Who should be captain ?

James Mirtle has a good piece on who should be captain of the Thrashers, Panthers, Kings, Rangers, Leafs, Flyers, Lightning and the Canucks. He list possible candidates for each team mentionned above. So let’s start with the most obvious choices on different teams.

The New York Rangers, it’s a no brainer, Chris Drury, that is one reason why Sather signed him as a UFA last summer, as he knew that he would be parting with Jagr and Shanahan.

The Philadelphia Flyers, the same thing, no doubt Mike Richards will get the nod. They did not invest all that $$$$ on his possible 50 goal a year seasons, because it won’t happen. He will be a 20 to 25 goal a year center.

In Tampa Bay, again there, no brainer, Vincent Lecavalier, will be captain of the Bolts until he retires.

Now for the less obvious.

Atlanta, Mirtle listed three possibilities to replace Holik. They are Niclas Havelid, Ilya Kovalchuk and Slava Kozlov. I am not sure I would pick any of them, as your best players don’t also make for good captains. I think Todd White would be a good captain and a locker room presence.

In Florida, the choices are : Bouwmeester, Horton and Cory Stillman. Bouwmeester’s status is up in the air, so would not be a good choice. So it’s a toss up between Stillman and Horton. I would go with Stillman, he a proven leader, he has two cup rings, would be a good influence on the youngsters.

The Kings, the choices are : Armstrong, Brown (Dustin), Frolov, Kopitar and Stoll. I think Brown would make a good captain.

Oh yes the Leafs, now this is interesting, as that person will have big shoes to fill with Sundin gone. The candidates are : Jason Blake, Kaberle, Kubina and Mayers. Mirtle had put McCabe, but I doubt he would want that job anyways, this notwithstanding his possible trade to Florida or elsewhere.

The Vancouver Canucks, the candidates are : Kesler, Mitchell and Ohlund. Ohlund is a UFA a the end of the season, if they are tanking by the tradedeadline in early March, no doubt he could be a sought after defensemen for a team looking to good deep in the playoffs. So it remains between Kesler and Mitchell, I think he will get the nod.

Like everyone else, I’m getting sick of hearing of the where will Mats Sundin go ? story. As long as he stays silent and let’s the speculation go on, it will get sickening for fans all over the NHL, not only in the cities where has gotten offers from, but others also. Turn the microphones off and use the old it’s ‘’off the record’’ line, and you surely will get snarks from a GM. As in ‘’ How long will this take, we can’t wait all season for him to decide.’’ The worst part is, is that even Gary Bettman can’t even intervene. Hopefully he comes to a decide soon and puts an end to the saga.

Three years after the signing of the new CBA, there is still a misconception on who counts against the cap, espacially when it comes to long term injuries. It’s also the same for short term injuries. Just because a player goes off the active roster, it does not mean his salary is off the books, he still counts in the team’s upper limit count. Players on long term injury reserve, and the team applied for the exemption, and that are close to the upper limit, can go over the limit, but not by all of the injured player’s salary. I will use the situation with Ryan Whitney in Pittsburgh. Presently the Penguins sit at 55,360,867 which leaves them with 1,339,133 in cap space. Whitney’s cap hit is 4,000,000. Take that amount, substract what is left in cap space, and that is amount they can go over. Teams don’t lose their cap space because of this, it’s more calculate how much they can go over. Teams can replace an injured player such as Whitney,with as many as they wish, as long as the total is not larger than the replaced player’s salary/cap hit.

Hopefully news picks up between now and Saturday, see you then.

Waiting for Mats and ….

Here we are Monday August 18th, and all of the NHL is holding it’s breath on where Mats Sundin will land next season. Of course, first he has to decide if he is going to play in the NHL again. That’s when the derby will really begin. Watch the rumour mill go wild, like it’s not already. Teams interested in him, will scramble to clear cap space in order that his contract fits in. Only Vancouver would only have to clear about a million in cap space to fit their offer to Sundin.

The Rangers are pretty close to the cap, as they have less than a million in cap space. The Flyers also have cap issues, as they are over the season limit of 56.7 million. Philadelphia is 1,031,667 $ in the red. Trading Jeff Carter for Bouwmeester, will not solve their cap problems. According to former RDS analyst, Yvon Pedneault, the offer the Canadiens made Sundin, was around 8 million, and the Habs fave about 6,564,699 $ in Cap space. No doubt Gainey will have to make a few trades for draft picks to make way for Sundin, if he returns to La belle province to play an another season.

