NHL Columns

"Wait. I was only kidding when I suggested Patrick Roy for the coach of the Avalanche. So, I take no credit or blame if Roy gets to stand under his own jersey hanging up there in the Pepsi Center rafters, along with those two Stanley Cup banners he helped win. My suggestion was in keeping with the Avs' fondness for leafing backward through their old scrapbooks. Oh, look. There's Ray Bourque. Why not him? Or how about Adam Deadmarsh, great name. Chris Drury, old Captain Clutch, still playing, could be a player-coach. No, it is Roy, the only name that gets the blood up, causes conversation. At least someone is talking about the next Avs coach, and will as long as Roy is bobbing through the rumor mill."

"Patrick Roy has discovered there is indeed life after hanging up his skates. Retiring the mask he wore while winning more than 500 games as an NHL goalie, St. Patrick has found his passion on the bench. And now he would like to be considered as the next coach of the Avalanche. "I realize this is what I want to do: coach," Roy said Saturday, during a telephone interview with The Denver Post. "I realize this is where I'm most comfortable in the game: by the ice." Although professing shock at Colorado's decision to severe ties with Joel Quenneville after three seasons, Roy has definite interest in rejoining a franchise he twice led to the Stanley Cup as a player. "

"That the Flyers are up against it here is plain enough. They are banged up on defense, banged up beyond reason, and they are facing a Pittsburgh Penguins team that has been somewhere between hot and incandescent since the Stanley Cup tournament began. The path here is steep, quite obviously. The Flyers are down by two games to none and heading home for an evening in which there can be no more false steps. It is hard and it might be getting harder, depending on the medical people. And Mike Richards still leads them. The tougher it gets, the more obvious he becomes."

"It is officially ridiculous now, the way the Flyers' luck has turned. Less than two minutes into a must-win playoff game, the best defenseman in uniform, Braydon Coburn, took a deflected slapshot in the face. Coburn curled into the fetal position, blood soaking his gloves and staining the ice below. It was the other shoe dropping on the Flyers' chances to win a game here. They'd been stunned by the loss of Kimmo Timonen about 24 hours before Game 1. Now they would have to play 58 minutes, and maybe more, without Coburn."

"Philadelphia media described the locker room visit by Flyers owner Ed Snyder last week as "rare". Thank God. It would be hard to take his wisdom more than occasionally. The old man doesn't like the NHL's draft system. You know, the one used by leagues in all major team sports? According to him, "Pittsburgh has all these great players for being lousy for so many years". He should know about lousy as his team was the worst in the league last year. Snyder seems to instead prefer the art of pillaging over the draft."

"Each coach made a change to his fourth line for Game 2 of this Eastern Conference final Sunday night. One of those changes worked out great. The other, not so much. An intense battle neared the midway point of the third period -- tied 2-2 -- when the two lineup additions crossed paths on what became the game's pivotal play. Flyers coach John Stevens thought his new guy, Steve Downie, would be a difference-maker, as he had been in Game 7 of a first-round series against Washington. He was, but not in the way Stevens had hoped. "

" We spend so much time lavishing praise on the Red Wings' powerful offense that we ignore their defense. Admittedly, that's a big mistake. You want to know why Brenden Morrow hasn't stamped his name on this series? The Red Wings refuse to let him. The same goes for Mike Ribeiro and Jere Lehtinen before he injured his leg in the first period of Game 2. The Stars' best line dominated the series against Anaheim and San Jose, combining for 14 goals and 33 points. In two games against Detroit, the Morrow-Ribeiro-Lehtinen line has generated one goal and two assists. Sorry, three points isn't going to get it done against the NHL's best team. This is not about character or effort. This is about the Stars finding a way to score more than one goal a game and apply some pressure to Detroit. "

