Tom Luongo Posts

Last night between games on HNIC, NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly was interviewed by Ron MacLean (link to HD video of the entire interview). The first thing they discussed was the rumor that escrow payments made by the players would be rising from 13% of their pay to 17-20%. Kelly wouldn't say exactly how much the payment would rise, but he did answer in the affirmative that the 17-20% range was accurate.

It is the escrow system that allows for the NHL to have both guaranteed contracts and a Salary Cap tied to a percentage of revenues. What this rise in escrow means is that the players contracts in total will likely be much more than the 56.5% of league revenues for the year. It was already pretty much taken for granted from the beginning of the season that the 13% that was being taken out of their checks and held in escrow would be returned to the owners at year's end.

The Buffalo Sabres announced today that recent call-up RW Nathan Gerbe would be out at least two weeks with the ubiquitous-through-shadow, "Upper Boddy Injury." Gerbe was a target of abuse all night against the Devils last Saturday and took one particularly nasty sandwich between Jamie Langenbrunner and, I believe if memory serves, David Clarkson. The Sabres aren't talking but a reaction shot of him after the hit on the bench leads me to believe the injury is shoulder-related.

Speaking of shoulders, Captain Craig Rivet (D) gave out an update on his injured shoulder yesterday. It was injured way back at the beginning of the month vs. Montreal. Rivet, ever the tough guy, played three games with it but was a game-time scratch on Friday vs. the Lightning.

"It's something that I tried to play with," Rivet said of the injury. "Obviously it was really limiting what I can do on the ice and really affecting my game... the pain issue, you can get through those things but when it makes things that much more difficult for you on the ice you have to take a step back and try to rehabilitate it... see if we can strengthen it up."

According to yesterday's interview with Lindy Ruff, post-practice, Rivet will be evaluated in two week intervals until he's ready to return to the lineup. Shoulder injuries are rough in that he can still skate adn keep his conditioning up, but he can't do any strength work and if this stretches on for any length of time may hamper him late in the season when you'd have to think the Sabres will need his brand of rough and ready play as the games get meaner and tighter.

On the healing front, uber pest Patrick Kaleta will replace Gerbe in the lineup for tomorow's game against the Devils. The Kaleta Missile Crisis has been out for 7 games with a neck injury sustained after a week of pounding by a number of teams for his antics on the ice. We'll see if this first serious injury changes his approach to the game.

I'm not holding my breath.

Ta,

This is going to be one of those posts that to any seasoned hockey fan will seem as obvious as this report will seem to any dog owner. Yes, Virginia, you're dog has a rich and complex emotional life, it's just that of your average three-year old. Well, by the same token, hitting wins hockey games. The more a team gets involved physically while still playing a disciplined overall game, the greater chance it has at winning any particular game, no matter what the disparity in record.

The knock in recent years on the Buffalo Sabres has been that they're soft. If you hit them, they will fold. And, for the most part, that sentiment has been correct. The departure of fundamentally chippy guys like Mike Grier and J.P. Dumont removed from their lineup veteran guys who knew (and more importantly) wanted to retaliate to any rough stuff. Grier and Dumont made their linemates play bigger and created space for them.

Beginning with the Tampa game last Saturday I started to see a change come over the Sabres. There were three fights in that game by guys not named Andrew Peters, that in itself was a rarity. Gaustad, Mair and (of all people) Jochen Hecht got into scraps that ended with decisive punches being thrown by the guys in the blue and gold. While they were substantially out-hit in that game 25-12, it was after the Hecht fight that they woke up and forechecked harder, trading goals and scoring the game winner in the 3rd period, which the dominated technically and territorially until a late surge by Tampa to tie the game fell short.

In Pittsburgh, even though the game did not have a single fight the Sabres out-hit the Penguins 32-20, normally three or four games worth of hits in one pretty hard-fought game. As a group the Sabres are a relatively calm, quiet bunch. Guys like Hecht, Lydman, Kotalik, and Pominville are all tough competitors but they are hard to rouse to expressing their anger in the form of board-rattling hits. The difference between playing solid, mistake-free, by-the-system hockey and winning hockey is the difference between taking that one extra step to finish your check and skate hard back into the play.

Hot on the heels of a second article by Jim Kelley at Sportsnet.ca on what was said and not said yesterday by the Buffalo Sabres management, Managing Partner and Minority Owner Larry Quinn is going to be on WGR550 this evening before the game versus the Lightning to clarify the situation beyond the scope of the statement, terse as it was, he released yesterday.

Kelley, ever on the attack, especially when it comes to the Golisano-owned Sabres, refused to back down, writing another thousand plus words to educate all of us in the art of disinformation. In that article he makes the salient point that Golisano has not said anything at all.

For instance, lost in a spate of denunciations is the fact that no one in the Sabres organization denied the original point of the story that the team is for sale. What minority partner Larry Quinn said was that, "We are not in negotiations to sell the team." Quinn neither named the "we" nor did he say that team owner Tom Golisano, the man most likely to be in the discussions to sell the franchise he purchased out of bankruptcy in 2003, was or was not involved. In fact, Golisano is said to be at the winter meetings in Florida but nowhere to be seen or heard. The owner made no public appearance after Day 1 of the Board of Governors meetings despite the fact he winters in Florida and the other 29 owners have, essentially, come to his house.

