At least the Leafs had an excuse ...
Canadian teams are a joke, and we’d laugh if it didn’t hurt so bad
You might not have the playoffs to look forward to, but you’ll always have the Monday morning musings and meditations on the world of sports.
As the Auston Matthews sweepstakes play out to a dreary conclusion, we’re left to ponder the state of the NHL’s Canadian franchises and the mind-boggling events of this season.
There are six NHL teams who still have a realistic shot at finishing last overall. Five of them are Canadianbased and the two remaining franchises from the True North were removed from the playoff equation long ago.
How can this be? How is it that all seven teams could fail so spectacularly in the same season? Yes, there are mitigating circumstances — hello, Carey Price — but think about the expectations for each Canadian franchise back in October.
Ottawa, Winnipeg and Calgary were widely regarded to be young teams on the rise. Edmonton had added a generational talent in Connor McDavid.
The Canucks represented an unknown quantity, but they’d made the playoffs in 2014-15 and didn’t figure to fall off the map.
That left Toronto, and it was understood the Leafs had begun a comprehensive rebuild. At least they have an excuse. But what of the others? The level of incompetence displayed by those teams is offensive. Edmonton added McDavid and didn’t get appreciably better. Calgary added Dougie Hamilton to their blue-line corps and Michael Frolik up front, and got worse. Winnipeg had one of the NHL’s best young cores and took a big step backward. Ottawa was coming off an inspirational run to the playoffs last season and they too have regressed.
Now, this would be easier to stomach if you could understand why this has happened and why it’s been 23 years and counting since a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup. But this can’t be about the pressure and scrutiny of playing in Canada or some Bettman conspiracy that has altered the laws of competitive balance.
No, all we know is that the Canadian teams have been a joke this season, and you could laugh except you know how much the game means in those markets and what it means in this country.
We try not to take it personally. But this season, that’s a big ask.
On a somewhat related note: Again, two exhibition MLB games in Montreal drew massive crowds; again, there was dreamy talk about the return of the Expos; and, again, there’s no ballpark in Montreal and no prospective owner for the team.
As someone who used to sit in the left-field bleachers at Jarry Park, I wish they’d just stop. It’s a nice fairy tale, but it’s still a fairy tale.
Before he left for this week’s Frozen Four in Tampa, Canucks GM Jim Benning was confident he could sign ace goaltending prospect Thatcher Demko to his first NHL contract.
On this you have to take Benning at his word, but you can forgive the faithful if they’re a little nervous after watching the Jimmy Vesey soap opera unfold.
To recap, the Nashville Predators were also confident they’d sign Vesey. They believed they had a strong working relationship with the Harvard star and his family.
And Vesey now is headed toward unrestricted free agency.
Demko, the Boston College junior, might be the top goaltending prospect in hockey and it’s imperative the Canucks lock him up. This hasn’t been the greatest season on the ice for Benning’s team, but when you look at the player development side — Ben Hutton, Sven Baertschi, Nikita Tryamkin, Brock Boeser, Demko — there’s reason to believe things will get better.
Demko is a big part of that future. The Canucks don’t need any drama around the kid.
And finally, most hockey fans have long since stopped trying to make sense of the NHL’s disciplinary system, so there’s no point in analyzing the suspension to Duncan Keith.
But, just for fun, let’s consider the penalty that was handed to the Canucks’ Aaron Rome during the 2011 Cup final.
Rome, who had no priors, was suspended for the duration of the final after a late hit on the Bruins’ Nathan Horton in the first period of Game 3. The penalty, essentially a five-game suspension in the Stanley Cup Final, was the longest in finals’ history, and when asked if this was a sign the NHL was taking head shots more seriously, Mike Murphy, the NHL senior vice-president in charge of discipline answered: “Without question.”
Now fast forward five years and, in Keith, you have a player who’s been involved in three separate incidents all involving an opponent’s head.
The latest occurred when he swung his stick like a shillelagh and creased the fine features of Minnesota’s Charlie Coyle.
And for this he was suspended for five regular-season games and one playoff contest. Really? Considering the ice time Keith logs, the five regular-season games are as much an aid to the defenceman and his team as a penalty. The only meaningful part of any suspension was always going to be the number of playoff games Keith sat out, and he was given one.
It’s amazing. Aaron Rome, who’d never been suspended, got four games and a large part of another in THE STANLEY CUP FINAL for a late hit, while Keith, a repeat offender, was suspended for just one playoff game.
You’d just hate to think what the penalty would have been if the NHL wasn’t cracking down on this sort of thing.