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Tag: Patrick Kane

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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Podcasts • Team USA

Feb 24, 2014

Podcast: Mike Hurley

Mike Hurley of CBS Boston joins me to talk about Team USA’s disappointing finish in Sochi and why Gary Bettman and the NHL would be making a mistake to not allow players to compete in future Olympics.

After a perfect start to the 2014 Olympics, Team USA was unable to score against Canada to advance to the gold-medal game and was unable to score against Finland in the bronze-medal game. So now we will have to four more years to end the gold-medal drought, which will be at 38 years in 2018.

With the Olympics now over, Mike Hurley of CBS Boston joined me talk about Team USA’s disappointing finish in Sochi, Dan Bylsma being the wrong coach for the team and why Gary Bettman and the NHL would be making a mistake to not allow players to compete in future Olympics.

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Blogs • Team USA

Feb 21, 2014

Team USA-Canada Thoughts: Goodbye, Gold Medal

Team USA was dominated by Canada in the semifinals and the chance to end the goal-medal drought will have to wait another four years.

Friday could have been memorable. Team USA could have beaten Canada. They could have played for the gold medal for the second time in as many Olympics and the third time in the last four. They could have forced Canada to play for the bronze medal on Saturday morning. They could have proven that USA Hockey is on the same level as Hockey Canada. They could have been one win closer to winning gold for the first time since 1980.

But Friday wasn’t memorable. At least not in a good way. Jonathan Quick was the only member of Team USA to show up and we’re lucky he did. Or maybe we’re not since all Quick’s performance did was prevent Americans from changing the channel as they watched the clock slowly tick away on their gold medal dreams. Without Quick, every American could have gone back to work earlier or saved their bank account from an excessive early-afternoon or bar tab or flipped over to watch King of Queens or Everybody Loves Raymond reruns rather than monitor the clock in the final minutes and seconds of the semifinal game, hoping Team USA had another last-minute Zach Parise goal from 2010 in their back pocket.

The Team USA we saw on Thursday wasn’t the team we saw the previous four games and that’s Dan Bylsma’s fault. Throughout the game, the team made no adjustments to create offense as the clock slowly wound down on their goal-medal campaign. Aside from Patrick Kane giving us a few “Ohhhh!” and “Ahhhh!” moments (and those were mostly exaggerated “Ohhhh!” and “Ahhhh!” moments since we were looking for something, anything to be excited about) Team USA never really came close to putting the puck in the net. The worst kind of hockey fans are those that get overly excited and get out of their seat for any 3-on-2 or for their team simply carrying the puck over the opposing blue since it’s unlikely either of those things will result in a goal, but I found myself getting worked up whenever Team USA was able to just gain possession on the other side of the red.

It’s hard to win when you don’t score and despite recording 31 shots (though I’m still unsure of where about 20 of those came from), you can count the true Team USA scoring chances on one hand and you could still count them if that one hand had only three fingers. Team USA never challenged Carey Price and never made a goalie who wouldn’t cross my mind in picking to start for me in a game for everything work for his eventual shutout. Canada dominated the entire game and again, if it weren’t for Quick, what was a 1-0 game would have easily been 5-0 or 6-0 or worse. Quick played like the former Conn Smythe he is and the Olympic MVP he could have been had Team USA won the game.

Despite the result, it’s hard to think that this Team USA was only one goal worse than this Team Canada. Canada was missing it’s second- and third- best players (Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Tavares) and they still won and they are still playing for the goal medal. It’s hard to think about what the result of the game would have been if Canada had Stamkos and Tavares in the lineup or if Quick had only been amazing and not unbelievable. If Patrick Kane is Team USA’s best player, where would this team be without Phil Kessel and Zach Parise (or whoever you think are Team USA’s best two players after Kane)? But this game doesn’t mean that USA Hockey has lost a step in its pursuit of Hockey Canada over the last four years. It’s just that this Team USA wasn’t as good as this Team Canada.

After waiting four years thinking that this would be the time to end the drought, it’s all over. Sure, Team USA plays again on Saturday morning against Finland for the bronze medal, but who cares? Anything other than gold was going to be a disappointment after the way the 2010 Games ended in overtime in Vancouver. Making the gold-medal game wasn’t going to be enough. Only winning gold was.

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Blogs • Team USA

Feb 19, 2014

Team USA-Czech Republic Thoughts: We Want Canada

I was worried that Team USA drew the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals, but it turned out there was nothing to worry about with this Team USA against that Czech Republic team.

