Pierre McGuire – Page 2 – Keefe To The City

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoff Thoughts • Rangers Playoffs

May 3, 2013

Rangers-Capitals Game 1 Thoughts: Feels Like 2010-11 Again

The Rangers lost Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals to the Capitals after they once again had trouble scoring.

I spent the entire NHL season up until Game 47 of 48 worrying about the Rangers getting into the playoffs in a season in which they were supposed to build off an Eastern Conference finals appearance. If I knew the first game of the playoffs would go the way Game 1 did on Thursday night, I could have saved a lot of time during the regular season by learning how to cook or by finally watching The Wire or by finally reading all of the classic books I used SparkNotes on in high school instead of watching Rangers games.

Is that a little dramatic following one playoff loss? Of course. But I’m not worried about the Rangers being down 1-0 in a seven-game series to a team they were equal to during the regular season. I’m worried about the Rangers because of the effort in Game 1 and the way they played and were outplayed by a Capitals team that looks much different than they did when they last met the Rangers on March 24.

Thursday night’s Game 1 was the 20^th playoff game between the Rangers and Capitals since the 2008-09 quarterfinals. It was the ninth time in the 20 games that the Rangers scored one goal or less and their inability to score goals has become an annual problem that not even Rick Nash being the scoring machine he is could fix thanks to minimal secondary scoring help.

So despite it being a new Rangers team, the franchise still has the same scoring problem. How much of a problem is it? Let’s take a look. Here are the scores of all the Rangers-Capitals playoff games since the 2008-09 quarterfinals.

2012-13 Quarterfinals
Game 1: WSH 3, NYR 1

2011-12 Semifinals
Game 1: NYR 3, WSH 1
Game 2: WSH 3, NYR 2
Game 3: NYR 2, WSH 1 (OT)
Game 4: WSH 3, NYR 2
Game 5: NYR 3, WSH 2 (OT)
Game 6: WSH 2, NYR 1
Game 7: NYR 2, WSH 1

2010-11 Quarterfinals
Game 1: WSH 2, NYR 1 (OT)
Game 2: WSH 2, NYR 0
Game 3: NYR 3, WSH 2
Game 4: WSH 4, NYR 3 (OT)
Game 5: WSH 3, NYR 1

2008-09 Quarterfinals
Game 1: NYR 4, WSH 3
Game 2: NYR 1, WSH 0
Game 3: WSH 4, NYR 0
Game 4: NYR 2, WSH 1
Game 5: WSH 4, NYR 0
Game 6: WSH 5, NYR 3
Game 7: WSH 2, NYR 1

The Rangers are 8-12 in the 20 games.

The Rangers have scored 35 goals in the 20 games (1.75 goals per game).

The Rangers have been shutout three times (15 percent).

The Rangers have scored one goal or less nine times (45 percent).

The Rangers have scored two goals or less 14 times (70 percent).

Do you see this as a problem? I do. Do you see this as the reason why they have only won one of the three previous series and needed two overtime wins to win that series? I do. Do you see this as a goaltending problem? I don’t. Because how could you?

It took one playoff game and one loss for the Henrik Lundqvist critics to come out of their holes like Punxsutawney Phil to recite Lundqvist’s playoff record and the Rangers’ lack of success in the playoffs during his tenure. These are claims made by unintelligent fans who aren’t aware that Lundqvist can’t score goals for the Rangers and that the team missed out on the playoffs for seven consecutive seasons before he became a Ranger after the lockout, and that the Rangers have been in the playoffs seven of the eight years since the lockout.

Game 1 was just another Rangers loss that had nothing to do with the way Lundqvist played and everything to do with the offense and the power play. If you’re someone who placed any blame for the 3-1 loss on Lundqvist then that means you’re someone who felt the Rangers should have won a playoff game 1-0 against the hottest team in the NHL with one of the best power plays in league history because the Rangers scored one goal.

– I’m really not sure what Ryan McDonagh and Dan Girardi were thinking or doing when they let Steven Oleksy complete a pass from the top of the Capitals circle to the Rangers blue line to Marcus Johansson, who inexplicably got behind them, to create a breakaway and give the Capitals a 2-1 lead. That’s supposed to be the Rangers’ best defensive pair. No big deal!

