There’s a stark contrast right now between the speed at which the next NHL season is barreling down at us and the slow drip of news that continues to trickle in from around the league. That drip belies the truth of what’s soon coming, which is real hockey, so let’s turn our attention to some actual hockey questions to prepare, shall we?
How does Alex Steen’s retirement affect the St. Louis Blues?
There’s this awkward dance we’re left to do in the media when players retire due to injury with what appears to be fortuitous timing for both the player and the organization. I want to be clear that I’m speaking in generalities here, and that I’ve got the utmost respect for Alexander Steen and his wonderful career. I’m also expressing zero skepticism that his back is a mess and that it’d be much better for his long-term health to not force it through another NHL season. I’m certain it’s the right call.
I also had the utmost respect for Marian Hossa, I have the utmost respect for Johnny Boychuk, and I don’t think anyone is fabricating anything in these LTIRetired scenarios.
You can feel the “but” coming, I know.
BUT we’re left to do this awkward dance even when we know the above to be true, because we also know that nearly every veteran player has nagging injuries, and every player would benefit from stopping the cycle of working to get their body in a position to play each day so they’re able to sustain further damage each night. What doctor wouldn’t verify these players would be better to stop playing? (“Doc my back hurts me every day, do you think I should keep getting in small car accidents each night or no?”) But the vast majority of them continue to do so, for a variety of reasons.
The dance is just in acknowledging that truth – that this is obviously in the player’s best interest – while not coming off like a rube that sometimes the decision to LTIRetire is the best way to not forfeit money AND help the team out in the process.
Steen will be placed on LTIR and be paid his full salary on the final year remaining on his contract #stlblueshttps://t.co/Hz5cx2ELn2
Whatever the case may be there in St. Louis, boy, is Steen’s $5.75 million cap hit coming off the books fortuitous timing (I’m sure they knew this was coming but likely would’ve preferred it be confirmed before the Pietrangelo negotiations, no?). They should have the space to pay Vince Dunn and still add some offence, whether in the form of Mike Hoffman or Mikael Granlund or Anthony Duclair or someone else they think can score them some goals in the (hopefully temporary) absence of Vladimir Tarasenko.
It’s impossible to know how this affects St. Louis off the ice, as Steen has been a smart, serious, thoughtful and respected leader there. But in viewing it from an on-ice perspective alone, this should allow the Blues to be improved in 2020-21.
How does having zero exhibition games affect your view of the NHL season?
The loss of exhibition games certainly doesn’t add anything to the credibility of the campaign, does it? There’s a real feeling-out process in the early part of the season, where teams can at least get a look at a few lines and special teams units, have a sense for how the whole thing is going to mesh together, and try to be properly prepared a few games later.
Players can be reminded of game pace and how that all feels, and there’s at least a couple games where playing competitively feels weird.
Those games will now count, which feels even weirder.
Which is fine.
At this point it is what it is and nothing is guaranteed this NHL season. Have you seen what COVID-19 is doing around North America right now? There’s the very real risk of having big swaths of games cancelled between January and April, meaning the league is going to need the biggest sample size possible on which to draw revenue and cobble together a regular season. It’s OK to admit we’re cobbling here, people.
So, in sum, having no exhibition games does hurt the legitimacy of the regular season. But right now the NHL is James Franco in 127 hours – it can sit around and hope for a magical best-case scenario to come through and die in the process, or cut off its own arm and live here. (OK that’s a bit dramatic, but at some point you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.)
Which players have the most to prove in the upcoming season?
I enjoyed this list put together over on The Hockey News about players who have the most to prove during the upcoming season. The 10 names they came up with: Freddy Andersen, Josh Anderson, Sergei Bobrovsky, Johnny Gaudreau, Philipp Grubauer, Taylor Hall, Jack Hughes, Matt Murray, Bobby Ryan, and Jesse Puljujarvi.
My quick thoughts on a handful of those names:
Gaudreau: Great players can have one-off years that aren’t great for a variety of reasons, and the guy is 27 years old. But last season was definitely a concern, and I feel like if he has another off year the Flames will move him, so this is of utmost interest to me.
Hall: I’m not sure an NHL player has ever had a career like his and not gotten The Big Payday. He’s a first-overall draft pick who’s won a Hart Trophy and is a decade into the league but he’s yet to take home more than six million in a season. He’s gonna make eight this year, but if for whatever reason it isn’t a great year, and every team is tight in a flat-cap system, is it ever going to come for the guy?
Murray: The Sens don’t make too many big bets, and making one in the crease is the biggest bet you can make. Murray’s had some concerning numbers of late, but has proven he can be the guy in the past. Can he again?
It’s awful news, and here’s hoping Hank will be just fine and back soon.
The plan in net for a very good Capitals team was to have a solid veteran who can handle a decent workload provide cover for their hopeful starter of the future in rookie Ilya Samsonov. Boy, the pressure just ramped up on the kid, didn’t it? There will have to be a solution here for Washington, and I’m eager to see how they pursue filling that hole.
Players are returning for NHL camps, what will those look like?
One of my takeaways from working with an NHL team was just about how little time there is to prepare for and execute all that there is to do. Now teams head toward a 10-day training camp – tops – with no exhibition games and big decisions to make. Here in Toronto, numerous roster decisions are left hanging in the balance, I’m sure in part with the plan in mind of sorting them out at camp.
So watching how teams choose to operate during these camps is going to be wildly different, I’d wager, and thus fascinating. If you need to sort out roster spots you need to play games. Will there be scrimmages? You need to get conditioning up to game speed as quickly as possible, but there won’t be time for much rest, so how hard can you go? Can you bag skate? You need to get back to battle hockey too, which plays into that. There will be systems coaching, lines to sort out, and decisions that normally take three weeks and multiple games to make will have to be made in severely compressed timelines.
One thing’s for sure: whenever hockey comes back, coaches, staff and players will be working at nearly impossible levels to be ready for puck drop, heading into one of the weirder seasons in NHL history. I, for one, am ready for it, and I’m sure they are too.
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.
It won’t be an easy assignment.
Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.
“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”
Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”
Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.
After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.
“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”
Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.
“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.
A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.
“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”
But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.
“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”
Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”
“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.
Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.
“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”
While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.
“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”
The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.
“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
