The Rest of the NHL

[BigEd76]

NHL considering realignment, wants to go back to 4 divisions

Eastern Conference
Northeast Division
Boston
Buffalo
Columbus
Montreal
Ottawa
Pittsburgh
Toronto

Atlantic Division
Carolina
Florida
New Jersey
NY Islanders
NY Rangers
Philadelphia
Tampa Bay
Washington

Western Conference
Central Division
Atlanta 
Chicago
Dallas
Detroit
Minnesota
Nashville
St. Louis

Pacific Division
Anaheim
Calgary
Colorado
Edmonton
Los Angeles
Phoenix
San Jose
Vancouver

-- The top 2 teams in each division would be guaranteed seeds 1-4, then the next 4 among the rest of the conference would get seeds 5-8.

-- 6 games vs each team in your own division = 36 or 42
-- 3 or 4 games vs the other division's teams = 31 or 25
-- 1 game vs each team in the other conference = 15

[Father Demon]

Blues to offer free food and (non-adult) beverages for one game

http://www.stltoday.com/forums/viewt...231531#4231531

When the St. Louis Blues host the Los Angeles Kings at 1 p.m. on Saturday, January 13th, all fans in attendance will be treated to complimentary food and beverage. The promotion, designed to introduce new Head Coach Andy Murray and the resurgent St. Louis Blues to the area sports fans and families, will provide hot dogs, chicken fingers, chips, popcorn, peanuts, soft drinks and water -- all for free -- from the moment the gates open at 12 p.m. until the end of the second intermission.

"We believe that this is the first time a professional sports franchise has ever attempted an everybody eats for free promotion," said Peter McLoughlin, CEO of Blues Enterprises. "The excitement in and around the Blues and the Scottrade Center has been building since Andy Murray joined our organization and we really want St. Louis families to be a part of the revival of Blues hockey."

[Seabiscuit36]

http://thefourthperiod.com/columnists/wyshynski.html

Happy Pucking New Year, 2006 Ed.

TFP Columnist Greg Wyshynski presents his year-end awards (including The Worst Player of the Year), and explains why 2006 was the year when hockey fans decided not to take it anymore.

(WASHINGTON, DC) -- The hockey fan in me wishes the preamble to my obligatory snark-fest of year-end awards (see the end of the column) could focus on what the NHL considers to be reasons to rejoice.
Faster play. More scoring. Parity to the point of parody. Young stars who will carry this league on their shoulder pads (under their form-fitting aerodynamic new jerseys, naturally) for the next two decades.

The hockey cynic in me knows better than to swallow that sugar-coated dung. It used to be that the league was broken; now, regretfully, it's the game as well.

Two years of rules tinkering have left the NHL with a baffling, damaged product — tentative where it should be explosive, passive where it should be physical, tedious where it should be tantalizing.

It has left players wondering what they're allowed to do, what they're allowed to say, and when body-checks and slapshots will be banned for safety's sake.

It's a game that would have left fans reaching for the remote control to change the channel, but that would assume the majority of them could find VERSUS or HDNet in their cable universe to begin with.

Yet the tide is turning. It's no longer an issue that the casuals are not coming to the arena or watching on television — it's that some of the diehards aren't, either.

In the end, 2006 may be the year when we've all decided just not to take it anymore.

At this point, the cliché would be to use Howard Beale's "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" rant from "Network" as a rallying cry. But for hockey fans, it's not about being mad — it's more like exhaustion.

We've spent the better part of the last two decades defending our sport against hateful hordes of non-believers and outright adversaries — in the media, on the Web... hell, in our own offices and living rooms.

Now, not only do we have to battle those boobs who make remarks like "I didn't realize they still played hockey," but we find ourselves fighting to keep a flicker of the game we love alive before focus groups, marketing firms and the unending avarice of the men charged with protecting and promoting hockey extinguish it.
The biggest mistake we, as hockey fans, made was not holding the owners and players more accountable for stealing a season from us during the lockout.

We were just glad to have the game back. But the honeymoon is over. The alarm clock has sounded.

Cost certainty? The only certainty is that watching this game is costing more every season.

Only now do we also realize that the pendulum on offensive play has swung too far away from what we loved about the game... which, last time I checked, wasn't powerplays and pirouetting midgets skating through the crease unabated.

Now they're talking about enlarging the nets... how long before the NHL features three pucks and a game without the unwelcome hindrance of goaltenders?

Luckily, there is a cacophony of voices all condemning the current product, with its dispassionate play and physical timidity; when Kevin Paul Dupont, John Tortorella, Stan Fischler, Don Cherry, Allan Muir and Larry Brooks are on the same page about anything, hit the panic button and cue the Bat-signal because something is amiss.