"The Red Wings faithful serenades Marty Turco loudly and lustily – sometimes for no apparent reason. Clearly, they revel in his failure. It's up to Turco to shut them up. He didn't do it Saturday night. Again. After a 2-1 loss to Detroit, the Stars goalie is 0-9-2 at Joe Louis Arena. "It's not a biggie for me. I want to win here," Turco said. "Given the situation of the team and the fact that we're in the playoffs, this is a great opportunity for me. "

"Saturday night, after the Red Wings wrapped up their eighth straight playoff win, I asked Nick Lidstrom if he realized this couldn't go on forever. His answer was the verbal equivalent of a delay-of-game penalty. He obviously wasn't going to say the Wings could win the rest of their games, but he wasn't going to concede that they will lose, either. Perfectly understandable. But the fact is that the Wings are not going to win another six in a row. That would be superhuman. As it is, their eight-game winning streak is their best playoff run since at least 1995, when they also won eight in a row (and lost in the Stanley Cup Finals to the New Jersey Trapping Devils)."

"What you are watching now, or should be if you aren't, is real hockey. The San Jose Sharks and their fans still reel about what occurred in the wee hours Monday morning in Dallas, where the hometown Stars scored in the fourth overtime period to advance to the Stanley Cup semifinals. But years from now, those same Sharks will tell their grandchildren about a slice of NHL history, the eighth-longest game ever to that point, a visceral and exceptional montage of skills that concluded at 1:21 a.m., or 129 minutes and three seconds of hockey action after Game 6 of their series commenced..."

"Detroit Red Wings goaltender Chris Osgood butt-ended Dallas Stars center Mike Ribeiro in the face with the knob end of his stick in the waning seconds at The Joe on Saturday night, and maybe, just maybe, that will mitigate how the NHL will react today to what happened next. But don't count on it. It's hard to mitigate stupid. It's generally the guy who retaliates who gets slapped the hardest. If Ribeiro didn't already know that, he's about to find out the hard way."

"The Red Wings faithful serenades Marty Turco loudly and lustily – sometimes for no apparent reason. Clearly, they revel in his failure. It's up to Turco to shut them up. He didn't do it Saturday night. Again. After a 2-1 loss to Detroit, the Stars goalie is 0-9-2 at Joe Louis Arena. "It's not a biggie for me. I want to win here," Turco said. "Given the situation of the team and the fact that we're in the playoffs, this is a great opportunity for me. "I look at it like it's a good time to win here. It's inevitable. There is no better time. It could be a great moment in my career." For now, it's an albatross. "

"The Red Wings are doing it all now. They're winning the big battles and the little battles and the key battles, and they're on the verge of turning the Western Conference finals into a rout. Oh, and they're also turning the Stars into a frustrated bunch of mouth-breathers. Dallas is the Big D? Big Dummies, really. The Wings are skating on a different level and the Stars are scrambling to keep up, skittering around like dogs on linoleum. Game 2 wasn't lopsided, at least not by the score, a 2-1 Detroit victory. But the way Henrik Zetterberg is rolling and Tomas Holmstrom is agitating and Chris Osgood is playing, this series has been thoroughly lopsided so far, with the Wings up 2-0. And I doubt the Stars' idiocy at the end of Saturday night's game will change that. "

"For the past several weeks, rumors have floated through the offices of the Atlanta Spirit that Don Waddell was about to step into an executive position similar to that of the abruptly departed Bernie Mullin. This prompted two immediate reactions from most rational, clear-thinking beings close to (or within) the Thrashers and Hawks: 1) Why promote somebody whose only previous position in Atlanta is largely viewed as a colossal failure? 2) Isn’t the aforementioned Mullin position the same job that led owner Michael Gearon to comment: “Even though we set it up originally to have [general managers] reporting to Bernie, that never really happened. We quickly realized we didn’t need a person between us and them.”"

