he would miss the North American game. But if anyone doesn’t, it’s the guy who left 12 years and $77 million to return home. Maybe we’ll get to see him play against Team USA one more time in these Olympics, if not, maybe we’ll see him in four years in South Korea.

– When Pavel Datsyuk splits your defense (in this case, John Carlson and Brooks Orpik) and then scores on your Conn Smythe goalie, all you can do is shake your head and laugh. So that’s what I did.

– You have to love the Russian chants of “Shaybu!” which Doc said loosely translates to “Go get the puck.” What do the fans think the players are trying to do? We can relate to this here in the States where we have fans at games using their voices to repeatedly yell “Shoot!” at players on the power play no matter where the puck is or what kind of angle the player with possession has. But imagine everyone at Madison Square Garden repeatedly yelling “Go get the puck!” “Go get the puck!” “Go get the puck!”

– When NBC showed Russia’s coach for the first time and the graphic with his name, I wondered how much it would suck to have his name: Zinetula Bilyaletdinov. That’s eight letters for the first name and 13 for the last name for a total of 21 letters. As Neil Keefe (nine total letters), I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to write Zinetula Bilyaletdinov or to even remember it.

– It was weird to see Mike Babcock, Claude Julien, Lindy Ruff, Steve Yzerman, Peter Chiarelli and Doug Armstrong all together watching USA-Russia even though they are all part of Team Canada, but it wasn’t weird to see everyone laughing and having a good time except for Chiarelli who has never not been serious in his life.

– I have never been a Fedor Tyutin fan. Never. Not for a second. Not when he was drafted by the Rangers, on the Hartford Wolf Pack or when he finally made it to New York. I think I was happier when he was traded to Columbus before the 2008-09 season than when Michael Del Zotto was traded this season. So of course it was Tyutin who almost beat Team USA because that’s how things work out. But thankfully he didn’t.

– At the time of the disallowed Russia goal, I couldn’t believe that call was made. Not because the call went against Russia in Russia with Vladimir Putin in attendance, which seems like it should be enough for the call to stand, but because as an NHL fan, there wasn’t a high-stick and the puck clearly hit the back bar. The problem was that everyone on the NBC broadcast also happens to be trained to judge reviewed goals by NHL standards and weren’t aware of the net being slightly off its mooring. Once the international rule was eventually explained, the replayed showed Quick instantly showing the refs that the net was dislodged and without Quick pointing that out, maybe that goal doesn’t get reviewed and Russia wins and T.J. Oshie isn’t a legend.

– But T.J. Oshie is a legend. Oshie took six of the eight Team USA shootout attempts and scored on four of the six against Sergei Bobrovsky, who just happens to be the defending Vezina winner. There wasn’t a serious hockey fan who had ever heard the name T.J. Oshie prior to the shootout and if you has asked a random person if T.J. Oshie is a congressman from Minnesota, the CEO of Ford, an NHL player on the St. Louis Blues or the bass player for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, there’s no way they would have known. But when you beat the reigning Vezina winner, the face of hockey in Russia and the KHL and the captain of Russia in a shootout and seal the win for the latest chapter of USA-Russia hockey, everyone will know who you are.

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Blogs • Team USA

Feb 13, 2014

Team USA-Slovakia Thoughts: It’s Not Worth Winning If You Can’t Win Big

Team USA started their quest for the gold medal with a 7-1 win over Slovakia in a game that actually had me nervous past the first period.

I have always wondered what it would be like to live on the West Coast during football season and wake up just in time to watch the 1:00 p.m. games at 10:00 a.m. Instead of waiting for the football day to start by watching one of the dozen pregame shows, tinkering with fantasy teams or putting together improbable parlays in hopes of seven underdogs winning so I can retire to Hawaii, it would be nice to just wake up, turn the TV on and have the game start. I got a taste of that life on Thursday.

When I woke up on Thursday morning, I was greeted by Doc Emrick for Team USA hockey against Slovakia in the first game of the 2014 Olympics at 7:30 a.m.

