Retro Post - What you need to know, the nhl 2013

- just a blast from the past. As in last year. A rejected piece that will now see the light of the Internet for the first time. 

The National Hockey League is Crazy; What you Need to Know About the 2013 NHL Season

Is this a lock-out year or not?

  Looking to widen your sports knowledge to something outside of the local football league? Perhaps you are looking to butter up those Canadian tourists that wandered into your bar and will tend to tip way too much if someone mentions hockey around them. Whatever your reasons, welcome home.

 Last year I started submitting some posts to WhatCulture about the NHL, voted by 3o million Canadians, 54 Swedes, and Danny Taylor of Plymouth, England as being THE #1 hockey league in the world. The NHL stands to begin it’s 94th year of play (give or take) next month. And this year is no different as there is much excitement in the maple syrup-flavoured air, hockey-stank excitement. Nobody in Canada has been this excited about the NHL starting up since last season when it finally began after another epic Lock-Out, which will be discussed later.

 In what went down as the greatest Stanley Cup Finals ever played since 2012, the Chicago Blackhawks stunned the Boston Bruins with 2 goals in the final 90 seconds in Game 6 to clinch hockey’s greatest trophy. It was karmic retaliation of sorts, for the Bruins had earlier made the biggest comeback in history to defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7 of a playoff series earlier which everybody outside of Toronto found hilarious. If none of that made any sense to you, welcome to…

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW OF THE NHL AS A NON-FAN;

 All you need to know is this; The NHL is crazy. There is nothing rational about it, either on the ice or off. It was the subject of the greatest sports movie ever made, and has some of the best haircuts ever. It once had two players that dominated the sport like no other athlete has ever dominated a sport yet they played at the same time. Imagine Maradona and Pele playing at the same time, and on occasion even on the same team to defeat the world’s worst superpower and #2 hockey nation (no, not America, the other one).

HD TV makes everything look real.

THE EASY STUFF;

The regular season starts in October, is 82 games long, and lasts for about six months.
Playoffs start in April and go for about three months. There is no ‘one game take all’ playoffs; this is all about maximizing owner revenue so the teams are forced to play four rounds of best-of-seven’s, which in reality is quite brilliant. The first team to win four games over their opponent moves on to the next round and possibly gets a break while waiting for their opponents to inflict maximum pain on each other.

 They play for a large trophy called the Stanley Cup, named after Lord Stanley. It is so rare, there are only 3 replicas of it in existence (the presentation one, the touring one, and the one at the Hockey Hall of Fame. The original is kept in a safe at the Hall of Fame as well and is no bigger than a large salad bowl, which was probably it’s original intention).

Canadians start talking about hockey about 2 months before the regular season starts. This is called the ‘pre-season’ or 'summer' and in reality mean nothing unless you are a Toronto fan, then it defines the rest of your season, saving you all sorts of heartbreak later on.

THE HARDER STUFF;

The NHL continues to be one of the most confusing leagues in professional sports, being the only Pro League that has regular strikes and lock outs of their players. Last year was their fourth in 20 years, which basically boiled down to this; despite record-breaking profits by 1/3 of the league’s top ‘have’ teams, the ability to keep the bottom 2/3′s teams (the have-nots) afloat hinges on players continuing to take hefty pay cuts so that owners can continue to offer certain players way too much money over extended periods of time which causes another lock out, perpetuating the cycle. To keep the ‘have’ teams from buying up all the talent (see Manchester United, New York Yankees), the league has imposed a ‘salary cap ceiling and floor’. Effectively, a team’s payroll can only be X amount of money and they have to spend at least X amount of money to avoid a replay of the major motion picture, Major League. It adds another level of excitement for hockey poolsters, general managers and accountants everywhere.

The 2013 rendition also includes league re-alignment and the team Buy Out option where a team can effectively ‘fire’ a player but still have to pay him. He can then go play for another team while still getting paid by his former team. The rest of us peons can only hope that this will catch on in the rest of the employment sector.

For Example; Vincent Lecavalier played for a ‘have-not’ team called the Tampa Bay Lightning. They fired him after recently signing him to a 14 year contract. Under the buy-out clause they are still going to be paying him over $8 Million for the next 3 years; $1.7 Million for the following 11 years.

