Was Brad Marchand's goal against the Habs illegal?

Not to say that the rule being applied correctly would have made an impact on this game, but here is a case for the coach's challenge idea which has floated around the Interwebs for a year or so. As soon as I saw a quality angle of the first Boston Bruins goal in Game 5, I thought something was fishy.

First, a rule regarding broken sticks:

Zdeno Chara nearly decapitates Max Pacioretty

Ouch.

Zdeno Chara was assessed a five-minute major and a game misconduct for this hit on Max Pacioretty, but does that punishment fit the crime? Short answer, no. Let's look at the evidence from this season.

Jacques Martin should be banned from hockey

The Montreal Canadiens saw another lead get erased Tuesday night, and it's become a recurrent theme in Montreal these past few weeks.

Tuesday vs. Buffalo - Up 1-0 in 1st period. Lose 2-1 in Overtime.
Monday vs. Calgary - Up 4-0 in 2nd period. Win 5-4 in Overtime.
Saturday vs. NY Rangers - Up 3-1 in 1st period. Hang on for 3-2 win.
January 12th vs. Pittsburgh - Up 2-1 in 2nd period. Lose 5-2.

The three games before that were comeback wins for the Canadiens, who may be, under Jacques Martin's system, a team that plays better in desperation when they're allowed to skate. Their goal differential by period throughout each of their games has been +8, +3 and -7, which means that something is happening throughout the game that causes this breakdown. Unfortunately, no website splits goaltending statistics by period, but with an overall .921 save percentage, I neglect to think that the problem for the breakdowns has been Carey Price.

Arena review series: The Bell Centre, Montreal

I once saw the Yankees play at the old Cathedral in the Bronx, but I haven't been able to see any of the old hockey buildings yet. The Bell Centre, a flashy, spacious and amenity-filled rink right around old downtown Montreal, would no way compare to the rink where Rocket Richard and Guy Lafleur once wowed audiences. This was rather the house of Joe Juneau, Andreas Dackell, Jose Theodore and Jan Bulis. Hockey grows, and with it, Montreal fans lost the right to cheer exclusively for future legendary french players who defined the culture of an entire province and a nation* of Canadians only to have their heroes replaced by sterile foreigners, some of whom get pronounced over the public address system as if they grew up in Rosemaire. This is, I assume, the appeal of Andrei Kostitsyn.

Mike Richards sounds off on PK Subban

I'm no expert on unwritten rules, but I'm pretty sure Mike Richards is breaking one right about here.

“He’s a guy that’s come in the league and hasn’t earned respect,” Richards told Team 990 after the game.

“It’s just frustrating to see a young guy like that come in here and so much as think that he’s better than a lot of people. You have to earn respect in this league. It takes a lot. You can’t just come in here as a rookie and play like that. It’s not the way to get respect from other players around the league.

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.

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.

Oh, Carey...

If the preseason is a somewhat worthwhile indicator of the regular season, then Montreal General Manager Pierre Gauthier made out even worse than expected by choosing Carey Price over Jaroslav Halak this summer.

Carey Price, known for giving Pierre McGuire a telepathic handjob with this save in the 2008 preseason...



...made out not so good last night, allowing four goals on nine shots, being booed off the ice, and refusing to talk to the media afterwards.

Oh, Carey, at least you're in midseason form in one regard.

Canadiens goalie situation goes haywire

Remember Carey Price? He was the former fifth overall draft pick who was promoted to starter, relegated to backup and spent a lot of time in the Habs' latest playoff run riding the pine.

Price, now pencilled in as the Habs' starter, is still unsigned. He wants $3 million this year.

If you go to nhlnumbers and do a player comparison it's not as weird of a request as it sounds. $3 million is quite reasonable for a starting goalie in the NHL. Money-wise, it gets you Dwayne Roloson, and is $750,000 cheaper than Nikolai Khabi-boozin. A $3 million cap number would be the 21st highest in the league.

So the question here... is Carey Price a top 20 goalie? Last season he was 29th in goals against average with 2.77 and 19th in save percentage at .912%. If we use save percentage as the most reliable metric to calculate a goalie's worth, he's equal with the equally contract-troubled Antti Niemi. Niemi also had 7 shutouts and won 16 playoff games and that whole thing.

I invented a totally arbitrary goaltender statistic which sets a metric for how good each goaltender stacks up against the rest of his team's goaltender performance, somewhat eliminating the bias of having a player play behind a good team or a bad team. By using this metric, Carey Price was the 40th best goalie in the league. Niemi was 21st. The metric calculates, among other things, saves per 28.72 shots against (the median number of shots for playoff teams) and true winning percentage, which is wins per 60 minutes played versus the wins per 60 stat of the entire team's goalies.

I like Carey Price and I think he definitely has a future, though he wasn't helped after he was given a massive rookie deal and told to live alone on Rue St.-Catharines when he was young and immature, but if the Canadiens are going to spend $3 million on a starting goalie, the better option is Antti Niemi. He has just as much talent, though is older, more mature and more experienced, and will likely cost you the same.

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.

QMJHL draft-day trade shuts down Montreal radio

Your Sunday morning headlines



-Montreal Canadien draft-pick and future Hall of Fame winger Louis Leblanc, the hometown hero of Habstown, had his rights traded from Chicoutimi to the Montreal Junior 'Q' team, prompting speculation that he'll drop out of Harvard to play a year of junior in his hometown, giving Habs fans a reason to riot again.

You might not speak French, but you won't really want to. In this post, we're convinced that Leblanc can just as easily continue his studies at McGill University while he plays for the Junior. Hell, Bob McKenzie, a media leader in not jumping the shark, tweeted that he'd be "shocked if [Leblanc] doesn't leave Harvard for Q."

Anything to make people in Montreal care about the 'Q' again. The picture above Leblanc at Habs development camp yesterday, a snapshot that also made the rounds.

-From universal obsession to the completely overlooked, the Blue Jays beat the Yankees on a second straight day by a 3-2 score, with Aaron Hill knocking in the winning run in the bottom of the 14th in what was actually a pretty good game. Vernon Wells and Alex Gonzalez homered, bringing the team total to 96 on the year, 18 dingers above the next highest team in baseball, the Red Sox. The team has also struck out 427 batters, good for fourth in both leagues and just three behind the Dodgers, leading the category. Pretty soon there is going to be no reason to not watch the Blue Jays. It's a scary thought.

-Across town at BMO field, there is no danger of that happening with the local Reds, or 'Toronto FC' as they call them in soccer circles. They drew 0-0 on the road to the Kansas City Wizards yesterday, prompting one F.C. blogger to take pleasure in the upcoming World Cup break, since it means he won't have to watch F.C. for a while.

-Not his strongest outing of the year, but Ryan Dempster won another game, he's now 4-5 on the year, as the Cubs beat the Astros 8-5. He gave up six hits, two homers, and walked a couple, but managed to strike out seven. Justin Morneau was given the day off in a Twinkie 4-3 win over the As (although he managed to come in for a heroic pinch-hit walk in the 9th, before heroically being pulled for J.J. Hardy, who scored the winning run) and Jason Bay should have been given the day off. He went 0-for-4 with two Ks.

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With the Belmont Stakes today, horse racing's triple crown season is over. Next up on jockey's to-do lists: workouts with the Montreal Canadiens.

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.