– What’s the percentage of Dan Girardi shot attempts that actually find the net and count as a shot on goal and don’t hit shin pads, chests, sticks, the boards or glass? I’m thinking it’s somewhere around 7 percent. As for Michael Del Zotto, I’m thinking his percentage is around 4 or 5.

– Physics and common sense dictate that John Moore scored at 15:57 of the third period of Game 1 to cut the Rangers’ deficit to one. Camera placement by the NHL and TV networks and the idea of “conclusive evidence” created by the NFL dictate that Braden Holtby kept John Moore’s shot out of the net at 15:57 of the third period to hold the Capitals’ lead at 3-1. And while it sucked and would have been a nice momentum shift and would have made the last 4:04 of the game dramatic, I understand why the officials made the call they did since given the rules it was the correct call. But the Rangers shouldn’t put themselves in a position where they would need the help of the officials and the off-ice officials in Toronto to determine whether or not a goal should or shouldn’t count.

– Tortorella’s postgame press conference didn’t last long, but he had one telling line when he said, “Hopefully we discipline ourselves in the next game.” If the way to beat the Capitals is to contain Alexander Ovechkin (which the Rangers didn’t do in Game 1) and to limit their power-play opportunities (which the Rangers didn’t do in Game 1) then why wouldn’t the Rangers have come into the series already disciplined? They have been an undisciplined team all season with untimely penalties at inopportune times and their two-many-men-on-the-ice penalty just 34 seconds into the game showed that they aren’t prepared to change their ways for the postseason. Discipline falls on the coaching staff and the penalty to open the game, while it didn’t come back to hurt them, was absolutely ridiculous.

– I’m tired of listening to Pierre McGuire talk about John Tortorella as a power-play specialist (which he has done several times this year to Mike Francesa on WFAN), who has run successful power plays in the past for other organizations. No Rangers fan cares about Tortorella’s prior power-play success to coming to New York the way no one cares about him winning the Cup nine years ago in Tampa Bay.

The Rangers power play is a disgrace. They finished the regular season 23^rd in the league at 15.7 percent, which is actually sort of impressive when you think about where they were midseason. But in Game 1 they went an expected 0-for-4 on the power play and failed to score on a 5-on-3.

The Rangers power play isn’t good enough (it actually isn’t good at all) to be the difference in the series and the Capitals power play is too good to give any chances to (let alone five in one game). The Rangers need to use their supposed depth, defense and goaltending to win the series at even strength because if it comes down to special teams, this series is going to go the same way the 2010-11 quarterfinals went. After one game, it already feels like that series.

Blogs • Email Exchanges • Rangers

Feb 13, 2013

Dreaming of a Rangers-Bruins Postseason Series

The Rangers and Bruins met for the last time during the regular season, so an email exchange with Mike Hurley was needed to look back at the three meetings between the teams.

Thanks to some awesome scheduling from the NHL, the Rangers and Bruins won’t meet again this season unless it’s in the postseason. After 12 games, the Rangers and Bruins have played their entire three-game schedule against each other for 2012-13 and it’s going to take a seven-game series this spring if the growing rivalry is going to get a new chapter this season.

With the season series coming to an end, I decided to fill the email inbox of Mike Hurley from CBS Boston with garbage until he finally responded and agreed to an email exchange. OK, so I really didn’t have to beg him since he had nothing else going on (and usually doesn’t), but he wanted me to make it sound like it was really hard to get him to do this exchange since he’s “really busy.”

Keefe: I wanted to be in Boston last night for Rangers-Bruins and I wanted to be at Halftime Pizza before the game eating the best slices in Boston (there are only one or two others place in the entire city worth eating pizza sober at) and pounding their massive draft beers that for some reason taste better than draft beers from anywhere else. But the NHL went and scheduled the second and last meeting between the two teams on a Tuesday night, so I did watch the Rangers-Bruins game and I did eat pizza and drink draft beers, but I did it over 200 miles from TD Garden.