Vinnie and his 'O' face.

Lecavalier is a decent hockey player and has won a Stanley Cup; he was immediately signed to a $4.5 million/5 year deal by the Philadelphia Flyers (a ‘have’ team) who apparently have no idea how contracts work, as they used their buy-out to fire their #1 goalie, Ilya Bryzgalov who they just signed for 14 years and $23 million last year. It’s like playing Settlers of Cataan with your drunk Uncle Alfie. It’s just best to sit back and observe and try not to get spit on.

But back to the NHL...

16 of the 30 teams make the playoffs. Due to hockey mathematics involving shoot-outs and overtime losses, 28 of the teams will still be in contention up until the final 2 days of the regular season. Yet despite this multitude of entrants, only 17 teams of these 30 teams have won the Stanley Cup in it’s near 100 year history. Considering all of the Original 6 teams have won it, blow your Canadian friends’ minds by naming the eleven other teams to have won it.

Fighting is no longer encouraged in the game, except by the players, the media and the fans that either attend the games or watch it on television. This has been an ongoing discussion since 1989 which is really embarrassing. Although hitting is enthusiastically encouraged, any hit that is too enthusiastic will be considered a suspend-able offense and over-analyzed to death by hockey-starved media and hockey bloggers. Replays of the offending hit will be shown a minimum of 10x per report, until the next big suspension or injury happens.

Gone are the six divisions in two conferences that have truly meant nothing for the last 20 years replaced by four divisions that still truly mean nothing. The new structure still means that both the Western and Eastern Conference will still have 8 teams that qualify for the playoffs but in keeping with it’s unusual scoring system, the following method will be used to keep fans confused until the final days of the regular season when they learn if their team has qualified or not for the playoffs.

From NHL.com;
The top three teams in each division will make up the first 12 teams in the playoffs. The remaining four spots will be filled by the next two highest-placed finishers in each conference — regardless of division — based on regular-season points. It will be possible for one division to send five teams to the postseason while the other sends three. 

The seeding of the wild-card teams within each divisional playoff will be determined by regular-season points. The division winner with the most points in the conference will be matched against the wild-card team with the fewest points; the division winner with the second-most points in the conference will play the wild-card team with the second-fewest points.

Still here? If you are like most hockey watchers, it's best to just wait until March at which time the local sportscasters will tell you if your team is in or not. Or you can just watch TSN who starts making playoff predictions about mid-December.


Maybe your next question is how does a team get these points to qualify for the playoffs?

A team gets 2 points for a straight-up win. If both teams tie, they each get a point. They play a 5 minute overtime session, at which time each team is minus 1 player. If someone scores, the winning team gets 2 points and the losing team gets 1 point. If nobody scores in extra time, the teams go to a shoot out where players take turns trying to score on breakaways (much like a penalty kick). If they score, that goal doesn’t count as a goal on their point totals but their team could win, as long as the other team doesn’t score. Eventually, everyone gets bored and they all go home and wait for the NHL statisticians to tell us what happened.

As I said you don’t need to worry about it. Chances are your team will just make or just miss the playoffs. Pick a team then come back in April.

But on to the Teams, starting with the Western Conference…

THE (new) PACIFIC DIVISION;

In keeping with American’s appalling lack of geography, the teams have been named by their liberal geographic locations. The Pacific Division does have four teams that are a short distance away from the Pacific Ocean and three teams that are nearly 1500 kms away from any whale-watching tours, so on average, this is pretty good for America.

The Los Angeles Kings won the Stanley Cup 2 years ago, making them the Dane Cook of Los Angeles for a short time. The LA sporting world's attention returned to it’s natural order the following Thursday, at which time the Kings returned to being the 5th most popular professional team in a city with technically only three professional sports teams, unless we include David Beckham’s entourage that went around pretending to be a professional American football/soccer team for a few years.

Most interesting Player; Jonathon Quick is their all-star goalie who somehow stops everything shot at him despite his head never having been seen above waist level, giving him a playing height of about 2.5 feet.

