The Hockey Show - Episode 618

The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, is veering off its normal course of following the news and discussing major topics tonight for something a little more fun. In passing, Jason had mentioned the old McDonald's NHL mini goalie masks as he had seen a few for sale at a consignment store, and he and Teebz got to chatting about them prior to the last show they did in-studio before the renovations. There were many "do remember those" comments, and that's how we got here where our hosts will dive deep into NHL-McDonald's promotions tonight on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!

Regardless of your stance on McDonald's and their food, it's hard to deny that they are a marketing force when it comes to toys and promotional products. Tonight, Teebz and Jason jump squarely into that world as they look at the run of McDonald's hockey cards and some of the interesting things found there, the NHL mini goalie masks and the story behind them, and the crossover the NHL and the Muppets did that brought McDonald's in as a third party to that promotional push. The entire show is dedicated to NHL-McDonald's promotions as the two hosts look at three fun campaigns from the mid-1990s, have some discussion surrounding those campaigns, and hopefully stir up some memories for listeners tonight on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT on one of 101.5 FM, Channel 718 on MTS TV, or via UMFM.com!

If you live outside Winnipeg and want to listen, we have options! The new UMFM website's online streaming player works well if you want to listen online. We also recommend Radio Garden if you need an easy-to-use online stream. If you're more of an app person, we recommend you use the TuneIn app found on the App Store or Google Play Store. It's a solid app.

If you have questions, you can email all show queries and comments to hockeyshow@umfm.com! Tweet me anytime with questions you may have by hitting me up at @TeebzHBIC on Twitter! I'm here to listen to you, so make your voice heard!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason chat hockey cards, goalie masks, french fries, Muppets All-Stars, jingle controversy, promotions, and much more exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!

PODCAST: July 25, 2024: Episode 618

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Goalie Appreciation Piece

I'm pretty certain fans of the Winnipeg Jets know all about appreciating their goaltender after Connor Hellebuyck won some more hardware this past season. There are goalies who routinely excel at their position that ultimately land in the Hockey Hall of Fame, but there are many more who make it to the NHL, stop some pucks, and find themselves moving every few years as one of 64 coveted positions in the game are occupied by the best puck-stoppers found by general managers, coaches, and scouts. In saying that, it's always crazy when I hear a fan blurt out "I could have stopped that shot" following a goal scored on what looks like a relatively easy shot to save. But is it easy?

I'm here to tell you that it's not, and the proof comes from Hockey Alley's YouTube page. In the video below, you'll get a bird's eye view of what it looks like when a puck is coming towards you with no one standing between you and the shooter. Remember that most goalies have pads and skates on, so stopping these shots might look easy until you're wearing the same gear they do. And the key in this video? The shots get faster as the video gets longer. Have a watch below.
There's absolutely no way I'm making a save on any of those shots above 80mph, and I suspect that a lot of armchair goaltenders may have a new-found appreciation for why it looks like some goalies are guessing on where shots are going given the reaction time needed to stop some of the pucks. It seems pretty evident that the guys paid to stop pucks in the NHL are the best at what they do.

I may have led you to believe this is a goalie appreciation piece, and I still want to honour the armoured men stopping pucks because it's clear that they're incredible athletes. But it also may be a defensive player appreciation post because we often see skaters jumping in front of pucks or lying down in front of shots to help the goalies, and they often wear far less protective equipment than the guys and gals between the pipes. Often, we see players hobble back to the bench after a shot goes off a skate, and they're back out there a minute or two later. For as quick as the goalies have to be with their limbs and body stopping shots, the toughness shown by players to stand in the way of those shots is off the charts by my standards.

However, this piece is about what the goalies see, and imagine being able to have the reaction time to peek around two, three, sometimes four players in front of you, see the shot just as it's being released, and still making the save in the nanoseconds one would have to throw his or her body in the way. In saying that, what the best goalies do in the NHL on a nightly basis might just be magic. When you consider that Hellebuyck, Swayman, Bobrovksy, and Shesterkin are some of the best of the very best puck-stoppers the planet has to offer, seeing this video makes me appreciate just how difficult their jobs are.

Oh, and just for fun, let's roll one-timers into this too.
For anyone thinking, "I can do that", you're welcome to don the gear and show us how. Best of luck to you on that effort.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Welcome To Total Ignorance Arena

The image to the left is the rendering for Scotia Place, Calgary's newest arena to house the Flames. Ground was broken on the building today as all the usual suspects were there: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, and Flames executives. This is still one of the dumbest investments any province has made when it comes to spending public tax monies, and the $330 million committed to the project by Smith should see her cement her position as Alberta's most ineffective leader ever. With education, health care, and infrastructure all requiring some major investments at the provincial level, paying for a billionaire's new arena should win her a few more free hockey tickets when her time is up at the Alberta legislative building.

