Weekend reset: Jarome Iginla scores his 1000th point, and more

This will be as regular of a feature as I can possibly make it, since Sunday night is a great time to cool down with a glass of scotch and recap everything we got to see over the course of the weekend.

Jarome Iginla scores 1000th point, used to play for a lousy General Manager

When I was about six or seven years old, one of the books that ended up in mine and my brother's bookcase was a light read chronicling all National Hockey Players with 1000 points in their careers. Early on I gained an understanding and an appreciation for the players who held on long enough to still be effective late in their careers.

The first player I remember consciously seeing score his 1000th point was Doug Gilmour. I don't remember the play (but thank Youtube I can revisit it) but I do remember his Toronto Maple Leaf teammates stormed off the bench and mobbed him, only to have the goal disallowed for whatever reason. It was a dress rehearsal, and the real thing happened later in the game.

Darryl Sutter: Retrospective

Darryl Sutter came to Calgary midway through the 2002/2003 season, and stepped down before 2010 came to a close. His tenure represented a defining moment in the Flames' franchise; it saw the prime of Jarome Iginla, the end of the playoff drought, a Stanley Cup appearance, and a number of baffling moves that sunk the franchise for years and years.

Make no mistake, you won't find very many Calgary Flames fans who will say that the team is any better off now than it was when Sutter left. Save for the one Western Conference Champions banner, Sutter came to the team after Greg Gilbert pulled them out of the cellar and left just as they came back in.

What numbers can tell us about a tie game

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Calgary Flames played, with respect to both their fanbases, an absolutely meaningless game Thursday night to a 5-2 home-side victory at the Saddledome. Regardless of it being a mid-season game between two teams that won't make the playoffs, it doesn't mean we can't digest some of the numbers.

I didn't watch this game, but NHL.com has set itself up in such a way that I hardly needed to. All you truly need is the play-by-play feed and a handy spreadsheet, and you can plot the game on a graph complete with momentum changes and scoring chances.

Expansion franchise: Hamilton Boo Birds

[Frank Chartrand - AP]

Ontario hockey teams are not very good, are they? Both got shutout last night at home, both were booing their own teams, and neither look like they'll make it to the playoffs anytime soon without some serious housekeeping.

Sidney Crosby fights, Jarome Iginla doesn't

Kaboom, Niskanen. I don't particularly like fighting, and when you're losing the game, it's certainly a bad idea to have your star player off the ice for 5+ minutes.

Leafs strategy: Send Orr after goalie

Yeah, so this Jordan Eberle kid is alright

So, these Edmonton Oilers are fun to watch, aren't they? Or at least just this one time. This is probably the goal of the night, also featuring Ian White refusing to take both the man and the puck, and TJ Brodie somehow being outskated by Jordan Eberle.

Outside of Hedley and a long, convoluted, corny Olympics-esque opening ceremony at the Air Canada Centre, it was a pretty good return of hockey. Toronto and Edmonton had wins at home against a depleted Montreal team and a Flames team that's really just terrible, respectively, but it signaled a return of hope to two teams that looked in disrepair at January of last season.

Eberle notches his first goal in Oilers win
A good start in a year Leafs will fight for relevance

Buffalo are in Ottawa tonight. I guess I can't wait for that.

The Good Old Hockey Game - A look at the NHL season

The NHL season starts tomorrow, and every blog likes to put together a gimmicky look at the season. There's no reason The 'Eh' Factor can't get involved in this. Here are some lulz and predictions to get you ready for the season.

Toronto media continues to pile on Leafs prospect, and other hockey stories

Nazem Kadri, to nobody's surprise, was sent down to the Toronto Marlies yesterday, and Leafs nation's Barilkosphere outlets responded quite rationally. I still have yet to read a post from a reputable Leafs source which has declared Kadri a "bust" or other fancy terms Canucks had reserved for Cody Hodgson after his dissapointing preseason last year.

So, what say you, Toronto Sun?

Nazem Kadri is your saviour, Toronto

-Earlier this week, Toronto Maple Leafs blog Pension Plan Puppets went to town on potential first-round flop Nazem Kadri. The Puppets explain how poorly Kadri is playing compared to the average developmental curve of prospects and completely ignore the reasonable approach taken by the Toronto Sun.

Or something completely opposite of that.

