FanHouse Flyers

After Andre Roy went bat-poop crazy during a game against the Flyers earlier this month, Tampa Bay general manager Jay Feaster announced the 33-year-old enforcer would be sent home for a week as the team's "internal discussions and overall review continues" regarding that incident and others involving Roy this season. Well, the banishment is over, and Roy was scheduled to return to practice today with the Lightning. This begs the question: Why?

Why, when Tampa Bay's season has had a fork in it for weeks, is Roy even being considered for a slot in the lineup? Why, after blowing his stack in Philly and "also other situations that have taken place this season involving Andre" according to Feaster, does Roy come back? The most obvious answer is for a further audition: He's got one more year left on his deal at $1 million per season; if the Bolts want him out of town, it doesn't do Tampa any good if he ends the season stewing at home rather than showing an iota of professional competence on the ice.

The more complicated answer is that no matter how crazy Andre Roy might have become, his teammates won't hold it against him.

Darren Dreger of TSN reported today that the Tampa Bay Lightning have alerted center Brad Richards they're trying to deal him. Richards has given management a list of teams for which he'd be willing to waive his NTC; GM Jay Feaster will take the offers he's received -- allegedly from Vancouver, Columbus and Dallas -- to ownership, and a former Conn Smythe winner making $7.8 million per season until 2011 could be gonzo by the trade deadline.

If you go by the hockey rumoristas, Richards has been on the block longer than a septuagenarian prostitute. But this time could be different, if Dreger's on point with this line from his TSN.ca piece: "Tampa Bay's incoming owner Oren Koules is said to be heavily involved." Koules has taken over a losing team with the gross national product of Guyana tied up into three players; snipping a valuable but under-performing Richards would, I imagine, be something he might be interested in.

There are several teams rumored to be in the hunt for Richards. But would he improve any of them in the short term or the long run?

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

• Semi-Retired (adj.): 1. A near or incomplete state of retirement. 2. A code word, frequently used in professional hockey circa 2007, that describes a veteran player who is content to loaf around during the regular season until he decides to rejoin his team, causing a domino effect of financial repercussions.

Scott Niedermayer returned from semi-retirement last night in Anaheim's shootout loss to the Sharks, but the real loss appears to be to his once-sterling reputation. His decision to "leave" the Ducks before the season contributed to their post-Cup malaise and lack of success on the ice; his decision to return cost Anaheim one of its top offensive forwards (based on reputation, if not this year's numbers) in Andy MacDonald, a loss that Niedermayer can only blame himself for instigating. While the move will create a little more wiggle room for GM Brian Burke next off-season as he attempts to keep Corey Perry from Pennering the Ducks, it does little to address the destitute offense that has Anaheim 28th in the league in average goals scored per game and has all but three of its forwards with 10 points or less on the season.

Unless, of course, the Ducks' other star in semi-retirement decides to lace'em up again.

(Coming Up Next: This Weekend's Losers, Scandalous and Hilarious Puck Headlines, Life as Andy Sutton of the Islanders, The Blackhawks' Shooting Gallery, Ovechkin Comes To Motown, The Fan Who Broke the Doug Weight Trade and the Ottawa Senators Wish You an Awkward Christmas.)

Well-written column by George Johnson on ESPN.com today, mopping up the last penguin droppings after The Sidney Crosby circus left Western Canada days ago; it heads to Philly tonight for a game on Paul Kelly's favorite network. Besides grabbing a money quote from Calgary defenseman Cory Sarich -- "You're seeing car bombings somewhere else and it's not even a blurb on the news these days because of Sidney Crosby" -- Johnson does an interesting analysis of Crosby's game:

Stylistically, they found out that Crosby is far closer to, say, an in-the-pink-of-health Peter Forsberg than Gretzky, the icon he will forever be compared to. So strong on his skates, nearly impossible to discourage on the forecheck and seemingly hooked up to an inexhaustible oxygen tank hidden somewhere on his being, No. 87, the pin-up poster boy for the New NHL, is that rare combination of intuitive offensive player and relentless power forward.

