It's Time For Some Accountability

I have never met Bruce Cassidy, but people have said that he's a well-spoken, thoughtful man who would give insights to his decisions made while coaching. We can debate all day about his reluctance to name Logan Thompson the starter in Las Vegas, eventually leading to Thompson being traded to Washington where he's now 4-0 against his former team including stoning them in the shootout yesterday, prompting the reaction above. The knee-jerk reaction by Vegas to fire a coach who led the team to the Stanley Cup and who has turned in excellent results since that victory reeks of "what have you done for me lately". Being in a results-driven business, Kelly McCrimmon fired Cassidy and hired John Tortorella for the rest of the season.

Vegas has struggled this season as they currently sit in third-place in the Pacific Division and staring down a first-round matchup with the Edmonton Oilers. They're six points back of the Anaheim Ducks with eight games to play, and they don't face the Ducks again. They still have a shot at capturing first-place in the Pacific Division, but they're going to need some help while playing nearly-perfect hockey from this point forward as the John Tortorella era begins today.

The problem is that the four goaltenders that Vegas has employed this season have a woeful .879 save percentage as they've allowed 216 goals on 1788 shots. The fact that they're even in a playoff spot should surprise people because that kind of mediocre goaltending usually results in management hunting for a significant upgrade between the pipes. Adin Hill, who appears to be Vegas's starter, will bring his 3.10 GAA and .866 save percentage to the playoffs against the likes of McDavid and Draisaitl if Vegas doesn't catch Anaheim.

Logan Thompson played 46 games for the Vegas Golden Knights in 2023-24 where he went 25-14-5 with a 2.70 GAA and a .908 save percentage. Adin Hill, who split time in the crease with Thompson, was 19-12-2 with a 2.71 GAA and a .909 save percentage. As you can see, Thompson likely had every right to believe he could win more games based on his statistics that season, so asking the team for greater responsibility in the crease should have been a discussion where Cassidy and McCrimmon could have laid out a scenario where Thompson was given the opportunity to be the starter, especially after Thompson played well from January through to the playoffs.

Instead, it seemed like there was always going to be a competition between the goalies in Las Vegas, and Thompson made the decision to ask for a trade where he could seek a starter's role with another team. Vegas obliged, and he was traded to Washington at the 2024 NHL Entry Draft in exchange for two third-round picks. The rest, as they say, is history as Vegas has struggled in the crease while Thompson has played well for Washington with two sub-2.50 GAA and .910-or-better seasons, earning a Canadian Olympic roster spot.

Clearly, this problem goes higher than the coach as it wasn't Bruce Cassidy's decision to trade Thompson despite Steven Valiquette's assertion that Cassidy and Pete DeBoer not liking Thompson. Add in the fact that Vegas only has six picks on the first three rounds of the next four NHL Entry Drafts with no first-round picks until 2028, and there's more evidence that management is making bad decisions. It also bears mentioning that Adin Hill and his 3.10 GAA and his .866 save percentage are being paid $6,250,000 until 2031, making the general manager's office the source of Vegas's problems. Spending their way into division titles was a win-now ideology.

Perhaps spending $12 million per season on Mitch Marner was a good idea in the moment as Adin Hill held a 2.47 GAA and a .906 save percentage, but those numbers were the best numbers Hill has posted in any NHL season to date with the number of games he played. They weren't trending in that direction; they were an aberration away from his rather pedestrian baseline numbers. McCrimmon went seeking more help in the crease when he gambled on Carter Hart which, for the most part, has been an utter disaster on the ice as well as for the team's public image, and his follows his trade of fan favourite Marc-Andre Fleury, bailing on Robin Lehner when he needed help, and trading away Thompson. Now we'll see another coach to try cover up the damage that McCrimmon has caused with his short-sighted, win-at-all-costs mentality.

At some point, Kelly McCrimmon has to be responsible for the team he's assembled. Yes, the coach can and will make mistakes when it comes to player deployment or line combinations, but Bruce Cassidy proved he has the skills to do the job with the Stanley Cup ring he earned. Instead, this year's push will fall to John Tortorella after McCrimmon fired Cassidy one day after the Logan Thompson fist pump at the end of the shootout. Tortorella is only signed through to the end of the season, so this coaching carousel could start up again the moment that Vegas is eliminated from the 2026 playoffs.