The Anaheim Ducks have the infamy of once being the worst-named professional team in sports when they were owned by Disney Corp and named The Anaheim Mighty Ducks in an attempt to further publicize the last place Emilio Estevez was seen, the Mighty Ducks movie franchise and the accompanying kids cartoon and merchandising that followed. The Ducks also have the glory, much like their baseball sister the Anaheim Angels of actually being located in the Los Angeles. They too once won the Stanley Cup back in 2007, although nobody noticed.

Most Interesting Player; Teemu Selanne, the ageless wonder has been in the league longer than the Phoenix Coyotes. He is on a continual retirement watch since 2008 but seeing as how he keeps scoring goals, there seems little reason for him to stop playing. He is Anaheim’s number 3 most interesting person, behind Mickey Mouse and that crazy guy at Medieval Times.

The San Jose Sharks have been around for over 2o years and have been a perennial playoff favourite for the last decade. They are also the the perennial favourite to be one of the earlier teams to be eliminated from the playoffs, following a decade long tradition of failing to live up to expectations.

Most Interesting Player; Joe Thornton, the franchise’s all-time greatest player, which seeing as how he’s been there for 10 years and there has been nobody close to his potential during that time means that he will continue to be their greatest player twenty years from now. Despite this greatness Thornton is a consistent league leader in assists, size and failing to close the deal by winning the Stanley Cup.

The Phoenix Coyotes continue to surprise Canadian hockey fans year after year by continuing to exist in a climate that is more suited to growing crazy than growing a hockey fan base. While most fans appear to be Canadians avoiding winter, the Coyotes have one of the best moving companies in the nation always on standby, so they have that going for them.

Most Interesting Player;  Shane Doan. Not saying this guy is old but he started with the franchise back when it was the Winnipeg Jets, which everybody thought was just a legend before their confusing return two years ago. The return of the Jets to Winnipeg without Shane Doan (who left with the team the first time) left many people confused, especially him. It will be hard to find a player anywhere that has wasted more winning potential with one team than Doan. Oh, well, except for this guy. Laces out Dan.

The Edmonton Oilers are absolutely packed with great young talent, so everyone tells us. Thanks to their consistent ‘bottom of the pack’ finishes, they have managed to draft the highest picks in the land for the last 5 years. This continual drafting of high-end talent will be sure to pay off dividends in the years to come, once they finish their entry-level contracts and go to legitimate contenders.

Most Interesting Player; Ryan Smyth was once called Captain Canada for a reason. He’s well-known, relatively harmless and will always show up to the party. This year is another coming out party for the Oilers young guns; Justin Schulz, Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nail Yapukov. Yes, it sounds like the line up for a Yuk Yuks comedy festival but trust me, this team will be fun to watch as their dreams get crushed under the continual heart-wrenching losses they suffer.

The Calgary Flames are where the Edmonton Oilers are five years ago. With the trading of their all-star heart and soul of the team Jarome Iginla to more-victorious pastures and the subsequent retirement of their other all-star goalie Mikka Kipprusof; the Flames made waves by hiring the one person that can do nothing to help their team win games; unofficial league hardhead, Brian Burke.

Most Interesting Player; Their team mascot, Ralph the Dog has more name recognition than all the rest of the Flames combined. So you may as well sit back, enjoy some of the superstar talent that comes through on the visiting side. You may never see them again.

The Vancouver Canucks are Western Canada’s answer to the Toronto Maple Leafs. They are a team that can exceed expectations, especially when it comes to the rest of Canada hating their fan base. It’s like they deliberately try to make you hate them with things such as this and this. It’s impossible to throw a Starbuck’s coffee and not hit somebody that has an opinion of how the team could be better, even if they are continually in the top three teams of the league. However Vancouver fans do compensate by having the best playoff hockey-related riots west of Montreal.

Most Interesting Player; If you are going to break your piggy bank to watch a Canuck game, the Sedin twins offer double your money. However they are usually both on the ice at the same time and are pretty difficult to distinguish when one or the other doesn't have the puck. The best price of admission is just to follow bipolar goaltender and all around cool guy, Roberto Luongo on his twitter feed.

Continue to check back in for my reviews and picks for The Western Conference’s Central Division!