[...]

But unlike Gretzky, Crosby often absorbs one heck of a beating to make things happen. Gretzky beat teams with quick, lethal injections of genius. Crosby wears teams out. No one worked harder on a sheet of ice than Gretzky. That effort, however, was channeled in a distinctly different way than Sid the Kid's. Gretzky was an apparition; Crosby is a force of nature.

Maybe I'm off the reservation here, but are the words "Sidney Crosby" and "power forward" uttered together about as often as "Mike Huckabee" and "S&M Club?" Maybe it's the "Sid the Kid" thing, or the Penguins getting Georges Laraque to watch his back, or his being dwarfed by Malkin, or the ongoing comparisons to Gretzky ... whatever it is, Crosby hasn't exactly been characterized as Cam Neely, outside of longtime hockey executive Rick Dudley calling him powerful "going to the net."

I think Johnson makes a compelling case for Sidney as a power forward. But can the NHL ever hope to sell him as one to a fan culture that still views Crosby as a fresh-faced "kid" with a predisposition for whining -- albeit an undeniably talented one?

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

St. Pete Times reporter Damian Cristodero dropped a bomb the other day, quoting Tampa Bay GM Jay Feaster that huge changes could hit the Lightning if the team hasn't turned things around by Christmas: "Being sub-.500, being 13th or 14th out of a 15-team Eastern Conference isn't cutting it, given the money we lose, to think we're going to keep payroll where it is and not make changes."

Naturally, Vinny Lecavalier became the topic of conversation for everyone from Vancouver to Montreal, who believes it should own Vinny based on birth-right. Lyle "Spector" Richardson -- one of the few level heads when it comes to trade speculation in the NHL -- points out that unlike high-priced teammates Brad Richards and Marty St. Louis, Vinny does not have a no-trade clause in his contract. But Spector also claims that Feaster has gone on the record stating that "he wouldn't go down in history as the man who trade(d) Lecavalier." Which, to me, means it's more likely that the Bolts will fire John Tortorella or trade Vaclav Prospal if the team doesn't turn it around.

But even if Vinny were on the block, the notion that he could be had for some sort of mediocre Joe Thornton package is ludicrous.

(Coming Up Next: Last Night's Losers, Scandalous and Hilarious Puck Headlines, More CBC Hockey Blogging Reaction, Wade Belak Hits Pay Dirt, Games You Need To Watch Tonight, NHL Limericks and Why Hockey Players Need To "Where Visors.")

Last Wednesday, a game between the Florida Panthers and the Washington Capitals ended when a defenseman who had one goal on the season, and hadn't scored another in his next 17 games, was asked to beat Tomas Vokoun on a breakaway in an overtime skills competition. Washington's Brian Pothier was the 22nd shooter of the shootout, following offensive aristocracy like Jay Bouwmeester, Dave Steckel and Boyd Gordon; as expected, he failed to score, and the Panthers earned two points in the standings.

That the Panthers -- or any team in this painfully familiar scenario in today's NHL -- were rewarded for their shootout victory with the same number of points they would have earned with a victory in 60 minutes of regulation hockey is a crime. That said, the fact that the Capitals earned anything in the standings for losing the game, the 4-on-4 overtime and 11 rounds of a shootout is, by comparison, a federal offense.

Raising the possibility that the NHL could alter its current points system in the standings is nothing new; but what separates the revisionists (like Gary Bettman) from the revolutionaries is that the latter group understands the fundamental dogma of athletic competition, which is that you don't reward losers -- well, unless Sidney Crosby is at stake. Even if the shootout is never repealed, the overtime "charity point" has to go. To that end, I've taken two of the most popular alternative point-system proposals and applied them to the current NHL standings through Sunday, Dec. 2, to see how things might change. The results bring good news to teams like the Sabres, Lightning, Flyers and Wild; not-so-good news to the Rangers, Leafs and the Stanley Cup champions.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

The needle on the Vancouver hype machine was in the red yesterday as Todd Bertuzzi made his long-awaited return as an opponent after 18 months. The TEAM 1040 in Vancouver even cut away from "The Jim Rome Show" in favor of audio from Bertuzzi's Tuesday morning press conference, no doubt depriving listeners of dozens of recycled O.J. jokes and humorless "takes" from callers who live-read from scripts written on well-soiled cocktail napkins.