Perhaps at that point, Kelly McCrimmon will finally be held responsible for results turned in by Kelly McCrimmon's team.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Friedman With A Curious Thought

I had a good chuckle when social media went off about Alexander Ovechkin taking his first defensive zone face-off ths season despite the Capitals having played 73 games this season. It's not like Ovechkin has ever been up for a Selke Award in his career, and I don't think anyone would put him on the ice in the dying seconds of a game while up a goal. His talents are scoring goals, not stopping them, but Elliotte Friedman's 32 Thoughts article published on Sportsnet's website yesterday got me thinking about a new record in hockey.

To that point of the season on Thursday night in Utah, Ovechkin had watched every defensive zone face-off from the bench this season. That works out to about 4500 minutes of hockey without him ever lining up for a face-off mere feet from his own goal. It was Friedman's 32 Thoughts that got the wheels turning when he wrote,

With Ovechkin turning 41 years-old to begin the season next year, could he go an entire season without taking a defensive zone face-off? He went through 73 games this year without doing one, but he could do the full 84-game schedule - it's two games longer in 2026-27! - without starting a play in his own zone if he plays next season?

I'm not sure that's a record that anyone would want to hold, but it seems like that option may give Ovechkin the best shot at scoring a number of goals while keeping him fresh for all 84 games. If scoring goals means that much to Ovechkin and his coaches and teammates are fine with it, more power to him. This could be the way he hits 950 goals in his career which would be an impressive total to reach, but it clearly requires some sacrifices to parts of his game.

Friedman notes that it would have been "tremendous" for Ovechkin to have played the entire season without ever lining up in own zone, but, considering that the Capitals are on the outside of the playoff picture right now, this isn't a winning formula. Of course, Ovechkin could have been taking defensive zone face-offs and the Capitals could be in the same position or worse, but we won't know what impact he had at helping the team win defensive zone face-offs if he follows Friedman's thoughts and commits to taking none next season.

I should point out that the Capitals saw no harm on the two defensive zone face-offs where he was on the ice in Utah, so things are looking up for Ovechkin's defensive game already! Selke Trophy in 2027?

As for the multi-city send-off that Friedman floated, the answer is a hard "no" from me. As a Penguins fan, I can ackowledge his talents, but I'm not celebrating his career in any manner. I didn't care when he tied Gretzky's record for goals, and I didn't care when he broke the record. I'll tip my cap to him when he does retire because he certainly rewrote some records that were once believed to be untouchable, but it still needs to be mentioned that he won his only Stanley Cup when Barry Trotz forced him to play a 200-foot game.

If defence wins championships, the evidence is the 2018 Stanley Cup. Records will ultimately fall, but winning never, ever gets old.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

I Forgot About Marty

Marty McSorley isn't a player that one forgets about thanks to his impact on the game when he played. The 62 year-old enforcer was a decent defenceman who was known more for throwing knuckles than making crisp passes, but he was memorable. Whether it was the illegal stick in the 1993 Stanley Cup Final or the stick-swinging incident against the Vancouver Canucks, McSorley may also be remembered for the major mistakes he made while playing the game. One of the things that I forgot, though, was that he took bit parts in movies while playing for the Los Angeles Kings, and I encountered one of those movies tonight as I was searching for something to watch.

Known mostly for wearing #33, I had forgotten that he wore both #36 and #55 while skating for the New York Rangers during his nine-game stint in Manhattan that saw him, Shane Churla, and Jari Kurri traded to New York from Los Angeles on March 14, 1996 for Ray Ferraro, Nathan LaFayette, Ian Laperriere, Mattias Norstrom, and a draft pick. He had just two assists in those games and held a -6 rating, but he did pick up 21 PIMs during that short spell in The Big Apple.