"With all this talk about time and space, you half expect Albert Einstein to turn up at the morning skate. The Flyers need to create time and space for their best players, especially Danny Briere's line. They have to deny time and space to Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, the Pittsburgh Penguins' stars. The Flyers' theory of hockey relativity - E=mc2 - stands for Energy equals Malkin/Crosby to the second power. Of course, all this time/space continuum chatter is just modern coachspeak that means, We have to hit their guys before they can move with the puck."

"The puck and Mike Richards arrived in front of Marc-Andre Fleury at the same moment of a tie game, and seconds later, the Flyers would be in trouble. They would be in trouble because Richards would score to give them the lead. It’s supposed to be an achievement; it’s supposed to be how the game —- how any game —- is played. It’s supposed to be a reward for skill and work. And mostly, a lead is supposed to be cherished, to be preserved, to be protected with blood and sweat and honor. Leads. They’re supposed to be good things."

"When Bobby Clarke decided he had had enough -- and wanted no more of last place -- the Philadelphia Flyers were so unconvinced about Paul Holmgren they gave him the title of interim general manager. It wasn't exactly a vote of confidence. For a while, he was the interim boss. Then, the interim tag was dropped but no contract assurance came his way. And only after last year's trade deadline, after he had traded away Peter Forsberg for something of a king's ransom, only then did Flyers owner Ed Snider reward him with some kind of security. Today, Holmgren is something of a visionary."

"It was only a telephone call, one rich guy calling another to see how things were going and wondering if he wanted to do business. Jim Balsillie was just poking around, kicking the tires and seeing if a deal fell on his lap during a December conversation with Buffalo Sabres owner Tom Golisano. Rumors have percolated for several months that Golisano would be open to selling the franchise under the right conditions. Managing partner Larry Quinn issued a statement that basically said inquiries were common. He made it clear they’re not interested in selling to anybody who might relocate the franchise. And while Quinn’s announcement was certainly honorable and worthy of praise for having his heart in the right place, it also meant little in the big picture. "

"W hether Jarome Iginla and Dion Phaneuf are getting off scot-free with respect to their absence at the world hockey championship, being played in Canada for the first time, is open to question. But their situation certainly appears to contrast with Ed Jovanovski's. The former Canucks defender, coming off one of the best years of his career with respect to health, points and leadership in Phoenix, has been present and accounted for in Halifax despite the fact one of his two-year-old twins recently spent a night in hospital for observation of breathing difficulties at the family home in Florida..."

"Is it too late to pick the Penguins in three games? OK, enough with the wise-guy stuff, but, really, is there any reason to think the series with the Philadelphia Flyers will go more than four? I don't see one. Reality hit the Flyers hard at Mellon Arena last night when the Penguins swarmed them with their world-class talent and won Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, 4-2. It will rock 'em even harder this morning when they wake up and realize it won't be any easier in the three games ahead without their best player, defenseman Kimmo Timonen."

"The Philadelphia Flyers know what it feels like to be down, 1-0, in a series. All too well. They lost, 5-4, at Washington in their first-round opener, but came back to win in seven games. In the second round, Philadelphia lost at Montreal, 4-3, in overtime. The Flyers then won four in a row to eliminate the Canadiens and advance to face the Penguins. That means they're on a trail they hope they recognize in the Eastern Conference final."

"What were they thinking? Minus Kimmo Timonen, their best defenseman, the quarterback of their power play and the facilitator of their fast-break, what were the Flyers doing trying to play run-and-gun with the Penguins on Friday night at Mellon Arena? Here it was, Game 1 of the Eastern Conference final, a time for grit and character and patience and, above all else, puck possession. And there were the Flyers, playing pick-up basketball. "

"Raw emotion is like a shot of adrenaline. It can lift a team for a little while, but sooner or later it wears off. The Flyers were hit with two shots of pure emotion before Game 1 of their showdown series with the Penguins here last night."

