NHL Stock Watch

Allright it's time for the first installment of what I hope to be a running segment: NHL stockwatch. Basically this section asks which NHL teams/players/executives you should be buying and selling assuming they were stocks. As with stocks, you'd want to sell assets that have reached their peak value and are on the way down, and buy those which are undervalued and look to be on their way up. (allright, fine, so this whole thing is basically a convoluted version of those "hot and not" sections every magazine in the world has, except its focused on the future not the present)

First, the sell section. These are "stocks" which have reached their peak value and you should be selling...if they were actually stocks.

Brian Burke. If Brian Burke was a corporation right now I'd be shorting his stock like crazy. He's turned into the man who can do no wrong in the past two years, with the Pronger trade, winning the cup, and everything else. At this point there's really not much higher he can go. He does have plenty of room to fall, however. Picking up Bertuzzi for 1 mil per season would have been a great move. Picking him up for 2 years at 4 million per, not so much. He's now put himself in a position where a hell of a lot of things have to go right for this signing to be regarded as a sucess. Combine this whith the downgrade the Ducks upcoming stanley cup hangover season, which might have seen the team take a sep back even if it was kept entierely the same from last season, and lingering resentment from other managers for his decision not to match the offer sheet to Penner, and I see Burkie taking a lot of crap from a lot of people this year.

The Detroit Red Wings. Ever since the lockout at the beginning of every season I've been asking the same "is this the year that Detroit finally falls off?" and each time the answer has been no. But, well, it's gotta happern some time and this year looks as to have as big a chance as any. Other than that, there's also other factors, like the fact that the entire city of Detroit is falling apart, and that the team's bajillion-game sellout streak actually ended last season in the first round of the playoffs(with the Michigan economy being blamed). That can't be a good sign. Eventually it all has to come apart for a few years. It may not happern tommorow, but the weaknesses are already starting to show.

Daniel Briere, Chris Drury, Sheldon Souray. Way, way overvalued because of this last free agent season. All three of these guys are non-elite players who are coming off one good year, and all three got way more than they should because the teams apparently said "hey, someone's gotta get 6 mill per year this free agent season" and these guys were the best players available. A lot of people are gonna feel pretty stupid when these guys go back to their regular selves.

And now for the buy section. These are undervalued "stocks" that are on their way up.

The Kings, Caps and Blues. My three sleeper teams this season. The Avs aren't a sleeper because everyone's expecting them to do well this season. Of these three the Kings are my personal favourite. They have what may be one of the best defences in the NHL (seriously, look it up, they have 5 guys who've had at least a 39 point season in the last 5 years and the other one's Jack Johnson). They have one of the best group of young forwards in the league (Frolov, Kopitar, Calimaneri), and solid depth with Nagy, Hazndus and Calder. On paper this is at the very least a playoff team, and I really dont get why they're not getting more recognition aside from the fact that they sucked last year and did not make any single major move in the off-season (although this may be a point in their favor). The Blues were already good for the second half of last season, and only got better in the off-season. I'd be surprised if they dont contend this year. The Caps made a few good moves, but more than that just have "feel-good season" written all over them this year.

The NHLPA. Getting their shit back together at last.

The New Jersey Devils. Entirely because of the new arena. One of the most depressing recurring NHL stories of the past 15 years has been how the Devils have always been one of the best teams in hockey, but didn't have the fan support to match their on-ice performance. A lot of people, rightly or wrongly, blamed this on their former arena's proximity to MSG(apparently it's literally half an hour away). The new arena solves this problem and, aside from that, is probably just plain nicer than their decrepit old haunt. There's no guarantees here but it should probably do a lot to the franchise.

California Hockey. Ok maybe not.

Burke doesn't match

As you've no doubt heard, Brian Burke did not match the offer sheet and Penner is now headed to Edmonton for 5 years at 4.25 million per year. This offer, or rather the muted reaction to it, might be the most significant thing to happern this off-season. The surprise and anger that you would have expected after Burke didn't match hasn't been there so far. Yes, it's still early, but there haven't been any angry quotes from anonymous GMs calling Burke a pussy for not matching and claiming his actions will destroy...well I don't know what exactly. Compare this to last year, when even though Nonis matched Kesler's RFA offer he still got angry calls for other GMs for not doing so quickly enough. By now, though, he stigma that used to be associated with RFA offers, both in terms of offering them and even remotely contemplating not matching them, seems to have mostly dissapated. For the first time in a long while, or I guess ever, we've seen the RFA process occur without a huge ammount of scorn being heaped on all sides by the hockey community. Offer sheets are now a legitimate tactic. In the hockey world, this might be one of those huge historical moments that changes the way things are done from this point on. I think it's pretty likely that next summer we're going to see a lot more RFA offers and that not a lot of fuss, at least of the "RFA's are forebidden asshole!" variety, will be made about them. So congratulations Kevin Lowe. Your desperation has created a new world for us all.

Staal brothers arrested for steroids, illegal dogfighting and tampering with the refereeing of NHL games

Just kidding, it was for getting rowdy at a bachelor party. Doesn't it make you love the NHL when this is the worst we can come up with? Seriously.

The full police report:

On 07/21/07 at approximately 12:30 a.m. the Cook County Sheriff's Office received several complaints in the area of Lutsen Resort and Sea Villas. All complaints were similar in nature, and reporting the same incident; a group of approximately 20 people screaming, yelling, and playing loud music.