Kadri scored twice and had an assist in the Leafs' 4-3 exhibition win against the Ottawa Seators last night. Kadri still probably won't make the team and may be better off playing a full season in the American League, but his three-point night set up for one of the stupider ledes of the preseason.

It most surely was a slump at the most inopportune time of his young career.

Oh, sure, that makes sense. God forbid Kadri ever goes a couple of games without a point in the preseason ever again.

-Meanwhile, in Calgary, Flames president Ken King has called out TSN panelist Michael Peca for calling out Flames designated problem contract Jay Bouwmeester.

The whole drama erupted Tuesday night when TSN panelist Michael Peca said he used to look forward to playing against Jay Bouwmeester, because he coughed the puck up so much.

Strong words, to be sure. And it didn't die there.

On Wednesday afternoon, in a radio interview with Rob Kerr and Dean Molberg on the Fan 960, Flames president Ken King lashed out at the audacity of Peca, a former player, saying such things.

“I think it was out of line,” King said in an interview with The Fan 960. “It was a guy talking about his peer. His colleague. Someone who he has played with.....To diss and take such a low-brow approach to laughing at or ridiculing one of the premier defencemen in the league, I just think is completely inappropriate.”

In fairness to Peca, King has probably never skated against Bouwmeester.

-In Montreal, Brian Gionta was named the 2nd ever American captain in Franchise history leading to more concerns that the captain of the Habs can't speak French. The only reasonable solution is to move to Tampa, commence covering the Lightning, drag Vinny Lecavalier down and force Steve Yzerman to trade him to Montreal.

Here's an old link on a Vincent Lecavalier to Montreal for Louis Leblanc RDS story.

This is a tall order for Gionta.

News and notes this Tuesday

-There are two big hockey stories to look at today. The fallout has evened out from yesterday's shocking, absolutely shocking revelation that Roberto Luongo would step down as Captain of the Vancouver Canucks. Iain MacIntyre of the Vancouver Sun does a nice job of arguing that Henrik Sedin should replace him. Over at The Hockey Writers, I argue the same point with the grace and maturity of the comments of the MacIntyre column.

-Then there is Sheldon Souray. His orange highness Steve Tambellini told the media that Sheldon Souray would not come to training camp. Souray's only fault, it seemed, was criticizing team management. And going minus-19 in just 37 games played.

-Speaking of Edmonton baggage, Eric Tillman has officially been named General Manager of the Eskimos. The TSN story does not skimp out on the details in the fourth paragraph of that story. Tillman is generally credited with building the current version of the Roughriders and winning that team's first Grey Cup since 1989, restoring the glory that team never had. He scouted and signed Darian Durant, Weston Dressler and Rob Bagg.

Even though he tried to hump the babysitter, Tillman and the Eskimos have drawn pretty well zero criticism through this union of geeky-faced football experts and football teams with names coming from derogatory Inuit slang.

-BC signed Ricky Foley last night. Then they didn't finalize it, but then they did today. BC has won two straight. Saskatchewan have lost 2 of 3 and Rider fans are scared. Will there be a home playoff game in pouring, pouring, despicable rain in November at Empire Stadium? Oh God I hope so.

*UPDATE* It appears that Ricky Foley has actually signed with Toronto, the rat bastard, or as Cam Cole put it on Twitter, owner David Braley "successfully outbidding himself for services of prized pass rusher."

-Defensive Player of the Week:



-Some MLS team somewhere in Canada fired their coach/manager. Never trust a guy with one first name.

-From the "Darryl Sutter is still insane" files, James Mirtle reports that Calgary tried to sign Vesa Toskala this summer. No word on whether Toskala turned the contract down because he could not in good conscience work for somebody dumb enough to sign him.

--

I'll return to a full-day of posting on Friday, where I will get some CFL previews running.

How the NHL network TV schedule affects Canadian teams

The National Hockey League released it's 2010/2011 network television schedule for both the Canadian and American markets on Wednesday. CBC, TSN and TSN2 will carry national games in Canada, along with the early game we'll see on NBC after New Year's.

National TV broadcasts get us into a nice routine. Saturday nights are for curling up on the couch and flipping on CBC, particularly after playing out on the pond, or spending the day sleeping off a hangover and playing video games. The weekday TSN games are great for when you come in after work or school, too bent out of shape to complain about Pierre McGuire.