"You can take this however you want. If you are the Flyers, it would be wise to take away this simple fact from an untidy game: that they can play a lot better and that they have played a lot better, from the goaltender on out; that while the loss of defenseman Kimmo Timonen stresses the Flyers significantly, and will continue to do so, most of their problems last night were not about that. They were just about other errors, some forced, some unforced, most correctible. "

"Dave Tippett is planning to scrap all of the defensive pairings he used in Game 1. That pretty much says all you need to know about what he thought about the Dallas Stars' defense in their 4-1 loss to Detroit. So Tippett is wasting no time. Good for him. This is no time to be stubborn. There's no guarantee anything he tries will work today in Game 2, but change is considerably better than the status quo. "

"Thursday he confirmed to The Washington Post he won't be returning. He still wants to play, and he most likely still can play. But it is the end of an era in this town — the Kolzig era. It is an era not noted for championships and celebrations. It is an era, though, noteworthy because of the humanity, character and class that this 6-foot-3, 225-pound goaltender brought with him to Washington sports."

"Usually, they don't even see him coming. They'll be skating along, head down, chasing the puck, and then there he is, all arms and legs and fuzzy beard, clobbering the player right into a video highlight. For the longest time, we didn't see him coming either. Niklas Kronwall was half-myth and half-misfortune, a heavy-hitting defenseman who always seemed to suffer the flukiest injuries, knocking him out of the playoffs, damaging the Red Wings' chances more than we ever knew. Now we know. "

"If the Stars, the team that played with bravado and arrogance in the first two rounds of the playoffs don't show up in a hurry, the Western Conference finals will end in four games. No doubt. You know it. I know it. Even the players know it, though they certainly aren't going to admit it. "

"Right in front of our eyes, while almost no one is noticing, one of the greatest come-from-behind sagas in the history of Pittsburgh sports is unfolding. The Penguins, not all that far removed from bankruptcy and a string of four consecutive last-places finishes, are in the process of surpassing the Steelers as Pittsburgh's favorite sports team. The Penguins haven't passed the Steelers -- yet -- but they're coming hard after having long ago whizzed by the Pirates. "

"The argument revolving around the "best player in the world" may be impossible to accurately define, but this much is undeniable: Of the three most-often referenced presumptive nominees -- Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin -- two play for the Penguins. That's the Flyers' problem in the Eastern Conference final. Eventually, it'll be the Red Wings' or Stars' dilemma. "

" He was the Flyers' No. 1 defenseman. Now Coburn is. Fifteen months ago, almost none of us had heard of Coburn when Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren acquired him from Atlanta in exchange for a bag of consonants (Alexei Zhitnik). Now, Coburn will likely play more minutes than any other Flyers defenseman the rest of the way, however long that is."

"Mike Knuble grew up in Kentwood, Mich., played hockey for the University of Michigan, held the Stanley Cup in his hands at the end of his first two NHL seasons with Detroit. "The passion it brings out in the city and the fans is something you never forget," he said after the Flyers' practice yesterday. "In Detroit they had all those flags hanging on the cars . . . "You got tired of it almost after 2 years in a row. It sounds crazy but . . . It was like, 'There's that damn Cup again.' ""

" You are excused if you are coming to the Flyers a little late. There have been plenty of reasons not to pay attention to this team. There was the disastrous NHL lockout that closed the league for the 2004-05 season. Then there was the Flyers' own disastrous 2006-07 season, when they were the worst team in the league. So there are surely plenty of fans who will tune in for the first time now that the Flyers are one round away from the Stanley Cup Finals."

"Maybe, just maybe, this conference final isn't a complete mismatch. Maybe the Stars aren't as dumb and dreary as they look. Or maybe -- strongly consider this possibility -- the Red Wings can make anyone look downright daffy these days. The Wings were borderline abusive Thursday night, and if Dallas goalie Marty Turco had Joe Louis Arena demons before, what must possess him now? The Wings have the look, the one we've seen before, the one Turco sees in his nightmares. "

"Before I spend one more word on how good our hockey team played Thursday night, I have to say how bad it looked to see so many empty seats at Joe Louis Arena. Cheaper seats. Expensive seats. Empty clusters. Half-empty rows. Hey, this ain't Nashville, folks. This is Detroit, Hockeytown, where every seat should be filled, because these are the conference finals, the bridge to the championship, against Dallas, a team that hasn't been here for the playoffs in 10 years. That last time was a war that ultimately led to a Detroit Stanley Cup."