After blowing a two-goal lead to the Bruins in the third game of the season at Madison Square Garden, the Rangers blew a three-goal lead in the last 11:16 on Tuesday night. And while you have to credit the Bruins’ heart (or their “hearts of lions” as Jack Edwards referred to it) for their miraculous late-game comeback, I’m going to also discredit the Rangers’ shot-blocking strategy, which is actually more of a negative than a positive for the team’s defense and the reason for the Bruins’ third-period effort.

Henrik Lundqvist is the best goalie in the world. The best goalie in the world needs to see the puck and he needs to see the shot. He doesn’t need to be playing from behind screens and trying to anticipate whose stick the puck will end up on when Ryan Callahan and Dan Girardi simultaneously sacrifice their bodies and seasons like Secret Service members trying to protect the President. Yes, the Bruins erased a three-goal deficit in the third period and scored twice with an empty net, but none of it would have been possible without some perfect rebounds courteous of too much traffic created in front of the Rangers’ net by the Rangers themselves.

The Rangers did come away with two points and managed to get four of a possible six points against the Bruins this season, but they let the Bruins pick up points in the final minutes of each of the last two games. And while it was good to see the Rangers win their third straight and win on the road in Boston, I get the feeling that no one in Boston views last night’s loss as a loss and that’s not good for the Rangers or me or anyone. These two teams will hopefully meet again this spring and the last thing the Rangers need is the Bruins believing they can always come back against them and that they are never out of a game, and despite losing twice to the Rangers, the Bruins must feel like they have the Rangers’ number. If the Bruins are practicing today, I’m sure the mood in their locker room is of a team that won on last night and not of one that lost.

I guess whenever anything goes wrong like it did in the third period there is someone to blame and someone to praise, but am I am discrediting the Bruins’ comeback too much and placing too much of the blame on the Rangers? And did you get a goody bag with your TD Garden dinner on Tuesday night that looked like everything you would find at a five-year-old’s birthday party?

Hurley: For the record, because of awful traffic due to the blizzard, I got to the Garden late and had no time for dinner, so I ate an oreo brownie, a fudge roll, a big pretzel with mustard, a cup of popcorn and a plate of M&M’s and gummy worms for dinner in the press box. I am 7 years old and everyone knows it, so it’s OK.

I do think you’re right to discredit the Rangers a bit. On 99 out of 100 nights, Anton Stralman’s weak wrister doesn’t beat Tuukka Rask, and on probably 90 out of 100 nights, Derek Stepan’s shot gets stopped easily with the glove. So on a night when they don’t have a somewhat gift-wrapped 3-goal lead, they might not be so fortunate to leave the building with two points.

That said, the Bruins do deserve some credit. They realized against that mess of bodies and No. 30 in net, the only way they were scoring was going to be on a rebound. Andrew Ference’s point shot was intentionally low, and Nathan Horton banged home the rebound. Dennis Seidenberg intentionally shot at Milan Lucic in the slot, and the redirect on Lundqvist led to an open net for David Krejci. And though Brad Marchand just got a lucky break for his goal, that was a pretty good snipe. So it’s not as if the Rangers blew the lead to the Flames or anything.

But it was a blocked shot that led to that opportunity for Marchand to score the game-tying goal, which allowed the B’s to walk away from the season series with four out of six points in the season series as well. So you’re not crazy for thinking the shot-blocking strategy can work against them. You are crazy for a lot of reasons, but not that one, I suppose.

Keefe: For the record, you told me about four hours before the game that you were going to eat healthy and detox after your brother’s wedding weekend. But really, I don’t think you had any plans other than to eat those things for dinner whether there was traffic or not.

When I see Rick Nash do the things he did to the Bruins defense and then to Tuukka Rask, I can’t help but think how they would have gotten past the Devils last May if they had traded for Nash last February. (Yes, I would still trade Chris Kreider for Nash if it was still an option.) And when I see the things that Marian Gaborik does like Nash, I can’t help, but think about how the Bruins have no one like Nash or Gaborik though Tyler Seguin will one day be Boston’s version of those two. And when I realize that the Bruins don’t have a true superstar (even though Pierre McGuire thinks Patrice Bergeron’s is one of the best players in the league), I wonder how they are so good even without Tim Thomas. But then you watch them play and you realize why they are so good.

