Okay, okay, as I type this, it’s still August 31st in the Eastern Time Zone, but most of the planet has already entered the Month of School…first off, what the hell????  Why now would the NHLPA want to go all goofy and look as disorganized as, well, as the NHL?  No doubt most of us were left scratching our heads over this move to dump Paul Kelly, but the truth is, a very select few know what’s been going on behind-the-scenes of the NHLPA, and none of those select few are members of the media or the average hockey fan, or any fan, for that matter.  Maybe the whole truth and nothing but the truth comes out in the next few months, maybe it comes out in a great book five Christmases from now.  Either way, from my brief dealings with Mr. Kelly (as part of a couple of media scrums), he sure seemed like exactly what the NHLPA needed, at least in terms of public perception….Brian Burke is correct yet again.  He once compared the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Vatican, in terms of its importance in the hockey world.  How bang on he was.  Like the Vatican, the Leafs wield an enormous amount of power, mostly over the great unwashed, you know, the opiate of the masses and all the stuff.  Now that it’s been shown, despite pious denials to the contrary, that the moneybags known as Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment have absolutely no intention of sharing the Southern Ontario sandbox with anyone else, they’ve proven they really are the Vatican of the NHL (or any other religious powerbase, if you’re so inclined to be easily offended as a Catholic).  This is only the sainted Maple Leafs’ latest salvo at the game of hockey.  Forget their overly inflated prices for everything ranging from game tickets to concession food to foam fingers, because practically every pro sports team is guilty of that sin, the Leafs have shown once again they only care for themselves.  Among their list of sins against the game of hockey include their refusal to allow the hallowed grounds of Maple Leaf Gardens to be sold to Eugene Melnick, who wanted to install his St. Michael’s Majors OHL team in the beloved building.  What a perfect placement that would have been, but no, MLSE would have no part of that, fearing competition for second-rate concerts and, god knows what, tractor pulls.  Once the AHL Toronto Roadrunners couldn’t make a go of it at the CNE Coliseum/Ricoh Centre, the Leafs swooped in and installed the St. John’s Maple Leafs…and a bunch of second-rate concerts and tractor pulls.  A cynic (who, me?) could lazily point to over forty years of inept NHL hockey, but honestly, the Leafs since 1993 have iced a number of competitive teams that reached the Final Four, so that’s not an accurate shot.  Regardless of how one feels about the entire sordid Phoenix Coyotes situation, it’s interesting, and a bit alarming, to think that the Maple Leafs may believe themselves to be the tail that wags the NHL dog.  Alarming, but typical….the red jersey the Minnesota Wild wear at home is a beautiful thing, even if it reminds me of the Quebec Remparts, and adding to all this sweater splendour is their recently unveiled third jersey.  Now that green sucker will make one fine addition to my collection this Christmas, and just in time, as my five-year-old son recently discovered where all my hockey and baseball uniforms hang….it’s great to be paid to talk and write about hockey, but after ten months of the game, I crave a break.  Anything but hockey.  Baseball, CFL (hey, I’m Canadian), even NFL training camps.  But no puck.  Well, so I thought.  Sadly, this past Thursday evening, even after being up for close to 22 hours due to doing Hockey This Morning with the Shalley-Lama, I found myself logging onto the TSN website and trying to catch parts of the Red-White Team Canada scrimmage at the Saddledome in Calgary.  It was kind of difficult to see clearly, and at times I swear I heard Foster Hewitt mispronouncing names.  It’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to replicating the experience of listening to a Saturday night hockey game on the wireless, though as a kid in Calgary, my Dad built me a crystal radio one summer, and I fiddled with that thing long into the night, hoping to hear something besides Top 40….how much longer until it’s acceptable to start your hockey pool?  Our XM NFL pool just held its draft this past Sunday (I got Kurt Warner, yet Joe Thistel ended up with both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady…how???), and our MLB pool is in full swing (as defending champion, I currently sit a disappointing fourth out of eight teams).  Where is Rob Higgins when you need him?…best way to build up your wrist shot?  Find an apple tree, and when those suckers fall to the ground, which they’ve been doing for the past month (trust me), instead of bagging them, shoot them into the bushes, or the garden, in my case.  Oh sure, you could eat them, but it would be best to do that before they hit the ground, or are riddled with worms…who’s the player you most want to see with their new team?  Personally, I’m itching to see Ray Emery in that splendid orange uniform of the Philadelphia Flyers, for so many reasons.  Now, I can never actually cheer for the Evil Empire Jr., but I’m pulling for Emery….as for the Flyers, it’s been 34 years and counting since they last hoisted the Stanley Cup.  Unthinkable.  The Bruins, 37 years.  Also unthinkable.  Putting aside the so-called Original Six, how have all the other “classes” of teams faired in the Cup count?  The 1967 teams have been pretty successful.  The Penguins have three, the Flyers two, and the Stars one.  Okay, in Dallas, but it still counts.  C’mon Blues, it’s been 1970 since you got to the big dance.  Speaking of 1970, that class of graduates have each gotten to the Final twice and lost.  No luck here.  1972 can boast of five Cups, four for the Islanders and one for the Flames, though it was up north in Calgary.  1974 has three Cups, though they were captured, of course, in New Jersey, not Kansas City, or even Denver.  The Caps made to the Final once.  Odds are they’ll get there again real soon.  1979 has been rather successful.  The WHA refugees have won eight Cups between them.  Five for the Oilers, two for the Nordiques, ahh, Avalanche, and one for the Whalers, ahh, Hurricanes.  Any surprise the Jets/Coyotes/Steelbacks haven’t won any?  The Sharks represent the Class of ‘91, and they represent the Texas Rangers in the NHL.  No appearances in the Classic, Spring in this case.  Tampa has the lone Cup from the 1992 kids, though Ottawa got a shot at it, and they lost to the Ducks of the Class of 1993.  Their expansion cousins, the Panthers, have one appearance in the Final.  Anyone we missed?  The Thrashers, Predators, Blue Jackets and Wild?  Nope.  Nothing from those four yet.  Is that all the teams in the NHL???  Did I add up the Cups won correctly?  Hey look it’s now 12:07 am eastern time.  You try doing all this off the top-of-your-head at this hour, without using Google.  At least it got me to September.  Pre-season NHL games in fifteen days.

