Post by Ducky on Jan 1, 2005 22:25:49 GMT -5
PRINCE OF PUCKS: Bruins owner blames stars
Spector / Special to FOXSports.com
Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs raised eyebrows recently with his suggestion that part of the problem with the NHL's product is its highest paid players fail to perform on a consistent basis.
In a recent interview with the Boston Globe, Jacobs claimed "a lot of people within the sport" believe the star players in the league are dogging it on some nights. He accused those players of being "comfortable" and "presumptuous", lacking competitive fire because they know their jobs are safe, which in turn contributed to the deterioration of the on-ice product.
Looking at the list of the highest paid players in the NHL last season, some players obviously didn't play up to the level expected of their salaries.
Alexei Yashin, Keith Tkachuk, Pierre Turgeon and Jaromir Jagr certainly didn't play well enough to earn their whopping salaries and haven't for some time. Whether or not lack of desire and effort was the reason for their sub-par play is subject for debate.
Still, there were others who clearly deserved to be ranked among the best in terms of salary and performance.
Nicklas Lidstrom remains one of the top defensemen in the game. Nobody would accuse Joe Sakic of mailing in his performance last season. Martin Brodeur won his second straight Vezina Trophy as the league's best goaltender.
Detroit's Nicklas Lidstrom is definitely one player who has earned his money. (Dave Sandford / GettyImages)
Mats Sundin remains the heart and soul of the Toronto Maple Leafs and is consistently their best offensive player. After leading the Calgary Flames to their first playoff berth in seven years and within a goal of winning the Stanley Cup, few in Calgary believe Jarome Iginla was inconsistent.
It wouldn't be fair to single out Peter Forsberg, Ziggy Palffy, Jason Allison and Pavel Bure, as they missed part or all of last season due to injury. If one pro-rates Forsberg's and Palffy's statistics over the course of the entire season, they would've been among the league's top offensive players.
What's more noteworthy is the number of above-average players who were paid as though they're superstars. Some owners obviously overvalued players who weren't among the best in the league.
Tkachuk, Bobby Holik, Curtis Joseph and Bill Guerin fall into that category, having parlayed a couple of strong seasons into salaries worth far more than their talents.
There were also some players, like Turgeon and Philadelphia's John LeClair and Jeremy Roenick, who were among the highest paid despite being on the downside of their careers. That demonstrates a lack of good judgement on the part of the teams who signed them to those contracts.
Even Jacobs' Bruins weren't immune to overpaying an average player. In 2001 they signed unrestricted free agent and career third-liner Martin Lapointe to a hefty four-year, $20 million contract. Lapointe obviously lacks the talent to be worth that kind of salary and for an owner like Jacobs to expect him to play beyond his skill levels to justify that money is unreasonable. Nobody forced the Bruins to pay him that much.
In reality, years of uncalled obstruction, oversized goaltending equipment and the reliance by too many teams on trapping defensive hockey is more to blame than any perceived malingering by the game's best players.
The final word on this goes to Sakic, who "thanked" Jacobs for how he runs the Bruins, saying, "Otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten Ray Bourque and won a Stanley Cup."
Zing!
The World Junior Championships are currently being held in Grand Forks, N.D. and Thief River Fall, M.N. Attendance has been solid thus far, but coverage on television in the U.S. has been limited to only those games where Team USA, the defending champions, are in action. Match-ups between teams of other countries are nowhere to be found.
In Canada, meanwhile, coverage is far more comprehensive, including telecasts of games involving other countries when Team Canada isn't playing. Canadian hockey fans were thus treated to an entertaining preliminary round game between Team USA and Russia on Christmas Day, which the Americans won 5-4.
This tournament provides a great opportunity for hockey fans to see the best young players in the world in action on the international stage. Some of these players, like Team Canada's Sidney Crosby and Ryan Getzlaf, Team USA's Patrick O'Sullivan and Ryan Suter, and Team Russia's Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeny Malkin, are bound for stardom in the National Hockey League.
A tournament of this magnitude should merit more coverage in the United States, particularly as they're the host country, but unfortunately, the WJC cannot compete with NCAA football bowl games scheduled during the same time period.
Meaningless regular season NCAA basketball games and re-runs of the poker events are also apparently more popular in the U.S. than a major international hockey tournament.
That's not the fault of the juniors. After all, the best professional players, most of them NHL stars, couldn't beat poker in the ratings during last September's World Cup of Hockey.
There's an interesting observation on pro hockey in the book, "Faithful: Two diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season", by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, that provides insight into how the average American sports fan views the current NHL product.
One of the authors described hockey as a bunch of helmeted guys grasping sticks in their gauntleted hands skating around on his TV screen for a while until commercials come on.
Given the decline in the NHL's television ratings over the past 10 years, many American sports fans apparently share that view.
Finally, there's a rumor kicking around that the NHL plans to make another proposal to the NHL Players Association, possibly as early as New Year's Eve.
Neither side has made any public comments on future talks, and with the expectation that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will announce cancellation of the 2004-05 season on Jan. 14, the possibility of a new offer from the league seems remote.
At home in Prince Edward Island, Canada, he's known as Lyle Richardson. But around these parts, he's known as Spector, FOXSports.com's Prince of Pucks. Check in with Spector for the latest NHL rumors from around the league and buy his book.