"Mark Fistric is a 21-year-old defenseman who is built like his father -- 6-foot-2, 232 pounds -- but already is a much better player. It was Fistric who was sent off for roughing early in the first period, giving the Wings a two-man advantage that was quickly turned into a 1-0 lead on Brian Rafalski's goal. It mattered little that the penalty call against Fistric was soft. It was all the Wings needed to jump-start their bid to reach the Stanley Cup Finals. Before the end of the period, Johan Franzen, on another power play, made it 2-0 on the way to a 4-1 victory at Joe Louis Arena. "

"You'd never suspect Paul Maurice was among Imlach's successors if you listened to Maurice's farewell press conference yesterday morning. The departing coach made his two-season stay at the Air Canada Centre sound as harmonious as yoga camp. His players? He loved them. His employers at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment? Wonderful folks to work for. "They really want to win," he said with earnest sincerity that almost made you want to phone up Richard Peddie and apologize for making all those suggestions to the contrary."

"Jacques Lemaire still loves coaching. But he has been wrestling with a simple question since about halfway through the season: Is he the right coach for the Minnesota Wild at this point in their history? Lemaire was extremely frustrated at times during the 2007-08 season. He would see certain players who could perform better, yet he couldn't seem to bring out their best. "I was thinking that I didn't want to disappoint Doug (Risebrough)," Lemaire said. "It hurt me. It hurt me. It felt like I'm failing." "

"In the words of Cliff Fletcher, this is the start of a new era for the Maple Leafs -- new general manager, new coach and new players. Unfortunately for Leafs fans, all three are still TBA and so far they have been able to clear out only the old manager and now the coach. So far none of them have been replaced. In truth, it is more like the end of an era and, indeed, if there was one thing that seemed abundantly clearer yesterday, during the confirmation of the firing of coach Paul Maurice, it is that the search for a new general manager should take on an even greater, though not reckless, urgency because now there are two major jobs to fill, not to mention what has to happen with the players and the direction of the organization. "

" The curious timing of the firing of Paul Maurice leads only to further intrigue around the ever-intriguing and often inept Maple Leafs. Why fire Maurice now, especially after interim boss Cliff Fletcher announced at the end of the regular season that he wasn't going to make a decision on the coach -- and that the determination would be made by the new general manager? Why fire Maurice now, when the timing coincides with the Leafs asking for permission to talk to fired Vancouver GM Dave Nonis but have yet to have any meaningful conversation with him? What if Nonis, in some front-office role with the Leafs, wants Maurice to coach? What then? And what now? "

"So let's get this chronology straight. On April 7, Maple Leaf sort-of general manager Cliff Fletcher made it abundantly clear he wasn't going to decide the fate of head coach Paul Maurice. Then the board of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment met two days ago. Then Maurice was fired yesterday. So do you still think Fletcher is really running this hockey club? More important, it's pretty clear based on these latest shenanigans – the board spending all of its time looking to purchase an English premier division soccer club, then canning Maurice in its spare time – that the MLSE suits have no intention of handing over control of their profitable-if-not-successful hockey toy to anybody."