The Bruins, for some unknown reason, find a way to score despite true scoring ability and a power play that makes even the Rangers not feel so bad about their man advantage and more importantly they find a way to win and win all types of games. I can’t explain it and I’m not sure if it’s even explainable because a team with that roster shouldn’t be this good without their best player (the Conn Smythe winner turned social media guru).

I know you’re probably going to say depth and defense and you might even talk about Claude Julien (I said “might”), but help me out here: Why are the Bruins so good? And why are they so good even without a single player whose jersey you would want to buy and wear?

Hurley: Well for one, Rask is a great goalie in his own right. He led the league in goals-against and save percentage in 2009-10, so it’s not like he’s some stiff off the street. Then you have Julien’s system, which above all else requires responsibility in your own end. That’s why Seguin barely played as a rookie — he wasn’t going to be put onto the ice until he could learn to play in the defensive system. Something tells me that as a kid, back-checking and getting sticks in passing lanes wasn’t drilled into the head of a kid as talented as Seguin.

So with that system, they’re rarely out of games. The 3-0 deficit against the Rangers was odd in that regard. And while they may not have a Steve Stamkos, they’re not short on talent up front. Nathan Horton is a big-time player. All the guy does is score big goals. The Bruins wouldn’t have made it out of the first round in 2011 if not for Horton, and his absence last spring was the reason the Bruins were wiped away in the first round.

Patrice Bergeron lacks flash, but if you were to assign grades to parts of his game, he’d get A-minuses across the board. He’s also won 63.6 percent of his faceoffs, which quietly goes a long way toward earning victories. Brad Marchand has a bad reputation for just being an agitator, but he’s a talented player who has a knack for scoring and has never been afraid of any moment or situation. David Krejci can be a wizard with the puck on his stick (still not a Marc Savard, but a decent knockoff) and Seguin is always a scoring threat every time he’s on the ice.

Add in third-liner Rich Peverley, who’d likely be a top-six forward in a lot of cities, and a fourth line that contributes while rarely making mistakes, and you just have a solid hockey team.

(I said hockey in case you were confused if I was talking about a football team or something.)

Oh, I should’ve mentioned, they’re also big on saying things like “compete level.” Julien hasn’t done an interview in the past five years without assessing his team’s compete level, and it’s spread to Peter Chiarelli and Cam Neely and now everyone who talks about the team.

It means “trying hard.” Yes, the millionaire hockey players need to be rated on whether they’re trying hard or not.

Regardless of its apparent stupidity, it really seems to work. It’s very rare you see the Bruins just lay a complete stinker, and teams know when they’re playing the Bruins that they’re in for a long battle. A lot of teams can’t handle it.

Keefe: Is Andy Brickley saying “compete level” yet or is he too busy talking about “points being at a premium” the way Edzo drops “active sticks” on everyone?

Everyone is talking about the Rangers and Bruins meeting again in the postseason for the first time since the 70s, you are one of these people, but a lot of these people are saying it’s going to happen. A lot of people said this last year too, but they forgot that eight teams make the playoffs in the Eastern Conference and just because people want a series to take place doesn’t it mean it will. And if it doesn’t take place in the quarterfinals then a lot has to go right for it to happen at all.

It’s been so long since these two teams have met in the playoffs and the New York-Boston rivalry has taken so many twists in the last 10 years that I don’t know what to expect if this series ever takes place and I don’t know if I even want it to. When the Yankees play the Red Sox, the Yankees are supposed to win. When the Knicks play the Celtics, the Celtics are supposed to win. When the Giants play the Patriots, the Giants always win. But what happens if these two teams meet again this year in the postseason? Who would have the upper hand? I can’t imagine this series would be good for my blood pressure especially coming in the beginning of baseball season. Maybe I will just pull for Rangers-Devils again.

Hurley: I’d like to see it happen because unofficially, without looking it up, I can state with complete confidence that every single Bruins-Rangers game in the past four years has been on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and has been a one-goal game, almost always 1-0 one way or the other. That’s all factual. Don’t look it up though.