On April 7, 1995, Columbia Pictures released Bad Boys, an action movie featuring Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, and Tea Leoni that was the directorial debut for Michael Bay while being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The film brought in just over $140 million at the box office against a production cost of around $20 million, so it seems audiences liked the Smith-Lawrence duo. The studio certainly did as it has now spawned three sequels since the original hit theatres.

As I re-watched the film for the first time in what has to be decades, I found myself shocked when one of the thugs staked out to watch detective Marcus Burnett's house began to look quite familiar to me.

The man on the left is none other than hockey pugilist Marty McSorley in his first Hollywood role as an actor! As per IMDB, his role listed him as "Henchman" in the script, but he got a few lines in the next scene!

Back at the police station, he's intensely interrogated by Detective Sanchez, played by Nestor Serrano, and Detective Ruiz, played by Julio Oscar Mechoso, as they try to get a name out of McSorley's character as to who hired them to watch Burnett's house, eventually getting the name "Fouchet" out of McSorley. The detectives would then piece together the crime and where it would be going down, and all four detectives - Lowery (Smith), Burnett (Lawrence), Sanchez, and Ruiz - set out to capture Fouchet, played by Tchéky Karyo. Commentary on McSorley giving up his boss aside, he played his role well in the film!

If you're wondering how McSorley landed in the film, it's reported that Jerry Bruckheimer began working out and playing hockey with several Los Angeles Kings players including both Luc Robitaille and McSorley. McSorley has also landed in other Bruckheimer productions including Con Air and CSI: Miami, so the hockey connection between the two men seems to have worked out quite nicely for both!

No one will mistake Marty McSorley for Martin Short, Martin Landau, or Martin Sheen, but his small roles saw him work alongside Will Smith, John Malkovich, Nicolas Cage, and Billy Crystal. That's a pretty cool side gig when you consider his "day job" was skating alongside the likes of Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, and Joe Thornton. Who else can claim those coworkers for their jobs?

He didn't win an Oscar nor did it help his hockey talents, but I had completely forgotten Marty McSorley was in Bad Boys. Rewatching the film certainly gave a "Michael Bay movie" feeling, but it was pretty cool seeing Marty McSorley's acting debut in the action film!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

The Hockey Show - Episode 705

The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, is back tonight with a full recap show of some of the events that happened last weekend in Elmira, in Halifax, and in Winnipeg. Honestly, it was a busy weekend of hockey action in those three cities, and our hosts will try to bring everyone up to speed on what happened in those cities. Frankly, it was a very entertaining weekend of hockey no matter which event one focused on, so we'll look at the two tournaments that determined university supremacy and the big game tonight on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason will look back on a weekend where both the U SPORTS National Men's and Women's Hockey Championships were played and where the PWHL took over Winnipeg. They'll have thoughts, opinions, and discussion about each of the events including who won, who didn't win, and all of the incredible action seen from the two National Championships before spending a larger amount of time discussing the PWHL's arrival in Winnipeg, the viability of the PWHL in Winnipeg, and the results from that game. As a bonus, Teebz sat down with both Kendra Woodland and Kaitlyn Ross of the Ottawa Charge to chat about their careers, so don't miss those! There's lots to discuss, so tune in tonight to 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 UMFM website's 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.

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! And because both Teebz and Jason are on the butterfly app where things are less noisy, you can find Teebz here and Jason here on Bluesky!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason chat National Championship, winners and also-rans, women's hockey, PWHL action, and much more exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

What Happened To The Ice?

If the ice in the image to the left looks a little off, this was a real thing in 2005. With the NHL lockout in full effect, the AHL was seeing a pile of stars play nightly who should have been on NHL rosters while the NHL and AHL brass looked at all sorts of options to make the game better during AHL games. The image to the left is from one of those games where the ice was coloured "electric powder blue", the blue lines were painted almost fluorescent orange, and the red line was painted dark blue. If those changes seem drastic, they were made for a specific reason.

According to an archived USA Today article, "[t]he blue ice is part of an experiment that was approved by both the NHL and AHL after officials discussed changing the ice color from white to enhance how the game is viewed by both live and television audiences."