- Mick Kern

Not sick-in-the-head, though many would advance that theory.  Sick as in “Man, I can’t get outta bed, it hurts so bad” sick.   One wicked case of sinus infection, which seems to happen this time every year.

Stuck at home, feeling like I blocked an Al MacInnis slapshot with my forehead, until the drugs kicked in.  Dragged myself to the basement TV room couch.  Thankfully, there were a lot of NHL games on this particular Tuesday evening.

Started with Pittsburgh in Montreal.  Talk about a game both teams wanted to win.  The Penguins trying to claw their way back into an Eastern Conference playoff spot; the Habs trying to hang onto theirs.

Don’t know what Canadiens’ head coach Guy Carbonneau said to Alex Kovalev, but the enigmatic Russian sniper played with some jump in his step.  Carey Price still makes me nervous as I watch him tend net.  His positioning is top-notch, but get the dude to move, and you’ve got a good chance of burying the puck.  Price will excel with a defensive core dedicated to clearing the puck.  Sounds simple, but not all defenceman master that basic skill.  Even so, Price appears to give up one questionable goal a game.  And he’s gotta stop doing that annoying shrug of his shoulders whenever he is scored upon.  It’s like he’s saying, “wasn’t my fault”.

Switched over to the resurgent Florida Panthers at the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Had intended to attend this game, but no such luck.  The Leafs staked themselves to a 3-1 lead, but watching it from the couch, I just knew that the Cats were gonna tie this thing up.  Toronto’s Alexei Ponikarovsky got caught for boarding with less than two minutes remaining in the game, and of course, Florida tied it up.

What cracked me up about that sequence of events was how Leafs’ uber-GM Brian Burke reacted, high up in the pressbox.  His face indicated he probably thought the penalty was horse-bleep.  Funny how that is.  It was clearly a boarding call.  It was also the only situation all night where a Leaf went to the penalty box alone.  Why can’t a team, or a kiss-ass TV/Radio play-by-play guy, or for that matter, most homer fans, admit when a penalty is a penalty?  Show some class.  Shuddup, and skate to the penalty box and feel shame for two minutes.  Or less.

And to complete the evening, ex-pat Bryan McCabe scored the overtime winner for Florida on a two-on-one slapshot.  Nice shot, but really, Vesa Toskala should have had it.  He’s a starting goaltender in the National Hockey League.  They’re supposed to get those ones, not allow them to squirt past him for the game-winning tally.

