Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. As a western conference cartoonist, it's about time I took a shot at drawing Todd McLellan and Mike Babcock, whose success as head coaches for the San Jose Sharks and Detroit Red Wings will put them behind the western conference bench for this weekend's All Star Game in Montreal. As a disgruntled fan of the Anaheim Ducks, it's also about time I took a shot at the lackluster play of netminder J.S. Giguere, who will start for the Western All-Stars despite winning only one game over the previous five weeks.
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. It's certainly been a tough month for fans of the Anaheim Ducks and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Since December 20, each franchise has collected only four wins, tied for fewest in the NHL for that stretch. Both teams, desperate for standings points, will go head-to-head in Pittsburgh on Friday night, and for now the consolation is that one of the teams will have to get an elusive win. While the two teams have similarly struggled to collect standings points, however, there are some differences to note in how the two teams have been losing with regularity.
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. Congratulations to the fans of the Montreal Canadiens, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Anaheim Ducks, and the Chicago Blackhawks for dominating the online vote for the starters of the 2009 NHL All Star Game. Because of their record-setting vote totals, the twelve starters for the midseason event will be entirely represented by those four teams.
Throughout the voting process, the NHL periodically removed large segments of votes because of robot fraud, but based on the tremendous volume of All Star votes, I have to think that the league couldn't offset them all. After all, I'm a Ducks fan who didn't vote even once, and I'm quite skeptical as to the lofty vote totals for Ryan Getzlaf, Scott Niedermayer, and J.S. Giguere.
Still, as the league announces the rest of the roster from the other 26 teams this week, it's tough for me to say that the results have been that tragic -- recall that last year only eight of twelve voted starters showed up to the event, and that the opening shift lasted an average of 49 seconds. It's a novelty exhibition game, this year featuring the influence of sneaky robot votes. Let's hope they can avoid the emotional crisis pictured above.
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. Don't worry, Canucks fans, Mats Sundin is still coming to town -- this cartoon is more in reference to the months of indecision that the former Maple Leafs captain showed before finally signing with Vancouver last week. In the spirit of that mid-season roster gift, here's hoping we all can similarly find that elusive Swedish top-line center we've been wishing for this Christmas.
From all of us at FanHouse, have a happy (and decisive) holiday season!
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. Of course this cartoon is only meant as a joke. The NHL doesn't suspend snow blowers, only loud blowhards. Still, it's quite clear that Joe Sakic's snow blower demonstrated conduct "detrimental to the League or game of hockey" when it attacked and injured three fingers on Sakic's hand, keeping him off of the Colorado Avalanche roster for the next three months.
Of course, being a Southern Californian, I suppose I should come clean: I've never seen a snow blower in my life. I'm not sure how accurate my cartoon depiction is, and I'm not really aware of the hazards in operating such a piece of machinery. Perhaps this serves as a wake-up call to NHL players to find employment in warmer-climate cities, where the threat of snow blower injury is significantly lessened.
As for the Avalanche, they currently sit one point behind the Nashville Predators for the western conference's 8th seed and will have to figure out how to cope with Sakic's loss for the bulk of the season. If Colorado management is smart, its players will also have to figure out how to cope with mandatory snow blower safety seminars. C'mon, fellas, let's keep those injuries on the ice!
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. Gender issues in sports is always a difficult topic, so I'm largely going to let the PuckToon speak for itself today. Still, it will be interesting to see what emerges from today's suspension meeting between the Dallas Stars' Sean Avery and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman regarding Avery's vague-but-crude remarks about former love interest Elisha Cuthbert and Calgary Flames' defenseman Dion Phaneuf.
As usual, I'm just here to poke fun at the issues without providing too much in the way of discussion or resolution, but feel free to share your suspension reaction in the comments.
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. The drama never stops for the Anaheim Ducks. Even a simple five-day break in the schedule cannot pass without some major news, in this case the stepping down of general manager Brian Burke, who of course had architected Anaheim's 2007 Stanley Cup Champion roster. Burke is probably off to work for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and in his stead right-hand man Bob Murray has assumed the GM duties for the Ducks. This was to be the final year of Brian Burke's contract, so the timing of the departure makes some sense, though it definitely caught this Ducks fan off-guard.
Over at Battle of California, I have begun a series of posts entitled "Burke Week", where I take a look back at the Anaheim legacy of Brian Burke. So far I have talked about three things that I think Burke gets too much criticism for, plus three things that I don't think he gets criticized enough for. Later on in the week I'll look at some of the positive lessons we can learn from Burke the general manager, as well as some downsides to having such a brash and outspoken executive in Anaheim's front office. In addition, I was also a guest on The Rink Podcast this week to talk over some of the ramifications of Burke's departure.