TSN are advertising 124 games on TSN and TSN2 this season, although the TSN2 games tend to be picked up from Versus. Some highlights from the TSN2 schedule include:

Monday October 18th - Colorado @ NY Rangers
Monday November 29th - Dallas @ Carolina
Monday December 27th - Minnesota @ Columbus
Monday January 17th - Los Angeles @ Dallas
Monday February 14th - Washington @ Phoenix
Tuesday March 15th - Buffalo @ Carolina

Sure, maybe some of those games, along with others on the 48-game TSN2 schedule, won't be total stinkers, but the TSN2 games are either Versus pickups or games where an extra camera crew may happen to be leftover in the region. Subtract those and the six preseason games plus four games from Europe that are on during times nobody will be able to watch, and we're looking at a 66-game schedule. That's nothing to sneeze at, and the North American season starts off nicely with a double-header on October 13th, with Toronto in Pittsburgh and Vancouver in Anaheim.

All in all on TSN we're looking at a 66-game schedule, with eight double headers, so 58 days during the year where there will be a nationally-televised game featuring a Canadian. That is more than enough to get your truculence fix from the Maple Leafs or Flames.

CBC, as usual, offers up the usual Saturday doubleheader, plus a doubleheader on Thursday, October 7th with Montreal in Toronto and Calgary in Edmonton with some specially scattered games throughout the season.

The national broadcaster will also have tripleheaders on December 4th, New Year's Day (accounting for the Winter Classic, which falls on a Saturday this year), February 5th, Hockey Day In Canada on February 12th, March 12th, and on April 9th, the last Saturday of the regular season.

Some notes:

-All three Western Canadian teams will be broadcasted on either TSN or CBC a total of 24 times: 14 times on CBC and 10 times on TSN. The Toronto Maple Leafs see their 24th nationally televised game on January 25th. The Montreal Canadiens will see their 24th nationally televised game on January 18th. The Ottawa Senators will see their 24th nationally televised game in franchise history sometime next season.

-The Edmonton Oilers boast the number one draft pick who will likely play on the team, but they have no nationally televised games in the United States.

-The Vancouver Canucks will not see a Saturday night game against a Western Canadian foe until, get this, January 22nd against the Calgary Flames. The Oilers and the Canucks will only see each other once on CBC.

-As usual, every Montreal Canadiens game will be televised in Canada on specialty channel RDS, which can be bought from all of the major carriers in smooth standard definition.

Sportsnet One: The Phantom Menace?

Mustachioed D1 soccer enthusiast Andrew Bucholtz wrote a poignant post this morning on the availability of top-tier European football on Canadian channels, or lack thereof. Buried deep within the post is a criticism of Sportsnet One, the new flagship cable channel of the Rogers media empire, and their attempt to screw the rest of us.

Sportsnet One is essentially Sportsnet HD. It shows the Raptors, Blue Jays, Oilers, Flames, Canucks and Senators, with the hockey teams being restricted to their own markets.

So really, the only alternative programming that Sportsnet One will offer is European football, but, as Bucholtz points out,

1: Sportsnet One is available only on Rogers carriers.

2: Rogers only offers cable to Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

For now, the only thing we'll be missing out on is Rogers' rights to Premiership games. For now. Keep in mind this summer that the Vancouver Canucks took on the communcations giant as a business partner this summer.

13 Canucks games to be broadcast on Sportsnet One

Since BC viewers are unable to get Rogers One, this means there will be pressure on Shaw, the Western Canadian cable company, as well as sattelite carriers, to carry the Rogers channel.

The Canucks generally have 11-17 pay-per-view games per season. The package is about $11 a game or $15 in HD. If Shaw begins carrying Sportsnet One at, say, $5 a month, it disguises the cost of pay-per-view games as a regular cable channel, offering nothing that the old Sportsnet didn't do already.

Good business? Hell yes. Ethical? Hell no. It's not just the Canucks, but the Oilers and Flames each have 58 games to air via Sportsnet, without the release stating how many will be reserved for the Sportsnet One broadcast.

This would be the television equivalent to money-laundering. How many Canuck, Flame and Oiler fans refused to buy the pay-per-view broadcasts because of the inherent bias of the phrase? Under the 'Sportsnet ONE' umbrella, it's just another cable channel, like TSN2.

Unlike TSN2, however, Sportsnet is not actually committed to bringing sports programming to our homes, but more determined to shut us out from it.