What happens if they meet? That’s why we want them to meet — it’s impossible to predict. The Rangers have the edge in offensive firepower, but so did the Canucks in 2011. It would be captivating hockey, and honestly whichever team emerged from that series would probably be too beaten, bruised and exhausted to go on a Cup run. But I wouldn’t mind watching it. Maybe even while enjoying some Halftime.

Keefe: OK, I looked it up. Here are the last 15 Rangers-Bruins games going back to 2009-10, which are the four years you told me to not look up.

NYR 4, BOS 3 (SO)
NYR 4, BOS 3 (OT)
BOS 3, NYR 1
BOS 2, NYR 1
NYR 4, BOS 3
NYR 3, BOS 0
NYR 3, BOS 2 (OT)
NYR 5, BOS 3
NYR 1, BOS 0
BOS 3, NYR 2
NYR 3, BOS 2
BOS 2. NYR 1
NYR 3, BOS 1
NYR 3, BOS 2
NYR 1, BOS 0

That’s 11 of 15 games that were decided by one goal. You were close.

It does feel like all of their games have been on Saturday or Sunday afternoons and they were all started by Tuukka Rask, which is weird considering over that time period Tim Thomas was the best goalie in the NHL. (Well, he was according to voters, but anyone who watched Henrik Lundqvist play behind awful teams know that it was King Henrik who has been the best goalie in the league for several years now.)

Only three of those games weren’t decided after three periods and one of them was on Tuesday night. While shootouts are fun when your teams wins, they are usually a letdown unless Rick Nash gives you a YouTube-worthy goal or unless Pavel Datsyuk is participating in the shootout. You have been a strong advocate of getting rid of the shootout and I’m on board with the idea. But what’s the solution? Is it 10 minutes of 4-on-4? Is it five minutes of 4-on-4 and then five minutes of 3-on-3? How can we make it so that the action that we saw in the five minutes of overtime on Tuesday night doesn’t end abruptly to have a breakaways decide a great game?

Hurley: 1. Rask started most of those games because Timmy T couldn’t handle the lighting at MSG! Remember? The lights were different for Tim!

2. You’re such an awful person for throwing my 10-minute, 4-on-4 period in there like you thought of it. Let the record show that’s my solution.

Actually, for years I (mostly jokingly) argued that the NHL should have five minutes of 4-on-4, and if it’s still tied, then five minutes of 3-on-3, and if it’s still tied then 2-on-2, and if it’s still tied then GOALIE DEATHMATCH AT CENTER ICE.

Because that’s a little extreme, and because we’d run out of goalies pretty quickly, I propose a simple 10-minute period of 4-on-4 hockey. I freaking love 4-on-4 hockey. I’ve been to three games at the TD Garden this season that have featured full five-minute periods of overtime, and they’ve all been thrilling. It’s like taking the best players on the planet and throwing them into an arcade game for five minutes. D-men get forced out of their comfort zones to be a part of odd-man rushes, then they get stuck out of position and lead to another odd-man advantage going the other way. Goalies are forced into hyper-mode, and the game is an all-out frenzy for 300 seconds.

Then they stop it abruptly and start a breakaway contest.

It makes no sense.

If you were showing an alien around earth and wanted to introduce it to the sport of hockey, you could show it five minutes of 4-on-4 overtime and the little freak would be in love with hockey forever. Five more minutes of that, and how many ties would we really end up with? You’d have to think that with 10 minutes of all that open ice, one team is going to be able to bury one goal.

And why do we hate ties so much to begin with? Is it really because fans don’t like the feeling of going home after a tie? For one, since when does the NHL give a crap about how fans feel? But even more so, when has that ever been a consideration in a league deciding the rules which govern its standings?? That’s insane. And thirdly (I could go until 12thly but I’ll stop), don’t fans feel worse when they leave a game which their team lost in a shootout than they would if their team had just tied? This isn’t rocket science here. Why are we having shootouts?

Oh, and if you take away the automatic point of making it to overtime, with a tie resulting in one point apiece and an OT win giving two points to the victor and bupkis to the loser. That would only make that 10 minutes of 4-on-4 overtime even better.