Overall, I can't get too upset with the notion of Burke leaving, though as the cartoon suggests there is some feeling of being jilted. At the very least Burke has left next year's roster in very manageable shape -- lots of contracts expire at the end of the year, so Bob Murray does have freedom to mold next year's roster to his own liking. We shall see how the Ducks evolve over the coming year, but no matter how that turns out, I feel confident that the Toronto media has finally found the right mouth man for the Leafs GM job.
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. Just two weeks ago, I was lamenting the poor start of the Anaheim Ducks, who found themselves in a slow-starting boat with the Dallas Stars, the Los Angeles Kings, and the Phoenix Coyotes -- all distantly trailing the hot-starting San Jose Sharks in what traditionally was a tight Pacific Division race.
Two weeks later, the Ducks have certainly improved their position. Even though the Sharks have continued on their 11-2-0 tear, the Ducks have run a 9-1-1 record in their last 11 games to pull within three standings points of the division leading Sharks. While certainly some of this gain has to do with a discrepancy in games-played (the Ducks have played two more games than nearly all other teams, including the Sharks), Anaheim has definitely separated themselves from the bottom three teams in the Pacific, all still struggling at .500 or below.
Time will tell how good this Sharks squad and this Ducks squad will be, but currently they represent two of the top three point totals in the league. The Sharks' start has obviously been more impressive, especially with consecutive wins against last year's Stanley Cup Finalists, but it's nice to see at least one team challenge San Jose for the Pacific crown. The Ducks still have some ground to make up, but their turnaround has been spectacular -- they are the only team thus far that can brag about wins against the 11-2-0 Sharks, the 8-2-2 Red Wings, and the 8-1-1 Canadiens. If Anaheim can continue its improved ascent, it should make for an epic Battle of California in the Pacific Division this year.
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. Well, it's two weeks into the North American NHL season, and already my Pacific Division previews need work. While I expected the San Jose Sharks to push for the division lead, I certainly thought it would be a much closer race. Really, the surprise isn't that San Jose has started so well (6-1-0), but rather how poorly the rest of the division has started.
Two of the more disappointing starts belong to the Anaheim Ducks (2-5-0) and the Dallas Stars (2-4-1), two teams that I had pegged to run neck-and-neck with the Sharks. The Ducks' problem has primarily been offensive -- the top two scoring lines in Anaheim have only netted one combined goal -- while the Stars have been struggling to keep the puck out of their net -- they have surrendered a league-high 29 goals-against. The Los Angeles Kings (2-3-0) and Phoenix Coyotes (2-3-0) are also well behind the Sharks, although they have played two fewer games than their division mates.
Yes, the 2008-09 NHL season is awfully young, but it is worth noting that only one time since the lockout has San Jose.led the Pacific Division by as many as seven points (the final week of last season), and if the playoffs began today, they'd be the only Pacific team to qualify. There's still plenty of time for the bottom four in the Pacific to turn their seasons around, but if the Sharks don't falter, it's going to be weird seeing a usually-competitive division turn into a one-horse race.
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. There certainly has been a lot of strange salary cap-related moves in the last few days around the league, particularly in the Pacific Division. Players have been waived, demoted, and even promoted in order to maximize spending under this year's $56.7 million cap ceiling.
In San Jose, defenseman Kyle McLaren was sent through waivers in an attempt to have his $2.5 million claimed by another team, but since nobody grabbed him, McLaren was demoted to the AHL Worcester affiliate. It's not an ideal solution for the team or the player, but it does at least allow the Sharks to begin the season below the salary ceiling. In Dallas, promising youngsters James Neal and Mark Fistric were demoted to the Central Hockey League's Oklahoma City Blazers, but then were recalled the following day to take advantage of Sergei Zubov's long-term injury. Anaheim went through most of its salary-shedding a few weeks ago, with the waiving then trading of defenseman Mathieu Schneider, the demotion of Bobby Ryan, and the trading of defenseman Sean O'Donnell. On top of that, the Ducks promoted goaltender David LeNeveu just for a day to take full advantage of the long-term injury exception.
On the other end of the salary spectrum, the Los Angeles Kings' GM Dean Lombardi and forward Patrick O'Sullivan finally finished their contract negotiations, and Lombardi's stubbornness appears to have paid off, as O'Sullivan signed a very affordable 3-year deal. With the signing, Los Angeles should be comfortably above the salary cap floor, though it still looks to be a tough year for the low-spending Kings. With all the promotions, demotions, trades, and signings of the last few days, one thing is clear: the salary cap is changing the way hockey teams operate in dramatic ways, and it's becoming tough for even hardcore fans to understand what their teams are up to. Regardless of silly salary cap math, though, the North American NHL season begins tonight! Hooray!