I'm not here to write Political Blog In Canada, though, so I won't mention how "61 per cent of the family doctors had been considering leaving the Alberta health-care system" in January or how half of Hinton, Alberta doesn't have a family doctor. Of course, when 250 education jobs are being cut due to budget constraints, it's hard to teach kids medicine, math, or anything else that they may need to succeed in society. Of course, there may be no society left soon with infrastructure projects such as "sidewalks, roads, underground infrastructure, water and wastewater" badly underfunded. But a new arena in downtown Calgary makes it all go away, right?

It's hard to imagine city employees using their heads for more than a hat rack as well, and it seems that Calgary Chief Administrative Officer David Duckworth fits that stereotype nicely, stating that the arena was "designed to be built on budget". I guess the city of Calgary operates in its own world since Montreal found out about overruns, Belmont, Massachusetts discovered overruns, Hamilton ran up costs, and Etobicoke finished with a higher price tag. But you do you, Mr. Duckworth, since this arena was "designed" to fall within the budget.

Rather than drone on about the all the shortfalls in Alberta that could use a $330 million investment, let's celebrate the new 18,400-seat arena that will host the Calgary Flames as the main tenant for as second before mentioning that "[t]he Flames will repay $316 million to the city in annual lease payments, but the city won't recoup this full amount until around 2060". For a cool $853 million, a budget-friendly building whose project management is entirely controlled by the rich men who own the Flames will be Calgary's newest landmark with the city of Calgary partly responsible for any and all budgetary costs above the initial price tag. Those same men managing the arena will have invested just $40 million of their own monies, so they may be able to afford a few overruns without worrying about shortfalls.

In the fine print of that $853 million price tag, you probably missed the part where David Duckworth's concerns about spending on costly projects had him saying, "There's no more big stuff. There is none." If there is none, how will Calgary pay for overruns?

"But Teebz, the Flames will pay property taxes for using the arena," you say, and this is where I grimace and ask "Will they?"

The city of Calgary actually owns the arena, and the city isn't paying itself any property taxes. According to Project Calgary, "the property taxes generated from any new developments in the Rivers District surrounding the new arena would not even begin to flow back to the City of Calgary general revenues until 2048", and we already know that most businesses surrounding an arena don't actually benefit from the foot traffic generated by the arena. Further to this, the Flames' control in running the arena will cease in 2049, so Calgary essentially operates at a half-billion dollar expenditure with virtually zero revenue generated for a quarter of a century.

Empirically, Calgary has negotiated a deal to reinforce all the statistics and economics about constructing arenas with no benefits for the city without even knowing it. That takes real skill considering there have been no cost-benefit analyses done on the new deal struck between the Flames and the various levels of government, and economic forecasts for this arena and entertainment district have risen from $550 million in 2018 to $631 million in 2021 to the current estimate of $926 million by the time the arena is finished in 2027. It seems like Calgary's answer to the Flames wanting a new arena is to spend whatever it takes to make that happen.

Do the Flames need a new arena? Arguably, yes as the Saddledome officially opened on October 15, 1983. It is the oldest arena used by any NHL team at this time, and it has shown its age over the years despite some renovations and touch-ups to keep it current. What's funny about the Saddledome's construction is that the cost was pegged at $80 million, yet the final bill came in at $97.7 million which makes me wonder if David Duckworth knows about his own city's issues with overruns when it comes to "no more big stuff".

Despite all the studies and forecasts and history proving that this deal might be one of the worst to ever be conceived in the history of major sports facilities, ground was broken on the new "Scotia Place" today. Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, Councillor Sonya Sharpe, and Premier Danielle Smith all posed together with shovels for the cameras to commemorate the spending of over a billion dollars of public money while the Calgary Flames - the manager, main tenant, and primary benefactor of this new facility - enjoyed seeing 96% of the costs covered by someone else... assuming there are no overruns.

Does Calgary need a new arena? Yes, the city does, but it should be one where they profit from it more than the main tenant does. Scotia Place will likely have all the bells and whistles for it to be a state-of-the-art arena, but it seems more apt to call this new structure "Total Ignorance Arena" because of how terrible this deal is for the city of Calgary and the province of Alberta.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Heading Home

I missed the news earlier this week, but it seems that former Columbus Blue Jackets head coach Pascal Vincent is heading home as he's accepted the head coaching position with the AHL's Laval Rocket! Vincent got his professional start as an assistant coach with the Winnipeg Jets before moving to the head coaching spot behind the bench of the AHL's Manitoba Moose. Following those jobs, he joined the the Columbus Blue Jackets as an assistant coach before being thrust into the head coaching position after the Mike Babcock debacle. He was relieved of that job after the organizational changes in Columbus, but the 52-year-old is back in Quebec doing what he does best after being hired by the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday.