"Michel Therrien has never formally interviewed for a coaching job. Not in junior hockey, where he scored his first assistant's job in 1990 through a chance meeting with an opponent from his playing days. Not in the American Hockey League, where he simply answered his phone one day in 1997 and accepted an offer to coach the Montreal Canadiens' top farm club. And not in the NHL, where, again, he basically responded to the ring of his cell phone and said, "Yes," to offers in Montreal and Pittsburgh. Final tally: eight jobs, no interviews. "I don't know how one works," Therrien says, laughing. "

"We've reached that point in the buildup to the Flyers' series with Pittsburgh where newspaper columnists take potshots at the other city. Stuff like: Our defining '70s film was Rocky. Pittsburgh had The Deer Hunter, half of which was set in a desolate, violent warscape and the other half of which was set in Vietnam. But we're going to skip that tradition here. We're talking about Pittsburgh, that bridge-happy city on the other side of the state. We're talking about our neighbors. Taking cheap shots at Pittsburgh would be like picking a fight with your favorite cousin."

"STORIES ALREADY abound about John Stevens, the man and the coach. Switching the lockers around during that March slump got a lot of attention, and the other day there was talk about an exercise in which the players were assigned scouting duties for the upcoming Pittsburgh series. But the cake stories really take the cake. Before the Phantoms' 2005 run to the Calder Cup, Stevens held a team meeting at his Washington Township, N.J., home and instructed each player to bring an ingredient. Eggs, flour, sugar, frosting - they were going to bake a team cake. The idea, as Stevens said the other day, "is that all the ingredients by themselves aren't that appealing. But when you mix them with some fire you come up with a better product in the end. That's kind of who you are.""

" If you look at this thing logically ... well, if you're a Dallas Stars fan, you better take a different viewpoint of the Western Conference finals than one based purely on logic. The Stars are playing their best hockey in years. It's still not at the level the Detroit Red Wings have reached. Again. The Red Wings are the constant in an NHL landscape that changes dramatically from year to year. One year's finalists are next year's first-round losers or playoff no-shows. The Red Wings roll on. "

"So much is the same again for the Red Wings, who are rolling with defense and stars and a goaltender who was lost and then found. So much is the same again for the Wings and Chris Osgood, who are making a slight detour to the past before they head forward. So much is the same, and also not the same. Osgood still has the blonde fuzz on his chin and the tousled hair and the aw-shucks smile that gives the sense he's as cool as frozen water. The difference is, now he really is. "

"With his team broomed from the NHL playoffs, his contract with the Avalanche rapidly approaching its expiration date and no firm commitment from his boss, coach Joel Quenneville is sitting here in limbo. Is Coach Q done in Denver? Although Quenneville remains employed with the Avs through the end of June, general manager Francois Giguere steadfastly refuses to make a commitment on the team's coach for next season, with a coyness that keeps everybody guessing. "

"This is a guy who, during the lockout, began to reinvent himself, because he saw younger goalies with more efficient styles. So he worked and reworked and he taught his old dog new tricks, and he is arguably now at the highest level in his career. This is a guy, who, even when they told him they didn't want him in Detroit anymore, refused to accept a departure. Instead, he kept a home here, never sold it, and viewed his time in New York and St. Louis as an exile."

"Risebrough, in Tampa with the staff, has noticed the coach's frustration for some time. "When Jacques was talking about frustration, I didn't quite understand," Risebrough said Wednesday. "I know we didn't win in the playoffs, and there were times during the year that were tough. But he was frustrated because it's the coach's job to get the best out of the players. He started to say — here's the self-doubt — 'am I the right coach to coach the team?' "My answer to him is, 'Yes, you're the right coach.' Obviously, it's yes.' He's got a high bar. He has given us the level of success we've had. Players responded to him like they wouldn't have responded to anyone else. I can't think of anyone else coaching our team." "

"Martin Biron never really established himself as the Buffalo Sabres' franchise goalie, but he always was a franchise person. His teammates adored him. The media couldn't get enough of him. Biron spent years entertaining the masses with $20 answers to two-cent questions, telling everyone to keep the change. One lasting memory from the Eastern Conference finals two years ago, aside from a medical room full of Sabres' defenseman, was Biron doing "The Wave" with Carolina fans from his Zamboni entrance perch in the RBC Center. That's when he wasn't performing the dance number that accompanied the song, "YMCA." The guy always had a ball."