– The troubling thing about the Olympics is that you don’t know what to expect. Sure, Team USA has one of the best rosters in the tournament, but you don’t know how the players and line combinations are going to work out or what kind of on-ice chemistry there will be once the first game starts. While they are coming off a silver-medal performance, it’s not like they are really coming off of a silver-medal performance since that was four years ago. So entering the game I was worried that the team would have trouble scoring goals like the Rangers and that fear was growing in the first period for the 14:27 of the game before John Carlson blasted one top tit past Jaroslav Halak.

Looking back at the game now, knowing that Team USA won 7-1, it’s funny to think at 0-0, 1-0 USA, 1-1 and 2-1 USA, I was worried about losing this game. After Slovakia tied it up to start the second, I envisioned a 2-1 loss and started to have flashbacks from 2006 in Turin. I’m glad I can now laugh at my unnecessary worrying from the first 22:32 of the game.

– I kept forgetting that the actual game was on Eastern Standard Time and had to remind myself that Doc Emrick couldn’t possibly be this fired up before 8 a.m. since he actually wasn’t. When the puck dropped, it was already 4:30 p.m in Sochi and Emrik wasn’t rattling off Slovakian names with such enthusiasm in the early hours of the morning. But in the words of David Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) in Dazed and Confused, “It would be a lot cooler if he did.”

For as enjoyable as it is to listen to Emrick, that’s how painful it is listening to Pierre McGuire as one of the first voices you hear to start your day. That also goes for Ed Olczyk in this game as he didn’t have his A-game with him for the U.S. opener. How about Olczyk (I refuse to call him “Edzo”) throwing out the early “active boards” in the game. And then with eight minutes left in the second, there was the casual “Boy, they are using those boards a lot, aren’t they?” on the broadcast.

– In the second period, Team USA scored six times. Here are their goals:

1:26 – Ryan Kesler (Patrick Kane)

2:32 – Paul Stastny (Max Pacioretty, T.J. Oshie)

8:16 – David Backes (Phil Kessel)

13:30 – Paul Stastny (Kevin Shattenkirk, T.J. Oshie)

14:20 – Phil Kessel (Ryan Kesler, James van Riemsdyk)

15:17 – Dustin Brown (John Carlson, Patrick Kane)

So Team USA scored at 1:26 then they scored 1:06 after that, 5:44 after that, 5:14 after that, 50 seconds after that and 57 seconds after that. At that point, I thought Dan Bylsma was going to have to tell the team they were to make five passes before shooting in the third period and I think he did. Team USA had 11 shots in the first period and 16 in the second, but just six shots and no goals in the third. Yes, 7-1 was enough that point, and Team USA should have no problem getting one of the four bye seeds in the quarterfinals, but the second tiebreaker for the tournament (after head-to-head matchup) is goal differential. Pierre was right when he said, “It’s international hockey, you’ve got to run it up.”

– Even though I have known it for some time, I still find it intriguing/interesting/odd that Paul Stastny plays for Team USA even though he was born in Quebec, while his dad played Slovakia. Paul has dual citizenship for the United States and Canada and could technically play for either team, but I think he made the right choice since he probably wouldn’t be in Sochi if had chosen to be Canadian over American and Team USA wouldn’t be as good as they are without him. Everybody wins because Paul Stastny wants to be American instead of Canadian.

– I’m not going to make a big deal out of the missed offside call given the outcome of the game. But yes, had Slovakia won the game or won by a goal, I would probably already have a few thousand words about it.

– One of my friends said that he thinks Ryan Miller should get the start on Saturday against Russia to which I asked “Whyyyyyyyyy?” If Quick was the No. 1 goalie entering the Olympics, which he clearly was and is since he started against Slovakia, then why would he not start every game of the tournament until he proves he isn’t the No. 1? Against Slovakia, he let in one goal on 23 shots and deserves to start on Saturday. If Miller were to start, Bylsma and the Team USA front office would be starting Miller because of his MVP performance in the 2010 Olympics. If they were going to reward him for that, they should have made it clear he was the No. 1 goalie before the Olympics and made it clear Quick would be the No. 2. But now they can’t start him based on his performance from four years ago after they left players off this roster because they didn’t want to reward past performances. And if Miller did start on Saturday and Team USA wins, who starts on Sunday against Slovenia?

Coaches want to make less decisions and things as easy as possible for them. Creating an unneeded goalie controversy isn’t something you want to do for a team coming off a dominant win and about to play the best team in their group.

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