Bertuzzi left the Canucks in what Jacques Martin believes is still the worst trade in the history of hockey, and was injured when Detroit and Florida came to Vancouver to play last season. But he hit the ice last night with Anaheim, receiving cheers from an appreciative GM Place crowd filled with fans dressed in their old Bertuzzi jerseys. And what a return it was, as ... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ... oh, sorry, nodded off there for a moment thinking about the anti-climax that was Bertuzzi's homecoming. The Ducks lose 4-0, and Bert goes 0-0-0 with no shots and a minus-2 in just under 13 minutes of ice time.

But all of that is secondary to the real news yesterday, which is that Ducks GM Brian Burke will evidently go to his grave defending Bertuzzi's assault on Steve Moore. "I know Todd Bertuzzi is a character person, who thought he was going to the aid of a teammate," Burke said yesterday. "As I said at the time, sitting right here, right beside him, I cannot condone what happened that night, but I think what Todd meant to do was well intentioned." Yikes...

(Coming Up Next: Last Night's Losers, Scandalous and Hilarious Puck Headlines, The End of Goal Judges, Most Embarrassing Stat Line of the Night, Satan's 666, Games You Need To Watch Tonight and Either The Most Endearing or Annoying Hockey Video of the Day.)

If Eric Lindros is enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame, my preference for his etched glass plaque would be an image of his frozen face under a twisted helmet, resting on the slowly melting ice in Philadelphia during Game 7 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Finals. Somewhere in the corner would be a smaller etching of Scott Stevens, shaking the freight-train impact from his shoulder.

The above is written as a Devils fan who is unable, even as Lindros formally announced the end of his career, to shake the vision of No. 88 as a fragile Messiah; always one championship away from being declared a hockey deity, always one head-shot away from admission to the infirmary. The above is also written as a prime example of the crux in Lindros's Hall of Fame debate: The inability of hockey pundits and fans to separate reputation, hype and personal behavior from the case that can be made for his Hall of Fame credentials.

I think that debate was captured nicely this morning by Jes Golbez in The Ice Sheet, where he lamented Lindros as being "content to sit back and have his parents whine about his ice time" while at the same time praising Eric as "a player who could do everything well and force opponents to change their strategy just to deal with the guy." Jes believes Lindros's place in NHL history "will cause many bar and kitchen table debates for years." Actually, it hasn't taken years: The Lindros Debate has intensely raged in the MSM and the blogosphere in the hours following news of his pending retirement.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Maple Grief
When I turned on the television this morning, BBC America was showing highlights from Carolina's 7-1 humbling of the Maple Leafs in Toronto last night. My first thought, obviously, was that Gary Bettman's plan for UK media domination had worked to perfection. My second thought was that when the Leafs are trounced on home ice by a Southeast Division team that has seven different players score a goal, that qualifies as an international incident worthy of world media attention. As Bill Lankoff of SLAM Sports noted, it was the worst home defeat of Coach Paul Maurice's tenure with the Leafs:

That it came against his former team likely made it hurt a little bit more. But, reality is that after all the talk by the Leafs about having each other's backs, all they did was stick in the knife and twist last night.

The only faint pulses on an otherwise comatose night came from Mats Sundin, who tied Darryl Sittler for the most points in franchise history (916) with a first-period assist, and the reaction to Jason Blake, making his first start after revealing that he's battling chronic myelogenous leukemia. If this 7-1 thrashing is evidence of the team being affected by that emotional admission on Monday, this might be the most distracting locker room cancer since Claude Lemieux.

(After the jump: The NHL Store opens in New York, The Marc Chouinard Award, The NHL finally goes HD where it counts and Tonight's Games You Should Be Watching.)