If you're looking at Pascal Vincent's record with the Blue Jackets in trying to figure out if he'll fit with the Rocket, stop looking because that entire Columbus franchise was a gong show last season. Instead, look back to his time with the Moose where he was effective as a head coach thanks to a solid roster. Vincent was 155-139-18-13 in his time as the Moose head coach, and he was recognized as the AHL's top coach in 2017-18 while serving as the head coach of the Central Division in the 2018 AHL All-Star Classic. He's a good communicator with younger players, and he should fit nicely in Laval with the Rocket's impressive roster of young talent.

For Vincent, the homecoming is a return to a city with which he's very familiar as he spent eleven seasons as a head coach in the QMJHL where he learned his trade, and three of those seasons were with the Montreal Juniors. 13 years after bouncing around the NHL and AHL, he'll stand behind the bench for the Rocket, just a stone's throw from the team he grew up watching in the Montreal Canadiens.

"The Montreal Canadiens are the Montreal Canadiens," Vincent said in his introductory press conference on Tuesday. "It runs through your blood when you're from the province of Quebec. It's quite a prestigious organization and you find that out even more when you're away from Montreal. When you work for another organization and you come to the Bell Centre and you play against the Habs, you can see the intensity and the passion of the fans, yes, but you can also sense how special it is for opponents to come to Montreal. So I knew it from a guy that grew up in Laval and being a big Habs fan. But when you experience that aspect from an opponent's side of view, I really realized how prestigious this organization is as of today. I'm really happy to be part of the family now."

The Rocket enter the season having missed the playoffs by six points in 2023-24 with a 33-31-8 record, and discipline might be the first thing that Vincent begins to preach after the Rocket amassed the second-most penalty minutes in the AHL. Laval's 19-13-4 record at home proves that they can play good hockey, but their 14-18-4 record on the road was the worst in their division. Only nine teams had a worse power-play efficiency this past season so improvements can certainly be made with the extra player, and only five teams were worse while down a player so Vincent can work on special teams play if he wants to see some quick improvements to the Rocket's place in the standings.

Montreal finished in the bottom-third of the NHL for both the power-play and penalty-killing efficiencies so improvement at the AHL level may help some of those young players get a longer look from the Canadiens, and it sounds like Vincent has a clear vision for his players after speaking to Montreal head coach Martin St. Louis.

"We want to be able to evaluate our players at the American league level but also when they're being called up we don't want them to think too much," Vincent said. "We want them to play and to showcase themselves. And if they have to learn a new system it doesn't do them any favours."

There's clearly more of a development effort at the AHL level, but winning still matters to the players and coaches. I imagine that Pascal Vincent will set up a culture where guys won't lose the vision of moving up to the NHL level, but will allow them to compete hard every night while skating with the Rocket. That ultimately should help both clubs find success.

“At the end of the day," he told Patrick Williams of the AHL, "the goal is how can we create an environment where the players will benefit from it. I think the relationship between the two teams, I see it as one big coaching staff, the Montreal Canadiens and the Laval Rocket. Making sure we’re on the same page. Push each other. Obviously ask questions. But at the end of the day, they make the decisions, and our job is to execute the plan, and I'm on board 100 percent."

I don't have a crystal ball to say whether this was a good hire by the Canadiens or not, but the initial prognosis is that the Laval Rocket should be better with Pascal Vincent behind the bench. He has a clear track record of developing talent for the Jets, he's worked at the highest levels in the game and with some excellent hockey minds, and he's going home to help the team he grew up cheering for and idolizing.

I'm not saying that Pascal Vincent will change the course of the Montreal Canadiens' overall plan, but he's saying all the right things when it comes to being a team guy. In that regard, welcome home, Pascal Vincent, and here's hoping you're as effective for the Canadiens as some of your boyhood heroes were!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

The First To Be Hired And Fired

It's a pretty well-known fact that former hockey players often become head coaches at various levels of hockey. In most cases, these players start out at lower levels below the NHL to hone their coaching skills because, like any job, it's a new set of skills and knowledge that one has to learn and apply. Great players may not be great coaches, and fourth-line grinders could turn out to be brilliant coaches. It's all up to the individual when it comes to how successful one will be in any job in any industry, but learning and applying that knowledge is the common theme across all industries. This is why it's always a good idea for NHL teams to avoid hiring coaches that have zero coaching experience after retiring from the game regardless of how successful those playing careers were. Case in point? The New York Islanders.