"Who is Fabian Brunnstrom and why are so many NHL teams - including the Canadiens - interested in him? Brunnstrom is back home in Sweden trying to decide where he would like to play after a whirlwind North American tour. He spent two days in Montreal, visited Detroit and Denver, and talked to people in Dallas and Toronto. He has been hailed as the best hockey player not under contract to an NHL team and has attracted a lot of attention as a 23-year-old free agent. Canadiens general manager Bob Gainey said yesterday he felt Brunnstrom has the talent to play in the NHL, but a quick look at the Swede's résumé suggests this guy poses more questions than Alex Trebek."

"To begin to understand the culture of professional ice hockey players, consider the cases of Terrell Owens and Derian Hatcher. On Dec. 19, 2004, Owens fractured the fibula and damaged the ligaments in his right ankle. On Feb. 6, 2005, Owens defied the odds and heroically played in the Super Bowl just 49 days after suffering the injury. On March 15, 2008, Hatcher fractured the tibia near his right ankle. On April 15, 2008, the Flyers defenseman defied the odds and heroically played in a Stanley Cup playoff game just 31 days after suffering the injury. General manager Paul Holmgren called Hatcher's return "a miracle." Those are the similarities. Tough and tougher. It is in the differences that a picture of hockey culture begins to emerge."

"FOR ALL OF the years and all of the jobs he has had with the Flyers - assistant and head coach, assistant and interim and plain-old general manager, and a couple of titles in between - Paul Holmgren has always been understated and plain-spoken at the same time. He is the kind of guy who has never led people wrong. Through decades of success and failure and fun and tumult , all the coaches, all the Lindroses, all of it, Holmgren has been a great organizational barometer. If you could find him - he was always scouting, somewhere - you could ask him something and he would tell you if he could and not tell you if he couldn't. But even in his silence, he would never leave you with the wrong impression - and if that doesn't sound like much, well, you have never been a newspaper reporter in the middle of a fast-moving story."

"Different feeling. Same result. Tuesday, at what has become the Sharks' annual bounced-in-the-second-round debriefing day, the mood was decidedly mixed. The glow from epic Game 6 had faded, replaced by the cold reality that the team completed another season of falling short of the goal. "It's strange to have pride and disappointment connected," General Manager Doug Wilson said. Unlike last year - when frustration and anger were the predominant emotions - this year's disappointment comes with pride. With heads held high. With knowing that the Sharks left everything they had on the ice in the final game. But, still. Different feeling. Same result. For the third consecutive season."

"You have to go a long way back in the memory bank to recall a better performance than Brenden Morrow has put in during these playoffs as the Dallas Stars hit the halfway mark in pursuit of the Stanley Cup. You can talk about the Conn Smythe Trophy for Morrow and rightfully so if the Stars get past Detroit to make the final, but the effort this man has put forward so far in leading a team against the size and strength of both Anaheim and San Jose is the stuff of legends. Not only does he give you everything he has, like he did in that deciding four overtime-period affair Sunday against the Sharks replete with 19 counted hits and no doubt many more which went unnoticed, it's what he does for the rest of the players on his team."

"The idea of analytics is so unorthodox and intimidating for the staid old hockey world, Mike Smith says there are general managers who will never "dip their toe in the water." But don't be surprised if new Vancouver Canuck boss Mike Gillis dives into the deep end. Analytics -- the sophisticated analysis of data -- revolutionized baseball when its most famous proponent, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, relied on statistics over gut instincts to build a perennial contender. Gillis, the former player agent hired last month to replace Dave Nonis as the Canucks' GM, cited Beane's success when discussing unconventionality in management. A day after introducing Laurence Gilman as the Canucks' first "capologist," Gillis reiterated Tuesday he is willing to try bold, new ideas."