Golisano made no media appearances and issued no statement.

Is Golisano's silence as deafening as Kelley makes it out? I don't know. But the story continues to have legs in Hamilton. This morning's report from the Spectator focuses on the sharing of Sabres home games between the two cities along with the nuances of the less than cordial relationship between the Commisioner and Research in Motion CEO Jim Balsillie.

Now, we all know that Gary Bettman is as much the Jedi Master of doublespeak as anyone in the public eye, so applying Kelley's rules of interpretation, the quote in the title could be roughly translated as, "Tom Golisano is not presenting involved in the completion of the sale of the Buffalo Sabres." If there's no contract on the table and due diligence being done then the process of selling the team is not occuring. Ergo, Bettman's statement is true and precise.

I guess all of us in Sabredom will be listening closely to the words that come out of Larry Quinn's mouth this evening. The actual words and not the ones we think we want to hear.

Ta,

On the heels of a great post at Puck Daddy on the Canadian media's obsession with the potential failure of the Phoenix Coyotes comes a report to be filed in a local magazine by long-time Buffalo beat writer Jim Kelley that the Buffalo Sabres are for sale. The Sabres have responded publicly (and immediately) to deny the allegation. From the Buffalo News:

That story also claims that managing partner Larry Quinn has approached Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie as the prospective buyer.

"Tom is not shopping the team, and I have approached nobody," Quinn replied today, in a phone interview from the National Hockey League's Board of Governors meeting in Florida. "And I would never discuss selling this team to anyone who would move it."

I'm not sure what to make of all this, but I can say that there is no love-loss between Quinn and Kelley and this article is sure to make things even less cordial in chilly Erie County.

Last night's 4-3 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning highlighted, for me, so many of the issues surrounding the Buffalo Sabres right now. Their swoon from 1st to 8th in the Eastern Conference has produced the kinds of wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the fans worthy of a realtor or car dealer. Maybe it's fitting that the primary corporate sponsor for the Sabres is Chevrolet as the Sabres Cup aspirations have mirrored the chart of the GM's stock price.

I got a chance to watch the recently re-booted Sabres play against Tampa, distraction-free, and it was an illuminating experience. Having missed the games against Nashville and Florida I couldn't comment on them, and by all accounts, who would have wanted to? The Sabres are bad right now, and the reasons why are manifest. Ready? See if you disagree with the list:

1. A lack of secondary scoring. The team that was the poster child for a balanced, deep attack has become the Thomas Vanek show.
2. Forwards cheating in the defensive zone and not supporting the defense-men at all.
   
3. Poor transition game because of the large gap between them and the defense.
4. Insistence that this is 2006 and not nearly 2009, so shinny is still the way they think they can win.
5. No one except Vanek is willing to bury a shoulder and drive the net. The entire team, to a man skates across the blue-line, pulls up short to set up a 5 man offense that looks like a bad power play
6. There's little battle in the corner for pucks. Winning one on one battles along the boards was a specialty and now it's a liability.
   
7. They are terrible at even strength, a team total -15.
8. Drew Stafford has no sophmore slump excuse. Grow up or get out.
9. Very little willingness to stand up for each other. They are now a collection of guys rather than a team.

I'll stop there... I could probably come up with more if I spend another five minutes thinking about it.

This afternoon it was reported that the Buffalo Sabres had recalled forward Nathan Gerbe from Portland of the AHL, in the process sending Mark Mancari back to their affiliate. Since starting the season 8-1-1 the Sabres have fallen to .500 going 3-10-2 since then and have fallen off of the playoff map in the Eastern Conference. Injuries, struggling youngsters and anti-clutch goaltending have contributed to the slide. Gerbe is the Sabres best offensive prospect and a player that few surrounding the team feel should spend much time in the minors. I'm sure it was the hope of GM Darth Regier and the coaching staff to keep him in Portland for as long as possible, if not the entire season, so he can grow into the professional game what they feel is a proper pace.

The problem, of course, is that this team needs to make the playoffs and with too many people not named Thomas Vanek not showing up on the score sheet with any regularity the Sabres have become an easy team to defend. Stop Vanek, regardless of linemates, and you have an even up chance of winning the hockey game. Throw in a dash of over-confidence from a hot start, breakdowns in execution, and teams hounding the Sabres defense on the fore-check to disrupt their quick transition game and the situation gets ugly in a big, fat hurry.

Injuries are quickly becoming a sub-plot in the story of this year's Buffalo Sabres, well, injuries and massively unbalanced scoring, as Captain Craig Rivet is not playing tonight against the Nashville Predators. The news out of Erie County is pretty ugly. In addition to Rivet's unnamed injury, agitator extraordinaire Patrick Kaleta is out with a neck injury after he was boarded by Andre Kostityn during Saturday's 3-2 loss to the Habs. Tim Connolly is, well, Tim Connolly and is still out with a broken rib and Max Afinogenov is out of the lineup because of a number of short-circuits between his ears. To my mind, Rivet has been pretty ordinary since returning from his knee surgery last month, a step slower.