The man pictured about is four-time Stanley Cup winner Phil Goyette. Phil grew up in Lachine, Quebec and became property of the Montreal Canadiens, eventually ascending to the NHL club in 1956 where he played 14 games at the end of the season and ten more in the playoffs en route to a Stanley Cup championship. Three more seasons with the Canadiens that followed brought three more Stanley Cups as Goyette played alongside the likes of Jean Beliveau, Henri Richard, Maurice Richard, and Bernie Geoffrion where he was a solid performer every year.

Goyette would remain a Canadiens forward for three more seasons until he was traded to the New York Rangers on June 4, 1963 in a blockbuster deal that saw Goyette, Don Marshall, and goaltender Jacques Plante head to Broadway in exchange for Dave Balon, Leon Rochefort, Len Ronson, and Lorne "Gump" Worsley. Goyette would be one of the Rangers' top scorers for the next six seasons including twice where he led the team in scoring. The Rangers, unfortunately, couldn't find postseason success, and he was traded to St. Louis on June 10, 1969 for their first-round pick who was Andre Dupont.

Goyette's tenure as a Blues player lasted all of 364 days as St. Louis left him unprotected in the expansion draft following a 29-goal, 78-point season where he led the team in scoring. With Buffalo and Vancouver needing immediate scoring, Goyette was the 13th player selected in the expansion draft on June 9, 1970 as the Buffalo Sabres added him to their list of players which included Tom Webster, Don Marshall, and Francois Lacombe.

Goyette finished the 1970-71 season as the second-leading scorer on the Sabres behind some kid named Gilbert Perreault, but injuries limited his 1971-72 season to just 37 games. In March 1972, he was traded back to the New York Rangers for an undisclosed amount of cash for the final eight games of the season, and he'd close out his career by retiring after 14 playoff games with the Rangers. He would end his career 674 points in 941 NHL games that saw him win four Stanley Cups and the 1970 Lady Byng Trophy.

Remember how I started this article? Well, it seems the desire to compete was still in Phil Goyette's body because the New York Islanders hired 38‐year‐old Goyette on this day in 1972 to be their first head coach in franchise history just six weeks before training camp started. I mentioned how NHL teams probably should avoid hiring rookie coaches, right? Expansion teams might just up the urgency to find an experienced coach by one-thousand percent, yet the Islanders decided to go with "a soft‐spoken, chain‐smoking center who has coached just one big‐league game" as their head coach according to Gerald Eskenazi of The New York Times.

Islanders GM Bill Torrey apparently wanted a different kind of coach as the Islanders began to write their history. He told Eskenazi, "There are so many more teams around now. Today, you must force the opposition into your style. You must break down their style," which is a strange thing to say after hiring a guy who had a grand total of one game of experience behind a bench. Nevertheless, Goyette was Torrey's man as training camp approached.

Goyette's comments in that article about how he would run training camp might have been a harbinger for the Islanders that season. Goyette said, "Camp isn't a place where you prepare to run the mile. I'll make the players work, but there'll also be relaxation periods."

Well, there seemed to be a very extended relaxation period as Phil Goyette's Islanders skated to a 6-40-4 record before Bill Torrey had seen enough and fired Goyette after fifty games, replacing him with Earl Ingarfield Sr. who fared virtually no better. Ingarfield actually finished the season with a 6-20-2 record - his .250 winning percentage only slightly better than Goyette's .160 - floundering to an overall 12-60-6 record, worst in the NHL and 18 points back of second-to-last California in 1971-72.

According to a 2013 article in the Observer-Dispatch, Goyette said about his dismissal, "The team wanted me to stay with them in a different capacity. I went home to Quebec. They made a change, I imagine to keep the fans from leaving. I don't hold any grudges with the organization."

He added, "I took the opportunity offered but I should have never done it. I was just out of the NHL as a player."

Of course, after that forgettable first season, Al Arbour took over the head coaching duties in 1973 as he and Torrey began putting the pieces of the Islanders' dynasty together. For most fans, Arbour was always seen as the first head coach of the team thanks to the success they had, but history shows there were two guys that came before him that helped get the franchise off the ground.

Of course, neither of them lasted a season, but Phil Goyette will always be the first coach in New York Islanders history that was hired and fired. The footnote in the history books will unfortunately show that both those events happened in the same 1972-73 season.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!