Spector / Special to FOXSports.com
Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs raised eyebrows recently with his suggestion that part of the problem with the NHL's product is its highest paid players fail to perform on a consistent basis.
In a recent interview with the Boston Globe, Jacobs claimed "a lot of people within the sport" believe the star players in the league are dogging it on some nights. He accused those players of being "comfortable" and "presumptuous", lacking competitive fire because they know their jobs are safe, which in turn contributed to the deterioration of the on-ice product.
Looking at the list of the highest paid players in the NHL last season, some players obviously didn't play up to the level expected of their salaries.
Alexei Yashin, Keith Tkachuk, Pierre Turgeon and Jaromir Jagr certainly didn't play well enough to earn their whopping salaries and haven't for some time. Whether or not lack of desire and effort was the reason for their sub-par play is subject for debate.
Still, there were others who clearly deserved to be ranked among the best in terms of salary and performance.
Nicklas Lidstrom remains one of the top defensemen in the game. Nobody would accuse Joe Sakic of mailing in his performance last season. Martin Brodeur won his second straight Vezina Trophy as the league's best goaltender.
Detroit's Nicklas Lidstrom is definitely one player who has earned his money. (Dave Sandford / GettyImages)
Mats Sundin remains the heart and soul of the Toronto Maple Leafs and is consistently their best offensive player. After leading the Calgary Flames to their first playoff berth in seven years and within a goal of winning the Stanley Cup, few in Calgary believe Jarome Iginla was inconsistent.
It wouldn't be fair to single out Peter Forsberg, Ziggy Palffy, Jason Allison and Pavel Bure, as they missed part or all of last season due to injury. If one pro-rates Forsberg's and Palffy's statistics over the course of the entire season, they would've been among the league's top offensive players.
What's more noteworthy is the number of above-average players who were paid as though they're superstars. Some owners obviously overvalued players who weren't among the best in the league.
Tkachuk, Bobby Holik, Curtis Joseph and Bill Guerin fall into that category, having parlayed a couple of strong seasons into salaries worth far more than their talents.
There were also some players, like Turgeon and Philadelphia's John LeClair and Jeremy Roenick, who were among the highest paid despite being on the downside of their careers. That demonstrates a lack of good judgement on the part of the teams who signed them to those contracts.
Even Jacobs' Bruins weren't immune to overpaying an average player. In 2001 they signed unrestricted free agent and career third-liner Martin Lapointe to a hefty four-year, $20 million contract. Lapointe obviously lacks the talent to be worth that kind of salary and for an owner like Jacobs to expect him to play beyond his skill levels to justify that money is unreasonable. Nobody forced the Bruins to pay him that much.
In reality, years of uncalled obstruction, oversized goaltending equipment and the reliance by too many teams on trapping defensive hockey is more to blame than any perceived malingering by the game's best players.
The final word on this goes to Sakic, who "thanked" Jacobs for how he runs the Bruins, saying, "Otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten Ray Bourque and won a Stanley Cup."
Zing!
The World Junior Championships are currently being held in Grand Forks, N.D. and Thief River Fall, M.N. Attendance has been solid thus far, but coverage on television in the U.S. has been limited to only those games where Team USA, the defending champions, are in action. Match-ups between teams of other countries are nowhere to be found.
In Canada, meanwhile, coverage is far more comprehensive, including telecasts of games involving other countries when Team Canada isn't playing. Canadian hockey fans were thus treated to an entertaining preliminary round game between Team USA and Russia on Christmas Day, which the Americans won 5-4.
This tournament provides a great opportunity for hockey fans to see the best young players in the world in action on the international stage. Some of these players, like Team Canada's Sidney Crosby and Ryan Getzlaf, Team USA's Patrick O'Sullivan and Ryan Suter, and Team Russia's Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeny Malkin, are bound for stardom in the National Hockey League.
A tournament of this magnitude should merit more coverage in the United States, particularly as they're the host country, but unfortunately, the WJC cannot compete with NCAA football bowl games scheduled during the same time period.
Meaningless regular season NCAA basketball games and re-runs of the poker events are also apparently more popular in the U.S. than a major international hockey tournament.
That's not the fault of the juniors. After all, the best professional players, most of them NHL stars, couldn't beat poker in the ratings during last September's World Cup of Hockey.
There's an interesting observation on pro hockey in the book, "Faithful: Two diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season", by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, that provides insight into how the average American sports fan views the current NHL product.
One of the authors described hockey as a bunch of helmeted guys grasping sticks in their gauntleted hands skating around on his TV screen for a while until commercials come on.
Given the decline in the NHL's television ratings over the past 10 years, many American sports fans apparently share that view.
Finally, there's a rumor kicking around that the NHL plans to make another proposal to the NHL Players Association, possibly as early as New Year's Eve.
Neither side has made any public comments on future talks, and with the expectation that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will announce cancellation of the 2004-05 season on Jan. 14, the possibility of a new offer from the league seems remote.
At home in Prince Edward Island, Canada, he's known as Lyle Richardson. But around these parts, he's known as Spector, FOXSports.com's Prince of Pucks. Check in with Spector for the latest NHL rumors from around the league and buy his book.