A roundup of today's hockey news

-The official press conference for the Heritage Classic, Canada's answer to the Winter Classic, came today at McMahon Stadium in Calgary. The Flames will play Montreal in an outdoor battle on February 20th. Check out the sweaters both teams will wear. The Flames sweaters, in particular, are absolutely spectacular, based on the old Western Canadian league Calgary Tigers threads.

Also, to quote Gary Bettman on this event: "The roots of our game emanate from frozen ponds and backyard rinks in Canada. When you have a heritage as proud and as strong as we do, you want to celebrate it."

-Meanwhile, the Team Canadian World Junior development camp kicked off in St. Johns. TSN's angle was that Taylor Hall didn't show up, and he had to be mentioned in all but two of the first eleven paragraphs, even though he was the offensive centrepiece on the first team to not win gold at the Jrs since 2005.

Kitchener Ranger Jeff Skinner, first round pick of the Carolina Hurricanes, scored the pretty practice goal that will have everybody talking for a couple of days: [Watch]]

-Move-in almost complete. CFL preview tomorrow, complete with Jim Barker delusion.

Darryl Sutter goes insane

I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to break down Free Agent signings on Canada Day. I didn't want to laugh at Bryan Murray's inexplicable decision to sign Sergei Gonchar over Anton Volchenkov, or Brian Burke's infatuation with Colby Armstrong's truculence.

But geez, Darryl Sutter, are you serious?

Sometimes an NHL GM might look to bring back veterans who had good young careers with that team. Lou Lamoriello brought back John MacLean to coach and traded for Jason Arnott. That's fine. Ken Holland had a couple of years where he had Chris Osgood starting back with Detroit, and that was fine as well, because Detroit won a Cup with him.

But today's moves by the Calgary Flames border on insane. Do the reminders of the years with Alex Tanguay and Olli Jokinen conjure up positive thoughts in the mind of Sutter? Sutter's a guy who ran his team into the ground against the salary cap last year by signing Jay Bouwmeester. Now he's found two former players who couldn't be more abject failures as Calgary Flames had they come out of the dressing room each game with their skates on the wrong foot.

What am I missing here? Is Roman Turek in as Mikka Kiprusoff's newest backup goalie? Is Al McInnis coming out of retirement? Was it bad enough that they brought Theo Fleury and Craig Conroy for nostalgia? Are the Eagles still touring?

The Tanguay signing is confirmed. Olli Jokinen is just a crazy Internet rumour right now. That guy may go down in history as one of the biggest failures in Calgary. He scored just 19 goals in 75 games with Calgary. They gave up a first round pick for him, and promptly gave up on the guy for Ales Kotalik and Christopher Higgins. Higgins is currently a free agent who scored two goals in 12 games in his brief stint in Cowtown. Kotalik had three goals in 26 games.

Remember when Darryl Sutter stepped down as the Flames coach so he could concentrate on managing? Harley Hotchkiss should have kept him as far away from the phones as possible. This is the guy who has drunk-dialed his way through the last two July 1sts and trade deadlines.

Sutter has always been a bit nuts, and if this Jokinen rumour is true (hell, even if it isn't) it's time for the Flames to take him out behind the barn Old Yeller-style.

We remember the worst blown calls of all time

CBC came out with their list of top 10 blown calls in celebration of Jim Joyce singlehandedly ruining a perfect game from a smiling Armando Galarraga.

The call is really only funny if Hitler and his Generals are narrating the action.

CBC's list is almost complete, but, for a network that takes so much criticism for catering to the Toronto Maple Leafs, it's surprising the list is short one Gretzky high stick.



Why was that one left off the list, but the 2004 Phantom Goal on the list?



I guess that's the way things go these days at that network.

Canadian outdoor NHL game for mid-February

Bob McKenzie has tweeted that the NHL will announce two outdoor games next year, one being a Canadian version.

As good of an idea it is to include Canadian teams in the Winter Classic, I'm surprised that we can't turn this into a doubleheader somehow, with the games going on the same day. Washington and Pittsburgh will play at Heinz Field on New Year's Day, with Calgary and Montreal going in mid-February.

The pick of Montreal is a strange one. Montreal has already played in an outdoor game, and they aren't exactly huge rivals of the Flames. Unless the NHL and the host broadcaster (presumably CBC, but let's not rule CTV out) want to feature one Eastern and one Western team per year.

From what we've seen with vintage jerseys, let's pray that Montreal retires those damn barber poles before the start of this one.