Hey, every so often one of those gets through.  Grant Fuhr was with the Maple Leafs when Trevor Linden unloaded a similar shot on him during a game at Maple Leaf Gardens during the autumn of 1991.  No doubt you could hear me scream with joy miles away, even though I was ensconced way up in the corner greys.

That goal stood up as the winner in a 2-1 victory for the Canucks.  After the game, Fuhr admitted one or two of those find their way through him every year.  He played the shot correctly, but sometimes, that little vulcanized rubber projectile has eyes of its own.

Same thing could be said for Toskula, but the trouble is, like Price, he tends to give up one bad goal a game.  A team cannot constantly win knowing they’re effectively one goal down to start.  Not that the Leafs’ brass probably minds; wasn’t this Year One of the constant rebuilding phase?

Switched games and caught the tail-end of the Capitals putting down the Devils 5-2.  Jose Theodore in net still makes me nervous.  Come to think of it, most goaltenders make me nervous.  So much so, I forgot about the sinuses for a while.  What will the Devils do when the Best Goaltender Of All-Time (C) returns?

A couple of late games that I was able to catch.  The mighty Marty Turco and his band of Merry Dallas Stars were at home and dropped the Calgary Flames 3-1.  Turco is back to playing like, well, Marty Turco, and the Stars are the force most of us expected them to be.

Which is why everyone has to keep their cool when it comes to watching this grand game of ours.  It’s a long, long season.  82 regular-season games.  All that matters is where you stand once your 82nd game is played.  Most teams will experience highs and lows during the course of the season.  Don’t allow either to convince you it’s a trend.

Having said that, Dallas moved to erase the cancer in their dressing room, and slowly, this team has rediscovered its confidence, even with key injuries.  Let the 2008-09 Dallas Stars stand as an example why a team should not automatically fire its head coach when things aren’t going as planned.  Often, the fault lines run deeper than that.

(Now watch, of course, as the Stars lose every game for the rest of the season).

Dallas were able to pull themselves out of a troubling nosedive, yet the Ottawa Senators seem keen on continuing their descent.  They get rid of the perceived malcontents, design some horrid third sweaters, the owner tells reporters to go blow themselves up, and then they fire head coach Craig Hartburg affter only 48 games.

48 games?  That’s not even as long as most people get to try out their fancy new widescreen HDTV before realizing they can’t pay for it, and return it to the store.

Whatever.  It looks good on the Senators that they lost tonight 1-0 to the rebuilding Los Angeles Kings.

Are we to expect a 11 am press conference on Wednesday morning announcing the firing of head coach Cory Clouston?  That’s the way things are tracking in Ottawa.

Flipped the channel.  Saw video of Adam Graves getting his number 9 retired by the New York Rangers.  With all due respect to Larry Brooks of the New York Post, who I enjoy reading, but is the whole world going crazy???

Okay, I get it.  Graves was a great guy off-the-ice, did great things for his community and was a key cog in the 1994 Stanley Cup winning Rangers team.  But c’mon.  This isn’t Rod Gilbert, or Jean Ratelle, or Ed Giacomin, or Brad Park, or Brian Leetch, or Mark Messier, or even Andy Bathgate, or Harry Howell, or Bill Gadsby, Vic Hadfield or the Cooks we’re talking about.

This is Adam Graves.

Messier commented that the night was not about honouring Graves’s stats.  Fair enough.  Raw numbers don’t always tell the whole tale.  But retiring his uniform number?   It should be first-and-foremost about what happens on the ice that determines sweater retirements, and Hall-of-Fame inductions, etc.

The standards have been lowered.  Ranger fans, take your best shot.  And don’t try and feed me the line, “ya had to be in New York to truly appreciate Graves”.

What about Bathgate, and Bernie Nicholls, and Rick Middleton, if the Rangers hadn’t been so stupid, stupid, stupid and traded away Nifty.  These guys also served as Number Nine.

Wow, win one Cup, one stinkin’ Cup after fifty-four years of nothing, and I guess you truly do walk together forever.

Then again, hey, it’s your team.  Do what you want.  The way things are going, each and every member of that ‘94 team will eventually have their number raised.  I can hardly wait for Jay Wells night. 