At approximately 12:50 a.m. Cook County Sheriff's Office deputies arrived at the Lutsen Resort and Sea Villas. The suspects were warned multiple times to be quiet or they may be removed from the property, issued citations, arrested, and/or deported from the country.

At approximately 3:00 a.m. staff at Lutsen Resort and Sea Villas ordered the group to leave the property, as they were not obeying the warnings they had been given. Cook County Sheriff Deputies, a Minnesota State Patrol Trooper, and a United States Border Patrol agent assisted with the removal of the suspects.

After leaving the property, the group gathered on Highway 61 and began harassing passing motorists. At approximately 4:00 a.m. the suspects were placed under arrest for disorderly conduct and obstructing the legal process. Some of the suspects fled in to the nearby woods.

I mean, really, we've all been there. Who hasn't put back a few with his buddies and decided "Hey, let's go harass some passing motorists". My favourite quote of this whole ordeal, though, comes from the Staals' agent. Apparently "this is what can happern when you get any group of 15-20 people together and there's loud noise." Oh no it's... loud noise. Loud noise make Staal want smash!

By the way here's the Staals' wildly dissapointing mug shots. Apparently these guys look clean cut even after a long night of drinking and harrassing motorists. Their faces aren't even red!!! God bless the NHL...



All in all, the older Staal spent a day in jail, his brother was released after a few hours, the Canes apparently decided to chalk this one up to "boys will be boys", and a good time was had by all. I would like to personally extend my thanks to the Staal brothers and suggest that all future NHL bachelor parties be held in July and August when there's not much else to write about.

(police report and mug shots shamelessly ripped off from Eric McErlan at AOL Fanhouse)

Link of the day...

Mysterious hockey trade rumor monger Eklund almost breaks down and cries on his blog about the crowd gathered at a "Save the Predators" rally in Nashville. Maybe there's hope for hockey there after all.

More on the rally at one of the Nashville Hockey Blogs (feels funny just saying that). Hopefully this gets some sort of positive coverage in the press tommorow. It's a freaking hockey rally in Nashville! They sold something like 700+ season tickets in one day. Even people in the organisation like Barry Trotz were buying them to support the cause. Sure those 7500 people who showed up might include every single hockey fan in Tennesee, but it's still nice to see something like this in a place where they had to have a PA announcement at the end of their first NHL game telling people to go home because the game was three periods not four quarters long. Also the Preds unveiled their new uniforms. Not that bad:

Will the East be any better this year?

As we all know, the East has been getting its' ass kicked up and down by the Western conference this past season, to the point that Ottawa stood almost no chance against a Western team after playing it's creampuff Eastern schedule. Just to put this in prespective the Western teams' combined record against the East was 82-48-20 (63-48 in regulation) and only a single Western team(Columbus) had a losing record against the East. So will the East be any better this year? Well one way to find out is to see if the East has picked up more quality free agents than the East. So without further ado, here's all the players that have switched teams from West to the East and those that have switched from the East to the West, with the bigger names in bold.

West to East:
Radek Dvorak
Shawn Thorton
Brett Mclean
Todd White
Petr Sykora
Dany Sabourin
Daryl Sydor
Roman Hamrlik
Kevin Klee
Bryan Smolinski
Ted Kostopoulos
Bill Guerin
Vitali Vishnevski
Joe Motzko

East to West:
Brian Rafalski
Yanic Pereault
Cory Sarich
Jed Ortmeyer
Ryan Smyth
Tom Preising
Greg DeVries
Radek Bonk
Brad Isbister
Eric Belanger
Shane Hindy
Sean Hill
Trevor Bryne
Shane Willis
Mike York
Todd Fedoruk

So really there's been no change, two medium-name defencemen and two medium-name forwards are lost and gained by each conference. If anything the biggest surprise has been how few big names have switched conferences, with the biggest name being Ryan Smyth who only went to the East on a deadline deal.

Of course there's also trades. From this we have a bit more movement:

West to East:
Jason Smith
Jeoffery Lupul
Thomas Vokun
Mark Bell
Vesa Toskala
Manny Fernandez
Kimmo Timmonen
Scott Hartnell
Jassen Cullimore
Tony Salmelaien

East to West:
Joni Pitkanen
Geoff Sanderson
Sergei Samsonov
Darryl Sydor
Petr Klaus

Here the East has finally made some gains, aquiring three of the preds best players and three starting goaltenders while the only good player the West gets back is Joni Pitkanen. So looks like the East is primed to make up at least a little ground, in part because of The Great Nashville Sell Off(tm).

About this Kevin Lowe business

Not that I'm trying to defend Kevin Lowe here or anything but I'm tired of reading everyone's complaints about how he's the most evil bastard in the world for giving Vanek an offer sheet. The man didn't do anything illegal. He took advantage of an existing clause in the CBA, a clause that I presume was put in there in order to be used. If you're going to have all this stigma attatched to it then why even bother having Restricted Freee Agency in the first place?

Isn't this whole process dangerously close to collusion? If a bunch of NHL(or say baseball....) owners got together and verbally agreed to limit the offers made to each other's players in order to keep salaries down they'd be in a lot of legal trouble. How different is that from the current situation where the league's GM's are essentially agreeing not to take advantage of a clause in the CBA that would probably drive up player salaries?