Joe Sakic, like Sundin is still undecided about his future in the NHL, but unlike his former teammate from the Quebec Nordiques days, Sakic will either play in Colorado or retire. The Colorado Avalanche have enough cap space to sign Sakic, they have 12,725,000 $, so there is no cap issue in this case.

I don’t think too many Leafs fans will be to disappointed to see Bryan McCabe leave Toronto in two weeks, the day he recieves his bonus money from the Leafs and is officially traded to the Florida Panthers. His last game as a Leaf, was in Montreal when speared young Gregory Stewart in the groin area and left the ice giving the fans the bronx cheer.

Chicago: The last stop for Bowman ?

The legendary coach took on a new challlenge last week, by accepting the position of Senior advisor to the Chicago Black Hawks. Is this the last stop in hockey for Scotty Bowman ? if you look at it in the perspective that he will get a chance to work with his son, at age 74 and soon to be 75, there is no doubt, it most likely will be, of course the master will have the final word on this. As we know, his son Stanley, named after the cup he has won more than any other coach in NHL history, has been battling cancer, the same that forced Mario Lemieux to sit out part of the 1992-93 season, when his dad was coaching the Pittsburgh Penguins.

This will be Scotty Bowman’s sixth and possibly last stop in a career that has spanned over four decades. Previous stops where until recently, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Montreal and St-Louis, where it all started in fall of 1967, when then the late Lynn Patrick whow as Gm and coach with the Blues, turned the bench over to the Young Scotty Bowman. In his first three seasons as bench boss, he brought a group of rejected players to three consecutives Stanley cup finals, losing all three and not even winning a single game. Of course the obvisious question was, what could this guy do with a better team ? Shortly after beeing fired as Gm in St-Louis, he got a call from the late Sam Pollock, who was already becoming a legend and was Gm of the Montreal Canadiens, who had just won the 1971 edition of the Stanley cup playoffs. Pollock did not offer Bowman the coaching job in his initial conversation with Scotty, that would come later. In fall of 1971, the Montreal Canadiens would have two new faces, who would come to write new chapters in the history of the great franchise, Scotty Bowman and Guy Lafleur, would team up to make the 70’s editions of les Canadiens, the strongest in hockey history. In the summer following the team’s third straight cup win, Bowman signed a two year deal, but would come to regret it in a way, as the Canadiens and the Forum were to be sold from Bronfman’s to Molson Breweries of Canada (who held on to the team til they sold a majority of it to now owner George Gillett Jr. in 2001). In the agreement of the sale, Sam Pollock would no longer be Gm, but could not tell Bowman. Scotty signed the contract thinking that Pollock would be his boss. In the spring of 1979, following the Canadiens fourth straight cup win, Bowman got offers to go elsewhere, he chose to exercise the option in the contract, which still had a year left, and opted for the Buffalo Sabres.

The Years in Buffalo did not turn out to be Scotty’s best moments in hockey, which in a way where of his own doing. He gutted a team that was maybe a few players short of a Stanley cup, and started a real bad re-building process, that went contrary to what Pollock did in Montreal. Not all went bad for Bowman during his seven year tenure in the great lakes city, he did make a few good choices, as in Housley, Barrasso, who he would recommend to Craig Patrick Gm in Pittsburgh as part of the early 90’s Penguins cup winning teams. When it all ended in Buffalo, a lot of people thought that Bowman’s reputation would be tarnished, and could be the end of one best coaching careers.

After his stint with Buffalo, he went on to become an analyst on Hockey Night in Canada, until he was offered a position with the Pittsburgh Penguins in the off season of 1990. Scotty was in charge of player personel and development. The Penguins won the Stanley Cup in the spring of 1991. Bob Johnson who coached that team, fell ill during that summer, and eventually passed away before the beginning of season. Scotty was asked to step in, which he did, it was not time bring in someone new. Bowman guide the Penguins to a second straight cup in 1992. Scotty and the Penguins were not as lucky in the spring of 1993, as they bowed out in round two of the playoffs. Bowman’s former team the Montreal Canadiens, coached by former wings coach, Jacques Demers, won the prize that year.

The Detroit Red Wings offered the coaching job to Bowman in summer of 1993. Scotty went on to win three more Stanley Cups as coach, he retired in the spring of 2002, after passing his mentor Toe Blake with his 9^th cup as coach. Before joining the BlackHawks, Scotty had spent fifteen years in Detroit.

His NHL coaching and executive career have come full circle, as he is back where it all started, in the american midwest.