And I’m not even someone who out and out hates the shootout. I just prefer watching hockey.

Keefe: You told me today you were going to give short, concise answers because no one wants to really hear what you have to say. So much for that like your diet.

I don’t really miss ties because I had seen my fair share of ties in real life as a child, but you’re right the NHL doesn’t care about the fan at all, so why start by eliminating ties and changing the record books and point system and goalie’s records? It doesn’t make sense. If Gary Bettman is going to be the worst commissioner to ever run a major sports league in North America, he might as well go all the way with it.

Bring back ties! Bring back the red line! Add “obstruction” to penalties again since penalties aren’t already the result of “obstructing” something! Have North America vs. the World for the All-Star Game and bring back the Goalie Goals competition to the Skills Competition! Sign a deal with FOX! Let them make the puck glow again!

The NHL.com video player is currently the worst piece of technology available and it works like something from 1999, so why not just change everything in the league back to a time when Jaromir Jagr led the league in scoring with the Penguins, Ron Tugnutt posted a 1.79 GAA and Byron Dafoe was playing goal for the Bruins? There’s a good question: What happened to Byron Dafoe? That might be an entire email exchange itself. “Bruins Goalies Between Andy Moog and Tim Thomas.” I think I know what our next email exchange will be about. And if it isn’t about that I’m sure we’ll talk again between now and Opening Day in the Bronx.

Hurley: I’m not sure what happened, but I’m nearly positive your brain just completely stopped working for a few paragraphs there. I’m not sure how it all came out in English. I don’t even know what to say. I don’t know when we’ll talk again, but how about this — don’t email me. I’ll email you.

Blogs • NHL • Team USA

Feb 25, 2010

Heavenly Hockey

Thirty years after the original “Miracle on Ice,” one game separates Team USA and the gold-medal game and a chance at history.

This column was originally published on WFAN.com on Feb. 25, 2010.

If you like hockey, then you liked Wednesday. And even if you don’t like hockey, chances are that you probably watched it at some point on Wednesday because it was on for 11 1/2 straight hours. Hockey had its version of March Madness, and in this case, the Elite Eight. Aside from not being able to watch three of the four games in high definition, it was a perfect day for a hockey fan. It was a day I didn’t want to see end, and on Sunday it will be a tournament that I wish didn’t have to disappear for four years. But if Gary Bettman has his way, the magic of Wednesday won’t ever return.

Between trying to decide if Pierre McGuire’s tenure as a “sideline” reporter between the benches has been a bigger failure than the FoxTrax puck was, and wondering if the over 2 ½ will hit on how many times Eddie Olczyk says “active sticks” during the USA game (it went under, he only said it once), I tried to imagine watching Olympic hockey without NHL players and I couldn’t.

Since allowing NHL players to participate in the Olympics in 1998, the decision has been the only one the game deserves credit for in recent years. Now the league is prepared to tell their fans – the ones they have left – that the Olympics will have to do without NHL players in the future because the league is losing too much money during the two-week layoff.

Gary Bettman isn’t exactly crushing it in approval rating and he is certainly isn’t winning any popularity contests. The same man who has watched two teams relocate from Canada during his tenure as commissioner is now ready to destroy the best thing the game has going for it.

With Bettman at the helm, fighting has been basically taken out of the game thanks to the instigator rule, a trapezoid has been painted behind the net and two-line passing has been allowed. He contemplated changing the size of the net, first allowed goalies to expand the size of their equipment and then created restrictions for them. He permitted the change of the overtime format to 4-on-4 and OK’ed shootouts deciding games and playoff berths. He let the Sabres change their colors to red and black before they changed them back, and then there was that time where the NHL didn’t play for an entire season. If people cared about hockey then Bettman might have to answer for his decisions. But no one cares enough to make a stand because Bettman chased away casual fans, and the only fans remaining are those that would watch the NHL no matter what type of mud Bettman drags it through.