And I thought the 1967 Maple Leafs were honoured to death.

Stop the presses!  As I type, the Vancouver Canucks actually win a game, 4-3, at home against the Hurricanes.  Alex Burrows pots the shorthanded winner with under two minutes to play.  Mats Sundin stays out of the penalty box and contributes a goal and an assist.

Stay tuned.

Time to take some more drugs.  All is well in the NHL.  Goodnight.

- Mick Kern

Friday night.  Everyone’s gone to bed early.  Time for some West Coast hockey.

First, have to clear a few things off the docket.  Speaking of the West Coast, saw a piece on the Globe and Mail website earlier tonight saying that the Olympic Village, at the upcoming 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, is now expected to be paid for by Vancouver taxpayers, and that bill appears to be for $875 million.

Why in the world would anyone want the Olympics in their backyard?  The charlatans that put on the fancy song-and-dance to woo the Lords of the Rings to their city always (ALWAYS!) promise that the taxpayer will not be left holding the bag, ahh, the bill, ahh, the bills.

Of course, these suits never have to put up their own money.  Typical self-serving swine.  Hardcore capitalists when it comes to their nest egg; publicly-minded socialists when it comes to dipping into the public purse.  Hey, much like the Big Three in Detroit.

Any reasonable opposition to the Games is always attacked as being small-minded, and accused of not thinking of legacy and of dreams and all that other pseudo-romantic crap.  Bread-and-circuses has long wooed public support, trouncing smaller, less glamorous approaches to everyday life.  Who cares about stuff such as classroom ratios, and libraries, and after school programs, and outdoor rinks, and so on and so and so on.  We’d rather have the fancy monorail in our town.  Bribe us with our own money!

No doubt we’ll all enjoy the hockey at the 2010 Winter Olympics.  And just wait until, say, Canada wins the Gold Medal in hockey.  Some well paid TV sports guy will be blubbering on-air about how this is such a special moment for the country, and how one can’t put a price tag on something like this.

Yes I can. Apparently at least $875 million.  For starters.

I’m going to be a NIMBY on this one.  The Olympics? Not In My Back Yard.  Ever. 

Yet some city, could be Chicago, will always bend over backwards for the right to be fleeced.  The robbery continues because we allow it to.

Moving on while we still can afford to, one of my favourite things to do is to peruse the comments sections in sports/hockey sites such as Kukla’s Korner, TSN, and various newspapers.  Someone on TSN today, speaking about the three game suspension Mikhail Grabovski received on Friday for his grappling with a linesman during Thursday night’s game in Montreal, suggested that the Leaf should have instead bit the official, since it’s been established that you only get two games for that infraction in the NHL. 

Well said.

Third point, the rumours about Vincent Lecavalier being moved out of money-challenged Tampa Bay.  Well, predictably, they were roundly shot down by the Lightning and their minions.  My experience has been that most hockey rumours possess a shred of truth; rarely is a rumour floated by respected media members that is, well, completely off.  It happens, but rarely.

No doubt some bright lights reading this will quibble with the term respected media members, but like-it-or-not, the likes of Mike Brophy and, concerning past rumours, Al Strachan, are respected, and well connected.  You at your computer are not.  Come to think of it, neither am I.  So I let folks like Brophy do the heavy lifting.

Does this mean Number Four is on the market?  Probably not the Lightning’s first choice, but come on, do you believe anything coming out of Tampa these days???  If you do, I’ve got some swamp land in Vancouver for you.  Might be a good spot to put on the Olympics.

Speaking of the Dolts, Steve Stamkos was kept out of Friday night’s game against the Anaheim Ducks, purportedly in an effort to get the 18-year-old future wunderkind to work on his strength and conditioning.  He will not sit out consecutive games.

Fair enough.  This kid will be a very good hockey player in the near future; but this is today, not tomorrow…even when you read this tomorrow.  Where was I???

Oh yeah, back in Fairytale Land, aka the Tampa Barrie Lightning.  Stamkos was a key component in their marketing this year.  He should have carefully been brought along by the team, not rushed into the league.  He’s 18 years old.  If anything, Stamkos would have benefited from playing in the recent World Junior’s in Ottawa, not toiling for a lousy pro team with no hope this season.  Maybe, just maybe, Barry Melrose wasn’t all that off-the-mark.

Finally, is the All-Star Game over yet?

- Mick Kern