I wanted Team USA to draw any team other than Czech Republic in the quarterfinals of the Olympics. But after winning all three first-round games and having a better goal differential than Canada and Finland, Team USA’s reward for earning the 2-seed was the winner of Czech Republic-Slovakia. And Czech Republic-Slovakia meant Czech Republic.

Canada ended up drawing Latvia and Finland ended up drawing Russia. Team USA got stuck with the Czech Republic, the 1998 gold winner, and a team still boasting household names, even if those names don’t hold as much meaning because of age.

But being so worried about the Czechs upsetting Team USA for the last few days was all for nothing. Here are the Thoughts from the game.

– When James van Riemsdyk scored just 1:39 into the game, I thought we could be in for another laugher, and for a quarterfinal game, we kind of were … eventually. After the Czechs tied the game up less than three minutes after van Riemsdyk’s goal and dominated play for the first period, I thought we might be in for a USA-Russia-type game. Instead Team USA won by three goals and their wins now in the tournament have been 7-1, 3-2, 5-1 and 5-2 for a combined 20-6.

– Czech Republic had plenty of quality first-period scoring chances that they didn’t capitalize on, but the play they did score on was when Ryan McDonagh shot the puck off Ryan Suter and over Jonathan Quick in an attempt to clear the puck. McDonagh must have learned how to score on his own net from Dan Girardi since he has had enough examples to watch from his teammate.

– Jaromir Jagr was part of the Czech’s 1998 gold-medal team. To put into perspective how long ago that was, here are some members of the 1998 Team USA roster: Pat LaFontaine, John LeClair, Tony Amonte, Bryan Berard, Joel Otto and Gary Suter. And here some of the 1998 Team Canada members: Wayne Gretzky, Ray Bourque, Joe Sakic, Steve Yzerman, Eric Lindros and Trevor Linden. (Eric Lindros was the captain for Canada over Gretzky, Bourque, Sakic, Yzerman, anyone. That is real life.)

Even Petr Nedved played for the Czech Republic. He is 42, last played in the NHL in 2006-07 and I think he still has mid-90s TUUKs on his skates. At 37, Patrik Elias actually seemed like one of the Czechs younger players.

– Phil Kessel (6), Paul Stastny (2), David Backes (3), Dustin Brown (2), Cam Fowler, Joe Pavelski, Ryan McDonagh, John Carlson, Ryan Kesler, James van Riemsdyk and Zach Parise have all scored. Prior to the Olympics, I thought leaving Bobby Ryan off the team was the biggest mistake because of Team USA’s lack of goal-scoring ability, but it hasn’t been an issue. All four lines are capable of putting the puck in the net and the combinations created by Dan Bylsma and his coaching staff have worked out perfectly.

– Casual hockey fans knew Patrick Kane, Phil Kessel and Zach Parise before the start of the Olympics and now everyone knows T.J. Oshie. But David Backes, despite being the captain of the Blues, is a name that should be growing in popularity for those who weren’t familiar with his game.

Backes doesn’t garner the attention of some of the flashier names on Team USA since he doesn’t put up superstar offensive numbers, but his game is certainly one to be admired. He played his best game of the Olympics against the Czech Republic and that’s saying a lot since he has looked great throughout all of the games in the tournament. It’s enjoyable to watch Kane dangle, Kessel fly and Parise create, but it’s also fun to watch Backes overpower defensemen in the corners and take over the play in the offensive zone.

– With Team USA holding a 5-1 lead for most of the third, I couldn’t help by check in on the Canada-Latvia game, which was tied 1-1 until 13:06 of the third. Latvia had one NHL player on its roster (Zemgus Girgensons of the Sabres) and started a goalie (Kristers Gudlevskis) who has played in the AHL and ECHL this season, but they hung with the Canadians for the entire game and kept all of Canada on edge for 53:06 of the game. I only say 53:06 and not 60:00 because Canada dominated the play, outshooting Latvia 57-16, and you knew that once they scored the seemingly inevitable second goal it would be over.

If Latvia had won, it would have made for a great story for the 48 hours leading up to a USA-Latvia game (and it would have made for a great story in Latvia forever), but USA-Latvia isn’t what we want even if it’s the easier way. It’s been 34 years since Team USA won the gold and it wouldn’t feel right if Canada wasn’t part of ending the drought.

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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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