On the good news front, Ales Kotalik is playing this evening, after missing the last 7 games with a bad hamstring. Al's size will be welcome on the RW, given the chippy (and that's putting it generously) nature of the Preds. The Sabres need him to return to score-sheet where he was to start the season, but Lindy Ruff has him skating right now with Peters and Mair on the 4th line. This suggests to me he's being rushed back to the lineup a little early to get him out on the point for the power play. Any shifts he gets 5 on 5 have to be considered gravy.

This brings me back to the link above to Mike Harrington's article today in the Buffalo News about the top-heavy nature of the Sabres offense.

So Vanek has 18, meaning the Sabres have gotten 38 of their 65 goals from just four players - Vanek, Jason Pominville (eight), Derek Roy and Clarke MacArthur (six each). That's 58.5 percent of the offense, making the Sabres one of the most unbalanced attacks in the league heading into tonight's visit by Nashville.

The rash of injuries down the middle to start the season didn't hurt the offense much as Clarke MacArthur stepped up while others, namely Stafford and Roy, were struggling to find the net. But, as the team returned to relative health the lines got shuffled and with it any chemistry between players. The question I have is, if Connolly is consistently injured and there's no one with whom Afinogenov can play with successfully, why would anyone think the Sabres are much more than a one-line team when one looks at the lower half of the lineup?

Mix in the fact that not one of the defense men are capable of getting a shot through from the point or rushing the puck up the ice to create havoc and there's no threat from the blueline. This has quickly become a predictable team offensively, if not a bit thin.

Ta,

After getting off to a solid 8-2-2 start, not losing a game in regulation for 3 weeks, the Buffalo Sabres have defined the phrase 'regressing to the mean,' losing seven of their last eight (1-6-1) and now sit in 9th place in the East, one game over .500 at 9-8-3. What's surprising is that this swoon has occurred once the team got healthy. Starting the season practically down three centers one would have figured a slow start, yet they grab 16 of 18 points. Once Jochen Hecht returned from his broken finger they've won just one game and garnered only three points. I'mnot trying to draw a causal link or anything, but the normally solid Hecht has looked a step behind the play and is a -5 in the last 5 games.

Everything that was going right in October is going wrong in November. Miller and Lalime had the proverbial Bill Clement 'force field' up, the defense kept everyone's forwards to the outside and every decent scoring chance ticked the jumbotron's display in their favor. Now, every mistake winds up in their net, they're hitting goalposts with the same frequency that they were hitting the net and Miller/Lalime have been ordinary, Miller in particular. The second goal he gave up against Philadelphia on Friday was unacceptable for a winning team, but seem to be all too common on teams that are losing. An unscreened shot, forty-plus feet out in the third period of a 1-0 hockey game, must be stopped.

Lindy Ruff has made it publicly clear that he will use his relative roster depth and ice-time to motivate anyone. This past weekend he sat previously-untouchable defenseman Henrik Tallinder and Why-is-he-still-in-Buffalo Maxim Afinogenov. Previously, guys like Drew Stafford and Daniel Paille have had their turns in the press box.

From the Hockey News today comes a quick report that at least one Canadian franchise is closely monitoring the ever-changing exchange rate between the the US and Canadian dollars. Habs president Pierre Boivin is apparently very worried about the falling value of the Loonie to the US dollar in these past 3 months. As I've discussed earlier, the NHL's revenues are, at the margin, greatly affected by this exchange rate especially when viewed in relation to the salaries teams are committed to paying out. Every day that the exchange rate stays below $0.90 CAD to $1 USD (which was the average exchange rate during last season) is another day closer to the current salary cap looking like an unsustainable level.

While attendance numbers are supposedly at record levels, some are beginning to sift through the numbers to question just how exaggerated they are when still the New York Islanders are being advertised at having 13000+ people at their games, which anyone who actually watches an Isles game can tell you is only possible if the guy doing the head count works for AIG's Mortgage Securities Division. Of course the NHL's numbers count tickets sold, not butts in seats. And in this blogger's mind I have to wonder waht's more pathetic in these hard times, paying for an Islanders ticket and not going, or actually having to sit through a game at the Mausoleum.

What I don't think is realistic for Mr. Boivin to be speculating on is the long-term health of the Canadian franchises. Conditions between the two countries are completely different today than in 2001-03 when teams like Edmonton and Calgary were struggling to keep up with the Joneses south of the 498th parallel. Their arenas are packed and the fans happy and spending money. It will, in my opinion, now be the American franchises that cannot attract a big enough audience *Cough* Florida *Cough* New Jersey* *Cough* to sustain a viable business. With entertainment dollars shrinking more people will choose, rationally, substitute one live hockey game for a full season's subscription to Center Ice. All those 2nd mortgages and house-flipping profits aren't there to fuel season ticket sales in marginal NHL towns like Miami and Phoenix.

Ta,