It didn’t have to be like this and it doesn’t have to continue to be like this. I can’t remember the last time people I wouldn’t expect to be excited about hockey were this excited. Team USA’s resurgence, and the overall talent level of the tournament has casual fans finding out that there are other stars in the sport than Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. Even if those fans missed entire first periods because they were trying to find out what NBC ancillary channel the Olympics relegated hockey to, they have still become attracted to the game. There is a throng of new hockey fans with a desire to watch a sport that can use as many fans as it can get. And the commissioner who has spent the last six-plus years trying to attract new audiences is ready to deprive his newest fans of the reason they watched hockey in the first place.

On Monday I wrote about how Americans were interested in how Team USA would perform in the tournament, and mainly how they would perform against Team Canada. Well, according to the New York Times, the USA-Canada game matched MSNBC’s election-night viewership and was the most-watched sports program in Canadian history. It was a non-elimination game and it had more viewers in both countries than Game 7 of last season’s Stanley Cup final, in which the game’s biggest star was playing against one of the game’s most popular teams.

Did NBC do the NHL – its business partner – an injustice by not airing important preliminary games and even the Canada-Russia quarterfinal on its main station? Yes. If the games were on NBC, more people would have stumbled upon them while looking for The Office or 30 Rock, but the amount of positive exposure the NHL has received during the tournament can’t be rivaled by anything the league has done itself to increase popularity.

Maybe the NHL and the television networks of future Olympics can work out a marketing partnership or the networks can promise to put the intriguing matchups on their No. 1 channel in place of the biathlon or ski jumping or curling. If the NHL is so hung up on trying to make money off the Olympics rather than letting the Olympics work its magic for the NHL, then OK, find a business strategy that works. Just don’t sacrifice the participation of NHL players as that strategy.

The Olympics deserve the best hockey players from each country and that means NHLers. NHL-filled rosters offer an experience for viewers that isn’t duplicated at any other time. Sure, there is the IIHF World Championship each year, but that takes place during the NHL playoffs, so many of the top players aren’t available, and those who are usually decline to play. Amateur lineups would create a tournament similar to the World Junior Championships, and teams like the United States and Canada would be at a disadvantage against the European teams that include former NHL players currently playing in the KHL or European elite leagues.

The uniqueness of the event creates a bond among each country’s fans that rarely happens. The tournament allows for fans of NHL rivals like the Rangers and Devils to pull for each other’s players in the same way Yankees fans are asked to pull for Red Sox, and Mets fans for Phillies with home-field in the World Series on the line at the MLB All-Star Game. There aren’t too many times Rangers fans hope Zach Parise scores a goal and hope Henrik Lundqvist gives one up. For a week, Devils fans are allowed to hate Martin Brodeur and love Chris Drury.

Most importantly, NHL players in the Olympics just makes for better hockey.

Yes, the two-week break and lack of an All-Star Game is costing the NHL money today, but maybe Bettman doesn’t see what this tournament is doing for tomorrow and the future of the game. The Winter Classic is nice, but it’s not doing the trick, and the only thing that could get the game back on the map in the United States would be an American star equivalent in talent to Crosby or Ovechkin. The Olympics are doing a job that Bettman has tried to do since he cancelled the 2004-05 season, and no one cares that there wasn’t an All-Star Game or a skills competition this February. Fans want to see competitive hockey games with the world’s best players. They don’t want – or need – to see Zdeno Chara skate untouched and put all his weight into a slap shot that goes into an open net at 103 mph. Fans want to watch Olympic hockey with NHL players. They can live without the All-Star Game and its festivities once every four years.

Right now, there is a buzz in the hockey world following Canada’s rout of Russia and Slovakia’s upset of Sweden. United States fans are anxious for Friday’s semifinal against Finland and sports media outlets are asking whether or not Team USA can knock off Team Canada twice in the same week if they meet again. Players like Ryan Miller and Patrick Kane are watching their stock rise thanks to national television exposure. It has all contributed to one very pleasant surprise because when was the last time the talk anywhere focused on hockey?

If Team USA takes home the gold, it will be the perfect ending to a perfect tournament, and will do wonders for the final weeks of the NHL season. I suggest you watch because it might never be the same again.

Tag: Pierre McGuire

Rangers-Capitals Game 1 Thoughts: Feels Like 2010-11 Again

Dreaming of a Rangers-Bruins Postseason Series

Heavenly Hockey