The final 10 weeks of the regular season will be a race for playoff positioning in both conferences. It will also feature some player movements at next month's trade deadline. Before we proceed, it is time to review the surprises and disappointments from the first half.
Now that the All-Star Weekend has concluded, HockeyPrimeTime.com decided it was appropriate to look back at the five biggest surprises and disappointments of the first half of the 2011-12 National Hockey League season.
As with all lists, this one is subjective. What we decided to do was to open both categories to teams, players and executives.
Without any further ado:
FIVE BIGGEST SURPRISES
1) The on-ice success of the reborn Winnipeg Jets: The return of the NHL to Winnipeg was greeted with the kind of celebratory fanfare that equaled the Beatles’ first trip to the United States in 1964. The Winnipeg fans bought 13,000 season tickets less than 20 minutes after they were put on sale.
“Sometimes it’s not just the size of the market. Sometimes it’s the function of the intensity of the market,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said about Winnipeg’s feverish response to the resurrected Jets.
When looking at the Jets’ roster makeup prior to the season, it was populated with many of the same athletes that played in front of witness relocation-sized crowds in Atlanta.
Yet, the Jets’ 22-22-6 mark has them 10th in the East, only five points behind eighth-seeded New Jersey. With $11.599 million in cap room, the Jets could add talent through trades. Perhaps one or more of Anaheim’s Big Three? What about Jeff Carter? Maybe Rick Nash? Or Jarome Iginla?
How would a grateful and worshipful Winnipeg react if the Jets reached the playoffs?
2) The ascendant New York Rangers: Yeah, yeah, the Rangers were going to be good after signing Brad Richards to a nine-year, $60 million free agent contract on Jul. 2
What wasn’t expected was that the Rangers would have the second-most points in the NHL or lead the Eastern Conference at the start of the second half.
3) Tyler Seguin: On a team renowned for its work ethic, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2010 Entry Draft is its flashy skill. The 19-year old Seguin leads the reigning Stanley Cup Champions with 19 goals and 43 points while playing 16:16 of ice time a game. About the only thing he has done wrong is oversleep. But that’s what teenagers do.
4) Ryan Nugent-Hopkins: NHL franchises are incredibly conservative when it comes to the promotion of young players. The accepted thinking is that youngsters need to ply their trade in either juniors or the AHL for at least a year before they can compete for a job.
Nugent-Hopkins symbolically laughed at the accepted thinking. He is second on a very young Edmonton Oilers squad with 35 points. His 13 goals rank third on the team while averaging 17:19 of ice time. The kid can play and he’s only 18.
5) The Panthers are prowling South Beach:…and the rest of the Eastern Conference. Florida hadn’t played a playoff game since Bill Clinton was ending his second term as President of the United States. The exact date was Apr. 20, 2000, and the Panthers were shut out, 4-0, in the fourth and final game of their Eastern Conference Quarterfinal series against the soon-to-be Stanley Cup Champion New Jersey Devils.
Yeah, it’s been awhile.
But it seems as if Miamians will be able to push the Miami Marlins—well, they already ignore them—to the backburner come April as the Panthers are seventh in the East with 55 points in 47 games. Florida is in a virtual tie with Southeast Division leading Washington (the Caps have four more wins than do the Panthers). Free agent signee Kris Versteeg’s 19 goals and 43 points are tops on the team. Not bad for someone in a contract year.
FIVE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS
26) Carolina Hurricanes and New York Islanders: Both teams thought they could contend for playoff spots in the East. Then the season started. Both teams have high-end talent (Eric Staal and Jeff Skinner for Carolina, John Tavares on Long Island) but the management—read: ownership—for both organization have not added enough quality pieces to play with their franchise players.
27) Alexander Ovechkin and Tim Thomas: The Washington Capitals’ left wing and the Boston Bruins’ goaltender each committed acts of self-aggrandizement last week that were breathtaking.
After being notified that he was suspended three games for charging Pittsburgh defenseman Zbynek Michalek—a play in which Ovechkin jumped off the ice and into Michalek—the Caps’ captain announced that he would not participate in the All-Star Weekend. He asked Washington reporters, “I got suspended. Why I have to go there?”
Thomas, you may have read on this site and others, refused to join his Boston Bruins teammates at the White House to be honored for winning the Stanley Cup last June because he disagrees with President Barack Obama’s polices.
It is enough to bring a tear to a diva’s eye.
28) Brian Burke’s continued insistence for fighting in hockey: The General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs was frustrated on the day of Jan. 5. Earlier in the day he had to inform right wing Colton Orr that he was being placed on waivers so he could be sent to the Leafs’ AHL affiliate, the Toronto Marlies.
Why?
Well, in the post-lockout NHL, the one-dimensional pugilist is a dying breed. Players need to be able to play. Shocking concept. Orr, signed to a four-year, $4 million free agent contract in the summer of 2009, had recorded seven goals, nine points and 372 penalty minutes in 133 games as a Leaf.
“I know the Greenpeace folks will be happy with this,” Burke ranted to Toronto reporters before that night’s 4-0 over the Jets at the Air Canada Centre. “I wonder, the accountability in our game and the notion that players can stick up for themselves and each other, I wonder where we’re going with that.
“The only lament I have on this is the fear that if we don’t have guys looking after each other, that the rats will take this game over.”
Burke is right that the so-called rats are a problem. So are having nuclear deterrents that can do little other than punch each other in the face for half-a-minute. A far better solution is to increase the referees’ powers to actually enforce the rules on the books.
29) Brendan Shanahan: Bettman introduced Shanahan as the league’s new Dean of Discipline in a conference room inside the Westin Hotel in New York City on Jun. 22, replacing Colin Campbell.
As part of the press conference, Shanahan announced that he and a group that included Rob Blake and Steve Yzerman had modified Rule 48 and that the league was going a hard line stance on headshots.
He started out a crusader, having suspended nine players for a combined 58 pre-season and regular season games. However the harsh penalties have not carried over to the regular season, which has led to…
30) The continued player-on-player acts of predatory violence: After watching Philadelphia Flyers forwards Tom Sestito and Max Talbot throw dangerous checks to teammate Andre Deveaux on the night of Sept. 26, New York Ranger Erik Christensen asked Metro Newspaper in New York City , “what is going to take?” for his fellow players to fall in line with the league’s no-tolerance of headshots.
There was no good answer then and there is not a good answer now, not when Brad Marchand was suspended only five games for clipping Sami Salo and Dan Carcillo lost seven games for boarding Tom Gilbert.
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