You might be wondering why the NHL decided to give this idea any thought, but 2005 was the year that HDTV became a big thing that everyone had to have with Steve Jobs opening MacWorld that year "with the proclamation that 2005 is the 'year of high-definition video,'" so professional hockey was trying to keep ahead of the emerging television technology. After all, fans could have an HDTV in their homes for the NHL to give them the best view possible!

The game on March 20, 2005 where this was first tried featured the Rochester Americans and the Cleveland Barons playing in Buffalo's HSBC Arena in front of 15,288 fans as per the gamesheet. Paul Gaustad beat Nolan Schaefer in the first period and Rory Fitzpatrick added a second Americans goal from Geoff Peters and Daniel Paille while shorthanded in the second period, and that's all the scoring that Americans netminder Ryan Miller needed as Rochester captured the 2-0 victory. For what it's worth, Rochester ended up being the AHL's best team that season with 112 points with a record of 51-19-10 while Cleveland was last in the North Division with a 35-37-8 record and 78 points, 11 points back of a playoff spot.

As per the players, some noticed the new paint job on the ice while it seemingly had no effect on others based on their comments.

"I didn't notice it too much from a player's standpoint," Fitzpatrick told USA Today. "It was hardly noticeable at all."

Derek Roy had a different view of the ice after watching the game from the pressbox, telling The Associated Press, "From afar there was a distinct difference, as the black puck seemed to stand out well on its powder-blue backdrop, especially when it slid along the orange 'blue' lines. I think the orange lines really stood out. I think that was a positive. But overall, it didn't look that much different. It looked like everyone adapted and everyone liked it."

Fans seemed to agree with Roy's assessment of the new ice colours.

"I think it looks great," Sabres fan Alysa White told USA Today. "It takes some getting used to, but I really don't mind it at all."

While there was no guarantee these colour changes or any of the other changes - two-foot blue lines, larger nets, the trapezoid - would stick for NHL play when it resumed once the lockout ended, the Buffalo Sabres seemed pretty happy to partner with the NHL to put these experimental ideas to the test inside the HSBC Arena.

"We are very excited to experiment with a light blue ice surface," Buffalo Sabres Managing Partner Larry Quinn told AHL.com. "The National Hockey League first introduced the idea of using different types of ice colors and we asked their permission to experiment with the blue ice concept during our two upcoming AHL games. We think the action on the ice will show up better on television with a blue surface and will be easier to see the flow of the puck."

Depsite the somewhat-positive feedback for the ice, the Americans would play a second game on the powder blue surface against the St. John's Maple Leafs at HSBC Arena in front of 15,326 fans. Jason Pominville would record a hat trick and Thomas Vanek had a pair of goals for the Americans to erase Kyle Wellwood's two goals, and the Americans downed the Maple Leafs by a 6-4 score on April 3, 2005.

I couldn't find a single article about this game with the online newspaper archive being down, so there aren't any further comments about the blue ice. However, it seems like the thinking for the blue ice was similar to the experience that hockey fans had when hockey debuted on TV in the 1950s. As per a McGill University article,

"Television viewers got their first glimpse of painted ice on October 11, 1952 with the initial Hockey Night in Canada telecast. When color television appeared, cameras couldn't handle the brilliant white ice surface and it had to be painted blue. Technology soon overcame this faux-pas so that today we can watch hockey played on a white sheet of ice, as it should be."

With the innovation of high-definition television, it seems like the NHL was trying to learn from a mistake they made in the past by painting the ice blue in these test games. Despite the two games showing no adverse effects for players or fans when it came to playing or watching the game, it seems we were fairly close to seeing blue ice, bright orange lines and face-off markings, and a blue line at centre ice in an effort to make the game easier to watch on HDTV!

Ok, maybe we weren't THAT close considering that those two games were the only games we saw with the blue ice in the AHL that season or in any other season, but those two games should be remembered for what could have been had the NHL gone ahead with their HDTV idea. Frankly, the game looks pretty good in high-definition without any new paint on the ice, so perhaps this blue ice experiment was just to confirm that white ice works best on high-definition TVs.

Or, as the McGill article stated more succinctly, "today we can watch hockey played on a white sheet of ice, as it should be." 'Nuff said.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!