But it's not just the media championing the cause. Only now do we realize that the fans have some influence; that the fans have some say, the fans have some power when they decide they're not going to take it anymore.

We laughed at the league for those insipid samurai commercials after the lockout; now we have funny, appealing ads that center on personalities who actually play in the NHL.

We resented the all-star balloting format, so we've nearly voted a journeyman defenseman with no points in 22 games in as a starter; think they'll change that process next season?

And hey, did you notice in the new realignment plan floated by the NHL that the number of playoff teams remained at 16? That's because when they floated the additional post-season berths about a year ago, the fans raised hell — and the league cowered when it heard them.

In 2007, we'll be faced with more problems, from realignment and relocations to skin-tight jerseys and even tighter rules enforcement. Raise hell of you don't like them, on the blogs and on the message boards and in the stands. And keep raising hell until the league corrects not only its most recent mistakes (hello, overtime format), but also its lasting ones.

Like acknowledging that having a few more teams in Canada isn't a mortal sin after The Great American Footprint Experiment has failed.

Like acknowledging that VERSUS, with its empty promises and disappointing coverage, has become SportsChannel America Part Deux and that the league needs a new cable home in the U.S., pronto (though not necessarily ESPN).

Like dropping the instigator penalty, a move that would serve as a coded message to disenfranchised diehards: "Friends, please be advised that you can start watching hockey again."

I don't think I'm alone when I say I'm proud to be a hockey fan, but not all that proud to be an NHL fan these days. My father's the same way. This Christmas, my sister and I kicked in and purchased a Devils road Ken Daneyko jersey for him as a gift. He can't relate to a lot of these current players. But Daneyko? He can relate to a blue-collar guy, who overcame his shortcomings with undeniable heart; one who, from his fists to his fortitude, embodied what it was my father loved about the NHL.

My dad didn't take off his New Jersey new jersey for the entirety of Dec. 25th; he was a 59-year-old man morphed back into a 12-year-old fan on Christmas morning. Perhaps he was happy to spend a day in Ken Daneyko's NHL instead of wallowing in the miseries of its current broken model.

Perhaps by not taking it off he, like so many of us, just decided not to take it anymore.
LetsGoFlyers59 is online now Report Bad Post      Reply With Quote

To me its a great article because the game isnt what it used to be, even with the flyers sucking, I have centerice and its just ridiculous with some of the shtein that gets called now.  Puck Bettman and his henchm :flipoffen

[MDS]

What's funny is they killed the sport with the boring play that became standard and the trap and the clutch and grab. Then, no one watches it anymore. Then, it goes away for a year. Then, all the loser hockey fans come crawling back like nothing ever happened.

You deserve what you got.

[Seabiscuit36]

We got Bettman, noone deserves that.  I'm hoping for his death next year

[Father Demon]

Sick pass from David Backes last night against the Devils.  22 year old kid called up to the Blues for now.

It's the first goal showed.

http://broadband.tsn.ca/?vid=2632

[Seabiscuit36]

Alright so who watched the NHL All Star Super Skills Challenge last night   

I did, and couldnt help but laugh at Bettman.  The entire broadcast was horrible.  The electronic stopwatch didnt work for the speed skating competition.  They just kept letting Sidney Crosby take shootout after shootout, there was no format it seemed.  Add to that during the shootout they had a camera on of a old man sweeping ice in the other net.  Oh yeah and Bettman decided to put the allstar game on last night instead of last weekend because of the conference championship.  He put them up against American Idol    Why not have it this upcoming weekend.  What a farging tool. 

[BigEd76]

They were trying to imitate baseball with all the all-star games being during the week.  It didn't work...

[Seabiscuit36]

They put it on VS. 

[Seabiscuit36]

[SD_Eagle5]

Skills competitions are boring, they should have done away with them in the 90's. In fact, all all-star games are boring. The only one I'll sometimes watch is the Pro-Bowl and that's because I'll take any NFL fix I can get and it's at the end of the season like they all should be.

[Geowhizzer]

They were trying to imitate baseball with all the all-star games being during the week.  It didn't work...

Duh Bettman, baseball's all-star game is in the summer, when there's no other sports interfering.  Hockey's is in the middle of Super Bowl hype and the NBA.

[Father Demon]

They were trying to imitate baseball with all the all-star games being during the week.  It didn't work...

Duh Bettman, baseball's all-star game is in the summer, when there's no other sports interfering.  Hockey's is in the middle of Super Bowl hype and the NBA and American Idol.

FTFY

[Geowhizzer]

So, anyone else actually watching the all-star game?

[MDS]

I had no idea this was going on. Wow.